By OWEN MORRIS
Even if you don't subscribe to The New Yorker, as a person interested in food this may be a good week to pick up a copy from a magazine stand. (Do street magazine stands exist anymore?)
It's the annual food issue, and it's got some interesting stuff.
First and foremost: Kansas City son Calvin Trillin expounds on the wonders and virtues of barbecue. Nothing surprising there. He's been writing about barbecue for years and is on record calling Arthur Bryant's the single best restaurant in the world.
Except this time, Trillin is talking about Texas barbecue.
Trillin has gone to the Death Star, or at least the Lone Star, for a journey to the best barbecue places in the state, as compiled by the writers of Texas Monthly (an excellent magazine even if you've never been to Texas). He mainly focuses on a place called Snow's, which is admittedly a feel-good, rags-to-less-rags story. Still, it's Texas barbecue! It's downright blasphemous.
While most of the article is gushing about the tenderness, smokiness and crispness of the meat, Trillin does save his KC cred with this backhanded compliment near the end.
I had warned the Texas Monthly crowd that if they were looking for confirmation of their ranking by an objective outlander, someone from Kansas City was not likely to provide it. A jazz fan taken to a rock concert might admire the musical technique, but he probably wouldn’t make an ecstatic rush to the stage. As we sat down at one of the outside tables, under a galvanized-tin covering, I told them that they could expect the sort of response that a proud young father I know has received during the past year or so whenever he e-mails me pictures of his firstborn: “A perfectly adequate child.” Still, what Burka had ordered was good enough to make me forget that we were eating a huge meal of barbecue at a time on Saturday morning when most people were starting to wonder what they might rustle up for breakfast once they bestirred themselves. I particularly liked the brisket, although I couldn’t attest that it was as soft and sweet as cookie dough. In Kansas City, it is not customary to eat cookie dough.
Elsewhere in the magazine, there is an article about Dogfish Brewery of Delaware and its crazy-alcholic 18 percent (!) IPA's and the general rise of more and more crazy micro-brewers. A profile of master bladesmith Bob Kramer and his amazing knives. A profile on food writers Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, who have traveled the world writing books such as Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas. And former New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton talks about her trials and troubles trying to find the perfect brodetto; a thick fish soup that Italians are especially picky about. Oh, and then of course there's Prince eating carrot soup.
The Kramer, Sheraton and food writers articles are available only in print. You know -- the actual magazine. So go pick it up soon, and then be sure to carry it around all week under your arm to impress your friends.
Showing 1-4 of 4
Let me see if I've got this right. This article is about a New Yorker article about a Texas monthly article. Good work if you can get it.
The difference between KC and Texas barbecue is sauce. I've always found the sauce in my beloved Lone Star State to be usually thin and pretty much the same from place to place (there are countless exceptions, of course). Up here, even the restaurants no one ever talks about bottle their own sauces and sell them in the grocery store in mass quantities. Or consider the difference between Bryant's regular sauce, which is tangy and almost mustardy, and the sauce at OK Joe's, which is your pretty standard smoky, tomato-y affair, like you get down in TX, which is maybe why I go there the most. In Texas, the meat comes first and the sauce is an afterthought, albeit a necessary one. That's why you don't get "burnt ends" (i.e. sauce with chunks of meat swimming in it) so much down there.
Duly noted and changed Rick in PV. Reason #482 why I will never ever write for the New Yorker.
like
dislike
