When a region such as the Southwest achieves national attention, a broad, enduring public interest often results. International galleries import achievements of local artists. Entrepreneurs bottle indigenous sauces and spices, supplying the gourmet sections of upscale department stores. Most important, restaurants serving regional cuisine open all over the country. The…
In the novel How to Make an American Quilt, Whitney Otto writes about a fabric pattern called the “Crazy Quilt” and the women who are involved in sewing it. The narrator says, “I am reminded of some sort of complicated dance of many partners, facing many different directions.” This “complicated…
Three years ago I flew 3000 miles on a redeye for a long weekend with my future husband. After living on the opposite coast for six months, I expected to fall truly, madly, deeply in love all over again, and I did. What I didn’t anticipate was the love affair…
As I noted a few weeks ago in a review of the Marlins Steakhouse and Sports Bar, I’m comfortable with spectator sports and some sports bars. But hardly all sports bars. Sometimes skillfully prepared food can be as rare as a grand-slam home run. Like a growing number of women,…
Hunger affects people differently. Some exhibit such physical symptoms as vertigo; for many, speech becomes an impossibility, the need to eat obliterating the desire to communicate — this accounts for the silence, as thick as glass, that often precedes the service of a meal. Others become mentally distressed, the fall…
Periodically, a friend reminds me that we belong to a disenfranchised generation. The baby boomers’ economic balloon — the one we also expected to rise on — busted along with the Eighties; the funds, cars, and technological goodies we looked to garner instantly after college never materialized. Rather than the…
Sometimes only Cuban food will do. Stress makes me long for it. Like chocolate, I believe, black beans must release endorphins — daily pills for daily ills. Bickering with my husband, the cat misbehaving, even the phone ringing too many times in an evening can launch me in search of…
For every neighborhood there should be a special restaurant to serve its dining needs. A place where locals can enjoy a pleasant ambiance, without attitude, and perhaps even engage in conversation. Where the menu stimulates without indulging in excess, particularly concerning price. Where the cuisine is so consistently and exquisitely…
In the early Eighties, when some bars began to concentrate on bringing sporting events to a cheering, tipsy public, they were obviously a man’s domain — a place to pound a beer, a buddy on the back, a fist on the table (or now and then in someone’s face). And…
Like most people, I schedule my social life according to my professional life. I (usually) stay out late or turn in early in direct relation to what I must achieve — or how I must act — at my job. It’s a simple truth to which I conform, digestible if…
The main reason I used to watch Three’s Company was the principal character and his occupation: Jack Tripper, chef. Okay. I’ll admit I also was a sucker for the show’s endless puns, the innuendo and double entendres. But for me Jack was the star. He brought to the job all…
In Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist, Rose is a beautifully eccentric character who cannot exit the safe realm of her neighborhood without becoming hopelessly lost. Any destination other than the local market or drugstore fills her with unbounded terror. Maps, compasses, even detailed directions are useless. I identify with Rose,…
“On a bush they are beautiful, unless you are the gardener who planted the bush. They are beautiful on plates, too, each one in its own little dent, shell full of hot green butter like a magic cup.” Aside from M.F.K. Fisher, who wrote so lyrically in praise of snails,…
Some time ago, cocktailing at a pub called The Fox and Firkin, I was one of only two waitresses who laid no claim to being British. But customers often assumed I was and asked me my origins. When I replied “Jersey,” they thought I meant the green English meadows, not…
My husband remembers Bella Ravioli. He remembers the neighborhood A Italian, working-class, streets rimmed with naked oaks and snow-scarred cars A and the bakery next door, the cannolis, zeppoles like sweet miniature snowballs, breads stacked upon breads. He recalls the door, always a little stuck, always jarred open to the…
Nothing is more frustrating for a fledgling gourmand than to be cut down in his or her prime by food allergies. The other night I arranged to meet two companions, a man and a woman, both of whom adore dining. The difficulty lay in choosing a restaurant. The man is…
“Welcome to chaos,” the hostess said, though she grinned beautifully as if she had never experienced a day of it in her life, or as if she were accustomed to action whirling around her like the Tasmanian Devil. Our table was just then being clothed A cloaked in water glasses…
The idea of eating raw fish is anathema to many Americans. Some years ago I was among those who vowed never to try it. But when it comes to food, my self-imposed prohibitions often mean very little. And so it was with sushi. I was persuaded by three enthusiastic lovers…
To many people the approach of Memorial Day means the approach of summer. In the northern states, where winter’s last spiteful fits often mar spring’s hesitant nods, residents regard Memorial Day as the herald of change. At last the celebratory parades; at last the soothing heat; at last the white…
Thanks to the media-administered anesthesia of The Little Mermaid and Splash, most people view the mythical mermaid as they do manatees A gentle and stupid. Legend maintains that they rescue fallen sailors from the sea, groom themselves endlessly, and nurture a forlorn desire A strangely and at any cost A…
“Those only who have sojourned in the ardent climates of the South can appreciate the delights of an abode combining the breezy coolness of the mountain with the freshness and verdure of the valley. Everything invites to that indolent repose, the bliss of Southern climes; and while the half-shut eye…
In spring, when the heat of the Southern California sun mingled the odors of sweaty cabbage with sweet strawberries, my husband and I would park in a local field and watch the El Toro Air Force Base’s annual air show. The most fascinating aspect of the show was not the…
