the trip
I'd meant to get this post up sooner, but this summer has turned out to be an unusually busy one. It's not the usual way of things in our kitchen to get overtime in July and August, but there you are. There's been just enough events to keep us occupied, and now that we have enough staff we're starting to make more things from scratch - for example, the hundred and sixty tart shells I formed by hand and baked off yesterday. Man, that shit's tedious. In other news, I am pretty good at making tart shells.
It's Death Week, and you should read Peter Guralnick's astonishing two-volume making/unmaking-of biography of Elvis, Last Train To Memphis and Careless Love if you haven't already. I never thought I'd enjoy a biography as much as a novel. Even if you don't give two shits about the King, it's a fascinating picture of the South on the cusp of change, taking into account the intersection and division of class and race issues and how it affected the then-open format of the locally powered radio and music industry, and the effects of overnight fame on an already emotionally troubled teenager. (Remember the slightly creepy, oddly dressed, pimply misfit with delusions of grandeur that sat in the back of the class in school? Elvis was that guy.) If the idea of committing to two volumes sounds too much like the classroom, then start with the second book, which picks up after he arrives home from Germany and the Army. It wasn't all the Colonel's fault, incidentally. Two big factors were his entourage and the fact that "diet pills" used to be considered harmless.
Anyroad, the visit.
[(fear of heights x fear of falling) + (mild claustrophia x{long legs and broad build})]x ornery sciatic nerve in my leg = I hate to fly. I took a direct flight - thank God Northwest started offering one about a year after I got to Seattle. After a horrible experience where I spent eight hours trapped in the Atlanta airport during the Christmas season, I'll pay nearly half again as much to avoid connectors. Took about three hours and then I immediately lost all sense of time and didn't bother to find it again.
The first thing I noticed about Memphis was that there's new eateries and shops in the concourse - most notably several outlets for local barbecue restaurants, a sure sign that I'm home - but outside of its shiny center the Memphis airport remains unrepentantly unremodeled, identical to my seventies-era memories. It's all angles and concrete, brown and gray, and dirty speckled white tile. Mom began tearing up as I came towards the baggage claim and couldn't talk at first. She looked older, and while I stood at the carousel holding her hand I ran scenarios for her retirement through my head.
The second thing I noticed about Memphis was the almost visible heat, which was surprisingly dry and felt good after several cold days in Seattle. The third thing I noticed is that there's been an influx of attractive women since I lived there. Not the gorgeous, curvy, R. Crumb-drawn types I date here in the PCNW: they're all slender crunchy girls with long curly hair and glasses. They look like different versions of Memphis College of Art students, or PhD candidates at Rhodes. I had breakfast at Otherlands on Cooper (bless them, they introduced me to lemon curd back in the day), and it was infested with them in the best possible way. The only other males around were tiny hollow-chested emo boys with bad posture and loud, oafish older guys in suits: no competition in sight.
In retrospect, I probably should've asked the guy at the register what the hell they were putting in their lemon curd. There was a momentary timeslip into an alternate reality where I hadn't spent my twenties being clinically depressed and socially isolated, and for a second I saw myself sitting at the coffee bar smiling at the girl next to me, with her hemp top and open copy of The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and I thought about possibilities. And then I blinked and saw instead myself twenty pounds heavier, with a football injury, an indifferent wife and children, a high-interest mortgage and an uncomfortably tight mind. And then I watched me wish I was a pastry chef like the guys he watched on the Food Network, that lived someplace both outdoorsy and urbane like in the movies and rode a bike to work and had sex with beautiful, intriguing women and who spent his off time at coffee houses on his laptop instead of watching cable. Several times that week, usually when I was reminded how cheap it is to live there, I wondered briefly if I could ever move back, despite the pact I made with my cousin and fellow expatriate involving desperate midnight rescues and forced deprogramming. I always came back to that guy staring unhappily at his copy of the Commercial Appeal, with its clumsy typeface and huge blank gutters, his daily antacid tablets set carefully next to his doctor-ordered decaf, wanting to be someplace else but not knowing how to get there.
The first couple of days were spent meeting more people, more people, more people. Mom goes to the local UCC church, and there were tons of happy shiny folks she wanted to introduce me to. The church has a hostel, a fair trade goods store, a coffee shop, and a bike co-op, and I got in a great conversation with the co-op mechanic about Seattle and the fixie craze before being dragged away. Most of them were her stable of gay boyfriends. It's still a little hard for me to believe that my Mom's become such a huge fag hag. Everyone was perfectly nice, but after being stuck for a few hours at a tableful of small town gays I couldn't help missing all my burly, bearded, and pierced crew. My homos would kick the ass of my Mom's homos, no contest. At one place in the suburbs we visited, I spent an hour listening politely to the tightly wound owner go on about the black baffles in his track lighting and following him around his fern-draped house, being careful not to knock over the ceramic figurines in the living room or to touch any of the Wizard of Oz memorabilia in his "media room". I kept thinking about uspinmeround and muddy_feet's sexy apartment with its glorious furred wall, and wishing I could take pictures to share when I got back. Takes all kinds to make up a subculture, I guess: at the one commitment ceremony I went to in Memphis, the two women both wore matching gauzy pants, natural unbleached cotton shifts, and rainbow scarves. I can't help but picture my chosen familia's assorted flavors of dykes standing around uncomfortably during the service, discreetly slapping their new tattoos, eyeing the sparkling apple juice and wondering who remembered to bring her hip flask.
