And it’s one, two…

Recently, Rob went to New Orleans without me.  I know, I know, Sam I went to Florida without him, and it was delightful, but New Orleans is the foodie capital of the world. (Or one of them, anyway). I tried to be a good sport. He was there on business, but still…the pictures of oyster po boys and shrimp and grits and oysters on the half shell (!) kept coming to my phone and breaking my heart. I was in New Orleans once, at the age of 20, visiting a “boyfriend” who subsequently turned out to be playing for the other team. He lived in Metairie, he worked all day, I had no way to get in to the city, it was August and 112 in the shade, there were roaches in the apartment, I accidentally broke his roommate’s cherished Purdue Boilermaker glass…you get the picture. Rob went to New Orleans and stayed at the Omni Crescent where one of his brothers is a high level employee. The brother forced him to try new foods (raw oysters), took him drinking after hours, took him to Morning Call for Begniet and coffee…you get the picture.  Clearly a karmic imbalance.

Since the last day that Rob spent enjoying fresh seafood and touring the city was my birthday, he bought me a present. It was a cook book, but for reasons which will become clear in a moment, I will not reveal the name of the book. Suffice it to say that it was not written by Paul Prudhomme or Emeril Lagasse. It was pretty, it had interesting information about the author’s Cajun family, and since I was still on my post-Panhandle Southern cooking kick, and Rob was still seeing grits and gumbo in his dreams, I planned our weekly menu around the recipes in the book. Chicken fricassee sounded good, although I have to confess that I wasn’t exactly sure what it was supposed to be like. I picked it for Sunday night, along with greens. I also wanted to make red beans and rice, but the author provided a recipe for “white beans and rice” instead, explaining that her family preferred white beans, but that the preparation was essentially the same. That was last night’s dinner, with cornbread. I also decided to make pork chops in tomato gravy with baked cheese grits, and a slow-cooked Cajun Pot Roast with plain grits and coleslaw.

The chicken fricassee was a complete, unmitigated failure. I am haunted by the accusing eyes of my family as I dished out the beige glop and (to Sam’s horror) an accompanying bowl of slimy green stuff with liquid in it. Apparently, chicken fricassee is meant to involve chicken with it’s skin on, which is at least nicely browned, if not caramelized, and then cooked in a roux-based sauce that may or may not include sausage or mushrooms, but almost certainly involves onions and green pepper. This was a recipe for fricassee using boneless, skinless white meat, and while it did involve the preparation  of a roux, and the use of green pepper and onion, it had less flavor than the Chicken a la King served to cardiac patients in a hospital. Rob’s comment was that it reminded him of the canned Chop Suey he had been forced to consume in childhood. Being the hopeful, trusting person that I am, I believed that even though the recipe shouted “BLAND! TURN BACK!” I was missing some mysterious alchemy of which only the author was aware. I should have learned a lesson based on that dinner, but as you will see, I didn’t. As for the greens, it turns out (and this was our second try) that Northerners who do not grow up eating greens do not love them as much as Southerners who do. If I prepare something that calls for that much bacon, and they still won’t eat it, we’re done.

Yesterday, considering the fricassee to have been a fluke, I embarked on Project White Beans and Rice. I read through the recipe, as I generally do, noting casually that an hour and a half didn’t seem like much time to cook dried beans, and that 6 cups of water wasn’t a lot of liquid to cook them in for that period of time. Once again, I suspended my judgment in favor of the Cajun Lady, figuring that she must know something I didn’t.  (I could, by the way, write an entire series of self-help books about this particular self defeating behavior. Instead. I will say this to you: if you think a recipe sounds like it won’t work, and it isn’t from a source you trust, and it doesn’t have a word in the title like “amazing” or “impossible” to explain away it’s patently impractical aspects, don’t waste your time. Trust yourself).

I cooked the bacon, removed the bacon, added the beans, water, bay leaves, spices, onions and peppers, brought it all to a boil, and then left it to simmer for an hour and a half. It smelled good, but at 5:30 when I fixed the cornbread and put it in the oven for 30 minutes, the beans were still rock-like. During the half hour when the bread was baking and the beans were supposed to be ascending to tender deliciousness, I smelled a bad smell. It was a burning sort of smell. Looking into the bean pot I observed that, even over low heat, in a very heavy pot, the beans had sucked up all of the water called for in the recipe, and were now dying horrible deaths in the bottom of the pot. This had happened since my last visit. It occurred to me, at this point, that if this was really how her ancestors fixed beans on wash days in Louisiana, leaving them to cook all day as the women scrubbed and rinsed, the family must have had a real craving for carbon.

