Best Food Writing 2009

364 Pages·2009·1.351 MB·English

by  Holly Hughes

738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:49 AM Page i

best
WRITING
2009
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:49 AM Page ii
also edited by holly hughes
Best Food Writing 2008
Best Food Writing 2007
Best Food Writing 2006
Best Food Writing 2005
Best Food Writing 2004
Best Food Writing 2003
Best Food Writing 2002
Best Food Writing 2001
Best Food Writing 2000
also by holly hughes
Frommer’s 500 Places to Take the Kids
Before They Grow Up
Frommer’s 500 Places to See Before They Disappear
Frommer’s 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:49 AM Page iii

best
WRITING
2009
Edited by
Holly Hughes
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:49 AM Page iv
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their
products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book
and Da Capo Press was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been
printed in initial capital letters.
Copyright © 2009 by Holly Hughes
Pages 343–348 constitute an extension of the copyright page.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re-
trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani-
cal, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
Set in 11 point Bembo by the Perseus Books Group
Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of
Congress.
First Da Capo Press edition 2009
ISBN 978-0-7382-1369-9
Published by Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
www.dacapopress.com
Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the
U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information,
please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group,
2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, or call [phone],
ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:49 AM Page v
Contents
(cid:2)
Introduction ix
Holly Hughes
Food Fights
The Cranky Connoisseur,from enRoute 2
By Timothy Taylor
Too Much of a Mouthful,from Word of Mouth 8
By Tim Hayward
The Raw Deal,from chow.com 11
By Lessley Anderson
Medium-Size Me,from Gastronomica 17
By Jim Hinch
Go Slow, Foodies,It’s the Way to Win,
from the Washington Post 30
By Jane Black
Stocking the Pantry
Seeking Market Freshness,from the Philadelphia Inquirer 36
By Rick Nichols
The Misunderstood Habanero,from Heirloom 41
By Tim Stark
Illegal Cheese, from Gastronomica 48
By Eric LeMay
Wine Scams: A Counterfeiter Confesses,from Food & Wine 57
By Lettie Teague
Marshmallow Fluff,from Gastronomica 67
By Katie Liesener
Spam: It’s Not Just for Inboxes Anymore,from City Pages 76
By Rachel Hutton
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:49 AM Page vi
vi| Contents
Out of the Wild,from SF Weekly 81
By Peter Jamison
Summer’s End,from Saveur 92
By Tamasin Day-Lewis
The Meat of the Matter
Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner,from Raising Steaks 98
By Betty Fussell
The Last of the Great $10 Steaks,from WestWord 106
By Jason Sheehan
Highway to Hog Heaven,from Broward Palm Beach New Times 111
By John Linn
By Meat Alone,from The New Yorker 116
By Calvin Trillin
The Disappearing Art of the Country Ham,
from the Charlotte Observer 125
By Kathleen Purvis
Morality Bites,from the Chicago Tribune Magazine 137
By Monica Eng
The Beauty of the Beast,from The Stranger 149
By Bethany Jean Clement
Home Cooking
Kitchen Smackdown, from the New York Times 154
Take This! Sort of French, Sort of Italian 154
By Julia Moskin
Take That! Starting with Five Appetizers 158
By Kim Severson
Two Food Writers in a Kitchen Smackdown 162
By Frank Bruni
Dairy’s Queen,from O! The Oprah Magazine 165
By Michelle Wildgen
Eggs Enough and Time,from eGullet.org 170
By Margaret McArthur
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/15/09 12:11 PM Page vii
Contents|vii
Deep in the Heart of Texas, We Bread Steak,
from the Washington Post 176
By Joe Yonan
The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie I’ve Ever Had,
from epicurious.com 179
By Raphael Kadushin
They Remember Home,from Saveur 182
By Annia Ciezadlo
What Is Real Cooking?,from Modern Spice 189
By Monica Bhide
Someone’s In the Kitchen
Mac ’n’ Jeez,from The Hunger 194
By John DeLucie
How Not to Hire a Chef,from the Washington City Paper 200
By Tim Carman
A Beautiful Mess,from Gourmet 208
By Charles Montgomery
Back to the Old World, 1962–1967,from Amarcord 215
By Marcella Hazan
What We Hunger For,from Tin House 221
By Douglas Bauer
Dining Around
The Last Time I Saw Paris,from Gourmet 234
By Ruth Reichl
English Oyster Cult,from Sex, Death & Oysters 242
By Robb Walsh
Tokyo, Cocktail Capital of the World,fromBon Appetit 248
By Hugh Garvey
Eternal City,from Saveur 254
By Josh Ozersky
Bridging the Chasm,from theOxford American 259
By John T. Edge
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:49 AM Page viii
viii|Contents
FoiX GraX,from The Foie Gras Wars 267
By Mark Caro
Eat Your Damn Dessert,from San Francisco Magazine 278
By Scott Hocker
