memphis mary's

Janae asked me to go with her to Memphis Mary's in order to do reconnaissance. I'm not clear on why we needed to do reconnaissance, but I take pictures in restaurants all the time so I wasn't too concerned with the details. We told the waitstaff I write a food and travel blog. Misdirection through honesty is a specialty of mine.

The food: surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting much from a lesbian diner known primarily for its happy hour and contemporary dance mix. But it's solid.

We started with the spinach-artichoke dip that comes, unusually, with chips. The chips were outstanding: paper thin, crisp, warm, and lightly salty. The dip itself was well-balanced between creamy and astringent. The portions aren't large, but I only noticed because I wished I had some more dip after it was gone.

I specially requested grilled rather than fried shrimp for my po' boy. While the waitress was reluctant, she got it done. And it was a fine po'boy, this version firmly in the tradition of unfussy food. The bread was soft, not too crusty and grilled, which was a nice touch. Rather than the remoulade most places would serve with a po'boy, Mary's just uses a generous smear of tangy mayo. The fries were what really had me. Wow! Soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside, not too oily, lightly salted...and browner, more crisp than others. I liked the size of them, too: thick, but not steak-size. Perfect proportions!

Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken

I'm not much of a fan of fried chicken. To me, it's greasy, soggy, flavorless mush coating overcooked chicken. You can revoke my "Southern" card if you want, but fried food in general just doesn't do much for me. The flavor of the fat tends to overwhelm the flavor of the food. In almost all cases you would do better to prepare it in another way.

This is the opposite of how I feel about Gus's fried chicken.

There's something about how they make it that's alchemical. The crust is crisp and full of the flavor of pepper and spice, while the chicken stays moist and juicy. It's like they condensed the essence of chicken in there. Maybe it's special chickens...I don't know. But they just taste better than ordinary ones.


Other than the superlative chicken, the menu at Gus's is limited. They have enjoyable fried pickles and jalapenos, the pies are uninspired but not bad. Beans and coleslaw come with the chicken meal and are serviceable. I like to scoop up coleslaw with pieces of chicken lightly doused in pepper vinegar. Yum!

I go to the Gus's downtown, on Front & Linden. I'm told the location out east has more variety of vegetables, but I wonder why they bother. People come to Gus's for the chicken. Eating anything else is just a waste of perfectly good tummy space.

Jerry's SnoCones

Jason and I had been planning a trip to Jerry's Sno Cones for months it seems. We finally went the other day! First of all, it's a bit of a trek to get there. Way up in the north part of Memphis - 1657 Wells Station Rd. But it's worth it on a hot day. The place is so pink and yellow and square, like if communist architecture came to Portugal.





And it does feel a little post-apocalyptic with all the people in various stages of summer undress waiting around in the sun or slurping their food out of styrofoam cups. what saves it from being too morbid is the gratuitousness of the combination of sno cone with soft serve ice cream. It's called a "supreme" and it's very good. I tried mine with mango, orchid, and cherry flavors. They were all a bit sickly sweet, and *way* too much for one person to eat, but the texture on my tongue was pretty amazing. I'm told wedding cake is the most popular flavor...but i think next time I'll try lemon or coffee and hope it won't put my teeth on edge!

Jeanne & Thorsten's Wedding Cake

So, I'm back in Memphis now -- teaching some Philosophy, tearing up some floors, baking some wedding cake. This is my second wedding cake, and I was very happy with it. It looked beautiful thanks to Amanda and Jena's artistic touches, but it tasted excellent as well! Let's see...it was an almond cake with raspberry eau-de-vie buttercream filling and fresh raspberries. For the outside I chopped up a bunch of almonds very finely and mixed it with gold dust so that it would remind Jeanne of the sand on the Pacific.

Lemon tart with Raspberries and Rosemary

the lemon filling was loose.... there's something about these creamy-firm textured pies that's difficult for me. but it was delicious anyway!

a gustatory adventure

Maria and I started our day at Beauty’s Luncheonette. It was a little overpriced, but the atmosphere was swell and the food was tasty. I'm told there's usually a crazy wait to get a seat, but Maria and I just breezed on in. My pancakes were lovely, sincere versions and the blueberries were fresh-tasting. The syrup on the other hand...let's say it was more caramel-colored sugar water than maple syrup!

Anyway, Maria's spinach and red pepper omelet with hash browns was hearty and well-seasoned. But what's with all the brown cooked bits on the omelet? This may be a little exigent, but you lose much of the delicacy and softness of the egg when you let it cook so long (or at such a high heat). Brown bits on the potatoes, however...heaven!