I went into triage mode, removing as much un-burned bean as possible and putting it into a fresh pot, and adding peanut butter, which I had just read would make burned foods taste less burned. (It actually helped, by the way, and didn’t make the beans taste like peanut butter). I added more water, and removed the poor cornbread from the oven, hoping that the beans might be finished while it was still warm enough to melt butter. I continued to nurse the beans for another hour and a half (for a total of three hours, instead of the hour and a half promised by the recipe), adding at least another 5 cups of water (in addition to the 6 cups called for). When we finally sat down to dinner at 7:45, the beans were less repellent than the previous night’s chicken, but they were not wonderful. The cornbread was stone cold, and the family was sliding from mutinous to depressed and resigned. This is not the desired response when one has spent hours making dinner (even though it was supposed to be cooking itself while I did loads of crinolines and starched collars).

I am not saying what the cookbook is (yet) because I still want this all to be a fluke. I still want to think that this relatively unknown author could have written a great book, with fabulous recipes, and that I just picked duds. After all, I haven’t loved every recipe I ever tried, and many of my least favorites come from the kitchens of fairly prominent cookers. On the other hand, most of those people have also provided me with a counterbalancing number of “keepers.”

Tonight I will try one more of the recipes from the book. I have adopted a “three strikes, you’re out” policy, and if this one sends my poor family into the Outer Darkness of Dinners, I am going to come right back here and tell you what this book is, so that you may save yourselves and those you hold dearest. If, on the other hand, the third time is a charm, I will give credit where credit is due.

No matter what I say, though, don’t try the boneless chicken fricassee or the white beans and rice.

Zen Fried Chicken

I am reading a great deal of Buddhist philosophy at the moment, and while I was not expecting my focus on impermanence, suffering and egolessness to find a place so quickly in my cooking life, I am pleased (in a way that acknowledges, of course, that pleasure is impermanent and necessarily paired with pain) to say that the preparation of last night’s dinner became fairly Zen in conception, if not in substance.

It was supposed to be Arroz con Pollo, which I have wanted to make for a long time. As I started to prep, though, I realized that I had forgotten to buy (or had used up) some  fairly essential ingredients including white vinegar and a can of chopped tomatoes. Thus began the suffering. It was clear that my impermanent, human plans would have to change, and a quick look through the kitchen revealed most of a bottle of Frank’s Extra Hot Sauce, a bag of red potatoes, and some frozen peas. In a transition that was achieved swiftly and with minimal self-flagellation, I abandoned the Arroz con Pollo and elected to try to duplicate the fried chicken I have read about for years, served at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, in Nashville. I wasn’t going to mess around with trying for a precise duplication, particularly since I have never had the real deal, but I knew I wanted fried chicken, I wanted it spicy, and I was going to serve it with smashed red potatoes and peas.

The chicken breasts went into a zip-top plastic bag with all of the hot sauce, to relax in the refrigerator for several hours whilst I went about my quotidian business. I did notice, as I rinsed and dried them, that they were unusually large, but my state of unnatural calm and acceptance of all things floating through the universe led me to think only that it was good that they were large, because I only had three of them for the three of us.

Come cooking time, I had my potatoes boiling, my oil sputtering in a cast-iron pan, and my three (oh Lord, I am not sufficiently enlightened yet to refer to my “unusually large breasts” without giggling) pieces of chicken were dredged in regular old flour. In they went, into the hot oil, skin-side down; the plan was that they would cook for 15 minutes on each side and emerge moist, crisp, spicy and generally irresistible. I set the table, I drained the potatoes, I steamed the peas, Sam smashed the potatoes, we seasoned the potatoes, I seasoned the peas, I turned the chicken at 15 minutes, admiring it’s firm, mahogany crust, and at the 30 minute mark I put the chicken on paper towels, turned off the heat, and summoned the boys to the table. At 31 minutes, Sam showed me the uncooked interior of his chicken. Musing about the fact that Buddhist philosophy could really give Xanax a run for it’s money (to the extent that one can muse while juggling a cast iron pan full of boiling oil and three partially breached chicken breasts) I turned the heat back on, put the chicken back in, covered the potatoes and peas, and finished reading the paper for another ten minutes.

[Okay, I did swear a little when I found out the chicken wasn't cooked. It's important that you realize that, despite my admirably Goddess-like qualities, I am human, too.]

The chicken was not cooked through after an additional ten minutes. After another ten minutes (a total of 50, if you’re counting along with me) it was cooked, and it was lovely. I revived both peas and potatoes with a run through the microwave, and my little family became a blissful hub of chewing and “mmm” ing. It was crisp, it was moist inside, it was spicy (although I think I’ll add spices to the flour next time, because I’m pretty sure they do that at Prince’s) and it was honestly worth waiting for.

