The Search for the Perfect French Toast - Sylvester's

Of all the Valley's famous residents, Sylvester Graham is probably the least-remembered and the most intriguing. Most people know at least a little bit about Calvin Coolidge, Sojourner Truth, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson, but very few people know about old Sylvester - or, if they do, they don't know that they do. This is because the graham cracker was named after him. There is some dispute as to whether Sylvester actually invented the graham cracker or if it was simply given his name because it was originally made using the "graham flour" that he helped to popularize in the nineteenth century, but in either case his is a significant contribution to the annals of American food culture for that reason alone.

But that's not why he's intriguing. He's intriguing because he was the first American dietary guru, and because he was among the first to adopt that oh-so-American habit of equating dietary choices with moral choices (anyone who has ever heard a dessert described as "decadent" or "sinful" has Graham to thank). For Graham, good health depended on curbing appetites, whether digestive or sexual, and adhering to a strict, ascetic lifestyle. Meat, he felt, inflamed the stomach as well as the carnal passions, and thus should be avoided entirely (late in life he helped found one of the country's earliest vegetarian societies). For the same reasons condiments were to be shunned, as were tight corsets, feather beds, enriched flour (hence his development of unenriched "graham flour"), and, of course, masturbation (the ill effects of the latter could clearly be seen in outbreaks of acne among adolescents). Many of his prescriptions were, in fact, quite healthful, though often not for the reasons he thought. He promoted regular exercise, for instance, believing that it would prevent nocturnal emissions, and many a modern-day nutritionist would endorse his advocacy of a meat-free diet rich in whole grains, even if they might be a bit more lenient when it came to feather beds.

Graham emerged during a period of intense reforming zeal in American history, preaching his food gospel (he was, fittingly, a Presbyterian minister) during the 1820s and 1830s, during the so-called Second Great Awakening. Just to the west of here, in the "burned-over district" of upstate New York, Joseph Smith was founding the Latter Day Saints after being visited by the angel Moroni, who showed him golden plates detailing Christ's visits to the ancient Israelite inhabitants of the Americas. Also among Graham's neighbors were the Shakers, who first started getting the shakes around this time; the Fox sisters, whose seances became national sensations; and John Noyes, who founded the utopian commune at Oneida, NY, where residents simultaneously practiced group marriage and discouraged male ejaculation - no mean feat, that, but one of which Graham must surely have approved.

Graham's legacy, apart from the eponymous cracker, is primarily felt today in the breakfast cereal aisle of your local grocery store. James Caleb Jackson, a Graham disciple, developed the first breakfast cereal, called Granula, from his teacher's whole-grain principles. John Harvey Kellogg, brother of W. K. Kellogg (whose signature, found on millions of cereal boxes worldwide, is second only to John Hancock's as the most famous in America), was another Graham follower, and his famous sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan (the setting of T.C. Boyle's book The Road to Wellville and the film of the same name) updated and popularized Graham's teaching in the late 19th century. Kellogg developed his own cereal (the first of which he named Granola, after a court battle deprived him of the name Granula), and he and his brother went on to build a breakfast cereal empire that, over time, came to have only a tenuous connection to Graham's original principles.

It's fitting, therefore, that Graham's Northampton home, where he died in 1851, should now be one of the Valley's most popular brunch destinations. Until very recently the servers' t-shirts said, on the back, "Rain or Shine, There's Always a Line," and it's true, especially on weekends - if you're trying to get into Sylvester's on a sunny Sunday morning, you'd better bring a book and prepare to wait a while. In many ways, however, Graham would be thoroughly appalled by what's become of his former home. Not only does the restaurant serve bread baked with enriched flour (Graham famously clashed with Boston bakers in 1837 over his opposition to their industrially manufactured bread), it also serves coffee and tea (Graham was opposed to all stimulants), as well as meat of every kind. The place might as well be filled with masturbating teenagers in corsets.



Still, it's a pretty good brunch spot, although one sometimes gets the feeling that they're coasting on their reputation. The food is good, but it's not outstanding, and the menu is seldom innovative like it is at, say, the Green Bean or the Lone Wolf. They do, however, offer a range of french toasts - in addition to the usual choice of white or wheat, there is also banana bread, cinnamon raisin, and apple. On a recent visit, in the spirit of Sylvester Graham, I opted for the most whole-grain french toast I could find - the kind made with Oatmeal Sunflower Seed Bread. My expectations were high, given the popularity of the restaurant and the karmic appropriateness of eating this specific variety of french toast in Graham's own house, but I'm afraid it wasn't the transcendent experience I was expecting. Mind you, it was perfectly serviceable french toast - nicely crisp on the outside, a little cinnamony, the scattered sunflower seeds enlivening the task of masticating - but it was eggy and mushy inside, and it lacked powdered sugar. It certainly didn't inflame my passions - which, I suppose, would have suited the original Sylvester just fine.