Deviled Eggs & Egg Salad: boring but a blank canvas for something bold or bright.

One of the basic American nibbles is the deviled egg. Generally it is a pretty bland item on the table of cold appetizers. So is it’s chopped up form, egg salad. You can shrug and ignore it, or you can put your imagination to work and make something out of it.

Basic Deviled Eggs: Boil six eggs, shell them, slice them in half and pop the yokes into a small bowl. Add to the yokes: a quarter cup of mayonnaise, a teaspoon of mustard, a grind or two of white pepper and a pinch of turmeric to hype the yellow color Mash and combine all the ingredients into a paste, put into a pastry bag or into a plastic storage bag, nip the corner of the bag and use it as an ad hoc pastry bag and squeeze the yoke mixture into the cavity left in the half eggs where the yoke used to be.


Photo from Wikipedia

While the above is good, it is also ordinary, even if you have used fresh free range organic eggs with a rich country taste instead of the bland hatchery laid eggs. Using the basic recipe you can take the eggs in a more interesting directions. Here are some ways to pep them up and give them some zip.

Cajun Eggs: Add fresh chopped chives and as much Tobasco Sauce as you want and substitute Creole or another whole grain mustard for the ordinary French’s Salad Mustard.

Green Herb Eggs: Chop up a couple shallots, two tablespoons of fresh parsley, a couple teaspoons of chopped chives and a a tea spoon of capers.

Sicilian Eggs: Add a tablespoon of capers, a table spoon of fresh basil, a teaspoon of lemon zest and a small dab of anchovy paste, mix and dust the stuffed with fine chopped parsley.

New York Eggs: Add a couple pieces of smoked salmon, a quarter teaspoon of chopped fresh dill, one chopped shallot, one teaspoon chopped chives and a quarter teaspoon of prepared horseradish.

Tarragon Eggs: Add a pinch of chopped tarragon, two table spoons of chopped French Cornichons, a quarter teaspoon of lemon zest.

Polish Eggs: Use sour cream instead of mayonnaise, add half a teaspoon of chopped dill, a quarter teaspoon of horseradish, a teaspoon of chopped parsley and a scant teaspoon of Russian style honey mustard.

French Eggs: Add a teaspoon of Dijon Mustard, two teaspoons of chervil if available parsley if not, white pepper and two teaspoons of chopped cornishons.

Yorkshire Eggs: Add a table spoon of Cross & Blackwell’s Chow Chow chopping up the pickle to small nubs, two teaspoons of fresh parsley. Unless you make your own private mustard pickles their is no substitute for Chow Chow.

The list can go on and on with your imagination and ingenuity the only limits.

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Anchovy Paste, the once & future seasoning.

Anchovy fillets on a Ceasar Salad. This and the other photos from Wikipedia.

Going through a forty year old LA Times cookbook of recipes from the restaurants of that time I was struck that anchovy paste was often used, not just to rev up salad dressings, but as a seasoning in many dishes and sauces. Today it is almost never mentioned except in family recipes from Italian American cooks like Rachel Ray or others coming from a southern Italian or Sicilian traditions.

This is really too bad because a tube of anchovy paste is handy, even a small can of anchovy fillets in olive oil is way too much for most dishes, unless you are making a bucket size Greek salad or an Italian one of roast peppers and other vegetables for a big party or barbecue.

A good quirt of it replaces salt in gravy and adds a rich bass note, not unlike Asian fish sauce. You don’t taste it, but you get a richer result, so you don’t have to tell people it’s in their plate. It is a very good substitute for salt in any dish that calls for it. It is especially good beef gravies.



A once common use of anchovy fillets in the British Isles, a snack called "Scotch Woodcock."

Historically until the Muslims seized north Africa in the eighth century, Roman and post Roman cooks added Garum, commonly translated as Fish Pickle, to almost everything, just like the Vietnamese, Chinese and other South East Asians. In Spain, Portugal, southern France and Italy anchovies came into use to replace the Garum that for some reason was no longer made on the shores of north Africa.
Bottles of Thai fish sauce.

The Chinese call it Fish Sauce, Nuc Mam in Vietnam, Bagoong or Pitis the Philippines. It is also used all the other Southeast Asian nations. During my year on the Mekong River during the Vietnam war I can attest that the most remarkable pungent awful smell that came from the riverside factories where fish was dried and then fermented into Nuc Mam. The smell was overpowering even if you were miles away. These drying and fermentation factories were always well away from any villages.

