While Girlfriend and I weren’t out touring Boston at the end of April, we rested our heads in nearby Somerville. The neighborhoods of this town, bordering three major universities and cradling the last stretch of the Red Line out of Boston, have been through more than one wave of history – including the familiar story of gentrification.

As such, it seemed fitting to take sips of strong Turkish coffee at Istanbul’lu, a young, charming Turkish restaurant between Davis Square and Teele Square. Refined enough to feel high-end and suburban enough to feel familiar, Istanbul’lu was a refreshing taste of immigrant cuisine that required neither travail nor translation to be digested.

Haydari was one of the house’s many tasty uses of Turkish yogurt, which found its way into almost all of our dishes. This “cold tapas” presentation was little more than a luscious, high-fat yogurt, strained until stand-up thick and seasoned with crushed garlic and chopped dill.

Topped with a drizzle of melted butter, a sprinkle of dried red pepper, and a pinch of fresh mint, it made a happy partner to Istanbul’lu’s fluffy, buttery house bread – though not as stellar as the house’s complementary garlic-and-red pepper sauce. It was also perfectly fine eaten one creamy spoonful at a time; the subtleties of the dish’s seasoning added just the right layer of extra flavor to the simple pleasure of well-prepared yogurt.

I’ve read that beyaz is actually a form of cheese made from fresh sheeps’ milk, but Istanbul’lu’s menu lists the filling for its kirmizi beyaz as suzme, the same strained yogurt prepared as the base for haydari. Whatever was lost in my translation, this particular sample was closer to a whipped cream cheese than savory feta, noticeably tangier and lighter than its full-bore counterpart. Used to stuff a delicate roasted pepper and laid over melted butter, it was simple, satisfying, and (sadly) short-lived.

Mucver, a fritter constructed from finely chopped zucchini, carrot, egg, beyaz and smattering of herbs and spices, is one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes. Pan-fried to a deep brown crisp, rested on a mound of yogurt and paired with a single slice of red tomato, the mucver at Istanbul’lu is home cooking, perfectly elevated to white-tablecloth status. The fritter itself shows off a fantastic balance between crunchy crust and fluffy core, while the dollop of yogurt and streak of tomato juice round out each bite with graceful calculation.

The soup menu’s paca (pronounced “pahtch-ah”) does just as much in the opposite direction, offering a straightforward lamb soup for the soul. Rich as a concentrated serving of lamb bone extract should be, this soup was boosted by yogurt and sharpened by garlic. Scraps of lamb meat and fat at the bottom of the bowl punctuate the paca’s essential character, a gratitude to home cooking that makes Istanbul’lu more than just an edible import into a nice neighborhood.

Home-bred character was in equally high supply at The Neighborhood, a Portugese-American diner that’s been serving all-day breakfast at the foot of Somerville’s Prospect Hill for almost 30 years.

Upon placing our orders we were immediately offered a complement of either a baked apple or a bowl of cream of wheat. Girlfriend, confused by this sudden, off-the-menu decision, asked our Boston-bound waiter to explain.

“Cream of wheat,” he responded, making a spooning motion from an invisible bowl to his jaw. “It’s a hot cereal.”

We all chose the baked apple. Cored, filled with butter and cinnamon, then baked to a mash and glazed with maple syrup, it was a bit heavy as an appetizer, but not so sweet or heavy that it couldn’t be polished off in just a few bites.

For eight bucks, I was then handed a platter of grilled linguica, home fries from scratch, three fried eggs, and a whole grilled banana.

My home fries were just barely crusty and tasted of butter and salt without being heavy, greasy or over-salted. My eggs delivered their nondescript lines without a second thought to creativity. My Portugese sausage was true to form, with a snappy casing and a juicy, fall-apart filling. The Neighborhood’s grilled banana, tender and overripe, snubbed dill pickle spears everywhere with its sweet, caramelized edges. This was the American breakfast dream, realized just as splendidly by the Borges family as it has been by other favorites of mine, like Ann’s Kitchen and Stage Restaurant.

The Neighborhood confirms its destination status with an outstanding plate of blueberry pancakes. This particular short stack wasn’t as crisp on the edges or as fluffy and airy on the inside as the platonic perfect pancake my childhood memory often fools me into chasing. Still, these moist, berry-stuffed pancakes had sides just crisp enough to lead us right into another bite, and before we knew it, we were left with a faint puddle of maple syrup.

Eating within big city limits, it’s easy to forget that suburban living doesn’t necessarily equate to culinary surrender. If the Flushings, Westminsters and Somervilles of the world are any indication, I’ll have plenty to look forward to when it’s time to think about leaving suck city for good.

Related posts:

1. Food Touring the Tourist’s Way in Boston I don’t often play the role of “tourist,” but when...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Sunday doughnuts were a gift to all, an adult’s admission to her child that yes, bad foods taste good, and we all deserve a bite now and then. And in southern California, doughnut shops – invariably run by immigrants seeking a foothold in local business – were the American intersection of class and craft over Formica tables, pink cardboard boxes and small styrofoam cups. To my faithless eyes, the doughnut counter was a holy place, where people of all colors and car models shared five minutes of small talk as their fingers sauntered from one doughnut to the next.

The newest wave of fancy doughnuts in this town attempts to elevate the doughnut to gourmet status. In the case of Doughnut Plant‘s raised doughnuts, this means plastering gummy, dried-out doughnuts with overwrought glazes. Their “fresh strawberry” is nice enough as a frosting, but in a New York minute it’s revealed as little more than sugar shock. Biting into this one feels like eating a doughnut straight out of an episode of The Simpsons.

The toasted sesame glaze has a more distinctive flavor, but its accompanying doughnut is still clunky, with no spring to its texture and a marked lack of fluffiness. Doughnut Plant’s raised doughnuts exemplify why I used to avoid raised doughnuts altogether, and no measure of inventive topping or filling will change that fact when I’m paying $2-$3 a pop.

