Snack Cart: Bathtub carp, sick Pete Wells burns, and double J Gold
Snack Cart is a weekly newsletter of my favorite food writing from around the country.
Welcome to the Snack Cart. I’ve loaded up great food content from across the Internet. Take a look and maybe you’ll find one or two things to enjoy as you wait for an acceptable time to hit the nog (it was two hours ago).
Mayukh Sen wrote about fruitcake for Food52. Well, it’s sort of about fruitcake. It’s really about being a Bengali immigrant and being gay and somehow the ways in which a maligned British dessert is involved in both. This beautiful and touching personal essay has been blowing up food Twitter for good reason. It’s the most lovely holiday essay I’ve read this year.
OK, that’s enough empathy and understanding. Here’s NPR’s story on how Slovokians raise carp in their bathtubs for Christmas Eve dinner. WEIRD.
One more from the “foreign people are to be feared and shunned” file: The special guest at the St. John’s, Newfoundland holiday parade is The Big Stick, an anthropomorphic log of bologna. Like Spam in Hawaii, bologna was one of the few foods that would last long enough to make it to the islands. Over time, it evolved from a food of necessity to a food of love. Unrelated, for one week this year I made bologna and mustard sandwiches for lunch every day and it was the best decision I made in 2016.
A recipe for General Tsos Latkes has me like.
No matter how much you do anything, it’s good to really think about how and why. So I studied this Eater guide on how to order at a trendy restaurant. In particular, it has a good section about how to decipher a menu to increase your odds of something great.
I would like a TV channel that is just BD Wong explaining things to me all day.
A Roads and Kingdoms profile of Brother Lamp, the number one noodle expert/obsessive in Chongquing, is the story of most food experts: odd people obsessed with the everyday. My new Twitter bio: “I don’t pay attention to politics. What’s the use? I pay attention to noodles, and that’s enough.”
This article, on the difference between ramen and pho, is on its face super boring. But the editors note at the top contains multitudes. I didn’t hear anything about this, but man this entire scandal seems silly and wonderful. [Editor’s note: oh man they took the whole thing down!]
Boston
Amanda Hoover at Boston Magazine goes deep into Boston’s history with liquor licensing and the need for reform. This is probably the most important thing to know about the Boston food scene. The number of licenses is severely capped, so the few that exist have have become prohibitively expensive (~$500,000 on a quasi-legal gray market). They are so expensive that only rich chains or groups can afford them, which means that people of color, poor neighborhoods, and independent restaurants are fucked. This keeps predominantly black or latino neighborhoods as dining deserts (there are literally zero places to go out for dinner and a beer in Mattapan). It also keeps our food scene boring, without alcohol profits, an avant garde concept or tough location is doomed from the start.
Ted Weesner is back! Not with a restaurant review, but with a profile of the chef at Formaggio Kitchen. Weesner appears hell-bent on using his time at the Boston Globe to tell the culinary history of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I, for one, am here for it. Formaggio Kitchen is one of the most important food destinations in the country, and that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Hidden Boston covers Brick Wall Kitchen, which is a new-to-me restaurant in an entire new-to-me *neighborhood*. And it’s called “Whiskey Point” (the neighborhood, not the restaurant)!
MC Slim JB visits the new Area 4 for The Improper and writes a pean on the value of a neighborhood restaurant in times of uncertainty.
There’s no proper review this week, but once again Cheap Eats stretches the limits to review Nzuko, a new Caribbean/Mediterranean hybrid recently opened by an African chef in Farmington. Do it, Devra. Eliminate the Cheap Eats column once and for all and give these places the due they deserve. We don’t need more random first looks at trendy places (even if MIDA is near me and everyone should go so it stays open).
There was a drunken brawl at a Chuck-e-Cheese in Everett, so don’t you tell me there aren’t Christmas miracles.
Emmas, an East Cambridge pizza institution, is closing. I’m sure it had its fans, but I never really liked it and neither did anyone I know.
