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

A Basque meal at the Noriega Hotel in Bakersfield

Saturday night five of us drove up to Bakersfield for dinner at Noriega’s Hotel. It has been there, near the Union Pacific (formerly Southern Pacific) Railroad Station, since 1893. A time warp, it is pretty much like it was then and has an authentic feel like few other places. There is a large bar with the dining room behind it. Unlike the three or four other Basque places in Bakersfield, Noriega’s is very much a traditional place serving one set meal like country places in Europe. There are three very long tables with stout “jury room” chairs for about 200 people. Diner is served in one sitting at seven. Parties are seated up and down the tables more or less in the order they checked in. On this saturday night there were half a dozen birthday groups and many family celebrations and a group of jovial middle aged middle class motorcycle warriors who had rolled up from Ventura County.

The food is basque style home cooking, cooking as it was in my grandmother’s day. It is good, but not serious four star basque cooking. For that I recommend the showcase Orosko Dinning Room at the Nugget Hotel Casino in Sparks Nevada.

At Noriega’s dinner is a homey and authentic meal provided by the Elizalde family as they have since 1931. When you enter the dinning room the smell is welcoming like a country farm house kitchen fifty years ago or more, like my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon with a mix of American and Portuguese dishes cooking. The Basques are generally recognized as the best cooks in Iberia and while not the same, their cooking shares many things with Portuguese and regional Spanish styles.

Waiting on the table when you are seated are a large salad bowl dressed with a blue cheese based variation on Caesar dressing and a large steaming tureen of cabbage and vegetable soup seasoned to the point and very much homemade. Placed around it are a large platter of thin slices of marinated tongue, a bowl of stewed pinto beans, a large basket of sliced french bread, butter, a bowl of herbed seasoned cottage cheese, a plate of homemade potato salad and a bowl of red tomato and pepper basque salsa picante, just this side of very hot. The salsa is added to the pinto beans to bring them to whatever level you prefer. Cuidado, it is muy picante. There is also a bottle of full bodied red house wine.

After first course were cleared away, the meal went on with a platter of spaghetti marinara eavily dusted with parmesan cheese that was as good as any I’ve ever had. After this a plate with a large slab of blue cheese was served with bowl of steamed Broccoli florets in a white hollandaise and then the oxtail stew. It was very much like my grandmother made in winter time, the meat and vegetables in unthickened cooking juices and not a heavy gravy. Finally, we were served platters of very crispy fried chicken heavily sprinkled with sautéed garlic cloves and platter of crisp hot french fries. “We don’t have to worry about vampires,” was my daughter’s comment. The pungent sweetness of the sautéed garlic on the chicken cut through any greasiness and made it a savory rustic dish. After this was cleared ice cream was served.

At dinner coffee is not put on the table, you have to ask for it. The bar has some interesting basque liqueurs if you want to try one. Les Fleurs des Pyrenees is very good as are others. The meal was large and simple in a traditional way. It took a convivial two hours and was well worth the drive to Bakersfield. What is telling is that a traditional country meal originally served to the men staying at a Basque boarding house a century ago seems to us today to be very special and festive dinner.

The meal is served for $20 per person, childern up to 12 are charge a dollar for each year of their age. A simpler meal is served at lunch for $14. A country breakfast is served daily from 7:00 to 9:00 for $10 with basque sausages, eggs and a slab of Monterey Jack cheese like my grandparents ate every morning. The Noriega Hotel is open everyday except Mondays. The dinner is served in one sitting at 7:00 pm. Reservations are suggested.

Noriega Hotel

525 Sumner Street

Bakersfield, California

(661) 322-8419

A great burger doesn't always come in a bun.

Hamburgers have become not just the great American fast food. Lately they have like cupcakes become a foodie obsession. Some are just made with care and the best available ingredients like those at Oinkster in Eagle Rock, the place that kicked off this fad locally. Now Oinster set out to prove that if you took care and skill, you could produce a perfect hamburger. They do and at a price not that much higher than ordinary fast food places.

Since then the foodies have swarmed and now we have ultra burgers for ten bucks each or more or hyper burgers for twenty or more bucks. The ultra burgers tend to be big, too big, often half a pound of beef. The hyper burgers are tarted up with special buns, exotic kinds of meat and lily gilding “gourmet” extra ingredients like fois gras, exotic bacon, rare mushrooms and so on and so forth. For me, I think what the Oinkster does is commendable and a revelation of what care and skill can do. For the ultra and hyper burgers, while sometimes interesting, even amazing, I find them decadent at best, just for show at worst.