The seasonal return of Green Corn Tamales

>Well, even if we still have a couple rainy days coming up next week the wet half of LA’s two season climate (wet & dry) is almost over. This morning one of the surest signs appeared, not a robin on a branch but an e-mail from El Cholo that Green Corn Tamales will return to the menu on May Day. ¡Fantastico! !Viva El Cholo!
>
>Sure, Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck do great things, but this is one of LA’s greatest and most beloved comfort foods, like a double dipped beef sandwich at Phillipe’s or a Tommy’s chili burger on the way home from a pub crawl. It is like bacon and eggs at the Original Pantry, a Pastrami Sandwich at Langer's or a Chili Dog at Carnies.
>
>The green corn tamales are simplicity itself. They are fresh sweet white corn kernels mixed with chilies and sweet salty white cheese encased in masa dough, wrapped in dried corn husks and steamed until all the ingredients melt into a sweet fresh soul caressing wholeness.
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>Of the original El Cholo on Western Avenue down near USC and the other new locations I prefer the one in Pasadena. The original has a great bar but the chaotic cluster of dinning rooms and the often brusk “tourist trap” service and the crowds put me off.
>
>
>The one thing about El Cholo besides being LA’s oldest Mexican Restaurant is the reality that it is family owned and even more is very much a kitchen that still cooks in the style of the family’s Sonora heritage. The Green Corn Tamales and a number of their signature dishes are very authentic Sonora cooking. The piled up not rolled enchiladas and the choizo tostada for example are also Sonoran as are the pinto beans.
>
>When you need soothing affirmative comfort food, I commend El Cholo and the Green Corn Tamales, a bowl of guacamole prepared table side and a bottle of cold Dos XX and what more could you want.
>
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St. Patrick’s Day recipes & tips

Green Salad

The salad dressing recipe was from a British web site adapted with my memory of smooth house dressings at Robaire’s French Restaurant. The almond oil was from Robaire's. The turmeric was added for color.

half a cup of sherry vinegar

one cup of olive oil

half a cup of almond oil

tablespoon of Dijon mustard

salt & pepper

tablespoon of dried parsley

teaspoon of dried chives

half teaspoon paprika

half teaspoon of turmeric

Whisk together and set aside for at least four hours.

The salad was butter lettuce and mixed organic greens served with Asparagus and pickled beets and onions

The asparagus were trimmed, cooked in boiling water then blanched in ice water. The beet salad was simplicity itself, two cans of pickled beets with two small red onions thinly sliced. After four hours, the pickled beet juice mellowed and turned the onion bright red.

The Corned Beef

Many years ago sitting at the counter at Langer’s Deli near downtown LA, my wife and I talked to one of the cooks and he told us how to cook corned beef at home. At Langer's they put the corned beef into steam cabinets that hold the meat at about 190 degrees for six to eight hours. The key to keeping it tender and juicy is never to let it boil.

At home a crock pot is ideal to match this deli slow cooking. Ten hours before dinner put two pieces of corned beef about 4 pounds each into the crock pot plus a quarter cut of mixed pickling spices. In my family we pour in two cups of Apple Cider vinegar or if you have it black malt vinegar. The cider vinegar give a bit of brightness, the malt vinegar is strong and sweet. Then fill the crock pot with cold water up to half an inch of the rim, cover and put on low. Turn the meat two or three times during cooking. When the meat is done (usually around eight hours) you can turn the crock pot off.

To cook the vegetables take about half the cooking water from the crock pot and ladle it into a large pot and add water to cook the carrots, parsnips, turnips and onions and potatoes and cook them on the stove. Bring to a boil and then let simmer until they are cook to your taste. The old country Irish cook them soft, but today most of us prefer them with some texture but not Al Dente. This is up to you.

Tips & suggestions

Don’t peel or cut the onions, the skins will come off and the whole onion will not fall apart while cooking. While you are carving the corned beet put in a whole cabbage cut into eighths, or quarters if you have two small cabbages. Do not cut off the core. It will hold the cabbage wedges together.

Serve the sliced corned beef on a platter along with a platter of the vegetables.

I use an electric knife to do the slicing. Since very few home cooks have professional grade knives or the skill to keep them sharp, the electric knife is the most reliable way to carve the meat. They are less than $20 at Target. Emeril Lagasse , Elton Brown, Bobby Flay and other Food Channel headliners recommend them for home kitchens.

