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Chicago has great public art, on every level. Dustin Schuler’s Spindle blows away all other pieces of public art, because it involves cars and impaling. You just can’t beat that - unless you located the art in the broad expanse of a 1970’s shopping center, which it is.

The piece has a set of four labels, only one of which was un-defaced enough to read.

I’ve eaten frozen White Castle sliders back home in the Golden State, but that’s like kissing your sister. White Castle has been an elusive burger mystery to me for years. Standing at the opposite of my hamburger philosophy, these tiny, minimalist finger foods have long tempted me. Something about their almost monochrome squareness reminds me of the sculptures of minimalist Donald Judd, their arrangement on the grill or plate seems to me a terrific repetitive aesthetic.

So when Michele surprised me by directing us to a White Castle as we pulled into Chicago, I was quite pleased. It was weirdly anti-climactic, as the White Castle building shape and burger are already so familiar to me that I didn’t really realize I was looking at one for the first time until I had stepped from the car. So goes life in the information age. The awesomeness could only sink in after the faux-familiarity had passed.

above - our meal. I had a decent sized lunch, so our visit to White Castle was really just a tasting. While I was tempted to order a sack, and the concept of ordering a crate of 100 aroused my excess gland, I stuck with a nice duo of a White Castle, and it’s club sandwich-like brother, the double. Michele ordered a pair of cheeseburgers and we shared fries and onion rings.

The fries were standard industry crinkle-cut fries, but the onion rings were above average for a fast food place. I found the onion to be a little on the overcooked and steamy side, but Michele was really into them. For dipping there’s a nice array of packet sauces available, including mayo, which I’ve come to understand is what fries have been looking for all along.

above - Each White Castle hamburger comes in it’s own little box. How elegant a package for something I could easily consume in a single bite. Something about this image reminds me of all of those iPhone hand size comparisons that have been kicking around the web lately.

above - My double in progress. The White Castle burger is a strange animal, as both the bun and the onions get a healthy dose of steam on the grill, there’s a welcome starchiness to the bun that’s novel and tasty. The pickle provides a nice crisp snap, giving the otherwise soft burger a little more substance. The meat has the standard taste of the too thin patties that they serve at chain fast food places, but the steaming action of the grilling process keeps the meat moist and tasty. I preferred the double to the standard, as I felt it had a better bread-meat-pickle ratio.

The Damage - minimal. You can get a sack of 10 White Castles for about $5, so you’d have to be trying to hurt your pocketbook by eating here. It’s junk food, after all.

Technorati Tags: White Castle, food, food porn, fast food, hamburger, burger

Right as we were on our way to our Chicago hotel, Michele’s Sunday afternoon cable trained eyes spotted this trailered baby cruising towards downtown. It took us forever to get up next to it for photos, as we were being cock-blocked by this cotton-top driving at parking lot speed, and rocking the weird license plate “JEW 417″.

It looks a little worse for wear - maybe it’s been built up from a kit? It has the license BTTF.COM.

Technorati Tags: Back to the Future, prop, De Lorean, car, Fusion

Well, not really, but some have argued so.  On the way between Kansas City and Iowa City, we stopped in Plattsburg, Missouri to play tag with this particular piece of American history.

In 1849, David Rice Atchison was the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and during the one day gap between the Polk and Taylor administrations (due to Taylor refusing to be sworn in on the Sabbath), some believe that he was the president during that gap.  Unfortunately for excited historians, Atchison’s term as President Pro Tempore expired simultaneously to Polk’s, and so therefore he was not in line to succeed the president, and he never took the oath of office.  That’s the simplest version.  So on March 4, 1849, we had no president - good thing Alexander Haig wasn’t around…

Despite having never really been the president, he has received local recognition in Plattsburg, in the form of the above statue and plaque.  There’s also a mini-museum in appropriately named Atchison, Kansas dedicated to his memory.

Technorati Tags: presidential, politics, American history, statue

After the meaty disaster of Arthur Bryant’s BBQ, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. Is Kansas City-style barbecue just bad meat, badly cooked, then doused in sauce? If that was the case, I had no food related reason to be in Kansas City at all - I could probably just mail order the sauce and pour it on stuff at home. That’s a bit severe, but Arthur Bryant’s was severely bad.

I’ve left Kansas City now, and after my brief visit, I don’t have much of a handle on it. From what I can tell, it’s a black and white city (in a racial sense), with the abandoned downtown, where a fat bloody chum of fresh lofts is being spread in an effort to repopulate it with “upwardly mobile” types, functioning as a DMZ between the wealthy and poor, and the white and the black. There’s a tension here, a tension that touches on something that’s almost wholly alien to my city, and my way of life. Being unawares of the history of the place, I don’t think I can come to understand it.

