The perfect BLT -- Merritt’s Store and Grill

Back in the mid 1990s, when I lived in the wild, bucolic, rolling hills of Chatham County, I used to drive pass a run down Esso station on US 15-501, built circa 1945, every few days on the way to Chapel Hill in order to pick up this or that. In those days, this or that usually meant a trip to the Wellspring, a stop at the Mediterranean Deli on Franklin Street or occasionally a pizza from Pepper's. And every time I drove passed it, there would be cars – Beamers, Volvo wagons and the like – in the parking lot, but little evidence that anything was going on inside. It looked to world that or at least to me, that this was nothing more than a little family run country store, eking out an existence on its way to being bulldozed and turned in a TGI McFunsters.

Tragic, in a personal way for the family trying to make it in an age where corporate behemoths rule the universe and little guys get trampled underfoot.

I moved away to New York for five years, only to spend hours commuting into The City and freezing myself nearly solid as blizzard after blizzard finally disabused me on the notion that the horsey part of Westchester County, New York was Currier and Ives landscape made real. Sure, it looks great dressed in white, but how in the &@#$%^! do I get to the train station in this mess?

A Double on Sourdough, with mayo

So five years later, we came back and the little Esso Station that could was still there, complete with the same complement of high buck Euro-steel in the parking lot. It was only then that I learned the magic secret: this little Esso Station was no Esso Station eking out an existence. This Esso Station is Merritt's Store and Grill and they make BLTs like nobody's business.

Hipsters knew but I didn't. But I do now.

There are other things on the menu and I have heard of people ordering fried bologna sandwiches but I never have.

No, the star of the show is the BLT, which comes in three variants: the Single, the Double and The Triple and they are exactly what you think they would be. A single is Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato between two slices of the bread of your choice – mayo optional. The double is Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato, and then another layer of Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato. The triple is three layers of the BLT between two slices of bread. To put it in perspective; a triple is almost as big as my head.

This time of year, the Tomatoes are perfect. The Bacon comes from Cliff's in Carrboro and has the right balance of fat to lean, smoke to salt. Is it worth the drive from Raleigh? You betcha'. Is it special? So special, in fact, I took my Mom to lunch there for Mother's Day (okay, it was the Saturday before since they're closed on Sundays).

The prices are reasonable, with a double coming in at about eight bucks. Worth it.

Merritt's Store & Grill

1009 S. Columbia St.

Chapel Hill, 919-942-4897

Cuisine: Road food
Rating: ****
Prices: $
Atmosphere: Ex-gas station
Noise level: low
Open: 6 am to 8 pm Monday through Friday, 8 am to 8 pm Satuday. Closed Sunday.
Reservations: No
Other: Self-service, cash only

We rank restaurants in five categories:

***** Extraordinary – Intense attention to ingredients and preparation and devoid of pretense. Everything right.

**** Excellent – Attention to ingredients and preparation; in down scale environs, its something that’s absolutely true to its DNA.

*** Above average – Spotty attention to ingredients and preparation; okay but not great.

** Average – Will do in a pinch but not worth the journey.

* Fair – Don’t bother, as it probably has a help wanted sign in the window. Always the harbinger of a bad time on the horizon.

The dollar signs defined: $ Entrees average less than $10. $$ Entrees $11 to $16. $$$ Entrees $17 to $25. $$$$ Entrees more than $25.

What happens when an ancient restaurant dies – Cheese Soup at The Old Drover’s Inn

Opening montage: bucolic country settings, old barns, portraits of the people mentioned in the voice over.

Ambient sounds: crickets and other appropriate country sounds.

Music: soft, melancholy fiddle music should start midway through the opening narration.

Voice over (should be David McCullough-esque): In 1750, Louis the 15^th presided over the Court at Versailles. Across the channel, 12 year-old Edward the 6^th sat on the throne on England. In America, Benjamin Franklin had just captured nature's fury with his invention the lightening rod. It was an invention he never patented and freely gave away to the world. In China, the Qing Dynasty ruled and would continue to until the early part of the 20^th Century. The Pope, Benedict the 14^th, officiated services at St. Peter's in Rome.

In 1750, Philadelphia was the largest city in the English speaking American colonies with a population of some 25,000. New York had just 15,000 people and Baltimore, a mere 7,000. The average life expectancy was 35 years of age.

In 1750, the Declaration of Independence was 26 years in the future. Its author, Thomas Jefferson, was seven years old. The United States Constitution was 39 years away. Its author, James Madison, had yet to be born.

