The Lunch Encounter

Shooting down 95 around noon she said, “I know a cute diner in Richmond,” and I said, “Exit here to Millie’s!”

I used to do quite a bit of work for Hamilton-Beach with Tom Chambers and Jeff Saxman in Richmond, just 100 miles south and a whole civilized world away when it comes to workpace. In Richmond, during photoshoots, we go out to lunch. Up here, in bottom-line focused Baltimore, too often we have what is called a “working lunch”. Ha ha. Emphasis on “working”.
Had we put a quarter in the juke box at our table we would still be waiting to hear our song two weeks later. Millie’s was mobbed.
Crack attack. A tribute to the food hall of fame.
A road trip requires staff – driver and navigator, cruise director and talent. Clay drove valiantly, while Heidi was our sundial.

Heidi gamely ordered the BLT and it was loaded for bear with avocado. That’s whatcha call a BLAT.

Paul Keevil, that handsome devil, was roaming the joint and looking in on booths. He generously gifted us with two Millie’s cds.

Just around the corner from Millie’s, also in Shockoe Bottom, is another Keevil sandwich outpost, Lulu’s, where Paul’s band plays occasionally and the sandwiches are stacked.

Millie’s-style sustenance got us to Raleigh and rocked us with the Bottle Rockets till 2 am, then we skipped with gusto behind John Horton’s metronome-even, long, strong strides to a chic, late night sandwich spot for an Uber-Wisconsin Grilled Cheese. Scarfed. You hadda be quick to get more than a crumb. Then goodnight fellas, love ya!, and sleeeep of the dead.

Quiet day at the Lunch Encounter, which is all for the best. Gave us time to sweep the corners, clean out the grease trap, scrub the buffalo chopper, sand the monkey bars and oil the robot coupe. 

A tip did drop over the transom…

Just opened last month, Taylor Gourmet has gotten kudos for their look, their deli-stuffs, and for bringing in Philadelphia bakery Sarcone‘s breads. And…Taylor’s delivers! Sandwiches, hoagies, olive oil, meats, cheeses, the works! Hoagies! Wrapped in oily paper, one would hope. Got to get myself over for a first bite.

Taylor Gourmet
1116 H Street NE, between 11th and 12th Streets
Washington, DC
202-684-7001

Things just ain’t what they used to be. Now when I was your age and being awarded new Brownie badges, a big deal was made of it. Guest celebrities, fireworks, flags flying.

After two long, long days of styling ice cream cakes I needed to be scraped off the floor. Meant to rest up over the weekend but burned the other end of the candle instead, driving down to Raleigh to see my beloved Bottle Rockets.

Monday morning I headed back up to Arbutus, close neighbor to Baltimore, for a round of sandwich styling. Honestly, those things were a piece of cake compared to ice cream cakes. Sitting on a couple stacked milk crates, forceps in hand, adjusting crumbs and kraut strands I felt completely at ease.

What came to mind immediately was: This job is like taxidermy compared to the open-heart surgery of last week’s cakes. Food is always dying as you work on it, but the pace of ‘wiches is so civilized. Photos by Dan Whipps.
He has a new website and it is beauteous.

Putting a new band together. The Outskirts. My future bandmates have not been clued in on this, but they will have to go along because we are all for one and one for all. Polygamist’s wives we are. Fundamentalist girls gone WILD. 

Except that one on the right-back. She/he is a bit of a mess. Keep that on the lowdown – wouldn’t want to ruffle any fundi-feathers.

When the man is preoccupied we eat Whoppers. Heaven knows a person could choke on a fast food sandwich when it has become contraband.

The meals around this joint would be tastier and timelier were there a wife or two, or three, to spare. Fewer sandwiches when the clock is not striking lunch. More fork food when the clock IS striking dinner. Where do I sign?

PS: BLUE is the color of freedom — the freedom to be yourself.
L. Bourgeois

That would be Louise. LoU-EaSe.  Club Louise, in case you don’t know, is the exclusive club for girls who have turned to women and are not done being wild.

Apologies, nothing to do with sandwiches.

The Washington DC City Paper’s food issue, out last Thursday, ran a story called
How To Build a Dish Like a Food Stylist. Very kind of them.

After all these millions of years I finally met Darrow Montgomery, whose photos I admire. Was also very impressed with Jule Banville and hope that we will have further encounters, perhaps involving sandwiches. Jule did such a fine job in the writing that I was rewarded with this remark from a neighbor, “in the overall context of presenting chefs as totally beset by OCD, you come off as inspired, rather than psycho!” Little does she know…..

Do wish I had a make-up and hairstylist though. Jeez, I can’t do everything. Psycho much? Yes.

Mudflap Girls

This is an invitational, mind you, and these iconic chicks made the cut.
The 1st 6th Grilled Cheese Invitational

The 16th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational

I harbor a warm spot for mudflap girls. They ride the highways, saucy as can be, not bothered by a bit of road splatter. Were I to drive long haul a pair would tail my trailer. Perhaps cause I am a sucker for Dieselbilly and the man who personifies it, Bill Kirchen. Bill coined the phrase, “To the manor born redneck,” wordplay that endeared him to me for eternity.

The sidewalk soundtrack, the wolf whistle, is long dead and buried. Could mudflap girls be long for this world?

OCTOBER 30, 2008
SANDWICH DUEL, PART 19
Written by Chris Onstad

When last I wrote (a while ago now, since I was out on the road promoting my new book, “The Great Outdoor Fight”), Frank Bruni (chief restaurant critic for the New York Times) was tickling away on an old six-string on my front lawn, and I had edged inside to prepare some lunch for him.

I smiled politely. “No, they’re not,” I thought.

Read more here.

Alert! Alert! Alert!
This just in from My Main Sandwich Man in NYC, JAF:

The Sandwich Run, Downtown
A SANDWICH is the quintessential New York lunch, a tasty package that makes swift work of the midday minutes we get to eat.

But even if you’re in Midtown, it’s worth taking an entire lunch hour to venture downtown to three new places with some of the best things since, and on, sliced bread.
Betsy Andrews

Heavens to Betsy, this piece is so well-written it makes me slurp.

And the inside word from a ‘hood insider is:

that pork sandwich on 7th st…

the place is so tiny!

Small enough to make a person squeal as they squeeze in.

Been on a bit of a scrapple jag, lately.

The fountain of scrapple spouts in PA, so over the weekend we drove north. We crested trim peaks fast enough to make our stomaches drop, winding along leafy, but nearly picked clean orchards.

Destination: Carlisle → Downtown → Fay’s → Scrapple

A Lunch Encounterer’s hours.

We are so hap, hap, happy that Kelly, Teen and Phoeboe have settled in Pennsylvania, close enough to drive up for lunch. Kelly doesn’t eat meat, but…

…her brave son accepted a bite of scrapple and smiled through it. Turns out that chap eats brussel sprouts and beets, “if they are roasted.” Quite refined, he is. That’s what a childhood in London will do for ya, lucky devil.

Kelly’s friend Steve’s grandmother (got that?) used to say “Buckwheat cakes with loads of butter make your lips go flitter flutter.”

Blue bucks, dead center. Ringed by eggs and a helluva lotta toast. A tad early for scrapple sandwiches, I settled for a side. Alone and flat, the scrapple sat, no wiggle, no jiggle, no sizzle. What it lacks in animation scrapple makes up for in taste, that livery taste that is a force with which to reckon, particularly before noon.

Toast or Scrapple…er….Scrapple or Toast

It WAS!!

The way we were as H. E. Doubletoothpicks, the band with a “big bottom”, two bassists. Kelly still brings it like nobody’s business!