I connected with a couple of old friends I hadn't seen in years and found out that one of them, who works for a cookbook publishing company, has the Pacific Northwest Territory and is a potential source of future expense account dinners. We caught up at the Flying Saucer in Cordova (a chain, but sporting a beer list in the hundreds and populated with waitresses in plaid miniskirts a la GoGo Yubari), and on the way home, I found out that when the Wendy's restaurants in Memphis say that they close at 1 AM what they really mean is that they shut down the Frosty machine at fifteen till. Fuckers.
I ate lots. Less than in previous visits, since I'm older and wiser as of the 28th of July, but it was enough. I fixed my barbecue jones at Central Barbecue, and had some of the best homemade potato chips I've ever eaten. Their sauce was thick and sweet, as it should be. I mistakenly took some of the hot sauce from the sauce bar, and was happy to find out that it was more warm than hot and tasted of Chinese five-spice, a very nice effect. It was great with the chips. The pulled pork was incredibly fresh and lacked the tinny taste that tells you that it's drenched in sauce for a reason. (I see online that some idiot Yankee reviewed Central after ordering just the deli-sliced turkey sandwich. Sliced turkey, shit, go back to New York already.) I tried to talk Mom into going to Payne's, which is probably the best in the city, but her ingrained fear of poor black neighborhoods wouldn't budge. I had plenty of frozen yogurt, feeding a decades-old addiction and catching up for the lack of the TCBY chain in Washington. We stopped by an unremarkable but promising bakery in still-undeveloped downtown Memphis - sad to see the trolley line languishing under the Location Curse - mixed popcorn and SnoCaps at the movies, had a decent steak at a local Italian restaurant, and ate away at my birthday cake, which I was shocked to find out after all these years was a white cake mix with strawberry Jell-O added.
Best of all was Cafe 1912, a new French bistro and cute little sister to grand old La Tourelle. The first night Mom bugged me into going for the barbecue shrimp and grits, which topped my duck breast and grits but not by much, and the last night we went back for - wait for it - pan-seared scallops with ginger-carrot puree and orange beurre blanc. Real scallops, too, not the fakes punched from skate muscle, flaky and sweet and big as a child's fist. Sweet Jesus, it was good. We actually went back the second time hoping to try the goat cheese cheesecake we saw on the menu earlier, but missed it. (Oddly enough, goat cheese cheesecake was one of the first things we made at work when I got back, and I'll post the recipe here as soon as I wangle it away from my co-worker.) I also was introduced to the wonderful Tennant's Lager, which tasted faintly of pickled ginger and wasabi. It's the perfect sushi beer, and naturally, no one in Seattle seems to carry it.
Memphis has always suffered from a lack of good restaurants. Sure, it bests some of the best bar food in the nation, and some of it's even passably non-greasy. And it does have a couple of upscale and white tablecloth places like Erling Jensen's and Encore, courtesy of the ever-dapper Chef Jose, late of the limited and needlessly stuffy Chez Philippe at the Peabody. But what it's really lacked is small, dressy casual, locally owned, fresh ingredients places, suitable for a date and aimed towards adults that don't plan on drinking until they vomit. It's been good to watch the influx of bistros, soup and salad cafes, and granola coffee shops from afar, knowing that it would lead to a change in the food face of Memphis for the better; Memphis has badly needed to move out of its culinary frat boy ways for some time and grow up in a non-stodgy direction.
There was other stuff. The Stax museum, still going, hosting its annual summer music program for local kids, still new and clean but the neighborhood around it shamelessly being neglected to ruin. The houses on any given street in Midtown, all different: white Spanish stucco painted screaming pink next to a sedate and elegant red-brick colonial next to a carefully preserved Victorian with an elaborate garden. My favorite oddball Memphis attraction, the Ornamental Metal Museum, featuring a display of avant-garde knives by its forge artists. My favorite comic book shop, still where they were since I was in high school. The Midtown Schnuck's with its dusty, saggy shelves and weird off-brands, truly the long dark grocery store of the soul. The view of the Rhodes clock tower from my Mom's balcony, and hearing it strike the hour in the early morning. And the cicadas, which I didn't realize I missed until I heard them my first night there. I had forgotten that susurrant background track to my past. I left the window open nights to hear it, but paid for it in mosquito bites, which was in itself a familiar, nostalgic experience.
