Quiet Bubble

Trois pistoles—the good, the bad, and the merely sinful

My friend L(2) introduced me to the Canadian beer Trois Pistoles last Thanksgiving, which makes her a wicked, wicked woman. It’s a fruity but dark concoction that’s got a strong 9% alcohol kick that sneaks up on me because it’s so sweet and almost chocolatey in its richness and flavor. Only the label—Gothic lettering, vaguely menacing horse-dragon creature—and almost black glass give you fair warning. I don’t often drink beer but I look out for that one.

In honor of L(2) and the city I just visited (for work), which has equal shares of fruitiness and musk, here are three culinary experiences I had in San Francisco.

Mona Lisa (on Columbus Avenue): Compressed like a shotgun, candlelit, dim, and crammed with Renaissance art reproductions from floor to high ceiling, the Mona Lisa sounds like it should feel cramped and uncomfortable. Instead, it’s quite homey, even though the décor is like something out of a Fragonard painting—or, at least, the opulent curlicues of the Fragonard room at the Frick Collection. Poppy Z. Brite would call it a classic “red-gravy joint,” in that the cuisine is standard Italian—the menu has two big pages of pasta dishes. But the menu feels almost larger than the physical space, and the Mona Lisa has to be competitive, as you can trip over Italian restaurants in the North Beach area. I found antipasti that surprised and amazed me. The copious slivers of smoked salmon glistened on the plate and melted in the mouth. Laid on a bed of mixed greens and sprinkled with lemon juice and tangy, large capers, the fish’s layout was so pink and fleshy as to be embarrassingly erotic. Tasting the salmon, and letting it rest on the tongue, only heightened the sensation. I cleaned my plate. The fettuccine, with sliced tomatoes and a subtle cream sauce that was laid on just thick enough to coat the past, was superb. Around this time, I fell in love with the restaurant. My waiter—and, yes, he was called “Tony” by the crew—understood my desire for a second glass of wine before even I realized it. The waitstaff weaved its way through the close tables and intimately chatting clientele so adroitly that the Mona Lisa seemed more spacious than it was—at most, the room could fit 50 eaters, but it never felt like a luncheonette. Halfway through my Fettuccine Leonardo, a young waiter came from the back carrying a trombone. He serenaded a birthday girl with a slurring, sexy rendition of Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther” before blurting out “Happy Birthday.” Later, he would perform the opening snatch of “West End Blues,” apparently just to show that he could. My visit afterward to City Lights Books, two blocks down, seemed anticlimactic by comparison.

Empress of China (on Grant Avenue): The Empress of China, though technically a top-floor restaurant, feels nestled in the middle of something—a buried egg. Perhaps it should remain so, but it’s too late for that. It’s got a reputation to uphold. The waiters dress in tuxes, the busboys wield green jackets, and the petite maitre d’ wore a dazzling blue-and-gold dress cut to accentuate her curves. That dress was the best part of my dining experience and, yes, that’s a backhanded compliment. The savory pot stickers weren’t particularly interesting, though the doughy, slippery texture was delightful. My barbecued duck, garnished with cilantro, was all too greasy and gristly. The Woody Allen one-liner—“The food was terrible, and the portions were so small!” comes to mind here. I wish the cuisine were less oily all-around, spiced more appropriately, and that there was more of it. The menu wasn’t a step beyond what I see at my local Best Wok, Jackson’s Chinese takeout magnifique, so there wasn’t a helluva lot to choose from. Even the décor seemed like faded glamour. At one point, a table cleared and a busboy worked swiftly to replace the silverware and tablecloth. He lifted the brilliant white tablecloth to reveal, but only for a sec, the cracked and stained Formica beneath. My experience was like that. And then I saw the bill. I had to walk down Grant and Kearny, and pause to watch Chinese teens play a pick-up game of volleyball at the Willie “Woo Woo” Wong playground to recover from the $60 tab.

See’s Candies (on Market Street): I’ve said before that I’m not a big dessert eater, and that’s true, as far as it goes. But I’m a sucker for toffee. Buttery toffee rectangles, coated with milk chocolate and then sprinkled with shaved almonds… well, that’s just irresistible. I bought a tin for Ashleigh at work, and another for myself. I’ll need to read a Jack Chick tract to recover from all that sin, but God should bless See’s, anyway.

Muscadine martini

Finally, a use for muscadine wine.

Mind you, I’m a Cultured Southern Man so, by rights, I should be downing the stuff like Coca-Cola. Every time I attend a party with fancy hors d’oeuvres here in Jackson, I can be sure that chilled vintage from Old South Winery will also be on the menu. Honestly, though, I’ve never liked this particular grape. It’s both too sweet and too astringent; I always feel like I’m drinking liquid Jolly Ranchers. Dessert wines aren’t my favorites, anyway, but at least riesling is spicy and a little dry.

But Traveling Tom, who’s been staying with me for a week or two, seems to favor muscadine wine above all other alcoholic beverages. Sure, he’ll try a margarita, if we’re eating at a Tex-Mex restaurant, but he’s otherwise completely sober. He just doesn’t like the taste. Muscadine wine, however, doesn’t have the bitter, sharp, lingering taste that most alcohol has, and so he likes it. I’m of the opposite persuasion. I want my alcohol to taste like it, damnit, so I won’t get lulled into a false sense of security. A fruity drink—“It tastes just like juice!”; “I don’t notice the alcohol at all!”—gets me into trouble quickly; I’d rather be conscious of my intake. Besides, I’m just not big on desserts.

