The Peanut Butter Sauce Quest

My perfect sundae at Friendly's

Growing up in central Jersey, my friends and I had a few favorite activities in high school: driving around the Watchung Mountains, hanging out in the McD's parking lot, going to Great Adventure, and going to Friendly's. The summer after senior year—probably in subconscious prep for the imminent loss of each other to college—we went to Friendly's every single night for ice cream. The sundae I had then is the same I have now, except then my Reese's Pieces sundae had five scoops and now I only get two: 1 scoop of chocolate chip, 1 scoop of butter crunch with hot fudge and peanut butter sauce on top (the Reese's Pieces requisite marshmallow topping is sometimes added on special occasions).

Shake Shack Sheep

When people ask if I’ve ever been to Mardi Gras, my answer is that I would never visit New Orleans when it’s so crowded. The same rule applies in my life when it comes to Black Friday, free Shakespeare in the Park, and Danny Meyer’s global hit burger chain Shake Shack. Mr. Meyer started his empire 30 years ago with Union Square Café, and has experienced continued, subsequent success after opening restaurants like my favorite, Gramercy Tavern (whose original chef, Tom Colicchio, is now famous in his own right). Shake Shack was different from the rest—it was Mr. Meyer’s personal love project based on the modest burgers, fries and ice cream he experienced growing up in the Midwest.

Would you like hash browns with that McBlandwich?

The McDonald’s Egg White Delight breakfast sandwich is a recent brand extension in the U.S. of the popular Egg McMuffin. All McMuffin ingredients have been altered—an egg without a yolk, a whole grain instead of plain English muffin, processed white Cheddar cheese instead of processed American—except for the round of Canadian bacon, which remains in the sandwich unchanged.

By introducing this “healthier” McMuffin, McDonald’s has also inadvertently suggested that we in the U.S. are a bland people craving bland food. Perhaps their thinking is that the U.S. melting pot has melted together so much that our cultural rainbow has morphed into a mottled grey, resulting in an ineffectual breakfast sandwich, aka the McBlandwich.

For the Love of Greek Butter Cookies

As a young girl, my favorite place to go out to eat was a Greek place at the foot of the Watchung Mountains. We lived in suburban Scotch Plains, NJ, and my father liked this family-run, homestyle joint that had checkered tablecloths like Italian restaurants, yet the colors were blue & white and there was no red sauce on the menu.

Part of the fun was that dinner felt like a meal of exotic appetizers. The restaurant’s specialty was phyllo dough cigars filled with either spinach (spanakopita), Greek cheese (tiropita) or seasoned ground meat (kreatopita?). My father would ask how many of each kind we'd like, which always resulted in a variety to share. I loved this food and rotated bites of each phyllo cigar. They were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, with flavors always fascinating in their newness to me, and always delicious.

Potato Chip Gyp

The United States of America is often referred to as “the land of opportunity.” This country may indeed be a rich land of opportunity for many reasons, but certainly not when it comes to potato chips. For some reason, the U.S. is the blandest producer of potato chip flavors in the world. England, Canada, India… their chips swell with flavorful pride. Here? All we’ve really got to call our own is BBQ, Sour Cream & Onion, perhaps some Cheddar, and endless riffs on the same. Why is it that our diverse melting pot palate is presumed to be one-dimensional when it comes to potato chips?

Local Hostess to the Nth Degree

CMB PBMC

There's a really super bakery in Los Angeles that produces fantastic and innovative pastries and gets them to people in a unique way. Cake Monkey Bakery does not yet have a retail storefront, so they distribute a few of their most popular single-serve cakes to specific retail partners. Finding one at a store is sort of like a bakery treasure hunt. "There's the Cake Monkey foil-wrapped cakes! Do they have the kind I want??"

Some may find this a sort of pleasure-hunt game, others may find it annoying. I say let's be grateful for the opportunity to even have cakes like this, meaning their rules are okay by me. Cake Monkey treats are baked in Burbank, and to get some you have to find a retail store that sells them. Too frustrating? Then place an order directly, like the time I picked up a special order of limited-edition passion fruit brown butter bars (and did not regret it!). The benefit of ordering ahead is you get much more choice, since only four of their cakes are sold at retail partners and there are so many more choices online (like these Inside Out 'Smores).

Tales from the Customer Service Crypt

Starbucks' Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate

Foodies love to think about what they're going to eat and drink way before the actual moment of ingestion. Could be because they love to think about their favorite hobby, and if you only think about what you're eating and drinking while eating and drinking it, the whole pleasurable event is over way too soon. In my opinion, that's why all roads leading to the tasting moment also contribute to a foodie's bliss.

In an episode of “Top Chef” this year, host/producer Tom Colicchio said, "People come to a restaurant for food, but they come back for service." How true! Customer service is a huge and often taken for granted part of any buying experience, whether the buyer is a foodie or not. When there are bumps in the road to acquiring what a person can't wait to taste, that leaves a lingering malaise and can result in a customer lost.