It's Death Week, and you should read Peter Guralnick's astonishing two-volume making/unmaking-of biography of Elvis, Last Train To Memphis and Careless Love if you haven't already. I never thought I'd enjoy a biography as much as a novel. Even if you don't give two shits about the King, it's a fascinating picture of the South on the cusp of change, taking into account the intersection and division of class and race issues and how it affected the then-open format of the locally powered radio and music industry, and the effects of overnight fame on an already emotionally troubled teenager. (Remember the slightly creepy, oddly dressed, pimply misfit with delusions of grandeur that sat in the back of the class in school? Elvis was that guy.) If the idea of committing to two volumes sounds too much like the classroom, then start with the second book, which picks up after he arrives home from Germany and the Army. It wasn't all the Colonel's fault, incidentally. Two big factors were his entourage and the fact that "diet pills" used to be considered harmless.
Anyroad, the visit.
[(fear of heights x fear of falling) + (mild claustrophia x{long legs and broad build})]x ornery sciatic nerve in my leg = I hate to fly. I took a direct flight - thank God Northwest started offering one about a year after I got to Seattle. After a horrible experience where I spent eight hours trapped in the Atlanta airport during the Christmas season, I'll pay nearly half again as much to avoid connectors. Took about three hours and then I immediately lost all sense of time and didn't bother to find it again.
The first thing I noticed about Memphis was that there's new eateries and shops in the concourse - most notably several outlets for local barbecue restaurants, a sure sign that I'm home - but outside of its shiny center the Memphis airport remains unrepentantly unremodeled, identical to my seventies-era memories. It's all angles and concrete, brown and gray, and dirty speckled white tile. Mom began tearing up as I came towards the baggage claim and couldn't talk at first. She looked older, and while I stood at the carousel holding her hand I ran scenarios for her retirement through my head.
The second thing I noticed about Memphis was the almost visible heat, which was surprisingly dry and felt good after several cold days in Seattle. The third thing I noticed is that there's been an influx of attractive women since I lived there. Not the gorgeous, curvy, R. Crumb-drawn types I date here in the PCNW: they're all slender crunchy girls with long curly hair and glasses. They look like different versions of Memphis College of Art students, or PhD candidates at Rhodes. I had breakfast at Otherlands on Cooper (bless them, they introduced me to lemon curd back in the day), and it was infested with them in the best possible way. The only other males around were tiny hollow-chested emo boys with bad posture and loud, oafish older guys in suits: no competition in sight.
In retrospect, I probably should've asked the guy at the register what the hell they were putting in their lemon curd. There was a momentary timeslip into an alternate reality where I hadn't spent my twenties being clinically depressed and socially isolated, and for a second I saw myself sitting at the coffee bar smiling at the girl next to me, with her hemp top and open copy of The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and I thought about possibilities. And then I blinked and saw instead myself twenty pounds heavier, with a football injury, an indifferent wife and children, a high-interest mortgage and an uncomfortably tight mind. And then I watched me wish I was a pastry chef like the guys he watched on the Food Network, that lived someplace both outdoorsy and urbane like in the movies and rode a bike to work and had sex with beautiful, intriguing women and who spent his off time at coffee houses on his laptop instead of watching cable. Several times that week, usually when I was reminded how cheap it is to live there, I wondered briefly if I could ever move back, despite the pact I made with my cousin and fellow expatriate involving desperate midnight rescues and forced deprogramming. I always came back to that guy staring unhappily at his copy of the Commercial Appeal, with its clumsy typeface and huge blank gutters, his daily antacid tablets set carefully next to his doctor-ordered decaf, wanting to be someplace else but not knowing how to get there.
The first couple of days were spent meeting more people, more people, more people. Mom goes to the local UCC church, and there were tons of happy shiny folks she wanted to introduce me to. The church has a hostel, a fair trade goods store, a coffee shop, and a bike co-op, and I got in a great conversation with the co-op mechanic about Seattle and the fixie craze before being dragged away. Most of them were her stable of gay boyfriends. It's still a little hard for me to believe that my Mom's become such a huge fag hag. Everyone was perfectly nice, but after being stuck for a few hours at a tableful of small town gays I couldn't help missing all my burly, bearded, and pierced crew. My homos would kick the ass of my Mom's homos, no contest. At one place in the suburbs we visited, I spent an hour listening politely to the tightly wound owner go on about the black baffles in his track lighting and following him around his fern-draped house, being careful not to knock over the ceramic figurines in the living room or to touch any of the Wizard of Oz memorabilia in his "media room". I kept thinking about uspinmeround and muddy_feet's sexy apartment with its glorious furred wall, and wishing I could take pictures to share when I got back. Takes all kinds to make up a subculture, I guess: at the one commitment ceremony I went to in Memphis, the two women both wore matching gauzy pants, natural unbleached cotton shifts, and rainbow scarves. I can't help but picture my chosen familia's assorted flavors of dykes standing around uncomfortably during the service, discreetly slapping their new tattoos, eyeing the sparkling apple juice and wondering who remembered to bring her hip flask.
