Holiday Potato Salad, with a little crunch.

This potato salad is very popular with our friends. It is based on my Grandmother Camilla Mellow’s recipe with a few innovations. It includes celery which adds a bit of crunch to the texture.

5 lb.. Russet potatoes, boiled in lightly salted water then peeled and chopped.

6 stalks Celery, including the interior ones and any leaves still attached.

3 Red onions

1 can Israeli packed brine dill pickles.

1/2 can Pitted black olives

1 jar Prepared diced pimentos, drained

1 bunch Fresh Italian (flat leaf) parsley, leaves only

2 tbs. Dijon mustard

2 tbs. Prepared horseradish

splash white wine vinegar

salt & pepper to taste.

2 cups mayonnaise

1 cup sour cream

6 hard boiled eggs, chopped or cut into in rounds -- optional

a. Wash half a pound of russet potatoes, put in a large pot of cold water and bring to a boil. Salt the water. Cook until a knife easily cuts though the potatoes. Drain and let cool enough to peel and chop into roughly half inch cubes.

b. Cut celery, onions, pickles and olives into smaller pieces then mince in a chopper until they are minced into roughly quarter inch size pieces. Chop the parsley leaves fine. Put all of these into a large mixing bowl with the jar of drained pimentos.

c. To the chopped vegetables add the Dijon or other sharp mustard, the horseradish, then add the cubed potatoes and mix evenly. Then add the mayonnaise and sour cream and mix again. Begin with one and half cups of mayonnaise and the sour cream and add just enough to make sure it is evenly mixed. Taste the salad and salt and pepper to taste and add a splash of white wine vinegar or fresh lemon juice to cut the richness. Be cautious with the salt since the pickles, mustard, horseradish and mayonnaise already bring a lot of salt with them. My Grandmother always used white pepper in her potato salad and her mashed potatoes as do most Europeans. The favor is sharper and does not put black flecks into the white mixture. Cover and chill for at least four hours.

d. Before serving taste the salad and add more mayonnaise it it seems dry.

Notes:

-- Only use jarred prepared pimentos, do not use roast red peppers because they bleed into the potatoes and turn the salad pink.

-- The sharp mustard and horseradish add high notes to the taste and they should not really be tasted, use just enough to give the salad some bite. The same with the white wine vinegar or lemon juice, they liven the flavor but you should not be able to taste either. Do not add the brine from the Israeli pickles, it is far too salty. If you use a vinegar cured pickle, you might want to use it's juice instead of white wine vinegar or lemon juice.

-- The very menschlich (manly in German & Yiddish) Israeli brine pickles are strong, salty, zippy, garlicky and make a real difference and cut the sweetness of the potato mayonnaise flavor of the salad. Other deli type pickles or sour dills also work. Some people use sweet pickles or pickle relish and like it, but I feel the tangy salty ones contrast with the potatoes and make a lively salad. A few times I have used French conrichons which are pickled in wine vinegar and seasoned with tarragon. It makes a sophisticated salad some people will like.

Red onions mellow out in the salad and do not have as sharp a flavor as white or brown onions. Green onions are too assertive and like dill weed tend to overpower the other flavors.

There are many other fine potato salads including the herb rich French and Italian ones where the dressing is white wine vinegar & olive oil, not mayonnaise, and the warm bacon and apple cider vinegar German potato salads. Even Asians make a mild creamy potato salad that you will find with Hawaiian cooking or as a side dish with a robust chili seasoned Korean Barbecue.

Once when I realized I didn't have any celery I took a can of water chestnuts and chopped them and added then to the salad. It provided the need crunch and blended in well.

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A ham in Hollywood.

Our Christmas ham fresh from the oven. Photo taken by Mara Kelly

A long time ago when my daughter was a baby my wife and I decided that rather than make the rounds on Christmas Day it was easier just to stay home. We set up a buffet so friends and family came and went as they wished and their holiday schedule permitted. Checking out the cost of things we made a baked ham the center piece of the buffet table, ham was and remains the most cost effective way to provide meat for a large crowd. We made a large potato salad and set out a spread of pickles, olives and other garnishes. My wife made her signature holiday dish, a Pizza Rustica, which is not a pizza but a tall pie of puff pastry over layers of salami, Italian ham, spinach, provolone, mortadella and dried tomatoes, sort of classic hero sandwich without bread. Our friends and family would bring something, usually sweet and we would have a pleasant relaxed day. Since we live in Hollywood most of the time people sat in the back yard during the afternoon.

We still have our Open House on the afternoon of Christmas Day. The center piece is still a baked whole ham. Today, for most of visitors it is the one and only time of the year they eat real ham. Unlike spiral hams, this whole ham does not dry out or get too salty or sugary when slow roasted. The slow roasting does cook out most of the brine added to the ham in processing. The glaze and the cloves give it a richer more complex flavor. Here is how we do it:

Take one large ham, 20 to 25 pounds. We use Farmer John’s, since it is the local favorite. In those parts of the country where real “county hams” are available they would be even better. In the south and the Midwest people are as serious and fussy about ham as Californians are about wine. In Virginia the virtues of ham from York or Surrey counties are taken very seriously, like wine lovers contrasting the virtues of wine from Sonoma and Napa counties. The last thing before going to bed on Christmas Eve, we take it out of the refrigerator and set it in the sink to come to room temperature over night. This is important because it lets the ham cook evenly and come to temperature more quickly the next day. In the morning we unwrap the ham and prepare it. First we spray the big black roasting pan and the rack with Pam -- this will save you hours of scrubbing the next day. Then we wash off and dry the ham, set it on the rack. Now we score the fat and pork skin in the traditional crisscross cross pattern of one inch squares. Next we take a cup full of whole cloves and stick one in the center of each of the squares. Then we make our ham glaze.

Ham Glaze:

The glaze is savory, meaning it is sweet and salty, tangy and with sharp citrus edge. The brown sugar and molasses ensure a rich deep caramelized crust while the sour orange pulp and tartness of the marmalade and the sharp hotness of the mustard are the counterpoint to the rich sweetness.

One jar of tart rough cut orange marmalade, preferably the original Dundee brand from Scotland, although a homemade or domestic one works if it is chunky and on the tart side.

To this we add one cup of Dijon mustard (A sharp “brown” mustard works too).

Next add a cup of brown sugar, two tablespoons of dark molasses and as much orange juice to thin the mixture so it can be beaten together.

Brush this on the ham. Now tent the ham loosely in aluminum foil and put a couple quarts of water and a sliced orange in the bottom of the roasting pan. (This makes for a moist heat and does not dry out the ham.)

Once an hour brush on a thin coat of the glaze. When you are down to the last hour removed the aluminum foil and bush on a heavy coat of the glaze, repeat every fifteen minutes until you have used up the glaze mixture.

Pull the ham out and let it rest half an hour on a platter in the center of the buffet table. It is a very impressive dish and one whose rich fragrance permeates the whole house. People like to take pictures of it. Finally, carve it into two platters, one for the large slices and another for the cracklings and odd and irregular pieces. We have loaves of sliced rye and sourdough bread on the table, young people seem to prefer sandwiches while adults eat their ham “straight.”

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Like Cinderella's pumpkin, the “roach coach” poufs into a high end cafe on wheels.