It's only a few days until Halloween. What better time, then, to share a few scary tales from the customer service crypt. The scary-meter below refers to when I, as customer, realized a particular business was scaring me with its cluelessness and/or lack of sanity with regard to basic customer service.

Calamari Please Hold the Ketchup

In the last few weeks I’ve been hit with an overwhelming craving to eat calamari, aka “fried calamari in the typical fashion." To me that translates to breaded rings and tiny tentacles of squid that are deep-fried and served hot and crispy. When I refer to calamari I am never referring to grilled calamari on top of greens or that newish fad of calamari sticks—a stack of breaded calamari planks that when picked up flounce up and down like a rubber pencil. Nope, those latter types of calamari are just not for me.

Calamari is one of those proteins in which I suspend my disbelief about 80% regarding what I’m actually eating. What can I say, I could barely look into the famous and breathtakingly gorgeous jellyfish tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and while I know that jellyfish are not quite the same as squid, still, this type of creature is not what I like to imagine ingesting with full cognitive awareness. Calamari is squid after all, and personally I do not find squid attractive to look at or think about chewing. That said, the tiny tentacles pieces on a typical fried calamari plate is pretty much the squid sticking its tongue out at me proclaiming, "See, how could you NOT know you're eating me, the squid." Alas, how true, and that is likely why 20% of my brain always gets that eating delicious fried calamari equals eating pieces of a once squiggly, icky squid.

Salty & Sweet

Food and Wine's milk chocolate tart with pretzel crust a la Marly

Now that this blog's grad school hiatus is officially over, I can tell you about one of my all-time favorite pleasures. It is the taste of salty and sweet on the palate, and here are just a few of the ways to enjoy this:

• the Canadian tradition of dipping bacon into maple syrup
• a cheese plate with wine and some salty & sweet accoutrements  
• adding plain M&Ms to movie theater popcorn (some prefer M&M peanut)
• the trend of adding salt to caramel and other desserts: 1) here is a recipe for a caramel sea salt tart from Saveur magazine in 2009; 2) you can buy bittersweet sea salt chocolate chip cookies online now from Saint Cupcake in Portland, and you should! One of the best cookies I ever tasted.

Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries...

“Cough," I said. "Cough cough.” It seemed natural enough to cough my lungs up at Rite Aid, where I arrived much in need of some cough syrup. Not even a week after the big spider bite (consensus says it was most likely a black widow), I had picked up my first case of bronchitis, and who knows if this was due to my body fighting off spider venom or because of several hours spent in the most crowded and poorly managed ER in Los Angeles County.

The coughs notwithstanding, at least I could still roll my eyes at the typical drug store scenario of each and every bottle of cough syrup being cherry flavored. Cherry flavored? How come the children's cough syrup is grape flavored? Adult cherry cough syrup is so vile that pharmaceutical companies must clearly only take pity on coughing children since they're the only ones given a less repulsive flavor option. As an asthmatic child, I was in need of cough syrup often and it was always cherry flavored and thankfully my parents usually bribed me to take it down with a YooHoo chaser.

Toffee Love

Candy lovers are people I can really relate to, ahem, because I'm one myself. One thing about candy lovers—besides their need for dental work—is as much as they get excited by all kinds of candy, there’s usually one sweet in particular that rocks their world. For instance, my sister is drawn to caramels. Another friend of mine loves sour candies. Others love licorice. Candy lovers usually have at least one must-have item in a candy store, and for me that has always been toffee.

No, not taffy or that kind of thing; I’m talking about traditional English-style toffee, with its sunburnt golden hues, slicks of chocolate on one or both sides, and some kind of nut sparingly integrated throughout. Toffee should be lightly crunchy and even a little gritty when chewed, not sticky or gluey as can be the case with peanut brittle. A good toffee is dental-work safe! It will crunch and then soon dissolve once bitten. Overcooked toffee is a sad thing, stuck in a candy purgatory between what toffee should be and peanut brittle, and that's no good.

Danish Red Pesto & Fried Bacon (or Pork?)

While studying in Aarhus, Denmark for three weeks this summer I pondered the possible titles for this upcoming blog post:

"Starving in Denmark" (so expensive to eat there, which is why the photo above is of a cheap meal I made at home), "The Land of Leggings" (de rigueur fashion element for women of all ages), "World Wide Web" (so many spiders and their webs!), or "Allergies my Allergies" (they owned me and my puffy face).

But, since this is a food blog it made more sense for the title to refer to the two regional food items I loved most on the trip:

It's Time To Eat the Doughnuts!

A "30 Rock" episode from a few years back really illustrated the show's pulse of the times when Alec Baldwin's character brought Jennifer Aniston's character up-to-date on the latest in New York. He said, "Welcome to New York. Let's see, we're using credit cards in cabs now, all the galleries have moved to Chelsea, and we're off cupcakes and we're back to doughnuts. Would you excuse me for a moment?" (He probably ran off to get some doughnuts.)

