Of course, he would be happy to.
They were still at their peak, sweet, juicy, abidingly tender, the tastier for their unexpected appearance - Edenic apples beside the asphalt, berries from heaven.
So goes the season of strawberries; it straddles spring's end and summer's start, arriving tart, ending (slightly) sour. But in between, they're a valentine, the Lancaster and Jersey berries full of the ephemeral strawberry-ness that the ruinous demands of shelf life and shipping from California put in second place, or down even a few rungs from that.
They polka-dot the city. At Lore's Chocolates, Seventh and Chestnut, a particular dark chocolate-covered strawberry makes its secret cameo. Only on Wednesday, like one of those flowers that blooms for a day and is gone.
This is not what you think of, typically, as a chocolate-dipped berry. What Lore's does is roll the strawberry in a fondant sugar, then coat it with chocolate; the berry's acidity converts the sugar to a cordial syrup. Customers in the know have standing orders: Every Wednesday!
Why one day? The syrup has a viscosity that seems thinner than water, and after a single day it is rare that it doesn't find an invisible channel and seep out the bottom.
You can freeze them. But Tony Lore, the owner, doesn't encourage it: "It's not the same." Some things are meant to be what they are. In the moment. Then done.
The local season is dwindling. But late-season local strawberries are actually part of the personality of the strawberry shortcake that chef Ted Manko strongly - insistently? - advises you to try at the end of your meal at Oyster House, 15th and Sansom.