Your Zen koan: if your tomatoes are missing, look South.

“B” is for “Budget” and “Bummer”

For the third meal in my eating out troika, I was taken to the local Tex-Mex restaurant El Azteco by my friends Patty and Renae. (And no, I do not have a friend named Gidget). I have waxed lovingly about El Az in the past, and was thrilled to find myself there on a sunny afternoon with my fellow Cougar/BFF/Soccer Moms, despite the fact that restaurant staff were prepping the rooftop dining area ready for spring in some manner that involved the use of jackhammers, and that they attempted to drown out the construction noise by turning the music up so loud that we found ourselves screaming about the goalie on the JV team and the popularity of various 6th grade boys.

El Az has always been cheap – their $1.00 bean and cheese burrito puts Taco Bell to shame – so I was surprised to see, in addition to the familiar large menu, a smaller version billing itself as an anti-recession menu with entrees hovering around the $5.00 range. The “budget” offerings included fideo, and fideo with chicken, which I probably should have ordered. I wanted to try something other than the Topopo Salad which I order as reflexively as I breathe in and out, or the aforementioned bean burritos which I have been eating since I worked in “downtown” East Lansing between college and law school, and needed a very cheap, very filling lunch. Instead, Renae and I ordered the “Vegetarian Combination” (or something like that) which promised a tamale, a gordita-type-thing, and a “serving of Topopo Salad with no chicken.” It sounded a little adventurous, and seemed to allow us to have our Topopo and something else, too. For half the price.

What I got was a tamale, a flat, tough cornmeal object, and a portion of apparently un-dressed lettuce, peas and cheese. The tamale was fine, the cornmeal object was dry and nearly impenetrable around the edges, and the “Topopo,” well, I was honestly expecting that even without the chicken, I would still receive some of the things that make a Topopo great, like the guacamole, the frijoles, the chips or the melted cheese. Patty kept offering me some of her Topopo (no one can eat a whole one, and Patty, who is approximately the size of the Mayor of Munchkinland, is not even a dark horse contender) and I kept refusing, feeling that I had made my lunch bed, and must lie in it. It sure looked good, though, her Topopo…..

The economy is not great, and there are many opinions on whether businesses are helping or preying when they pitch an offering as a “recession buster.” Whether these Economy Deals are generous or manipulative, the fact is that if you are paying for something that isn’t valuable, even if it’s cheap, it’s not much of a deal. If Renae and I had split a Topopo Salad-hold-the-chicken as we often do, it would have cost two dollars more than our combined Budget Meals, and would have been infinitely more satisfying. Maybe the fideo is wonderful, maybe we just picked the Bum Budget Buster, but even a beloved institution risks losing it’s loyal customers when they create and serve sub-par offerings.

Ukai – Dinner and a Show

The second of my eating out experiences this week took me to Ukai, a Japanese restaurant in Okemos, Michigan. Chosen by my 11-year-old nephew as the site of his birthday dinner, Ukai occupies a space which was, in my youth, Pizza Villa. Gone are the murals of gondolas and the menu drowning in red sauce; it has all been replaced by long hibachi tables, low lights, and a sushi bar. Huge props to my nephew for choosing a Japanese steakhouse with sushi for Auntie Ann instead of something more tortuously predictable with a group of mutinous waitstaff singing and clapping the “happy, happy birthday” song at warp speed.

Not since eating at a Benihana in the 80s have I sat at a table and watched a chef slice, dice and do tricks in the course of preparing dinner. It’s kitschy, to be sure, but unless one is jaded to the point of unconsciousness, it’s also amusing. It’s even more amusing in the company of children, who are exponentially more dazzled by the throwing of knives, and the breaking of eggs caught on a Ginsu blade as they descend from the sky whence they were juggled. Three generations of my family sat around the long table/cook top watching this show, laughing and gasping at the tricks, and while it was neither haute nor sophisticated, it was kind of a transcendently wonderful evening for all of us. (My spellchecker informs me that “transcendently” is not a word, but you’ll have to live with it). Both the table-side chef and  the kimono-ed  waitress were gracious, solicitous, and impressively able to remember the particulars of ten different orders.

