Bean pies and Faidley's crab cakes

My sister once ate a Thai-style fried whole baby snapper that was so delicious, it literally made her cry.  Even if you live to eat as I do, it's not often that you have an experience so sublime, it makes you swoon.  Like love, these things come when you least expect them.

Lexington Market in inner-city Baltimore, Maryland is a proper fresh-food market, similar to Footscray or Preston markets.  It's so exciting to see that markets like these exist in the States, as before now I had thought that the only options available to Americans were the pallid, wizened vegetables at a regular grocery store, slimy with overenergetic misting, or the frou-frou of the organic farmer's market.

Tucked down the back of the market is Faidley's, a seafood purveyor that has been in the same family and in the same location since 1886.  They are famous for their crab cakes, a Maryland specialty.  Who tipped us off?  Everyone's favourite Baltimore cop, McNulty, of course!  Wire freaks only - scroll about a 1/4 of the way down for the quote.

It's standing room only at Faidley's, which is a dangerous thing when you take a bite of this crab cake and feel your legs give way.  Absolutely one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten.  Fat chunks of crab meat - no shreds at all - just barely bound with cracker crumbs before being lightly fried.  The crab is so fresh, and there's no room for any extraneous binders or fillers, such is the quantity packed in.  As Bruce Goldfarb says, "A crab cake to tell your grandchildren about."

On our way out we picked up an "Ali Teenie Beanie - with The Come Back Taste!"  Oh, say it with me now - The Come Back Taste!  I love it!!

These pies, made with navy beans (small, white beans like the ones in canned baked beans) have an interesting history.  They have been associated with the Nation of Islam movement, whose founder promoted the pies as an attempt to get his followers to eat more healthily, and also as a fundraising method. 

Well, I should get my daughter's kindy onto these instead of the filthy Cadbury fundraising box.  The interior is sweet, custardy, and gooey, while the top is burnished brown sugar.  Eating a pie made with beans doesn't seem weird to me at all, especially when so many of my favourite sweets are made with red beans, mung beans, or glutinous rice.  The beans give the custard a more substantial texture than just eggs alone.  The Come Back Taste - amen to that!

This ends my chronicle of the best foods I ate in the States.  Thanks for coming on the journey with me, and I hope I managed to show you some of the diversity of this great country, which is so often unfairly written off as nothing but a fast food nation.  I had been worried to write about non-Footscray things here; the blog's focus is very specific and I do like it that way.  However, I was surprised and delighted that you all seemed to enjoy my virtual "slide night" and didn't switch off!  As you read this, I am back in Footscray, getting ready to share more western suburbs gems with you.  Stay tuned!

If you're planning a trip to B-more, I recommend Welcome to Baltimore, Hon! to get you off the beaten path.  You can find the self-guided Wire Tour here at Wikitravel.

Italian beefs and Bawlmer pit sandwiches

"How do you want it?" came the voice, crackly down the phone line.  "Hot and wet," I whispered, "and sweet and juicy for my friend."  It's not every day ordering couple of sandwiches makes you feel like you're a phone sex operator, but that's how you do it here in Chicago when you want an Italian beef.

This is absolutely my favourite Chicago food.  Seasoned beef that has been "wet-roasted" in a flavoursome, clear beef jus, then sliced wafer-thin and returned to the juice it was roasted in.  This is then piled on thick, coarse-crumbed, Italian-style bread.  The "sweet" or "hot" in the order comes from your choices of sweet peppers (sauteed capsicum) or hot giardiniera, a spicy mix of pickled vegetables and feisty green chillis.  Once constructed, your sandwich can be "dry" (the meat was allowed to drain before being piled on the bread), "wet" (the meat was slapped on with lots of juice), or "dipped"/"juicy" (the entire sandwich was dunked back into the juice).  Each beef shack has its own subtle permutations on the lingo, like "soaked" or "double-dipped."

Baltimore has a signature beef sandwich too - the "pit beef" or "pit sandwich."  Good enough to make you confess to murder, apparently!  (If you have not watched The Wire - SHAME, SHAME! - spoiler alert!!)

Chaps Pit Beef in Baltimore is just off the highway heading out of town.  You can pick it by the line out the door and the plume of smoke rising from the monstrous grill inside.

