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Little it is, but little is not as little does. Kitchen Little does it up big.

There is something about a tiny restaurant that ignites each beat of my heart. For years and years I have dreamed of having my own luncheon counter. About 8 stools would do, me behind the counter. Short order is my forte. That and round-the-clock chats.

Rules to live by:
Hold the door.
Look ’em in the eye and shake hands firmly.
Coffee black.
Everything tastes better with a bit o’ butter.

What could be more apropos to this part of the world than a Portuguese water dog? And red shoes?

See, what’d I tell ya? Connecticut style lobster roll. No mayo. No celery. No pepper. No nuttin. Hot buttered lobster on a toasted bun. Didn’t I tell ya everything tastes better with a bit o’ butter?

The view from the terrace.
Photo by T.S.K.T.

From the lips of Sir Loin, Esq. himself,
Ahoy Matey, look out for them ther rocksalts to the starboard!

These bizarre meatscape ads are growing on me. Why just this morning in the shower I had to scrub a bit of roast beef off my left calf.

We were a bit in the rough ourselves, after a 10 hour drive and then a mandatory walk to the brink of every pier at the Mystic wooden boat show. From what I had read Abbott’s Lobster in the Rough the lot would be jammed, the line long, and the picnic tables busting at the seams. We found some Abbott’s breathing space on a hazy, humid July Monday evening.

It’s a big menu. When faced with such a thing my eyes edit to the quintessential. Lobster. In the rough. Lobster roll. Not quite as rough. Oh, and clam chowder. They serve it real plain here and I like that. Greyish, which might not be a person’s first choice in food color outside of clams. They have loads of other stuff, and if we lived in walking distance we might gradually take a tour of the menu. For our brief touchdown we zeroed in on the essence.

This rendition of a lobster roll took me by surprise. Have always seen it, eaten it, and read about it as a cool lobster salad in a top-sliced hotdog roll. My post-Abbott’s graduate work started here with the NY Times, and upon further reading here I found that the hot, buttered lobster roll is Connecticut’s preference.

Under the dock there are huge striped bass slipping and sliding. The counter people were generous with small bags of oyster crackers which my son liberally sprinkled into the gape-mouthed, writhing, leaping, monster fish.

Folks get married at this joint. Do you spose they pack oyster crackers in small net bags tied up with ribbon?

House chips. Tasty and they bring on a thirst. Abbott’s is BYOB. Yippee! I thought until our Sunday drive search for drink yielded zilch. Connecticut has blue laws. Blue is right. I had a case of the dying-for-a-beer blues.

Excerpts from:

‘PRIMANTI WAY’

75 YEARS OF THE SANDWICH THAT HAS IT ALL

Eighteenth Street in the Strip District: a blocklong slab of hot, patchy asphalt, slathered over a bumpy bed of cobblestone, sprinkled with oil and leafy litter, sandwiched between two busy slices of Smallman Street and Penn Avenue.
…
Today, 18th Street, the home of Primanti Bros. restaurant, will receive the name “Primanti Way,” an honorary designation bestowed by city officials as part of the sandwich shop’s 75th anniversary celebration.
…
Said owner Jim Patrinos, who bought Primanti’s in 1974, when he was 24. “I don’t know if MapQuest will change the name
…
When Joe Primanti and his brothers started the business in 1933, it wasn’t a sandwich shop so much as a small wooden lunch stand serving produce workers and truck drivers in the Strip District. The menu was simple enough: grilled meat, fried potatoes, sliced tomato, coleslaw and provolone cheese between two thick pieces of Italian bread.

READ IT ALL HERE.
And my post is HERE, with pictures and more links.

I get the distinct impression that the Pittsburgh Gazette is a damn fine paper, in particular on their coverage of newsworthy food stories. As my local food section has become, in their words, “a dying business” it fascinates me to see ink being spread on local food stories in much smaller markets.

Word to the bbq-eating wise. If you’re gonna eat a pulled pork sandwich in Memphis, and you like your pork with the slaw on it, wear a shirt in the above color. Tumeric colored. Bold yellow. Some ‘o that slaw is gonna wind up on your shirt and they make it yellow there, the slaw. Boldly yellow.

I wore a yellow blotch face-front while in Memphis. Scratched off the worst of it and then lived with it.

We drove to Austin, Texas, and back, noodling from blue highways to red, and taking 3 weeks. Me and my dog. I don’t remember the year, but know that just as we were pulling away from the curb in front of the house my husband pressed a newly purchased cell phone into my hand through the car window. Had never had, or held, a cell prior. Musta been about 1994 or 5. The car was set to GO and we went.

Memphis is on the way to Austin from here. As are Knoxville, Nashville, Hot Springs and Dallas. Biloxi, Montgomery, Athens and Blowing Rock are all on the way back. Lots of good eating to be done. And sight seeing. Sight is right. We saw. We looked. Our eyes were open and opened. Insight and outsight. We were made of mesh and the world flowed in and out.

My Ida. She could leap tall buildings in her youth. One agile ~spring~. Wind up, then uncoil her hocks and she was UP, perched regally on the Graceland wall.

And then, she had to wait in the car, while I looked around inside. Later we ate bbq and she was appeased. So well built, dogs never drip slaw on their chests. Teeth, lips and tongue advance towards tasty bites and bits, beautifully.

Slaw. Pork. Dogs. Love. Gets me thinking.

