Oh My Sweet Carolina

Growing up in North Carolina, I wanted nothing more than to leave. It's a state with a beautiful coastline and majestic mountains. It's a state where the water allows one to dissolve more sugar than should be physically possible into the sweet tea. It's also a state where a sign reading, "The KKK Welcomes You To Johnston County" wasn't removed until the late 1980's. Give any angst-fueled Raleigh native a few years of breakfast sandwiches and New York traffic, and he'll start to forget about that last part. The overwhelming longing for a real biscuit distorts certain memories.

Cracker Barrel is a nationwide chain. There's even one in Maine, but no one worth his gravy would dare call something a "biscuit" in any state north of Virginia. Going here outside of the south is kind of like getting pizza in the Ukraine. If it's all you know, then I suppose ignorance is bliss. But if you grew up in North Carolina, then nothing but the real thing is worth the heartburn. Oh, the glorious heartburn. There are rocking chairs on that porch for a reason.

My dinner started as a BLT. For those of us uncomfortable with this vegetable-to-meat ratio, they let you add cheese and a chicken breast to it. I opted for grilled chicken. They'll also fry it, but that just seemed like playing Russian roulette with my arteries. Either way, the lettuce and tomato just seemed out of place at this point. So yes, I got a BLT and threw the LT under the bus. I mean, hey, there's no sense in pretending that there's anything redeeming left in this sandwich.

Aside from being able to drink unlimited quantities of Cheerwine, there's only one thing you need to know about Cook-Out: milkshake possibilities. Depending on the season, their menu contains 39-40 flavors, and they let you add as many as you dare. Practically speaking, this gets disgusting quickly. But if you think about the numbers, it's just impressive. A simple calculation* shows that with 39 add-ins (since vanilla is the base), there are about 550 BILLION unique milkshakes. Keep in mind, a quarter of those contain Hi-C and Peanut Banana.

Traditionally, I make the mistake of hitting up the first Bojangles I see in Virginia as I'm driving home. This results in 1) weaving down I-95 because I'm too wrapped up in reuniting with this lost love, and 2) going back almost every day I'm there, hoping to get my fill before I head back to New York. This time, I saved it for my last meal. One can actually go a lot of different directions with meat, potatoes and bread. Add a deep fryer to the mix, and there's really only one clear way to go. It's this, and it's perfection in a box.


* The Cook-Out milkshake computation

First, warm up with an easier problem: pretend you have only one add-in on the menu, say M&M's. You can choose to have M&M's or forgo M&M's, so you have two possible milkshakes. No magic there.

Now, pretend you have two add-ins, say M&M's and chocolate syrup. You first choose to have M&M's or omit them, which gives you two possibilities. For each of those possibilities, you can choose to add or omit chocolate syrup. That means for each of two choices you have two choices. Two choices times two choices gives you four possible milkshakes. Still reasonable, right?

[Exercise: Work out how many unique milkshake there are if you have three possible add-ins. If you guessed it's two times two times two = eight, you'd be correct. If you think I'm lying, write them out... it doesn't take that long. Or don't, because this is just a dumb blog.]

Now let's look at 39 add-ins. It works the same way. You can choose M&M's or no M&M's, you can choose Hi-C or no Hi-C, and so on. Multiplying two thirty nine times will take you a while, but Google can quickly tell you that the answer is 549,755,813,888, or just under 550 billion.

Dear Chicago

I get the sinking feeling that referring to my fish & chips + beef & Guinness binge as "Irish cuisine" was akin to spending a day in Times Square and bragging about the exquisite NYC food offered at the Roxy Deli and Famous Original Ray's Pizza (not to be confused with Ray's or Famous Ray's, but that's been covered elsewhere). I have no shame, and I will now proceed to judge Chicago by the two tourist-filled establishments in which I stuffed my face.

Billy Goat Tavern is a landmark of sorts. Aside from the total lack of natural light on the inside (which is comfortingly familiar to a graduate student), it's pretty much as depicted in the SNL skit from the dark ages 1970's: there will be a Burger Nazi working the counter who suffers from a bizarre form of Tourette's that forces him to scream "chee-burger" several times whenever he detects some form of motion from the corner of his wandering eye. Yes, that's the appeal.