Great hunks of beef are blackened on the bars here, before being thinly sliced and served on your choice of bun, the classic being a kaiser roll.  The meat, which is best rare or medium-rare, is then traditionally topped with raw onion and doused liberally with fresh horseradish or "tiger sauce," based on horseradish.

Very tasty, although mine did need a lot of help in the form of salt and horseradish - and ordering it was a lot less fun than ordering a beef in Chicago.

For Italian beef in Chicago, you could start by exploring Beef with Hot.  I recommend Johnnie's Beef (Arlington Heights/Elmwood Park) and Tore & Luke's (Palatine).

Chaps Pit Beef
5801 Pulaski Hwy
Baltimore MD

Clam cakes and pizza slices

New England, the area of the US of which Rhode Island is a part, is probably best known for its seafood.  Thick, creamy clam chowder is enjoyed across the region, Maine is known for its lobster, while Maryland loves its crab cakes.  In Rhode Island, clam cakes and "stuffies" are the favourites.  As Quahog.org explains, the former is a fried ball of dough mixed with chopped clams, while "stuffies" are a bread stuffing mixed with chopped clams and baked in a clam shell. 

Of course, anything that is the "signature" food of an area is ripe for tourist ripoffs, particularly with something like seafood.  With just a few hours to go before our whirlwind trip of Rhode Island drew to a close, we were on a mission to find a "locals only" seafood shack.

Just past the airport is the village of Warwick, and after a picturesque walk along an inlet leading into Apponaug Cove, we found the Crow's Nest.  This restaurant has been in the same location since the mid-sixties, and has been serving many of the same seafood favourites ever since.  It was packed with the blue rinse set, which I thought was either a great sign or a really, really bad one.  Luckily it turned out to be the former.

Cup of chowder and 1/2 lobster roll

Chowder, a thick soup made from clams, bacon, potatoes, onion, and herbs & spices, normally comes New England-style (white and creamy) or Manhattan-style (tomato base).  Unfortunately the Crow's Nest didn't serve the clear, broth-like version indigenous to Rhode Island, but they more than made up for it with their classic New England style.  This is high on my list of things to learn to make - so smooth, comforting, yet the taste of the clams lightens it up.  Also served is a half lobster roll, which was insanely generous with lobster - concealed beneath the shredded lobster/mayo mix were huge chunks from the claws.

Three clam cakes with a bowl of chowder, $7

I was not so much a fan of this Manhattan-style one.  It was thin and I didn't think the chunks of potato worked as well with the bitey tomato flavour.  The clam cakes to the right were awesome though - I suspect the batter was made with cornmeal, and they were neither too light nor too dense.

So we had had our "hot weenies" and our seafood - Rhode Island was two for two.  At a small farmer's market in the city centre, I spied a man selling "pizza strips," the last local delicacy on my hit list of RI classics.  You could say these are pieces of pizza without the cheese, served at room temperature, but I think that would be doing them a disservice.  These particular pizza strips were so tasty, fragrant with olive oil, and the pizza sauce so rich and thick.  I will try this at home - when the sauce is this good, why ruin it with cheese?

I loved Rhode Island - the place I probably expected the least from on our trip turned out to be my favourite.  The pizza strips were 3 for $1, and when I opened up the paper bag at the airport, what we found inside sums up this delightful part of the USA - the man had given us 4 instead of 3.

The Crow's Nest (map)
288 Arnold's Neck Drive
Warwick RI

Baker at the Downtown Farmer's Market (map)
Fridays 11am - 2pm for limited months of the year

This is Footscray Food Blog's 100th post!  Blogging has become a creative outlet for me that I really treasure.  It has also been wonderful to meet and continue to meet so many fun, interesting people through the blogosphere.  Thank you so much for reading, subscribing, and all your comments.  I now have a Facebook page - you can "like" the blog officially now (see button to the right, if reading on the site).  I'm not sure how it will fit in, but it could become another space for readers and writer/s to interact.

My American food journey is almost at an end, and I will bring you more Footscray delights very soon.  Until then, thank you!

