A ray of sunshine.

I had the opportunity to go to Florida last week for work, specifically Orlando.  Even with the chain restaurants, the humidity, and the throngs of fanny-pack wearin’, overweight, waddling, sunburned tourists, it was a great trip.  It rekindled a thought that I have been mulling over, on and off, for several years…  Is Florida considered a Southern state?  It’s a legitimate question, and it brings up lots of conflicting feelings.  Let’s have a look, shall we?

My first reckoning that Florida should be considered Southern is the University of Florida Gators football team.  What could be more Southern than college football in the fall?  Florida also has the distinct advantage of belonging to the SEC, which any beer-swilling redneck knows is the absolute MACK DADDY of college football conferences.  (My team, the Gamecocks, is also in the SEC.  I was in school there when we joined the conference.  We’ve actually beaten Florida a few times since then.)  A lot of people consider the Florida Gators to be the best college football team of all time.  Honestly, when I try to watch games outside the SEC, I’m lukewarm about it at best.  Who cares about those lunatics on the West Coast?  Oregon?  Washington?  California?  Crazy hippies.  Respect the SEC.  Respect the Gators.  I suppose those games out there must mean something to the locals, but WE have the SEC.  We’re the big boys.  There’s a saying in the South:  God, guns, and college football, not necessarily in that order.  Between the televangelist mega-churches in Orlando, the coked-out whackos in the southern part of the state, and the Gators, Florida has all three.

Another check in the plus column for Southern-ness is Daytona.  Daytona is home to the NASCAR Daytona 500, which is the Holy Grail of Motorsports.  A lot of people think of NASCAR as a bunch of toothless Cretins driving around in circles, and well, I guess they’re right.  But hey, it’s a bunch of drunks with the pedal to the metal in really loud, fast cars.  What’s not to like about that?  If you’re into auto racing, Daytona is your Xanadu, with the caveats that “dining on honeydew” tastes like a Nathan’s hot dog, and the “milk of Paradise” tastes like warm PBR in a plastic cup.

On the other hand…

The best example to say that Florida is not Southern can be summed up in one word:  Miami.  Miami is definitely not a Southern city.  Miami isn’t really even a city; it’s a freak show with a ZIP code.  Miami makes Larry Flynt look like Mr. Rogers.  When the Jim Rose Circus pulls into Miami, the performers get off the bus and say, “Man, this place is fucked up”.  Go to a nightclub in Miami, and they check you for guns at the door.  If you don’t have one, they let you choose one from the selection they provide to their unarmed guests as a courtesy.  People in Miami don’t honk the horn if you cut them off in traffic; they throw a brick through your car window, then pull you out onto the pavement and shoot you.  Where are their manners?  You can, however, get a pretty mean conch fritter just about anywhere in Miami.  A conch fritter is like a shellfish-flavored hush-puppy, and that’s a good thing.

So, is Florida Southern?  I’ll think it over while I watch the race.

Two Bellinis and a bicycle

This is a great week to say thanks and congratulations to my friends in the Charleston F&B scene.  Namely, the awesome servers and bartenders all over town who got WORKED last weekend.  We had two college graduations, and it was Mother’s Day.  What this means, if you’re a restaurant worker, is Amateur Night.  Much like Cinco de Mayo, Halloween, New Year’s Eve, or any other holiday when people that don’t regularly dine out flock en masse to restaurants and bars to terrorize the service staff.  If you work, or have ever worked, in F&B, you know what I mean.

“Hi, I’d like a water with extra lemons and some sugar packets, but no ice, I’m allergic to ice.  I’d like the filet mignon, well well well done, tell the cook to burn it if he has to, but please make sure it’s tender and juicy.  Also, I would really like a baked potato, but I’m allergic to potatoes, so I’ll just have the french fries, no salt, but please make sure they’re seasoned well.  I’ll think about some dessert later, but we’re in a hurry, so could you tell the kitchen to put a rush on that?  Do you have any non-alcohol wine with no sulfites?  I’m allergic to sulfites”.

This is obviously hyperbole, but these types of things are heard by our stalwart servers and bartenders almost every day.

