Sample text for Eat your way across the U.S.A. : 500 diners, lobster shacks, farmland buffets, pie palaces, and other all-American eateries / Jane and Michael Stern.
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Eat Your Way Across the USA is a guide to the best food in America.
Whether your goal is to explore regional specialties all across the country in neighborhood cafés, seaside shanties, and backwoods supper clubs, or simply to find something decent to eat while on a road trip or in an unfamiliar city, this book is designed to be your appetite's favorite travel companion.
It will lead you to unforgettable (but often unsung) restaurants, delicious (but mostly inexpensive) meals, and the kinds of culinary roadside experiences that can transform breakfast, lunch, and dinner into the high points of any trip. We intend for this book to be a way to know the diversity of America through its food: Texas beef parlors, Yankee shore dinners, Creole gumbo lunchrooms, Great Lakes fish fries, High Plains farmers' cafes, the Basque dinner halls of the Rockies, Georgia soul food buffets, bordertown chile cheeseburgers, Milwaukee milk shakes and Seattle seafood.
We should state a point that we hope is obvious to any reader: This is a very personal book. We really love the places we have included, and we hope you love them, too. This is not the kind of guidebook that is compiled by committee or survey. For us, eating is a passion, and reading about it--whether for vicarious pleasure or to get some practical advice--ought to be inspiring.
Since we started traveling around the country looking for good food in 1974, we have driven more than three million miles and we have eaten in tens of thousands of restaurants. Eat Your Way Across the USA is the culmination of that quest, reflecting what we have learned in nearly a quarter century of American meals. A few of the restaurants listed here are old favorites that we have returned to dozens of times over the years; many are recent discoveries. Each and every one has won our hearts, and never just because it serves delicious food. For us, the joy of eating our way across the USA has been something more than sustenance. It has shown us the soul of a nation. It is our hope this book will help readers find--and savor--that soul.
How To Use This Book
If you are planning a special trip to any restaurant in this book, please call ahead to make certain it is open. Hours of operation change and proprietors sometimes go fishing. Many heartland restaurants do serve dinner, but you should be aware that dinner hour can end as early as six or seven o'clock. Also, some specialties are seasonal.
Most of these restaurants require no reservations and are come-as-you-are. Some pricier ones do have a dress code and a few require a reservation. We've tried to note which ones get insanely crowded and what you can do about it. But again, if in doubt, please call ahead.
Our approximate cost guide is as follows:
$ = one full meal is under $10
$$ = one full meal is between $10 and $25
$$$ = one full meal is over $25
We use the abbreviations B (breakfast), L (lunch), D (dinner) throughout.
We welcome tips for inclusion in future editions, comments and even complaints. Please address any such correspondence to us c/o Broadway Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036. Or e-mail us: KTDoll@aol.com.
Katz's Deli
205 E. Houston St., New York, NY $
(212) 254-2246 BLD
A vintage lower East Side dining experience, Katz's (since 1888) is a line-up-and-order delicatessen where the size of your sandwich and even the quality of meat in it is determined by your rapport with the counterman. Tipping is supposedly not allowed, but if you manage to slip your man a little something as he forks the corned beef onto the cutting board, he'll give you fat or lean, whichever you prefer; he may even offer a few forkfuls to nosh while he slices. Pastrami, corned beef, and brisket on fine, fresh rye bread are all deli paradigms, as is the garlicky salami known as knoblewurst, and the all-beef hot dogs are New York's best.
A sign above the cash register on the way out advises SEND A SALAMI TO YOUR BOY IN THE ARMY.