What's to be said? This is a (double) cheeseburger in the purest sense. No grass-fed Kobe beef with Roquefort and foie gras on a Portuguese muffin. This is processed to the point that between the beef and American Cheese, only about half of the actual weight could come from real cows. It's a good, greasy burger... no more, no less. It's comfortable being what it is, and I can't not support that.

There's also a bar inside that looks like the Second City's answer to McSorley's, also serving up adorably undersized glasses of their own brews of "lager" and "dark." Unlike McSorley's, they did not insist that patrons order two at a time. That cheeseburger was purchased during breakfast hours, so maybe this is just their policy for morning drinkers. I happen to live across the street from a bar that opens for the vets at 8AM daily, so this place seemed a little cushy. Cushy, but oh-so-quaint.

As I've only lived in New York for four years, I can't call myself a New Yorker. I'll always be just a transplant. So with no strong ties to the Big Apple, I wasn't above trying this freaky pizza they serve here. Yes, the crust is THICK. Yes, they even put the sauce above the cheese. I don't think most New Yorkers realize that last part; the thick crust is so offensive that they just stop listening. Wandering around aimlessly, I found a place established in 1966 called Gino's East just before the clouds above me burst into a deluge of rain and hail. My lunch was meant to be.

Being charged $18 for a pizza with a ten inch diameter feels like robbery. That is, until you realize that the diameter only describes its spatial extent in two of the three dimensions that matter to your stomach. It's so thick that upon being seated, they warn you that your pizza will take at least 45 minutes to bake. That's for a small. There is at least large NY pie's worth of crust crammed into that dish. Guzzle some pop and that stuff starts expanding inside you. Really, pace yourself.

The sauce and cheese start mixing once you take a bite, so it's not actually that big of a deal for them to be presented to you in reverse order. This one had ground sausage on it, too. Now, in college, I used to scarf down a large Papa John's bacon+beef+extra cheese pie if I was up late calculating (more likely trying to calculate) something important, and I couldn't manage to get through 3/4 of this beast. The waiter had that certain look of "I told you so" as he bagged up the rest. I'd prefer not to need a cardiologist before age 30, so I'll let him have that victory.

Thursday's Lunch: Melt Shop

New York is a city of food fads. Cupcakes were really big for a while. After the novelty of being able to order gourmet dessert at 4AM wore off, people looked for the next decadent thing. Hence, the grilled cheese pandemonium that has invaded most neighborhoods.

A fair account of the history can be found here, but all one needs to know is that this enterprise has morphed into a miniature fleet of trucks and several upscale eateries. It's already so five minutes ago. Ronnie, the underground grilled cheese dealer of the East Village, shut down his operation before I could buy a sandwich in a transaction that could be mistaken for acquiring... well, blow. Apparently the threat of being shut down by the Health Department became too great to press on. What this meant to me is that I had to journey to midtown to catch the grilled cheese train. Bummer.

Melt Shop got a fair amount of press when they opened, so I took notice earlier this year. It just took me this many months to gain the courage to make the journey to midtown for lunch. Of course, what they don't tell you is that seating space here is just a myth during the lunch hour. I took a risk and barreled east as quickly as I could, ultimately finding an empty set of stairs on 1st Avenue in the mid 50's before the molten meal congealed entirely. It's a strange enough sight for some dude to eat a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich while sitting in front of an abandoned building as all the suited folks from the UN walk by. It pushes it over the edge when he takes out a camera to take pictures of his own lunch.

I got a side of tater tots... because I forgot one can only comfortably take so much grease on a hot afternoon. The main course is the bacon/cheddar variety, with some other disclaimers such as "aged" or "maple" that I quickly forgot; they had me at "bacon." What isn't explicit in the description of this beast is the entire stick of butter that they fry this thing with, and that's what you feel when you walk back home on a summer afternoon. However, as I wondered if I was going to expire, I did always came back to, "well... what a tasty way to go."

Verdict: Make no mistake, this is just comfort food in a pretty package. It's good, but you have to stand in line with a bunch of people wearing suits to get it. The Three-martini lunch has officially been traded for the kid's lunch in trendy clothing. It's probably for the best, because I don't like olives, and bacon is apparently my Muse.