YOU BETTER, YOUR BETTER, YOU BEST
Place shapes reception of foodstuff. It's tantamount to taste. No way around it. Full, complete, unique gain a most or more when set down in loci sticky enough to hold fast to the transient, revisionist flake that is memory. No shit.
Why am I compelled to name a paper plate of beef ribs cooked to cream consistency as "best?" Ordinary meat cuts - ribeye or prime rib - become blood-soaked vehicles to Big E Ethereal when doled out in wood 'n' stone rooms by septuagenarian waiter bathed in English Leather and pipe tobacco. A single rainbow trout becomes "more than a fish" when ripped out of its river, gutted, flash-cooked and eaten with fingers from a piece of foil. Cold canned beer that accompanies it is soft, familiar exclamation. Down the hatch.
First food that comes to mind: Bowl of tagliatelle bolognese. Took the train from Roma to Bologna through cold rain 'n' snow over hills, through mountains. Bologna is born of Umberto Eco with its labyrinths, domes, spires. Battlements like dead teeth. Towers taller than the tales told of them. Restaurants tucked away in shadows. Like spiders crushed into corners. It was late for lunch, but we pulled our Newlywed Card. I left it gleaming on the table, conspicuous. Proprietor responded as all Italians did. He heaped praises baroque and hyperbolic, hands waving as south GA faith-hearler.
Food and drink come from all sides. Bowls of noodles buried in steaming rust red sauce. Parmesan shaved in slow snows over meat. Bread soaked in oil green and young; rosemary blades, peppercorns. Wine purple as Faulkner's prose. We didn't talk. We grunted. We sighed. The sauce... Cream and wine and saffron meld with tomato concentrate, veal, beef, pork. Goddamn it's great. Men walk by frosted front windows in topcoats, pipes growing from mouth corners. Women in furs, long, tight leather slacks. Buon Natale an annoying mantra.
Tennessee. Fishing Hiawassee. Tim and I bought two slabs of beef ribs at some sad cancerous "intown" grocer. Wrapped them in foil bag. Glug of BBQ sauce, beer. Seal bag. Place on slow fire. Back into river. Fishing dries, over and across, over and across. Rainbows nosing out of fast water, bumping buggy hackles and taking the trick. Never got the ribs on early enough. They'd cook til midnight. Probably six hours total on the flame. Dead drunk on nth beers, whiskies. Tim plops a tall can pork 'n' beans down in the embers. Retrieves it with two sticks - caveman tongs. Decimated both slabs. Ten minutes, maybe. No talking. Grunting. Both of us sitting there with grease and sauce painted across our faces, headlamps ignited. Tim tells me about how he can't ever just get to sleep right away. Sits awake in the small hours imagining what he would do if a bear came for him before the sun rose. I'm snoring in minutes. Gut distended, roaring.
Highland Tap's prime rib - the mastodonic king cut specifically - is the thing of birthdays. Excessiveness. The day calls for it. I comply. A trio of Beefeater martinis beforehand. Snails, lettucewedge and Maytag Bleu. Plate comes to table with a plank of muscle bleeding upon it. Fucker's inch high, fat wedge smirking. Au jus. Horseradish. It's a slow, ruminative chew. Some asshole's playing Steely Dan on the juke. Yeah, I'll have another martini. Forty minutes later, belt comes unbuckled. Long sighs. Brandy. Octogenarian couple sits soundlessly. Staring through food, through people and walls into futures known, soundly decided.
Prague's sausage is natural casing fare. Pork hand-mixed with fennel seed, caraway, crushed red pepper flakes. Salted, peppered, pushed into intestines and tied off. Fried, braised, given crisp crunchy skins. Served with brown bread Finnegans Wake dense. Vodka shots, teeth-rattling cold. Spoonful mustard gets sinuses sprinting. Meal under two yankee dollars. Local sits down with us. Discovers we're from American South. Questions come quick, furious about the Klan. Not interested, but frighteningly passionate.
Tim returns from the stream with a cooler full of fish. I don't know how many exactly. But there were enough. He chalks success up to recent WMA stock. Doesn't matter how he got them; I just want to eat them. Zero prep. Laid down for quick nap inside jerry-rigged smoker more resembling redneck war-machine circa 2057. Fish flake apart. Eyes bulge ghost white. Skins blush and silver oily. The rich, smoky flesh. Many cans of Schlitz. A game of croquet. I have a Greek midterm in the morning. Out comes the whisky. Into the night we go.
No. 5 is croque monsieur, frite, aioli, and nth Adelscotts taken somewhere near Louvre probably 10 years ago. Brasserie was no frills shithole. Waitstaff literally counted to trillion before asking if I'd like another beer. This sandwich a miracle of bread, butter, meat, cheese. Potato planks fried in goose fat. Ramekin of pucker-up cornichon 'n' onion complete the tableau. Never had one close to that nagging perfection since. Adieu.
Why am I compelled to name a paper plate of beef ribs cooked to cream consistency as "best?" Ordinary meat cuts - ribeye or prime rib - become blood-soaked vehicles to Big E Ethereal when doled out in wood 'n' stone rooms by septuagenarian waiter bathed in English Leather and pipe tobacco. A single rainbow trout becomes "more than a fish" when ripped out of its river, gutted, flash-cooked and eaten with fingers from a piece of foil. Cold canned beer that accompanies it is soft, familiar exclamation. Down the hatch.