Last night, though, TT told me that he had just found a new apartment, and I felt like offering a small gift to him in celebration. So, a bottle of Old South Winery’s Sweet Magnolia was cooling in the fridge. I had a nice bottle of Russian vodka in the freezer but, alas, no vermouth. So, he could celebrate but I was stuck.

Now, I get my best ideas while washing dishes. Mid-scrub, I figured that a splash of Sweet Magnolia might work as well as dry vermouth. After setting the plates and silverware out to dry, I tried out the following: 3 ounces of Jewel of Russia vodka, a nip of muscadine wine, two or three drops of olive juice. Shake over ice, pour into chilled glass, add two olives, and sip. The wine’s sweetness undercuts the bracing effect of hardcore vodka, and adds a pleasant, mild fragrance that reminds me of musk and herb gardens. The olive juice keeps the concoction salty and adult. In retrospect, I might use less muscadine—a generous splash of it overpowers everything—but it’s terrific all the same.

Just so you know.

Chabon’s shtekeleh

I knew I’d fallen in love with Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union around the time the protagonist, drunkard detective Meyer Landsman, observes about his ex-wife Bina Gelbfish. They’re sharing a tense meal in a sad cafeteria—Meyer’s still in love with Bina, she knows this, and they’re both avoiding the issue—on a blue, snowy night. Meyer’s filled with longing, and Chabon slices to the core of the man’s love:

She spoons up a mouthful of tuna salad. He catches the glint of her gold-rimmed bicuspid and thinks of the day she came home with it, looped on nitrous oxide and inviting him to put his tongue into her mouth and see how it felt. After the first bite of tuna salad, Bina gets serious. She shovels in ten or eleven more spoonfuls, chewing and swallowing with abandon. Her breath comes through her nostrils in avid jets. Her eyes are fixed on the intercourse of her plate and spoon. A girl with a healthy appetite, that was his mother’s first recorded statement on the subject of Bina Gelbfish twenty years ago. Like most of his mother’s compliments, it was convertible to an insult when needed. But Landsman trusts only a woman who eats like a man. When there is nothing left but a mayonnaise slick on the lettuce leaf, Bina wipes her mouth on her napkin and lets out a deep sigh of satiety.

Oh, yum yum yum, and I’m not talking about the tuna salad. Meyer and I are soulmates. Chabon’s prose is propulsive and churning, richly detailed but succinct and darkly, briskly funny. More than anything, though, it’s gustatory, an orgy of culinary smells, food-drenched metaphors, and sharp sentences that evoke the tastebuds and olfactory senses as much—and maybe more—than the eyes. The book’s full of big ideas—about noir, law vs. lawlessness, faith and the lack thereof, the concept of homeland, miracles, chess—but it’s written in the flesh. It’s a pungent, earthy novel.

Still, it’s unnerving how big a role food plays in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Meyer’s emboldened and distracted in equal measures by his ever-present bottle of slivovitz. An establishing meeting between Meyer and the family of his old friend/detective comrade Berko Shemets takes place over breakfast at Shemets’ apartment—the fold and aroma of the waffles lingers in the mind, as does Landsman’s beer (in front of the children, no less). A rebbe gets told of his son’s untimely death by detectives interrupting his Sabbath meal. The most important conversations take place over eats and drinks, in seedy bars and lonely cafeterias. Landsman gets a crucial clue about a man’s murder in a bakery. It’s not just any kind of bakery:

The Filipino-style Chinese donut, or shtekeleh, is the great contribution of the District of Sitka to the food lovers of the world. In its present form, it cannot be found in the Philippines. No Chinese trencherman would recognize it as the fruit of his native fry kettles. Like the storm god Yahweh of Sumeria, the shtekeleh was not invented by the Jews, but the world would sport neither God nor the shtekeleh without Jews and their desires. A panatela of fried dough not quite sweet, not quite salty, rolled in sugar, crisp-skinned, tender inside, and honeycombed with air pockets. You sink it in your paper cup of milky tea and close your eyes, and for ten fat seconds, you seem to glimpse the possibility of finer things.

The shtekeleh is so beautifully described that I was convinced that it was real. It doesn’t exist, of course. Neither does Sitka, Alaska, Chabon’s imagined Jewish district—it’s like Israel, but smaller and without the sovereignty. Nevertheless, Chabon makes it into flesh. It’s telling that, in his vision, one of Jewish culture’s most significant gifts to the world is culinary.

So much contemporary fiction (and older fiction, too) purports to tell us about the world, but doesn’t involve food and drink at all. So much of our lives revolve around food and food preparation—consoling us and aggravating us, both because of the amount of time it takes up—but few of our novels and short stories do. This has always bothered me.

So, I’m a sucker for Chabon’s novel. It’s not just a mystery, a philosophical meditation, or a lament, but also a Yiddish cookbook of sorts. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union makes Jewish food and life sexy, slurpy, and tactile. Like the best of fictions (and, so far, Chabon’s is the best 2007 book I’ve read), it evokes a world we can taste but also directs us inward to our own imagined world and nostalgia-tinged memories.

