Dispatches from planet BBQ: Arthur Bryant's

fig. a: beans, ribs, fries, sauces

I would imagine we've all had the experience of going to a restaurant with high expectations, but going to a place like Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City, MO, is an altogether different experience. This is a barbecue joint--a "grease house," as Mr. Bryant used to put it--of the highest order, easily ranking among the 10 most famous in America.

fig. b: world famous

This is an establishment that Calvin Trillin once referred to as, "possibly the single best restaurant in the world," in the pages of Playboy (in an article that later appeared in American Fried). Of course, Trillin hails from K.C. originally, but there was a lot more than just hometown pride behind his claim. There were ribs, there was Arthur Bryant's legendary barbecue sauce, and, most importantly, there were burnt ends.

So when you got to a place like Arthur Bryant's and it actually manages to meet or exceed your expectations, you know you've experienced something special, and that's exactly what happened. I was blown away (which is pretty amazing for a place whose patriarch passed away almost 30 years ago).

I mean, just look at those ribs in the image up top. And you can't tell from the photo, but those beans are the real deal. Tender, smoky, savory, and laced with a major dose of Arthur Bryant's phenomenal burnt ends. Even their fries are excellent. And their brisket? Ridiculously succulent. I haven't had the pleasure of a barbecue tour of Texas (yet), so I'm hardly an expert, but this brisket was a work of beauty.

Arthur Bryant's being a serious barbecue joint, your ribs, your brisket, your bbq pork, etc., all come to you unsauced (unless you're taking them to go, in which case you'll be asked if you want them slathered or not). Arthur Bryant's is world famous, in part, for their sauce, but, generally, the saucing of the barbecue is left up to you, the customer. You take your tray to your table, and there you'll find a battery of Arthur Bryant's special brews: their original sauce, a sweet sauce, and a spicy sauce. Both the sweet sauce and the spicy sauce have their adherents (and with good reason: they're excellent), but Arthur Bryant's true believers all swear by the original recipe, and nothing but. Who can blame them? It's an utterly beguiling barbecue sauce, unlike any other I've ever tasted. Jane and Michael Stern have described the sauce as, "a gritty, red-orange blend of spice and sorcery that is not at all sweet,... packs a hot paprika wallop and tastes like a strange soul-food curry," and, as strange as that last part may sound, there's something to it.

fig. c: decor

The interior of Arthur Bryant's flagship restaurant is pure mid-20th-century soul,* from its no-nonsense decor, to its cafeteria-style service, to its low-key, down-tempo blues & soul soundtrack. It's also a true barbecue shrine. Arthur Bryant's website features photographs of Tom Watson, Calvin Trillin, and Jimmy Carter under the caption "Our Fans," but its walls feature images of fans like Steven Spielberg and Sally Field alongside African-American heroes like Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Charlie Parker.

That hickory-smoke flavor and the tang of that Arthur Bryant's original sauce lingered deliciously on my fingertips for hours after my visit, even after I'd washed up, but eventually, sadly, they faded away, like everything else in this mean, old world. And ever since, all I can think is: "how the heck will I ever be able to get back to K.C.?" Thank God I left Arthur Bryant's with a bottle of their magical elixir.

fig. d: Mister Bryant goes to heaven

Arthur Bryant's
1727 Brooklyn Ave.
Kansas City, MO
(816) 231-1123

fig. e: Arthur Bryant's is it!

aj

* While the Arthur Bryant's tradition has roots that date back to the early 20th century, the 1727 Brooklyn location was established in 1958.

Special Edition Mac & Cheese Pancakes, rev. ed.