Because there was sushi, I had sushi. I had two rolls, something called a “Spartan Roll” that had both cooked shrimp and raw salmon in it, and a Spicy Tuna Roll.  I also ordered a bowl of edamame for the table, just because I could. It was all delicious and fresh, as were the miso soup and the ginger-dressed salad. Everyone else ordered a hibachi dinner, and we all watched, transfixed, as fried rice, chicken, beef, scallops, shrimp and fresh vegetables were prepared. The preparation was simple – the proteins were cooked in oil and seasoned with soy sauce – and the timing was perfection as the young chef spread out the large cuts of steak and chicken to cook while he worked the smaller seafood items, flipping them on the plates surrounding the grill as each was completed. I had to taste the hibachi grilled dishes (I’m a professional, you know) and found the beef and chicken tender and flavorful, the fried rice light, and the small, grill-crisped pieces of shrimp particularly lovely. It was really, really simple food, once one got past the flying knives, and when food is that simple it’s easy to tell when it’s not right. This was right, and pleasing to everyone from nothing-spicy-grandma to my own picky son.

Slice-and-dice Japanese steakhouses may be too retro for the true foodie (hereinafter “TF”),  but I give Ukai a ringing endorsement. (I have a feeling, by the way, that one could enjoy a terrifically adult meal at the sushi bar, far from the flaming hibachis). I may be a TF, but I cannot deny the pleasure of high quality ingredients prepared beautifully, good service, and a ridiculously happy family.

Ukai Japanese Steakhouse – Okemos
2167 West Grand River Avenue
Okemos, MI 48864
(517) 349-0820

Mitchell’s Fish Market – Sometimes It’s Good to be On a Chain Gang

I had the great good fortune to eat out three times this week; this is not a usual circumstance in my particular life in this particular economy. The first of these three meals was my “real” birthday dinner, the night after my “real” birthday, at Mitchell’s Fish Market in Eastwood Towne Center.

As a food snob living in Restaurant Wasteland, I find that chain restaurants are a necessary evil. We do have authentic and wonderful places to eat  Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Ethopian, Soul Food and Middle Eastern food, but there isn’t an independently owned Italian restaurant within ten miles of my (fairly urban) house, so it’s The Olive Garden or Cucina Bravo for Italian. Local rib joints keep coming and going, so ribs come from Smokey Bones, and as for French food…we don’t even have a chain for that.  We also have our share of Chilis, Old Chicagos,

If one wishes to eat seafood in these parts, it’s either Red Lobster or Mitchell’s Fish Market. There is just something about Red Lobster, the gold standard of the culinarily backward, that gives me a mild case of hives. I have actually had pretty good meals there in the past, but the franchise seems to advertise huge quantities of, say, crab, lobster or shrimp, fried or dripping with butter in a way that is neither sophisticated nor even authentically “seafood shack rustic.” It is rare that I would choose to eat, or watch anyone else eat 500 crab legs unless I had, perhaps, been drinking more than I usually do, and found myself starving, in front of Red Lobster, with pockets mysteriously filled with the coin of the realm. It may be a chain, but it’s not a cheap chain.

Sober, hungry and looking for something delicious and thoughtfully prepared, I pick Mitchell’s every time. I picked it for my birthday dinner because, although it is part of a chain, it is a very smart and classy chain, indeed, with a menu that offers great diversity and a kitchen that knows what it’s doing and does it with pride.. I have never had a bad meal at Mitchell’s, and my recent visit was delightful from warm sourdough bread to complimentary key lime birthday pie. We started with an order of  Kung Pao Fried Calamari for the table, which was hot, abundant and perfectly prepared.  No grease, lovely texture in the calamari, and delicious eaten plain, sans dipping sauce. Our waitress, who was both charming and efficient, returned frequently to try to coax Sam into trying a piece of calamari. No dice, but she got huge points for trying.

After much agonizing, I ordered the Red Lobster-ishly named “Shrimp, Shrimp, Shrimp,” which let me try three preparations of shrimp (beer-battered, garlic broiled, and barbecued and shrimp-wrapped) along with cheese grits and a melange of green beans and mushrooms. It was plated beautifully: a small rectangular dish of grits topped with the barbecued shrimp, a skewer or shrimp alternating with cloves of garlic resting atop the green beans, and a fluffy pile of fried shrimp in the middle. The beer-battered shrimp were the least interesting, but they were crisp, greaseless and indulgent. The garlic-broiled version was lovely, and the soft, mellow chunks of garlic were a huge bonus. My favorite were the barbecued and bacon-wrapped shrimp; I ended up removing most of the bacon (having already consumed fried calamari and fried shrimp) and found that the shrimp kept a hit of bacon flavor which, combined with barbecue sauce, fresh shrimp and mellow cheese grits, gave me the most perfect bites of the night.