Some off beat and different burgers come to mind. Trying to recapture them might be a much more useful thing than lily gilding and hyping the whole idea of hamburger sandwich. Three of the best burgers I’ve ever eaten all came with out the common hamburger bun. Yeah,they came on bread of one kind or another and were all the better for it.

USS Camden AOE-2 in South China Sea

The first is the US Navy “Midrats” burgers and cheese burgers. By old custom at sea around midnight the ship’s galley prepares a light meal for the on coming and off going watch. The “eve” watch runs from 8:00 pm to midnight, the “mid” watch from midnight to 4:00 am. From eleven thirty to twelve fifteen, the galley has a light meal for those about to take the watch and those coming off. Every couple days my ship served burgers, on the other days they had grilled ham and cheese sandwiches or cold roast beef from the evening meal. The burgers were grilled with or with cheese and slapped between slices of ship’s bread. This was not fluffy store bought bread, but chewy home made bread that didn’t go mushy or fall apart. Basic condiments were available including lettuce and pickles, tomatoes ran out a few days after we left port. These were great direct simple burgers that tasted rich and satisfying after four hours on deck in the dark, the wind and salt spray.

In the San Francisco Bay area many places served larger burgers (a third or half a pound of beef) on flat French or Italian rolls. This gave you something to hold onto and something to soak up the meat juices. Larry Blake’s on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley had a great savory burger they served with a big helping of garlicky Caesar Salad not fries. It was ambrosia and salty enough to make sure you ordered another beer. The same was true of many places where you had a choice of a a hamburger or a linguiça, Italian, Polish or Louisiana Hot sausage sandwich. The sausages were split down the center and grilled until crusted then dropped into the big chew rolls and dresses with the usual condiments and garnishes. They were so big they came already cut in half. Great manly food.

The Joe’s restaurants around the Bay Area served and still serve their hamburgers in a long piece of sour dough baguette. Some hallow out the inside to fit the oblong burger, some don’t. Some mix raw onion into the meat before cooking, others give you grilled onions if you ask for them. None of the usual condiments outside mustard and catsup are provided, but honestly these high quality burgers really don’t need any extra flavoring.

California tastes & memories: real food.

This blog is about food and eating in California, both today and over the years. There will three contributing writers and we will write about the taste of California both today and over the past fifty years or more. We will offer memories and some recipes from our grandmother's kitchens and from our kitchens today. We will write about meals at restaurants both today and a long time ago -- in the next week we will put up posts about a dinner at Bakersfield's Noriega Hotel last month and a dinner at San Francisco at Jack's in the summer of 1965.

We have some biases. We are not foodies although we respect young cooks who have the imagination, skill and vision to try something new, even radical, if they respect their ingredients and our taste buds. We like and revere the ethnic traditions of California. We enjoy good restaurants like Campanile, but we also like red check table cloth Italoamerican family places and family run Mexican places that remember their roots in Jalisco or Sonora.

The three of us went College near San Francisco in the early 1960's and still have golden memories of the time, when San Francisco still had a strong local flavor and there were wonderful restaurants across the spectrum from great restaurants like Paoli's, Jack's, the original Trader Vic's in Emeryville to the cheap homey places in North Beach like the New Piza, La Pantera, the San Remo. All of them are only memories.

Your comments and your take and your memories are welcome.

Shopping in LA

Where I shop in Los Angeles and why.

For me, grocery shopping is a bit of hobby or at least a challenge, in addition to being a necessary errand and often a chore. In this post I will outline the places where I often shop and a few others that I visit from time to time, especially when I’m looking for ethnic or out of the ordinary food and ingredients.

Von’s (as Safeway stores are known in Southern California) is my main local supermarket. I live in an old neighborhood between downtown LA and Hollywood. I shop a Von’s once a week. At least at my local Von’s I like the meat department and appreciate the quality of their “house” brand products, and I commend their organic “O” brand to you, especially the catsup which is very good with a zippy tang and fresh tomato taste. While there is a sameness to all the Von’s/Safeways there is a real variance between individual stores, for example, my regular market gets at best a C+ for its produce and a B- for its in store bakery. There is one Von’s store that is far above the rest in service, wide selection and quality. That is the Montecito branch in that very special suburb of Santa Barbara. I’ll write about that one in a separate post.

Trader Joe’s is a place I go primarily for dairy products and light shopping, averaging not quite once a week. TJ’s has very good prices on dairy and bakery items and has a great selection of frozen fish.

