We’re certainly behind the curve on this news — the great Dixie Barbeque of Johnson City, Tennessee is closed permanently, and has been closed since the first of the year. Alan Howell simply decided to retire. It was no surprise – folks knew that December would be their final shot at his famous pulled pork and filled the place in record numbers all month. Today, there’s a “for sale” sign on the shuttered building. Mark Rutledge, writing for North Carolina’s Daily Reflector, mourns Dixie’s absence from his life: “Barbecue is not my religion, but if it were, Alan Howell . . . would be my preacher.”
Author: Bruce Bilmes and Susan Boyle (Page 11 of 61)
Legends of Texas Barbecue
Published in 2002, Robb Walsh’s Legends of Texas Barbecue, Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses is nominally a cook book but in reality a tour through the varied world of Texas barbecue. For those who view the story of Texas Q as the story of smoked brisket and beef sausage, the book is an eye-opener, revealing the Lone Star State’s wide-ranging smoked meat traditions. Mr. Walsh has just released a revised edition of his book (with a slightly revised title: Pit Bosses has been changed to the slightly more egalitarian Pitmasters). Continue reading
Burt Katz, one of the key players of the Chicago pizza scene for decades, passed away Saturday at the age of 78. He specialized in Chicago’s famed deep-dish pizza, which he preferred to call pan pizza. His pies were not quite as deep as a standard Chicago pizza, and they also featured a personal trademark that has become a local favorite: his caramelized crust, in which the outer rim of the pie is crusted over with almost-blackened chewy and crisp cheese. Continue reading
A Punishment and a Joy
Andre Prince, owner of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack of Nashville, TN, says eating Nashville hot chicken “is a punishment and a joy.” She knows that as well as anyone, as it was the philandering ways of Andre’s uncle Thornton that is responsible for the creation of the dish. The rapscallion’s wife punished him one day by loading his fried chicken with cayenne pepper. Unfortunately for her, the pain turned to pleasure, so much so, in fact, that uncle Thornton opened the chicken shack and began selling the stuff to the public! Continue reading
Vote for the Best Ice Cream Parlor, Lobster Roll, Cuban Sandwich, …
USA Today’s 10Best has got a mess o’ polls going on right now, many focused on regional food specialties across America. In each category, a team of experts has selected 20 candidates, and it’s up to you to choose the winner. For instance, in the category of Best Po’ Boy in Louisiana, one of our favorite spots, Parkway Bakery and Tavern in New Orleans, is currently leading the vote tally, which will continue to accumulate until May 9th. Continue reading
Meat, Smoke, and Time: America’s Best BBQ
Where can you find the best barbecue in America? Leaving aside, for the moment, the silliness of seeking a single best barbecue joint, the answer to that question is a very personal one. Our favorite spots may not be your favorites. Do you like ribs, pulled pork, smoked brisket? Do you prefer a lot of smoke, or a subtle hit? Do you like it spicy or do you prefer to taste mostly meat? Do you want the meat to fall apart at the slightest prodding or do you think barbecue should retain an honest chew? Is sauce the most important factor to you? Continue reading
First Annual Philly Taco Challenge – Not What You Think!
This is not a Philadelphia eating contest to see who can eat the most tacos. That wouldn’t even make any sense in The City of Brotherly Love. No, the contest is as follows: who can eat a single Philly Taco the fastest? What’s a Philly Taco? You begin with a cheesesteak from Jim’s Steaks on South Street. Carry it down the street to Lorenzo’s Pizza, where you order one of their giant, pliable slices. Then you roll the cheesesteak in the pizza slice and begin eating! Obviously, this is not a dish born of straight and sober minds. Continue reading
Tony Luke’s Expanding Down East Coast
Gotta admit, when we first started making regular visits to Tony Luke’s in South Philly in the early ’90s, we never imagined it would ever expand to a second Philadelphia outlet much less become franchised up and down the east coast. The roast pork Italian and Uncle Mike sandwiches had us thoroughly seduced, as did the very scruffy, bare-bones location, alongside a barbed wire encircled “parking area” beneath rumbling Interstate 95 next door. Continue reading
Much More Than Chile in Santa Fe
Sure, the you’ll find a blue corn this and roasted poblano that. The ubiquitous green chile cheeseburger (a good one!) can be enjoyed as well. A bit of red chile may even find its way into the occasional sauce or marinade. Just the same, the upscale 33-year-old Santacafé, in Santa Fé, NM, offers so much more than Southwest regional specialties – the menu probably sports as many Asian touches as Southwestern. If you’re visiting The City Different and plan to subsist on more than adovada and green chile (not that there’s anything wrong with that approach!), and don’t mind dressing a little, Santacafé may be just what you’re looking for. Read more about Santacafé in yesterday’s Albuquerque Journal review.
The Clintons are pushing hard for the food savvy vote. Earlier this week, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton joined Stephen Colbert for a meal at New York’s famed Carnegie Deli. Yesterday, her husband and possible future First Gentleman, Bill, showed up at the home of the best pizza on earth, Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana, in New Haven, CT, the city where he and Hillary first met. He shook hands and gabbed, and even got close enough to some Pepe’s pies to appreciate their alluring scent. His current ascetic eating plan, however, apparently wouldn’t allow him to dine, as he departed without a bite. While we admire the former president’s willpower, surely a slice of founder Frank Pepe’s favorite pie, topped with tomatoes but no cheese, would have fit into his vegan diet!