Cake doughnuts, however, are Doughnut Plant’s strong suit, and this oatmeal cake is a marvel. Balancing sweet, toasted, nutty and fruity flavors, it’s also texturally complex; between the bits of toasted oat, salt-inflected crust, and morsels of fruit baked into the dough, it’s nothing short of a baker’s masterpiece.

In gaining my respect, Doughnut Plant loses my loyalty. Its best cakes – the chocolate “blackout,” the tres leches, and the creme brulee – stray just far enough from what I connect to as the American doughnut to make me feel awkward using the word “doughnut” to describe them. I like cake, but I have no use for ring-shaped cakes with a doughnut hook when what I really want is a box of crusty old-fashioneds, a mug of coffee, and a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Brooklyn’s Dough makes a much better case for the fancy doughnut. No less gourmet than Doughnut Plant, the $2 raised doughnuts at Dough carry themselves with the same decadent vibe, as evidenced by the ring of grease that turned this sheet of waxed paper into my window to weight gain.

One bite into Dough’s hibiscus raised doughnut reveals something fundamentally different. Far from re-branded cake or dressed-up mediocrity, it’s truly a yeast doughnut on another level: moist yet fluffy, with an almost crisp exterior and just enough spring to make each bite last until it melts onto the tongue. The hibiscus frosting has a bright, fruity flavor that starts with a tart punch, then offers a brief brush of sweetness before receding perfectly into the wonderful, familiar flavor of fried, yeast-raised dough.

Likewise, Dough’s lemon poppy is a pronounced twist on a traditional glazed raised. Not as in-your-face-fruity as the hibiscus doughnut, but essentially following the same approach, its tart lemon flavor rides a wave of sugar with a sense of restraint. The proportion of glaze to doughnut ultimately emphasizes the doughnut, not the glaze, and this substantial tire of a doughnut is good enough on its own for this approach to be a winner.

Dough’s chocolate earl grey drapes a hefty coat of milk chocolate frosting on top of an already hefty doughnut, making this one impossible to imagine as a morning ritual. Still, it’s suitably luscious as a midday dessert. A brush of aromatic earl grey is present in the frosting on its own, but once it merges with the doughnut, subtleties vanish and it becomes an oversized paean to the chocolate frosted rings I would eye from across the counter as a kid.

Dough’s doughnut holes are the best option for those looking to take the greasy edge off of the full-sized rings. Like a good batch of homemade hush puppies, they’re pleasingly irregular, and one of Dough’s homages to the doughnut’s simplicity. Paying $1.00 for four of these might stab at my strip-mall-raised heart, but in a doughnut shop with this much character, I’m more than happy to point at the basket and add a few to my order.

I don’t doubt that fancy doughnuts can be incredibly delicious, but my favorite doughnuts – fancy or not – are still the ones that inspire a sense of common uplift. When things come full fried circle, I’ll remember the doughnuts that elevate not the dough, but the customer – just as they did, dozens at a time, on the shelves of my own Americana.

Related posts:

1. South Brooklyn Pizza’s Cut of the Dough Location is fundamental to business. Even in a world bombarded...
2. Blueberry Sky This is the best god damned muffin I’ve ever eaten....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Then cut that table in half length-wise, and on the side where nobody is sitting, add a kitchen. Now it’s a diner counter.

Even if everyone at that counter is a stranger eating alone, they are sharing a meal at the same table, with each other, and with the restaurant’s employees working in front of them. In a weird way, for the span of one meal, each is part of the others’ lives just as if they were relatives at Thanksgiving dinner.

My favorite breakfast spot during my years in Berkeley was little more than a breakfast counter. Makris Cafe on University Ave isn’t the most popular place around campus, but as someone who enjoys dining alone, I visited frequently – with notepad or newspaper in hand – for some eggs, coffee and uninterested company.

Makris had a staff of two and a half. Han, the husband, manned the griddle, too busy to ever turn around. His wife, who dealt with the customers, spoke each order in his ear as their ‘tween daughter, on the busiest days, helped out by refilling coffees and learning how to use the outdated cash register. As husband, wife and daughter work hard to keep the business afloat, the financial needs of a family working two feet from their patrons are part of the process as well.

On one hand, it’s a bit unnerving, like standing outside of their home window as a cloaked voyeur. On the other hand, I believe that meals have more value when there’s a connection between chef, server and customer, even if that relationship is based only on proximity. It cuts out the middleman and becomes a barter between a hungry stranger and a family business that needs patronage. The awareness of that exchange adds a certain honesty to each bite, and it’s that stripped-down style of dining that made Makris my go-to fried egg dispenser in college.

In other words, I love breakfast counters. That’s why, upon stepping inside Art’s Cafe, a restaurant consisting of only one long breakfast counter, I instantly liked what I saw. It didn’t hurt that Art’s is also run by a Korean family.

A tiny storefront sandwiched between bigger buildings on the pedestrian-thick Irving Blvd, Art’s Cafe is easily passed by unnoticed. During weekdays, the long counter waits mostly empty for the occasional walk-in. On weekends, a line gathers out front waiting for the rare vacant stool. Each patron is greeted by the woman, offered coffee and left to examine the myriad postcards beneath the counter glass, gifts from Art’s many fans and a testament to the value of a friendly place to eat. The meal is accompanied by the smell of hot bacon grease, heat from the kitchen, and the percussion of spatulas and frying pans.

The main difference between Makris Cafe and Art’s Cafe is that the latter is more successful, and the primary reason for that is its food. While Han knew how to fry an egg, the menu at Art’s has more to offer, and an efficient kitchen keeps the customer turnover high. Despite the tiny space, success has allowed Art’s to hire additional kitchen help and buy better equipment. More rice cookers. Bigger toasters. Cleaner griddles. A website. Makris may have Art’s beat on the Dickensian scoreboard, but when comparing quality, my five dollars are better spent on Art’s corned beef hash.

The black sheep of Art’s menu are the hash brown sandwiches, which are basically quesadillas made with hash browns instead of tortillas. Like the corned beef hash, Art’s hash browns are an ultra-thin and surprisingly uniform version of what I would normally expect, which works perfectly as the casing to your choice of filling. Even if these novelties don’t add up to anything more than the sums of their parts, they’re priced to move.