The current fad in LA for high grade or at least serious mobile kitchens is a good thing. It is an innovation and a fusion whose time has come. These rolling kitchens have been around for more than a generation and usually known as “roach coaches.” Most of them serve a mix of Mexican and American cooking depending on their clients, and their daily route from office to factory to this or that other site. Few people realize that this form of mobile kitchen had a highly improbable birth. Forty or more years ago an Armenian immigrant from the USSR was eating lunch with his coworkers and they lamented that all you could get from a truck was cold sandwiches and prepackaged salads and and candy.

The immigrant mentioned that when he was drafted into the Red Army, he had spent his years as a cook in a mobile field kitchen. Somehow he was able to convince a friend or relative that there was a big market for these mobile kitchens and they built one and then another and soon they were everywhere and the old cold food catering trucks all but disappeared.

What is happening now that is good is that trained chef’s and cooks have taken these mobile kitchens and begun to use them to offer high quality food in their ethnic tradition or in a hybrid fusion of American and other cooking traditions. By parking them near clubs and other venues popular with young adults that empty late at night, they provide high quality food to people who need it at a time and place where it is hard to get. Some of the fusion's are highly personal, like the Korean Taco truck that more or less kicked off the trend. Over time I am sure many other forms of fusion menus will develop and compete for acceptance. Like any fad, this can be carried too far, but I suspect high quality mobile kitchens are here to stay and will become the up scale part of the mobile kitchen industry. They will serve the affluent in the evening as the earlier trucks served the working class morning and noon and the middle class on the weekends at parks and beaches.

What to expect? Barbecue trucks serving meats from one or more traditions, ultra high end coaches offering Segruva Caviar and the rarest and most precious Jamon Iberico, a mobile calzone kitchen, a fine intense ramen truck, a mobile kitchen from Campanile offering the variety of special sandwiches that are the Thursday night special at the restaurant. Other things that might appear could be a deli truck with pastrami, brisket and corn beef on rye and Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda, a Polish truck with a soup kitchen with flaki (tripe), beef barley, sauerkraut, sorrel, kapusta (cabbage) or any of the other dozens of great soups from the Polish kitchen. Who knows we might see a Portuguese American truck offering linguiça sandwiches and steaming bowls of Azores style bean soup and kale & potato soup or a Spanish one offering chorizo sandwiches, hot or cold tortillas (potato & onion omelets) and plates of jamon y machego cheese, or a French one selling onion soup, ham and cheese on a baguette, croque’s and cones of pomme frites & remoulade.

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Breakfast, the most varied meal.

An Irish breakfast of fried eggs, back bacon, country pork sausages and black and white pudding. This and all the photos of food in this post are public domain from Wikapedia.

Breakfast, now there’s a topic, the first meal of the day and the one least pondered and most enjoyed. Every nation has its local breakfast favorites, including a few where the specialty is nothing, literally nothing at all.

In Rome, ancient or modern, breakfast is not much.

Italy that beloved and beautify land does not do breakfast. Italians don’t eat it and the don’t capish’ breakfast either. They have a name for it, primo collazione, they just don’t eat it. This goes back to ancient Roman times. A Roman would drop his feet out of bed and right into his sandals. Then he would wash his hands and face in cold water, rinse his mouth after seeing to his teeth with a special kind of malleable twig (just like most modern Hindus) then he would drop a tunic -- sort of long t-shirt that fell to his knees -- over his head tie it with a belt and bang, it was then off to work. If he was an important fellow, his wife or valet would drape his white wool toga around him, he would receive morning calls from his “clients” and catch up on gossip and lay a little walking around money on those who needed some. Then he was off to the forum for legal business after a courtesy call at his patron’s house on the way. Everybody except the Emperor had a patron above him and clients below. During the morning he might have a bread roll with a piece of cheese or ham, (it is a panini today) or a whatever fruit was in season or a handful of dried fruit. Finally around one thirty he would stop his work or business and head home for cena (the principal meal of the day). After sunset Romans would have a bowl of soup or a salad and fruit if it was warm. No breakfast, like many modern Americans, the Romans didn't have the time or interest in eating early in the day. The most Italians still don’t. Some strong coffee, but eat something: no. The latte which younger Americans have come to love is strictly a morning beverage in Italy where nobody ever orders one after midday. They can and do cheat late morning with a snack, like what the English call “eleven's.”

A traditional English breakfast, sitting on a tatami floor mat in a kimono.

The Japanese and most east Asians eat a light breakfast of rice porridge - - jook or con gee to the Chinese -- along with some dried salt fish and pickled vegetables -- not something that would charm many foreigners. Now the Japanese have long studied the world with great care and close attention to every detail. When they judged something was the best they have appropriated it for themselves, often improving it in the process. They took the battered fried fish of the Portuguese 500 years ago and refined it into feather light “tempura.” They studied all the whiskeys of the world and their leading distillery Suntory now makes a fine whiskey that tastes more Scotch than the real thing. However, as is so often the case in Japan, unexpectedly a real world class breakfast does exist if you are staying in a traditional Japanese inn. In these ryokan you will be offered a traditional English breakfast. This is God’s own truth. A staff member in a kimono will appear with a tray with pots of strong black tea and hot milk, a bowl of oatmeal porridge, fried “back” bacon, two eggs fried sunny side up in the bacon fat and cold toast with marmalade.

A good example of a traditional English Breakfast.

from It is a simple and well known story that brought this British staple to Japan. In the early 1920’s a squadron of the Imperial Navy was detailed to take the Crown Prince and his brother on a world tour. In England the two princes were invited to stay with King George V and his family. They were deeply impressed by sharing a hearty English breakfast around the table with simple family style informality. His Royal Highness George V, by the grace of God, King of England, Ireland and Scotland, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India and the Dominions beyond the Seas, assured his guests that starting the day with a solid filling English breakfast gave you the strength and conviction to carry on through the day no matter what happened. It should be remembered that until Britain gave way to heavy American pressure in the mid 1920’s, Japan had long been Britain’s most reliable Asian ally. The Japanese admired the UK as a near prefect model for an ambitious developing island nation. In a rare newspaper interview while he was in Britain, the Crown Prince told the Japanese people how he had taken the fatherly advice of King George to heart and henceforth he would begin his day like the British monarch with a large English Breakfast. Whoosh with the suddenness of an earthquake every Japanese man wanted to join in too. Even the otherwise ultra traditional Japanese Inns began to serve an authentic English Breakfast.

Apparently for this and other reasons the Japanese retain a devotion to the memory of King George V. Fifteen years ago my wife and daughter and I were having dinner in the vast dinning room of the Empress Hotel in Victoria British Columbia. On the back wall in golden frames were a pair of larger than life size portraits of King George V in a Mountie uniform and his spouse Queen Mary. As we ate our dinner, through the main door came an escorted group of forty or more middle aged Japanese tourists. The tour leader lined them up in three rows at the edge of the large dance floor and then shouted a command in Japanese and all the tourists bowed low three times to the royal portraits. It surprised us and it amazed the Canadian diners and waiters who looked on befuddled that the Japanese clearly still rendered royal honors even to dimly remembered monarchs. We tended to forget that technically Canada is still a monarchy and legally is a self governing Dominion of the English crown.

Portuguese American breakfast of fresh cheese, hard tack and strong coffee.