Hot wieners

The US has such fantastic regional cuisine variations, which are quite unmatched in Australia.  We really don't have foods specific to particular parts of the country, unless you count the pie floater in Adelaide.*  On the other hand, in the States, many cities have their own best-loved BBQ dishes, be it Texas brisket, North Carolina-style vinegar-soaked pulled pork, or Chicago's fall-off-the-bone baby-back ribs.  Green chile stew is popular in Colorado, while Texas chilli is a meaty stew which, in contrast to most other chilli con carne recipes, has no beans in it at all.  I love that even the smallest state in the US - Rhode Island - has a whole groaning buffet table of culinary specialties that are totally unique to it.

Rhode Island is actually one of the world's centres of vintage costume jewellery components, which is how K and I found ourselves cruising the dusty aisles of a rickety warehouse, exclaiming at the yellowed stickytape and fragile tissue paper cradling some specimens, and gasping with delight upon discovering some hidden gem (both literally and figuratively).  After a couple of hours of rummaging, our throats aching from decades-old dust, and we headed just down the road to the famous Olneyville New York System for a long, tall coffee milk and a couple of hot wieners.

Hot wieners, pronounced "hot weenies" and alternatively known as "gaggas," start with a special type of hot dog that, being made with pork, has a milder taste than Chicago's favourite Vienna Beef variety.  They have square ends as a result of being chopped when they come out of the hot dog machine (don't think too much about that!) rather than tied off.  They are placed in a plain white hot dog bun, squirted with mustard, and topped with a special, spiced, ground beef topping.  This is then layered with raw onion and celery salt. 

They are so beloved that the Rhode Island Magazine had to discontinue the hot wiener category in its "Best of Rhode Island" awards, such was the hate mail that resulted from their top choices and who was left out.

We perched at the counter at Olneyville N.Y. System, which has been serving hot wieners since the 1930s, and at the current location since 1953.  The "New York System" part of the name is apparently because hot dogs were originally associated with New York City.  Rhode Islanders, both now and during the rest of our stay, proved to be so friendly and curious, and they were delighted we had made it to semi-industrial Olneyville just to sample their favourite snack food. 

And let me tell you, the "hot weenies" were SO good.  The meat sauce is not fatty or wet, but a drier style (I am not a fan of "chilli dogs" a la Pink's in LA, which are topped with chilli con carne).  It's spiced with a secret mix that must include a little cumin, but I couldn't tell you what else.  The onions and the mustard cut through the richness, and the celery salt adds a zing to everything.  SO, SO yummy!

We washed this down with Rhode Island's favourite drink, "coffee milk", which is icy-cold milk, sweetened, and just stained with coffee.  While we were eating, some customers came in and asked for 5 spoons of sugar in their coffee milk.  I thought they were just mucking around, but the man faithfully made it up as ordered, and then one of the customers came back to the counter and said she actually wanted 10 spoons!  We left soon after, so we never got to see if it was all bluster back and forth, or horrifyingly, if it was not.

Olneyville N.Y. System (map)
20 Plainfield St
Providence, RI

If ever planning a trip to RI, you must explore Quahog.org, which is such an awesome site devoted to all things RI.

* I'm sure there are many indigenous food variations, but of these I am sadly unknowledgeable.

Margie's Candies

Margie's Candies is something of a Chicago legend.  Running at its original location in Bucktown since 1921, it has served up homemade candies and legendary icecream sundaes to (allegedly) Al Capone, the Beatles, and generations of Chicagoans.  Now run by the original proprietor's son, it has opened a second shop on the North Side, which was within walking distance of our pad during our recent "holiday from the holiday" in downtown Chicago.

The sundaes are served in a huge white clamshell and are loaded with ice cream (there is one with 25 scoops) and a cavalcade of whipped cream, nuts, caramel, bananas, cherries, and more.  Our choice came with wafer biscuits and a gravy boat of hot, homemade chocolate fudge sauce.  Look at those fat fingers, hovering in anticipation!

What, you want a critical review?  How could you not absolutely love it?  Even I, who tried to order a Diet Coke and got a quizzically-raised eyebrow, just had to dig in.

I think the fact that my oldest looks like she is about to puke is quite telling.