Where would the sandwich universe be without mustard? In a lopsided, astronomically banal loop around the outer reaches of a black hole.

Mustard is the peacemaker. You got a sandwich. And that is good. But it is not quite right. Missing somethin’. And there is an abyss between you and that sandwich cause it lacks the punch to bring you to it. Mustard! That’s the punch. That’s the punctuation. Mustard will make you lean forward, scoop that sandwich up and make yourself one with it. A peaceful union.
 

These outfits both have the cred of history. Both are local, as in not owned by Kraft or similar, and both engender civic pride.

Weber’s

Weber’s is good anytime of the day, of course. My introduction was at 7 am on a cold sausage. Zooee mama, it was tasteee.

The last remaining mustard mill in the US is:

Ray’s

Ray’s is on in Eastport, Maine, way up north on the east coast near Canada. I wonder where those mustard seeds are grown. That’s a good question. Next up….mustard seed plantations, backyard plots and urban gardens.

We were in Pittsburgh this weekend in the Strip District and I had one of the best sandwiches ever. Fresh mozzarella, artichokes and field greens with a vinaigrette douse.

Enrico’s

They sure know what to do with two slices of bread in Pittsburgh. At Enrico’s they seem to know what to do with flour, yeast, water and salt.

This operation is BYOB, something we have a shortage of in DC – our liquor laws are not conducive to that privilege and luxury. Now Philadelphia…there’s a city for BYOBing. Thriving restaurant scene hinging on just that. Lemme surf a bit and see if the same holds true for Pittsburgh. Hmm. Found an impressive list on Citysearch.

(Made the mistake of googling “pairing wine with sandwiches”. Now I am blind from information overload. I will, however, file away these sage bits: No dry wines with peanut butter and jelly. Riesling with a Reuben. Course, none of these sound words apply to Enrico’s. For that joint you need to linger in the Italian aisle.)

We encourage you to bring your own bottle of wine. This sentene, from Enrico’s website, is one of my faves. Right up there with, We’ll just charge this to his credit card.

for a hamburger today.”

Back in the dark ages of American kitchens, otherwise known as the mid-to-late 19th century, the hamburger was nowhere to be found. Sure, we had ground beef, introduced by German immigrants in the early 1800s, but a Hamburg steak is one giant white-bread step away from a hamburger.

Who was the first to slap it on a bun?

Click to read and listen.
NPR’s Present at the Creation

The Hamburger: A History, out recently from Yale University Press by Josh Ozersky examines the iconic sandwich in detail.

Read a review from the Chicago Tribune.

“Obviously, my philosophy on gastronomy can be summed up by saying the fat is the meat and the meat is the vegetable,” says Mr. Ozersky.

And the vegetable is the French fry.

Scroll down a bit and the obvious will smack you in the face like the snap of a genu-iiiine, split-n-grilled, hawt diggity dawwwg – I was impressed with Super Duper Weenie.

Put the pedal to the metal and cruised without incident from DC to Connecticut, not even a hint of a back-up at the George Washington Bridge. Lunchtime on the interstate usually means cutting a fast-food deal (the promise of a plastic toy gets my boy every time) and I go for it too, happily and hungrily absorbed by the brightly approaching promise of vacation. This time I could not wrap my mind’s appetite around MacDonald’s, but Teddy’s focus stayed true, so we pulled in. Teddy came bouncing back, Happy Meal swinging, while I called ahead for directions to Super Duper Weenie.
.

Just a brief piece up 95 and one turn off the ramp, Super Duper came into view and set our hearts a-thump with anticipation.

The dogs are split lengthwise pre-grilling. One of these days someone is going to package pre-split dogs. Super-surface dogs.

Instinct pinched me. “Order The New Englander,” it whispered. Instinct has never betrayed me.

He ate again. What a coup for his knee-jerk-anti-fast food mother. French fries and a chocolate milkshake. Top of the food pyramid, yes?

“Our own” means shop-made. Lots of personality in the fixin’s and NO bottled complacency. These are what I call high-wire hot dogs, where anything could happen. A superlative lunch encounter.

The half smoke is a DC thing – about the only indigenous DC food, far as I can tell.

Folks don’t emerge from airplanes on a half smoke prowl though. Not like lobster roll aficionados traveling to Maine, or pulled pork devotees driving south. Still and all, you gotta wrap your hometown flag in somethin’ and I’ll take the half smoke.

A dirty water dog from a vendor will do, but the Weenie Beenie will do you better by at least half.

Weenie Beenie!! A rare unoccupied moment. The ghosts in the parking lot can still smell the half smokes.

Wiki Weenie here. While my infatuation with the Weenie Beenie is consuming, I cannot mention half smokes without putting in a plug for Ben’s Chili Bowl. Ben’s is beloved here in DC, and rightly so.

(Word on the street is Van Camp’s increased the weenie to beanie ratio. Believe I felt the earth move.)

From Abiding Arlington Correspondent Ellen:

The name of my DC ultimate Frisbee team is Disc Toast, but we go by Toast. Each season we get a t-shirt, sweatshirt or other garment with a toast image on the front. This year our sweatshirts simply say TOAST.

I have a couple pieces of Toast clothing too, but couldn’t find any pictures. The image above is “Angry Toast”, our logo. You can make out the word Toast on the Frisbee he is holding in the air. Clearly he is an ultimate Frisbee player since he is wearing athletic shorts and shoes.