Beef & Garlic, Spice & Smoke
We’ve long maintained that Harold’s New York Deli in Edison, NJ serves New York’s most consistently delicious pastrami. In the latest issue of Saveur, Laura Hoffman takes a closer look at the famed Jersey deli, and its owner Harold Jaffe. What strikes first-time visitors immediately are the comically large portions. What surprises most of those fressers is how the quality surpasses the size. The great pastrami is made and smoked in-house, the matzo balls are as light as they are enormous, and even the coleslaw is top-notch. Continue reading
Garrett Popcorn Coming to D.C. Area
CaramelCrisp is making its Washington D.C. arrival soon as Garrett Popcorn Shops is opening their first area store in Arlington, VA, in the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City. The most delicious caramel corn on earth, originally made in Chicago, can now be found in the U.S. in Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, and New York, as well as across Asia and the Middle East. No Garrett near your home? Not a problem; they deliver!
Running for president of the U.S. requires something of an iron gut. It’s important to be seen enthusiastically consuming the local delicacies but it’s also critical to avoid a culinary faux pas: don’t ask for Swiss on your Philly cheesesteak or ketchup on your Chicago dog. Hillary Clinton joined Stephen Colbert for lunch yesterday at New York’s Carnegie Deli, where she was given a lesson on the proper way to eat New York cheesecake. Watch and learn.
We learned last spring that a Shake Shack would be coming to Scottsdale AZ in 2016. It hasn’t yet opened but the latest word is that three Shake Shacks will be opening in the region in 2016. That Scottsdale location, in Fashion Square, along with a Phoenix Shake Shack to be planted in Uptown Plaza, should be operating by this spring. A third location will begin serving sometime this year in Phoenix’s Kierland Commons. The Arizona-only concrete, named the Camel Shack, will feature vanilla custard, salted caramel sauce, and banana cream pie made by The Bakery Phx of Phoenix. Shake Shack has been rapidly expanding in the east but these Phoenix stores will join the ones in Las Vegas and Austin as the only western U.S. Shake Shacks to date.
Hitting the Cajun Boudin Trail
Pork, rice, spice, and liver – those ingredients, in widely varying ratios, are stuffed into hog casings by Cajun butchers to create their famed boudin. Boudin touring is one of the most enjoyable experiences in Cajun country, west of New Orleans, as far as we’re concerned, in part because the vast majority of the good stuff comes from the most humble and unassuming sources (you won’t find the Louisiana landscape littered with identical McBoudreaux and Boudin King eateries). Continue reading
Stop in at Nick’s Original Coney Island Weiners of Fall River, MA and the first thing you’ll be asked is whether you’d like fries with your order. That’s because your fries are cut and fried to order, in a fryer reserved solely for spuds, from potatoes grown on a farm six miles away in Westport. Old-timers dress their potatoes with salt and malt vinegar, while the kids go for cheese and ketchup. However you garnish your fries, they’re the perfect accompaniment to those weiners topped with sauce made from a recipe that founder Nicholas Pappas brought with him in 1920 from Philadelphia. Read more about Nick’s hand-cut fries in this Wicked Local story.
New Apple Honey Pie at Grand Traverse Pie Company
Yesterday was National Pie Day, and one of the ways the Grand Traverse Pie Company of Michigan celebrated the event was to introduce a new pie flavor, Apple Honey. The sugar in GTPC’s popular apple pie, made with Northern Spy apples, is replaced by floral-scented star thistle honey from Northern Michigan honey producer Sleeping Bear Farms. The lattice top receives an additional drizzle of honey. Sounds wonderful! You can buy the new pie at any of Grand Traverse Pie Company’s 15 retail locations, or by mail.
Croissant, Scraps, and Beignants (!) in Lafayette LA
The Times of Acadiana showcases three Lafayette, LA spots that do amazing things with croissant dough, and we don’t know where to begin! How about beignants, the awkwardly named Acadian variation of the Cronut, where large pinches of croissant dough are deep-fried like beignets, then dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon and drizzled with honey. They are available Saturday mornings from Rêve Coffee Roasters. Continue reading
Milwaukee’s Delicious Dozen
The Chicago Tribune has presented a list of 12 particularly memorable things to eat in Milwaukee, their neighbor about an hour-and-a-half to the north. You’ll find a mix of new discoveries and old classics, like the butterburgers at Solly’s Grille, which the Tribune calls silky (?) and butter-soaked (for sure). These burgers are near the top of our Milwaukee list as well. They also fell in love with Parmesan tomato soup with cheddar grilled cheese on sourdough at Benji’s Deli, which we know as our source for hoppel-poppel. We’ve tackled the famous Mader pork shank and agree: don’t miss it! Dessert? Leon’s tin roof sundae. Continue reading
Evans Brothers Coffee Wins 2016 Good Food Award
The Good Food Awards are handed out annually to the country’s top craft food producers. Not only are the producers required to excel in a blind tasting competition, but they must also demonstrate they are “respectful of the environment, and connected to communities and cultural traditions.” This year, Evans Brothers, artisanal coffee roasters in Sandpoint, Idaho, were honored for their Kenya Gatundu Karinga AB coffee. Randy Evans describes its flavor profile this way: “super juicy, floral, citrus and chocolate.” You can see the complete list of 2016 Good Food Awards winners here. Evans Brothers ships their beans – shop here.