Next, we drove up to the Jean-Talon market, one of the most exciting open markets I've visited. First of all, it's huge. Rows and rows of fresh fruit and vegetables - all arranged like bouquets -, then there's booths for honey, maple syrup, cider and ice wine, cheese shops, butcher shops, stands of cured pork and homemade sausage, all surrounded by a sea of flowers. Maria and I got hooked by the mangos, which I wouldn't have expected to be as deliciously floral as they were. One of the nice things about the Jean-Talon market is that the vendors will give you samples of their fresh produce. When we sampled the mango it was so wonderful I bought 6!

We had one more stop to make: Paul Patates. I read this was the best place to get hot dog steamies and the only place to get a homemade spruce beer float.Let me say: Yum! Everything at Paul Patates was delicious! Especially the spruce beer float. Spruce beer itself is very light and refreshing, with that tinny pine tone. What I especially liked about it is how the soft serve ice cream makes thin little ice crystals in the spruce beer. It's almost like eating a little brush of pine needles with snow on top!

Elvis...like a bad penny

Maria and I visited Old Montreal while she was in town. It's really a beautiful neighborhood, right on the water, with a mix of ornate European-style architecture and the rusted remains of port industry.


It's also become a bit of a tourist haven. Complete with a golden Elvis.

And we thought we got away from this guy!

What is it with those giant plastic cups, anyway? When people go on vacation, do they just expect those? Or is it the vendors? I guess they're onto something...it's probably only through drunken eyes that their rows of tiny Canadian flags, spoons, shot glasses and beavers could look good.

Something that did look mighty appealing to me and Maria were these:


Boules au miel, or honey balls. And they taste as good as they look! Some people were ordering them with soft serve ice cream on top, or chocolate syrup. Maria and I decided to go with simplicity. They taste like New Orleans' beignets (and with that almost indefinable vanilla richness that donuts never seem to achieve), but soaked in a very light honey rather than powdered sugar. The shop, le Volcan, also offers another Quebec specialty: beaver tail. I'm not quite sure what that is, but I plan on finding out soon.

The Fringe

There are so many things to do at the Fringe Festival, trying to relate it all threatens the coherency of a single entry. But I'll try anyway...coherency is an overrated ideal.

On St. Laurent the street food vendors stretched out like the ocean. Maria and I tried Jamaican patties, churros, fresh lemonade, Schwartz's sandwiches, chicken burritos, mango on a stick, and crepes with banana and nutella. But what we really wanted was to see some shows, preferably for free. So, we dropped in on a band from Austin playing in the Parc des Transameriques. We thought they were great...that is, until they stopped tuning up....

What we didn't anticipate was that the Parc des Transameriques would be the scene of something even less savory: The Cultural Gargantuan.

First off, we were tricked into going. I mean, they were offering free pancakes! Who can say no to free pancakes? In retrospect, I should have glanced at their pedigree. Had the pancakes been delicious as fluffy little maple clouds they still wouldn't have excused the display of rampantly poor theatre we endured for them. Unfortunately, the pancakes were so gritty and undercooked that they just added to our feeling of being swindled. I won't belabor the point: the "Cultural Gargantuan" was a vehicle for the production of "Fear of a Fat Planet" in which large, over-exposed women threw themselves around a stage and made out while eating bacon. We left after about 10 minutes.


In fact, if there's anyone wondering what the Fringe Festival in Montréal is all about, I think this poster kind of sums it up:


Got a run in your favorite pair of fishnet stockings? Well, sister, you're just going to have to wait until after the Fringe to replace them. Everyone's sold out.

We did catch a good show the next day, though: My Origami Motorcycle. The tale of one woman's motorcycle adventure across Canada to find her muse. Kind of a metaphor for Maria's life...except in her motorcycle adventure, when the bugs hit you, it doesn't hurt.

Spring Snow

DIY Pizza

So, I love pizza. It's one of those foods I just can't say 'no' to. There's a piece of pizza in my fridge right now I'm trying to resist eating for at least another hour. I thought writing about it would help, but it really just makes the pizza-lust stronger.

The good news is that I think I've channeled this love into a healthy new direction: making pizzas. The first thing I did was perfect the sauce. This seems like it should be complicated, but it's easy. Just open a big can of the highest quality tomatoes you're willing to shell out for (San Marzano, in my taste tests, deserved the hype), squish 'em a bit with your hands, then put them in a pot over very low heat for, like, five hours, lightly salting them before slathering them on the pizza crust. The only hard part is leaving them alone while they cook. When they start getting thick and sweet and filling your kitchen with delicious smells...you just want to eat 'em all up right out of the pot.

