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Googie-of-the-Month Club

Astro Family Restaurant + Coffee Shop | Conrad’s Drive-In 1957 Armet + Davis | Silver Lake | Los Angeles
Googie Style

Long as I have my plastic cheeses

Riding on the dashboard of my car.

And remember:
What a friend we have in cheeses.

Banh Mi in DC?

Can the classic Vietnamese sandwich be rescued from Northern Virginia?

Rescued?? Nice choice of word. Hey, ain’t we all in this together? Last time I looked out my NoVa window, we were not under water, or under threat of siege, or under anything but the big blue sky that umbrellas us all.

Lookie here for Mark Furstenburg’s new adventure. G Street Food. Gee. I mean GEE, been here so long that G Street is not the street I knew. No 3 story, warren of treasures that was G Street Remnant. My mind’s nose smells G Street and conjures discarded food. After hours street scents and scenes.

This is a new day, however, and DC is re-re-re-born. You go, Mr. Furstenburg. And go and go and go. 71 is the new 69. In my family that is 43. When we utter, “Oh, to be 81 again”, it means something.

Nevermind. Whatever. No bundle in my undies over this slight slight. Banh Mi is the It Wich, according to my Sandwich-O-Meter, and she is a fine choice. Bout time she left the safety of the suburbs, grabbed her trendy bag, and teetered the downtown sidewalks in spike-heeled boots. You go, Miss Banh Mi. Banh Mi Mi to you, Handsome!

Thanks a banh million to Mike of ComicsDC for the linkety link.

Seems both distant and near. Summer. The season that begins, in case you didn’t know, on the longest day of the year, my favorite day of all 365.  The shortest day of the year is upon us, a mere three weeks to go, followed by MY SECOND FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR, December 22, when the days begin to stretch again.

Last summer, summer 2009, Along-for-the-Ride Heidi and Teddy and I went to Wisconsin. Heidi took Wisconsin 101 and so there was no avoiding ice cream, Bucky Badger, knitting and other of my personal touchstone Wisconsin esoterica. She suffered, poor thing, through the tour of my former apartments, the long gone tables upon which I waited, on and on and on, interminably I waxed nostalgic.

Lakeside Fibers, however, has not a thread to do with my past, although my past and present are looped together through knitting. All that I have been, I am still. A more perfect knit shop, you will not find, according to me. Yarn, buttons, books, advice, a view, and sandwiches!

Lakeside Fibers is the sister to The Washington Hotel, on Washington Island, where they grow their own wheat and hops, make their own bread and beer, and anything else they can get their sustainable hands on.

Good food prevails at both places. Word to the childless wise – do not tell the child that the “red things” in his quiche are red peppers. Just play dumb. Red things? What red things? We LOVE red things. Go big Red!When in Madison, you gotta getta Bucky Badger shirt. I am partial to F-k ’em Bucky, but nobody else wanted that.

Now, this set of table and chairs takes me back. Coffee shops and cafes so rarely have these rickety sorts of things anymore. Got a coffee jitter flashback. Flashback to a time when I could and would drink ten cups of coffee in a sitting. Sitting and talking and feeling so smaaart and collegy. Shortlived, but vivid.

Was in the market for Go Big Dread, although I understand that has been unavailable since about 1979. When did I become so declassé and passé? Appalling to face the demise of my coolness factor.

Very remote and windswept, The Washington Hotel creaks at its seams with pride, and rightly so. I am in love with its restrained luxury. Luxury for a puritan. Just my speed. No, I have not slept in its beds, nor eaten its bread, or toasted my chilly bones on its sun-leaning lawn, but I can picture it. And we always have Lakeside Fibers, where the menu is identical and I ate a sandwich and warmed my bones in the luxury of colors, colors, colors in wool, cotton, alpaca, bamboo, rayon and silk.

Washington Island is a place to go slow. Knit one, chew a bit, purl one, look about, knit one, sip sip sip, purl one, tuck the greens back into the bread, knit one, stretch from tip to toe, and so on, slowly it goes.


Speaking of Washington Island, off the tip of Door County, in the waters of the devil’s door…speaking of it brings one’s mind round to cherries. Limestone, the stuff of which Door County is made, is conducive to growing sour cherry trees, should you be inclined to blast a few holes. “Live fast, die young” could be a Door County cherry tree’s motto. They do not live long there, but do they produce a heavy crop! They do.

The ruby, nearly translucently so, cherries are not sour to my taste. Delicious warm, off the tree, unwashed-who-cares. Transformed into pie, sour cherries restore my faith in humankind.

We did this too while on vacation. No rush. Lacing lattice is a zen experience on the holiday clock.

Pie is to share, doncha know. This person eating pie, Morsty, is proof in the flesh that when worlds collide, a feast results.

Local Restaurant World Tour: Vietnamese Cuisine

The Banh Mi has become ubiquitous in DC. Kojo whets your whistle for this Vietnamese sandwich.

Good day to be home baking 2000 cookies and lunching vicarously.

I ask you. In Nowheresville. Dullards Central. Slobbering through a sea of Subways and 7 Elevens. Thank you, JAF, my MSMINY, for the strong link to what counts. Counting, one sandwich at a time.