In 1750, in the town that would later be named Dover Plains in Duchess County, New York, John Preston opened his house to the folks driving cattle from farms in Upstate New York to Vermont. Eventually, it would be called the Old Drover's Inn and it would operate for the next 260 years, serving hearty fare and its famous Cheese Soup to anyone that came by. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton famously fled there to avoid the glaring eyes of the paparazzi and her then husband, Eddie Fisher, in 1962.

Then, in July of this year, 2010, it went through foreclosure and was and shut down. Gone forever. It was sold for less than $350,000.00. So rapid was its demise, it was reported that dirty dishes were simply left on tables and food was allowed to rot in refrigerators.

The economy can be blamed. Changes in diners' tastes can be blamed. Lax management or inattentive service could also be culprits. It's out of the way location -- miles from the nearest Interstate -- may have been a factor.

Whatever. The fact remains, it's gone. And while this one restaurant's closure may or may not be a big deal, it is part of a disturbing trend: America is losing some of its culinary heritage. 

Now, some may argue that we never had any great culinary heritage; that we were all immigrants, bringing our old school recipes and culinary culture with us from Africa, Asia and Europe. America was not France or Italy or China or Japan or some other country with a great culinary tradition; that only now are we learning to cook and care about food in the way that those countries with great culinary traditions did way back when most Americans didn't have indoor plumbing. And you'd be right. But that misses a larger point.

The food our grandparents and great-grandparents ate at the turn of the 20^th century up through the Eisenhower era is alien to most hipsters today. People in Middle America in the early part of the last century -- the non-urban, rustic, bucolic countryside of the Depression -- often ate something they killed in their backyards. Preparations were simple. Restaurants, such as they were, churned out regional comfort food. And as more of these ancient restaurants die, they take their traditional recipes with them to their graves.

I have a cookbook from 1950 that lists the Old Drover's Inn as a destination and includes the recipe for their famous Cheese Soup. Her Imperial Majesty and I visited the Inn during happier times when it was open and, yes, we had the soup. It was astonishing and I can see why it made it into the book. But the book is long out of print. Now, thanks to the internet, the recipe for its' Cheese Soup may live forever. Here it is:

• 12 ounce cheddar cheese, shredded
  
• 4 tablespoons of butter
  
• ½ cup diced carrots
  
• ½ cup diced green peppers
  
• ½ cup minced onion
  
• ½ cup minced celery
  
• 1/3 cup flour
  
• 1 quart, chicken stock
  
• 3 to 4 cups of milk
  
• Salt and pepper
  

Melt butter in 4 quart pan, melt the butter. Sauté all vegetables until soft. Blend in flour to make a roux. Cook one minute, then add stock and stir until thick. At this point, the recipe calls for straining the veggies, but since I don't have a strainer, I put the stock and veggies in a food processor and pureed them. Then, back into the pot. Add the cheese and stir until it melts, then add the milk until it reaches a creamy consistency. Season with salt and pepper. I like to add a shot of sherry at the end for a bit of an extra kick.

Wholesome and savory. Hale and hearty. One can close one's eyes and with the aroma alone be magically transported back in time to a much different America, an America before it had its cultural ADHD, a time when everything didn't have to be oh-so-up-to-the-minute and the 24 hour news cycle simply didn't exist. A time when things were much slower and people stopped at out of the way inns and watering holes to take in the local fare. Sadly, it's an America that slowly going away, dying one by one like the last veterans of wars fought long ago. Soon, they will all exist only in our collective memories, their recipes in ancient, out-of-print cookbooks, preserved for the ages.


 

Of Swedish cars, Birkenstocks and Tofu – Vit Goal Tofu, RTP

For decades, I used to make fun of people who drove Swedish cars, wore Birkenstocks and ate tofu. Volvos and Saabs always seemed a bit too much like fashion statements to me. Priced like Benz's and Beamers, but with less horsepower, they didn't make sense to me. I always thought of Saabs as BMW wannabes. 

Indeed, when I was living in the horsey part of Westchester County, New York, there was a couple down the street who had one of each. Their house was immaculate and their gardens were so perfect they look Photoshop-ed™. It was like they were making a statement about their hyper-sensibilities and their sterling non-conventionality. The cars, the house, the garden were all statements. Like obnoxious political bumper stickers or those stupid Darwin fish affixed to the back of people's cars, "statements" as political fashion gave me headaches.

