The Lunch Encounter

This just in from Super Fan D. Kmetz in the northeast, who adds, ” Hope they cover Portland, Maine as well, as it can hold up against the west coast’s namesake.”

Portland is a town where you can find an impressive sandwich lurking around nearly every corner at places like Meat Cheese Bread (whose green bean sandwich we have already sussed out),Bunk, and Big-Ass Sandwiches. We visit two places making ultra-handmade ingredients for their sandwiches, starting at Olympic Provisions, where we chat with resident salumist Elias Cairo and get an excellent salami sandwich, made even more awesome with a liberal smear of butter. Then we go to Kenny & Zuke’s, one of the only spots in the country making old-school pastrami from start to finish, and putting it in a damn fine Reuben.

For a bit of escapism I occasionally daydream about living in a tiny, sunlit apartment in downtown Portland. This is a serious case of “Perfect Far Away” because I have not been to Portland since 1976. That town did make an impression on me. Even then the “food scene” was adventurous and included a restaurant that seated 8, all at one table, in a room so small that our chairbacks were pressed to the walls. We had brunch, and were all puffed up with our college girl sophistication and the pure bohemia of it all.

Now THIS is a life well lived. Freddie Yauner (is that Yawner? as in, height of irony? unless, of course, one finds rocketing toast to be a yawner. personally, i find it fascinating. toast itself is a yawner, which is what, of course, makes it so fascinating. fascinatingly dull.) must have spent hours and hours and hours engineering a toaster that sends toast up, up and awaaaay. it does come back to earth, as almost all things do, and NOT EVEN TOASTED. Ha. That is what I call a life well lived. that part anyway.

He calls it a moaster. So brilliant it oughter shine like a toaster useta. Moaster. We all need to pay attention to our inner moaster. Shiny and brilliant and sending hot stuff into outer space.
Freddie Yauner

How many feet would a hamster fly, if a hamster could fly high? Hamsters love speeed, you know, and those critters know horizontal only, earthbound they are. Betcha, I betcha, I betcha a hamster’s tail, that any hamster worth its weight in toast would grab on tight to an opportunity to go vertical. Up, up and away.

Reach for the stars and touch the sky.

7th Hill appears in lists of DC’s best sandwiches. Lists are…just lists…a way of putting things into manageable amounts, something that we can receive. And obey. Obeisant, I went. Took a willing friend.

Cute spot, with a sweet patio and a winking parade of passersby.

7th Hill is sweet and tended without being precious. Must say, the guy tossing pizza skins was mighty precious.

Okay, it is no secret that I love sandwiches, and I am not particularly discerning. My criteria is largely based on sincere effort and allegiance to personal expression and authenticity. Got that? Let me just rinse my mouth of that gobbledy gook and tell you this: the sandwiches at 7th Hill take flight, go to heights, soar up to heaven on a magic carpet of black bubbled bread. Lord have mercy, that sandwich was good. Wing me away on the stuff inside, the stuff that came from animals by way of human ingenuity – prosciutto, salami, cheeeese. Nature + nurture = rapture.

The friend earned his sandwich with flattery. He’d paid it forward. I got the best end of that deal, far past the tipping point. The price of a couple sandwiches and a couple softdrinks. If we go to dinner, I will be sure to pour on the verbal sugar well in advance.   A good friend eats sandwiches with you, at a place of your choosing, and laughs at your jokes, and makes you laugh, too. And doesn’t hold you accountable for lapses in judgement. For example, in response to a note of mine written during an evening of defeat, he wrote, “No worries
re the rant.  Love your candid heart and dancing spirit!” I went to bed defeated and woke up determined. Thank heaven he did not hold the rant against me, as it was fleeting. Heaven is inhabited with this sort of angel, the angel who sees your dancing spirit, even when your shoes are concrete.

Bragging once, bragging twice.
Big, bad shot of Times Square rice.

Pat my back once, pat my back twice.
Styled this salmon on a hill of rice.

Photo by Dan Whipps

Macon, Georgia

ISO DC STREET FOOD AND SCRAMBLED HOT DOG TALES

THIS JUST IN FROM BRUCE KRAIG:
I’m doing 2 books (don’t even ask!). One is another book on hot dogs, this one on the cultural and social meaning of hot dogs stands, and the other an encyclopedia of street food around the world. Naturally half-smokes are in both. In looking around for scrambled hot dogs, your site popped up. Have you eaten them? I have in Georgia, where they’re from.  If you have, what do you think? And, are there any other DC street foods I should consider?

Anyone? DC street foods to add to Bruce’s book? First hand scrambled hot dog encounters to disclose? Step right up!

What I found on the internest about Scrambled Hot Dogs:

A scrambled dog is this. On a small flat tray (like for french fries or something) you have an opened up hotdog bun. Add chili, cut up hot dog, oyster crackers, cheese, chopped onions and some slaw. Eat with a fork.

The Columbus version is an open faced hot dog served in a ceramic tray (similar to what a banana split is served in) the hot dog is cut up.. buried in copious amounts of chili (with beans) topped with cheese, diced onions, pickle slices and oyster crackers.

Big Bad Breakfast
719 N. Lamar Blvd., Oxford, MS 38655
Has a scrambled dog called a Pylon. A mountain of griddle fried hot dogs, chili, slaw, cheddar, mustard, chopped pickles, onion, jalapenos, and oyster crackers on a sweet waffle. Sounds weird, but it is one of the things that has made them famous, and people love it. They cure their own bacon, grow their own herbs, and even have a smoke house out back.