On other occasions I have eaten and enjoyed the clam chowder, the lobster bisque, the Oysters Rockefeller, King Salmon prepared in the Shanghai style (steamed with ginger and scallions), and several imaginative and fresh lunch salads. There is steak for the non-seafood eating crowd (Sam was delighted with his filet mignon, and even more pleased with the “Titanic” iceberg wedge salad) and the desserts are delicious and sized so that a table of four can pass one around and feel completely satisfied.

I long for the seafood restaurants in the Florida panhandle, and I could kick myself for living in Boston for 7 years during my “seafood refusal” stage, but I can get a pretty good fix at Mitchell’s, and for that I am extremely grateful. If you live where there is fresh seafood and great restaurants to cook it for you, you should, of course, go to those places as often as possible. If you don’t, and there is a Mitchell’s around, check it out. I think I can safely promise that you’ll leave as happy as I did.

Mitchell’s Fish Market
2975 Preyde Blvd.
Lansing, Michigan 48912 |
(517) 482-3474

What Will I Eat?

I find myself in a strange position.  I write about food, I read about food, I talk about food, I watch TV shows and movies about food, and often (really often) I give other people suggestions about what they should cook or eat. I recommend restaurants here and in other cities, I e-mail favorite recipes, and I hold the hands of nervous cookers who aren’t quite sure they can really make Hollandaise or bake bread.  Today, I am stumped.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and for a variety of reasons there will be no real “birthday dinner.” Rob is in New Orleans at a convention and won’t be home until late at night, so he will not be here to take me anywhere, and although my parents are around, they are going to wait and take me out the night after my birthday so that Rob can join us. There is, of course, a part of me (the part that still believes in Birthday Magic) that finds it grossly unfair that nothing will happen on my actual birthday because Rob is “stuck” in The Big Easy eating jambalaya and Po Boys. That inner child believes that someone, somewhere should sweep in with a wad of cash, a bottle of champagne and a beautifully wrapped gift and say “the world was just bluffing, Annie; we have something wonderful planned for you!” The part of me that is almost 47, and has been around the block knows that mostly I need to get over it.

Still, I would at least like to cook something nice for myself. Well, and for Sam, who will be with me. I just can’t think of anything that I really want to eat. I cannot spend the day cooking myself something Chef-prep, multi-step and complicated because there is Church, Sam has to go to a birthday party, and there is March Madness to be watched. I am thinking I want  something luxurious, and delicious, maybe even sinful, that isn’t too complicated and (and this is a big issue) will be eaten by a twelve year old boy who doesn’t eat seafood. (Of course, if the suggestion lights my fire, he can have a grilled cheese sandwich. I’m really fine with that).

Readers, if you’re out there, take a minute from your busy day and tell me what I should eat. Send me a recipe, a suggestion, a link…knowing that someone out there cares about my culinary happiness (SNIFF) will please the Birthday Magic child within, and help the seasoned adult part of me to fix her something that will make her feel less like the Little Match Girl.

Jambalaya

During the days leading up to Mardi Gras, my beloved Create Network ran hours and hours of New Orleans-related cooking shows. I watched John Besh go out on a shrimp boat with one of his sons and use the shrimp boumty in several dishes in one of his restaurant kitchens, I learned the difference between Cajun and Creole, and I saw several versions of gumbo, jambalaya and Bananas Foster. What stuck in my mind, for some unknown reason, was Chef Paul Prudhomme making a chicken and smoked sausage gumbo. He said that his methods were unorthodox (which, I’ll admit, always attracts me), he explained the significance of roux prepared to different degrees of darkness, and he just seemed sort of like the Charlton Heston/God of Gumbo sitting in a chair in his white clothes, talking as he cooked something he had made millions of times. I made a mental note to make that gumbo after I returned from my vacation, and tonight, I did.

The original recipe is here, but I tweaked it enough that I am going to tell you what I actually did, rather than what I was supposed to do. (See “unorthodox,” above).  I did not use bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces, which I believe would give the dish more flavor, only because I didn’t want to deal with the step that required pulling the chicken off the bone. I also doubled the smoked sausage, just because the boys like it a lot. The original recipe also calls for purchased Prudhomme spice mixtures, and I found the recipe for the mixture and made my own. It also calls for andouille sausage, which I can get only by making a huge effort, so I used regular smoked sausage. If you come over, I’ll buy the real stuff.

Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo

Ingredients

1. 3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, each cut into 3-4 pieces
2. 2 tablespoons, plus 2 teaspoons Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Poultry Magic. the recipe to make your own is here.
3. 1 cup finely diced onions
4. 1 cup finely diced green bell peppers
5. 3/4 cup finely diced celery
6. 1  cup all-purpose flour
7. Vegetable oil for frying
8. 7 cups chicken stock
9. 1 pound smoked sausage, Andouille if you can get it, diced into ¼-inch cubes
10. 1 teaspoon minced fresh garlic
11. 2 cups hot cooked white rice

How to Prepare:

Sprinkle the chicken evenly with 2 tablespoons of the spice mix and rub it in well. Let stand at room temperature while you dice the vegetables.