Unsurprisingly, I found myself thinking of my longstanding attachment to the cuisine of the delicatessen. But Chabon has brought me back even farther than that, to something I’d forgotten that I loved.

When I first came to Jackson, in August 1995, I had trouble finding good, cheap food. I wouldn’t discover Little Tokyo’s exquisite, glistening sushi until the Spring of 1996. (In fact, I had never tasted sushi until going to Little Tokyo; it’s spoiled me.) I’d weaned myself off of fast food. Mississippi barbecue eluded my tastebuds. College friends would make Thai House one of my favorite haunts, but this wouldn’t happen for another six months. Even Best Wok—that bastion of greasy-slick Chinese takeout—wouldn’t find its way to me for another two years.

Somehow, my dad and I ended up at Old Tyme Deli, at the corner of the I-55 North frontage road and Northside Drive, during one of his visits. I don’t know how we ended up there. It doesn’t matter. Smack-dab in the middle of what I figured was the most Southern Baptist town on Earth, there was an unassuming, genuine, truly great Jewish delicatessen with genuine seltzers, nose-curling mustards, and the most tender, flavorful, kosher sandwiches I’d ever seen.

The light was dim. The tables were rickety, and cramped together. The walls behind you held chicory coffee, chocolates, kosher cookbooks, exotic candies that I still never see in Kroger, pickled tomatoes and cucumbers. Sour creams, pastrami, smoked salmon, baklava, herring salad, and spanokopita sat in or on the glassed-in, refrigerated counter. It was a grocery and a restaurant all at once, and I loved watching the customers come and go, buying things in bulk that I had never even heard of (lox, knishes).

I know the Old Tyme Deli made concessions to the area—I’m pretty sure no self-respecting Hassidic Jew has eaten a sandwich called the Millsaps Major, or a pastrami with melted Swiss cheese—but, in retrospect, it was mostly kosher. The sandwiches were stacked high, juicy, spicy, with interesting, hard breads that my tongue adored. The Old Tyme Deli quickly became a regular haunt. Every time Dad rolled into town, we made a trip to the deli.

And then, in early 2000, the rumor started going around. The restaurant’s owner was retiring, and selling the place. Would the restaurant be preserved by the new owners, or would a new place usurp it?

You know the answer. I suppose I did, too, though I didn’t want to believe it. Sure enough, the New Time Deli opened in early 2001. Glossy tables, brick-oven-baked pizzas, overpriced drinks, and exposed brick columns filled the artificially cheery air. Traveling Tom and I walked in during its first week, took a look at the menu and the bad imitations of Abstract Expressionist painting, and walked right out. In retrospect, I feel sorry for the poor maitre d’, looking forlornly at our backs and just trying to do her job.

Eventually, I did get around to eating there. The food wasn’t good, and the flaccid attempts to retain part of the old menu were too ironic by half. The place was gone in a year.

Now, the location holds Julep, a relatively upscale bar with a decent gourmet brunch menu. It’s fine, I guess, but I haven’t been there in three years. Gradually, the Old Tyme Deli receded in my memory—its smells, its outstanding sandwiches and pickles, its grunge, its clank-and-clatter of the kitchen that any customer could glimpse because the restaurant sure as hell wasn’t airy.

For a place that held me so much in sway, I sure forgot it fast. Shame on me. But The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a novel I’m halfway through, has brought it all rushing back to my nose and fingertips and tongue. For that alone, the book deserves my thanks.

Gazpacho time

Gazpacho de Quietbubble, con el gato Eliza, 26 March 2007.

It’s springtime, which means it’s gazpacho time.

The first time I ever heard of the fabulous cold soup, I was watching Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown in my 11th-grade Spanish class, which was taught by a French immigrant who realized, way too late, that this movie might not be appropriate for his high school class. It could have been a number of things that made him jittery, worrying about how much of the humor we were getting: the high, lusty camp; the foul language; the suicide attempt played for laughs; the sex talk; the talk of terrorists on TV, again played for laughs; the crazy cuckold with a handgun; the lovely women in skimpy, loud miniskirts.

I’d like to think it was the drugs that made Mr. Chaligné bite his nails.

There’s little point in giving plot summary. Those who haven’t seen the movie will be slightly bewildered by the paragraphs that follow, as at least four different plots converge on a grieving woman’s Madrid apartment. Those who have seen it will cringe at what will be necessary reductionism. Bear with me, though, because knowing the basics is important.

Pepa, a voice actor for a soap opera, decides to kill herself. Her lover Ivan (Fernando Guillén), a voice actor for the same soap opera, uses the smooth lines from the TV show to pick up women, and is leaving Pepa for another woman. Once upon a time, Pepa was the Other Woman, and her relationship with Ivan broke up his marriage to Lucia. Later, Pepa discovers that the new Other Woman is one of her dearest friends. And Lucia, who went mad when Ivan left her, has recently been released from a mental hospital, has scary running eyeliner, a handgun, and is looking for Pepa. Again, Pepa finds all that out as the movie progresses.