Remember when we made Kenny Shopsin's lemon-ricotta pancakes a few months back? At the time I noted that we had found the recipe in the New York Times Magazine alongside Shopsin's infinitely more delirious Mac & Cheese Pancakes, but when it came time to choose, "it really wasn't much of a decision" because we had farm-fresh ricotta on-hand. What I didn't mention was that at the time, we couldn't for the life of us imagine what the taste and textural qualities of Mac & Cheese Pancakes might be like. We certainly were intrigued, though. So intrigued, in fact, that when we got back home, we made picking up a copy of Shopsin's Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin a top priority. Not because we needed the Mac & Cheese Pancakes recipe--it was right there in black & white in the New York Times Magazine--but because we wanted to further acquaint ourselves with the philosophy behind the Mac & Cheese Pancakes and the rest of Kenny Shopsin's ridiculously huge and hilariously inventive repertoire. And if we happened to learn the origin of the Mac & Cheese Pancake, all the better.*

fig. a: before

fig. b: after (accidents will happen)

Not only is Eat Me one of the best-looking cookbooks we've seen in quite some time (maybe ever), but it's been one of our absolute favorite reads of the last few months, and, perhaps not surprisingly, Shopsin's Mac & Cheese Pancakes were among the very first recipes that we tried out. All I can say is that--I admit it--I was a little skeptical about the Mac & Cheese Pancakes, but now, when I think of pancakes, I think of these first. I'm not even kidding. And I don't care if it's Lent and to even dream about these pancakes amounts to impure thoughts. Just mention the word "pancake" and these are all I see.

The funny thing is, the first time we made them, we read the recipe in Eat Me carefully, but somehow, unconsciously, we ended up making them not as the recipe actually instructed, but as we imagined they'd be made. [Later, I was reminded of a story: In describing Kenny's Egyptian Burrito, Calvin Trillin once wrote: "An Egyptian Burrito is a burrito, and inside is sort of what Kenny thinks Egyptians might eat."] You see, Kenny's original recipe calls for cooked elbow macaroni tossed with olive oil, with the cheddar cheese added separately. We, on the other hand, began with a pretty deluxe batch of leftover mac & cheese. Anyway, this was totally accidental, but our Mac & Cheese Pancakes ended up being at least twice as cheesy as Shopsin's, and quite a bit more savory. Problem? I don't think so. Having now read Eat Me, we know all too well what Kenny thinks of bacon in pancakes. We have a feeling he'd give his blessing to our Special Edition Mac & Cheese Pancakes.

What you need:

fig. c: leftover mac & cheese

1. leftover macaroni & cheese, preferably leftovers from a batch of E & D Special Mac & Cheese.

fig. d: pancake batter

2. pancake batter, such as this one:

Pancake Batter

7 tablespoons butter
1 1/3 cups whole milk
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon plus 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt.

In a saucepan over medium-low heat, heat the butter and milk until the butter melts. Set aside until lukewarm. Beat the eggs in a medium bowl. Slowly pour 1/2 cup of the warm milk mixture into the eggs while stirring. Stir in the remaining milk mixture.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture, a little at a time, stirring slowly, just until the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be lumpy and will start to bubble.

Makes about 3 1/2 cups.

fig. e: cheddar cheese

3. a block of medium-sharp cheddar cheese

What you need to know:

Special Edition Mac & Cheese Pancakes**

butter for the skillet and for serving
3 cups pancake batter
1 heaping cup macaroni & cheese, preferably E & D Special Mac & Cheese, at room temperature
1 heaping cup grated cheddar cheese
medium Grade A (or B--Kenny prefers B) maple syrup

Heat your skillet over medium heat. When it's hot, add the butter and run it across the skillet surface, then use a small ladle to pour the batter on the skillet. When small bubbles cover 40-50% of the surface of your pancakes (after about 2 minutes), drop about 1 tablespoon of the mac & cheese on each pancake, and then, as if that wasn't enough, sprinkle a layer of cheddar on top, before using a thin spatula to quickly and artfully flip the pancakes. Turn the heat down a little, use the spatula to press down on the pancakes a bit, and when the undersides are golden, about 2 minutes later, use the spatula to transfer the pancakes to a plate, mac & cheese & cheese side up.

Serve with butter and maple syrup. Makes roughly 12 4-inch pancakes.