My Portuguese American grandparent’s favorite breakfast was unusual in this country. It was strong coffee served with fresh homemade “farmer’s” cheese, soft lightly salted and still retaining the sweetness of the milk eaten with hardtack, small round hard ship's bread or “sea biscuit.” When I was a child it was still baked somewhere back in New England and shipped in barrels to California where it could be bought at the one of the stalls at the huge Crystal Palace market in San Francisco and a few grocery stores and bakeries that served the Portuguese American community. This is the round thick hard as stone sea biscuit that their ancestors had taken to sea from New Bedford and the Açores when fishing or whaling. Even after dunking in the strong black coffee the hardtack was a best chewy. I never got the taste for hard tack, although I can still remember the slightly sour yet sweet fresh white cheese. On Sunday mornings my grandmother would bake a round morcella - - a sausage made from pork blood, onions, watercress and rice seasoned with cinnamon, cumin, garlic and paprika. It is the Portuguese version of the Mexican and Spanish sausage of the same name, of the French boudim noir, Polish kaszanka and the Black Pudding of the British Isles. While the Italians make a blood sausage it includes raisins and sometimes pine nuts which makes it sweeter and milder and being Italian not intended for breakfast.

Polish kaszanka blood sausage. (KA-shan-KA)

Morcella or anyother blood sausage is a dish that truly separates paisanos from everybody else. People not familiar with it will always remember it since it causes guarantees two days of the worse heartburn they ever had. It sits inert in their gut like a cinnamon, garlic, paprika flavored brick. It should be approached with the greatest caution if you are not familiar with it.

Bacon makes the breakfast.

There are many great breakfasts in the world, an Irish farm breakfast cooked over a turf fire with the mystic rich cinnamon musky smell of the burning peat filling the air with along with the heavy smell of dark strong aromatic Irish tea. In England at Bury St. Edmund's I had a breakfast of Suffolk sweet pickle bacon and eggs. This is the finest bacon in the world, marinated in black malt vinegar, treacle (molasses) and spices before smoking. It is even more majestic than the hard Hungarian paprika smoked bacon or tidewater Virginia’s finest bacon.

The Australian Breakfast, fit for real blokes and heroes.

In Australia you can begin your day with the most manly of all fast breaking meals -- a Sydney side Breakfast of thin beef steak topped with two fried eggs and surrounded by a dozen small perfect pan fried Sydney Rock Oysters -- the ethereal essence of brine and sea foam. It must be a southern hemisphere thing, topping beefsteak with fried eggs. It is common in both Chile, Argentina and Uruguay too. After this meal you are ready to take on the world and ready to sing every verse and chorus of The Wild Colonial Boy. After this meal and a couple mugs of dark brown tea you know in your heart that Australia really is God’s own country. Where else could you get this many meal and also eat a plate of ripe tropical fruit fresh from the tropical fields and orchards of Queensland, Australia’s northeast corner.

Hangtown Fry, a Gold Rush icon.

In San Francisco while few places will serve it for breakfast anymore, you can have America’s take on the Australian breakfast for lunch at the fish houses like Tadish’s and Sam’s. I’m talking about Hangtown Fry, a survivor from the Gold Rush era. It is two or three very thick rashers of bacon and a dozen pan fried oysters tucked inside a three egg omelet. A bit more civilized than the Sydney side breakfast but still one great load of protein and the making it a day where you are ready for whatever they send your your way.

Of course there are every sort of pancakes: In New England served with amber maple syrup, in Dixie with the more gamy tasting sorghum syrup. In Oregon they serve them with dark thick tannin zesty blackberry syrup. In the upper Midwest they make the delicate wide thin Scandinavian griddle cakes with butter and tart little lingonberry or home made cranberry jam.

New England has salty as hell but savory red flannel hash. In New York the favorite breakfast is Nova Scotia lox and cream cheese on fresh plain salt water bagels. In Philadelphia you get Scrapple with your eggs and toast. If you want a very sophisticated breakfast you can go to New Orleans and order Eggs Sardou named after the French playwright who wrote the story for Puccini’s Tosca. You also can get Eggs Hussar, or the more commonplace Eggs Benedict or Florentine. In more down to earth southern places your eggs will come with grits -- which to me is “southern” for what is called polenta in San Francisco.

Huevos made a great breakfast.

Huevos Rancheros as traditionally served in northern Mexico.

Mexico also is nation of great breakfasts. As any native Angelino knows, on Sunday mornings you can easily get a big bowl of menudo, the tripe homey soup beloved as the Breakfast of Champions. Mexican Americans claim it is a sovereign hangover cure. In Chicago the Poles make flacki with the same curative potency but made with potatoes, onions and tripe without any chilies. Ironically, this is only one of the many cultural tastes and values shared by these two communities, but that is a separate subject. Both nations came late to a particularly ferocious form of Catholicism, have an icon of the Madonna as a national symbol, a deep and strong sense of aggrieved nationalism, a fascination with death and martyrdom, a stubborn sense of identity, a love for festivals, dancing polkas and drinking beer and clear distilled spirits. Both people are legendary hard workers and take work with a seriousness lacking in most communities. Today in Chicago there are at least three trilingual bands that play rustic polka music for parties and weddings. English, Spanish & Polish lyrics are sung and many of the songs share the same melodies.

Here in Los Angeles there are any number of fancy or homey places that make the most life affirming breakfast --- huevos rancheros. This is a heroic meal, a platter of hot re fried pinto beans and three fried eggs topped with a zesty salsa and eaten with three or four fresh hot corn tortillas. There is a more upscale version of this called chillaqules -- where the salsa and eggs are scrambled with crisps corn chips and maybe some fresh lime juice. There is also huevos con choizo, where the eggs are cooked with spicy pork sausage and huevos con machaca, eggs cooked with onions, chilies and salty dried chopped beet. The simplest Mexican breakfast is a cup of cafe olla (coffee sweetened with raw sugar and cinnamon) and a piece of pan dolce or perhaps a cup of thick foamy Mexican hot chocolate (champarado) and a long churro, deep fried pastry.

There are three old joints in LA where you can get a real American breakfast. At Philippe’s you get your eggs and homemade fried potatoes served with light hot biscuits. At the Original Pantry a robust very old fashioned American breakfast is served with hot cakes or buckwheat cakes if you want them instead of well grilled potatoes. Finally at Musso & Franks are their signature “flannel cakes.” As big around as the wide plate, light as a cloud and hardly thicker than a sheet of writing paper. A real masterpiece and worth the trip, especially on a lazy June Saturday morning when the fog just hangs on and hangs on and LA does a good if palm lined imitation of Seattle.

And you, I know you have your favorite breakfasts ranging from a platter of fresh tropical fruit in a Hawaiian honeymoon suite to a zesty plate of curried County Captain or kedgeree served in a more stuffy than necessary little hotel in tidewater Virginia or a B & B in a village in the Cotswold's in England.

Poached eggs on toasted sour dough bread.

Coffee & hot pastries on the Oakland ferryboat.

The Southern Pacific Railroad's steam ferry Berkeley at the Ferry Building before WW II, from an old postcard.