What’s important is the suicide by gazpacho. Carmen Maura plays Pepa as someone warm and nearly motherly, but deeply embittered and worn through by the difference between real love and what passes for it on the TV shows for which she does dub work. She’s lovely but there’s something maniacal about her eyes and that set jaw. Pepa makes a large batch of gazpacho in her blender, spiking it with a bottle of sleeping pills. She plans to drink the soup, and call it quits.

Before she can drink it all, though, a number of people trickle into her house—an old friend Candela (Maria Barranco), who’s running from the police and Shiite terrorists (long story); the police who are searching for her; Ivan’s son Carlos (Antonio Banderas, nerdy and sexy all at once) and fiancée Marisa (Rossy de Palma), who are apartment hunting and don’t initially realize who Pepa is. It’s a party, but an unintentional one.

As with most parties, there’s food. By the end of the movie, almost everyone’s had a bit of that gazpacho. Pepa offers it to the detectives searching for Candela. The virginal Marisa drinks it, and goes to sleep on the balcony, where she dreams of losing her virginity. (Mr. Chaligné’s ears were red through this entire scene. The class giggled, and erupted into laughter when, discussing the deflowering with Pepa, Pepa tells her that “It’s better the way you did it.”) All in all, the gazpacho gets everyone in the movie to loosen up a bit, and basically causes a laugh riot for everyone outside the movie—i.e., the audience.

Women on the Verge introduced me to a lot of things, from casual drug use to dark humor (that’s nevertheless cheerily lit and gaudy), to frank sexual humor that’s adult instead of adolescent, to the idea of seeing life from a woman-centric, deeply campy gaze. All of this and more can be summed up by the gazpacho, a ridiculously colorful, spicy, amazing concoction that flipped my taste buds around simply because I’d never considered the idea that a soup could be intentionally cold.

For an impressionable 17-year-old boy, looking at the stylish and madcap and sexy Almodóvar world, gazpacho sounded like the coolest thing ever. I had no idea what it would taste like.

After revisiting the movie six or seven years later, I decided to finally make some gazpacho of my own. The recipe I found online makes it sound easy:

Ingredients:
4 large tomatoes, peeled and quartered
1 large cucumber, peeled and seeded
2 cups tomato juice
1 red onion
4 garlic cloves
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
Cumin, salt, cilantro, and Tabasco sauce to taste

Instructions: Purée tomatoes, cucumber, tomato juice, onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Strain into bowl. Stir in olive oil, vinegar, cumin, salt, and Tabasco. Garnish with cilantro leaves. Chill for 3-4 hours.

I bought the groceries—I’d never heard of cumin before, and balsamic vinegar was something I’d smelled but never tasted—and laid them out. I dressed in my customary cooking garb—old Phish t-shirt, black sweatpants, and swimming goggles to protect me from the onion spray—and got to work. It would be easy.

Around the time that I took a swipe at a tomato with the vegetable peeler, and splattered tomato juice and seed all over the kitchen wall, it dawned on me that I didn’t know how to peel a tomato. I like the thin-skinned tartness of a good tomato, so I’d never bothered to learn. Deseeding the cucumber was proved to be time-consuming and slippery; I nearly cut a fingertip off on two occasions. The ingredients were adding up to a larger meal, and taking up more counter and bowl space, than I’d anticipated.

The trick for peeling tomatoes is simple. Bring a small pot of water to boil. Submerge a tomato in the water. In about three minutes, the tomato’s skin will have loosened and split enough for you to tear it off in strips. Even your average cook knows this instinctively. I had to look it up on the internet, with a heap of cut vegetables sitting on the kitchen countertop.

With all the work involved, and the necessary wait, I hoped the soup would live up to my anticipations. It surpassed them. Gazpacho is rich, tangy, and very spicy. Tabasco, along with peppering up the whole thing, emphasizes the garlic. At its best, it’s not smooth but chunky, with a feel on the tongue that’s slightly grainy but also velvetty going down. The cumin neutralizes the tartness some, and adds its own musk of spiced clay. It’s a soup with bite, and a sharp smell that, because it’s cold instead of steaming, doesn’t overpower the nostrils.

When I make it now, I’m more generous with the Tabasco than I was a few years ago. Instead of garnishing with cilantro, I pluck the leaves and puree them along with everything else. I go light on the salt, figuring that the Tabasco and vinegar will carry the saltiness as far as it needs to go. The soup is perfect for a hot Mississippi summer afternoon, with a baguette, apple slices, and cheese on the side.

I haven’t, however, tried it with sleeping pills, and don’t recommend Pepa’s recipe unless you’re throwing a really wild party.

To hell with Turkey Day

Who, really, likes turkey? It’s such a dry, tasteless bird that we have to cram its ass with flavorful, spiced dressing and slather it in rich gravy before we’ll admit to enjoying it. Even then, it’s a stretch. That’s no surprise, of course. The Puritans who gave us the core of this half-hearted feast weren’t exactly purveyors of corporeal pleasure. Given what they had, and given that they were cooking with food either made with the first batch of decent crops they’d ever seen or gifted to them by American Indians (and thus food with which the Puritans were unfamiliar with), I guess we should be glad that the food wasn’t worse than it was.

Still, I like all the dishes around the turkey much more than I like the main dish itself. It’s a terrible base around which to prepare a meal. It’s worth noting that, here in the South, people risk house fires and amputation through explosion by trying to deep-fry the turkey—anything to make it taste better. I sympathize with them.