[inspired by Kenny Shopsin's Mac n Cheese Pancakes, Eat Me]

If all goes well they should look something like this:

fig. f: the finished product

And they should taste outrageously good. You see, our E & D Special Mac & Cheese has a copious amount of thick-cut bacon in it, so what you end up with is a Mac & Cheese Pancake with bacon built right into it. Then, with a knob of butter and a little maple syrup... As Kenny might say: "It's really very sexy."

aj

* We did: it was a dish specially invented for a regular customer who only ever ordered one of two dishes at Shopsin's, the mac & cheese or the pancakes, and who one day asked Kenny to decide which he should have.

** Now with extra cheese!

New York Odds & Ends 1

fig. a: Egg

Egg

Ever since I was taken to a restaurant in Reykjavik that operated as several different restaurants during the course of the week (there was a rotation at work, so it'd be a hippy vegetarian restaurant every Friday, a Pakistani restaurant every Saturday, and so on), I've liked the idea of restaurants sharing a space as a way of minimizing overhead costs. Of course, the fact that both visits to that Reykjavik resto were successful certainly helped. In theory, rock bands sharing a rehearsal space can be a pretty cool thing too, but in practice the results aren't always all that, well, noteworthy. Anyway, when we heard about the breakfasts at Egg, which started off by sharing its space on N. 15th St. in Williamsburg with a nouveau hot dog and hamburger joint named Sparky's--Egg by morning, Sparky's by afternoon and evening--we were intrigued. When we heard the folks at Egg were serving Col. Bill Newsom's legendary Kentucky country ham, we were more than intrigued: we got downright excited. We'd been dreaming of Newsom's hams for some time, and we even looked into getting a Newsom's country ham shipped to AEB headquarters in Montreal at one point, but we're sorry to say free trade ain't what it's cracked up to be.

It was a little too blustery to dine seated at the outdoor table for two you see pictured above, so we stepped inside and joined the short queue waiting inside the door of this slender, minimal restaurant with the short, minimal name. Ten minutes later we had our table and our menus and it took about 2 seconds to make up our minds about our order: country ham biscuit with fig jam and aged Grafton Village cheddar for her, eggs over easy, cheese grits, and artisanal bacon for him. The grits, from South Carolina's Anson Mills, were quite possibly the best I'd ever had. They weren't really cheese grits, they were more along the lines of "grits with cheese," but I couldn't have cared less because the grits themselves were truly awesome. The bacon was ridiculously good too, and cooked to tender perfection--such a rarity. But that country ham biscuit was simply out of control. What it lacked in volume--it's fairly compact and is easily dwarfed by its plate--it more than made up for in complexity of flavor. That ham, that cheese, that jam--we're talking a veritable symphony. I can't say I'm a connoisseur when it comes to Southern hams (sadly, I might add), but it's hard for me to imagine a better-tasting ham. Dark and smoky, with an almost crumbly texture that reminded me of a fine Parmigiano Reggiano, this was a ham with character to spare. Michelle enjoyed every last morsel. And when she'd made it disappear we ordered a generous side order of Newsom's ham for the road. Pretty much the best $4 we've ever spent.

From there we crossed the bridge

fig. b: Brooklyn as seen from the Williamsburg Bridge

and made our way into the Lower East Side.

Essex Street Market

We paid a visit to the Essex Street Market for the first time since its make-over and while we were at Saxelby Cheesemongers sampling some cheeses and having a friendly chat with one of the cheesemongers (eventually we bought some artisanal butter), we both couldn't help but notice an odd-looking café just to the right of the cheese counter. A few tables, a short-order cook behind the counter composing his short orders, an informal, open setting--nothing too strange about that, right? Aside from the fact that there was a waitress, the format was pretty much the same as any other North American food court operation. Except that we found ourselves looking at the plates that were getting served, trying to figure out what kind of food they served, and, try as we might, we just couldn't pin it down. Some plates looked vaguely Mexican, others vague Southeast Asian, but none of the plates looked entirely like one thing or the other. Then we noticed their hot sauces. This place had a massive selection, and, again, they spanned the globe (Mexican, Caribbean, Southeast Asian, American, etc.). And then there was the grizzled beatnik manning the kitchen. After puzzling over things for a minute or so, we both came to the same tentative conclusion: "Shopsin's? Here?" And so it was.

