Posted by Michael Stern
, July 23, 2010 14:08
I discovered Blackbird Baked Goods pies at the Farmer’s Market in Georgetown, Connecticut, nearly 10 years ago, and only recently found out that the market originally was organized by Gail Brookover, the Blackbird Baker. It’s a great market, source also of Wave Hill Bread, and these pies, let me tell you, are nothing short of sensational. Pictured above is Jumble Berry, a mix of raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and strawberries with a buttery, sweet crumble crust. Served warm, it demands a scoop of vanilla ice cream, preferably the ultracreamy rich kind from Dr. Mike's up the road in Bethel. Even if you set aside pizza, hot lobster rolls and Super Duper weenies, Connecticut is a pretty nice state in which to eat. [And why would you ever set aside pizza, hot lobster rolls and Super Duper weenies?]
Posted by ayersian
, July 23, 2010 11:41
Chicago…oh, Chicago. You certainly demand an entire blog entry just for yourself. After catching a Cubs game at Wrigley (and consuming the standard ballpark fare that comes along with such an outing) on Monday night we were able to cross “attractions” off of the Chi-town list and move on to the “dining.” Some may not consider Doug’s Dogs on N. California to be the place to break one’s morning fast, but knowing that the lines grow exponentially in relation to the time of day, we made it our first stop of the day. With so many unique combinations of exotic sausages (Foie gras dog! Corned beef sausage!) and designer toppings (Havarti cheese! Shrimp remoulade!), the selection process can be difficult. We decided to go with the “Game of the Week” (proudly posted beneath the head of a stuffed jackalope?), a wild rice and asiago cheese bison sausage topped with roasted yellow pepper mustard and Chimay beer cheese. A quick stop down the road at the Bleeding Heart Bakery (advertised as a “punk rock bakery”) for a Veruca Salt (salted caramel) cupcake and a couple of cake balls (think of a moist cake, then think denser, then denser again), and we were on our way to meet up with Gregg “Chi-Town Diner” Pill and his wife Patty for an afternoon/evening of Roadfood indulgence.
First stop (and certainly one of the highlights of an all-around 5-star day) was at Paradise Pup in Des Plaines. The charburger would have been delicious on its own, but when liberally topped with Merkt’s cheddar, tomato, and grilled onions…there are few words. Equally fabulous were the char dog (dressed Chicago-style), three-way fries (with Merkt’s, sour cream, and bacon), and the fresh raspberry shake. For something totally different, we made our way to Freddy’s in Cicero, a neighborhood Italian corner store that packs a tremendous amount of home-cooked food into a very small interior. Among the highlights of this stop were the stuffed gnocchi, tomatoes layered with fresh mozzarella and prosciutto, and the multiple cups of gelato and Italian ice shared around the table. After receiving an email from Gregg nearly a month back that simply read: “My 4 words for the day will be: Hoosier Mama Pie Company,” we were psyched for our next stop. The pie company has a very small (perhaps 2 tables?) storefront on Chicago Avenue from which they serve up a long list of homemade sweet and savory pies, including our choices of banana cream, chocolate chess, and apple raspberry with pecan crumble topping. Each of us seemed to come up with a different rank ordering, but everyone agreed that the pies were top-notch and worth a major travel detour when in town!
Our next stop was the iconic Margie’s Candies on Western Avenue for ice cream sundaes. Like Lagomarcino’s, they serve the hot fudge on the side—but here it’s in a silver pitcher, with ample fudge plus a delicious sugar wafer as garnish. The dish looks like a huge conch shell, and coupled with the old-timey memorabilia and fixtures, Margie’s is a must for all sweets lovers. Returning to hot dogs, we enjoyed a works dog stuffed Primanti’s-style with French fries at Redhot Ranch on Western, but the real draw here was the fabulously fried shrimp and cocktail sauce—excellent! Gregg took this opportunity to show us the Vienna Beef Factory where the Chicago hot dog magic happens, but it was all about the beef at Johnnie’s in Elmwood Park: steaming Italian beef, sopped with juiciness, redolent with hot giardiniera, cooled only by Johnnie’s Italian lemon ice with bits of rind mixed in. Does Chicago get better than this? Actually, yes it does—when we started Route 66 the next morning with breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s downtown on Jackson Street. Gregg had told us that when he was there last, The Travelin’ Man wouldn’t share his Apple and Cheese Omelette with anyone, so of course we had to try one for ourselves: Michigan sugar sweet apples topped an ultra-fluffy omelette stuffed with gooey Old English cheddar, sided with crunchy hash browns…TTM, we don’t blame you one bit! As always, a thousand thank-yous to Gregg and Patty for showing us their town. Now to actually get on the road and start Route 66!
Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, February 24, 2010 16:10
When it comes to cream pies, coconut edged out banana and chocolate in the Roadfood.com poll: The Best Cream Pie is ... . Here’s the thing about coconut pie, though: too many restaurants play fast and loose with the boundaries between coconut CREAM pie and coconut CUSTARD pie, and while we love them both, there IS a huge difference between the two. You cannot call one the other. And don’t get us started on cream pies versus meringue pies… Suffice it to say that a cream pie has a creamy, pudding-like filling topped, ideally, with whipped cream (or at least some sort of whipped topping). Top it with beaten egg whites, though, and you no longer have cream pie, you’ve got meringue pie, which is where the lemon version really shines. Vanilla cream pie? We’ve never heard of it either, but we figured if there’s chocolate there must also be vanilla. Apparently not.
Posted by ayersian
, September 08, 2009 08:30
Now that we’ve unpacked, settled, and taken time to go through nearly 2,000 photos, we’re looking back at this long roadtrip and have come up with some stats and best-of lists. The most amazing occurrence is that we managed to eat only a handful of mediocre meals, with the vast majority (approximately 95%) being four- and five-star Roadfood menu items. We quickly found out, however, that months and months of advance research sometimes didn’t hold a candle to a quick Internet or local newspaper browse when pulling into a town.
Miles driven on trip: just shy of 10,000
States and provinces visited: 26
Roadfood-reviewed spots visited: 38
Non-RF-reviewed spots visited: 101
Places that should be RF-reviewed: 74
Best burger: 911 Burger, Eddie Burger + Bar, Banff, AB
Best hot dog: Buffalo Dog, Billy’s Giant Hamburgers, Jackson, WY
Best “fast food”: Grilled Bratwurst, Woudstra Meat Market, Orange City, IA
Best sandwich: Roast Pork Italian, Tony Luke’s, Philadelphia, PA
Best bar food: Charlie Boy, Miles Inn, Sioux City, IA
Best meal eaten in a bus: Grilled Cheese Grill, Portland, OR and Motoraunt, Edmonton, AB (tie)
Best pizza: Pizza Pot Pie, Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co., Chicago, IL
Best seafood: Smoked Mussels, Ecola Seafoods, Cannon Beach, OR and Smoked Salmon, Crabpot, Lincoln City, OR (tie)
Best sushi: Chef’s Choice, Yuki Hana, Chicago, IL
Best coffee: Captain Jack Mocha, Rusty Cup, Astoria, WA (also Friendliest service)
Best pastry: Raisin Scones, Fairmont Empress, Victoria, BC
Best doughnut: Bacon Maple Bar, Voodoo Doughnut, Portland, OR
Best pie: Strawberry Cream Pie, Cheyenne Crossing, Lead, SD
Best ice cream: Wilcoxson’s Mountain Berry, Yellowstone National Park, WY
Best milkshake: Huckleberry shake, Victor Emporium, Victor, ID
Best car food: Prime Rib Snack Sticks, S&S Meats, Grand Rapids, MN
Weirdest meal: Salami Curry, Manpuku, Toronto, ON
Favorite “new to us” meal: Meat and pizza pasties, Dobber’s Pasties, Iron Mountain, MI
Best breakfast: Chorizo & Avocado Eggs Benedict, Diner Deluxe, Calgary, AB
Most decadent item: 5-Layer Chocolate Pie Shake, Betty’s Pies, Two Harbors, MN
Most addictive food: Ginger Beef, Silver Inn, Calgary, AB
Best carnivore dinner: Greek dry ribs and sirloin, Lakeshore Steak House, Regina, SK
We’d also like to thank all the people who fed us, put us up for the night, and divulged their most secret places for fabulous food, especially: Jane & Michael Stern, Bruce Bilmes & Sue Boyle, Buffetbuster, Nocarolina, ChiTownDiner & Patti, the JRPfeff family, the Buffalo Tarheel family, WanderingJew, Sarah & Chris, Mary Alice, the Honey family, the Mr. Chips family, the Johnsons, the Westovers, Sarah & Kris, Kirsty & Darren, the Roseau crew, Susan, the Chafouleas family, SRO/Anthem, U.S. and Canadian National Park rangers, free wifi, and all the fine servers, owners, and customers of Roadfood spots across the continent!
Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, May 04, 2009 11:02
Jane and Michael Stern have found the pinnacle of pecan pie at the Texas Pie Company in Kyle, TX. Don’t miss the endearingly sweet and moist strawberry cake either, if they have any available the day you’re there. The Sterns talk about these and more during their recent visit with Lynne Rossetto Kasper on her radio show called The Splendid Table. You can still hear their segment, or the entire show, online.
The photo of strawberry cake above is from the Roadfood.com review of the Texas Pie Company. About that cake, Michael says: “Although the name of the place is the Texas PIE Company, this square of strawberry cake with strawberry frosting won my heart. The moistness of the cake cannot be exaggerated and while it is sweet indeed, the berry nature of the sweetness sang through loud and clear.”
Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, April 18, 2009 23:20
Where’d everyone go? Did the whole city close down? When we came down to the hotel lobby it was deserted. The Louisiana Roadfood Festival was over, but we chose to stick around for another day. The plan for this morning? To ride the St. Charles streetcar out to Carrollton and the Camellia Grill for breakfast. We’ve been to New Orleans before but, somehow, we’d never been on a streetcar. We remembered reading that the streetcars take only exact fares. What we didn’t know was, what is that fare, and does it have to be change or will they take paper?
So Bruce asked the concierge. She souped up her Churchillian accent and replied that the streetcar takes one dollar bill (thumb and forefinger of each hand outlining the size and shape of a dollar) and one quarter (forefinger of the right hand pointing straight up). Then, because he must have looked like he was in town for the Village Idiot’s Convention, she repeated her instructions (finger work included). He thanked her and, as he was about to leave, she glanced down at his shorts and warned, “It’s chilly out there.” Bah! We’re from New Jersey! As we stepped out of the hotel, we found out, hey, it’s chilly out here! Back up to our room for long pants and jacket.
The streetcar trip is wonderful. The car is old and rickety, the neighborhoods are fascinating, the houses are impressive. The streetcar travels through the Warehouse District and the Garden District, and passes the statue of Robert E. Lee, the beautiful park setting of the zoo, and Loyola and Tulane universities. When the streetcar reaches the intersection of St. Charles and Carrollton, it’s across the street from Camellia Grill.
It doesn’t look anything like a diner, does it? But that’s exactly what it is. In fact, the menu is a classic diner menu pared down to just the essentials: eggs, pancakes, sandwiches, chili, pie… There’s usually a line but it moves along reasonably quickly. All seating is at two (three?) U-shaped counters. Our waiter, Marvin (“Word”), kept up a non-stop one-man show that was truly amazing to witness: songs, greetings, sayings, fist-bumps, announcements to no one in particular, … Even his co-workers commented on his unusual rambunctiousness.
The food:
A perfectly executed pecan waffle (loaded with nuts), of the increasingly rare small-tread model, made on:
With a side of eggs and sausage (note the trademark white cloth napkin):
They have pitchers of butter and Steen’s syrup for dressing your waffle. The Steen’s tastes much like molasses. You can ask for pancake syrup if you wish but Sue says the Steen’s is wonderful on a pecan waffle.
Bruce went with the “kitchen sink” Chef Special Omelet:
If you plan to visit Camellia, don’t get the wrong idea. These are perfectly executed versions of diner food, but they ARE just diner dishes. As good as this stuff is, they don’t have delusions here: they serve diner food, they know it, and they do it particularly well. We absolutely, positively love it. Maybe best of all was this:
We saw the family sitting across from us order three slices of pecan pie. What they received was three slices of pecan pie. From pan to plate to counter. We knew that was NOT what we wanted, so Sue specified she wanted her slice heated on the grill. Word twirls around, cuts a giant wedge, and slaps it face down on the grill top. Then he smashes it down with the spatula some so it makes full contact with the hot surface. Now comes the real lunacy: as it cooks he grabs a brush sitting in a tub of melted butter, and he drizzles and flicks melted butter all over and around the grilling slice (all the while, next door to the pie on the grill, eggs and bacon and such are sizzling away). The pie gets flipped and more butter gets drizzled. When the pie achieves its full measure of extra caramelization Word scoops it onto a plate, walks over to the ice cream freezer, and calls out to us that we want a scoop of vanilla on it. We agree. The result you see above. Truly amazing!
