Let's just get the bad
news out of the way: American coffee DOES taste like "jus de chaussettes"
(sock juice). After living in France six years and as an infant
weaned on New Orleans café au lait, even Starbucks couldn't satisfy
my craving for a real cup of coffee.
The good news is that
great American dining is very much alive and well, creative cooking
is where it's at and portions are bigger than ever. Even Starbucks
calls their small a "tall" and tall it is, nearly twice the size
of an average French café crème.
It was an eating tour
on the East Coast. For two weeks, starting in New York, traveling
down to Washington, DC, over to Long Island and then ending up again
in Manhattan, we chowed down on what is today the most typical of
American restaurant fare. We satisfied our cravings of old faithfuls
-- like hot dogs, hamburgers, pancakes and apple pie, but I'd have
to now add to that list, such multi-ethnic contributions as chop
suey in China Town, pasta in Little Italy, Ethiopian "injera" in
Washington, DC (believed to be the city with the world's second
largest Ethiopian population) and the newest addition to every menu
across the continent – "wraps." We didn't miss much and neither
do Americans.
In the mid 90's a
young guy in San Francisco had a bright idea to open a store called
"It's a Wrap," create a line-up of soft flour tortillas filled with
everything from snow crab to squash as a portable on-the-go version
of a sandwich. Now just a few years later, it's tough to find a
menu that DOESN'T list at least one or two wraps and more and more
that specialize in America's hottest "don't need utensils" eating
habits (according to the international newsletter on food trends,
"Trend/Wire"). At this point I wondered if Americans are adverse
to using utensils because they never learned how to hold a fork
in the left hand, the knife in the right, and pick up food with
the fork upside down, like the Europeans do. Nonetheless, the wrap
is certainly faster to eat than the proverbial three-course French
meal and maybe that's the main reason for its success. The Baja
Grill Bordery Eatery in East Northport, Long Island, offers three
kinds of "Fajita Wraps" five kinds of "Cool Wraps," three kinds
of "UnWrapped" wraps and seven kinds of "Hot Wraps." I went for
a "Fried Calamari Wrap" (with mixed greens, pico de gallo, guacamole
and cilantro lime dressing) but thought the "Grilled Chicken Caesar
Wrap" was a particularly creative use of the early 90's trendy Caesar
Salad.
Believe it or not, the
best Caesar Salad we found (and my daughter ordered one almost everywhere
we went) was at My Most Favorite Dessert, a kosher restaurant in
the Times Square district of Manhattan. It was twice the price of
any other, but it was well worth it. Kosher dining isn't often on
my list, but for my yarmelke-bearing friends in New York, I'd go
anywhere. This is a large, nicely decorated two-level space, always
buzzing and consistently dishing out a quality meal to those who
choose not to mix their meat and milk. I can't ever remember seeing
a Caesar Salad on a menu in France, but friends say I just missed
seeing it the one or two there are. Yes, I do miss them and every
now and then, concoct one at home.
Our first night in the
Big Apple (happened to be a Sunday night and THE traditional night
of the week for Jews to eat Chinese in China Town), we headed straight
for New York Noodletown on Bowery I had become fond of from previous
trips. It's got a good reputation for cheap and delicious and it
was just that. However, cheaper and even more delicious, was Chung
How Chinese Kitchen in East Setauket, Long Island. Their menu has
over 200 items to choose from, nothing more expensive than $10.95
(a Cantonese dish called "Happy Family"). The strange thing about
Chung How is that nobody, but nobody eats there at the restaurant.
Almost 100% of its business is take out, so the kitchen is twice
the size of the restaurant side of the place. We got a chuckle out
of the bizarre scene, but the portions were so large that five of
us could only eat half of what we ordered, and all for a whopping
$50. What a deal.
You can't get American
donuts in Paris (at least not that I know of), but you can get them
in New York on just about every corner. You know the kinds I mean?
Round with a hole or twisted like a rope, glazed, powdered, chocolate
covered, sprinkled, you name it sweet and gooey. Curbside stands
offer every assortment imaginable with a "sock juice" of your choice.
When I was living in Knoxville, Tennessee, the most popular spot
in town was the Krispy Kreme where you could watch hot glazed donuts
come right off the conveyer belt into a box where a dozen sat flat
side by side. It was impossible to eat just one and I knew lots
of folks who could down a dozen at a sitting. Today, Krispy Kreme
is hot (no pun intended), opening shops coast to coast. Buy stock
now.
