Category Archives: Contemporary Food Culture

Texas Food Politics is like, well, Texas Politics

29 Thursday Mar 2018

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tex mexI’m not from Texas so I have no stake in this fight. But the recent article in Eater about bragging rights over the most important cuisine in Texas demonstrates how deeply silly food politics can be but also how it reflects deep seated cultural conflict. The story as told by Meghan McCarron is a meandering tale with a moral that is hard to discern. But it seems to go roughly like this. For many years chili was the state dish:

The official version of chili con carne can only be made by people from Texas. It’s literally the law: In 1977, the 65th Texas Legislature enshrined the stew of beef and chile peppers as the official state dish, but also an official version of the dish, declaring that “the only real ‘bowl of red’ is that prepared by Texans.

That’s the silly part. What is it about chili that someone from Minnesota just can’t grasp? But at any rate, chili was originally popularized by the chili queens of San Antonio—Tejanas or Mexican women who sold chili on the street to hungry working people. They are unmentioned in the state resolution.

But today there are powerful movements afoot to make smoked brisket the state dish pushing chili off the foodie radar and off menus as well. This seems to be true. I recently spent three weeks in Texas and had to search for a restaurant serving chili. It’s hard to find a neighborhood without a barbecue joint on every corner.

Why the move to elevate brisket? Despite the rootedness of barbecue in black culture, the brisket craze is the purview of white men. Racial and gender politics are at the heart of involved. Chili was made by women and moreover is part of the Tex-Mex cuisine that is also being marginalized despite the fact that it’s a cuisine that most Texans eat every day. McCarron argues that it’s really Tex-Mex cooking that is the heart of Texas foodways. Yet the old family restaurants are closing or struggling to make ends meet and no one is entering the market to pick up the pieces.

If Tex-Mex really is the comfort food that Texans adore, why are restaurants struggling? The answer is buried toward the end of the article but, plausibly, she argues it’s because people have the expectation that Tex-Mex food should be cheap. As labor, materials, land and building costs rise it’s impossible to take Tex-Mex cooking to the next level. Barbecue joints by contrast can get $20 a lb. for their meat.

She also insists that Tex-Mex has gotten a bad rap as being inauthentic.This is a pet peeve of mine. Tex-Mex, like Sonoran cuisine in Arizona or Cal-Mex in Southern California, is border food. The people who eat it have adopted their food habits to fit what’s available in their location on the border. They are real people with genuine food traditions of their own; it’s as authentic as any other cuisine.

That said there is no question that Tex-Mex needs an infusion of innovation. McCarron waxes poetic about “sizzling fajitas, cheese enchiladas, frozen margaritas, queso, breakfast tacos, Frito pie, barbacoa, puffy tacos”. OK. I love a good guisada as much as the next person. But there is an awful lot of been there, done that at Tex-Mex restaurants. How many plastic-cheese-drenched combination plates covered with iceberg lettuce and pallid, pithy tomatoes does one life need?

She’s apparently enthused about corporate cooptation:

While family-run Tex-Mex restaurants might vanish, the key delights and innovations of Tex-Mex are in no danger of disappearance: Fajitas are in every Applebee’s; queso is on the menu at every Chipotle (for now); chili and nachos grace every tailgate; and margaritas end the workweek across America. Tex-Mex is infinite and eternal.

This is part of the problem. The fact it has been colonized as the corporate version of Mexican food only reinforces the idea that Tex-Mex is cheap and enjoyed only by people who don’t like food. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be corporate drones.

What Tex-Mex suffers incessantly, in media, in casual conversation, in its relentless commodification to enrich corporations while family-run restaurants struggle to stay afloat, is a lack of love. Or, to get confrontational, a patronizing disrespect. It is stereotyped as cheap without even the backhanded compliment of fetishized authenticity.

If you want love you need some love handles. McCarron’s solution is probably the only viable one:

Though if the next dish to sweep across America might be brisket tacos, within Texas the larger trend is, as Dallas-based writer and editor José R. Ralat says, Tex-Mex becoming more Mexican. Newer arrivals have always influenced the cuisine, but Ralat sees that cycle accelerating as cooks and chefs cross back and forth across the border more often — as do ingredients.