Asian influences on the breakfast menu come in the form of white rice and teriyaki. The latter of which features in one of Art’s more popular dishes, the Samurai Omelet. On the lunch menu, next to burgers and melts, folks can choose from some griddle-Korean food as well.

Everything I’ve tried at Art’s thus far has rated at a solid B, decent food made as well as possible with a limited kitchen and cheap ingredients. Art’s deserves every bit of the success displayed in postcard form – if not for the food, than for being an above-average, mom-and-pop breakfast counter.

Those postcards weren’t sent from all over the world to Art’s for the food, after all. They were sent to the people on the other side of the halved Thanksgiving table, because when it comes to breakfast over the counter, “family” might not be a strong enough a word.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Maybe Mill Valley is an actual place, but after hanging around the town a few times, I can’t shake the feeling that everything there is a little bit storybook. The streets are clean of litter and loiterers, the sidewalks are full of mommies pushing strollers, the public education system is well-funded, and a cheerful woman hands you a free tote bag when you walk into the supermarket. Everything is just right in Mill Valley and that’s a little off-putting, because it doesn’t seem real. It’s like some kind of 21st-century Pleasantville, as if Mill Valley took American culture, re-engineered it for its own purposes, and then bottled it for families with household incomes of at least six digits.

Mill Valley’s food culture is no different. Everything looks the same, but the recipes change, like a B.L.T. made of applewood-smoked bacon, arugula and roma tomato. It’s delicious, and it’s classically American, but its authenticity is part pageantry. At least, this is how I felt when I walked into Pearl’s Phat Burgers, Mill Valley’s version of the American fast food diner. The small restaurant is sparse white, with minimal red trim and a couple cafeteria tables. It gives the impression of a generic greasy spoon due to a classic menu board on the wall and the lack of a wait staff, but a closer look at the options obscures the place’s definition. Pearl’s may be dressed up as a generic American grease peddler, but the burgers aren’t plain old American burgers. They’re just pretending to be.

I guess – for an upscale, forward-thinking population like Mill Valley – cheap, greasy diner food is a matter of nostalgia. For me, taking a gourmet burger and trying to pass it off as being ungourmet sounds like some kind of prank that Hawkeye Pierce and B.J. Hunnicutt might come up with. I have to give Pearl’s credit, though. There’s a psychology to the experience, and for someone like me, who can’t help but despise the idea of “gourmet” burgers, the disguise works in everyone’s favor. If Pearl’s served burgers on ceramic plates and wood tables, I would have liked it less, because, you know, I’m prejudiced.

Gourmet or not, Pearl’s burger has found fans. Bobby Flay and friends awarded Pearl’s Phat Burgers as the Best Burger in the Bay Area at the Great American Food and Music Fest. The prize winner was the Kobe Bula Burger, Pearl’s reinvention of the Hawaiian burger using bacon, swiss, mayo and spicy pineapple teriyaki sauce. As a fan of Hawaiian teri-burgers in general, it wasn’t hard for me to like the Bula, whose tangy, sweet sauce gives the impression of eating a messy, teriyaki-glazed pineapple slice without the accompanying physical difficulty. The bacon is thick cut and chewy, the way bacon should be, and the patty itself is pink on the inside, the way patties should be. Still, I remain skeptical of the burger’s “Best” title, because the combination of fatty Niman Ranch beef and a generous portion of swiss cheese left pools of grease in my digestive system. Maybe I should have forked over the extra four dollars for the Kobe.

Definitely not the generic burger joint, Pearl’s offers buffalo and turkey patties, too. I liked the lean texture of the buffalo more than the fat and grease of the beef; however, as per usual, the buffalo burger was not quite as flavorful. That said, I’ll gladly order the Bula Burger with beef again, maybe without the cheese, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the buffalo to anyone who doesn’t want to feel like crap after her meal. This is Mill Valley after all, where eating at a classic greasy spoon doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your health and where food culture doesn’t have to end in a food coma. That’s the Mill Valley brand, bottled and ready to go, coming to a city near you. There’s already a Pearl’s in San Francisco. Next time you order a burger at a generic diner near you, beware – it just might be gourmet.

Pearl’s Phat Burgers
8 E Blithedale Ave
Mill Valley, CA 94941
(415) 381-6010

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If so, you’ve had the privilege of tasting one of America’s finest burgers. If not, you’ll get your answer below the fold.

This is the last of the point-and-eat posts from my holiday in California. I’ve saved what are probably my three favorite meals of the two weeks I spent on the west coast for the end of this series, and – to no one’s surprise, I hope – the ranking of all three has as much to do with people, place and memory as with the food I ate.

Mitsuru Cafe – Little Tokyo, Downtown L.A.

While I was in the boundaries of Los Angeles, I was recruited to review downtown LA’s Nickel Diner for a magazine pitch. While that meal was mostly boring, it did give Boykji and me a chance to stroll through the downtown area on a sunny day. We walked through the neon sign wonderland known as Grand Central Market, peeked inside the Blade Runner set known as the Bradbury Building, and navigated our way through the plazas of Little Tokyo, where we stumbled a cross a long line of eaters awaiting their chance to enter a small Japanese cafe.

Mitsuru, as it turns out, is known for its imagawayaki, a kind of red bean hotcake that customers can watch the pastry chef make as they queue up for a turn at the counter. Agreeing that the mention of red bean is reason enough to form up single file, we fell in and fixed our eyes on the windowpane. Working with the deliberation of a grand jury, the unadorned chef filled a hot casting griddle with batter, spooned homemade red bean filling over the cakes as they rose, then, using his fingers as a barometer, flipped one half atop the other to form a seal as the baking process completed.

