Guilty Pleasures

Some thoughts on hamburgers.

OK, I know anybody with the slightest pretense to being a gourmet, a serious food thinker or a civilized human being is supposed to recoil with horror from most if not all chain produced burgers. In general I do, but like most people there are some chain products that I will enjoy on the quiet

a. McDonalds still have the best fries, always have. The Big Mac is a disgrace but their Angus Burger is compared to the others not a bad burger. I’m talking about the “plain” not tarted up versions. Not bad, especially for the money. The other burgers range from misses to lousy. However if there is a place besides the fries that McDonalds delivers the goods it is at Breakfast, the egg mcmuffin is pretty good and the sausage and egg biscuit is good, if you omit the cheese which doesn’t add any taste and in my opinion is like a gooey plastic.

b. The Wendy’s basic hamburger is not bad at all, in fact it is probably the best big chain burger of the lot.

c. OK here it comes, I’m now and always have been a sucker for Carl’s Western Bacon Cheese Hamburger. There I said it and it’s true. The basic “$6 Burger” is better than most. I don’t think the other hyper burger versions are as good and most of them go from decadent to insane sloppy feats of shameless gluttony. The one that oozes all over the lovely Padma is out and out pornography saying telling us more about the Indian beauty than the sandwich. The Famous Star is a good burger, almost as good as Wendy’s classical basic burger.

d. Jack in the Box make a Sourdough Hamburger that is almost as addictive as the Western Bacon Cheese Burger. This is the west coast take on the classic Paddy Melt which is on rye with swiss or provolone. The other thing I admit to liking at Jack’s is their Super Taco which is pretty damned good for a bunch of gavachos from San Diego.

e. Burger King is number two in the chain world. They are in second place for good reason. As Winston Churchill said of his counter part across the House, Clement Attlee, “He is modest man with a lot to be modest about.” I can’t summon up the slightest guilty pleasure for anything on their menu. This is odd because almost every other chain has something they do well, Wendy’s baked potatoes, Del Tacol’s Fiesta Salad and real English Tetley's brewed ice tea with real lemon wedges -- just two examples. And it’s not that they haven’t tried innovations. They have and all were duds.

f. In’n Out. Sure the burger is good, but for me I wish it was bigger by about half. I don’t like the double double, but I would like the regular burger to be bigger so one is enough.

g. I have only had one Sonic Burger and was surprised, but I don’t know enough to say more than the place is different and warrants further study. Some people I know who spend time in the Central Valley swear by Sonic as the Prince of chain burger joints. It does have real Texas attitude.

h. Finally, what can I say about Tommy’s Chili Burger? It is an dependable old friend and a soul soothing bit of real LA. It doesn’t need any cheese. If you don’t like it, then move to Seattle and live sunless in the gray mist under gloomy dripping conifers and drive a mud spattered Subaru down the clammy streets and endure the musty smell of wet wool sweaters and over roasted coffee fumes.

Pax vobiscum. (Catholic for Aloha, Shalom and Salaam)

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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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