If you are old as I am, you might just remember the great coffee and hot Snails (archaic San Francisco slang for what is generally called a “Danish.”) and Bear Claws served on the upper deck galley of the black and white Southern Pacific double ended steam ferries that crossed San Francisco Bay from the Ferry Building to the Oakland Mole until 1958. The hot fresh pastries were a specialty of the ferry boats. During the summer before they were withdrawn from service my father took me and some friends to San Francisco where we boarded the San Leandro for the trip to Oakland. He wanted us to experience a breakfast on board with the boat swaying slightly on the waves and the deck vibrating with the pulse of the steam pistons turning the drive shaft. He took us up to the second deck and we had coffee and pastries as the boat steamed through the light misty fog under the Bay Bridge to the ancient wooden "Oakland Mole" which was a Victorian train shed way out on a pier where the trains made their final stop. The passengers then walked down the platform to the ferry slips and the short voyage across the Bay to San Francisco. At the end of shed you walked under a very large round stained glass window which glowed in the afternoon sun with a huge Southern Pacific logo of railroad tracks leading into the Sunset. Before the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge were opened dozens of black and white ferries steamed back and forth across the bay to Oakland, Berkeley and half a dozen other cities. The landing of the ferry into its slip was great to watch from the rail just below the pilot house. When the boat headed into the wooden walled slip it coasted until it skidded off the wooden retaining wall on one side or the other with a loud scraping sound and once firmly inside the funnel shaped slip the front prop under the bow went into reverse and braked the boat with a huge surge of water just before the bow touched the end of the slip and the entire boat shuddered as the wooden pilings and wooden sides of slip groaned and screached. You can still experience this on New York's Statten Island ferry and on many of Washington State ferries running in and out of Seattle.

The lunch counter on a ferryboat in the late 1930s.

Perhaps you love Yorkshire kippers or Parisian Omelet de fines herbs. Maybe it’s just toast with tart Dundee marmalade or bread with sweet Danish butter and fruit preserves. Whatever it might be you have had great and lousy breakfasts and can remember them too. An American girl who spent a summer at the University of Krakow never got used to a Polish breakfast being exactly the same a Polish lunch, something that is the rule there and in most of Germany and the Scandinavian nations.

In northern Europe breakfast sometimes includes Roll Mops, pickled herring rapped around a dill pickle, not something most Americans would like to see before lunch.

In Norway many hotels will serve an "English" Breakfast to people who are flat out horrified by a local Viking breakfast of smoked and picked fish with rye bread.

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Over the hills and through the woods to Grandmother’s house

For whatever reason my mother this year set up Thanksgiving dinner without the usual turkey. She wanted a ham and we ate ham. She and the rest of the family made most of our traditional side dishes and desserts, but not bird and no dressing, gravy or cranberry sauce (we always have home made whole berry relish plus store bought cranberry jelly). It was a smaller than usual table, only eight instead of the usual fourteen to twenty, counting the younger ones who sit at the “kid’s table” in the living room.

We had a fine dinner and all was well until Friday. There was no leftover turkey for sandwiches to eat during the non stop day long series of college football games. Even more their was no pot of turkey soup for supper that night. Missed it, missed it a lot more than we missed the actual turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

Two things to write about were the pies my mother made for Thanksgiving dessert: a wild blackberry pie and an apricot pie. The intense tangy wild blackberries make a memorable pie. Even with the added sugar it is still a tart rich and wild. The flavor is much more complex than the jam like berry pies made from farm grown berries. One scoop of vanilla ice cream sets it up fine. The other pie was an apricot pie she made from a recipe of her aunt Minnie. Until a generation ago our home town just north of San Jose was a major center of apricot orchards and I grew up working in cousin’s farm picking, cutting and drying ‘cots. There were about five different varieties at that time including the Blenheims which were almost a big as a peach and had a honeyed richness.

Two things make our old family apricot pie recipe. First of all we always mixed a handful of dried apricots with the fresh ones. This added sharpness and intensity that fresh fruit by itself misses. Additionally, the pie uses tapioca to thicken the juices so the pie isn’t soupy or too juicy. It is a wonderful pie, apricots with just a bit of a kick. Since fresh apricots are put into a closed shed and exposed to sulfur smoke before going into the sun to dry, this may be part of the tang. If you are sensitive to sulfur, take care.

On the way home Sunday from northern California on Highway 99 we stopped at a Sonic hamburger stand in Madera. My daughter and I wanted to check it out since we see Sonic ads on TV even though there are none in Los Angeles itself. Sonic is outlets surround us in Orange county and in the most distant suburbs but none are in the metro area.

The stand was interesting, no dinning room at all just a large covered outside area with tables. Even more interesting was the two long rows of old time drive in stalls also under shade covers on one side where you drive up in your car and are served by girls on in line skates, car hops in the lingo of the ‘40’s and ‘50’s when most dinners were “drive in’s.” When chains like Jack in the Box and McDonald's developed the drive through windows in the ‘60’s the old fashioned drive in disappeared. Chains like Mel’s in northern California and Bob’s Big Boy in the south kept on going, but without the car hops in their shorts and skates. Also cars got smaller than there were in previous decades. Buicks and Hudson Hornets in 1950 were as roomy as today’s limo’s.

Other oddities of Sonic are the fact that you order by electronic order panels, not to a human. You can pay the machine by credit or ATM card or pay the car hop who brings your order in cash. Sonic originate in Texas or Oklahoma and it shows on their menu: they offer armadillo eggs ( jalapeño peppers stuffed with cream cheese, breaded and deep fried) and a chicken fried steak sandwich in addition to chicken sandwiches. The basic sonic burger was a large one patty burger on a larger than usual bun. For a chain burger it was good, up to Carl Jr’s bigger burgers. They also offer a “coney” which is short for a coney island chili dog. I didn’t try one, but it looked more Texas than NYC.

I’m not ready to pass any serious judgment on this chain, but it does clearly march to it’s own drum and apparently has a lot of fans. It offers a far wider selection of drinks, shakes, smoothies and fruit drinks than any other chain along with some clearly Texas items. I’ll get back to you on this. Let me know if you have feed back.

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A traditional San Francisco Crab Feed.

Photo from California Department of Fish & Game

In the 1950’s when I was in grade school once or twice a year we would get a call from my mother’s cousin in San Francisco and she and her husband would drive out to Niles, a small town where we lived in the East Bay now folded into the City of Fremont. It was usually a rainy Saturday or Sunday between St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick's Day. Late that afternoon my mother’s parents and other friends and cousins from both sides would pull into our long gravel driveway. The Martin’s would arrive with a large shopping bag with half a dozen round hard crusted loaves of Laraboru (sp?) Sour Dough French Bread and a gunny sack of Dungeness Crabs still warm from the steam pot where they were cooked. My parents would make sure the house was in order and dinning room table had the leaf in it. On these days a card table would be set up near it to hold what wouldn’t fit on the table. Unlike any other time the table would be covered with a thick layer of old newspapers not a table cloth. My mother would make a grocery run and make a big green salad and some other side dishes and bake pies for dessert. There would be wine, the heavy dark unfiltered old vines Zinfandel my Grandfather made every year from the grapes on a hillside in Woodside. There would also be white wine for my grandmother and the others who preferred it.

This traditional “crab feed” as it was always called was something that all the native Californians, both my Irish and Portuguese relatives loved and looked forward to as they had as long as anybody could remember. In New England they had clams and lobsters. In California we had pacific crab and abalone. The crab harvests are now bigger than ever but abalone is is now $50. a serving at the maybe half dozen places in the State that are able to buy it directly from divers.

In the kitchen the dozen crabs would be broken apart, the legs and claws going into big bowls or platters while my mother would break the meat out of the center of the crab and turn the ordinary green salad into a crab louis. Then the feast would begin. We would sit around the table with nutcrackers and metal picks and go after the meat in the legs and claws, the biggest pieces were in the claws. Each of us would make our special blend of condiments to go with the crab from bowls of lemon wedges, thick homemade chili sauce, horseradish, louie dressing, mayonnaise all with or without some tobasco sauce to bring it to the heat level they liked. The loaves of sour dough bread were sliced and we had butter not everyday margarine to spread on the slices. The crab was the main event, but the tangy chewy hard crispy crusted San Francisco sour dough was almost as much a treat since it was not available this far from the city at this time. We could by a good bread made in Oakland, but it never had or could have the “bite” of the real one baked in the city.