New people with new ideas. That’s the solution to most problems. And getting the taco officially recognized as a state treasure would help. But her final paragraph doesn’t hold out much hope:

A state legislature dominated by a Republican party at war with itself, fixated on barring trans people from using public bathrooms and cracking down on cities seeking to protect immigrants, is not likely to enshrine the taco as the state’s official food. But doing so would both capture the 21st century zeitgest of the state, and fulfill one of Texas’s most cherished obsessions: pissing off California.

I’m Californian—we don’t get pissed about such things. It must be a Texas thing.

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Coming Down Off the Perfect Meal

08 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Philosophy

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Food and wine have not been taken seriously as forms of art throughout history in part because of the belief that vision and hearing are the only senses that lend themselves to the intellectual explorations we associate with art. This ideology, called the “sense hierarchy”, and masterfully traced by Carolyn Korsmeyer in Making Sense of Taste, treats taste and smell as thoroughly functional sources of brute pleasure, too primitive and instinctual to be worthy of genuine aesthetic discrimination.

This ideology is ancient. 2500 years ago, Plato argued that vision and sound give us information about the world that engages the intellect, while tastes and smells only encourage the appetite which he likened to a ravenous beast that overcomes our rational faculties. (I suppose Plato can be forgiven for not knowing about the porn industry or trivial pop melodies that suck you in each time you hear them.)

…the gods made what is called the lower belly, to be a receptacle for the superfluous meat and drink and formed the convolution of the bowels, so that the food might be prevented from passing quickly through and compelling the body to require more food, thus producing insatiable gluttony and making the whole race an enemy to philosophy and culture, and rebellious against the divinest element within us.

One wonders what was in Plato’s kitchen that threatened to sap his self-control. But Plato’s assertion rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how appetite works. Appetite has its own internal control mechanisms.

This point was brought home to me as I read Jay Rayner’s book The Man Who Ate the World. Rayner, a British food critic, often on the judges’ panel for Top Chef, set out on a worldwide quest to discover the perfect meal. With perfection being an impossible standard, his quest involves more disappointments than successes. But the penultimate failures could be attributed to the fact that his ambling about the world was avoiding the one place where such perfection is alleged to be routine—Paris, where he endeavors to eat 7 meals in 7 days at the finest restaurants.

The regrets begin on Day Two, and by Day Six:

Oh, god, I don’t know. Another Parisian three-star. Doormen in peaked caps.Claw-foot chairs. Side tables for the ladies to put their handbags on. The food was standard three-star stuff: langoustines on sticks wrapped in sea-water foam, beetroot meringues, yeast ice cream decorated with silver leaf. You know the score by now.

Rayner’s weary lamentation shows that appetite is not quite a ravenous, insatiable beast. It’s not that the food wasn’t good. Most of it met his expectations. But the adage “too much of a good thing” applies even to the finest cuisine. In the absence of compulsive disorders, pleasures aim at their own extinction. (There is probably an evolutionary explanation for this. Organisms that are never satisfied will ignore everything else to their obvious detriment)

Many philosophers have noticed this tendency of pleasures to be satiated but argue that the desire for pleasure always returns in a never ending cycle of debilitating craving. But, again, Rayner’s experience shows that this is not necessarily the case.

But the wonderful thing about perfection is that it is, of course,unobtainable. That didn’t stop me searching for it. That hasn’t stopped me wondering about it. All I need is the appetite. There is only one problem. I’m no longer sure I have one.

Having experienced the best cuisine in the world, the post-quest prospect of the many failed meals that await the restaurant critic no longer appeals to him. Once one develops aesthetic standards and acquires an ability to discriminate, fewer pleasures seem attractive.  Critical awareness enhances self-control. The motivation to seek pleasure can be tamed by the very intellect that Plato thought would be overwhelmed.

There is no reason to think there is something peculiarly “brute” or instinctual about taste—it can be refined and disciplined just like any other sensation.

