You read it here first.

Zombies are in. Blissful ignorance is out.

Zombie crawls are in. Happy hours are out.

Wendell Berry is in. Wending balefully is out.

8 1/2 is in. 9 is out.

Going out is in. Staying in is out.

Sandwiches are in. Sandwiches are never out.

Witness the  THREE sandwich stories in today’s Washington Post, January 6 Food Section.

Brisket That’s A Cut Above

AND

Sandwiches: Cork’s Veggie Version Has Bite

AND

Sandwiches: The Other Masterpiece from Philadelphia

Yes, I got an iPhone for Chrismas. Was already hooked on Facebook. I am a crawling zombie, my livingdead fingers crawling across the keyboards and touchscreens, scratching and pecking and tapping meaningless, reductionist communications.

Not like this blog. No no no. For this oh-so-deadly-alive blog I scratch my head, hunt and peck, and tap my toes compulsively to keep the blood flowing from the veins of my subdadaedconscience to this moldy-coldy screen.

January feels clean and clear and wide open. The Christmas tree knows something is up cause I stopped watering it day before yesterday. My sentiment that Christmas is best when seen in the riew view mirror is all too clear.

So bloody cold out we have to take our sandwiches hot and liquid. Bread soup all around. Warm the bowls please.

Googie-of-the-Month Club

Denny’s Restaurant 1958 Armet + Davis | Ramirez Street | Los Angeles
Googie Style

Decidedly Un-Googie, but I am ga ga just the same.

Highlander Motor Inn

Dreamy. I want it for my own. A destination Motor Inn. Intimate lunch encounters in the lobby intime. Dreamtime at the Highlander would be supream.

It is getting to be the end of the year. A time for cleaning out, clearing up, purging, the old “nothing is sacred”  tour of your house, your mind, your files, your blog, your life. Took a look through my blog drafts and felt the urge to purge, DELETE DELETE DELETE! HOWEVER, the new year is fast approaching and I resolve to exercise self-control. No panic deletes allowed. So, the year in sandwiches is before me, and I will will will finish what I began, beginning not at the beginning, but anywhere that strikes.

Here’s one now, jumping to the top. Taylor Gourmet. Along-for-the-Ride Heidi met me there for lunch way back when in 2009. We lunched. We chatted up the owner. We scrutinized the other patrons and formed opinions at the level of shoes on up. Up to sandwiches, on to the garage door, and Up Up Up to the walls and ceiling. The place reeks of hipness. And I mean that in the best way, bless their hearts.

Open till 3:30 am Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And delivering!

Three Bears Bread – not too hard, not too soft – we liked it, and you will have to try it for yourself. Bread is so personal, the mother’s milk of food. Sarcone’s rolls ride down to Taylor Gourmet everyday – if not everyday, often – from phil, fill, Philly, and burnishes the spot with the patina of authenticity. The authenticity does go deeper than that, too, I promise you.
Clever, DIY wood panelesque walls behind the counter and in the restbathladiesandmensrooms.
Glass-paneled industrial garage door up front.

Good surfaces all about.

Heidi said about a particular pair of dorky shoes, “The youth think that they are retro.”
The sandwiches were, it goes without saying, delish. Had they not been delish,  they would go without mention here. This blog is devoted to good things. What is good, you ask. I will be the judge of that, I answer. Start with, perfect is the enemy of good. Or, to put a Pollyanna spin on it, good is. Good is not the friend of perfection. Good is. Good is not a good. It cannot be bought and sold.

The chairs – we want ’em. The shoes, we’ll take ’em. The wiches – we had ’em!

VS
Salami, cheese made weapons in store fight
Dec. 14, 2009

Details

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.