The Lobster Roll
Rte. 27, Amagansett, NY $$
(516) 267-3470 LD
On any sunny day, you will wait too long in line, and the wood-benched tables scarcely provide a view of the highway, let alone the ocean. But despite these hardships, the Lobster Roll is one of the essential seafood shacks in the Hamptons. It has been here forever, operated by a family that settled on Long Island in the seventeenth century, and the menu is traditional family-fun vacation food. Chowder, steamers, plump lobster rolls, and fried puffers are the staples; but it is dessert that is great, pie in particular. It is glorious pie, pie that reminds you of Long Island's farmland heritage, with a fine flaky crust and bounteous filling. Midsummer, when the sky is blue and the waves lap against nearby sands, what could be better than a lunch of chowder and lobster followed by a slab of fresh strawberry-rhubarb or raspberry pie?
Chicago Street Food Fundamentals
No other American city has such an abundance of cheap-eats outlets where excellence is presupposed. We are not talking about "restaurants," not even pizza parlors or barbecue shacks. We mean little storefront dives, most without tables or chairs (maybe, at most, a counter to lean on while you dine), almost all of them marked by yellow and red signs provided by their meat supplier. In these inglorious outlets you can count on snapping-good, garlicky red hots (Chicago's term for hot dogs), spicy Italian beef sandwiches, and fragrant Greek gyros. Here are a few ordering tips.
Red hots. Plump all-beef dogs on fresh poppy-seed buns are the beginning. Condiments put this beauteous package over the top. Order yours "dragged through the garden" and the wienermeister will apply a dizzying assemblage of mustard, onions, piccalilli, sliced tomato and cucumber, lettuce, celery salt, and tiny hot "sport peppers."
Polish sausage. Similar to red hots, served in the same cornucopic configurations, but generally bigger and spicier and porkier and cooked until blistery black.
Italian beef. Thin-sliced beef sopped with gravy, piled into a fresh, crusty roll. The condiment of choice is giardiniera: hot peppers and diced vegetables in a powerhouse marinade.
Italian sausage. Sweet and succulent, sold at fine Italian beef stands, generally cooked over charcoal until crusty on the outside. Devil-may-care connoisseurs combine Italian beef and sausage in one sandwich.
Gyros. Although not unique to Chicago, these breathtaking sandwiches reach a deliciously evil apotheosis here. Lamb and beef are ground up and reconstituted into a frighteningly large circular roast that rotates in front of a vertical broiler and is cut into long slices that are heaped into pita bread with raw onions, tomatoes, and a creamy yogurt sauce. The scent and taste of this most odoriferous of all street foods will stay with you for hours.
Midwest Splurges
Expensive, fancy, and/or fashionable regional restaurants that are worth it.
* Gibson's, Chicago, IL (p. 171)
* Tuttaposto, Chicago, IL (p. 180)
* Phil Smidt & Son, Hammond, IN (p. 185)
* St. Elmo Steak House, Indianapolis, IN (p. 188)
* Vogel's, Whiting, IN (p. 189)
* Caucus Club, Detroit, MI (p. 194)
* Rattlesnake Club, Detroit, MI (p. 200)
* CafÚ Brenda, Minneapolis, MN (p. 204)
* Jess & Jim's, Kansas City, MO (p. 208)
* Karl Ratzsch's, Milwaukee, WI (p. 222)
* Rupp's Lodge, Sheboygan, WI (p. 226)
Interstate Bar-B-Que
2265 S. Third St., Memphis, TN $
(901) 775-2304 LD
Inside and out, Interstate is perfumed by smoke from slow-sizzling barbecue. A modest-looking pork house serving ribs, shoulder meat, sausages, and bologna with all the proper fixin's, including addictive bar-b-q spaghetti (soft noodles in breathtaking sauce), it is a jewel in the crown of Memphis pits. Eat at a table in the simple dining room where a "Wall of Fame" boasts critics' accolades and 8 x 10s from celebrity fans; or enter next door and get it to go, by the sandwich, plate, or whole slab of ribs.