From the Archives

Wine Food Pairing Guidelines: Taste is more important than flavor

01 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Wine Culture

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wine and food pairingIn wine and food pairing, a lot of attention is given to flavor matching. We seek wines that match the flavor profile of the dish. Earthy wines go with earthy foods, herbaceous wines with a salad, wines with a briny flavor note go with seafood, etc. While this relationship is important to create that magical synergy that the best pairings have I think it’s a mistake to begin with this relationship. It’s seldom the case that your choice of wine will have a negative influence on your food. But it’s rather common for food to ruin the flavor of wine. And its taste, not flavor, that is the culprit in pairing disasters. In other words, the most important thing to know is how the presence of the 5 basic tastes in your dish will impact the wine.

Here are the basic relationships to know:

1. The most important factor to assess is how sweet your dish is. Sweet food will make your wine taste thin and sour. Serve a sweet sauce with a $150 Barolo and you might as well pour the wine down the drain. The wine must be sweeter than your food.

2. Foods with high acid (sour or tart foods) will make the wine taste sweeter and softer. Try tasting a bit of lemon with a wine to observe this effect. The sourness in the food seems to mask the sourness in the wine.

3. Salt also makes wine tastes softer and brings out fruit notes. Is there anything better than potato chips with sparkling wine?

4. Bitter foods will boost the bitterness and astringency of a wine, especially red wines with lots of tannins. Try walnuts with a young, tannic wine to observe this. Bitter foods are better served with white wines that lack tannins.

5. Umami can be tricky. Umami will boost every flavor. That can be good or bad. Umami can boost bitterness and acidity throwing the wine out of balance. It can make oaked wines taste too oaky. But umami also boosts umami. Foods full of umami can make an aged wine taste wonderful because aged wines have lots of umami.

Of course the amount and intensity of a taste and how dominant it is will be crucial information to think about.

This is obviously not all there is to wine pairing. Matching the weight of food and wine is important as well. But if you keep in mind these basic relationships you can avoid most pairing disasters.

Here’s the Beef: Texas Food Traditions

25 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Travel

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aged-beef2Texas is a big state with lots of food traditions. But somehow they’re all about beef.

kreuz marketTexas is best known for smoked brisket. Unlike Kansas City-style brisket, Texans don’t drench it in sauce. In fact, at Kreuz Market in Lockhart, perhaps the best-known barbecue joint in the country, they only started offering sauce two years ago. This place is about as old-school as you can get. The meat is served on butcher block paper and with a knife. The forks are plastic, for eating their German potato salad.

Where’s the best barbecue in Texas?  Kreuz Market has the history, having been in business since 1900, but I found their brisket too dry, even with the sauce.  Franklin in Austin has the current big reputation but they had a fire and were closed when we visited. My favorite was Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Q in Llano. Just the right ratio of crispy crust on the outside and tender melting beef on the inside and with an outstanding pepper based sauce to rival the best in Kansas City. When you arrive you line up at the pit and pick the piece of meat you want.cooper's-smoke-pi2t

Texas Chili is another beef obsession. Texans insist that beans in chili are an abomination. And you know what? They’re right. Beans are a distraction when you’re looking for pure beefy essence. Tolbert’s in Grapevine, north of Dallas, has a good Texas chili.

For pure Texas excess, its hard to beat John Tresor’s monster 240-day aged Ribeye at Knife in Dallas (pictured above). It tasted like it was basted in gorgonzola, a little funky, but there’s nothing wrong with funk.

Even Texas peasant food is beefy. Chicken-fried steak is an art form at Hill Country Cupboard in Johnson City, where self-deprecation is taken to a new level. Their sign says “Best Chicken Fried Steak in the World (over 3 dozen sold)”.  It’s tender with a crunchy crust, and a creamy gravy packed with cracked pepper.

chris-madrid's-burger2And at Chris Madrid’s in San Antonio their specialty is the macho tostada burger. The burger rests on refried beans, onions and tortilla chips topped off with a mountain of melted cheddar.  But in the burger sweepstakes I think my favorite was the chili burger at Alamo Springs Café near Luckenbach, just because the beef was of high quality.burger-near-luckenbach2

And of course Tex-Mex cooking is all about the beef. Beef enchiladas, beef-stuffed chile rellenos, beef guisado. It’s hard to find a dish without beef. They probably put beef in their fish tacos.