Unfortunately, I didn't
personally have the perfect burger during the entire binge, but
in a classic diner in Manhattan, I ogled what I would call the real
thing being served up, bigger and fatter and juicier than ever,
smothered in cheese and bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, mustard
and ketchup. They looked delicious and you could tell, by the sheer
numbers of burgers coming off the grill, that they were about as
good as they get. What a shame that the French don't have a clue
how good a real burger can be, since their idea of an American hamburger
is "MacDo."
By sheer fluke, we stumbled
into another classic New York diner looking for a phone and a place
to rest our weary feet. It turns out that Joe Junior's, at the corner
of 12th Street and Avenue of the Americas, is where neighborhood
folks line up for pea soup, a specialty only on Mondays and Saturdays.
Luckily for us, it was Monday and I must say the pea soup was damned
good. When I mentioned Joe Junior's to friends living in the city,
they all said "of course," since it's an institution everyone in
the know knows about. Gorgeous Gregg, son of Joe Junior and regular
counter guy, seems to know the name of everyone who comes in, although
he says after 26 years of serving up pea soup to the regulars, that's
a piece of cake. We skipped the cake this particular afternoon.
My daughter's idea of
American pig-out heaven is ribs. Baby Back Barbecued Ribs at Timothy's
in Wilmington, Delaware are sold by the slab. One slab is a small
portion. Ha! You should see the large portions. At the "Outback,"
Long Island's answer to an Aussie Barbie, imported ribs, smoked
and grilled, served with Aussie chips (we call them "French fries"
and the French call them "frites") and cinnamon apples are more
than enough for two adults, I can assure you. More importantly than
that, they were seriously "finger-lickin' good." Again, non-utensil
dining, quite acceptable.
Throughout our journey
we got hooked on root beer floats and argued whether they were better
with vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Purists prefer vanilla. I prefer
chocolate. The French have never heard of this concoction, mainly
because they've never heard of or tasted root beer. Where I come
from, Barq's is the best. We all seem to have our favorite brand.
Friends we stayed with on Long Island have reported that now that
we've left, they're hooked, too, as if it were a kind of contagious
disease. I miss them already – the root beer floats and the friends.
In "our nation's capitol,"
we sopped up delicately spiced morsels of meats, chicken, shrimp
and vegetables with Ethiopian "injera," a spongy crepe-like bread
(slightly sour) in a restaurant in the Adams-Morgan area of Washington
called Meskerem. The injera are layered on a round table and stew-like
mixtures are piled on top, then more injera are used to scoop up
and eat the stews. We all agreed that we liked the stews, but the
spongy consistency of the injera left us cold. Once again, cutlery
here is for the faint of heart. Considering the terrible starvation
Ethiopia is experiencing now, it occurred to me that "Ethiopian
Cuisine" is an oxymoron in itself.
Being in DC, so close
to the Maryland shore where the blue crab is plentiful, was an opportunity
for me I wasn't going to pass up. The Dancing Crab on Wisconsin
Avenue often serves up "all-you-can-eat" boiled blue crabs in the
traditional method simply on layers of newspaper along with a mallet
for cracking the claws. My friends were long finished with their
oyster sandwiches and clam chowder while I was still cracking and
peeling. One dozen crabs and two hours later, I finally turned in
my mallet in exchange for the check. My mother swears that one time
while vacationing on the Gulf Coast, she and a friend ate one hundred
crabs in one sitting after catching and boiling them, so it seems
I inherited her appetite.
Lina's Sandwiches are
pumping out paninis all over Paris and you can get a baguette filled
with jambon de Paris in almost every boulangerie but you still can't
get a real club sandwich in Paris. That's exactly what I got at
the Lyric Diner on 3rd Avenue near Gramercy Park in Manhattan, where
a club sandwich consists of sliced breast of turkey, lettuce, tomato,
bacon and mayonnaise on three pieces of whole wheat toast, cut into
quarters, skewered by a "dressed-up" toothpick, accompanied by French
fries and a dill pickle. Of course, I could only finish three of
the quarters, half the fries, half the pickle, but, of course, I
managed to down all of the root beer float. What's a club sandwich
without a root beer float?
In the end, that last
morning before our plane headed home to Paris, we had our favorite
American food of all -- one big flat pancake with a fried egg on
top, four strips of bacon, butter and syrup. What a shame I had
to wash it down with "sock juice" and have my American "pig-out"
come to a halting stop. It was certainly fun, undeniably memorable
and I learned one very important thing: what's more American than
apple pie? French fries, of course.
P.S. The French don't
"pig-out." They "dine."
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