While here I read Leonardo Sciasia’s The Day of the Owl, a decidedly unglamorous depiction which delves into the seamy underbelly of localized mob control. Less a unified system than a murky network of connections, this world is imagined as one whose outlines are not even fully understood by those on the inside. Such a representation gets a nice cinematic pairing in Francesco Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano, a portrait of an apolitical hustler that avoids any direct depiction of the man, only the shadow cast by him on the island’s arid landscape, and the way his actions were influenced by the eternal forces (organized crime, church, and state) which tussle for total control, balancing each other out in the process. It may seem trite to try and connect food to all this, but the culinary patchwork here is equally indefinable and unorganized; having spent dozens of hours trying to enforce order upon it, I feel like I’m no closer to pinning down any essential character or qualities, beyond the fascinating maelstrom of complete culinary entropy.
I saved this topic for the final post, both because these establishments typically serve the heaviest, most dinner-centric meals, and because I didn’t want to lead with a mafia reference. It would be easy to entirely ignore the existence of the island’s most famous criminal enterprise, both because it’s a distasteful topic, and one that doesn’t intrinsically have much to do with food. Yet the two are also linked in some essential way, constituent elements in Sicily’s enduring outlaw mystique. There’s an inherent untamabilty to this area, which has been dominated by so many external rulers yet remains stubbornly singular, refusing to cede control of its inner workings. Italy has failed to fully subjugate it as well, despite years of struggle during the fascist era and beyond, during which period the mafia gained further mystique as desperado freedom fighters.
While here I read Leonardo Sciasia’s The Day of the Owl, a decidedly unglamorous depiction which delves into the seamy underbelly of localized mob control. Less a unified system than a murky network of connections, this world is imagined as one whose outlines are not even fully understood by those on the inside. Such a representation gets a nice cinematic pairing in Francesco Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano, a portrait of an apolitical hustler that avoids any direct depiction of the man, only the shadow cast by him on the island’s arid landscape, and the way his actions were influenced by the eternal forces (organized crime, church, and state) which tussle for total control, balancing each other out in the process. It may seem trite to try and connect food to all this, but the culinary patchwork here is equally indefinable and unorganized; having spent dozens of hours trying to enforce order upon it, I feel like I’m no closer to pinning down any essential character or qualities, beyond the fascinating maelstrom of complete culinary entropy.
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This category of sweet, which I’ll designate with the rough appellation of “suckers”, stands as probably the least appreciated genus of confectionery, relegated to the scrap ends of Halloween hauls and left to ossify in untouched candy dishes. At best, they’re a vector for nostalgia, which for me personally means a vague fondness for Starlite mints, strawberry grandma candies and Lifesavers (which my mom would keep in her purse to appease me in moments of singular petulant mania), that doesn’t translate into any actual desire to pop one in my mouth, let alone purchase an entire bag. Even now, in the depths of a months-long lockdown, I’ve maintained a sizable hoard of those guava hard candies you get gratis with Thai and Vietnamese takeout orders.
Differentiating the Osteria, the subject of this post, from the Trattoria, the subject of the next and final one, is probably a fool’s errand. Yet I conceived of this half-cocked schematic, so now I will stick with it. In my limited view, both places are equally rustic and anti-formal, but the Osteria is a tad more stripped down, more a spot for a quick lunch and a wine than the Trattoria, where meals tend to be heavier and a little more complexly fashioned. I’ll be lumping cafes in here too, since coffee, snacks, and desserts are all served in abundance at Osterias, which often seem to double as community centers, full of people lounging and chatting while enjoying an espresso or a snack. As with the previous post, the categories into which certain foods are placed are largely arbitrary and based mostly on my own personal dining experience on the island, which you will again see was highly limited in the grand scope of things.
As mentioned in a previous post on Berliner cuisine, the homegrown delicacy Currywurst likely originated out of pure post-war resourcefulness, a means for both stretching the ingredients on hand, and turning low quality sausage into a vehicle for a sauce that could mask its mediocrity. The result is not quite subsistence food, but fast food with a poverty twist, one that for me at least, excuses the fact that it’s not really any more exciting than your standard New York dirty water dog; at least it’s an interesting artifact. This quality is largely rooted in the window it provides into the fractured status of post-war Berlin. At this point the city was cut into four internationally-administered quadrants, three of which seem to have done their part in birthing the Currywurst. The curry powder that gives the sauce its weird zing, not to mention the Worcestershire that likely reinforces it, emanated from the British sector. It’s these ingredients that bolster the ketchup (our American component), separating the dish from your run-of-the-mill hot dog. Further separation comes via the German-style presentation, which foreswears the bun in favor of sliced or semi-sliced sausage rounds, flanked by a healthy serving of Frites (the French contribution, somewhat reductively).