We'd been having elaborate Shopsin's fantasies ever since we read Calvin Trillin's "Don't Mention It," his in-depth account of the Shopsin's mystique, in The New Yorker a few years back. We knew Kenny Shopsin had reopened his namesake restaurant in Greenwich Village sometime after his original "general store" was forced into retirement--we had no idea that he'd picked up and moved the operation yet again. Unfortunately, as brisk as our walk across the Williamsburg Bridge had been, it wasn't quite brisk enough to work off the country ham and grits we'd just finished wolfing down, so all we did was admire Shopsin's from the periphery. Correction: all we did was admire Shopsin's from the periphery and grab one of Shopsin's thoroughly unhinged menus,

fig. c: detail of Side 1 of Shopsin's menu

the better to prepare for our next trip to New York.

fig. d: one of #1 Dumpling House's #1 dumplings

#1 Dumpling House

Minutes later we had just enough room to run a little QC on #1 Dumpling House, and we're happy to report that their pork and chive dumplings and their sesame pancake with beef are both just as dazzling as ever.

fig. e: Saigon Bakery

Saigon Bakery

Post-#1 Dumpling, we were back to having no room, but that didn't stop us from following up on another lead and checking out Saigon Bakery in search of mind-blowing banh-mi, and as soon as we did it was clear to both of us that this was an opportunity that we couldn't possibly pass up on. Saigon Bakery is tucked away in the back of a jewelry store, but, make no mistake, this is a serious banh-mi joint. We ordered one of their massive--and I mean massive--meatball subs and promptly got our minds blown. These were luscious pork meatballs, they were hefty, they were packed into a big sub that was slathered with pork pâté and mayo and absolutely overstuffed with Saigon Bakery's fresh, flavorful (and spicy) fixins, and they forever changed our notion of what banh-mi means. You could have fed a family of four with that thing. You could have fed a family of four and made them very happy indeed. Definitely the best $3.75 we've ever spent.

Joanne Hendricks

A couple of hours later we were on the western extremity of Greenwich Village. We'd gone there in search of out of print, antiquarian, and unusual cookbooks and behind this handsome door

fig. f: Joanne Hendricks

that's exactly what we found. We knew from experience that New York's cookbook specialists could be very impressive, and Joanne Hendricks was just such a bookstore. We'd already had our minds blown by Saigon Bakery's meatball sub--now we found our minds getting majorly expanded by the curiosities at Joanne Hendricks. Like a good museum, or a sprawling flea market, a store like this exposes you to so many things you never even knew existed. We spent about an hour just browsing, each of us lost in our own little culinary world. Then we started talking to Joanne Hendricks herself--she was almost as excited about our impending pizza tour as we were--and the next thing we knew another hour had elapsed. In the end, I only picked up one book, but she's a beaut: Judith and Marguerite Herman's Cornucopia, a book I'd once pored over at my friend J.'s place some years ago (and had been coveting ever since). Here's a seasonally appropriate scan (complete with Mrs. Acton's Christmas Plum-Pudding receipt [courtesy of Tabitha Tickletooth]) to give you a small taste of Cornucopia's considerable charms and its striking two-tone printing:

fig. g: Cornucopia on plum pudding, holly, and mistletoe

The Strand

Our mandatory visit to The Strand only turned up one real gem and Michelle found it in their Rare Books department: The Merle Armitage Book of Food. I mean, what can you say about a book that combines some pithy food writing, a collection of recipes that includes everything from Lapin au vin blanc to 'Possum and Sweet 'Taters, celebrity recipes from the likes of Lewis Mumford, Edgar Varèse, and James M. Cain, and "Four Vegetables," a four-page portfolio by Edward Weston? Beautiful layout, too, including, some more fine two-tone printing:

fig. h: Merle Armitage on food as art

Egg, 135 N. 5th St., Brooklyn, (718) 302-5151

Essex Street Market, 120 Essex St. (at Delancey), Manhattan

#1 Dumpling House, 118 Eldridge St., Manhattan, (212) 625-8008

Saigon Bakery, 138 Mott St., Manhattan, (212) 941-1541

Joanne Hendricks, 488 Greenwich St., Manhattan, (212) 226- 5731

Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway (at 12th St.), Manhattan, (212) 473-1452

aj

Top Ten #8

1. "Alice, Off the Page," Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker, March 27, 2006