However, in my advancing age, I seem to have mellowed and ripened like -- dare I say it -- French cheese. Now, I stare into my garage and there is a Saab and a Volvo parked right next to each other, each a different shade of gray. No, there is not a obnoxious political bumper sticker or a Darwin fish on either. They are well designed and well engineered machines and I like them both and will drive them until their wheels fall off. I now think of my Saab as a BMW don't wannabe. As for Birkenstocks, 15 years of waiting tables and bartending ruined my feet. So now, I own six pair including two pair that looks like real shoes. They made my heel spurs go away.

And yes, I even eat tofu. I love it in fact.

What I once maligned out of sheer ignorance and did not enjoy when I did try it because of sloppy preparation, I have returned to out of devotion to one dish from one restaurant. It's an unassuming Korean place in a strip shopping center located next to an Asian grocery store in Durham, just outside of Research Triangle Park, off the 54/55 exit north.

Vit Goal Tofu. Just typing this makes me hungry.

The dish of choice sits in the middle of the place's DNA: the tofu soup with vegetable dumplings. Delivered in a smoking hot stoneware bowl, the soup is mixture of broth, vegetable dumplings and massive amounts of tofu, with the creamy consistency of scrambled egg whites. One can order it with a variable level of spiciness. Her Imperial Majesty Junior likes hers plain white, while the Missus and I take ours a bit spicier. It's served with rice and the usual compliment of pickled kim chee sides. My glasses always fog as this soup is served steaming hot.

The other dishes I've had there – beef short ribs, bibimbop and scallion pancakes – are all good. But one of Dave's Rules of Restaurants is that you should never go against the DNA of the place. Just like you should never order chicken in a place named for burgers, if tofu is in the joint's name, you need to go with it. In this case, it's nothing less than spectacular. The food couldn't get any simpler or any better.

Vit Goal Tofu Restaurant

919-361-9100

2107 Allendown Dr. Ste 101
Durham, NC 27713


 

Circa 1981 – Ruelle’s and Café Central

Her Imperial Majesty is a bit eccentric in a charming sort of British way, and no, it’s not for the obvious reason that she married me. No, she’s a bit eccentric in a charming sort of British way because collects matchbooks from restaurants that are long dead.

The downside: I have lots of packs of matches that I can’t use because they’re “special”.

The upside: As far as collections go, it’s inexpensive and it doesn’t take up much space, unlike collections of shoes, horses or BMWs.

One of her favorite stories is about a long dead restaurant that was once the talk of the Upper West side: Ruelle’s. At 75th and Columbus, it was the place to be single and be seen. A New York magazine piece (starts on page 42) at the time goes to great lengths to talk up how it re-vitalized a neighborhood and went to greater lengths to talk up the singles scene and celebrity sightings.

Bobby DeNiro. Warren Beatty. Calvin Klein. They all popped by at one time or another.

But despite all the attention given to "The Scene" and to the celebrity sightings, there is nary a word about the food. Oh, they do mention that it is a restaurant and not a disco and there is a passing reference to its "nouvelle cuisine", but that’s where it stops.

You see, that was back in the early 1980s. All food was comfort food and, thanks to the absence of The Food Network, not every restaurant was trying to be high-end gourmet. You can call it the “bad old days” if you want. I call it Paleo-food. Paleo-food is simple, honest preparations devoid of pretense and attitude. It was food as "food" and not as "food-based entertainment."

So Her Imperial Majesty and her two mates – Susan and Linda – would hit Ruelle’s for a quick bite before running off to that other west side hot spot (read "meet market"), Café Central. There, they would hustle single men to buy them drinks. And there, Bruno the surly bartender, would sling liquor and abuse the customer base as if he were a future movie star. Heck, every waiter or bartender in New York thinks they’re a future movie star. However, in this case, the surly bartender – Bruno Willis – did turn out to be a future movie star: Bruce Willis.

The ladies all tell me he was a jerk. I wasn’t there and don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what they told me.

Anyway, since they were young and struggling to live in The City, the girls had to eat the cheapest thing on the menu. At Ruelle’s that was the vegetable plate. It’s simple and direct.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup broccoli, steamed
• ½  cup cauliflower, steamed
• ¼ cup diced carrots, steamed
• ½ cup snow peas, steamed
• ¼ cup walnuts 
•  ½ cup each Cheddar and Gruyere cheeses
•  ¼ cup white wine (the cheap stuff will work)
• Juice of one lemon
• Pinch of salt.