Combine the onions, bell peppers and celery in a bowl and set aside.

Combine the remaining spice mix with the flour in a paper or plastic bag. Add the seasoned chicken pieces and shake until the chicken is well coated. Reserve ½ cup of the seasoned flour. Heat about 1 inch of oil in a large, heavy skillet over high heat until very hot (375°F to 400°F), about 6 to 7 minutes. Fry the chicken until the until brown on both sides and the meat is cooked, about 5 to 8 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels. Carefully pour the hot oil into a heatproof glass measuring cup, leaving some of the brown bits in the pan, then return ½ cup of the hot oil to the pan.

Return the pan to high heat and gradually whisk in the reserved ½ cup seasoned flour. Cook, whisking constantly, until the roux is dark red-brown, about 3½ to 4 minutes, being careful not to let it scorch or splash on your skin. Remove the pan from the heat and immediately add the vegetables, stirring constantly until the roux stops getting darker. Place the pan over low heat and cook, stirring constantly and scraping the pan bottom well, until the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring the stock to a boil in large saucepan or Dutch oven. Add the vegetable mixture by spoonfuls to the boiling stock, stirring between each addition until the roux is dissolved. Return to a boil, stirring and scraping the pan bottom often. Reduce the heat to low, stir in the sausage and garlic, and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes, stirring often toward the end of the cooking time.

When the gumbo has cooked for 45 minutes, stir in the chicken.

Serve immediately, over rice.

The Apalachicola Seafood Grill and The Piggly Wiggly

On the second day of our Florida trip, we dined at one of our favorite, always good, “coming home” restaurants in Apalachicola: The Apalachicola Seafood Grill. Located in the heart of “downtown” Apalachicola (within spitting distance of the town’s solitary traffic light) , The Grill offers a simple menu, The World’s Largest Fried Grouper Sandwich, an impressive assortment of beer (you get your own bottle) and the motto “No Whining.” We have been eating at The Grill at least once a trip since Sam was two and threw a sippy cup at the front window. We’ve not been disappointed.  I have had everything on the menu that I want to try, and the Grill is not the kind of restaurant that changes it’s menu. There are fresh shrimp, oysters and fishes fried, baked, broiled, in soups, stews and chowders, in sandwiches and/or in baskets. City folk can have a salad with seafood in it, if they insist. If I arrived at The Grill to discover that they were offering a terrine of langoustine on a bed of microgreens with a Guiness reduction, I would burst into tears.

I will admit that, with no shame, I ordered another fried oyster basket because it’s one of my top two things to order there (the other being the Oyster Stew).  I also wanted to compare them to the previous day’s offering at Papa Joe’s, to see which I liked best. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. If one can’t eat fried food every day of the week in the South, one should stay home with one’s flaxseed bread and grilled chicken breasts. Anyway, the oysters were excellent, as always, but I didn’t love them as much as I loved them at Papa Joe’s. The breading was a little denser, and the idea (in my opinion) of a fried oyster is that there should be only the merest hint of salty crisp outside the oyster, so that there is a contrast that highlights the juicy sweetness of The Main Event. The oysters were delicious, my Dixie Beer was refreshing, and it was a pleasure to be in a place that I love, but next year I’m going back to the Oyster Stew, which is probably the best I’ve ever had.

Prior to dinner at The Grill, we ventured into the Piggly Wiggly in Apalachicola. I always enjoy visiting a “foreign” grocery store (Rob had to drag me out of a convenience store in Puerto Rico because I was so fascinated by the merchandise) and the P-W wasd no exception. First off, I was fascinated by the store’s bags, which were emblazoned with a pig wearing an apron that said “I Love Barbecue.” There’s a cry for help, if I ever saw one. Second, I was just really interested in all of the things they sold that I had never seen before. I walked around taking pictures, no doubt causing the locals who were actually buying food to think that I should probably visit Community Mental Health along with the self-loathing pig. My friend Michelle says I am the only person she knows who takes pictures in the grocery store, but see if you don’t learn a lot about the culture in Apalachicola, Florida, from my finds…..

Papa Joe’s, or “On Seeing the First Oyster of Spring”

I went into this year’s Florida trip saddened by the fact that  Avenue Sea had closed before I ever had a chance to eat there. Last year, my parents took Sam to dine at the restaurant at which the kitchen was under the direction of (real) Chef David Carrier, who had worked for Thomas Keller and with Grant Achatz. I had the flu and received a lovely doggie bag. I waited all year for the chance to go back and see what Carrier was doing, only to discover that Avenue Sea closed in December.   Clearly, I would be eating well, but I would not be eating fancy on this trip.