When cupcakes hit New York there was some dabbling around in it by all. When doughnuts hit, that was better. People can make a great cupcake in their kitchen, but a doughnut? Nope, when doughnuts were back in vogue Krispy Kreme was the one-stop shop. One tiny bundle of glazed "hot now" did the trick and gently wafted in memories of sugary childhood delight.

Foodie Redemption

This past Friday I had the pleasure of dining at Shahnawaz Restaurant with a group from the USC Office of International Services. It was the last meeting of the OIS Diner's Club for the year, and also the last time one of its leaders—@MarciaonTour from Project Quinn class—would have the chance to host such an event at USC.

Buffalo Wings + A Poem

Last Wednesday I had some Buffalo wings after a four-month wing time-off, which reminded me of a poem I once wrote on the subject for my de facto Buffalo wing partner-in-crime Dan. Wings were first introduced into my life at the infamous Chuck's Spring Street Café in NJ during undergrad. Once in NY some friends and I survived a wing road trip to Buffalo, NY. Our goal was to try four different wing places in a day, and we succeeded...our first bouts of heartburn notwithstanding. These days I still believe any food is best the closer you are to its source, yet I also admit that good wings can be found even in LA if you look around long enough (thanks Hot Wings Café, and ok thanks even to you Hooters). Yeah I think about wings a lot; hence the poem.

The Dreaded Vegetable?

There's been a lot of fattening blogging going on around here. That's why this week I'm turning to a more healthy alternative (thanks Steph), even though it's a thing most often met with dread when mentioned. I'm referring to...Brussels sprouts!!! [Sound effects: scary howling noises, people screaming!]

(Something I noticed when proofreading restaurant menus was part of my job description is that the word most commonly misspelled on menus today is Brussels sprouts. I can't tell if this is in direct relation to people's dislike of it, or that it's just a weird thing to spell.)

Ben & Jerry's Love Affair

I consider myself an active consumer of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. When I had an NYC job and commuted from NJ, on off-nights I'd sometimes turn to my "vice kit," which equated to some bad take-out, an alcoholic beverage, and a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Funny, back then I could easily eat a pint in one sitting.

My long-time love of Ben & Jerry's—the ice cream brand with a quirky-casual attitude featuring kooky, exciting flavors—instilled a dream in me to some day visit their Vermont factory. One time after moving to Brooklyn an ex-boyfriend swept into the city the week after 9/11 to take me on a road trip. We drove to Canada for a week, and on the way back he surprised me by driving to the place I wouldn't stop talking about when we were together. So we got to visit and take a factory tour! (That's us at the factory eating our free samples above.)

Danish Danish

You know those little fruit-filled round morning disks called "Danish pastry" that are usually found on insipid continental breakfast buffets in this country? And you know how we eat them because of either: 1) casual passivity, 2) they’re there, 3) you’re half asleep, or 4) otherwise you’d starve? Until about six years ago I thought these ubiquitous pastries were one of life’s little tricks because they look and sound good, yet each time I bite into one I’m reminded of how awful they are. Here’s the thing: what we call Danish are Americanized Danish, in the same way that Panda Express is Chinese food.

Little Chocolate Lie

In my last post, "Overdose," I forgot to mention something about the time when I started secretly eating chocolate behind my Mom's back (because she feared it would make me sick, which it didn't). When I was 15, my friends and I ate candy as an after-school activity and when that wasn't enough, I'd sneak some back into my room. One error in judgement—brought on by sheer teen laziness—almost ruined everything. After eating candy in my room, sometimes I'd forgot to throw away the wrappers. My Mom noticed and confronted me. (Guess I wasn't so stealth after all.) My quick reply birthed from mortification and fear was, "Oh I didn't eat those Mom. They're my friends' candy bars...they ate 'em and gave the wrappers to me because...I'm starting to collect them." If my Mom didn't believe me (who would?) she never let on. But because I felt so awful about lying, I figured the best way to fix it was to make the lie true, and that's how my chocolate wrapper collection began.

Overdose

An emergency-room doctor told my parents I had a chocolate allergy when I was five years old, meaning I became one of those kids whose Halloween bounty was stored far from reach. During junior high I joyfully discovered at a slumber party that I was no longer (or ever had been) allergic to chocolate, due to the giant bowl of M&M's that slept by my sleeping bag, and my not having to be rushed to the hospital. From sixteen years and on, my small disposable income from working at McDonald's couldn't be used to feed my secret chocolate habit, only because my Mom was still worried that chocolate could upset my asthma. When college started a few years later, I came into a small inheritance. With no adult supervision and money rotting in the bank, my immediate goal was to get my hands on some chocolate, and lots of it. And not just any deli counter chocolate; the good stuff. In the pre-internet days, it's a miracle that something like the amazing "Nestlé's International Collection" catalog fell into my greedy little hands, so I ordered up about $150 worth.