So what do you do if you don’t like beef? Well, they will condescend to serve you pork if you insist. For porky goodness skip the Tex Mex and look for south-of-the-border Mexican food. Mi Tierra in San Antonio is known for their Carnitas Michoacan. And at upscale Barley Swine in Austin, a sophisticated Carnitas is usually on their small plates menu. But for pure porky goodness, it’s Cooper’s again. They serve a mammoth pepper-crusted chop that just might make you forget about beef, even in Texas.coopers-pork-chop2

On Tasting the New

22 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Philosophy of Food and Wine, Wine Culture

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novel foodThere is a strain of thought in the wine and food world that assumes the object of our affection, a remarkable dish or great bottle of wine, is best understood as a representation of the culture in which it is embedded rather than a composition with intrinsic, aesthetic value.  On this view, our attitudes and judgments are nothing but the sum total of critic’s scores, magazine puff pieces, Facebook likes, Yelp reviews, wine education seminars–the whole deluge of information and misinformation that hurtles toward us every day, not to mention our own personal histories and educations that form our taste preferences.

The poor object, the dish or wine cuvee, is just a cipher, a placeholder, for socially-formed, aesthetic values determined by the cultural framework in which we live.

There is much to be said in favor of this point of view. No doubt our preferences are deeply influenced by culture and history. But it has a serious flaw. If wine or food quality is nothing but the outcome of agreements formed around contemporary tasting practices and popular conventions, we can’t explain how the new arises and captures the attention of people on the cutting edge of change. If great wines and cuisine are nothing but the product of dominant cultural discourses, we have no vocabulary to explain what goes on when those cultural practices are rejected and new taste preferences catch on, and we therefore miss the potential of dishes or cuvees that are off the beaten path. A set of assumptions that cannot explain change is surely deficient.

The alternative to this assumption that cultural practices and discourse determine taste preferences is to view new works in the wine and food world as having some degree of autonomy from their history of production and reception. They have qualities that appeal to us on their own terms, not just as an expression of culture.

I’m not suggesting that some works have universal appeal or express essences that are outside the influence of time and culture. Instead, I’m suggesting that some artifacts have qualities that cannot be assimilated to existing cultural paradigms. Because the “new’ matters to us, we should intentionally seek to foster sensitivity toward new directions, always on the look out for new experiences. Although wine and food are cultural practices deeply penetrated by the hierarchies of everyday life filtered through the framework of media and its ability to manipulate, works nevertheless must be viewed as having their own trajectories and potentials to be able to mount criticisms and challenges to prevailing preferences and experiences.

When natural wine became the rage among New York somms or molecular gastronomy sent chefs back to their chemistry texts it wasn’t because such moves were endorsed by prevailing cultural norms. They weren’t trendy when they first emerged. It was because someone said “ to hell with cultural norms, let’s do it differently” and set about creating works that made no sense.

New works that have some novel dimension create room for new experiences by transgressing habitual distinctions and routine behaviors. They do so because there is something about them that resists assimilation to the prevailing cultural framework. Of course, sometimes nonsense is just nonsense. There is no guarantee that what is novel will have value. But we will never discover if it’s valuable or not unless we nurture its resistance, grant it autonomy and see if it takes flight. That requires some cultural appreciation for novelty. But it also requires objects that are genuinely novel.

 

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Populist Gastronomy?

17 Wednesday Jan 2018

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Is fine cuisine worth its exorbitant price? Sometimes, although price can be an unreliable indicator of quality. But when I have had the opportunity to indulge in high-end dining, I’m struck by how many diners don’t seem to be enjoying their food. In fact, the food seems to be an afterthought for the majority who are focused on showing off the depth of their wallet, being a general lout, taking care of business, partying, or gossiping about the latest celebrity in rehab. Fine cuisine is wasted, if not on the rich, surely on the bored, distracted, or ignorant.

Food writer Jay Rayner in his book The Man Who Ate the World noted the same phenomenon in his worldwide quest for the perfect meal.

…if my journey around he world had taught me anything, it was this: That every night, in the great food cities of the new millennium, there were terrific restaurants, filled with horrible people who were there because they could afford them,or, through status, gain access to them, and who were having a much nicer time than they deserved

Commenting on his fellow Brits he explains, “In Britain, food is, and always has been, from the top down”, an interest in food having been invented by the aristocracy as a status symbol. By contrast, he argues,

In France, the food culture is a bottom-up affair, with high gastronomy only being its ultimate expression. The notion of Le Terroir to which every Frenchman cleaves—that there is a specific piece of land from which their identity comes—may well encourage gastronomic conservatism, but it does at least lend the whole business a certain democracy.