I am always in favor of a food that includes so many toppings that if the foundation (in this case the hotdog) were forgone, you might not notice.

The challenge is in LA, so a person could walk from joint to joint. So, yeah, then I might be ready, willing and able. Under those circumstances. A burger trek.

I couldn’t stay away too long. Just a hop, skip and jump from my front door, I am making up for years of snubbing this joint. As the spanking new highish rises
accumulate along Columbia Pike blankly blinking their thermopanes into the sun, the Broiler looks sweeter and friendly and more human-scaled than ever.


And patinaed. Take it from me. Visually and odorously. Orange is the new orange. Orange speaks directly to tastebuds, orange juice cans with a short string between. Once you’ve eaten, screaming orange will jolt you out of your booth and onto the street, freeing a spot for the next guy.

The Broiler is guyland, punctuated occasionally by a woman or two.

I made my maiden voyage, and my sophomore Broiler encounter, with the right Tony. I know he is the right Tony because he gets the Broiler. And he gets me, at least the sandwich part, which is more than enough.

Know what? What? I like the sandwiches at the Broiler, very, very much. They do not use organic, or local, or hormone-free, or free-range. The food is far from what food was 75 years ago, before shelf life was a consideration for things that humans eat.

A lot of the food now, the food available for purchase at your average grocery store screams at us Shelf Life, as a command. Embrace the Eternal.

In between then and now, there were some golden years when we (my family of origin) went to Mary’s A&W, just on the skirts of Appleton, Wisconsin, for brats and root beers and car service. They hooked that tray onto the car window frame on the driver’s side where The Dad sat. We might have worn our pajamas over there. Sometimes on Sunday nights we would go for “a drive” and we wore pajamas, my sisters and me, not The Dad. He wore his regular clothes.

And so, what I am getting at, is that there were some years in there, the golden years, when food had a foot in each camp, the past/present and the future/present. Teetering on the fence,  we were still optimistic about the possibility of improving upon nature. We saw food as food and weren’t afraid of it yet. Those were the days. Food was food and humans had their hands in it, but not their claws, not yet.

Eating at the Broiler, I want to go to there – Mary’s A&W. Food science and optimism were not mutually exclusive. Take me back. And then take me forward. In the future, a perfect future, the Broiler still stands, the rolls are baked around the corner, the meat is from a happy cow (happyish anyway), the tomatoes are nowhere to be seen October to July, we all pay a bit more.

This is no-frills flying, people. Assuming good intent, I believe the brothers in charge at the Broiler have never taken a look at their side door, from any distance. We go by it each time we enter our neighborhood. When it comes time to sell our house, I will direct prospective buyers to take an alternate route. Gotta respect the authenticity.

A reminder to look up. Look up and take in the sky. Alexis Rockman, I hear ya. To hear him too, and see what I mean, take a look at the Rockman show hanging now at the Museum of American Art.

In the future, a perfect future, the Broiler has jack-hammered out some black top, put in trees and flowers (FLOWERS!!), and folks are spilling out into the streets, clamoring for not upscale, not low-brow, just food, food, food, plain sandwiches that deliver.  Under the clear blue sky, cows and lettuce and wheat all grow. Keep that in mind.

We met for a little retail therapy and lunch encounter, low brow style, here in the reality show of south Arlington. Goodwill and The Broiler. The Saks of Goodwill, which is just around the corner, is an asset to my home assessment. The thrill of purchase without the agony of buyer’s remorse. Coupla smart cookies, we are. At least Melissa.
The Broiler is a beloved on-foot destination for the people in my hood. After 18 years living here, this certified greasy spoon, if they had spoons which they don’t, is beginning to eke out a little real estate in my heart.

The trick is, do not go for soft serve only, cause the grease smell will getcha and make your first lick icky. You must get a fix of fries and a sub first, then swash it all down with a cold, sweet, licking-sticky Mr. Twisty/Mr. Softee. Freezes the grease and  moves it through your system in small bits, rather than coating your ribs for a lifetime.

Good place to meet a real man, I’d say. I’ll say! They said, “No one has wanted to take our picture in a long time.” Nudge, wink, nudge, slurp. They looked happy and at home. Bet they have clocked some hours in that orange booth.
I used a napkin/bite ratio of 1:1, stashing the unladylike, reduced-to-transparency-by-grease, crushed and crumpled paper bits in the corner of the booth. They accumulate with a 6-inch sub. A diet of 12-inchers for a few months could clear a forest.

Just before we received our mushroom cheesesteaks with everything Melissa said, “I have a thing about crumbs.” Uh oh. I thing about crumbs. The bread was toasted crunchy. Crackin’. She ate it, neatly. Admirably neatly.

Shopping, I was in search of a white shirt for the first band concert of my son’s elementary school (what is called nowadays) career. Posh, this is not. It is elementary school, although he did want to look the part, lovely boy that he is. White shirt, black trousers, black shoes. I had scored a pair of incredibly fabulous black Doc Martens for him at the Goodwill, but the white shirt had not surfaced. What gives with that? I was devastated.

Don’t think there is a breed more resourceful than the breed of mothers on a budget. There is not. Melissa stepped in. Of course she had a shirt in her library. We took it out on loan.

The shoes, the fantastic, extra-thick soled Docs have been worn. Only once. They don’t stand a flip flop’s chance in a blizzard of making his regular shoe rotation. Too heavy, too many laces, too old school. But when he is grown, and sees the pictures?! He will know. He will know the lengths to which a mother will go. Miles and miles and miles, even in second hand shoes.

Thankfully the Broiler is in walking distance.