To be traditional small white rose potatoes would be cooked with the other root vegetables. Parsnips and turnips are optional, but traditional in Ireland if you have them. In Irish slang Turnips are called “nips” while potatoes are called “spuds” or “praties" (pray'tee's). Most Irish families serve horse radish and mustard with the corned beef.

Tastes vary widely but I served the corned beef with a hot sweet Russian style mustard, a strong German style mustard and a whole grain Dijon mustard. Gulden's Spicy Brown or "Chicago Style" mustard is not surprisingly very close to tangy German Mustard. In Ireland they use Coleman’s English Mustard which is very very sharp, too sharp for American taste. But you can find Coleman's in most supermarkets is you want to be authentic and fearless.

In Los Angeles, we have a famous and ferocious local mustard, Phillipe’s house made mustard is available at the restaurant by the jar. This summer a French college student we took there told us he loved the mustard and the double dipped beef made him feel at home. He was from Grenoble and I later discovered so was the founder Phillipe. The sandwich is not called the "French Dip" for nothing. The name of the place should be pronounced Fil-LEAP in the French manner, but this being LA we pronounce it like the Spanish Filipe. ¿Porque no?

Every now and again, a home run.

Over the past couple years there have been a few times a dish knocked my socks off. Here is list in no particular order:

Wolfgang Puck did at his Spago in Beverly Hills, he served a chicken soup with winter vegetables made from a recipe he credits to his Grandmother. This bowl of soup was as perfect as the music created by Salzburg's other Wolfgang, Herr Mozart. The broth was rich clear amber essence of chicken and herbs accompanied by perfectly cooked root vegetables. Amazing and humbling to see somebody reach perfection with transparent simplicity. It was simple but absolutely as perfect as the first act of the Marriage of Figaro or the Ave Verum Corpus.

At the Spago in Caesar’s Palace Wolfie did it again, this time with something his Grandmother never made but mine did. This was a soup of clams and spanish chorizo in a white wine and tomato stock. While his recipe may be based on Basque cooking, it was all but identical to my Grandfather’s favorite Portuguese soup. The briny chewy perfectly cooked clams contrasted with the rich paprika and garlic smoked hard chorizo, the white wine mixed with the clam juice and the olive oil sautéed sofrito of onions, garlic, mild peppers and tomato make a bold savory but direct dish of warmth and depth. A perfect rustic marriage of the land and the sea. And he served it in a large iron pot with a big basket of crusty bread.

Another home run was served at Marin Joe’s on the 101 near San Raphael. This was a large platter of sweetbreads sautéed with mushrooms with wine, onions, herbs and sweet peppers. Awesome. The gamy earthiness of the mushrooms was the counter point to the delicate almost ethereal taste of the sweetbreads while both were bound together by the sherry enriched sauce of herbs and vegetables. Served with big crusty real San Francisco Sour Dough bread this was a memorable nostalgic meal.

Tafelspitz -- Austrian boil beef. Photo from Wikapedia

At a restaurant called with a kitchen and front staff of Hungarians, Maxmilian’s in North Hollywood I had tafelspitz, Austrian style boiled beef for the first time in my life. It has a wonderful concentrated but light real beef flavor served with half a dozen accompaniment including, the best cucumber salad I’ve ever tasted, a zippy sour cream and horseradish sauce, and other small enhancements. I know that in Vienna all the great composers gathered for a lunch of Tafelspitz, a deep satifying meal very much like a deep nostagic but vibrant piano quartet by Brahms. Boiled beef sounds flat in English, but this is not at all dull or boring.

My daughter Mara dazzled me one morning with a magnificent “Dutch Baby” apple pancake that was as rich and velvety as an omelet and sweet and just a bit earthy with still slightly crisp apple slices. The big rich pancake overflowed the large iron skillet she baked itg in and rose with unexpected lightness. It knocked my socks off with its richness and at the same time it’s lightness. Amazing accomplishment.

Finally, I have to include the very simple old fashion sliced tongue in a white wine vinaigrette they served as an appetizer at Noriega’s basque restaurant in Bakersfield. Unexpected, very traditional to the point of being almost a historic relic, this was a wonderful dish that was great in itself and even more an example of real authentic traditional cooking that we should appreciate and seek out much more often. Tongue today is very much an old fashioned item, rarely seen outside those unyielding ethnic cafe like Noriega’s and the other Basque restaurants and in authentic Mexican places where lingua is served and authentic means they cook with Manteca (pork lard) and they got to show you no stinking badges. Not even all Jewish deli’s still serve tongue.