But Oklahoma Joe’s made me feel better about it. Oklahoma Joe’s has restored my faith in barbecue, moving into second place behind The Salt Lick, an official shrine on my eternal meaty pilgrimage. Mated to a Shamrock gas station, festooned internally with the odd trophies and monochrome vinyl banners belonging to the awesomely named Slaughterhouse Five Barbecue Team - unknown to me, but imagined as smoky, apron clad madmen, armed with mirror finish tongs and black cast iron grills. It’s well lit, clean, and smells like heaven on earth. The menu is clearly written, and you can get silverware and other stuff without inserting yourself back into the line of customers.

Both the fellow who took our order and the woman working the register were exceptionally nice. The woman at the register in the gas station section was equally nice. The team at Joe’s is enjoying their success and it really shows. They’re proud and happy. Every bit of weirdness about Kansas City melted away after our meal here.

above - My meal, the pulled pork. It reads “our specialty” over this item, and it’s my territory, so I went with what I know and love best. The side - red beans and rice, pretty uncommon at barbecue joints, and a welcome sight, as they’re my favourite side, after collard greens (why don’t more BBQ places have greens on the menu?)

The pork was properly shredded, and had a nice chew to it, a little resistance, but not rubbery or dry. Slightly smoky, with the kind of good pork flavour that I associate with suckling pig. It’s definitely edible without sauce, but combined with its bun, the pork becomes a well set stage for both of Joe’s sauces. I don’t know why they cut your sandwich in half for you at Joe’s, but I like to think of it as two twin sandwiches, one for each sauce.

The two sauces served at Joe’s are a spicy and a more regular tomato based sauce. I cannot describe either, only to say they both blow any non-North Carolina sauce I’ve ever had right out of the water. The spicy sauce had a low, but steady heat that stayed with you, drawing out the finish of each bite, and the tomato based sauce was sweet in a manner that I can only describe as honest and real. These sauces have the power of Greyskull my friend, they will make a He-Man out of your taste buds.

My red beans and rice were insane - they’re everything I’ve ever wished red beans and rice would be. Soft, yielding rice, deliciously smoky, no hint of mystery chemicals or tricks. I discovered a bay leaf in my beans, the sure sign of actual cooking.

above - Michele’s meal. Her usual, beef brisket, pit beans and potato salad. I only got to taste a speck of brisket, the chow was so good that I failed to sneak up on Michele’s sandwich before she finished. The piece I had was the best brisket I’ve had any side of Texas, and I bet if I sat down with a pile of the brisket for a while, I’d be considering my loyalty to the Lone Star State.

The pit beans at Joe’s are a unique animal. Someone has invested a great deal of experimentation in getting them just right. A mix of black, red and white beans, strewn with stray bits of pork, like the beans from the red beans in rice, they are magically smoky. There’s a sweetness to the beans that was right up our alley, smooth and fresh like the sweetness of a good orange. Everything at Joe’s has a great deal of depth of flavour, and the beans really capture that sensation, with every bite you discover something new, and you want to get to the bottom of why they’re so goddamn good, but the mystery just gets deeper with every bite. It helps that I’m a sucker for white beans - white beans should be the new black, but the chefs of the world don’t seem to be on the same page with me on this one.

My quest to understand and possibly come to love potato salad continued at Joe’s. Small, well cooked bits of potato, mixed into what I’ll call a “medium” level of sauce, very delicately flavoured. This is potato salad that’s been tested and re-tested. Competition grade potato salad, giving me knowledge that every item on Joe’s menu has likely been worked over with military precision. It is subtle in flavour, but at its heart is the gentle push of dill, which gives it definition and makes me want just a little more after each bite.

Food Porn!

above - Michele’s Beef Brisket in progress. From her “The best fucking food I’ve ever had in a gas station!”

above - The inner workings of my Jumbo Pulled Pork sandwich. This meat needed no sauce, but the two sauces at Joe’s elevated it beyond any expectations.

The Damage

We ate at Oklahoma Joe’s and spent under $20 between us. A full rack of ribs will still cost you about $17, but I can only imagine how delicious the ribs are here. Next trip will tell - this is the place to bring your dozen best friends so you can taste stuff from everyone’s plate. We bought bottles of both of Joe’s sauces for home, and they were an easy $3.99 each, a good price. The woman who sold us the sauce following our meal asked us if we were on the road, and when we said yes, she wrapped our bottles to prevent breakage. That’s what I’m talking about.