One long line and $1.25 per piece later, we were handed our imagawayaki in thin paper bags. While these pastries don’t reach the textural highs of the glutinous, black sesame-dotted yakimochi at Cafe Zaiya in New York, they’re still well worth the wait. The crust of each cake, hot and steaming off the griddle, was nicely crisped, while the insides were fluffy. The homemade filling was thankfully not too sweet, and nothing about the pastry tasted artificial or augmented in the slightest. We sat down on a nearby bench and ate with our hands, breaking simple sweet bread amongst our fellow Angelenos.

The Apple Pan – West L.A.
Later that day, we returned to Boykji’s hometown of west Los Angeles, where mother Boyk took us out for dinner at The Apple Pan. I may have eaten at In-N-Out four times during the two weeks I spent in California, but none of those burgers beat out what I still think is the best burger in Los Angeles and possibly my favorite burger in the country.

Part of The Apple Pan’s unique quality (which, as emblazoned on the neon sign posted outside its unassuming building, will last forever) is its presence. Whenever I gripe about diners not really being diners and joints not really being joints, the first image to back up my curmudgeonly mind is the counter at The Apple Pan. There is no form of restaurant seating more elegant: When you walk through the double doors of this institution of eating, you must decide whether to step to the left or to the right. Once you’ve chosen your side of the room, you wait for an open spot at the counter. You receive no ticket and you wait for no waiters; just mind your manners and you’ll get a chance to sit down.

Once you’ve taken your seat – slightly uncomfortable since 1947 – a stately, white-haired buck, clad in white and crowned with folded paper, asks for your order. He’s flanked by years of brick, wood and stainless steel. Line cooks bustle about behind him, freshly grilled patties shifting between their hands and mile-high stacks of iceberg lettuce and pre-sliced cheese towering on one side of the assembly table. He’s one of the friendliest guys you’ll ever meet, but if you try to order before your lady, he will, without hesitation, put you in your place.

A pile of fries, well done if you ask, show up first. Wedged into cardboard, they’re stark, simple and absolutely perfect. As you take your first crunchy bite, the man throws down a cardboard plate, flips over his bottle of Heinz and – in a manner that can only be defined as “not fucking around” – heaps a serving of catsup beside it. He then sets out a wire frame with a tiny, conical paper cup, into which he drops a scoop of ice before handing you a soft drink. The flawless motion of it all makes me wish that Ray Croc had never sucked all the soul out of routine.

Once you’ve had your chance to munch on a few fries and take a sip of your soda, your choice of two burgers hits the counter. The only difference between them is in condiment – the hickory burger is dressed with a tangy barbecue sauce, while the steak burger is dressed with a sweet, red pickle relish. I prefer the taste and texture of relish on my patty, but both burgers are created equal.

Aside from the distinction of sauce, a hamburger at the Apple Pan is as simple as simple may be: loosely packed ground beef grilled medium well, a sizeable wad of iceberg, pickles and mayo on a deeply browned-edge bun. Beef here knows nothing of the heavily stuffed, thickly crusted, medium rare patties that dominate palates of the future. Instead, they offer an endlessly juicy hamburger experience. I have never had a juicier burger (that’s juicy, not bloody or greasy) than I have at the Apple Pan. It’s the template of taste for all hamburgers in fast food (White Castles exempt from all things definitional, of course), and it still holds the title after over half a century of business.

Making your way through a burger and fries here would be enough to land this place on your list of best burger joints in the world. What cements its spot is the next question asked: “Are you going to have pie tonight?”

The only acceptable answer is yes. The only right answer is banana cream. The Apple Pan’s banana cream pulls rank with Lois’ lemon icebox as the best pie of my lifetime. It’s the kind of pie that shows you things you thought pie could never accomplish. Yes, banana can be refreshing. Yes, pastry crust can stay flaky under multiple layers of banana, pudding and whipped cream. Yes, you will dream for months about your next chance to part with six bucks for a slice of pie – banana pie, of all things. Yes, you can have another slice.

Once you’ve polished off the last bits of whipped cream and crust crumb, you pay your tab and let someone else have his turn at the counter. The moment you step out through those swinging doors, you’re back in the twenty-first century, walking along Pico in the shadow of one of L.A.’s biggest shopping malls. This is the kind of dining experience that makes it extremely easy to see through the plastered-on rustics of pretty much every old-timey-themed restaurant I come across. Just as flash is no substitute for flavor, atmosphere is no substitute for history; the Apple Pan operates on both of these principles with a wink in its eye, not a tongue in its cheek.

Shanghai Restaurant – Chinatown, Downtown Oakland
When Oakland’s Shanghai opened a luxurious second branch in the crotch of student territory in Berkeley, it was doomed to the worst kind of failure: failure by ignorance. The restaurant had one or two years of glory, attracting diners from all around the Bay Area but remaining anathema to the undergraduate body, who would sooner gush over its mediocre-with-brunch neighbor, Cafe Durant, than sit down for a meal of xiaolongbao and sticky rice. Then, it closed up shop, content with the bounds of its original hole in the wall on Webster.

When I returned to Shanghai, it was business as usual – cramped space, dingy walls, ramshackle tables and an attitude ranging somewhere between indifferent and confused. Perfect for my last night in the East Bay.

Every meal at Shanghai starts off with xiaolongbao. These soup dumplings are the perfect mirror to the rest of Shanghai’s food – not something I would refer to as “refined” and too thick-skinned for me to stand up and call them the best XLB I’ll ever have, but very tasty all the same.

Another standby, Shanghai’s double fried noodles – chow mein style noodles, half tender, half crispy – rides the crest of comfort food. The meat gravy ladled atop is unobtrusive enough to ward off the aura of junk, and the varied textures of meat, pepper, leek and two kinds of noodles is ceaseless fun.

While not nearly as varied, Shanghai’s savory rice cakes (I think it’s niangao) – dressed in green, mixed with pork and doused in a similar gravy – also make for a comforting bite. Sauteed green beans are nicely charred.

This fellow was tasty, but I don’t remember anything in particular about him. Strange that I feel somewhat squeamish around cooked embodied shellfish but can’t resist taking close-up photos of a whole fried fish.