2. handmade accessories by Erin Templeton

3. Richard Olney, The French Menu Cookbook

4. The Pink Mountaintops, Axis of Evol

5. Homicide, season 1

6. John Thorne and Matt Lewis Thorne, Pot on the Fire: Further Exploits of a Renegade Cook

7. The Wire, season 3

8. Bombay Choupati

9. Triple Ginger Scones

10. Aries

03/24/06

By the Time We Got to Pittsburgh, pt. 2

The Original Hot Dog, Pittsburgh, PA
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

Pittsburgh is one of those towns where there's no shortage of good food to be had, but you're not necessarily going to find it in any of the city's "sophisticated" "Continental" restaurants. It's the kind of place you might go to on a quest to find some Slovak church where pirohy are handmade by the thousands, like I did (unsuccessfully, I might add), but, if you're not careful, the locals might very well try to impress you with the ancien regime opulence of a Versailles-like "French" restaurant with a view. Calvin Trillin writes at length on this topic--on how it is not uncommon "for an American city to be vaguely embarrassed" about its local delicacies--in his brilliant, gloriously carnivalesque American Fried. And although things have changed enormously since the early 1970s when his book was first published (I mean, the Smithsonian's Folklife Festival, which has done much to promote awareness of American regional cuisines and the world cultures that have profoundly shaped American food culture, came right out and dedicated itself to "the great variety of American foodways" this past summer), you still encounter a resistance to celebrating local specialties when you travel across America from time to time. Personally, I'm much less interested in experiencing "the pinnacle of fine dining" coupled with an "unsurpassed view" of Pittsburgh (or any other city) when I travel, than I am with experiencing something honest and freshly prepared, a dish or a meal that tells you something about the place you’re visiting, in a place that has its loyal denizens. And as Trillin puts it, “What is saddest about a visitor’s sitting in the Continental cuisine palace chewing on what an honest menu would have identified as Frozen Duck à l’Orange Soda Pop is that he is likely to have passed a spectacular restaurant on the way over. Despite the efforts of forward-looking bankers and mad-dog franchisers, there is still great food all over the country, but the struggle to wring information from the locals about where it is served can sometimes leave a traveler too exhausted to eat.” American Fried is testament to the fact that Trillin didn’t let such hurdles keep him from the “true delights” of the American culinary landscape, and Trillin’s subsequent articles and books on food have continued to display this restless passion for locating a region’s true gastronomic vernacular, in America as well as elsewhere (see his wonderful and downright hilarious piece on his pilgrimage to Ecuador for Holy Week in pursuit of fanesca in The New Yorker’s recent food issue [Sept. 5, 2005]) for a taste of Trillin’s food writing at its finest). In much the same spirit, we might not have had a lot of time, and the little that we did have was largely accounted for prior to our arrival, but we’d gotten a couple of Pittsburgh food tips before going, and we definitely weren’t going to leave town without carrying out a couple of investigations.

There’s no question that the most satisfying meal that we had in Pittsburgh, and this is in no way an insult to Pittsburgh’s food scene, was at Essie’s Original Hot Dog, in the heart of the district that surrounds the University of Pittsburgh. I’m sure we could have easily found more elaborate or more daring meals, but all of our wedding-related meals were suitably fancy, with plenty of frills, so we were in the mood for things of a more pedestrian variety.

1960 was a pivotal year for Pittsburgh in some regards. It was the year the Pirates beat the New York Yankees in the World Series in seven games, a victory clinched by a Bill Mazeroski home run in the bottom of the 9th at Forbes Field. It was the year James Blandi opened Le Mont on the top of Mt. Washington, overlooking downtown Pittsburgh, the $1.5 million restaurant with the Louis XIV décor that brought “fine dining” to the Iron City. And it was also the year Sid and Essie Simon opened The Original Hot Dog Shop just a block away from Forbes Field. Originally The Original Hot Dog Shop had a sign that advertised hot dogs and hamburgers (hamburgers, after all, had been on the ascendant ever since the McDonald brothers began to streamline the production process at their San Bernardino carhop), but Sid had spent some 15 years working at The Original Famous Sandwich Shop, the store that had invented the foot-long hot dog back in 1928, and hot dogs and twice-fried French fries became his bread-and-butter.

