I'd call it a Hole in the Wall...

...but that would be disrespectful to actual holes.

I haven't mentioned it but I was in Chattanooga, TN fo several days over the last two weeks for work - oh, the exciting places I get to - and I had a fun night out with two of my buddies on the crew in a local barbeque joint.

(Actually, Chattanooga's a lot of fun, the downtown is very walker-friendly and they have a great Aquarium there.)

One of our nights there we got off early enough to do some wandering around downtown, and feed my barbeque fixation. We'd seen several places we wanted to try, and one chain - Famous Dave's - that we didn't, but I was obsessed with a place about 3 blocks from our hotel.

It was the classic hole-in-the-wall joint - crumbling like a biscuit, one window boarded up, an enormous smoker parked on the sidewalk outside (I wonder if they take it in at night?), and old guys sitting around out front. I suppose they were playing dominos but even that was to much effort, since we were in the middle of a heat wave and it was 95 degrees at 9 pm. So mostly they were sitting around sweating.

We tooled in - me, ravenous as ever, Andy the Gay Biker, and our loyal assistant Kari, who would probably rather have eaten at Applebee's - and took seats at a battered formica table with one short leg. The place was clean, if you didn't look to closely. If you looked closely you felt slightly sick. A woman as battered as the table came out and took our orders. She had the short leg issue too. It was the kind of place that, instead of ordering off the menu, it was safer just to ask what was available. You avoid disappointment.

The service was slow - the waitress may have also been the cook - but it gave us time to admire the decor, which was done in Early American Homeless Shelter. Everything that was there, had been there, for a verrrrry long time. And had the dust coat to prove it. The only thing gleaming in the flickering flourescent light was a wall of barbeque trophies. There must have been fifty of them. I'm not sure where they came from - this didn't look like an operation that went on the road - but they were lovingly polished and displayed.

Our food was great. It had to be, in a place like that. It had authenticity by the bucket. Andy and Kari got ribs, I got chopped pork, tender and juicy with bits of crackling. The ribs were better. I know because I stole some of Andy's. The mac and cheese was rad. The fried okra was out. Damn. How can you run out of okra? Andy got fries instead. I went for pasta salad. What the hell I was thinking I don't know. It was terrible.

The rib sauce was the Georgia sweet tomato-y style, with an intriguing bitter edge that may have been herbal or may have been from baking in a pot on the top of the stove all day. Still not quite sure. We polished it off while listening to an older man in the corner booth ramble loudly about the drug trade in the neighborhood and the government. All atmospheric southern diners have a guy like this. I think it's in the building codes. Gorged on pork, we left huge tip and waddled out into the night, steaming slightly in the humid air.

I'd give you the name so you could try it yourself, but the neon sign out front was broken, so I couldn't read the name. It started with an F. Franks? that sounds right. But trust me, when you see it you'll know you are in the right place. Your common sense will be saying, "run! run like the wind!" but your nose will be luring you in, like a character in a cartoon, your feet trailing helplessly behind...

Heed the scent of the pork.

By Popular Demand: The Human Flesh Story

The title says it all, really.

I used to go to Mexico once or twice a year, until I found out I could go to Europe and have people be rude to me for only three times the expense. On one visit, I was in Chiapas, near San Christobel de las Casas, and found a place that gave horseback tours to some of the smaller villages. They took us thru all this wild mountain scenery to a village that was in the middle of it's annual pagan festival - I kid you not, the people of the town were still worshiping in the traditional fashion, and they had gutted the local colonial-era church, painted it all kinds of wild drug-trip colors, and held ceremonies there. Cameras totally forbidden in the church. It was amazing, even without being hot and saddle-sore from the ride.

I took a break on a hillside near the cemetery - you could take pictures there - and two little boys came up to me, mugging and goofing for the camera, with those incredible, angelic, trusting faces that you only see on country kids. They must have been five or six years old. I fell instantly, utterly in love with them. As soon as I took a picture, they stuck out their hands and demanded payment. Ambitious little guys.

We rode back to San Christobel - more great scenery - and by the time I got there I was in serious pain. A, I hadn't done a lot of riding in a loooong time, and B, the saddles were basically wood with a stretched leather cover. So riding, for any length of time, was just - frankly, every jolt of the horse was like being rapped sharply on the ass with a frying pan. I feared I might never sit down again.

When I got back to town, I was sweaty, stiff, and tired. And ravenous. I found the nearest cafe and stumbled in, glancing at the menu on the chalkboard. I saw something that looked reasonable - "Milenesa de something something" - and thought, that'll be good. I couldn't remember for the life of me what the second word, the one that actually id'd the meat, was, but I knew that Milenesa always means "breaded and fried" and what's not to like there? I'd figure out the previous owner's mode of being when it came to the table.

But I NEVER DID.

It was a white meat, I can tell you that. Fairly mild. Didn't taste like chicken. Probably the only thing in the world that doesn't. Not quite pork...I tried to catch my waiter's eye, to ask him what this thing I was wolfing down was (I was too hungry not to eat it), but he was behind the bar, studiously ignoring me. Apparently menu translation was not included in the price. Possibly, too, he was avoiding me because I reeked of horse, and kept shifting my weight from one buttock to the other.

I ate it. I paid. I went back to my room, got out my spanish dictionary and searched for that word while laying butt-up on the bed, poring thru the pages...

No luck.

So, if I ever develop a crazed desire for the taste of human flesh.... I'll know where it came from.

OMG: The Goat Cheese Revelation

Despite the fact that I have, in the past, in this very blog, trumpeted the Grossness of Goat Cheese, I have to stand corrected. I have finally stumbled upon the fact that there are two types of goat cheese: the strongly aged type that does a nice job of standing in for a rancid, sweaty goat itself, and the young, unaged, soft, creamy, delicious... sorry, sort of lost control there.

