“Shallots are for Babies, Onions are for Men.  Garlic is for Heroes.”

Disembarking hurriedly from the train at Back Bay Station in Boston, I immediately hailed a cab. It wasn’t lobster and steamer clams dripping with salty butter for which I fantasized, nor the insipid coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, or even the tart crunch of autumn apples from western Massachusetts. Those treats will be relished in time; each with great fondness and nostalgia for my earlier life spent in New England. Rather,it was the garlic from The Daily Catch in Boston’s North End for which I now ached.

It was a warm Friday night and the line snaking down Hanover Street was long. With only six tables inside the tiny storefront, there was always an assured wait for supper. Italian music from the bodega next door set the mood on, while ecclesiastical incense from the church across the street reminded me of Sicily. Daily Catch didn’t take names, reservations or credit cards. The menu was written in colored chalk on a large board, set against a dingy tin wall. It didn’t often deviate. In the line behind me, an older man in a finely cut, blue pinstriped blue suit and shiny black shoes tried to pimp out his much younger, blonde and pregnant wife to get ahead in line.

No dice, old man.

It was the scent of frying garlic that set me on edge; I was growing slowly mad from its perfume. Allium sativum, or garlic, is a species of the the onion genus, Allium, and counts as its family the onion, leek, shallot and chive. The compound Allicin produces garlic’s distinctive odor, which changes depending on its preparation.

Native to central Asia, the pungent bulb has been used for more than 7,000 years in kitchens from Asia to Africa; throughout Europe, and heartily embraced in the Mediterranean regions. Ancient Egyptians fed garlic to laborers building the Pyramids. Ancient Greeks extolled garlic’s benefits as an over-all curative. Ancient Romans fed it to their soldiers and sailors to increase stamina. Before humans subscribed to better living through chemistry, these cultures understood food is medicine. Garlic rightfully earned its place in the mortars of both canteen and pharmacy ever since. The writings of wise men such as Hippocrates, Galen, Pliny the Elder, and Dioscorides mentions garlic for treating conditions, such as parasites, respiratory problems, poor digestion, and low energy.

More recently, nutrition scientists at the University of Florida found garlic boosts the number of T-cells in the blood stream. The bulb’s benefits have been noted with helping to treat high blood pressure, cholesterol and heart disease. Garlic is used for building the immune system, fighting colds and flu, preventing and treating bacterial and fungal infection, and maintaining healthy liver function. Louis Pasteur discovered garlic kills bacteria and I’ve even known athletes who apply garlic’s oil topically to treat jock itch and athlete’s foot.

I studied each person waiting in line at The Daily Catch, gauging worthiness for the flavors that lie ahead. My judgements were momentarily halted as the door finally swung open and we were directed to a small table set with paper napkins. I couldn’t have been more excited if I’d been escorted to a Frette linen-draped table at a Michelin three-star in Paris. The open kitchen was set in the middle of the dining room. The single waiter jostled between the tables, taking orders, refilling water and serving food. A gregarious, twenty-three year old with a thick Boston accent, he was one of six boys in a family that owned the joint. There was one young Hispanic man with a gleaming grill flashing with his ready smile, cutting thick, doughy loaves of Italian bread and clearing tables. Behind the line was a tall, bespeckled Asian man, quite adept at keeping the dented, overworked skillets full of frying garlic and seafood and moving them quickly across the burners. We ordered two glasses of crisp white Falanghina wine from Campania to start, along with a bottle of inexpensive Sicilian Nero d’Avola. Two small plastic cups were the glassware of choice, but the lack of hand-blown crystal didn’t deter from the wine’s pleasure.

The place is known for its house-made squid ink pasta, hand-cranked each morning and as black as the ocean’s floor. We ordered the pasta smothered in minced squid with garlic, a platter of crunchy broccoli with yet more garlic; and a large, snow-white filet of haddock from the local waters, dusted with crumb and set under a blazing broiler. For a brief moment, my food dreams of past, present, and future intersected.

The college girls at the next table drank several bottles of white Zinfandel and feasted on Lobster Fra Diavolo, their cheeks taking on a rosy hue from wine, conversation and garlic.