Salted pork with bean sheets is one of Shanghai’s hidden aces and definitely the surprise standout of the evening. The pork on this dish is extremely tender, juicy and savory in the simplest sense. The bean sheets in question are actually flat, wide noodles cut from tofu sheets; the imprinted surface and clean, dense texture are really nice upgrades from a comparably shaped egg or rice noodle.

Easily superior to Shanghai’s xialongbao are Shanghai’s shengjianbao, bite-sized buns filled with the same savory pork filling, then browned from beneath and sprinkled with sesame seeds and green onion. No visit to Webster St. is complete without a handful of these.

I could say the same thing about the restaurant’s red bean pancake, a Christmas card-shaped slap to the cheeks of red bean buns all over town. Made with rice flour and fried until it attains the union of chewy, crisp and greasy, this is the perfect end to a meal composed almost entirely of items off the dim sum menu. And while it might have tasted even better on a warm bench in downtown L.A., it wouldn’t have been as satisfying outside the dank confines of Shanghai.

I’ll see you again next year, California!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Some people wake up for brunch. Brunch lovers, wafting through restaurant doors for a beautifully arrayed spread of poached eggs, afternoon greens, brioche, grapefruit, gourmet bacon and the hair of the dog, cross a gradient of dining that I cannot. I get into debates when I try to preserve the line between American breakfast and American brunch, as if I were drawing it in sand. I’m not; yet, with every new brunch menu that hits the table, the empirical distance between the two semantic cousins becomes more and more palpable in ways that make me think that I hate brunch.

This turn has been a long time coming. As a newcomer to the world of comestible obsessions in Berkeley, I discovered the joy of breakfast at Ann’s Kitchen, an understated, high turnover corner joint with sticky tables, plenty of Bruce Louisiana hot sauce and an owner who could memorize the name and face of a customer after two visits. Ann’s breakfast plate, consisting of two eggs any style, two slices of toast with apple butter, and a molehill of the most impeccably crisped home fries in three dimensions, hit the counter five minutes after order for $3.45. It was food at its peak: brutally simple, yet impossible to replace.

As years passed and I found myself sharing more and more morning meals with friends, I discovered that my enthusiasm for the off-the-cuff familiarity of Ann’s was burnt crust compared to the student body’s lust for the brunch experience. Each time I joined a weekend excursion for the same old overdressed basics, I felt a little more disillusioned – by the long waits, the $12+tip price tags, and the over-seasoned, hyper-relaxed, late morning banter. What struck me most, though, was the feeling that the simplicity of breakfast was being slyly replaced. Before long, no one wanted to go to Ann’s with me. Sure, the food was good, the price was right, and Amoeba and Moe’s were right around the corner, but it just didn’t scratch that lazy, luxuriant itch that only a mimosa could pacify.

I went on with my life, avoiding brunch outings when possible and not quite knowing how to explain my aversion to the meal in certain terms. Then, on the suggestion of a good friend (ironically, also a brunch lover), I had breakfast at Stage Restaurant in the East Village.

If Manhattan was born with greasy spoon in its mouth, Stage would be that spoon: a short order holdover from a world in which entire meals are cooked on a griddle no bigger than the cook’s torso, and no one has ever asked for granola. Unaffected by nostalgia, the Stage is simply one long counter of history. Elbow room is the only room in this alleyway of a diner, and the diners whose elbows rub against mine range from a scruffy student annotating texts over pancakes to a barely comprehensible IEBW member who uses firm, stubby fingers to drive home his claim that Keith Richards is rock and roll’s greatest guitar player. “But you know who looked the best? Mick Jagger. He looked goood, man.”

At the far end of the counter, as if by cue, sits an old man whose newspaper is more important than humanity itself. A bulky, wall-mounted payphone just behind him rings for minutes at a time before Stage’s senior waitress decides to oblige the occasional telephone order. As she repeats the words coming across the wire, cooks in the back room slide hot plates of food through a service window, from which they shuffle their way to patrons at the counter. On the opposite side of the diner, blue collar workers and cooks from the neighborhood stop by on break, sweeping huge bags of food for their staffs from the counter and pushing off just as quickly as they had stepped in.

Breakfast, prepared to order on the griddle just behind the counter, is a winner here. For $4.65, you can have two eggs any style, a molehill of home fries, two slices of toast, breakfast meat of your choice, and a bottomless cup of diner coffee. The gourmet choice, as noted by Serious Eats’ Nick Solares, is corned beef hash, prepared in house and served scrumptiously under eggs. Thoroughly crisped on the edges, fluffy and pink on the inside, and seasoned with just the right about of black pepper, Stage’s corned beef hash, like a great burger, is a patty of victory for Americana (though, sadly, Stage’s actual burger has recently earned scorn from the very same Nick Solares).

Stage’s immigrant personality only enriches that victory. Despite the presence of a Russian language calendar and at least one Russian speaking staff member – I still haven’t figured out which one it is, but I’ve placed a bet on the behemoth short order cook, whose speech is indecipherable in any language that doesn’t involve the words “eggs over easy,” anyway – Stage is a solidly Polish-American establishment. Consequently, substitution of kielbasa for breakfast sausage and buckwheat kasha for potatoes (doused, if you like, with mushroom gravy and grilled onions) is a few words away. While a brunch menu would attempt to surpass the essential with gourmet flair, Stage is much more content with the natural beauty of cultural assimilation, connecting comfort food dots across international borders and serving up the result in a melting pot of grease.

Pierogi, latkes, blintzes and a number of other Polish staples are spot on at Stage, but they’re also overpriced. With even better Polish food at half the price just across the East River in Greenpoint, diners at Stage are better off asking what specials are on deck – homemade meat loaf, lasagna and a huge plate of egg noodles with sour cream are a few of the choices I’ve seen make their way across that counter.

The best representation of the diner’s Polish-Ukranian heritage is its soup – after all, any cook bred from Eastern European stock must benchmark her skills by the ladle. Stage doesn’t shy from the challenge, offering as many as four different types soups with a hunk of challah bread on any given day.