Word fist-bumps us on our way as we depart, and we take the St. Charles line almost all the way back, getting off a couple of blocks sooner so we could walk down to that Southern Food & Beverage Museum that we missed on Friday morning. It’s in a mall, which Bruce always finds very depressing. What makes it worse is that we enter the mall at the absolute geometrically farthest point from the entrance to the museum. But when we finally get there, it turns out to be worth the effort. It’s new, and they’re still building up their collections, but we learned some fascinating things, like: the association of Cajuns with crawfish is a relatively new one. During the Depression, even when food was scarce, most Cajuns refused to lower themselves to the point of eating crawfish. And: about a hundred years ago about 90% of the French Quarter was of Italian descent. And: crabbing was once about the lowest of the low in terms of job status.
Learn about the origins of the sno-ball, and see some of the original machinery.
A museum within a museum.
And what would a Southern food museum be without Elvis? There is a section devoted to that Southern gourmand who knew no self-restraint:
The answer to Elvis’ question, after our late breakfast at Camellia Grill, was “highly unlikely.” We were pretty certain we were done eating for the day.
Coming up… Why Drink Pernod in NOLA When You Can Have Herbsaint? and The Dish That Out-Garlicked Mosca’s!
Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, March 29, 2009 01:12
Since 1957, when pastor Ford Berg of the Zion Mennonite Church started up a committee to organize a local relief sale, the Tri-County, later Pennsylvania Relief Sale has raised over $11 million for the Mennonite Central Committee to help people in need both in the US and around the world. Friday and Saturday will mark the 53rd annual relief sale.
The sale includes a chance to bid on many gorgeous quilts, a quilting demonstration, a silent auction, children’s activities, choral performances, a country auction, and much more. The food booths have always been a big part of the relief sale. Some of the edibles include apple dumplings, homemade candy and donuts, pies galore, soft pretzels, a Saturday morning breakfast of ham and eggs or sausages and pancakes, and a Saturday chicken barbecue.
Remember, the dates are April 3rd and 4th, 2009, and the site is the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg. All proceeds go towards aiding the victims of poverty and other man-made and natural disasters. And you’ll have a good time, and good things to eat, too.
Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, March 03, 2009 14:47
What is Roadfood.com readers’ favorite Pennsylvania Dutch specialty? In a recent poll, the leading choice indicates that many people have never tried any of them! Of those who have, Lebanon bologna had a small lead over apple butter and shoofly pie. So just what are these things?
Pot Pie: most people are familiar with pot pie as a pie filled with meat and vegetables and gravy. PA Dutch pot pie is something else, a dish of rich chicken (usually) broth in which are cooked thick noodle squares (often homemade, these noodles are also called pot pies). There’s usually a good amount of chicken meat too. The broth ends up anywhere from soup to gravy.
Shoofly Pie: This really is a pie, in two layers. The bottom is a thick (sometimes almost flowing, sometimes not), dark molasses filling, and the top holds a thick layer of crumbs.
Chow Chow: a pickled vegetable relish.
Apple Butter: a dark, spicy, thick apple spread.
Schnitz und Knepp: a dish of apples, ham, and dumplings. buffetbuster’s comment in the Roadfood.com Forums: “Aren't they the Bird-in-Hand personal injury lawyers who specialize in buggy accidents?”
Lebanon Bologna: a summer sausage with a distinctive tangy, fermented smoky flavor.
Cup Cheese: a soft, spreadable cheese often sold in a crockery cup. Can be mild or potent. This poll choice came close to setting a poll record: it received 0% but actually one person chose it as their favorite.
Potato Filling: like a bread stuffing with the added weight and savor of mashed potatoes.
Funeral Pie: raisin pie.
Rivel Soup: a meat broth in which are cooked little dumpling bits (rivels).
Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, January 15, 2009 14:02
The Indiana Foodways Alliance has requested a resolution for the Indiana legislature to declare sugar cream pie the state pie of Indiana. They claim it would help promote Indiana food tourism. An article on the WIBC website also notes that sugar cream pie may have been invented by Quakers from North Carolina who settled in Indiana in the early 1800s. The slice of sugar cream pie pictured above comes from Nick’s Kitchen of Huntington, IN. You can read Michael Stern’s Roadfood.com review of Nick’s here.
Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, December 10, 2008 00:27
Thanksgiving may be old news but for many people the Thanksgiving meal more or less makes an encore appearance at Christmas, so it’s worth noting that in our recent Roadfood.com poll that sought readers opinions on the least essential Thanksgiving dinner element, a plurality felt that everything from cranberries to pie had to be there. Of those who felt something could be eliminated, yams led the pack. Note also that you’d be wiser to drop the turkey than the stuffing and gravy (but then how would you make the gravy?).