SAVING NEW ORLEANS CULTURE, ONE SANDWICH AT A TIME
By John T Edge the lucky devil

At the New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival on Nov. 22, as brass bands play and celebrators hoist drinks, serious-minded panelists will tell tales of long-lost po’ boy shops. They will speak of the import of this city’s signature sandwich, piled with roast beef and gravy or corn-flour-breaded and fried shrimp, slathered with mayonnaise, paved with sliced pickles and slicedtomatoes, strewn with shredded lettuce, wrapped in butcher paper.

Wanna know whereta getta good one in NO? Look here.

He made it, I ate it, it was pitch black on the bottom. How could I take a pass on a two-inch round grilled cheese and pepperoni? The pepperoni, our all-purpose food, met its snug destiny so neatly.

You make a coupla eggs in a frame, you got a coupla spare bread holes. Actually, they are not holes, as donut holes are not. The egg in a frame by-product is a bread round. A bag of donut holes would be lighter than a slice of bread and leave no grease spots, Watson. I believe the so-called donut holes at Dunkin’ Donuts have never made contact with a donut. Those hole thingys are too round and too big to squeeze inside a chocolate glazed, for instance.

Indulging in a post that is more personal than is typical for me. After all, it is Thanksgiving. Time to get teary-eyed over the gorgeousness of my own life.

The mashed potatoes were riced, nice and glamoured thrice – butter, cream and salt.

We raced through the thankfulness for family and friends. While it goes without saying, if you don’t say it, it might go, via the bad luck of taking it for granted.

BUYER BEWARE

Look out ahead. As Chris Smither said, You get kids, you get maudlin.

BLACK FRIDAY ALERT

o. k. i am thankful.

for the exuberance of my child. for the peaceful passing, after lives joyfully lived, of my two sweet dogs. for my continued health and ability to do what needs to be done, far as i can tell. for a tiny taste of what might, maybe be human beings rounding the corner towards thinking about possibly, perhaps, preserving and restoring and protecting mother earth. believe you me, that is one mother who is entitled to be maudlin. for the gorgeousness of all life. for being older, wiser and alive in it.

do wish I had a bit of leftover turkey and a coupla slices of bread….

Subzilla! A big sandwich garners a big price tag. Sticker shock! SUBZILLA!!!! I was shockingly sticky from the manhandling of this mammoth wich. SUBZILLAD!

Party hero. You can say that again. A three-footer.How can you tell a boy photographer from a girl photographer? From the size of their rig. Boys just love a rig, don’t they? Can’t say I mind. We put this braided baby on the slicing rig for maximum precision, and I went at it with the unmanliest of all tools, the electric knife. No guy would touch that silly thing for fear his Mancard would be revoked. Jeez, you’d think I could spring for a new apron or two, stead of this ratty thing. Easy does it. As my favorite dyslexic says, “Viola!” Ta dahhhh!
You need only look presentable from one angle, dear.
It looks like a person just slaps this together, but that’s not how it goes. Lots of looking, squinting, balancing. “Is it loopy enough on the right? Is it too dense on the left?”
All photos by Claudia Barac-Roth It turned out well. Not too painful a construction. Doesn’t hurt to have a client whose mantra is, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”We couldn’t bear to throw it out. For all I know, that bear of a wich is slowly decomposing in Baltimore.

Have heard it said that foodstyling is a bit like embalming a body. You only gotta see it from one side, and you gotta keep it looking alive. Moisture is key. “Shout all you want it doesn’t matter. Don’t you know that I am mostly water? Seventy percent, don’t worry about the rest.” Nope, not to worry.

Signing off now from Studio Goodenough.

Googie-of-the-Month Club

Chip’s Diner 1955 by architect Harry Harrison | 11908 Hawthorne Boulevard | Los Angeles

Googie Style

Man Says Bear Mugged Him for His Italian Sandwich

Woman Says Seagull Committed Assault and Battery on Her Humphreys Beach Picnic Sandwich

That would be me. Us rather. And our king’s ransom worth of holy-moly-that-took-a-bite-out-of-my-wallet beach resort sandwiches. Turned away to bask in the beauty of my son at beach dusk, turned back to squawk squawk squawk at the birds going at it! Ripping, tearing, swiping, swooping. Gone daddy gone, the love is gone. Gone daddy gone, our dinner’s gone. The birds took it away! Damn expensive sandwiches too. Island prices. Nothing is ordinary there, even the seagulls are exceptionally cunning and gutsy.

Lately it feels like work, work, work and die around here. Focused on getting through it and not letting my son slip through the cracks while I’m at it. Got to make hay while the sun shines and, hey! he is my sunshine while I am making hay. Thankfully, as the sun is shining its favor on another hemisphere this time of year.

So, enough about that, let’s get back to the light of my life, my son. Ha! Speaking of bears, let me tell you yet another besotted mother story. Sitting at dinner. Teddy is about three. “Mom, how bout we get a baby brother around here! How bout a baby sister! How bout………………………………bears!?!” Bears? Now we’re talking.