Technorati Tags: BBQ, barbecue, Oklahoma Joe’s, Kansas City, food, food porn, pulled pork, brisket, meat, food porn

The above image is a still I shot with my camera of a commercial by the Ramsdell Law Firm. I saw this while I was in Springfield, Missouri, and it’s one of those weird moments of TV surreality that you just can’t believe you saw. Essentially the whole commercial consists of this image, with the flag waving, while patriotic music plays in the background. At the beginning of the commercial there’s a brief on-screen disclaimer about choosing a proper lawyer.

Was this kind of strangeness extant prior to the reality warping effects of the American response to 9/11?

Technorati Tags: still image, still, commercial, television commercial, law firm, legal, flag, American flag, surreal

I don’t really have time to write at length about my visit to the Museum and Library, but here’s some historical joy.

above - Richard Nixon’s bowling ball.  Nixon was our only president to to be a serious bowler, a player of the sport of kings.  He’s my personal bowling tiki-totem.  According to legend, Nixon once bowled a 300 on the lanes he had installed in the White House basement.  Maybe this was the ball…

above - one of Jackie O’s pillbox hats.  Not the one from Dallas, but one nonetheless.  Post-assassination, perhaps, there’s no more loaded fashion symbol to be found in the 20th Century, save for swastika armbands and Mao suits.

above - “Ethnics for Reagan/Bush ‘84″  Wow.  Was this not seen as disparaging and racist at the time?  If you put out a button like this today, you’d get YouTubed into Gary Hart land.  Oh, and there’s a whole set of more specific “ethnic buttons” - see if you can spot the puppet states!

above - How To Spot a Jap, courtesy of Terry and the Pirates. It was a lot easier to immolate 60+ Japanese cities in firebombings and then to top it off with a pair of A-bombs after we had suitably de-humanized them now, wasn’t it?  A point of history - there are anecdotes of Japanese soldiers in mainland China cutting off their feet or toes at the close of the war so as to avoid being slaughtered by very angry, “who gives a shit for the rules of warfare” Chinese Nationalists.

All of my HSTPLM pics are in their special Flickr set. I’ll go on about the Library at length in a later post.

Technorati Tags: Nixon, bowling ball, Jackie O, Presidential Library, Truman, Harry S. Truman, Terry and the Pirates, politics

We’ve arrived in Kansas City, home of Kansas City-style barbecue. Having only about 24 hours to really get a feel for the local flavour, we started with the super-well known Arthur Bryant’s, made famous in 1974 by Calvin Trillin, who proclaimed it the “Best Restaurant on the Planet.” That’s some bold shoes to fill, there.

Well, Bryant’s turned out to be a serious disappointment. Arthur Bryant himself died in 1982, so maybe something has fallen off in the 25 years since his demise. While the BBQ boys of G.A.S. gave Bryant’s a decent rating of 7.1, they didn’t get past 8 on their scale of 10. So I don’t feel totally alone in questioning the quality of this legendary BBQ joint.

Adding to the quality of the food issue is the value and customer service issue. I eat in a lot of “family owned” BBQ and soul food places, and there seem to be a fair number of restaurants serving those styles where the sky’s the limit on price and the service is “fuck you” oriented. A lot of these places are assembly line cash cows where local or national fame has been leveraged, but the quality of food has dropped off over time, especially at restaurants that continue past the death of their legendary founder. Flossie’s in Los Angeles comes to mind… The insult is furthered by the fact that most of these restaurants have no table service, own their own building or otherwise have much, much lower overhead than many other restaurants.

So when I come to your window, after dealing briefly with your idiosyncratic line-up policy, and announce my intention to plunk down heavy cash for your overpriced and over-hyped food - treat me with some respect. At Bryant’s, I got shit for grabbing a plate and silverware at the beginning of the line, like all the customers in front of me did, as there’s no handy chart telling the public which of your various dishes comes on a self-serve plate, or a kitchen-served plate. The drunk as shit dude who came in while we were eating and stumbled his way through the line, talking at everyone? No one gave him a hard time at all.

above - my open faced pulled pork sandwich, fries and Boulevard Pale Ale. Not the droid I was looking for, I’ll tell you. I went in planning on going for the ribs, but I saw a lot of people order this, and pulled pork is probably my favourite BBQ…

There are three styles of pulled pork that I’m familiar with. The first is “I don’t know what pulled pork is”, sliced pork passed off as pulled pork. The second consists of big chunks of pulled pork, served without sauce. The third consists of pork shredded into mush and doused in sauce. Bryant’s is of the third type, which is not my favourite. I’ve enjoyed it in the past, but this dish was typical of what I tasted at Bryant’s - no depth. It was edible, but it had more in common with wet dog food than it should. The meat didn’t have any real flavour, and the whole thing really required a dousing in sauce to have any character. While I’m expecting BBQ in Kansas City to be sauce-oriented, this stuff had no life outside of the sauce (like bad French food). They were generous with the white bread, though.