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Balsamic this, balsamic that, so much hooey!

What is it with balsamic vinegar? It shows up in everything. A little saucer with a splash of black pungent balsamic vinegar under a quarter cup of olive oil is the first thing set on the table and unless you are lucky some sort of balsamic sorbet will be the last thing set before you. What is it? It is a long time and esteemed local specialty of Modena Italy. Until it became the vinegar to end all vinegar's, it was a thick sweet caramelized long aged product that played a role in Italian cooking very much like Worcestershire Sauce played in American cooking. It added a savory bass note to dishes and gravies, a few drops went into a Caesar Salad, a few more into a Bloody Mary.

Now it appears in everything and anything. A while back it was kiwi fruit that showed up in all the expected places and in the damnedest places too. Balsamic vinegar has some great uses, but it is not the elixir of love.

Lets talk about vinegar's. There are lots and lots of them and unlike Balsamic most of them are great in salads and other things too. To begin there is red wine vinegar and its twin, white wine vinegar. These are meant to dress salads. The more rustic and Mediterranean, the more it cries out for a good red wine vinegar. The more refined and delicate salads like Bibb or Boston lettuce call for a more refined white wine vinegar. The classic french dressing calls for red wine and olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of dry mustard and sweet paprika. A more elegant Parisian Dressing calls for white wine vinegar and olive oil salt pepper and a healthy spoon of smooth Dijon mustard to give tang and emulsify the dressing. Seafood salads call for a tarragon white wine vinegar. Other salads need the robust dark richness of a Sherry Vinegar from Spain, something that is used more in main dishes than on salads where it tends to overwhelm.

There are other vinegar's, for example apple cider vinegar, an amber acid with a hint of apple sweetness, malt vinegar used mainly in the British Isles where its rich sharpness and hint of malt sugar gives a robust bite. In Asia rice vinegar's are the staple, they combine a sharpness with a mild slight sweetness. They are available in their natural state or seasoned and slightly sweetened. These seasoned rice vinegar's are mild enough to dress a salad alone, no oil need which is very useful if you are watching calories.

The one fine vinegar that has fallen out of favor and I regret is tarragon vinegar. In the USA it is usually made with apple cider vinegar, which gives an earth Midwestern flavor. The best Tarragon vinegar's from France and Italy are white wine vinegar's that have a large sprig of tarragon in the bottle to infuse the musky herbal flavor. The one place they are absolutely and vitally necessary is in seafood salads, especially calamari or octopus salads. This is the perfect herb to bring out the subtle briny essence of these particularly ugly but wonderful tasting creatures.

Four Favorite places in Santa Barbara

There is a German saying, “Happy as God in France.” In California we don’t think He would prefer France, but as a writer once put it, “God would live in Santa Barbara, if he could afford it.” When the town was devastated by a major earthquake in 1925 the city fathers decreed that in rebuilding they would do it in a Spanish Colonial Revival style and so we have the city we know today, a west coast Williamsburg where even McDonalds and KFC’s look like 18th century Mexican bodegas and the courthouse looks like a Viceregal Palace. Hundreds of Mexican revival villas and haciendas dot the landscape. Montecito is home to millionaires and Oprah Winfrey with oak trees, stables, formal gardens and the musty smell of old money or barely dry ink aroma of crisp new money.

Far beyond what you might expect in a city its size, Santa Barbara is a center for innovative and traditional restaurants, food stores and bakeries. This is not a review, just quick a summary of places my family likes a lot. There are at least a dozen more I could and should mention. They will get their turn later.

The Summerland Beach Cafe is a small Victorian house with terraces around it. Only open for breakfast and lunch, it does very well thought out California dishes and serves them cheerfully in a welcoming ambiance. Organic, pretty much. Vegetarians are welcome, but they also make a near perfect club sandwich on whole grain bread and make a huge selection of sandwiches, hamburgers, salads, omelets and egg dishes. Even the side dishes like their potato salad, onion rings, cole slaw and garnishes show imagination and nice but not fussy flair. Breakfast or lunch here is our customary first stop on a long weekend or mini vacation in Santa Barbara where sitting in the sun looking over the 101 freeway at the Pacific begins our decompression.

