get @baffled

It's 4 p.m. on the last day of August and New Yorkers are lined up in the Flatiron District, enduring shadeless heat so they can be among the first to explore Eataly, an Italian mega-market. When the doors finally open, the pandemonium to get inside is not just for air conditioning.

Aside from the pizza and gelato counters, the centre of excitement is the fresh-baked bread counter where one of the owners, Mario Batali, smiles for photos with an endless parade of bright-eyed fans. Though he looks slimmer than he has in years, he is easy to recognize with his ponytail, short pants and pink-stockinged feet stuffed into orange Crocs. Elsewhere in the store are his cookbooks and pasta sauces for sale.

But Eataly is really about Italy, the celebrity chef points out. “We're sharing it with New York,” he says. “This is our interpretation of what Italian culture is. We're not pretending to invent anything. It's all in support of helping people eat better, but it's not precious.”

“We” refers to his partners, Joe Bastianich, Lidia Bastianich and Oscar Farinetti, the mogul who founded the first Eataly in Turin in 2007. The food-centric foursome has worked together for two years to create a New York flagship store, assembling a mind-bending dried pasta collection, a 10,000-bottle Italian wine shop and seven café/restaurants on the premises. Manzo is a full-blown white tablecloth experience while other more casual counters are devoted to fresh fish, pasta, vegetarian options, panini or coffee. Surrounding it all are shelves of canned, bottled, jarred and packaged goods, fresh and cured meats, fish, cheese, fruit, vegetables, desserts and housewares.

Eataly is open daily from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.; 200 Fifth Ave. (23rd St.), New York; 212-229-2560; www.newyork.eataly.com.

What you can get for … $58

Barilla bucatini pasta, made in Italy, $1.98

Tin of Amarelli Rossano licorice, $5.80

Domori Cacao Sambirano dark chocolate bar, $7.80

Saba (Mosto Cotto), the poor man's balsamic vinegar, $14.80

Lavazza espresso, 8.8 ounces, $9.20

Eataly cotton shopping bag, $1.78

Lidia's Tomato Basil Sauce, 24.7 ounces, $6.80

Vacuum-packed carnaroli rice from Falesco, 500 grams, $3.80

Biscottini made by Camporelli since 1852, 8.8 ounces, $5.80

Neil Reynolds writes:

" The celebrated “new atheists” – foremost among them Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) – have led a boisterous charge against religious faith. Remarkably few defenders of faith, however, have effectively engaged them. In David Brog, the atheists meet a worthy protagonist.

 

Mr. Brog, in his In Defense of Faith: The Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity, concedes that Christians have committed horrendous crimes in the name of theology but sets out to prove that Judeo-Christian beliefs gave the Western and, ultimately, entire world its most important spiritual value: an obligatory reverence for life. "

This would probably make an interesting read... From what I can gather so far, the real question that the author may be missing is "is morality the exclusive province of the Judeo-Christian system of beliefs?". That's a big question, to be sure, and one that I would have to answer in the negative....