When you lift a rib, meat slides off the bone. It is chewy with a deep savor haloed by the perfume of wood smoke. Chopped pork shoulder has a few crusty outside shreds and tatters among the pillowy pile of interior meat; slices are less gooped with sauce, and not as messy, but not as succulent, either. A large chopped pork sandwich is the most Memphian dish on the menu, made as per local custom with a layer of cool cole slaw atop the well-sauced meat--a total mess that disintegrates as you eat it.
Things That Are Barbecued in Memphis
Memphis, Tennessee, is America's pork capital, with boundless variations on the duo of smoky pig meat and sweet sauce.
Wet ribs Glazed with enough spicy red sauce to require many napkins and moist towelettes
Dry ribs Rubbed with seasoning that forms a dry crust enveloping succulent meat
Pig sandwich Pork pulled off the smoked shoulder, drenched with tangy sauce and embellished with cole slaw in a broad bun
Barbecue pizza Hacked, shredded, sauced pork atop cheese and crust
Barbecue spaghetti Limp noodles in zesty sauce (meatless), served as a side dish like barbecued beans, often with barbecue cole slaw (cabbage salad with sauce)
Barbecue salad Similar to a chef's salad, but with chunks of pork instead of ham and turkey on the lettuce, topped with cool barbecue sauce or salad dressing or both
Barbecue shrimp Usually served "u-peel-'em" style, sopped with a buttery version of the house barbecue sauce--an unholy, irresistible mess to eat
Hot links Thick, porcine sausages glazed with sauce
Turkeys and Cornish hens Fabulous specialties of the Cozy Corner (p. 94)
A Tequila Treatise
Here is the correct right way to drink tequila: open the bottle, pour some into a glass, and swallow it.
We risk being obvious only because so many more elaborate methods have been invented for drinking tequila and for getting drunk on it. The most popular one, known as the Mexican itch, is to bracket hammered-back shots of it with licking salt off the base of one's thumb and squeezing a wedge of lime between one's teeth, a slavering ritual that makes the tequila-drinker sound like a bulldog sucking up a mouthful of Jell-O. It is also frequently slugged back neat alongside a bottle of beer--a bordertown boilermaker. For a slammer, the liquor is combined in a glass with champagne, tonic, or soda, banged on the table a couple of times until it fizzes, then gulped in one greedy, effervescent swallow. It seems fair to say that in none of these examples is the act of tequila-drinking an expression of connoisseurship or gentility; the point is to ingest the stuff fast and get drunk.
Tequila doesn't necessarily deserve its rowdy reputation. Like fine Kentucky bourbon, it is distilled with care and precision. The best, made from the heart of the agave plant, is aged in smoke-flavored, wax-lined barrels until it is as suave as good cognac. However, such smooth tequila is fairly rare, and most drink-till-you-drop brands are about as tasty--and as effective--as chloroform. Tequila in the U.S. has always had a certain outlaw swagger about it, conjuring up images of dusty cantinas where cowboys go to pass out on the floor, shoot holes in the ceiling, or fall in love with a pretty se±orita (or all three, in reverse order).
The most fearsome tequila is mezcal con gusano, known as mescal, which is made without the polish of double-distilling and aging and with the added attraction of a dead maguey worm (that's the "con gusano" part, and it is actually a caterpillar) submerged in the bottom of the bottle. The worm, which feeds on the agave plant, was originally packaged in mescal as proof that there was enough alcohol in the booze to preserve it. It is widely believed to induce hallucinations, or at least to make whoever drains the bottle's dregs into an ornery son of a buck. In fact, the worm is considered by protozoa connoisseurs to be so excellent that mescal is sometimes drunk by the shot with chaws of lime and heaps of crushed, mummified worms on the side to lick in lieu of salt.
Tequila's bellicose reputation has mellowed in recent years, thanks mostly to the popularity of frozen margaritas, which has helped establish its image as a fun libation for civilized middle-class people. Whipped into a frothy confectionery cooler the color of folding money and about as sweet as a green river, tequila nowadays needn't seem any more dangerous than sloe gin.
Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Restaurants United States Directories