Let Them Eat Cake

By Steve Poftak
March 15th, 2010

Please, please, my friends at the Greenway — don’t get too precious about vetting what foods are healthy enough to be sold on the Greenway. You need to draw people, put whatever people want to come and eat.

I’m all in favor of healthy, local options on my own dime but you need an infusion of people, not a monument.

This quote gives me pause:

“You can imagine people squeezing fresh lemons or fresh oranges,’’ said Nancy Brennan, executive director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. “You can imagine high-end grilled cheese sandwiches with local cheese as the centerpiece of really good bread.’’

I can also imagine families and workers that would rather have something tasty and affordable.

And while I’m working the Greenway-Food beat — I like that the Globe is supporting the notion of a public market near Haymarket. I hope that they can build it and populate it in a way that works with the existing Haymarket (read low-cost, high volume, and occasionally spotty quality) not against it. Haymarket thrives on the vast number of bargain shoppers and the Public Market should serve as a complement, not a yuppified counterpoint.