Another favorite is Anderson’s on State Street, a Danish bakery and restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. The bakery is exceptional and has wonderful breads and then pastries that show what very gifted mortals can do with butter, marzipan and skill. They make their own off the chart good orange preserves and raspberry preserve too. They even offer a real Danish breakfast -- no eggs, just a platter with two kinds of rye bread, a huge slice of homemade liver pate, a pile of sweet and salty Danish ham, slices of dill Havarti cheese and some garnishes and samples of their breakfast pastries. Phenomenal. This is usually our last stop where we buy bread, pastries or tubs of fresh fruit preserves to take home.

Not far away is Ca Dario, a small Italian restaurant with a Venetian accent. Lunch there can be a celebration of life. A soup of local shellfish in a briny broth, a platter of homemade zesty Italian sausage & peppers with fried polenta. At night, they serve a striped bass that is magnificent.

Above, the striped bass, below the artichoke salad. Photos by Mara Kelly

Take your time, it is small and often jammed. It is not a red check table cloth ItaloAmerican cafe, but very very much like a cafe in the Veneto, the most cultivated and orderly region of Italy. You would do best to eat a bit later than usual to avoid the meal time tides. Ask the servers about the menu and the day's specials, Ca'Dario is full of unexpected and authentic surprises like their cold artichoke appetizer which is unique and the best salad that doesn’t look like one since the Spanish invented gazpacho.

Finally, there is Cafe Buenos Aries (It originally occupied the small place where Ca Dario is now). My late wife loved this romantic place, especially at night when latin music and tangos were playing and candles and tiny lights lit the courtyard. This is a large restaurant you enter through a courtyard with arcades on two sides and outside fireplaces. The dinning room is tile floored and feels like it has been there a hundred years. They mix all the great national cocktails of the Americas (mojitos, caipirinhas, pisco sours, margaritas and more). They then serve steaks that are either flown up from the Pampas or cut locally in the Argentine manner. These are served with perfect fried potatoes and chimichurri, the herbal tangy national condiment. Romantic is the only adjective.

Andersen's Danish Bakery & Restaurant

1106 State St

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

(805) 962-5085

www.andersenssantabarbara.com

Ca' Dario

37 E Victoria Street

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

(805) 884-9419

www.cadario.net

Cafe Buenos Aires

1316 State Street

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

(805) 963-0242

Summerland Beach Cafe

2294 Lillie Ave

Summerland, CA 93067

(805) 969-1019

In Glendale, tastes from the Balkans & Buenos Aries

Elena's

One hidden away gem is a little place on Glendale Avenue called Elena’s. Run by a couple of Armenian ladies, this little place serves what my Bulgarian friend Boiko says is real Balkan soul food. The style is a mix of Greek, Turkish & Armenia staples that is not dumbed down for American taste. A great favorite with the LAPD from the near by Northeast Station and the local Glendale cops too, Elena's offers wonderful simple healthy food in a combination of Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Lebanese styles. All the dinner plates come with either a bowl of soul filling lentil soup or a very nice salad of lettuce tomatoes, onion, herbs and a vinegar lemon juice dressing that is just sharp and zesty enough to set off the vegetables. The following dinner plates are a large serving of rice pilaf with a grilled Anaheim pepper and a grilled tomato with onions and a side dish of pickled cabbage and other vegetables that is sort of mild Balkan take on kimchi. On this generous plate you can get various kabobs: chicken, lula, beef, lamb or a combination of them plus felafel, stuffed egg plant, stuffed grape leaves and a few other meatless dishes. The meats are well seasoned in the tangy Balkan Levantine way and full of zest without hiding or distorting their natural flavor. For myself, I almost always get a combo plate with one stick of lamb kabobs and the other of herb dusted chicken. While there is no beer or wine, a wide variety of soft drinks are available including the house made yogurt drink which is the prefect drink to go with the food. Finally some more good news about Elena’s is that almost all the dinners are less than ten dollars. They also have take out and also make pita sandwiches.

El Morfi

Another little place that I enjoy for its honest ethnic focus and direct simplicity is El Morfi, a block south of Porto’s Bakery on Brand across the street from the Alex Theater. An Argentine place, El Morfi (BA slang for a snack or quick bite) serves food in the unique Italo-Latino style of Buenos Aries. For example on the menu you will see “ñque” which really puzzled me until the young waiter explained it was how you spelled “Gnocchi” in Spanish. "¡ñque, ñque, ñque!" It is that kind of place.