 Directions:

• Fire up your broiler
• Take your steamed veggies and walnuts and arrange in some artful way in a broiler proof pan
• Combine the wine, with the lemon juice and salt. Whisk.
• Pour the wine/lemon mixture over the veggies
• Top the veggies with your cheeses
• Broil until the cheese brown and happy
• Serve

Can’t get much easier than that. It’s works as both a side dish and as a main dish, if combined with brown rice. Pair this with a fruity white wine and it should make a easy mid-week meal.

Road Food – Only Burger

Soft unobtrusive music from the overhead speakers. Candles on every table. Waitrons cruising about, dressed in black and white, moving gracefully in their choreographed randomness. The perfectly coiffed hostess showing you and your guest to a table, six inches away from two other tables in the center of the dining room. All the other patrons dressed to eleven. The chinking of glasses and tinkling of silverware right out of a Barry Levinson movie. Polite, politically correct banter floats through the dining room like audio oatmeal. You are seated in the very center of the trendiest restaurant in your 'burb and it took weeks to get a reservation.

In these situations, I usually last about five minutes before informing my server that I simply must adjourn to the bar. I can't take it. It's too much.

In fact, that's why I usually eat at the bar. Fabricated environments bother me to no end. So, eating at the bar equals zero pretension in my book. So when I go to when I go to The Angus Barn in Raleigh, I sit and the bar in The Wild Turkey Lounge with my beloved wife and split a hamburger (medium rare) and a nosh on the warm spinach salad. And it's great. Same is true of Lantern in Chapel Hill. We sit at the bar and order the special, whatever it is. And whatever the special is, it is always brilliant. Heck, I did a $150 lunch at the Gramercy Tavern in New York City for my wife's 40th at the bar.

I detest pretension. I do. When I walk into a restaurant, I can sense the vibe immediately. If a restaurateur wants to sell me on how cool I am for being in his or her joint and how cool it is that I can rub elbows with his or her clientele, I generally head for the door. 

I'm sorry. I don't require self-esteem therapy to be served on the side with my meal. The ambiance thing only goes so far before it negatively impacts the culinary experience.

That's why I'm a sucker for road food. Anybody selling his or her wares out of the side of a truck isn't trying to fool you with soft music and candles on every table. This is the kind of food eaten standing up on the sidewalk or in the front seat of your car. And if the person running the truck has the onions to sell his wares without all the trickery baked into the restaurant business, his food must be pretty damn good. Food without pretension works for me.

And the best in The Triangle for my money is Only Burger. Everything made fresh to order, with toppings that run the gamut from the standard to the over the top. Parked in front of the Durham Farmer's Market one Saturday, Her Imperial Majesty, Her Imperial Majesty Junior and I feasted on burgers for breakfast. Junior had hers with ketchup. Mine was done up Carolina style, with chili, mustard, onions and slaw. My beloved went all out, doing a proper breakfast burger, decked out with a fried green tomato, pimento cheese, and an over easy egg. It sounded ridiculous. It tasted ridiculously good. So good in fact, I went back for my own.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely, if, of course, you can track it down. It is a truck after all and trucks have wheels, so it moves around. The best way to do that is to follow them on twitter. And be prepared for lines ten deep that last for hours. It's that good. 

They have announced that they're opening a brick and mortar location. I just hope it doesn't come with soft music and candles on every table.

A perfect weekend breakfast – Northern California Style

At the behest of my beloved wife, my lovely  sister gave to me for my birthday Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook. It's beautiful, with extraordinary insights into the mind and professional acumen of one of the greatest chefs in America, if not the world. Indeed, no less than Anthony Bourdain once said he considered The French Laundry the best restaurant in the world.

So this cookbook was in the perfect place to be THE gift of the year, to be warmly remembered for years and years to come, its pages dog eared, with the entire house smelling of the gastronomical wonders of Thomas Keller and my mediocre ability to channel his culinary genius.

But alas, it was not to be. While the recipes looked fabulous and the photography borders on food porn, everything in it is just too complicated for even an experienced duffer like me to pull off. 

But this is not the first time I've waded into the waters of the Northern California restaurant scene by purchasing a cookbook and seeing if I can conjure that same magic in my own home kitchen. No, the last time I tried that stunt, I had a go at working the culinary genius of fellow Chatham High School graduate Alice Waters (class of 1963). Her restaurant, Chez Panisse, was the toast of the culinary world long before there was Food Network and Emeril LaGasse was just a skinny kid doing guest spots on Cooking with Master Chefs with Julia Child. For the record, he deep fried a turkey.