Cabbage soup here is a bright, tender and tart mix of kraut-like cabbage, potato and other vegetables. Lentil soup, with just right amount of vegetables and a parsley garnish, is also wonderful. Highest praise, though, goes to Stage’s zurek, a diner-grade bowl of the rich, savory fermented rye classic that comes with boiled potato and egg if you’re lucky. While my favorite bowl of zurek is still Lomzynianka‘s tangy, pure, rye-heavy blend, Stage’s soup tastes exactly like the zurek I would eat on the daily in random cafeterias when I was traveling through Poland. And, like fried eggs, it’s served all day, every day.

With places like Stage still making good on the promise of breakfast, I have little interest in the next iteration of eggs benedict. If I’m going to turn my weekend morning into a culinary experience, I’d much rather make a trip to Flushing to indulge in Taiwanese breakfast or play shortstop on an extended dim sum session. I could parlay my lazy hours into a wonderful, home cooked breakfast in the apartment with friends, channeling emptied hours into a richer form of relaxation. Better yet, I could head down to Shopsin’s and put my wages and wait time to their best possible use.

I suppose what Stage has taught me is that I really don’t hate brunch. Positively speaking: I love American breakfast, as food and as experience, and when I’m sitting at the counter at Stage, no aspect of brunch can supplant that experience. Wait lists, well spaced tables, cloth napkins, pristine presentation, individualized wait service and the mantra of leisure are all imports of fine dining that don’t add any value of mine when they latch themselves to a meal I love for its straightforward dishes, its workman’s character and its ubiquity. American breakfast is a meal that requires no special context, no special menu and no special timing to be relevant. It simply has to satisfy. For a five dollar meal, that’s the role of a lifetime.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Many major American cities, particularly those that once, long ago, would have been called “blue collar,” can claim as part of their civic heritage a signature junk food. The food is usually messy, often greasy and always – to borrow a term from famed football coach, analyst and tailgater John Madden – a sinker. Philadelphia has its cheese steaks, Chicago its deep-dish pizza, and Baltimore its crab cakes. Never willing to let Chicago one-up it at anything, Detroit, too, has its own, lesser-known local delicacy: the Coney Island hot dog.

Although named after the frankfurters sold in southern Brooklyn, the Coney Island, also known as the “Coney dog”, or simply the “Coney”, is an invention of Michigan. A “Coney with everything” is a beef or pork hot dog set in a bun, doused in chili, slicked with deli-style mustard, and surmounted with a handful of diced onions. The chili is thin, usually beanless and, while individual recipes are nearly always secret, often contains beef hearts. Ketchup can be added to the Coney, but Michiganders seldom do, believing it gauche. Two Coneys with fries and a Coke constitute a standard lunch, but orders of twice that size aren’t uncommon.

The two foremost purveyors of Coneys in downtown Detroit are Lafayette Coney Island and American Coney Island, which, due to a generations-old fraternal feud, happen to share a wall. The story goes that Constantine “Gust” Keros, a Greek immigrant, opened American in 1917 and soon after sent for his brother, William, to join him in the U.S. and learn the hot dog trade. Several years later, the brothers suffered a falling out, and William, in a fit of pique, moved into the tiny space next door (or, depending on who’s telling it, threw up a partition in the middle of American’s dining room) and founded Lafayette Coney Island, taking its name from an adjacent street. Since then, hundreds of Coney Island restaurants, most of them still owned by ethnic Greeks, have popped up throughout Michigan. To this day, American and Lafayette remain arch rivals, standing side by side but fighting an endless cold war for Detroit’s allegiance.

On a recent unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon, I strolled into Lafayette for a quick bite. The restaurant, which occupies a sliver of space running widthwise through a triangle-shaped block, is drab and cramped. The decor is Postwar American Diner: faded formica countertops, low-slung vinyl bar stools, and pies in glass display cases. The menu is only about a dozen items, consisting of standard Coney fare: dogs, chili, fries and “loose” hamburgers. Cans of pop are kept in an ice-filled sink. The register is a clanging mechanical contraption.

I took a seat at the counter and went with a single Coney and a pack of potato chips*. Although no longer owned by the Keros family, most of the waitstaff at Lafayette are still thick-chested, hairy-armed Greek men. All of them wear short-sleeve white shirts, white aprons and expressions of perpetual fatique. When one of them takes an order, he barks it in shorthand to the fellow working the grill: “Gimme one of each light chili, heavy onions, bowl chili!”

Service is variable: sometimes the staff is jocular and attentive, bantering with regular customers and even performing the occasional magic trick; other times, they are brusque and careless, as if aware that Lafayette’s reputation by now supercedes the actual experience of eating there. Yet, these men are bearers of a tradition, and this makes them loveable, caprice and all. Today, one of the owners, a short, bespectacled man who could pass for Henry Waxman’s swarthy twin, is hunched over the counter, complaining to a regular customer about the film crew shooting a remake of the Reagan-era classic Red Dawn down the street. The owner, face crushed into a scowl, is worried he’s getting fucked and is mulling avenues of legal recourse.

*A brief digression: Whether its cars or cola, residents of Detroit are extraordinarily allegiant to local brands. Nearly everyone drives American, and many city eateries will stock neither Coke nor Pepsi, only Detroit’s own Faygo. This unflinching loyalty occasionally places Detroiters into the uncomfortable position of having to defend to outsiders a local product they know to be not just inferior, but outright heinous – examples include the Pontiac Aztec, Insane Clown Posse, and the Detroit city council. Fortunately, the local brand of potato chip, aptly named “Better Made,” is crisp, flavorful, and neither excessively salted nor oiled. I’m unsure whether Better Mades are available outside of Metro Detroit, but I’m betting that if some enterprising soul were to purchase the distribution rights and introduce them into a complacent potato chip market, they could be a giant killer.