What I particularly like there is their salad, an Argentine version of a chopped salad in a clean vinaigrette, papas Provenzale -- great french fries salted then tossed with garlic and parsley and their milanesas. The Neopalitana is a wide thin breaded beef cutlet topped with a herby marinara sauce and melted provolone and a few strips of roasted red pepper. (You can get chicken milanesas if you prefer.) There are many other dishes including pasta, pizza, empanadas and other Argentine specialties. They carry a good selection of wine and beer from “BA” and make a very flavorful house made Sangria that is not too sweet but very full of red wine character. Prices are quite fair, cheap by those used to the West Side and Santa Monica. It is a simple little place popular with both English and Spanish speakers.

And then there is the real reason to enjoy El Morfi, their home made Chimichurri. This condiment is addictive, it sings with herbs, teases with the smoothness of olive oil, it enchants with herbal complexity, and pinches your tongue with a tang and a zing. I dip bread in it, and spoon the green and golden elixir over the papas provenzale. I think I could eat cardboard dipped in. It is made in house and can be bought in mason jars and taken home. Don't miss it.

There is a story the the name Chimichurri comes from the name of Irish soldier who fought with Argentine rebel army in their war of Independence from Spain, Jimmy McCurry. Who knows? I suppose you could even say El Morfi is Irish too, a phonetic spelling of Murphy. I had an old nun when I was a child who said whenever you have a good story, there usually was an Irishman as the bottom of it.

Other places you should know about in Glendale are Damon’s, which has been there since the 1930’s. It looks like a local take on the Trader Vic’s, Don the Beachcomber school of Tiki restaurant. While it serves a wide variety of Tiki Room rum and fruit juice drinks in the grand Dorothy Lamour, Hope & Crosby “Road” pictures style, the menu is very much old time LA steakhouse. Near by is Jax’s, a bit more up scale but also long time LA steak house.

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A few words about Glendale.

Glendale does not make it that often into the food blogs, however occasionally a local place gets attention. For example, not long ago the food writer of the LA Weekly discovered Billy’s Deli on Orange Street. He liked it and was surprised it had slipped his attention since it has been there for over 50 years and has been used in movies and TV series as the interior for a New York deli or old fashioned Italian restaurant depending on what ethnic decorations replace the photo murals of pre-WW II Glendale. Billy’s makes all the New York Jewish Deli standards and have well priced daily specials. When many deli’s are drifting farther and father away from their traditions Billy’s stay close to the old ways. On the hottest day of summer the year at an outlet of the Jerry’s Deli’s chain, a Latino waitress tells me that don’t served cold beet borscht because nobody but a few old guys ever ordered it. That was as shocking as finding an Irish saloon that didn’t served Jameson’s or an English pub that didn’t have Fuller’s London Pride. What is the world coming to?

Billy's, how authentic is it? One example, they serve a breakfast special of fried baloney & eggs. It is quarter inch thick slices of Hebrew National Baloney fried until there is a scorched crust. You can't get much more old time authentic than that. My daughter says it is too disgusting to even think about. Hey, but does she know about real food. I have it on good authority that President Obama likes Spam Fried Rice just like everybody who grew up in Honolulu.

Another place that I feel is unfairly omitted from most food blogs is Mario’s Italian Market on Broadway. Mario’s is an old fashioned Italian market like there used to be all over San Francisco, San Jose and the rest of the Bay Area and many other parts of the country. My daughter last year had a problem with her foot and went to see a specialist recently moved to the San Fernando Valley from New Jersey. During one appointment the Doctor said that he had not been able to find a real old time Italian Market. Mara told him he should try Mario’s in Glendale. The next time she saw him he told her, “Thanks for telling me about Mario’s. Ya’ know, I opened the door and it smelled just like I was back in New Jersey.”

At Mario’s they make dozens of Italian hero sandwiches with a wide variety of salami’s, sausages, and other cured meats on their own torpedo shaped rolls. I always ask for no mustard or mayonnaise but extra olive oil and vinegar dressing. Mario’s carries a wide range of Italian and other Mediterranean imports, anchovies, canned fish, dozens and dozens kinds of pasta, cookies, candy, olive oil, vinegar's, spices, olives, etc., etc. Personally I would rate their hero sandwiches as good or better than those at Bay Cities in Santa Monica, but that is just me and doesn’t mean that I don’t think Bay Cities is a fine place.

Billy’s Deli & Café

216 N. Orange Street, Glendale, CA 91203

Phone: (818) 246-1689 | Fax: (818) 246-3210

Mario's Italian Deli & Catering

740 East Broadway

Glendale, CA (818) 242-4114

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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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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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