Who knew? Not me.

I'm certainly glad I had decided to give the chevre another shot - part of my trying to expand my palate (instead of just my waistline) with stuff I'd always thought was yucky. Yeah, it's my inner five-year-old using the thesaurus today. But my inner adult is trying to come up with ways to use up the rest of this cheese, before I just break down and start licking it off the wrapper.

In a Paris Cafe, Or: Beware the Sausage Appetizer

I love, love, love to eat when I'm traveling. Whether it's barbeque in the south, seafood on the coast, or tapas in Spain, I am always looking to try out the local cuisine.

My language skills are rudimentary at best; I usually learn a few words in the local idiom, but I generally speak like Tarzan: one painful word at a time, all in the present tense. I hungry now. I sleep now. I buy many shoes now. And since I'm always keen to try new things (except, apparently, a Berlitz course) I often wind up ordering something on the menu that I don't quite know what it is. This gave rise to the human flesh story, which is not in this episode. And it gave rise to the Episode of the Sausage Appetizer.

I was in Paris. (Wow! Doesn't that just sound amazing? That is possibly the coolest thing, ever, to be able to say). April in Paris, they tell you, is fabulous. The stuff of song and poetry, the springtime of the soul. It was not April. It was the last week in March, and Paris was holding on to the bitter damp of winter with both hands. It was FREEZING. It was rainy. It was, in the way only weather can be, miserable.

I did not care. I was in Paris. (Wow!) I was in Paris and I was going to eat in outdoor cafes, nibbling quiche and drinking red wine, even if it killed me, even if I froze off my feet and I had to stump home on my ankles. My thoughts turned to some of the heartier options on the menus, to help stave of hypothermia.

Many of the cafes had "chacuterie" on the menus. I had never had this famous dish of northern France, though I had read about it, and I have what I assume is an excellent recipe for it in my Julia Child cookbook. In the book, it's call "chacutrie garni" - garnished sausage - and the photo showed a comfortingly messy, homestyle platter with fat sausages, pork chops, potatoes, and mounds of saurkraut. You can almost smell the steamy kitchen it came from. I've always admired the concept - it seems like the best sort of beery excess, more food than anyone could eat - but I've never actually made it.

After days of tramping around in the frigid rain, the idea of this warm, homey platter became an obsession. The quiche was very nice but in the evening it was COLD and I wanted that hot food. I found a cafe with the magic words on the menu, and found a seat. It was still, barely, warm enough to be outside. My cane chair was damp, but I had the vision of dinner to keep me warm.

I ordered from the waiter, who looked slightly surprised yet impressed at my order. We confirmed that I only wanted a serving for one - did he think I was on a saurkraut binge? a garni junkie? And he trotted off with my order, leaving me to wonder vaguely why they didn't have the "garni" part of the title on the menu. A Parisian quirk, clearly. I dismissed that thought and observed the man at the table next to me, who was intently smoking a Gitane or a Galoise or what ever it is they smoke there, smoking with such intensity that he was lighting the fresh cigarette with the stump of the old one, and clearly waiting for someone.

His date and my dinner arrived at the same moment, though it was hard to tell who was less pleased. "Chacutrie" in Paris is not the near mythical Alsation dish of my dreams. It is, in fact, a platter of cold sliced sausages of various types. A HUGE platter. It seemed like pounds, like a sausage nightmare, a nightmare where your dish keeps refilling itself. And I, the ignorant American, had ordered it.

So I had to eat it. All of it. Oh, no.

As I plowed through my sausage festival - foie gras sausage, pork sausage, duck sausage, something with nuts - I watched with increasing interest the activties of Monsieur Gitane and his date. You know how you constantly hear that French women are the most seductive in the world, that they are the most stylish and knowing, that they wrap their men around their fingers? This woman was having none of it. She sat down and instantly made a cell phone call, with only the most perfunctory acknowledgement of her escort, and chattered away like an American teenager. Their drinks came. Her phone rang again. More chatter.

I was beginning to sweat from the sausage. There was no way I was going to finish this. There was no way I was going to concede defeat and not finish it.

Monsieur Gitane smoked furiously. His date chattered away, oblivious. I began to feel sorry for him. I definitely felt sorry for me. And also slightly sick.

Finally the table on the other side of me was filled, by a large and florid Frenchman smoking an extremely smelly cigar. That was the final straw, and I threw in the towel. Victory: to the Sausage.

Note so self: invest in a menu translator. And I staggered off, listening to Madame's cell phone chatter as it drifted behind me, into the night.

Piggy

I'm on a job in North Carolina for a few days, and my favorite part of coming up here is the opportunity to - I think "glut" myself is the word I'm looking for - on barbeque. As mentioned in a previous post, I just spent two weeks in Spain, and despite the delicious food there, I came home insane for American food. Chicken wings especially. And barbeque. Oh, God, barbeque. I don't want to get all Anthony Bourdain on you here, but honestly, pigs can die happy, knowing that they are serving a nobler end.

In Georgia we have the sweeter, more tomato-y sauces, but in North Carolina they do a thin, vinegar based sauce that is very tangy and delicious. We've been here for one full day and have already had a great barbeque meal at Mama Dip's in Chapel Hill, where the chopped pork is smooth and delicious, with one of the best vinegar based sauces I've had. Highly reccomended. Skip the subpar sweet potato biscuits, and make up the calories with extra pork or the equally tasty fried chicken.

Two more days, so 4 more opportunities for NC-style que. Unless we start eating it for breakfast. Not, really, all that farfetched...