This was the 1950’s and dunginess crab was our favorite seafood and while not cheap, it was not so expensive that we didn’t have one or two of these crab dinners during the winter. In Maryland and Virginia families would do the same thing but with the little sweet blue crabs, in Florida they would feast on big thick shelled Stone Crab claws, in Louisiana at different times they would feast on crab or crayfish, gulf shrimp or oysters. The seafood would be boiled and eaten with gusto. Their tables were protected by a thick layer of newspapers too. And when dinner was over their would be a small mountain of shells that always brought on noisy brawl when the neighborhood cats gathered to fight over their crab feast.

As I wrote at the beginning, these were always gray rainy days, but they were also one of the high points of the year. A crab feed rate at the top feasts of the year along with my grandfather's Forth of July barbecue, Thanksgiving Day's turkey dinner and in early fall when my grandmother would cook the first wild mushrooms we would pick. My grandfather would go though the buckets of mushrooms and check each one and if it passed muster he put it into a basket, the doubtful ones went into the garbage.

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Only the locals know.

In most places there is an iconic local fast food item or two that everybody knows and assumes you do too. In LA I would nominate Tommy’s Chili Burgers and Pink’s Chili Dogs. In the Long Beach area it would be the Burger at Hof’s Hut, the iconic Southern California full dress hamburger -- what a New Yorker would call “one ‘a dem California salads on a poi’fectly good hamburger.” (New Yorkers like a burger with mustard and grilled onions just like they like Dogs with mustard & sauerkraut, punchy handfuls that would not get far on this sunny coast.)

Where I grew up on the Oakland side of San Francisco Bay our icon fast food was a Casper’s hot dog. Casper’s began in the 1930’s and the local chain is still owned by the grandchildren of the Armenian founders. Like most iconic handfuls, it is and was simplicity itself -- a very good real Frankfurter on a bun with it’s garnish. At Casper's the steamed sausages were put into a warm steamed bun, about three inches shorter than than the Dog. Then a smear of mustard went on one side, a smear of pickle relish on the other and the cook then sliced two half rounds of onion and two wedges of fresh tomato and slipped them on top of the Dog. That was it. The onions and tomatoes were always sliced when the dog was made. The perfect west coast hot dog and one with a natural casing and the juicy “snap” when you took your first bite. All the garnishes were supporting players to the high quality old country tasting Frankfurter.

Late at night, for lunch, for a snack the Casper’s dog was and remains the Gold Standard of hot dogs. Originally and when I was a kid, that was it, that was what they sold at Casper’s although you could get a bag of potato chips if you wanted and sodas in bottles. At this time it was like that at Tommy’s in LA too. Today the menu has opened up and Casper’s serves chicken dogs, a chili dog, polish sausages and hot links. Still with potato chips, no fries. (Tommy’s has added fries over the years). My parent’s like to stop for a night cap Hot Dog on the way home from a night in San Francisco.

What make a place iconic is the simplicity and directness of their specialty and the good sense and commitment not to mess with it. Longevity is a hallmark of this commitment: Casper’s has been serving their hot dog since 1934, Tommy’s has been serving their chili burger since 1946, Pinks since 1940. All are family owned and this is also important.

In Pasadena there are some very interesting local burger joints, Lucky Boy Burger on Arroyo Seco across the side street from Trader Joe's with it’s big very California hamburger and huge greasy sacks of very good onion rings. You will find a very similar big burger at The Hat although the Hat is better known for their lavish salty Pastrami Sandwich on a large French Roll. Not a deli pastrami sandwich for sure, but it is as good a pastrami sandwich as was ever made by the goyim. One thing the sandwich could use is a better mustard. The quality of the sandwich calls for one with bite and depth, I’d love it if they stepped up and at least offered Gulden’s spicy brown mustard.

Pie & Burger near Cal Tech makes a very west coast burger that is so messy it runs down you forearms, drips onto the counter and down your chin. One thing about Pie & Burger is that you expect to see the four guys from “Big Bang” at one of the tables toward the back of the place. I would expect the very rigid Sheldon would order a customized burger that was both less messy and less fun. Wolf Burgers on Lake street offers a very good burger you get to customize to your exact spec’s along with good breakfasts and a big menu for a burger joint. Wolf Burgers is a good laid back California place with a lot of live potted plants that offers high grade ingredients and really wants to make it exactly the way you want. They have a nice patio to eat al fresco in good weather, which is the usual kind in Pasadena to the envy of all eastern people who watch the New Years Day Rose Parade and hear about it being seventy degrees in Pasadena when they are freezing.

As I said almost every town has it’s favorite if not iconic burger or sandwich, I know there is a place in Sacramento that is famous for making burgers encased and surrounded by melted cheese, there are joints in the Twin Cities that make cheese burgers with the cheese melted inside the meat patty. There are places that flame broil their burgers instead of grilling them on the steel flat top grill. Please use the comments box below to let me know about the favorite if not iconic burgers and dogs from your hometown. I know I have barely scratched the surface. Imagination, a lucky accident or mistake, long time loyalty all make for unique and much loved inventions. There are a lot of them out there.

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Breakfast in LA: Huevos Rancheros

Something odd about what is no doubt the most popular single breakfast in Los Angeles is that the more you pay for it, the lousier it gets. This is counter intuitive but I am afraid all too true. What I’m talking about is my favorite start to the day, a platter of Huevos Rancheros. The further up the food chain, the worse this hearty soul satisfying meal becomes.

In case you are new to the West Coast, Huevos Ranchero is the traditional breakfast in northern Mexico. In English it would be Ranch Style Eggs. I first experienced this wonderful meal on Spring Break in the sixties. After driving through the night on our way to Mazatlan in the middle of the Sonora Desert we stopped at a rustic Pemex gas station that was also a tienda y cantina to fill up and eat. The place was all by itself in the wildest wilderness, a long building with walls of rust colored stone and a corrugated metal roof and a shady verandah across the front. Inside the far end was a bar and dinning room with simple homemade tables and a mix of chairs and benches painted in bright colors.

Our unofficial guide and classmate, a Mexican Irishman from Mexico City told us to have the huevos rancheros. We went along and fifteen minutes later the daughter of the cook served us each a platter of refritos with two perfectly fried sunny side up eggs on a crispy corn tortilla under a ladle of warm ranchero sauce, neither mild nor hot. We also got a pile of hot home made corn tortillas. Wow, it was a great breakfast, a huge load of protein that we ate with cups of smooth rich cafe olla, literally “rotten coffee” which is strong Mexican grown coffee sweetened with raw brown sugar and cinnamon. Great stuff. For some reason Mexican coffee while aromatic has less bitterness than our coffee. We didn’t talk much and made short work of the food. We were hungry and every platter was wiped clean with the hot tortillas.

Back here in LA, something that drives crazy is that this classic dish suffers terribly as the level of the joint selling it moves up the market. You can pay fifteen bucks for huevos rancheros at a hotel dinning room and get parody of the traditional meal. For starters, the refried pinto bears are replaced with underdone black beans. Then the tortilla is factory made from white wheat flour and as appealing as a cold buttermilk pancake. Two poached eggs rest on this limp pasty starch and they are covered with a warm overly tomato and far too spicy sauce. Ugh! Apparently our foodies are in love with black beans, even though they are as rare in northern Mexico as corn bread and grits are in Minnesota.