Margie's Candies (map)
1813 W Montrose
Chicago IL
Also in Bucktown

Tacos al pastor

One of the things I love most about the States is the perfusion of Latino food and culture throughout the country.  The Hispanic population of the States is growing and growing.  There are Latino TV channels, Latino radio stations, and whole neighbourhoods full of wonderful food, music, and culture.  Mexican food is right up there on my "to eat" list every time I return here, and top of that list is tacos al pastor.

Tacos al pastor are tacos filled with chopped, seasoned pork.  The marinade varies widely on the taqueria, but is rich and tangy, with mild chilli.  The meat is piled on doubled-up soft corn tortillas.  Many taquerias will do either "American-style" tacos, with sour cream, tomato, and lettuce, or "Mexican-style," with chopped coriander (aka cilantro), raw onion, and cheese.

Tacos al pastor are a local interpretation of Lebanese shawarma, lamb on a vertical spit (similar to souvlaki or doner kebab).  Lebanese migration to Mexico began around 1880 in response to pressure from the fragmenting Ottoman Empire.  See here for a very interesting article about the intermingling of Lebanese and Mexican cuisine during this period.  Over time, the lamb became the more locally-available pork, a transition now only reflected in the name, "tacos al pastor" - shepherd's tacos.  Above you can see the spit, or "trompo", used in some restaurants to make tacos al pastor, although at the taqueria above, the raw meat was only presented on the spit; to serve, it was shaved off and fried on a hot plate.

Another great Mexican street dish is the torta, a type of sandwich. The torta bread is soft and slightly sweet. This is torta al pastor. Divine!!

In every Mexican restaurant, while you wait for your food, you get an unlimited supply of homemade fried tortilla chips, usually with your choice of red or green salsa.  The red has a tomato base while the green is made with tomatillos, which resemble green tomatoes but are actually a separate vegetable altogether.

Another uniquely Mexican taste is horchata, a sweetened "milk" made from rice.  This refreshing, healthy drink is common across South America, but different countries use different bases, such as sesame seeds in Puerto Rico or different indigenous seeds in Nicaragua and El Salvador.  This tradition comes from Spain, where the drink was originally made with tigernuts, a type of tuber.  This plant and the tradition of making a beverage from it was brought to southern Spain by the Muslim "Moors," who ruled it from 711 to 1492.  This period, which spanned some of the darkest periods in medieval Christian Europe, saw huge developments in philosophy, science, and medicine.  It is known by many as La Convivencia ("the coexistence") for the relatively peaceful coexistence of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Spain at this time.

If I could import anything from the States to Australia, it would be a simple little taqueria like this one, Mr Salsa in Uptown. What passes for Mexican in Australia is nothing short of abysmal.  Real Mexican food is light, fresh, both very simple and very complex.  The regional variations are staggering.  I look forward to learning more... but always after a tacos al pastor starter!

Mr Salsa (map)

1025 W Montrose

Chicago IL

If you are exploring Chicago's restaurants, yelp.com is a great place to start.

Deep dish pizza

Oh, why could my husband not have been Vietnamese?  Instead, he had to be from the meat-and-cheese capital of the world.  Every time I come back to Chicago, instead of eating light, tangy Vietnamese coleslaw and cleansing, refreshing pho, I "have" to eat pizza, hot dogs, burgers, and beef sandwiches dripping with juice.  At least this trip I do not have a car, so I am forced to walk everywhere to get my fix of classic American food.  Sounds balanced - until you get something delivered!

Giordano's is a chain that makes Chicago-style deep dish pizza.  I normally don't like chains, but in this case, the chain is right up there with the mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall joints.

A deep dish pizza has a thicker base than a normal pizza, and the dough comes right up the sides.  It's layered first with cheese, then with toppings, then with sauce.  The sauce is often then sprinkled with just a little Parmesan.  It's really not as rich as people would think.

This spinach deep dish was so, so good.  The sauce was so thick, tomatoey and rich.  On a deep dish, I prefer toppings like spinach that don't need to be crisped for good flavour (e.g. pepperoni).  Giordano's crust is stuffed with cheese.  Other places will line the crust with cheese, so that it caramelizes between the crust and the pan.  Giordano's crust is doughy; other places might have a cornmeal element to theirs.

Gotta go - the bike path is calling!