If you've managed to resist the sauce until it's done, then the crust is the next step, and it's a bit trickier. You really do need a pizza stone. (Comic interlude: I bought a pizza stone the other day and, of course, needed to season it. Before I had a chance to do it, though, Dr. dj's brother came by and we decided to drive over to his house to visit the new baby. So, I packed up all of my pizza making supplies thinking, 'oh, it'll be perfect. I'll get to try my first pizza out on friends who would probably especially appreciate someone else cooking for them right now. And all did seem perfect -- until I seasoned the pizza stone. There was smoke *everywhere*. And my poor friends had to take the baby down to the basement to avoid breathing it.... Luckily, the pizza tasted great, which I guess was slightly redeeming.) So, once you've bought and seasoned your pizza stone far from any newborns, you can make the crust. Here's my recipe, adapted from Giada de Laurentiis':

Pizza Dough

3/4 cup warm water (105°F to 115°F)
1 envelope active dry yeast

1 cup (or more) all purpose flour
1 cup (or more) whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon honey


Pour 3/4 cup warm water into small bowl; stir in yeast. Let stand until yeast dissolves, about 5 minutes.

Brush large bowl lightly with olive oil. Mix 2 cups flour and salt in another bowl. Add yeast mixture, 3 tablespoons oil, and honey; mix with fork then hands until dough forms a sticky ball. Transfer to lightly floured surface. Knead dough until smooth, adding more flour by tablespoonfuls if dough is very sticky, about 1 minute. Transfer to prepared bowl; turn dough in bowl to coat with oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 1 hour. Punch down dough. (The dough can be made one day ahead. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.) Roll out dough into a circle the size of your pizza stone, starting in center and working outwork toward edges without rolling over them.)

So, once you've gotten your dough all rolled out, you can either transfer it to a pizza peel or take the very hot stone out of the pre-heating (425ºF) oven and quickly form the dough and top it before the stone gets too cold. It works, I promise, you just have to be careful not to burn yourself. It usually takes between 15 and 20 minutes to cook, but you should just keep an eye on it and turn it sometime in the middle of cooking.

As for the topping, well, you're only limited by your imagination. Fresh mozzarella works best, but the stuff is pretty expensive, so I think my next culinary feat will be making my own. Wish me luck!

Méli-Mélo

I started a French class here in Montréal a few weeks ago. It's focused primarily on conversation, and the people all seem very sincere, though the substitute teacher (who is there more often than the original teacher these days) is a little nutty. He keeps forgetting that one of the students, Jhon, doesn't speak English. So, he's constantly translating things for Jhon into English as if it would help him understand French better. The other day he even handed Jhon a French/English dictionary and asked him to look up "élevage." Of course, Jhon couldn't find it because he was looking in the English part, without even realizing it. Poor guy....

But here's how poorly my French teacher knows me: he assigned us "une authentique recette québécoise" to challenge us with preparing a true Quebec specialty from a recipe entirely in French. Now, what could this amazing and authentic challenge be, you ask? Two words, dear reader:

Chex Mix

So, I made the Quebec Chex Mix of barroom fable, which even has a fancy French name: méli-mélo and got nothing but the highest compliments for the ingenuity of my interpretation. That is, for substituting Bugles for the pretzels....

Les Nourritures montréalaises

Dans le Sud des États-Unis, on fait frire beaucoup des nourritures: des poissons, des tourtes, des poulets, des cornichons, et même des Twinkies. Mon père fait frire un dinde entier chaque année pour Thanksgiving. Et non seulement on couvre beaucoup de ces nourritures de la sauce au jus de viande, mais les gens du Sud ajoutent du fromage à tout.

Mais c’etait les Québécois qui ont mis tous les trois ensemble pour créer le nouveau plat enchanté de poutine. Je crois que poutine peux devenir un gros succès à Memphis, donc j’essaie apprendre le cuisiner.

Voici ma première tentative:

CocoLoco

Now, here's something I found out the other day: Montréal fines businesses whose smells waft onto the sidewalk. ...Something about olfactory pollution?

Anyway, word about town is that these fines are directly responsible for the lack of good barbeque in the city. ...Though since walking by CocoRico I think it's just because no proper Southerners have come to show them how its done.


When you walk anywhere near CocoRico, you smell roast chicken. Every time. And every time I think: am I hungry? My nose sure says I am....


And it's the roast chicken you come for, though they do also serve little roast new potatoes, cole slaw and beans. The ambiance is great, too. It's intimate, with only a bar down the length of the restaurant and a mirror to facilitate watching the cooks dish up the juicy chicken. On a recent afternoon when dr. dj and I couldn't resist the tempting aromas, we shared a really lovely bird with a serviceable coleslaw.

Au revoir, Paris!

Well, Cecco and I are packing our bags, leaving Paris on the morning’s first train. Before we leave, though, we had to say some special goodbyes

to Berthillon ice cream,









to the Seine,
to drinking cheap wine in the park,
to chicken sandwiches on the boulevard de Strasbourg,














to the Sorbonne,























and to the Eiffel Tower.
Until we meet again, Paris...je t’aime!

Marché Bastille

An homage to a Parisian street market