In diners and coffee shops the management often tampers with this dish on the mistaken assumption that their customers don’t want it to be too Mexican. Here you pay eight to ten bucks for a toned down huevos de gavachos. Awful stuff. (Gavacho is what Mexicans call us, gringo is what we think they call us.)

As I said, the cheaper the place the better the huevos rancheros. Right now my favorite place for this world class breakfast is a hamburger joint in Glendale. For five bucks they give me what I want and expect, a very close replica of variorum meal I ate in the middle of the Sonora Desert almost fifty years ago. When they call my number, they present me with a platter covered with an inch of real pinto bean refritos with shreds of queso ranchero melted into them, at one end on a corn tortilla are three sunny side up eggs covered in a warm medium salsa ranchero. Tightly rapped in aluminum foil are four small warm corn tortillas. This is it, the real thing. When you finish the last tortilla and wipe up the last smear of egg york and ranchero sauce, you feel ready and willing to take on the world, ready to mount your horse and head for the north end of the rancho.

The lesson here is that with huevos ranchero, do it right or not at all. The dish is simplicity itself and that is what makes it great. It’s like going into a little place in Japan and getting a perfect bowl of steamed rice topped with a grilled fresh mackerel lightly sauced with teriyaki sauce. A perfect combination of clean pure flavors.

The place I mention is Burger Central on Central Avenue in Glendale half way between the Galleria and the 134 Freeway. They also make a very good flame broiled quarter pound hamburger and serve it with regular or steak fries. It is almost as good as the one at Oinkster. Another place that make real huevos rancheros is Doña Rosa at Arroyo Seco & California in Pasadena. I can also add that almost any little place in the Barrio makes real huevos rancheros for a fair price, and they might even serve it with home made corn tortillas too.

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California & Salad Days

California is and has been the salad bowl of the nation since the railroads perfected the refrigerator car a hundred years ago. The Southern Pacific and Union Pacific built thousands of bright yellow orange insulated "refer" cars as they were called, established ice houses along the routes to keep them cold and developed high speed steam locomotives to pull the trains. Today the Union Pacific keeps the last steam locomotive that is still in continuous service, a large fast Challenger class engine that was specifically designed to haul the Pacific Fruit Express as this service was called.

My wife’s mother Fran grew up in Chicago. Seeing it on a menu, she told us how in pre-World War II Chicago, the “Wedge Salad” was a famous local specialty even in winter time at the best restaurants and steak houses. Because the railroads could deliver Salinas Valley lettuce to Chicago in three days, the restaurants could offer this delicacy. Still a steakhouse favorite, the Wedge Salad is as its name indicates is a large wedge of iceberg lettuce served whole on a plate with a heavy garnish of bacon shards, crumbled blue cheese, chopped fresh tomato and hard boiled egg then dressed with a white wine vinaigrette dressing. The diner’s carving up the dense crisp wedge was part of its appeal, which indicates its steakhouse origin, since diners already had a sharp steak knife along side their plate.

A Union Pacific Challenger locomotive built to haul high speed Pacific Fruit Express trains from California to the Midwest. Still on the active roster, it is the largest steam locomotice still in service in the world. Photo copyright by Allen Robertson used with permission.

In California at this time in the better restaurants, salads were either made at table side like the Caesar or dressed and tossed table side as they still do at Lawry’s Prime Rib. In San Francisco in the simple family run Italian restaurants like the New Pisa salads were served in a bowl that came out of the kitchen and stopped at the counter of the older woman who supervised the the dinning room. She would carefully pour on just the right amount of olive oil and then the waitress would deliver to the customer’s table where a cruet of red wine vinegar waited. Then either the waitress or the head of the table would pour on the vinegar and toss the salad then pass it around.

There is a unique salad that has long been the specialty at Clearman’s in San Marino and its branches. This salad, actually a pair of simple salads that are eaten together are memorable and addictive. They call the pair “Red & White” salads. The White salad is lettuce tossed in a not too rich creamy blue cheese dressing. It is paired with tart snappy red cabbage salad in a red wine vinegar dressing. This is the “Red” half of the partnership. The “White Salad” must be dressed immediately before serving to make sure the lettuce stays crisp. The “Red Salad” on the other hand has to be made a day or at least half a day before to set up. The red cabbage has to loose some of its moisture and soften just a bit while it absorbs the tangy vinegar sharpness that makes the combination of the two salads fascinating and refreshing.

Recipes for the pair salads are available at the LA Time food blog. They are not the actual recipes that Clearman’s keep to themselves, but savvy culinary “reverse engineering” that results in a near perfect duplicate of the original. On LA Times food blog do a search for “Clearman’s Salad.”

Like many trademark restaurant dishes including Joe’s Special, Philippe’s French Dip sandwich and Taylor’s Steakhouse “Molly Salad,” I suspect this pairing was a happy accident that the customers loved and asked for again and again. My theory is that the “red” salad came about when someone in the kitchen prepared a batch of red cabbage to be cooked down into the traditional German Rotkohl but never got around to cooking it. Someone in the kitchen tasted it after it sat over night and realized this was a cabbage salad with zest and crunchiness and served it. At the table the customers themselves most likely mixed the “Red” salad with the “White” one and the fit was a natural.

The whole phenomenon of the “happy accident” will be the topic of a future blog. A surprising number of well known dishes originated by lucky chance not the more common rational intention. One reason why they are memorable is the pure mischance or unusual circumstances of their creation, they broke some rule or tradition in an unexpected way, yet they worked. Another coming post will be a rant at the wide spread debasement of two California classics, the Caesar and Cobb salads. While not accidents these two icon dishes were both the result of someone daring to innovate when unusual circumstances demanded it. As the old US Navy wisdom has it, Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

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At meal at Jack's in San Francisco in 1965.

If there is one restaurant that I wish could visit again it is Jack’s in San Francisco. It had a long run, almost a century and a half. Some people miss other fine places, my parent’s loved the Blue Fox. In Los Angeles Scandia would head the roster of fondly remembered places. In New York there are many restaurants people recall with nostalgia. These special and favorite places keep passing on, this month the famous Cafe Des Artistes closed after almost a century. It is cherished as much or more for its pastel murals of delightful carefree arte deco nudes as for its food, a unique blend of French, American and Hungarian dishes. It was if nothing else, a deeply romantic place.

The first time I went to Jack’s in San Francisco was in August 1965 when a few of us got together to treat a friend who was about to report for duty in the Army. Even then Jack’s was a very very old place. The building was a weathered shabby three story brick building put up right after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. It was just up Sacramento Street from Montgomery Street, at the point where hill began its climb. Sacramento was a narrow side street that marched straight up and over Nob Hill. It was August in San Francisco, the weather lived up to Mark Twain's famous comment, “The coldest winter I spent in California was my summer in San Francisco.” This night was cool & foggy. When you turned off Montgomery Street, you caught a blast of misty air right off the Pacific. You entered through double beveled glass doors into a brightly lit room with a hand laid black and white hexagonal mosaic tile floor, dark wood paneling with beveled glass mirrors on the walls and a very high ceiling covered in sheets of patterned pressed tin. The dinning room was long with a bar across the front window. There were large round tables on the far wall and smaller square ones in the center and near side, all draped in stiff white table clothes. The staff was as elderly as the surroundings. After standing at the bar, without bar stools just a dinged and tarnished brass rail to rest your feet on, we were led to a stout table against the near wall and hung our rain coats on dark metal hooks screwed into the paneling. We were two or three decades younger than anyone else in the dinning room, although like them we all wore dark suits and white shirts and ties. The waiter handed each of us a menu, another relic from the nineteenth century, it was printed daily on stiff white legal size stock. It was all small black type, no art work and not even simple prose describing anything, just the names of items in French or English, a long long list of what was available printed on when inked metal type pressed directly on the paper on an antique letter press. In the 19th century Jack’s had begun as a French restaurant and still had some very old french dishes on the menu, although it was very much an American restaurant that didn’t go in for fads or much else that had not been listed since the place was reopened after the 1906 earthquake.