I propose that we find an alternative. Rather, I suggest alternatives. Instead of a singular Thanksgiving dish, each region of America (yea, each city, town, and even borough!) should celebrate the occasion with dishes appropriate to the area, and that mean something specifically to the area in which you live. Obviously, the kind folks of southern Louisiana will have a distinct advantage over the rest of us. But they live in a corrupt state with a tropical climate and earth that’s gradually becoming sludge and eroding into the Gulf of Mexico, and under the continual (and, last year, realized) threat of destruction by hurricane, so they should have something to lord over the rest of the country. So, give Louisiana its cuisine—I’d kill for a Thanksgiving meal that begins with beignets and chicory coffee, and that ends with jambalaya, a side dish of gumbo, another side dish of fresh oysters, a bouillabaisse as a palate-cleanser, pecan pie for dessert, and chased continually with hot toddies.

I live in Jackson, but I’m in my hometown (Dallas, Texas) for Thanksgiving. I’ll drive from suburb to suburb—my mom lives in Mesquite, to the east; my dad lives in Duncanville, west of Dallas—and will likely have multiple plates of a dish that I can tolerate only because I’m with family, while watching a sport (football) for which I’ve never understood the appeal.

Here’s what I’d really like to eat on this day. Consider it a true Texas Thanksgiving, Quiet Bubble style:

Let’s start with guacamole made of ripe avocado, chopped tomato and red onion, paprika and cumin and chili powder, sprinkled with salt and a generous squeeze of juice from a fresh lime. Eat with corn chips. A simple, large plate of nachos comes next, set in the center of the living room—corn chips doused with melted cheddar cheese, salsa, sour cream, pico de gallo, and chopped jalapenos. The guacamole and nachos go in the living room, so people can nibble and pick at their leisure, while mingling with family members.

A spicy bean soup—meaty and garlicky broth—follows as a palate cleanser; this is the first part of the meal that’s eaten at the family table.

Then the host—that’s me—offers the family a choice of one of three dishes. Hell, you can have a taste of all three if you wish. First, chicken and cheese enchiladas, made with flour tortillas, and lightly covered in a green chili sauce; spinach enchiladas, doused in a cream sauce, are an alternative for the vegetarians. Second, fresh pork tamales, tender and steamed so you can taste the corn. Third, barbecued beef brisket, drowned in a sauce of peppers, tomatoes, a hint of orange juice, and slow-cooked for 24 hours over burning hickory firewood. All is served with refried beans, Spanish rice, black-eyed peas, and—what the hell—green beans.

To drink: frozen lime margaritas, sangria, cold Corona beer, and hot apple cider.

For Texas, as much as it might hate to admit it, is as much Mexican in its cuisine (and in other things) as it is American.

Thanksgiving should be exactly that—giving thanks to God and country for their catholic bounties, be they cultural or gustatory. So, here’s my Thanksgiving prayer:

Oh Lord, I give thanks that, in Jackson, Mississippi, I can revel in the most tender sushi I’ve ever eaten at Little Tokyo; I can sniff the curries and chicken tikki masala at Ruchi/Taste of India any damn time I please; I give thanks that Saigon, a Vietnamese restaurant worthy of the name, is a 15-minute drive away from my home; I give thanks to Thai Taste, with its wooden elephant sculptures and spicy pleasures nonpareil. Oh dear Lord, I give thanks for the fact that this is a country bountiful enough that our palates are subtler, stronger, more adventurous, and more willing to be coaxed to orgasmic ecstasy than those of the Pilgrims. I give thanks that we no longer have to rely on unseasoned vegetables and a flavorless poultry dish, that the Pilgrims probably cringed at, back in the day, for our harvest meal. Amen.

We should all give thanks for these things, and then act upon our knowledge. Let the turkeys fend for themselves in the outer reaches of Antarctica, where they can’t hurt anyone.

Chicago Chop House

Last Wednesday night found me doing something I’ve never done before: paying more than $50 for a single meal. Dates don’t count. Preparation for parties doesn’t count. Paying for a friend’s birthday dinner doesn’t count—and, even then, I’ve never paid than $40.

Even more surprising, I’d chosen to splurge at a steakhouse. I don’t eat beef more than four or five times a month, and often it’s less than that. When I do carve up cow, I cook it myself. A family friend once told my stepdad that steakhouses are wastes of time. Steak, he argued, is one food that anybody can cook faster, better, and more cheaply at home than you ever could in a restaurant. “When I go out to eat,” he said, “I want to eat something that I couldn’t make better myself.” Those words have always stuck with me. Besides, I’ve never been an over-the-moon steak fan, instead preferring my beef as burgers, barbecue, or fajitas.

But Chicago had spent three days working its magic on me. It does things to people. I figured that a city that owes a good deal of its wealth to the stockyards is a city that might just know what a good steak tastes like. So, on a chilly Wednesday evening, as a World Series game was being rained out in St. Louis, I sat with a vodka martini in my hand, observing the woodsy, amber glow of the Chicago Chop House.