Giordano's (map)
2010 W Montrose, Chicago IL
Other locations throughout Chicago and Chicagoland

Chicago-style hot dogs

I don't care what anyone says - America's national food has got to be the hot dog.  The Tribune recently reported that between Memorial Day and Labor Day alone (the American summer), 300 million Americans consume 7 billion hot dogs.  7 BILLION!  While hot dogs for Australians mean those awful, pallid things encased in violent pink skin that is wont to split unappetisingly, American hot dogs are actually more like sausages, albeit heavily processed ones.  Many brands are available that do not have any fillers or byproducts.  Kosher brands are particularly well regarded.

Byron's in Wrigleyville, Chicago, serve dogs by the Vienna Beef company, favourite of many Chicago hole-in-the-wall dog joints, and they are famous for their own take on Chicago-style toppings. 

A Chicago-style hot dog is topped with mustard, relish, raw onion, pickle spear, tomato, celery salt (ground celery seeds mixed with salt), and "sport peppers" (small, hot chillis).  Byron's adds cucumber and capsicum and uses pickle rounds instead of long spears.  To add tomato sauce (ketchup) is sacrilege.

Spot the hot dog under all of that!  It really is the best way to eat a hot dog.  The processed, salty meat is tempered by all the fresh vegies and tangy pickle, relish, and mustard.

Byron's recently served their famous hot dogs at the White House's annual congressional picnic. Good choice - the Obamas are Chicagoans, after all!

Byron's Hot Dogs (map)

1017 W Irving Park Rd

Chicago, IL 60613

Paradise Pup

The suburbs of any city can seem like a culinary wasteland.  In Chicago this is particularly so with the prevalence of chains like Panera Bread, Potbelly Sandwich Works - there are literally hundreds.  I am not fond of chain restaurants.  Many came from one very successful, original business, but like the Roman empire, many seem to have expanded too far and lost the essence of what made them a success in the first place.  Melbournians can't take the high moral ground here, considering how Grill'd, Trampoline, and now even Brunetti's are popping up in different corners of our city.  But like any city, if you look beyond the hyper-real lights and colours of the food chains, you will find buried treasure here in Chicagoland.

For example, just past the airport and sandwiched between two auto repair shops, is the Paradise Pup.  This burger shack was opened by two brothers 22 years ago and has been run by them ever since. I knew it was going to be good by the huge line snaking out into the parking lot.

Despite their name, they are known for their burgers, not their dogs.  The favourite is the cheddar charburger, which comes with Merkts cheddar, a type of natural cheddar cheese that comes in a tub.  It's from Wisconsin, the state to the north of Illinois, which is so known for its cheese that its citizens are known (not particularly endearingly) as "cheeseheads."

Holy cornfields, this was the greatest burger!  The patty (still red in the middle, which I know is hard for Australians to get their head around) was so tasty and juicy, and the meat juices mingled with ketchup and mayo to snake down our forearms as we ate.  It came with "everything" - pickle, onion (raw or grilled), fresh tomato, ketchup, and mayonnaise.  The cheese was very rich, salty, and full of flavour, the perfect foil to the tasty meat.  A burger is easy to do, but so hard to do right - this hit the nail on the head.

As if it wasn't enough of a heartstopper, next we gobbled up the Paradise Pup's three-layer fries.  Crinkle-cut fries topped with Merkt's cheddar, sour cream, and real bacon.  I normally avoid loaded fries as they are often covered in mediocre chilli (as in chilli con carne) and awful, fake, lurid yellow "cheese" sauce.  The Paradise Pup's are the real deal, though - even the bacon was real bacon, lovingly chopped, not horrible "bacon bits" that come on the supermarket shelf.  Wow!

These were washed down with black cherry lemonade and an Oreo thickshake.  On the drive home, I put the seat back in the Buick, put my arm out the window, and wished I had cruise control.



The Paradise Pup (map)
1724 S River Rd
Des Plaines, IL 60018

** UPDATE!  Ms Baklover will be coming back to Australia next week!  I am just a city girl at heart.  Until then, enjoy a flurry of US posts before I get back into searching out new Footscray gems.  Thanks for reading, and to all my guest contributors for keeping the dream alive! **