On a monthly cycle I hit Costco for paper goods, pet food and pantry staples like pasta and canned goods. Then I also recommend Smart & Final for some meat items, restaurant grade coffee, especially high quality Peerless Coffee from Oakland, imported vinegar's and condiments, restaurant brand salad dressings, cleaning goods and occasionally bread. The gallon cans of chili, tomatoes, gravy, beans and pickles come in handy if you are having a barbecue or a big dinner.

When I want a lot of fresh produce I shop, two maybe three times a month at my local Jon’s Market, part of an Armenian owned chain with a very good large produce section and a wild selection of ethnic food: Armenian & Middle Eastern, Latino, and Eastern European items. They also have a particularly well selected and large Deli section with fifty kinds of ham, sausages and cold cuts, a lot of smoked fish and ethnic dairy items including Moskowskaya Smetana -- a Russian Sour cream that is to American Sour Cream like turkish coffee is to a watery vending machine cup of joe. They now carry Bobak’s traditional Polish sausages and cured meats from Chicago. The veal sausages are a revelation in how rich and subtle sausages can be when made when made with care and pride. Polish immigrant friends assure me Bobak’s products are authentic and z’dobsha -- it’s good. They also tell me that in Chicago they still make many traditional things that haven’t been seen in Poland since WW II. This is not surprising when you consider that more Poles live in Chicago than in Warsaw.

At least once a month or more I also shop at one of the two former Mayfair Markets, long been part of the Gelson’s chain, but in Hollywood they long maintained their original name. Gelsons is a high end market chain, like Raley’s in the Sacramento area. The Silver Lake store has a spectacular if expensive produce section while the Franklin Avenue Branch has a better Deli take out & Bakery section and a wider variety of up scale frozen items including frozen meat from wild game and some very special desserts. The store on Franklin Avenue is always full of faces you see at night on your TV set. Some other places I shop on an irregular basis are very ethnic stores like the Latino Vallarta Markets which have a very good panderia (Latino Bakery) and in summer super prices on a huge selection of local and tropical fresh fruit.

For Chinese and Vietnamese products of all kinds I have been going to 99 Lucky Ranch Markets. My favorite today is on Atlantic Blvd. in Monterey Park, but they have branches all over southern California. Started by a Vietnamese Chinese family that ran markets in Cholon, the Chinatown of Saigon, they came as boat people in the 1970’s and began with a small market on the edge of LA’s Chinatown. In addition to a large produce department with a huge selection of Asian fruits and vegetables, they have a large collection of tanks with many kinds of live fish and shell fish including lobsters, crabs, carp, catfish and often Striped Bass, a great tasting fish otherwise only available if you have a lucky day fishing in the San Juaquin Delta. It is known as “Rock Fish” in the Chesapeake Bay and a specialty of fine restaurants in Washington and Baltimore.

Other places I like are Filipino bakeries that make traditional products like Pan Espanol and the island nation’s specialty Pan Sal -- it is a chewy bun somewhere between a Mexican Bolio and a very big American Biscuit. They are sold hot by the dozen and locals wait for them. They also make buttery cinnamon pull apart “Monkey Bread” and custard and pineapple tarts that are a nice treat.

Three or four times a year I will drive down to the Alpine Market in Torrance which is a gold mine for German & Central European meats, sausages, cheeses, breads, Dutch, German and Norwegian packed herring and pickles. It also carries Scandinavian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Balkan and Baltic meat, cheese, bread, pickles, beers and schnapps, aquavit, vodka and many fruit and herbal liqueurs . The market has a very good if spartan lunch cafeteria with wide variety of “Old Country” dishes and sandwiches at very fair prices: Weisswurst with sauerkraut and german potato salad, big roll mop herrings, fat juicy knockwurst, spicy paprika flavored hungarian sausages and very good liverwurst on rye. You get a choice of yellow American mustard or a sharp European brown mustard with real zip.

Porto's Bakeries in Glendale and Burbank are a bit of old Havana, with great Cuban sandwiches. My favorite is Ropa Vieja -- a tangy Cuban take on Beef Pot Roast on half a loaf of Cuban bread. They serve Cubanos, Medianoches and other traditional Cuban sandwiches and a huge selection of cakes and pastries, many of them with exotic tropical fruit charlotte or pudding fillings. They have “Cubanos” -- a wide circle of puff pastry with a layer of cream cheese and intense guava preserves in the middle, the traditional Cuban Breakfast special eaten with strong coffee. They also make wonderful ham and potato croquettes and serve them with plantain chips.