That martini was perfectly prepared, with both the small splash of Campari and lemon twist that I requested. A patina of shaved ice reflected light on its surface. I sat in the smoking section because the wait for a single nonsmoking table was going to be over an hour, and was pleasantly surprised to find that no one was smoking. The hostesses were all Indian, well-mannered, and gorgeous. The place was crowded but the noise level was mild and pleasant; conversation bubbled instead of boiled over. Best of all, the house television was off for most of the meal. A customer tried to turn it off to catch the Detroit/St. Louis game, but it was a rainout and the offending device was quickly flicked off.

Joe, my waiter, knew his meat. He knew his customers, too—he had a fan club seated just behind me. He convinced me to try the baked cherrystone clams casino, even though I only know what a cherrystone clam is because of a Joseph Mitchell article, and I had no idea what “casino” implied. For the record, this appetizer involved six juicy clams lightly baked in a creamy, bready sauce that was spicy, and a little tangy. Joe knew that I’d want Tabasco sauce without my requesting it. The house salad that came between the appetizer and the main course was fresh, deeply green, and doused in a rich, homemade blue cheese dressing.

Since I ordered a New York strip, I decided to drink a Manhattan to go with it. I guess I had forgotten what 24 ounces of medium rare, boneless, juicy steak looks like. The presentation was terrific and simple but, in the end, it’s just a big hunk of meat. Buttered, with slightly salty juice running out of every cut, ever so slightly charred and blackened on the surface, rubbed in salt and pepper, tender and dark red on the inside, thoroughly lacking in gristle… okay, it’s a particularly delicious hunk of meat. But, still, people regularly pay 45 bucks for this?

Well, I did. I dipped each cut in its own juice. I savored each morsel. I sipped my Manhattan—again, perfectly made—and tried the baked potato and chives. I took my time. Even so, I surprised myself—not really; I’d spent eight hours walking around Lincoln Park and getting lost on the “Museum Campus,” and hadn’t eaten much breakfast or lunch—by eating it all. Slowly, to be sure (Joe didn’t rush me), but I did it. I even tried the turtle cheesecake and an Armagnac. I inhaled the aroma of the brandy, reveled in its golden brown hue and, sipping slowly, toasted myself.

I deserved a toast, having turned 30 on October 15th. I don’t feel any different than I did on the 14th, or six months previously. Though I’ve been asked regularly how it feels (or, more to the point: “How does it feel to be an old man?”), I get the feeling that most of the people asking are doing so because they think they should, not because they actually think it’s any different. I certainly haven’t reached any conclusions. Except, perhaps, one—it’s okay to indulge yourself, to enjoy corporeal pleasures, to spend $100 on a good meal every once in a while.

Meeting the Man

Back in October 2005, I went on an unofficial gastronomical tour of the Pacific Northwest. My gourmand friends dragged me by the belly around Seattle and Portland. It wasn’t hard to convince me to come along—hell, I probably gained ten pounds in a week. I consumed olive-and-honey-speckled cheeses in Pike Place Market, terrific Cajun food and mint juleps in a Portland dive, a Thai peanut sauce that almost made me weep with joy, and Lae-Lae’s homemade spinach crepes.

But I did not meet the Man. We tried.

Dixie’s BBQ is reported to be the finest barbecue west of the Mississippi. This, by the way, is an underwhelming boast. It’s much like claiming you’ve got the best Tex-Mex food north of the Mason-Dixon line—any southern transplant to Chicago could whip up in minutes dishes better than half of what appears on Manhattan plates. Anyway, I felt better about trying the place when I learned that its owners, Gene and Dixie Porter, immigrated to Seattle from Liberty, Mississippi.

The Man is the restaurant’s state secret—a special sauce that’s supposed to be so hot that the Devil himself fears it. Ernesto and I had heard about it from mutual friend Jorge. Gene Porter described it this way in an interview:

What's in “The Man?” Heat.
How many people actually like it? Nobody like it. The record is 9 spoonfuls.
Do you like it? Nope. I don’t touch it. I ain’t stupid.

Using the logic peculiar to post-adolescent nerds trying to prove their masculinity, we figured that we had to try a sauce that even its creator won’t touch.

We had the desire to set our tongues aflame. We had an address: 11522 Northup Way. We even had a phone number. What we didn’t have was a restaurant. Sure, our car, crammed with folks, found Bellevue and Northup Way readily enough. The address numbers increased from the 100 block to the 200 block to the 300 block to the 15000 block to— Wait; what?! We doubled back. Not only did the street numbers skip about eighty blocks, but the street name changed as well. At some point on the road, we noticed that one side of the road said “Northup Way” while the other side—the side we were on—said another street.

Ostensibly situated in Bellevue, a suburb of Seattle, Dixie’s appeared to exist only in an alternate dimension. We stopped twice in office parks, walked around an empty parking lot, wandered around a business courtyard, and asked for directions from a clueless gas station attendant. After thirty minutes of searching, we found the place—a squat building tucked in-between two six-story, nondescript business buildings, with a faded sign that said “Dixie’s BBQ and Porter Automotive.” Indeed, it looked like a mechanic’s garage. Stomachs grumbling, we pulled in.

You probably know the punchline.

The restaurant was closed.

So, we went out for Thai food, and I never met the Man.