Should Fine Dining Die?,from Food & Wine 289
By Anya von Bremzen
The Family Table
The Grapes of Wrath, In Three Episodes,from eGullet.org 296
By Steven Shaw
Picky-Picky,from Hungry Monkey 303
By Matthew Amster-Burton
Beating Eggs,from the New York Times Magazine 314
By Pete Wells
Getting to Know Him,from Gourmet 319
By Francis Lam
An Uncalculating Science,from A Homemade Life 325
By Molly Wizenberg
The Last Meal,from washingtonian.com 330
By Todd Kliman
The Eggs and I,from Saveur 335
By Francine Prose
Recipe Index 341
Permissions Acknowledgments 343
About the Editor 349
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:49 AM Page ix
Introduction
by Holly Hughes
(cid:2)
This summer, I got the itch to eat my way across America. I’d re-
cently wrapped up months of working on a travel guide—
Frommer’s 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers—on top of my usual
routine of poring over stacks of magazines, newspapers, books, and
food blogs to select candidates for this tenth anniversary edition of
Best Food Writing. I had food on my mind more than ever, and I
had a yen to visit some of those restaurants I’d written about.But
it wasn’t the temples of haute cuisine I yearned for, the Alineas,
French Laundries, Fat Ducks, and El Bullis of this world. No, I
wanted to eat fresh crab cakes at a waterside shack in Maryland, or
pulled pork at a North Carolina roadside barbecue joint; I wanted
to sample chicken-fried steak in Texas and fish tacos in San Diego.
If being a locavore (the hot buzz word from last year’s edition) was
so desirable, how much better to be a locavore in a string of differ-
ent localities?
Just before I left, I got another kick of inspiration by attending
two nights of events honoring Craig Claibourne, organized here
in New York City by the New School and the Southern Foodways
Alliance. Hearing about how Claibourne had “democratized”food
writing in his years at the New York Times by covering obscure little
eateries as well as high-end restaurants, I was eager to go out and
score some finds of my own.
Well, you know what they say about best-laid plans. My cross-
country odyssey was a family vacation and instead of following a gas-
tronomic trail we ended up choosing a route that took us to as many
baseball stadiums as possible. Still, even though half the time we were
eating ballpark food, along the way I worked in a few of the regional
specialties I’d been longing for. There was the lake trout I savored at a
restaurant we discovered by chance in Morgantown, West Virginia,
738213699-text.qxd:Layout 1 9/3/09 9:50 AM Page x
x|Introduction
and the memorable homemade chicken noodle soup at the only
joint still open when we pulled into Silverton, Colorado. I made a
point of dragging the family—even the non-meat eater—to experi-
ence Arthur Bryant’s delectable barbecue in Kansas City. And who’d
have expected that a Hampton Inn on the Navajo tribal lands near
Monument Valley would serve a green chile stew I’m still dreaming
about? Even the ballpark food had its highlights, like the Skyline
Chili coney at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati and the
Fatburger at Chase Field in Phoenix. Yes, the trip was a success.
Why does food always taste so good on vacation? I suspect it’s
because it’s such a pleasure to eat a meal I haven’t had to cook my-
self.The pleasures of cooking are easily lost in the scramble of daily
life, especially with three teenagers’ crazy schedules and weird food
moods to account for. Many days, I feel less like a cook than a jug-
gler, just trying to lay something on the table that’s edible and mar-
ginally nutritious. It’s especially frustrating when I’m in the middle
of editing each year’s Best Food Writing anthology. Here I am, im-
mersed all day in reading about wonderful food—like Eric
LeMay’s lush French cheeses (p. 48), Kathleen Purvis’s succulent
Carolina country hams (p. 125), Robb Walsh’s gleaming oysters on
the half shell (p. 242), John DeLucie’s melt-in-your-mouth mac ’n’
cheese (p. 194), or Raphael Kadushin’s divine chocolate chip
cookies (p. 179) (one of several loving odes to the chocolate chip
cookie that tempted me this year)—and all I could look forward to
was another evening of hastily grilled turkey burgers and cello-
pack salad.The way I was going, I was even salivating over Katie
Liesener’s celebration of Marshmallow Fluff (p. 67) and Rachel
Hutton’s feature on Spam (p. 76); a perfectly soft-boiled egg (Mar-
garet McArthur, p. 170, and Francine Prose, p. 335) seemed a very
welcome alternative.
Ironically, I kept discovering wonderful essays by various food
writers about the shared food memories that bound their families
together—from Steven Shaw’s riff on grape cravings (p. 296) to
Francis Lam’s quest for his grandfather’s food legacy (p. 319) to the
tender eulogies to their fathers written by Molly Wizenberg (p. 325)
and Todd Kliman (p. 330). All I can do is hope that someday my
family’s meals together—those few precious moments carved out of