An oddity of Jack’s was the way drinks were served. Due to the very advanced age of most of its waiters, simple drinks and cocktails like Old Fashions, Gin & Tonics, Martini’s and Manhattans were made at the bar then poured into tall water glasses, put on the waiter’s tray with an empty cocktail or old fashioned glass for each drink. When he got to the table the elderly waiter set down stemmed cocktail glasses and then poured the cocktail into it, leaving the depleted water glass beside it. The same for whiskey, whiskey & soda and gin & tonics which arrive in the bottom of the glass with a few pieces of jagged ice chipped off a ice block at the bar. The waiter then topped off the glass with a small bottle of club soda, quinine water or with water from the pitcher of ice water on each table. This added an extra layer of ritual and intensified the antique aura and slow tempo of the restaurant.

In the evening Jack’s served a set dinner that hadn’t changed in decades. Indeed this Edwardian meal continued to served into the 1980’s. An appetizer course was followed by bowl of soup, then a salad, followed by a fish course, the entree and finally a dessert. In progressed in the long accepted sequence of a proper meal at a very traditional restaurant. You began with a cocktail while your read the menu, then ordered a bottle of white wine with the appetizer and perhaps another with the fish, then a bottle of red wine with the meat entree, and finally cognac with the coffee at the end of the meal. Since you were in San Francisco you knew when you left the restaurant sometime between nine and ten you would step out the door onto Sacramento Street and a sharp blast of foggy cold air right off the Pacific Ocean would hit your face like punch.

You chose one item from each course on the list. The appetizers included shrimp or crab cocktail, home made pates, pickled pigs feet, marinated tongue, and other items rarely if ever seen on menu’s today. Then there was a choice of soups, beef or chicken consumes, vegetable soup of some kind, scotch broth (lamb and barley -- my favorite) and a cream soup. The salad was a straight forward mixed greens and sliced tomatoes in a white wine vinaigrette with or without Roquefort crumbled on it as you prefered. That was the only salad dressing offered. The Fish Course presented a choice of local fish like petrale, rex sole, hatchery trout, and sand dabs served “dore” or “mineure.” Finally you reached the entree, the red meat course. It was a choice of that evening's roast meat & fowl or their house special marinated rump steak. The rump steak was long marinated and cooked medium rare. Dense solid meat , no fat, bone or gristle. This steak was chewy with a zippy tang from the spices and vinegar and a deep base baritone beefiness. It was served in a rich bordalaise sauce. The potatoes and vegetable were served from small platters. Desserts were simple enough: ice cream, sherbet and apple pie. A cheese platter was also available.

It took at least two hours to march through this menu. A century ago, before radio or television, it was considered civilized to spend two hours at the table for an evening meal. Each course was like a round at prize fight with a ten minute intre’act between to savor it and clear the palate for the next. The sequence of courses was that of a proper 19th century French meal with the appetizers acting like the overture of an opera: tasty tangy salty items to wake up your taste buds. A large basket of sliced crusty sourdough bread and a bowl of salty butter stayed on the table. The size of the courses was appropriate to the meal, with portions smaller than we expect today in a two or three course dinner. The appetizer was served on a leaf of lettuce and only four or five savory bites. Next the soup was served in a small bowl, but it was more than the little cup you often get today. This warmed you up. A California restaurant, at Jack’s salad came next following the Iberian custom, not the French. All the salads except Crab Louis (a favorite local lunch dish) were served with a classic white wine vinaigrette. At Jack’s it had a good sprinkling of Roquefort cheese crumbles. Next came the fish course. Here again this was one whole fish or two or three fillets of a larger one. The fish was not accompanied by a starch or vegetables. Finally came the entree or main course. While most people had the marinated rump steak in bourdelais sauce, others had roast beef or lamb or half a roast chicken. Pork was sometimes offered, also roast mutton -- a rich manly dish rarely served at all today since the flavor is a bit like game and it is chewy and earthy. Finally came the desert course, but most of the time I ate there we would get the cheese platter. One of the cheeses was a strong soft cheese and a sharp hard cheese plus a large slab of fresh creamy Monterey Jack where the middle of the slab was so fresh it was spreadable and sweet and salty. I seem to recall a few apples or pears on the platter, but that be an error. At this time the old time family Italian places offered one dessert, a slab of fresh Monterey Jack cut from a large wheels, not rubbery square blocks from a supermarket. At Jack’s sliced sour dough bread was available through out the meal.

The wine list was large, ranging across the dozen or so important California wineries of the day and a selection of mainly French imports. This was years before the wine boom and establishment of dozens and then hundreds of small ”boutique” wineries. If my memory is accurate, we usually drank a Livermore Valley Sauvignon Blank from Wente or Concannon with the fish and a Cabernet Sauvignon from Beaulieu, Chas. Krug, Louis Martini or Inglenook or perhaps a reserve Pinot Noir with a bold red stripe diagonally across the label indicating its rare status from the long gone Almaden Winery in the Santa Clara Valley whose vineyards have disappeared under today’s Silicon Valley. If we drank French wines it was usually a white Burgundy followed by a velvety Chateauneuf de Pape from the Rhone Valley. Even if we could pronounce their names we were too young to appreciate and too poor to afford the great reds from Bordeaux and Burgundy.

All this food, drink and wine for four people might cost $60 including a tip, all laid out in cash on a small white plate with green stripes around the rim. Credit cards were a new thing then and the older San Francisco restaurants were slow to adopt them. At good San Francisco restaurants full dinners were five dollars at this time and the huge set piece dinner at Jack’s was around eight dollars, the same for bottles of good local wine. At this time three dollars would buy a hearty meal and house wine at the family places like the New Pisa, La Pantera and the San Remo. At fine Italian restaurants like Paoli’s, dinner began with a vast antipasti spread that cover the entire table with small plates and platters, then soup, a light salad, a small pasta course and finally the main dish. Cocktails were less than a dollar in San Francisco back then and our larger coins were still minted in real silver and a new VW beetle sold for about a thousand dollars and a brand new Ford Mustang for $2,000.

Jack’s dated back to the Gold Rush, I believe it was officially founded in the 1850’s. It was a French Restaurant which at that time meant it not only offered food in the French style, on it’s second and third floor it also provided “les chambres separees.” That is private rooms where meals were served to discreet couples. In addition to the main entrance through the bar and dinning room on the ground floor, a separate side entrance allowed ladies and gentlemen to enter and leave the second floor unobserved by the dinners in the ground floor restaurant. When my mother was a student nurse in San Francisco in the late 1930’s she and her classmates were given stern warnings about French restaurants and their private rooms, specifically Jack’s. When I first went there in the 1960’s the upper rooms had long since been converted into private dinning rooms for business meetings. Seduction and adultery had been replaced by tax avoidance and sales meetings while “the pill” had loosened up sexual mores for my generation.