A Coney doesn’t take long to eat. Lafayette’s chili, the dish’s focal point, is very good: mild, faintly gamy, and actually containing a few beans. The hot dog, which Lafayette has a bad rep for occasionally burning, is cooked perfectly and has a pleasant snap to it. Mustard lends the sauce a welcome acetous tinge, and the onions, while not very strong, provide a nice textural counterpoint. This being Michigan, where the fickle winds of the Great Lakes play Hell upon the predictive powers of local meteorologists, it’s not insignificant that Coneys are a fine all-weather food: they’ll warm you up on a cold day, but won’t slow you down on a hot one. On a previous visit, I had also tried Lafayette’s chili cheese fries and found them excellent, a fine fortification against boney limbs and hangovers.

American may be the older restaurant, but most Detroiters tend to consider Lafayette more authentic. This may have something to do with American’s renovation in 1989, when they it took over an adjacent building that filled out the end of its triangular block, then proceeded to expand both floor space and their menu. Suddenly, the cozy promixities of the lunch counter were eliminated in favor of islands of two- and four-person tables. With it was lost all the communal charm inherent in being made to elbow up against one’s grubby fellow man.

It didn’t help that American also chose to replace three of its four walls with glass paneling, giving the place the look of a terrarium. Recently, I’ve been writing an article on gambling, and the other day I spoke with a casino designer. He told me that well-designed casinos arrange their slots to give the gambler maximum privacy. “When’re they’re playing, slot players tend to feel physically vulnerable,” said the designer. “They like to hole up in nooks and crannies to give them some sense of protection.” The same, I suppose, could be true of people digging into a couple of sopping Coneys. At Lafayette, not only do you have a stronger sense of place, but you can be pretty sure no one’s staring at you.

Maybe Lafayette’s more popular because American tries too hard. If you’re out on Michigan Ave. staring at the two storefronts, the manager of American will often wander out and try to hustle you inside. Detroiters, with good reason, consider this sort of hard sell unseemly. By contrast, Lafayette, with its dinge and its dyspectic staff, plays it cool. It’s no wonder that Lafayette is where the last call crowd has its 3 a.m. sing-a-longs and crying jags, and it’s not surprising that Lafayette is where Patti Smith and MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic’” Smith held their wedding reception in 1980.

I polled a few patrons as to why they were eating at Lafayette and not American. One said the chili at Lafayette was better – much better. A lanky fellow who worked downtown said he’d eaten at both and thought they tasted about the same, but, for amorphous reasons, usually ate at Lafayette. “Part of it is that it’s the original,” said his girlfriend, who sat across from him, picking at a loose burger. “Everyone knows they were here first” (probably wrong, but what she says feels like it should be right). Sitting next to me at the bar was a middle-aged man and his father. The man said they’d driven down from Sterling Heights, a suburb a half hour north, just to drop in for a couple of Coneys. He said this was a thing they’ve done regularly since he was a boy. “It’s about tradition,” said the man. “Every time I have a Coney anywhere, it reminds me of having one here at Lafayette with my dad.” His dad, an oldster wearing a 3rd Infantry Division baseball cap, ate his chili and nodded.

I finished my meal and paid. Although no longer hungry, I felt compelled, out of curiosity and a sense of fairness, to stop in at American. I hadn’t eaten there since June, and when I did it was as a hungry man, not as a critic. American’s menu is far more extensive – a sign outside proclaims Wednesday “Fish Fry Night” – but I stuck to a Coney-with-everything and ate it walking down Michigan. The verdict: American has a better hot dog – it’s both larger and more sapid, not to mention consistently unburnt – but Lafayette has better chili. Given that in both cases the flavor of the chili dominates the palette, I suppose the overall edge in taste goes to Lafayette. However, having a strong opinion as to which Coney tastes better is a bit like taking a hardline stance on which is the best downmarket skin mag (Is it Club or Swank?). The products are so similar, their aims so base, that at three in the morning, either would seem to do – unless, of course, one brings tradition into it.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Half a century after the music died, only one San Diego Chicken Pie Shop is left. Despite a plaque at the front boasting the year 1938, this particular establishment isn’t the original. Still, a step inside feels like a trip through time to a kitchen that serves up bonafide American pie. I remember leaving the uptown landmark on my first visit, thinking, “Wow, how great is it that this place is mere steps from my apartment?” then, “What the hell is it doing here in 2009?”

Blown up newspaper articles, advertisements and menus from the restaurant’s history decorate the walls of the San Diego Chicken Pie Shop. I particularly love the lede on one 1940 ad: “Apartment dwellers and aircraft workers welcome this home-like atmosphere.” As an apartment dweller, I would agree, but it’s the prices that I welcome most of all. A pie dinner – which includes a giant pot pie, vegetables, mashed potatoes, cole slaw, dinner buns and a dessert pie – costs a mere six dollars. While that’s a large jump from 1948′s price of fifty cents, the cost-to-consumption ratio is caloric robbery.

When southern American comfort food began to earn the label soul food, the San Diego Chicken Pie Shop – thanks to notable San Diego food critic Eleanor Widmer – earned its own title: prole food. The term – which describes hamburgers, hot dogs and other foods that prioritize price and convenience over nutrition – fits. The price is definitely right, the nutrition is definitely lacking, and I can imagine highfalutin types raising their noses at the suppression of class in favor of cholesterol. The term “proletariat” lost its relevancy fifty years ago, and yes, you can spend more than your paycheck on a hamburger these days, but that’s 2009. Inside the San Diego Chicken Pie Shop, Elvis has yet to be drafted, Ritchie Valens has yet to board a plane and the word “gourmet” must be French.

Like a good prole food restaurant, the Pie Shop is void of all glamor. The dining area feels like a recreation room that has been converted into a cafeteria. Nothing on the menu is dated past 1950. The same goes for the Pie Shop’s waitresses, who push around wheeled carts full of pies, smell like too much hairspray and speak in middle-America accents. A rusted metal cash register is still bolted to the counter, and tacky chicken-themed decorations overpopulate spare counter surfaces. I’m not sure if I would call it a “home-like atmosphere,” but it sure is comforting.