First food that comes to mind: Bowl of tagliatelle bolognese. Took the train from Roma to Bologna through cold rain 'n' snow over hills, through mountains. Bologna is born of Umberto Eco with its labyrinths, domes, spires. Battlements like dead teeth. Towers taller than the tales told of them. Restaurants tucked away in shadows. Like spiders crushed into corners. It was late for lunch, but we pulled our Newlywed Card. I left it gleaming on the table, conspicuous. Proprietor responded as all Italians did. He heaped praises baroque and hyperbolic, hands waving as south GA faith-hearler.
Food and drink come from all sides. Bowls of noodles buried in steaming rust red sauce. Parmesan shaved in slow snows over meat. Bread soaked in oil green and young; rosemary blades, peppercorns. Wine purple as Faulkner's prose. We didn't talk. We grunted. We sighed. The sauce... Cream and wine and saffron meld with tomato concentrate, veal, beef, pork. Goddamn it's great. Men walk by frosted front windows in topcoats, pipes growing from mouth corners. Women in furs, long, tight leather slacks. Buon Natale an annoying mantra.
Tennessee. Fishing Hiawassee. Tim and I bought two slabs of beef ribs at some sad cancerous "intown" grocer. Wrapped them in foil bag. Glug of BBQ sauce, beer. Seal bag. Place on slow fire. Back into river. Fishing dries, over and across, over and across. Rainbows nosing out of fast water, bumping buggy hackles and taking the trick. Never got the ribs on early enough. They'd cook til midnight. Probably six hours total on the flame. Dead drunk on nth beers, whiskies. Tim plops a tall can pork 'n' beans down in the embers. Retrieves it with two sticks - caveman tongs. Decimated both slabs. Ten minutes, maybe. No talking. Grunting. Both of us sitting there with grease and sauce painted across our faces, headlamps ignited. Tim tells me about how he can't ever just get to sleep right away. Sits awake in the small hours imagining what he would do if a bear came for him before the sun rose. I'm snoring in minutes. Gut distended, roaring.
Highland Tap's prime rib - the mastodonic king cut specifically - is the thing of birthdays. Excessiveness. The day calls for it. I comply. A trio of Beefeater martinis beforehand. Snails, lettucewedge and Maytag Bleu. Plate comes to table with a plank of muscle bleeding upon it. Fucker's inch high, fat wedge smirking. Au jus. Horseradish. It's a slow, ruminative chew. Some asshole's playing Steely Dan on the juke. Yeah, I'll have another martini. Forty minutes later, belt comes unbuckled. Long sighs. Brandy. Octogenarian couple sits soundlessly. Staring through food, through people and walls into futures known, soundly decided.
Prague's sausage is natural casing fare. Pork hand-mixed with fennel seed, caraway, crushed red pepper flakes. Salted, peppered, pushed into intestines and tied off. Fried, braised, given crisp crunchy skins. Served with brown bread Finnegans Wake dense. Vodka shots, teeth-rattling cold. Spoonful mustard gets sinuses sprinting. Meal under two yankee dollars. Local sits down with us. Discovers we're from American South. Questions come quick, furious about the Klan. Not interested, but frighteningly passionate.
Tim returns from the stream with a cooler full of fish. I don't know how many exactly. But there were enough. He chalks success up to recent WMA stock. Doesn't matter how he got them; I just want to eat them. Zero prep. Laid down for quick nap inside jerry-rigged smoker more resembling redneck war-machine circa 2057. Fish flake apart. Eyes bulge ghost white. Skins blush and silver oily. The rich, smoky flesh. Many cans of Schlitz. A game of croquet. I have a Greek midterm in the morning. Out comes the whisky. Into the night we go.
No. 5 is croque monsieur, frite, aioli, and nth Adelscotts taken somewhere near Louvre probably 10 years ago. Brasserie was no frills shithole. Waitstaff literally counted to trillion before asking if I'd like another beer. This sandwich a miracle of bread, butter, meat, cheese. Potato planks fried in goose fat. Ramekin of pucker-up cornichon 'n' onion complete the tableau. Never had one close to that nagging perfection since. Adieu.
Labels: Bologna, Highland Tap, Ribs, Schlitz, Superlatives, Trout
posted by GSV JR at
7:00 AM
4 Comments:
I'm a 2nd generation Beefeater martini man. Nothing was better with a marlboro and a view of the King Cole mural at the bar in the St Regis while talking to a cop working undercover due to a recent influx of hookers in the bar. "Hookers? I don't see any hookers." "Trust me" he says. "There here.
This post rates up there in the thin oxygen.
Awesome.
Best meal I ever had was laksa at868, a restaurant in the backstreets of Port Moresby, PNG. Every school holidays had to have at least one trip. Maybe $8 Aus. and packed with ten times more than any I've had since. You can always tell a good laksa by the way the oil slicks over the coconut milk on top. Two types of noodles, all the trimmings bla bla bla. so spicy, i believe the term you use is hot in, hot out.
Since moving back to Aus fulltime, I'm yet to find one as good. I don't think I ever will. And 868's since closed
Theo - I've had "laska" before but it was more like a thin soup with tamarind and fish parts and chili peppers. Delicious, but unforgiving on the bowels.
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