Which really ceased to be a tragedy of even minor proportions as soon as I ate my first oyster. There are not many restaurants in Apalachicola where I have never eaten, but Papa Joe’s had somehow never come up. It’s a little remote from the center of town, situated on the quiet bay, bordered by docks and offering a beautiful view of shrimp and oyster boats coming in with their catch. The restaurant has the perfect non-ambiance for a seafood restaurant on the water; clean and nautical with a porch featuring huge, salt-pitted windows for watching boats, sunsets and fishing sea birds. It was my first meal in the South after a year, and I was delighted to have to order my tea “unsweet,” and to know that my lunch would be accompanied by the ubiquitous hush puppies. I hate them, actually, but I do not feel that I am really in thge South until I see them on my plate.

The menu at Papa Joe’s promises  a veritable oyster wonderland. There’s oyster stew, fried oysters, fried oysters in sandwiches, oysters on the half shell, steamed oysters and oysters baked with a mind-boggling number of topping combinations. Think is, if you haven’t seen an oyster for a while, you don’t probably want it topped with jalapenos and cheese, or wrapped in bacon. You want to taste the oyster. A real purist would have started with an order of raw specimens on the half shell, but Sam is pretty squeamish about the way raw oysters look (and all that slurping) so I had them fried. My father ordered the oyster stew, which I tasted and found to be a perfect, subtle cream soup with plenty of plump oysters. My fried oysters were sublime – very lightly breaded, no grease flavor or feel, and lots of hot, sweet oyster. The fries were also excellent, and I actually ate a hush puppy (or, more accurately, I bit into one) and found it curiously sweet. Overall, Papa Joe’s was a perfect beginning to my week of unabashed oyster worship, and it’s my current gold standard for fried oysters.

We never went back to Papa Joe’s on this trip for all kinds of reasons – too many other restaurants we love, too many beautiful days when we didn’t want to leave the beach and cross the bridge to leave the Island. Next year, though, I am going to try to make it there twice; once to have oysters on the half shell, even if I have to sit at a separate table, and once to try one of the baked oysters with toppings.

Papa Joe’s
301 B Market Street
Apalachicola, Florida 32320
850.653.1189

Getting There: Not Half the Fun

Recently, Sam and I took our annual trip to Florida’s “Forgotten Coast” to join my parents in their ridiculously well located and appointed rental house on St. George Island. The Island, and the closest “big city” Apalachicola are balm to my soul after the hard winters we have around here; they are havens of natural beauty, blessed inactivity, and readily available fresh seafood. Not tropically warm in March, not even sunny all the time, but an unexploited beach is just as lovely to me when it’s cloudy and 50 degrees. I am going to tell the heartbreaking story of our misadventures in travel; if you find such stories tedious, skip down to the “*” where I start talking about food.

Sam and I have made the trip at least eight times that we’re sure of, and while we’ve experienced the odd lost luggage or delayed flight, we have never had a trip to Florida to rival, in sheer unadulterated badness, the one we had this year. (Not the time we were actually in Florida, mind you; just the getting there). We left from Grand Rapids Michigan, intending to fly from there to Detroit, to Memphis and into Tallahassee. What we did not anticipate was that when an inch of snow falls in the South (by which, in this instance, I mean Memphis) the world comes to an end. Those of us in the frozen North are accustomed to conducting our business after several feet of snow have fallen, and our airports, municipalities and drivers are all used to maintaining the necessary equipment and supplies (shovels, salt, snowplows, airplane de-icer) required by cold weather and snow.

In Memphis, some snow fell. Our plane sat in line for three hours waiting to be de-iced, after which we were informed that they didn’t have enough de-icing fluid at the airport, and anyway, there was no longer enough fuel left in the plane to fly to Tallahassee. We were told that we would return to the Memphis airport and “deplane” for 45 minutes so that we could eat and stretch our legs. About 47 minutes after we left the plane, while most of us were just returning to the gate, Rob called me from home to say that he was tracking the flight on his computer, and that it had been “cancelled.”  While the gate agents swore that they had announced this, I didn’t speak to a single fellow passenger who heard this announcement, and the sign above the gate was never changed to indicate a cancellation. According to the Northwest employees present at the scene, the flight crew was going into overtime, and during the 45 minutes during which we were “stretching our legs,” they had all been sent home for the day.  The fact that I did not begin my career as a sniper at that point attests to my sterling upbringing.