The French are allegedly losing their gastronomic edge along with the intimate connection between French identity and fine cuisine. But Rayner’s thesis that a genuinely appreciative food culture must be a bottom up affair strikes me as plausible. People will care about flavor and the meaning of food only when their knowledge and experience is sufficient to warrant such a commitment. Such knowledge and experience is more attainable in a culture thoroughly suffused with the belief that their cuisine is more than a pleasant diversion but an expression of who they are. (Of course, the French are not alone in this belief; the Italians and Japanese and perhaps others are similarly committed.)

So what about the food culture in the United States? Is it a top-down affair where celebrity chefs create wondrous creations for status-driven consumers with too much money? Or is the growing “foodie” culture a place where genuine appreciation is rooted in deep knowledge of ingredients, methods, and traditions?

Aside from redoubts such as Louisiana where food traditions have long had a grip on the public, Americans discovered their palate only a few decades ago. Do we have what it takes to join the great cuisines of the world?

11 Most Memorable Meals for 2017

28 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Restaurant Reviews, Travel

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alinea 7

Bocadillo at Alinea

Because top 10 is so played out don’t you think? Our travels this year took us through Southern Oregon, Southern Idaho, the Upper Midwest, Wisconsin and then south through Chicago, Kansas City, Texas and points west. When not tasting wine we’re seeking out either regional cuisines or creative cooking. Here’s a list of the meals that left the most favorable impression.

1.   Alinea, Chicago

Well, it’s one of the best restaurants in the world for modernist cuisine. Grant Achatz is about as creative as one can get in the kitchen.  I can still taste the wood-smoked veal cheeks in a coating of fried wild rice. Here is my comprehensive review.

2. 5 Fusion  Bend, Oregon

James Beard Award semi-finalist Joe Kim, is creative in a different way seamlessly blending Asian and European flavors. Toro with Italian truffle, Unagi (eel)/ oatmeal cookie nigiri, Sweet and Sour Tortilla Soup made with tonkatsu bone broth,  Raman Carbonara with tonkatsu broth, pork belly and a quail egg, Seared Foie Gras with raisin puree and granola, and Beef Bourguignon Be-Bim-Bap.  It all worked. (See my review of fusion cuisine in Bend here)

3. New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro  Talent, Oregon

Inspired by Chez Panisse, this iconic farm-to-table mom-and-pop restaurant had only four items on the menu for lunch but they were scrumptious and the wine list is quite amazing. A total commitment to quality. (see my review here)

4. Gib’s On-The-Lake   Kewaunee, Wisconsin

This is a supper club on Lake Michigan. Supper clubs are a Wisconsin thing—high quality, made-from-scratch, traditional dishes in a convivial atmosphere where patrons hang out for the entire evening. Gib’s served an outstanding lasagna, delicious broasted chicken, and poutine made with local cheese curds. Traditional fare in a unique setting. (My review of Wisconsin regional cuisine is here)

5. Knife    Dallas, Texas

You really shouldn’t visit Texas without ordering a big steak. When I heard about this 36 inch Ribeye dry-aged for 240 days I just couldn’t resist. Yes, it tasted funky, but good, but good. (the review is here)

6. Lorella    Ashland, Oregon

A genuine farm-to-table restaurant, they served one of the most interesting dishes I had this year–Grilled Celtuce with Braised Frisee, French Lentils, Sauce Gribiche and Grilled Bread. Distinctive, original and very tasty. (see my review of Southern Oregon food here)

7.  Chez Panisse     Berkeley, CA

This was my first visit to the restaurant that arguably kicked off the food revolution in the U.S.  It didn’t disappoint. Nothing too fancy or original, just perfect execution. The grilled lamb chops and braised shank dressed with yoghurt and mint sauce, accompanied by crisp, smashed then fried potatoes and greens, was the epitome of the up-dated, French country cooking for which Chez Panisse is known. (See my review here)