Things have changed at The Original Hot Dog since 1960—among other things, they now offer pizza, chicken strips, and a selection of beers that numbers in the dozens—but “O” dogs and fries remain the principal attraction. We’d heard that the French fries came in monstrous portions, but we still weren’t prepared for the veritable mountain of fries that made up our “small” order. We couldn’t finish them all—mainly because we had a wedding to go to and we were worried about fitting into our outfits—but The Original Hot Dog’s fries were pretty much ideal, fresh and piping-hot, crisp yet tender. And their dogs? Well, their hot dogs lived up to our high expectations. We tried both an Original and a beautifully charred Super Deluxe Kosher Style Pure Beef Dog, and they were a couple of high-quality numbers, with taut skins that literally burst with flavor when you broke through them. I had my Kosher dog ballpark-style in honor of Mazeroski and the 1960 Pirates, with hot mustard, onions, and a bit of relish. This was a no-nonsense meal in surroundings that were anything but sumptuous, and all the better for it.

polishing off an "O dog"
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

The next day we headed down to The Strip, the old industrial neighborhood to the northeast of downtown Pittsburgh that was also the center of the city’s wholesale produce trade for most of the 20th century. Today the district is undergoing redevelopment and it’s home to a number of ethnic restaurants, groceries, and cafes, as well as other shops and retail spaces. We were looking for a good, honest breakfast and we found one at DeLuca’s, a classic greasy-spoon that advertised that it was “the home of the best breakfast in Pittsburgh” on a sign out front. Again, this was no-nonsense dining, but their home fries were fantastic, made with care and attention (just the way her mother makes them, according to Michelle), and I was overjoyed to see that they had a whole range of egg and sausage combinations on offer, including versions with sweet Italian sausage, hot Italian sausage, and kielbasa, not that Bob Evans-style dreck they serve in most breakfast joints in that part of the world. We had the eggs with kielbasa and the sausage came just the way we were hoping it would: split in half lengthwise, and griddle-fried. I sampled the sweet Italian and the hot Italian sausages, too, thanks to the generosity of my friends J and K, and they were also delicious. Our friends took off to make their way to the airport to catch their respective flights home, but we stuck around for another hour or so, getting a better feel for the neighborhood and stopping in for an espresso before we hit the road. With a few places to choose from—this is an area with a strong Italian presence, after all—we picked the La Prima Espresso Company. It seemed to be the preferred café of the local goodfellas and it had the right ambiance. We sat outside, savored our fine, authentically Continental cappuccinos, and got ourselves ready for the long drive home.

the scene at La Prima Espresso Co., Pittsburgh, PA
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

Any regrets? Well, there was that woman selling homemade Southeast Asian sandwiches with freshly grilled meats on Penn, just around the corner from La Prima. We passed her twice--once on the way to DeLuca's, when we were completely fixated on having breakfast, and once on the way back, when we were quite full--and both times she flashed us a smile and a glimpse of her freshly-prepared brochettes. You see, we're a little short on street food here in Montreal (there is none, by law [!]), and the smell of the grilled meat wafting down the street was more than a little tantalizing, and this stand did look like the genuine article... Oh, well, next time.

Essie’s Original Hot Dog Shop, 3901 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA, (412) 621-1185

DeLuca’s, 2015 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA, (412) 566-2195

La Prima Espresso Company, 205 21st St., Pittsburgh, PA, (412) 281-1922

The Sandwich Woman, Penn Ave. just east of 21st, Pittsburgh, PA

Calvin Trillin's American Fried (1974) is included in its entirety in The Tummy Trilogy (1994), along with Alice, Let's Eat (1978), and Third Helpings (1983).

aj