The principal reason for Jack’s unchanging menu and a dinning room that looked as it had in 1910 was that it was owned by a real estate tycoon who ate lunch there almost every day into his nineties. His heirs continued on for a couple decades after his death. Today it has been modernized into a more or less authentic French bistro and the main dinning room only has hints of it’s former Edwardian look. A perfectly respectable place, it retained the name, but it is not in any way the old Jack’s of fond memory. It was a miracle that it survived as long as it did.

As I wrote at the beginning of this chapter it was widely acknowledged to be a historic anomaly when I first went there in the early 1960’s. It was like eating and drinking in a museum where the menu was authentically as archaic as the decor and aged waiters, all of whom were at least seventy even then. Time passed very slowly at Jack’s and it had a large following who liked it that way. It had great gravitas and an almost preternatural longevity.

On the a la carte menu it offered a wide array of fish, steaks and chops and it’s signature dish, Chicken Jack’s: a sauté of half a chicken in pieces with mushrooms, onions, garlic, artichoke hearts and flavored with fresh herbs,spices and finished with sherry. Before the 1960's and large poultry companies like Foster Farms and the others, chicken and turkey were relatively much more expensive than today and most menu's reflected this. At that time fish was much cheaper than today and since Catholics and many other denominations had to eat it every Friday or on designated Lenten and fast days, fish was a far less exalted main course than today. Jack's was also famous for asparagus with hollandaise sauce, celery victor and leaks vinaigrette. It served entrees accompanied by their traditional classic french sauces, mushrooms in a Madeira sauté, Lobster Thermador, and California’s unique and now all but unobtainable beloved specialty, the essence of simplicity and the sublime, a ten inch wide Abalone steak d’orée. Today when culinary innovations and unexpected if not eccentric transpositions of Asian and European cooking are almost required at better restaurants, Jack’s seems to be a time warp. It was in many ways. It carried on far longer that anyone could have expected but not as long as it’s loyal diners might have hoped.

There was an almost antiquarian liquor store not far from Jacks on Montgomery Street that was my university for learning about wine. It is still there, John Walker & Sons. They carried a solid collection of the leading California wines and a wide selection of European wines. There I discovered French and German wines, especially the great reds from Burgundy and Rhine wines, in particular the great Rhinegau wines like Steinberger, Schloss Volrads, Schloss Johanisberger. I also found the Gewertztraminers of Alsace from the French side of the Rhine. These wines at their best were and still are like bottled sunlight. The legendary 1959 vintage were still available when turned 21 and could buy and drink them. That was the year of the century, annis mirabilis, as far as the Rhine and most French wines were concerned. The French reds of that year were big round and had wonderful rainbow of tastes. Both 1964 and 1966 were fine years also. I also discovered fine Ports and Madeira's from Portugal and the Gran Reserva Rioja reds, then aged at least until they were 10 to 15 years old, and Sherries, real Sherries including the bracing dry clear slightly salty Manzanillas from Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Because of the high post WW II dollar, the Rhine wines were not much more than their pale California counterparts while first rate, not grand cru but very good, French reds were not much more than very good California wines. The dollar fell from it’s pedestal at the end of the decade and fine European wines became a stretch for those of modest means.

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Smoke: right & wrong kinds of Smoke.

On Sepulveda Boulevard near San Fernando Mission is one of LA’s oldest yet surprisingly little known barbecue houses. Opened shortly after WW II, the Bear Pit is the only Missouri style BBQ joint in southern California. As it states proudly on the sign, it cooks country Missouri Barbecue on an Oak wood fire. For me and many others, this gives their meats a distinctive, deep subtle flavor lacking in most commercial BBQ places. Oak is the wood of choice for great grilling and barbecue. Period.

At the Bear Pit they put on a dry rub, not overly aggressive and then cook the meat in their big brick pit. That’s it. No gooey sauces. They let the oak fire and the rich smoke do the rest. You can taste this most clearly on their chickens. They have rich and subtle flavor under the tangy skin, the oak smoke flavor goes right to the bone very much like real Chinese smoked chicken or duck. They put a bottle of a mild and a medium sauce on each table, a middle of the road tomato, brown sugar, vinegar sauce for those who like and need it, but most of there meats are delectable just as they come on the platter: pulled pork, two kinds of pork ribs, beef ribs, brisket, tri-tip, ham, chicken and hot links. They also slow cook Turkeys and Ducks in their brick BBQ pit, both rarely seen in Southern California. In an old fashioned touch, when you sit down at the Bear Pit you get a bowl of what we call today crudités: Spears of salt cured kosher pickles, carrot sticks, hot little chili peppers and some other vegetables to munch on. This is as authentic a period 1950's touch as the housewives in “Mad Men” stuffing celery ribs with a cream cheese filling of some kind or another. They serve a tart southern style vinegar based cole slaw, not the creamy mayonnaise slaw usually served.

You can plot the dominant BBQ wood on a map, like the maps of Italy where they draw lines across the Boot at various places indicating where butter replaces olive oil as the principal cooking fat or where the pasta shifts from flat kinds to round or tubular ones (i.e. tagliatelle vs. penne, linguine vs. spaghetti). Well in the USA you can do a similar map indicating where and what kind of wood is use for a BBQ.

In California traditionally, but often ignored today, oak wood was fuel of choice in Northern and Central California all the way down to LA County line. It still is the only fuel for a classic Santa Maria Barbecue, the standard for judging any California BBQ. From Los Angeles across the southwest and at least half way across Texas Mesquite is firewood of choice. From somewhere east of Dallas north American hardwoods become the fuel of choice. Moving north into the Ozarks its is Oak like at the Bear Pit but crossing the Mississippi River Hickory becomes the favored wood, some times alone, other times mixed with Oak or other local hardwoods. This is clearly and easily tasted in the flavor of meats just as the material of the aging barrels is in wines. White wines aged in glass tanks have a fresh and strong varietal fruity taste. Redwood aging gives a slight cinnamon edge to red wines and used to be common, especially for Zinfandel's and Petite Syrah’s. White wines aged in American oak have a clear tannic edge and oak in the nose, while French oak barrels impart a more light and subtle oak edge.

Only certain woods burn well and slowly enough and give off the required heat and scented smoke that give character to any serious BBQ. For example, Eucalyptus burns very hot and gives off a very oily smoke that would quickly make anything it touched taste like it marinated in Vic’s Vapor Rub. It is far and way too aggressive. (Australians may strongly disagree if only because Down Under it’s gum tree wood or nothing.) The same heavy handed quality would apply to walnut, orange or other citrus woods which are oily like Eucalyptus and would overpower any meat. Soft woods like Pine are too quick burning and would coat food with a foul taste of pitch and a heavy smell of resin.

In New England maple wood is used to smoke bacon and for BBQ’s while apple wood is used in the upper Midwest. However the principal BBQ fuels are Oak in Central and northern California, Mesquite from LA across the Southwest and then Oak or Oak and Hickory in the lower Midwest and South. Better restaurants often use either Oak charcoal or a blend of Oak, Hickory and other hard woods to fire their grills. This blend of hardwood charcoal is available at many restaurant supply houses, but it comes in 50 pound bags which make it impractical unless you have the necessary storage space or grill a lot of meat.

The Bear Pit

10825 Sepulveda Boulevard

Mission Hills, CA 91345

(818) 365-2509 info@bearpitbbq.com