8. Gates Bar-B-Q    Kansas City, MO

In KC I go for the burnt ends, and Gates had the best in town. They have the right ratio of crispy, burnt pieces and fatty, succulent pieces.  (See my review of Kansas City barbecue here)

9.  Basque Market    Boise, Idaho

Friday at lunch the Basque market cooks up an authentic seafood paella outside in a traditional paella pan accompanied by the best croquetas and other pintxos this side of the Atlantic ocean. (see my review of Boise Basque cooking here)

10. Solly’s Grill   Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Leave it to Wisconsin to discover how to get more dairy products on your plate. Butter burgers are an institution invented by Solly’s in the 1930’s. They slather about a quarter cup of butter on a hamburger bun which melts when the hot burger is placed on it. It is as decadent as it sounds. (My review of Wisconsin regional foods is here)

11. The Boiler Room    Fargo, North Dakota

I mention this place because it transforms the hot dish into something delectable. A hot dish is a cheap casserole with tater tots and meat held together with mushroom soup. The Boiler Room transforms it by caramelizing the onions, and using lightly breaded sweet potato fingers in the shape of “tater tots” playing the role of starch, all bound together with sausage gravy, bacon and some quality cheddar cheese. Delish. (See my review of upper Midwest regional dishes here)

Kansas City Barbecue

11 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Travel

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joes-buildingAlthough they have many fine restaurants, Kansas City is best known for its distinctive barbecue–they take it very seriously. Real smokehouses, a tomato-based sauce thickened with molasses, and featuring burnt ends as their specialty, KC is one of a handful of places in the U.S. where you can earn a barbecue Ph.D. if you’re so inclined. Is there a higher aspiration? Truth be told you can really find lots of different styles of barbecue here, from Carolina pulled pork to Texas brisket, but why eat those interlopers when you can have the real deal?

During my recent visit to KC, after a hard day of wine tasting, I would seek to earn credits toward my degree by seeking the best barbecue in Kansas City with a special focus on burnt ends. But it turns out there are really two styles of KC barbecue and several sauce options. Some restaurants serve a traditional style that apparently hasn’t changed much in 50 years. Others serve what is known as competition barbecue which grew out of barbecue competitions where creativity scores points.

The birth of the Kansas City barbecue scene is usually traced to Henry Perry who served smoked meats to garment district workers in the early 20th Century. Perry’s sauce was likely made of vinegar and pepper and was described as “harsh and peppery”, not the thick, sweet sauce we now associate with Kansas City. Arthur and Charlie Bryant took over the business when Perry died in the 1940’s  and added tomato to the sauce to sweeten it, and the rest is history, as Arthur Bryant’s has become the best-known KC barbecue brand. In 1972 renowned writer Calvin Trillin, a native of Kansas City, wrote in an article for Playboy that Bryant’s was the best restaurant in the U.S. in part because that gave away the charred edges of the smoked brisket:

The counterman just pushes them over to the side and anyone who wants them helps himself. I dream of those burned edges. Sometimes, when I’m in some awful, overpriced restaurant in some strange town, trying to choke down some three-dollar hamburger that tastes like a burned sponge, a blank look comes over me: I have just realized that at that very moment, someone in Kansas City is being given those burned edges free.

Trillin was an influential food writer, so the endorsement of burnt ends as a delicacy was sufficient to make it Kansas City’s iconic dish and putting Kansas City on the food map. Needless to say, the burnt ends are no longer free.  For the uninitiated, burnt ends are the crisp, charred, fatty ends of the brisket, too short for slicing, that are chopped into chunks and doused in sauce, returned to the smoker for more flavor,  and usually served on bread slices. Truth be told, the demand for burnt ends is so great they are no longer made exclusively from the well-marbled “point” muscle but are cut from the whole brisket. The key is they must be both crusty and fatty—it’s a texture thing.

But burnt ends aside, Kansas City is one of those places in the U.S. where the differences between grilled meats and barbeque is a catechism. You grill if you cook meat quickly over a direct flame. By contrast, barbecued meat is cooked very, very  slowly over an indirect, wood-stoked fire, allowing that wood smoke to deeply penetrate the meat. If it’s not smoked, it’s not barbecue. Any restaurant that doesn’t get the difference will be laughed out of town. It is alleged that Kansas City’s 100 or so barbecue joints in the Metro area constitute the largest concentration of barbecue in the country, although locations in Texas or Kentucky might dispute that.