In my neighborhood is a small Mom & Pop Japanese Market called Fuji-ya that carries Japanese items and beautiful Japanese cuts of beef and pork plus some Hawaiian products including Maui Onion pickles and brewed in Hawaii Aloha Soyu and their line of their low salt and teriyaki sauces and marinades.

For Indian cooking there is India Sweets and Spices, a chain with stores in Los Feliz and across West Los Angeles and the South Bay. They carry a huge selection of Indian spices and food items and most have a cafeteria serving simple vegetarian food at modest prices. My Hindu friends tell me it like a second rate Indian Railway station buffet, but they all go there for a authentic cheap lunch. For me, their Tikka, a potato and onion pancake is a standout. I also like their lentil or bean soups (Dal), curry chickpeas & various vegetable stews especially their curried cauliflower. Indian sweets are for me hit or miss, you will like some of them and not others depending on your own taste. They also make something that is like an Indian take on a Chili Relleno, only hotter than the Mexican one.

Finally, I will tell you about a place that is worth a visit. Super King Market on San Fernando Road just south of the 2 Freeway and the Glendale city line. They also have markets in Altadena and Anaheim. This is “diversity central” and far and away the most multiethnic multicultural food store I have ever seen. It serves Gringos and Latinos, Chinese and Armenians, Vietnamese and Pakistanis, West Indians and East Africans, Koreans, Filipinos and Eastern Europeans. Everybody shops here -- from right off the boat immigrants to proper “ladies who lunch” from very affluent La Canada-Frintridge a few miles up the 2 Freeway. The produce department is huge and covers everything from topical fruits and vegetables like plantains and yuccas, all sorts of citrus including varieties I’ve never see before like sweet lemons and three kinds of limes.

The cooking oil section carried various grades of olive oil from France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. I think they also had some from Argentina too. The pickle section had jars of cucumber and other vegetable pickles from the USA, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Iran and India. These include the red pickled turnips that come with falafel, okra, green tomatoes, peppers of all sorts including the long “pencil” peppers form Turkey and short very hot Turkish “Fefferoni.” They also carry Balkan Ajar which is puree of peppers used in cooking. It comes mild or spicy.

The deli and meat section is huge and as wide ranging as the rest of the store. Domestic and imported cheese, Bulgarian Sheep milk Feta, Polish Cheeses, Swiss and Dutch cheese, English and Irish cheeses, hams from France (the Parisian Jambon is ethereal in its subtle perfection), Poland, Romania, Hungary, Spain, Italy and domestic ones. Also cold cuts ranging from twenty or more kinds of salami, baloney's, mortadella's, head cheese and many once common but rarely seen American items like German style midwestern hard salami and old fashioned veal and pork “Olive & Pimento” loaf. This was a favorite of my father and I had not seen it in a long time. I bought a sliced pound and my daughter liked it, “It’s like an American mortadella.” She had never see or eaten it before.

They also carry Mexican and other Latino meats and sausages. One thing to remember is every Iberian region and Latin American Republic makes its own unique kind of chorizo. Basque or what the Cubans call Bilbao Chorizo is a kin to Portuguese Linguiça while Argentine chorizo is very much like semi spicy Italian sausage. Mexican Chorizo is a spicy soft sausage that makes a great breakfast of Huevos con chorizo. In Mexico little hard chorizos are common but for some reason almost never seen here anymore. In Central America they make chorizos that are more like American pork sausage than the Mexican variety. Morcella is a hardy blood sausage like French Boudim Noir or English and Irish “Black Pudding.” The Argentine blood sausage like much Argentine food is close to an Italian original with pine nuts and raisins.

In the fresh meat department Super King has all the usual cuts of meat plus “butcher’s offal” including tripe, liver, kidneys, the tongues of various animals, beef shanks, lamb shanks, fresh hams and picnic hams, and ground beef, pork, lamb and mutton. Mutton is available, either mature sheep or goat and is popular with Mexicans and with Indians and Pakistani’s for Mexican Birria (goat stew) or curries of every kind.

The freezer cases are as eclectic as the rest of the store with frozen Pirogi’s and gyoza, peleminy, ravioli alongside meat cheese and fruit blintzes. The fruit and vegetable selections that include many varieties rarely seen in American supermarkets. It is worth a visit, if you have patience and avoid the weekends when the place is thronged.

Super King is worth a trip and I can guarantee you will find things you have never seen before, a lot of stuff you will not like, like sheep and pig heads, and a lot of things you will love. A deli counter with over two dozen kinds of ham and the same number of salami’s is worth a close look.

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