Four months later, I open my mailbox and find a Priority Mail envelope from Seattle. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I recognized Ernesto’s handwriting. There was only one thing inside—a little clear plastic jar, with a handwritten label that said “The Man Sauce.” I unscrewed the lid and peered inside. The jar was half-full, with a chunky sauce with pepper seeds, gummy and mashed pepper carcasses, and a smell so strong that I could smell it at arm’s length. The oil—I guess it’s oil—from the peppers was as thick syrup. The concoction was deep red, really almost black.

I dipped a silver spoon into it, got a sizable chunk, and spread it on a slice of baguette. The red residue that coated the spoon made it appear to be made of copper. It took a good ten-second scrub to get it all off. This should have been a warning but I took a large bit of bread and Man, anyway.

One of my favorite Simpsons episodes involves Homer eating chili laced with pepper so hot that he hallucinates and goes on a vision quest. My experience with the Man was something like that, minus the sitar music. I downed a full carton of lowfat milk and gargled my mouth out with glass after glass of ice water. I kept my mouth open. I said more variations of the word “fuck” than I thought I knew. The cat hid under the futon.

The Man wasn’t done with me, as I found out that evening. My dad once told me this about super-spicy food: “Painful going in, painful going out.” He’s right. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

I screwed the lid back on the Man, put it in the fridge, and that was the end of it. Sometimes, I open it up looking for orange juice, and I swear the jar stares at me.

For three months now, I’ve been wondering what on Earth I could use the Man for, how I could use it in a recipe that wouldn’t make the neighbors call the cops.

This past weekend, I was hankering for homemade chili—something simple, but interesting. Of all the cookbooks, only one had a variety of chili recipes. I never thought I’d have a use for The New Great American Writers Cookbook—honestly, I have it mostly as a joke—or that the best-looking recipe would come from Jim Lehrer. Lehrer’s “North Texas Chili” called for:

2 lbs. Lean ground meat
2 good-sized cans of stewed tomatoes
1 green pepper, diced
chili powder to taste
salt to taste
2 good-sized can of dark red kidney beans
grated Colby longhorn cheese
corn chips

The ingredients and directions were blunt, maybe too blunt. (By “green pepper,” does he mean a bell pepper, or a jalapeno or a poblano?) I made a few minor adjustments—one can of kidney beans, one can of black beans; half a bottle of good beer—and one major one. I added a spoonful of the Man to the pot, and left out the chili powder.

A bit of the Man got on my fingers. It was hot as I cooked, partly from the stove, partly because I’m cheap with the air conditioner and it’s June in Mississippi. So, I wiped sweat from my brow. Once. For the next hour, I looked like I had pink-eye, and my right eye stung and throbbed. The Man is not for kids.

Next time, I’ll add a chopped red onion. Otherwise, it was a perfect chili—flavorful, slightly smoky, chunky, rich. The Man gave it enough spice to knock me for a loop, but not so much that it overwhelmed the rest of the elements.

The pot of chili was enough for the next three days. The jar of the Man I’ve got will last for the next three years. Finally, though, I’m glad I’ve got it.

A tasty night in Saigon

Most of my friends are foodies. Last night, I was reminded why this is such a good thing.

Ashleigh works in my office. Her relatives are third-generation Chinese immigrants who moved east from northern California to the DDT- and dust-covered farmland of the Mississippi Delta. She’s got the melodic lilt of a Cleveland (Mississippi) country girl, but the taste buds (and politics) of a Left Coast aesthete. When I went on vacation to San Francisco in May 2002, I asked her what produce would be in season around that time. “Don’t forget to stop by See’s Candies,” she said, “and bring back a tin for me.” When I went to Seattle last October, I asked her about the local cuisine—“Get Thai and dim sum, you ninny, and for god’s sake don’t forget the seafood.” When my visiting friends ask what’s good in Jackson, I ask Ashleigh for tips before replying.

Somehow, she’s svelte. I don’t understand this.

Anyway, yesterday morning, an email blipped on my computer screen. “Walter, a few of us are going to Saigon after work for dinner. Wanna come?” This isn’t as bizarre as it sounds—Saigon is a Vietnamese restaurant off Lakeland Drive, one of the last enclaves of individualized cuisines before heading out into the suburban wilds of Flowood. I had been there once before, two years ago, and eaten a disappointingly murky noodle soup with rubbery tripe. (Ashleigh scowled at me the next day: “Oh, Walter, you know what tripe is, right?”) Still, if she was recommending the restaurant, I would be a fool to turn her down.

So, a small cadre of my fellow workers drove over to Saigon. The atmosphere leaves much to be desired. It looks like the fast-food restaurant that it used to be, though the restaurateurs—ex-Californians themselves—at least stocked the floor with real tables and chairs instead of booths. Ashleigh knew the waitress, her seven-year-old daughter, and the grandmother cleaning up behind us. She asked how the girl was liking first grade, and made recommendations for everyone. “Get spring rolls,” she said.

As an appetizer, I ordered spring rolls, which turned out to be wrapped in a wonderfully spongy, unfried rice dough, and filled with fresh lettuce, slender cuts of shrimp, rice, and crisp sprouts, with a creamy, slightly spicy peanut sauce for dipping. My plum soda mixed salty and sweet perfectly, and I sucked tart lemon pulp through my straw. Suddenly, the décor looked better, somehow. After all, Saigon is a family-run, family-oriented joint—my friend Pete brought his wife and three-year-old girl along—and the garish colors seemed appropriate now. A good peanut sauce will do that to me.