Unlike Texas, where barbecue sauce is often optional if not frowned upon, the sauce is essential to Kansas City barbecue. The traditional dry rub tends to be simple—pepper, salt, sugar, and garlic—with stylistic differences focused on the sauce. Most folks of the carnivore persuasion know about Kansas City Barbecue Sauce thanks to the ubiquity of Kansas City Masterpiece found everywhere on supermarket shelves. But genuine Kansas City sauce is more complex. Most restaurants offer a sweet, thick, tomato and molasses-based sauce. But Arthur Bryant’s original sauce was vinegar-based and less viscous as was the original sauce from another iconic brand, Gates Barbecue. It’s the thinner more savory sauce that is historically more authentic. Today, most restaurants offer several styles ranging from thin, sour, and spicy to sweet and sticky.

As to current trends, for the past several decades, the barbecue scene has been influenced by competitions where chefs try to present something distinct and innovative in order to attract the attention of judges. Better cuts of meat, the use of babyback ribs, more complex spice rubs, and new sauce recipes have made Kansas City a genuinely eclectic barbecue town incorporating influences from the other U.S. barbecue styles.

gates-ends2I didn’t visit all 100 barbecue joints in the week I spent in KC, but eight isn’t bad. (Yes. I did get tired of barbecue, a condition that lasted about a week.) Here’s the list in roughly my order of preference.

Gates Bar-B-Q

You come to KC for the burnt ends, and Gates’ burnt ends top my list. They had the best ratio of crispy burnt pieces and soft, fatty, succulent pieces, all well distributed on the hoagie roll. Their traditional sauce was savory, not too sweet, and also among my favorites. The only problem was their ribs are overly salty.

Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue

Housed at the end of an old gas station (pictured above), Joe’s has acquired a great reputation with a line out the door if you go at lunch or dinner. I went at 4:30 to avoid the crowds. They made their reputation by winning competitions, so Joe’s represents the new school of KC barbecue. Burnt ends are served only at lunch on Tuesday and Saturday so I didn’t get the opportunity to try them. The brisket was very smoky and tender with a layer of fat to keep it moist. Fall-off-the-bone ribs with great bark and a complex rub with sweet and savory elements make them stand out. Joe’s original sauce was sweet and spicy, very well balanced, and they offer several unusual menu items such as the Z-man sandwich ( brisket, provolone cheese, and onion rings with sauce on a Kaiser roll)and Kansas caviar, a tangy salsa of fresh vegetables. Yup. Health food at a barbecue joint. Go figure.

lc's oven

LC’s Bar-B-Q

We’re back to old school here. You enter this dark, smoke-filled den wondering if there might a fire in the backroom that the staff hasn’t notice. The burnt ends were thick hunks of meat, some fatty, some dry, with a little bark that lacked crunch. That’s probably because they open the door of their smoker occasionally and spray it with a garden hose. The sauce was a balance of sweet and peppery and the beans were outstanding with bits of burnt ends in the mix.

Arthur Bryant’s bryants-building2

The icon is still going strong with their original downtown location and one at the Speedway. Their burnt ends have plenty of flavor but are too dry. I love their paprika-laced original sauce, and the fries are to die for—I imagine they’re cooked in lard.

q39editedQ39

Upscale, competition Barbecue with full table service, and a complete bar. The bar is a feature for me since the only beverage that really, really works with sweet barbecue sauce is Kentucky Bourbon. The brisket and burnt ends were fine but didn’t jump out as extraordinary. They have an interesting menu; I regret I wasn’t able to try their smoked, fried chicken.

Woodyard Bar-B-Que

Out back is a wood yard that supplies wood for other barbecue joints in town. This place has a great funky vibe, a nice rub on their ribs, and great house made sausage.woodyard-building

Tin Kitchen

I include Tin Kitchen on the list because it’s outside the city near the airport in the charming, small town of Weston. Very good barbeque if you’re north of the city.

Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue

With several locations around Kansas City, this full service restaurant has a corporate feel but the barbeque is quite competent. The offer pork and lamb ribs, “sausage burnt ends”, and have a mail order service if you live in the diaspora.

How to Eat Sinfully

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Food Science, Uncategorized

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thanksgiving gluttonyJust in time to guarantee a guilt-free feast on Thanksgiving,  Dr. Aaron Carroll’s book The Bad Food Bible:  How and Why to Eat Sinfully has arrived at your favorite bookseller. Among the gems that Carroll hurls at the nutrition Nazis are that most fats are not bad for you; unless you already have high blood pressure, the amount of salt in your diet is probably fine; your chances of getting severe Salmonella poisoning from raw eggs are miniscule; and processed meats eaten in moderation will not increase your susceptibility to cancer.

As for his advice to Thanksgiving revelers from a recent interview:

Your health and your eating habits are not established by one day a year. It’s perfectly fine to enjoy yourself and to live! You need to weigh — in all your health decisions — the benefits and the harms. And too often we only focus on the latter. And included in benefits are joy, and quality of life and happiness. There are times when it’s a perfectly rational decision to allow yourself to be happy and to enjoy yourself. I’m not sort of giving a license for people to eat whatever they want, anytime they want. Yes, the Diet Coke, the pie, these are all processed foods. So you should think about how much you’re eating them in relation to everything else. But on the other hand, a piece of pie on Thanksgiving is not going to erase everything else you’ve done the rest of the year.

This is good advice, even without Carroll’s analysis of the lack of evidence for much nutritional advice. Unless you have health issues, choosing Thanksgiving Day to make a stand against poor nutrition is just a form of asceticism.

But Carroll’s book does more than give us all an excuse to indulge on occasion. He provides a careful analysis of the data supporting various nutritional guidelines in easy-to-understand prose. In fact, his book would be a good primer to use in a critical thinking class on statistics. Most of the nutritional guidelines we’re encouraged to follow are not well supported by the underlying studies. The problem isn’t that nutrition scientists are dishonest or careless—the problem is that nutritional science is very hard to do well and very expensive, so must studies are too limited and equivocal to allow definitive conclusions. Yet, the public, regulatory agencies, and the press want definitive conclusions so we end up with advice that outstrips evidence.

According to Carroll, not all nutritional advice is bad. Studies supporting the harmful effects of excessive sugar and refined carbohydrates are persuasive, and if you’re among the minority whose dietary cholesterol effects blood cholesterol then dietary modifications may be appropriate. Obviously, excessive calories and the resulting weight gain are not good; healthy eating requires moderation. But generally speaking trying to regulate health by making particular foods off limits is ineffective and unnecessary.

And surely Carroll is right that an occasional indulgence for reasonably healthy people will have no ill effects.

So this Thanksgiving put away the guilt and put away the turkey and stuffing. And think of that food coma as a well-deserved nap.

Thanksgiving Wine Pairing

20 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Wine Culture

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thanksgiving wine pairingPairing wine with the traditional Thanksgiving meal is a bit like taking photos of invisible objects—an impossible task. The dishes are so varied there is no wine that will go with all of them. Even the turkey is hard to pair–the wine that works best with dark meat will not be ideal with white meat.

Instead of recommending specific wines I’m going to list strategies. But keep two things in mind: (1) they will all fail, and (2) after the second glass no one will care.

1. Serve sparkling wine, one with a little perceptible sweetness. It’s not a perfect pairing but probably will not offend any of the dishes. And you will never be criticized for serving bubbly.

2. Serve a white and a red. An off-dry Riesling with good acidity and a medium-body red with soft tannins and high acidity such as Pinot Noir will both be passable with most dishes.

3. Serve the dinner in courses and pair a wine with each course. This is only for those who have fussy guests who insist on perfection; everyone else will think you’re nuts. You will probably need to hire a staff of servers and dishwashers to help but if you pull it off your guests will be impressed, even the one’s who think you’re nuts.

4. Open a variety of wines and let people drink what they want. It involves little labor and no one can complain about their own choices. I don’t see a downside.

5. Just pour your favorite wine and don’t worry about the pairing. Most wines will be OK with most foods. Its Thanksgiving after all, not a winemaker’s dinner.