I’m always impressed by the attitudes of the professionals that I know working in the kitchens of Charleston.  Almost all of them are passionate about food (as I am), and they are the most giving and sharing people you could meet.  Every time I go out, I talk to someone in the kitchen, and they’re always telling me about some new charcuterie technique they’re trying out, some new local honey they’re serving on the cheese plate, or whatever.  It’s amazing and comforting to see the passion and dedication of these young men and women.  It’s a foodie town, and it’s a great place to be.

Please be considerate when you dine out.  Look around, introduce yourself, get involved with your local food community and the people that support it.

As for the title of this blog post…  I was talking to a friend of mine that works in a great local Italian place.  He was telling me about some sort of graduation or Mother’s Day brunch they had put on.  Apparently it was a rough day, and he and the bartender starting hitting the Bellinis and Mimosas pretty early.  Again, if you work in F&B, you know it’s not uncommon for the staff to occasionally indulge in a snifter-full of the finest while at work.  (Unfortunately I’ve seen some servers that take it too far, but I can’t throw stones.  I’ve been there too).  The reality is that dealing with the crazy clientele on a busy weekend can be enough to make you want to “drain the bitter cup” as they say.  Anyway, the events of the day somehow led to my bartender buddy riding his bicycle home from work that night, carrying a Bellini in each hand.  I’m not even sure how that’s physically possible, but it happened.  I haven’t been back to that restaurant this week.  I’ll let ‘em sleep it off.

What's in a name?

I’ve had a bit of time on my hands recently, so I’ve been eating out quite a bit, and cooking lots too.  I’ve been thinking about some of the interesting “food words” that you see on menus and in recipes.  I was watching Jamie Oliver’s TV show a few days ago, and he had a recipe that called for some game birds to be spatchcocked.  Spatchcocked?  Sounds dangerous.

Southern food is filled with words that make our cooking sound fun.  Etouffée, piquante, maque choux, and my favorite, jambalaya.  I realize that the correct pronunciation of maque choux (mock shoe) sounds like a synonym for “imitation footwear”, but the word jambalaya sounds like a party.

“What’s happening this weekend?” 

“Gamecocks are playin’.” 

“Whatcha makin’?”

“Jambalaya.”

I’ll bring the beer.

I seem to meet a lot of tourists from the Northeast when I’m dining in my favorite places downtown, and I always have a great time explaining grits on the menu.  Although I find it baffling, I suppose that if you’re from New York or Boston or somewhere, it’s possible that you could grow up and never hear of grits.  They seem to struggle with the word “grits” itself, because it does sound a bit harsh and abrasive. Then I tell them about a Yankee word they’ve all heard:  Polenta.  If you’ve eaten polenta, you’ve eaten grits.  They seem taken aback because they’ll go to a great Italian restaurant in New York or Boston and pay twenty-five bucks for a fancy dish with polenta, but I can go to the Waffle House and get a bowl of grits for ninety-nine cents.

When I was growing up, my grandmother did what every other grandmother did when she cooked:  She made gravy.  Technically, she added flour to a pan of hot fat to make a roux, then she added buttermilk to the roux and made a classical French sauce called Bechamel.  She didn’t know a damned thing about roux or Bechamel sauce, she was just making gravy.  I like that.

If you want to see some really neat food, check out the websites for two of my favorite restaurants in the country:

Le Bernardin in New York

and

TRU in Chicago

You’ll see all kinds of “foodie” words like gastrique, salsify, quenelles, and foie gras.  The English translation of most of that stuff isn’t nearly as elegant as the French makes it sound.  Quenelles are dumplings.  Foie gras is the “fatty liver” from a goose that has been force-fed through a tube to give a it biological abnormality that we can harvest.  Doesn’t look or sound very good, but put it on a large white plate surrounded by Christofle Hotel flatware and some Reidel stems, and you can charge about fifteen bucks an ounce for it.

By far, the most unfortunate food word I’ve ever seen is “compote”.  I saw a recipe for some kind of rice and raisin compote thing in a recent issue of Food and Wine magazine.  That word is unfortunate to me because it kind of sounds like “compost”.  The official definition of compost is: a mixture of various decaying organic substances, such as dead leaves or manure, used for fertilizing soil.  I have a much more succinct definition of compost:  poo-poo.  That’s not something I’m gonna be eating.