I connected with a couple of old friends I hadn't seen in years and found out that one of them, who works for a cookbook publishing company, has the Pacific Northwest Territory and is a potential source of future expense account dinners. We caught up at the Flying Saucer in Cordova (a chain, but sporting a beer list in the hundreds and populated with waitresses in plaid miniskirts a la GoGo Yubari), and on the way home, I found out that when the Wendy's restaurants in Memphis say that they close at 1 AM what they really mean is that they shut down the Frosty machine at fifteen till. Fuckers.
I ate lots. Less than in previous visits, since I'm older and wiser as of the 28th of July, but it was enough. I fixed my barbecue jones at Central Barbecue, and had some of the best homemade potato chips I've ever eaten. Their sauce was thick and sweet, as it should be. I mistakenly took some of the hot sauce from the sauce bar, and was happy to find out that it was more warm than hot and tasted of Chinese five-spice, a very nice effect. It was great with the chips. The pulled pork was incredibly fresh and lacked the tinny taste that tells you that it's drenched in sauce for a reason. (I see online that some idiot Yankee reviewed Central after ordering just the deli-sliced turkey sandwich. Sliced turkey, shit, go back to New York already.) I tried to talk Mom into going to Payne's, which is probably the best in the city, but her ingrained fear of poor black neighborhoods wouldn't budge. I had plenty of frozen yogurt, feeding a decades-old addiction and catching up for the lack of the TCBY chain in Washington. We stopped by an unremarkable but promising bakery in still-undeveloped downtown Memphis - sad to see the trolley line languishing under the Location Curse - mixed popcorn and SnoCaps at the movies, had a decent steak at a local Italian restaurant, and ate away at my birthday cake, which I was shocked to find out after all these years was a white cake mix with strawberry Jell-O added.
Best of all was Cafe 1912, a new French bistro and cute little sister to grand old La Tourelle. The first night Mom bugged me into going for the barbecue shrimp and grits, which topped my duck breast and grits but not by much, and the last night we went back for - wait for it - pan-seared scallops with ginger-carrot puree and orange beurre blanc. Real scallops, too, not the fakes punched from skate muscle, flaky and sweet and big as a child's fist. Sweet Jesus, it was good. We actually went back the second time hoping to try the goat cheese cheesecake we saw on the menu earlier, but missed it. (Oddly enough, goat cheese cheesecake was one of the first things we made at work when I got back, and I'll post the recipe here as soon as I wangle it away from my co-worker.) I also was introduced to the wonderful Tennant's Lager, which tasted faintly of pickled ginger and wasabi. It's the perfect sushi beer, and naturally, no one in Seattle seems to carry it.
Memphis has always suffered from a lack of good restaurants. Sure, it bests some of the best bar food in the nation, and some of it's even passably non-greasy. And it does have a couple of upscale and white tablecloth places like Erling Jensen's and Encore, courtesy of the ever-dapper Chef Jose, late of the limited and needlessly stuffy Chez Philippe at the Peabody. But what it's really lacked is small, dressy casual, locally owned, fresh ingredients places, suitable for a date and aimed towards adults that don't plan on drinking until they vomit. It's been good to watch the influx of bistros, soup and salad cafes, and granola coffee shops from afar, knowing that it would lead to a change in the food face of Memphis for the better; Memphis has badly needed to move out of its culinary frat boy ways for some time and grow up in a non-stodgy direction.
There was other stuff. The Stax museum, still going, hosting its annual summer music program for local kids, still new and clean but the neighborhood around it shamelessly being neglected to ruin. The houses on any given street in Midtown, all different: white Spanish stucco painted screaming pink next to a sedate and elegant red-brick colonial next to a carefully preserved Victorian with an elaborate garden. My favorite oddball Memphis attraction, the Ornamental Metal Museum, featuring a display of avant-garde knives by its forge artists. My favorite comic book shop, still where they were since I was in high school. The Midtown Schnuck's with its dusty, saggy shelves and weird off-brands, truly the long dark grocery store of the soul. The view of the Rhodes clock tower from my Mom's balcony, and hearing it strike the hour in the early morning. And the cicadas, which I didn't realize I missed until I heard them my first night there. I had forgotten that susurrant background track to my past. I left the window open nights to hear it, but paid for it in mosquito bites, which was in itself a familiar, nostalgic experience.