I smelled my main course before I saw it. I got a chicken and shrimp hotpot, which sounds roughly like what it is. Tender chicken slices and shrimp are nestled into a bed of rice, fish sauce, peanut sauce and oil, and various bean sprouts and spices. All of it is cooked in a clay pot that also serves as your plate. Pickled cucumbers and cabbage came on the side, as does a broth soup sprinkled with chives and smelling of black licorice and mint.

I should have been polite, and let people share. But it was too good to let go, and I didn’t see anyone offering their food, either.

We were too stuffed to try dessert, though that didn’t stop Ashleigh from thinking about it. “Up in Madison [a suburb of Jackson], there’s a place called the Donut Palace,” she said. “You really should make a pilgrimage there, and try to get there early.” Soon, we were all recounting our favorite desserts, from that chocolate-covered, pecan-sprinkled donut hole Harriet had eaten once in Tennessee, to those tender ribs Pete had as a kid in Alabama. The best thing about great meals is that they remind you of other great meals, and make you hungry for conversation, even if your stomach is full. Just try not to think of tripe.

Say it ain't so

Second Avenue Deli may be closing its doors for good:

The Second Avenue Deli has survived turbulence and tragedy in its 51 years. The decline of the Jewish enclave on the Lower East Side did not kill it. The broad-daylight murder of its beloved founder, Abe Lebewohl, in a robbery in 1996 shut it down but briefly. Dietary fashion campaigns against artery-clogging fare like brick-thick pastrami sandwiches and fat-saturated potato latkes seemed only to make the lines of defiant fans longer.

But the deli seems to have met its match in that implacable beast, the real estate market.

On Sunday, facing a $9,000 increase in his $24,000-a-month base rent, the deli's owner, Jack Lebewohl, Abe's brother, pulled down the grates on the glimmering restaurant at East 10th Street and Second Avenue. The closing was described as temporary, but Mr. Lebewohl said yesterday that the next time the place opens it might very well be to clear out.

Last May, I wrote about the near-religious experience I had there back in February 2005.

(Via A.C. Douglas. You might need a password to view the Times article.)

The gastronomical QB*

Yes, I spent hours looking at the sea otters and glowing tropical fish at the Seattle Aquarium. I bought books at so many bookstores that I had to borrow a bag from a friend to take them all home. I enjoyed the below-70-degree weather and the downtown aromas and the men slinging fish at each other in Pike Place Market. I stumbled, slackjawed, through Portland’s Japanese Garden. I even found Bruce and Brandon Lee’s flower-laden gravestones in Volunteer Park. But, mostly, I ate. At least, it seems that way. Here are some victual vignettes from a week of gastronomical excess. Goddamn, my friends have great taste in food.

9 October (Seattle): Five of us are crammed into Thai Tom, a restaurant in the University District. The place can’t seat more than twenty or so at a time, and we’re seated at the bar overlooking the cooking space. We’re almost close enough to be licked by flames from the gas stoves. A whip-thin Thai man tends to his multiple pots and pans. All are simmering, sizzling, or boiling. He moves as if he’s slinging himself out of a rubber ladle, dipping and undulating as he adds a pinch of chili pepper here, a spoonful of peanut oil there. There are never less than three bubbling pots going at once—it’s a popular place. A teenage boy to the left of him preps rice and fresh vegetables. Slightly further back, an old man washes dishes quickly, with occasional head snaps to the two waitresses. Five people—that’s the whole operation. They execute the most precise dance I’ve seen in months, and yet they’re still finding time to crack jokes. My dish is called Swimming Rama—chicken, fresh spinach leaves, bell peppers, mushrooms, and mung bean sprouts, all drenched in a thick, creamy peanut sauce and sprinkled with peanut crumbs—and I can pick it apart from the other cooking dishes only because it smells even more seductive than what I’ve been smelling for the last twenty minutes. I refuse to describe how wonderful my meal tastes to me—that one’s just for me.

9 October (later the same day): Lae-Lae’s making dinner crepes for what turns out to be a small house party. She started around 6 p.m.; it’s now after eight, and the natives are getting restless. The oily spices and soothing cheese aroma—of feta, mozzarella, and cheddar—are enticing us. Our stomachs do somersaults. We hover around the stove. We cling to the kitchen walls, drinking our wine and hoping against hope that Lae-Lae will give us a taste before she’s done. No chance. Finally, she’s ready to use her homemade crepe batter. We make our own, dipping from bowls of fresh spinach, cheese, sautéed and chopped red bell pepper and garlic, and caramelized onions. Lae-Lae folds over the crepes and sticks them in the oven. By now, we’re becoming unbearable. The first bite nearly makes me collapse onto the floor. Several people say variants of “holy fucking shit.” Derek laments that his wife decided not to attend the party: “She’s an idiot.” Well, it’s only a half-lament; after all, no wife means more crepes for him. Lae-Lae admits that this is the first time she’s ever made this dish. I decide to believe her until I chew on the first, gooey bite of the dessert crepe. The banana slices are so warm and bittersweet, and blend perfectly with the nutty, chocolately Nutella. She has to be lying. This can’t be beginner’s luck.