I love a man who knows his fruit.
This is a valentine of sorts. Not to my husband, who, for the record, has considerable talent in this area. But to a guy who spends his days delighting strangers with sweetness.
I’ve had my eye on George Clare for years now. He works the late shift in the produce section of the Whole Foods on East First Avenue in Denver. He’s best known for offering samples of his ripest and juiciest picks.
“Aw, you gotta try this,” Clare says, all subtle seduction.
I’ll admit, I thought I had a special thing with the balding 58-year-old with the paring knife. He has a way of giving the impression that he has saved a stash of Palisade peaches just for me.
But I’m hardly the only one. As it turns out, loads of folks have a soft spot for Clare.
“We spend a boatload in his department,” says Mike Thompson, a regular.
“How can you help but have a crush on a guy who’s able to take a pile of melons and infallibly pick the very best one?” adds his wife, Celia. “We’d follow him off the edge of the Earth.”
Clare grew up on a dead-end street in West Haven, Conn., where he says he “thought produce grew at the produce rack at the A&P.” He didn’t taste an avocado until he left home at age 18.
He spent years as a migrant worker, traveling north in the summers and south in the winters to work whatever crop needed picking. He settled in Denver in 1977, selling produce at a string of green grocers until Whole Foods opened in the city. He lived for a while as a fruitarian.
This helps explains why he’s so terrific at his job.
Most of us, if required, could stack a pyramid of apples. Most of us could pick up basics such as how to identify an endive. Those skills are a dime a dozen.
But it’s rare and wonderful to have a feel for fruit.
Clare has an ability to choose the plum-iest plum, bursting out of its skin, precisely at the point between being too tart and too sweet. He can pick a pear when it’s hard and tasteless and tell you the exact day its juices will burst with flavor. With pomegranates, he’s able to press their skin and intuit the potency of their seeds. And at picking peaches, let’s just say he’s gifted.
Lately, his thing is citrus. Honey tangerines. Satsumas and mandarins. Rio Star grapefruits that give Texas a good name. And navel oranges that taste like sunshine.
And it’s not just the produce. It’s that he cuts it for you and smiles knowingly. It’s that he peels the tangelos, hands you a section, then hands you another when he sees that you like it. Just like toast that’s buttered for you, fruit tastes best when somebody else does the work.
Clare is proud of having offered a fresh fig to a man who figured they grew as Newtons. He relishes urging kids to eat their veggies. Day after day, he likes being there, surrounded by choice fruit and people who value its goodness.
There’s an art and rhythm to his work, which is all about timing. And there’s a mindfulness to the man himself that make me swoon.
“I build up my tables and the people build them down,” he says. “I’ve watched the seasons turn for a very long time now. And I’ve been paying attention.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