The fries were excellent, but as Michele pointed out during our meal, “Anyone can do good fries.” She’s right - I’m not coming here for the fries.

The beer, a Boulevard Pale Ale from a local brewery, was a decent beer, smooth, slightly hoppy, but far from IPA territory. Light in both flavour and gravity, it was easy to drink. The only bad thing I can say about it was the size of the mug - skimpy. I might have gotten another, despite the poor value, but I didn’t care to deal with the staff again, even the register and beverage girl who was kind of nice.

above - Michele’s coke, beans fries and brisket sandwich. The beans were beany, not candy sweet, but more smokey and meaty than some others. I felt they could have cooked a little longer to suit my taste, but they weren’t bad. That coke is big, but it’s mostly ice.

Michele is a brisket person, and I’ve never seen her less interested in brisket. I should have taken a picture of the disassembled sandwich, so you could see the quality of the meat. This brisket is from the “find the fattiest piece of meat you can find, cook the shit out of it, just shy of not being moist, and pile it too the moon variety. Maybe they’re trying to get the most out of their cuts, and brisket should have some fat on it, but this brisket barely passed my test, and I’m not fat-shy like Michele is. Having no real discernible smoke ring, I was pretty disappointed with the flavour of the meat as well. It’s not that it was bad, it’s just that it wasn’t there, there was no depth to the flavour of the food. When we left, we abandoned a half plate of brisket, and I’m notorious for finishing my food and then moving on to everyone else’s. After tasting both their pulled pork and their brisket, I really don’t have much interest in tasting their other meats.

The Damage - Neither I nor Michele got out of Bryant’s for less than $13, and that’s just for sandwiches and a drink. A rack of ribs here, plain, will set you back $17 before tax and beverage, a serious investment. With scores of BBQ joints on deck in Kansas City, I’d say just avoid Arthur Bryant’s - while it’s not a culinary apocalypse, you can certainly do better. Kansas City barbecue is famous for it’s sauce, and the original sauce at Arthur Bryant’s was a gritty, spicy mess - beware the sauce. There was this excellent chariot parked outside, though.

Technorati Tags: BBQ, barbecue, food, review, food review, Kansas City, Arthur Bryant’s

Located with freakish convenience directly across from Bass Pro in Springfield, Missouri is Buckingham Brand Smokehouse Bar-B-Q.  Although Springfield is physically close to both St. Louis and Kansas City, barbecue culture isn’t really present here.  As the sign above indicates, the place is filled with awards, and that wood isn’t for show.  There’s a whole house adjacent to the restaurant where the cooking goes down, the restaurant is just for serving.

above - Brisket sandwich, potato salad, beans and ribs.  Michele always goes for brisket, but I have trouble eating brisket outside of Texas and Jewish delis.  It’s good, but what I’m looking for in brisket is thicker cut and moister than what passes for brisket in other places.  The brisket at Buckingham is good, but it definitely needs sauce, otherwise I find it too dry.

The best way to describe the style of BBQ at Buckingham is “sweet”.  The ribs, beans and potato salad all have a candy quality, not a false sweetness, but a deep, well seated sweet.  So if you like your beans sweet, this is the place to eat.  I’m working on developing an understanding and appreciation of potato salad, and the salad at Bucking ham has great spiciness, but there’s more sauce than I’d normally like.

Those ribs were delicious.  Simultaneously crispy and falling off the bones, they were sweet and had excellent marrow.  They also have the sticky-sweet quality that the beans have, and it really works here.

above - My jumbo pulled pork sandwich, in progress.  This is why I return to Buckingham on every visit to Springfield.  Great big chunks of moist pork, shredded but not stringy, on a white bread bun and doused with a sweet-hot sauce.  Pig heaven!

The Damage - Buckingham is affordable from a barbecue standpoint, a sandwich and two sides is about $6-8, depending on the size of the sandwich.  Ribs are pricier, but they’ve got a combo where you can get a non-jumbo sandwich with a side of two ribs and two sides for $8 - not bad for indecisive days.  They also have a drive thru.