I can imagine this place in the forties, crowds of factory workers piling in at six in the evening. Nowadays the clientele is divided between families with young children, old folks on their way to bingo and the occasional comfort food fan who doesn’t fit in. As that comfort food fan, I love the San Diego Chicken Pie Shop. The history is interesting, the atmosphere is casual, the prices are amazing and the food is legitimately delicious. The pie dinner, which almost everyone orders, is the definition of satisfaction and proof that San Diego’s got prole.

It’s too much food for six dollars, and except for the always-bland vegetables, everything is delicious. The Pie Shop’s dinner buns are freshly cooked, its mashed potatoes and gravy are spot on, and its dessert pies taste homemade. Even the coleslaw, despite its dull appearance, has inexplicably made it to my top five favorite slaws list.

The title track here, of course, is pot pie. Starting with a pastry that is flaky, buttery and slightly doughy in the perfect way, the eponymous pie is loaded with turkey, chicken and gravy. Free of the usual pot pie vegetables, San Diego Chicken Pie Shop’s pie is the real deal – pure, unadulterated comfort.

Someone once told me that time traveling to forties and fifties America would be dangerous, because nobody could survive eating grandma’s cooking every day, smoking unfiltered cigarettes every hour and drinking in tiki lounges every night. The San Diego Chicken Pie Shop, as rich in cholesterol as it is in culture, is ready to back this notion. After eating here, I feel like Elvis Presley on the wrong side of the war, bloated and lazy. The secret to eating chicken pie must be to stay in the shop, safe from the past fifty years of modernity.

Or, you can buy a few pies frozen, bring them home, hum “American Pie” while you’re heating them up and whistle “Bye Bye Birdie” as you sit down to eat.

San Diego Chicken Pie Shop
2633 El Cajon Blvd
San Diego, CA 92104
619.295.0156

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Then I saw the menu taped to the inside of the diner window. It was a short list of nothing special, your basic breakfast items of eggs, toast, sausage, bacon, pancakes and little else, but the prices – ranging from two to four dollars – were far from ordinary. I walked home that day assuming Lucky’s had long been closed for good, its menu an item of historical value left up for pedestrians as a reminder of cheaper times. When I learned later that the menu was not a relic, that the prices were indeed up-to-date, I returned to the mysterious diner as soon as I could manage its 7:15 am – noon hours. I am happy to report that Lucky’s Golden Phenix lives on in anachronistic glory.

Yes, Phenix, not Phoenix, according to the menus. I didn’t know about Lucky’s older sign until I read mmm-yoso’s post on the restaurant, replete with photos, and I didn’t know that The Golden Phenix used to be a Chinese restaurant until I stepped inside. The walls were covered with watercolor-print wallpaper, traditional paintings of flowers and everything that might have been on sale at a street fair in Chinatown. Paper lanterns hung in the corner, knickknacks covered the shelves and a laminated painting of a boat scene covered a television set used only for ambient music. Clearly, Lucky’s was not your average American diner.

Despite the decor, walking into Lucky’s is nothing like walking into a Chinese restaurant. There are no tables – only the jigsaw pattern of a breakfast counter – and the greeting party is a motley selection of regulars, a racially diverse crowd of older folk who argue politics and philosophy on weekday mornings and pause only to tell newcomers, “Sit wherever you want,” “Have a nice day,” and “God bless you.” Their humorous musings and the ambient music provide the audio backdrop to every breakfast at Lucky’s.

On my first visit, the “Sit wherever you want” command proved tricky. Dirty dishes covered each vacant spot on the counter and there was no staff in sight. After some hesitation, we chose some seats anyway, and it wasn’t until we were settled that an older Chinese man appeared from the kitchen with a dishrag in hand and the sudden realization put a smile on my face. This was Lucky, the owner of The Golden Phenix, the waiter, the chef and the bus boy. And then I understood why the prices could be so low; Lucky had no employees to pay.

My friends and I were amazed. Here was this frail Chinese man, who could not have been younger than 70, running back and forth across the diner. Lucky receded back into the kitchen to cook the meals, placed the meals in the window, walked back around the wall to the diner side, picked up the meals and served them, all the while taking drink orders, refilling coffees and never writing anything down. Then, on top of all that, when Lucky spotted my friend David struggling to open his margarine packet across the room, he scurried over to us and proceeded to peel off three margarine covers with jittery fingers, because Lucky is just that kind of guy.

He is the key to the puzzle, the detail that ties together all of the quirkiness of The Golden Phenix, because it isn’t really The Golden Phenix; it’s Lucky’s. The diner’s faults are his faults and the diner’s charm is his charm because he runs every aspect of the establishment and he spares no effort in doing so. He operates The Golden Phenix as if he was the loyal servant to every man, woman and child that walks into the door. He takes no breaks, never slows and somehow – between cooking, serving and busing – he manages to incessantly stop by every patron and ask “More coffee? More water? More butter?” fifty times a meal.

Aside from the wonder of the owner himself – whose merit alone deserves a visit to The Golden Phenix – dining at Lucky’s is a pleasant experience. The winding counters achieve a balance between convenience and community, where groups can face each other but the unfriendly don’t have to feel uncomfortable dining alone. The food is on the bland and greasy side – in fact, most of us can do better at home – but it is serviceable, fast, cheap and served with ketchup and hot sauce. Between the prices, the charming interior and the fortune cookie at the end of meal, I’ve never left The Golden Phenix unsatisfied.

More than that, Lucky’s satisfies a void in my life. Tokyo 7-7 Coffee Shop quenched my Culver City desire for a homey breakfast home base, Makris Cafe and Ann’s Kitchen remained my mainstays during my Berkeley years and across the street from my apartment in Moscow, the old ladies behind the counter of the nameless cafe once said in unwhispered Russian, That boy eats here too often, he must have a bad mother. Until I spotted Lucky’s that afternoon, my life in San Diego had been missing that special place. Thank you, Lucky, “God bless you,” “Have a nice day,” and please, for your health, sit whenever you want.

Lucky’s Breakfast (Golden Phenix)
3804 Grim Ave
San Diego, CA 92104
(619) 297-2760

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.