I don't what it is that makes these recipes so perfectly opaque. I can't seem to pull off any of them. Exotic ingredients coupled with high French technique leave me simply dumbfounded. Indeed, the only dish inspired by Thomas Keller that I can actually prepare with any competence comes not from his beautifully appointed cookbook, but from an extra feature on the DVD of the movie Spanglish.

Yes, that silly Adam Sandler movie, Spanglish.

In it, there is a scene where the Adam Sandler character, who plays a chef, is talking to his romantic interest in the film, played by Paz Vega. During a telephone conversation between the two, there sits in the chef's kitchen one of the most perfect examples of a breakfast sandwich ever made – The Spanglish Sandwich. The producers of the film wanted to give the Adam Sandler character something to eat  that a real chef would prepare after a long shift at the restaurant. For technical assistance, they went to – here's your time to guess – Thomas Keller of the afore mentioned French Laundry. During the scene, Adam's character looks at, but never bites into the sandwich.

So much for the willing suspension of disbelief. The thing is such as work of art that everybody watching the flick is waiting for a moment that never comes – the happiness of the first bite of the perfect late night / early morning breakfast.

Interestingly enough, this is actually easy to prepare and makes a wonderful weekend breakfast. It's basically a BLT, with an egg fried over easy with the yolk is just barely runny. Add toasted bread and a slice of cheese and you're off to the races. When you do make the toast, run the slice with the cheese under a broiler or  in a toaster oven to get that slightly burnt cheesy "au gratin" effect. Bibb lettuce works best for this and you can add some fresh basil if you have that on hand. I typically layer it from bottom to top: lettuce/basil, tomato, bacon, egg, cheese. Mayo or aioli is optional.

Bon appetite!

Scallops with white beans, tomatoes, crispy prosciutto and arugula

These days, television is jammed packed with pretentious morons who preen about and squawk about the things they preen about and squawk about as if they are the only people with any wisdom at all about the given subject at hand. And no, I’m not talking about the talking heads at either Fox News or MSNBC although I easily could be. No, what bothers me is the second tier hosts of the Food Network and the Travel Channel shows. Watching the ridiculous competitions of aspiring celebrity chefs or food spokes models jabbering on and on about whatever they (or in reality, their production assistants) are cooking sets my teeth on edge.

Don’t get me wrong. Mario Batali is a real genius and I’ve been to some of his places (Babbo -- duck breast, medium rare with a raspberry reduction served with a heavenly sage risotto). Ditto chef, writer and world class raconteur Anthony Bourdain (Les Halles -- steak frites, medium rare – ‘natch). But for my money, the reigning genius is Jamie Oliver, who comes off as almost autistic in his devotion to food and its preparation. His focus is so laser sharp he almost appears to be channeling The Almighty.

This recipe comes from page 160 of The Naked Chef Takes Off, published in 2000. Like most of Jamie’s dishes, there are a lot of flavors and textures that work in a most harmonious fashion. It’s a very simple recipe with ingredients you can get at the neighborhood Trader Joes: scallops, tomatoes, anchovies, white beans from a can, prosciutto, arugula, lemon juice and olive oil.

To start, preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Quarter your tomatoes and season them with a bit of oregano. Let them go skin side down in the oven for about 15 minutes. Next, put the prosciutto in the pan next to the tomatoes at let it go for another 15 minutes or so until the prosciutto is all crispy and happy and the tomatoes are roasted through. While that’s happening….

Sauté some garlic in olive oil (no, you don’t have to use EVOO, that’s for salads) and your anchovies for a minute or two, then add a can of white beans (cannellini beans are what the recipe calls for but I’ve used navy beans in a pinch. I’ve even thought about trying chick peas next time. The extra nuttiness might work). Add a bit of white wine, and then once everything is heated through, mash the beans into a course puree. Once that’s done and the tomatoes and prosciutto are resting…

Sear off the scallops in olive oil. They should be dry before you cook them or else they won’t get that caramelized happiness you need to make this dish work. Two minutes a side should be sufficient. Now, it’s time to assemble.

I typically serve this in bowls just because the presentation looks so much better. Beans go in as the base. Then, add the scallops. Then top with the roasted tomatoes and crispy prosciutto, crumbled up like bacon bits. As a finishing touch, top with a bit of arugula and dress the whole thing with a dressing of lemon juice and olive oil (now you can use the EVOO). In my dressing, I usually add a bit of kosher salt as an emulsifier.

The result? Simple. Easy. Relatively inexpensive. Damn tasty. And one of the very reasons I think Jamie is a genius.