Soon after my friend Jimi moved to New York City, still in the initial grip of its charms, he told me he was fascinatated that he could buy a Big Mac any time he wanted. He wasn’t addicted to fast food, merely relaxed in the confidence that should he require a Big Mac at four in the morning, one could be readily procured at McDonald’s Times Square.
New York provides. Your want of any thing isn’t limited by what’s available because everything’s available. The only concern is, “Can I get it delivered or will I have to pick it up?” Earlier this year, for instance, I was convinced I needed a six-foot sheet of translucent Colorplast for a project and sure enough, a store on Canal Street sold just that.
To my dentist’s chagrin, I also want soda made with sweet, superior sugar. When I wrote excitedly last summer of finding Coke in San Francisco made with sugar instead of the high fructose corn syrup it’s been made with domestically since the mid-’80s, I had assumed it was the most conveniently available source. For shame. I should have checked New York first. Even more reliable than finding gray-market Mexican imports of sugar-Coke at local bodegas, I learned this weekend of a more consistent and legal stock bathed in semisecrecy.
According to a frequently bandied-about statistic, the New York metropolitan area is home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside Israel. Chametz, a law of Passover, dictates that certain grains cannot be consumed during the holiday, in some cases including corn, the source of high fructose corn syrup. So in order not to lose a segment of potential consumers, Coke adds a kosher-certified variety of its namesake beverage made with sucrose (sugar) in the weeks leading up to Passover, from mid-March to early April.
Compounding this small window of opportunity, availability is limited. In cans and two-liter bottles, you can find it in New York and a few other large metropolitain areas, which according to the Orthodox Union include Boston, Baltimore-Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Kosher Coke made with sugar can be spotted by a telltale yellow cap printed with a Hebrew phrase and the OU-P symbol (as well as sucrose in the ingredients listing).
Soda connoisseurs perpetuate and fret over the hoarding and small stocks of sugared Coke, but by merely striding toward the beverage aisle at an Upper West Side Gristedes, I noticed about half of the two-liter bottles of Coke on the shelves were topped by yellow caps. It’s interesting that they weren’t segregated or designated kosher/made-with-sugar by a sign or display. Possibly only observant Jewish folk, sugar-soda lovers and readers of certain blogs know the secret.