We were all then consigned to an endless line for “re-booking,” and word spread quickly that all flights to Tallahassee for that day were already overbooked. We were offered an “opportunity” to fly out the following morning to Ft. Lauderdale. We would have a 9 hour “layover” in Ft. Lauderdale and then depart for Tallahassee at 6:00 PM. As a tiny tear of sheer, unadulterated frustration welled up behind my glasses, Rob called to say that he had booked us on a flight on another airline leaving at 6:00 the following morning, and taking us to Charlotte with a connection to Tallahassee. We accepted our voucher for a “reduced rate” stay from a Northwest employee (not a free stay, mind you, because it was an unavoidable “act of God” that they had elected to send their flight crew home for the night) and moved on to get our luggage, which we were told would appear on Belt B.

Unfortunately, due to the horrific weather conditions (33 degrees and an inch of snow) Northwest decided that they could not spare any staff to unload luggage, so we were informed that they had our luggage, but would not give it to us. It would, we were informed, be “sent on to our final destination.” We were provided with an adorable little packet containing mini toiletries and a “Flight Crew) T-shirt by which to remember the occasion.  We called the number to book a “reduced rate room” and were informed that all of the reasonably priced hotels had already been booked due to the number of passengers stranded due to the Major Storm, and that we could pay $80.00 to spend the night at the Marriott. It was 9:30, and in order to make our 6:00 flight we would need to be at the airport at 5:00 AM. Our 7.5 hours of possible (and expensive) sleep were further reduced by the fact that the Marriott, having promised to call us and tell us when the Courtesy Van was approaching the airport, sent three vans without calling.  After nearly an hour of standing outside in the wind and snow wearing our “Florida” clothes, we finally, desperately paid a cab $20.00 to take us to the Marriott.  We booked a 4:30 AM ride back to the airport, and slept in our clothes for the remaining 5.5 hours.

We made the 6:00 flight to Charlotte, but we were 2 hours late in departing because of the difficulties involved in removing the ice on the runway that was blocking not the plane, but the “tug” necessary to push the plane forward. We missed our connecting flight to Tallahassee, and spent most of the day in Charlotte, waiting as standby passengers for a 2:40 flight to Tallahassee which we did not make, and finally getting on the 6:00 flight because I cried after having been told that Sam and I were “the first two standbys” and then watching the agent call an entire list of other names.  After some mechanical delays which, by that time, were a mere bagatelle, we were on our way to Talahassee.

*In the midst of all of this trauma, we ate some things, some good, some bad. On the Detroit to Memphis flight we tried out the $5.00 “A la carte Snack Box” now available because there is no longer any complimentary food on Northwest flights, not even a little bag of pretzels. The boxes included several edible items including pretzel chips, Stoned Wheat crackers, Milano cookies, and a peppermint, and several inedible items including cheddar and Swiss flavored cheese-like product, and pre-made chicken salad in a can which tasted much as I imagine cat food would taste if one added sweet pickle relish. For the same money you would do better to buy a bag of trail mix and a bottle of water.

In the Memphis airport, we ate barbecue at Neely’s Interstate Barbecue, and it was good. It was good compared to “real” food, by which I mean food obtained when one is free to choose ones food, as opposed to the unnatural limitations imposed by being trapped in an airport in an unfamiliar city. We ate sliced barbecued pork sandwiches on white bread, with a lovely sweet, red sauce and good coleslaw. The servers were incredibly friendly for airport food service personnel (!). I can honestly say that I would choose to eat at the Interstate, either in the Memphis Airport or at one of it’s non-airport locations in Memphis.

In Charlotte, we had a more franchise-y, but nevertheless pleasing meal at Einstein Bros. Bagels. I was not expecting to find authentic, New York bagels served in an airport in the South, and I didn’t find them. I found bagels in varieties which, to paraphrase Woody Allen, cause Jews to die every time they are eaten (for example, Cheddar Jalapeno and Blueberry). Unrepentant, and telling myself that my Yiddeshe ancestors would forgive me if they knew what I’d been through (oy!) I ordered us each a Cheddar Jalapeno bagel and a cup of cheddar broccoli soup. It was a reaxing space, there were plugs for our laptops, and we spent probably the pleasantest hour of the Trip from Hell sitting and eating our lunch, facebooking and IM’ing, and feeling some relief from the sterility and alienation of airport living. [Edited to add: Sam has reminded me of the highly significant fact that the Charlotte Airport had free wifi everywhere, and Memphis does not]. I might or might not choose to eat at Einstein Bros. if I were in a setting where I could choose from among more interesting offerings, but I am eternally grateful to them for that good hour.