Los Angeles
Double J. Gold! Last week’s story posted online about an hour after I sent the newsletter. That’ll show me to never be early again. First he continues his love affair with vegetables in a review of Hatchet Hall, a new temple of “neo-neo-southern food” in Culver City. The meat may be great, but it’s the sides that you’ll take home.
More appropriate for the season is his holiday tamale crawl of Los Angeles. It’s a lovely meditation on tradition, Los Angeles, and how the form of the tamale is repeated in food cultures around the world as a homey, comforting dish.
If you want to sell 40s of Colt 45 at your hip gastropub, that’s fine. It’s a bit gross, but I also love Billy Dee Williams and I’ve bought them before. Selling them in a paper bag, as they do at Saint Felix in Hollywood and West Hollywood, is some racist-ass shit. It’s not a loving tribute or ironic, as you claim in this story. Please stop.
Jeffrey Yuguchi, an native Angeleno and chef, takes LA Weekly on a tour through the lesser-known spots in Silverlake.
Katherine Spiers writes up the best dosa in Los Angeles, which she says is at Surati Farsan in Artesia. She also reminds us that even if fermentation is super hot right now, it’s been around for a long time.
Besha Rodell gives three stars to Michael’s in Santa Monica. She implores readers to support the restaurant, which is in the process of reinventing itself. Michael’s helped create California cuisine and celebrity food culture, but brand new dishes and inventive flavors at any 30-year-old institution run the risk of alienating long-time customers while simultaneously not getting the attention they deserve from the new-obsessed fooderati. “But for now, you have an opportunity to experience the greatness of L.A.’s dining past, its present and its future, all in one restaurant.”
New York
The New York Times mostly focused on cooking this week, but they did send out Pete Wells to review Cut by Wolfgang Puck in downtown. This should be a clash of the titans, one of the most famous chefs in the world is opening his first real New York restaurant. One of the Times’ archest critics reviewing it. But in the end it’s more like Rocky 6 than Rocky 2. The restaurant has good food, but is lazy and bloated with 80’s cliches. You can feel Wells’ disappointment. It’s a great read for lovers of withering bon mots
For a look behind the curtain, the Times published the notes on a behind-the-scenes event for Times Insiders, ‘How the Times Covers Food.”
New York Magazine’s Grubstreet put out the only 2106 retrospective that matters: The best dumplings in New York.
Da Silvano’s, a New York institution I had never heard of, has closed. Seems like the kind of place I would be desperate to go to and then hate. Also, I understand the minimum wage is tough, but when you rent has gone from $500/month to $41,000/month, maybe don’t blame paying your dish washers a living wage.
Chicago
Extra Crispy looks at the state of the Chicago doughnut, and finds it strong. *Both Republicans and Democrats rise. Standing ovation for 15 minutes. Doughnuts declared President-for-life.*
At Fooditor, Michael Gerbert writes why 2016 was the best year in Chicago Food history. He then asks Joe Campagna to argue the opposite. Joe’s essay has more insights into the Chicago food scene, so as an outsider I found it more interesting.
Filipino fast food spot Jollibee has opened its first Chicago location. This should make the small but overrepresented-in-my-subscribers contingent of LA to Chicago transplants very happy.
Phil Vettel first looks Eden, a new West Loop restaurant for the Chicago Tribune. His piece is short and sparse, and I will say what seems to be only subtext: “If your big pitch is that you’re close to the United Center, I am not excited to eat your food.”
How Mesh & Bone brought the Sri Lankan spirit Arakku to Chicago.
Underrated Pete Wells Burn of the Week
“‘Sometimes you know it in your head,’ the chef whispered.”
“‘Sometimes you feel it in your stomach,’ she smiled, buzzed.”
Sometimes you gag in your mouth, the critic sighed.
Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to get Snack Cart in your email inbox every week.