Over the summer I visited Sicily, an island whose reputation precedes it, and which justified every bit of praise ever heaped upon it’s rocky frame. What I enjoyed most was the way it served as a funky funhouse mirror of familiar Italian culture, possessing the same general outlines, but completely alien at a granular level. In keeping with this inscrutability, any attempt at an orderly taxonomization quickly proved an impossible task. So in this case, I’ve chosen to organize my eating report based on the style of establishment at which such a dish would be most commonly served. This means posts dedicated to the Rosticceria, the Osteria and the Trattoria, places which, in keeping with the island’s cuneate shape, form a sort of holy Trinacria of their own.
Like Berlin, Hamburg doesn’t rate too highly when considering international gastronomic destinations. This is also a fair designation, but it’s worth noting that not only is it’s cuisine significantly different from that of the adjoining Prussian sphere, it’s situated in another milieu entirely. Unlike Berlin, which was the seat of an empire but never a vital trade crossroads, Hamburg is one of two (formerly three) independently governed German city-states, all of whom operated as dynamic medieval trade nodes, creating a far more cosmopolitan character overall. Along with Bremen (and their former partner Lübeck) they were anchors of the vaunted Hanseatic League, a continent-spanning guild that for centuries dominated international commerce throughout the North and Baltic Seas.
It seems like American chip flavors just keep getting crazier, with each trip to the grocery store yielding a rogue’s gallery of strange new monstrosities. But this craziness is also circumscribed, pushed toward ever more extreme, overdriven concoctions, mash-ups and combinations, as well as eerily faithful reenactments of foods that have no business existing as chips. On the fast-food side of this equation, Pizza Hut has recently launched the latest attempt at challenging the Doritos Locos Taco. This hulking abomination expands the humble Cheez-It to mammoth proportions. A Cheez-It is obviously not a chip, but it's pizza-fied offspring (the end-result of years of desperate promiscuity by Sunshine, a company that needs to realize the inherent perfection of its star product and stick with it) is so wrongheaded, and so representative of the grotesquerie which defines the current state of processed food culture, that I would be remiss not to mention it. I should also mention that Extra Toasty Cheez-Its are a godsend, and almost singlehandedly balance out the damage inflicted by the last 15 years of lab-spawned, misbegotten oddities.
In April I made an expedition to two locations which, while notable destinations in their own right, are not particularly famous for their food. Yet far from providing a shortage of gustatory stimulation, I've learned that trips like this often allow for a finer focus, both on specific local pleasures, and less likely ones that have filtered in from abroad. The second stop (saved for the next post) was the Netherlands, whose national cuisine benefits from fresh produce and dairy (thanks to ultra-modern farming practices) but whose flavors seem wan next to that of its former colonial holdings. The first is Berlin, a banner city for the famously rich gastronomic quilt that is Germany, but also one that sits on its fringes, marked by the staid cold-weather fare of the former Prussian empire. The city’s biggest culinary champion is probably currywurst, the rare dish that somehow manages a decrease in the quality of the run-of-the-mill German sausage.
Not a still, but too good to ignore (or leave unanimated). Jackie Chan's bumbling private eye finds his lust competing with his hunger, Tex Avery style, in Wong Jing's City Hunter (1993)
Excerpted from the late Eduardo Galeano’s Faces and Masks, part of the ‘80s-era Memory of Fire trilogy, here's a 12-hour rundown of antique Peruvian snacks, circa 1769. A running catalog of the toll of corporatist colonialism on the so-called “New World,” the book is particularly focused on charting historical upheavals via the metronomic march of the calendar, which adds a sense of strange menace to this seemingly innocent list of foods, many of them influenced by flavors and ingredients forcibly introduced from Spain. A few of these dishes are self-explanatory, although some others are not. “Curds seller,” to start, likely refers to vendors of Quesillo, a moniker that means something slightly different in every Latin American nation, in Peru signifying a fresh curd cheese still sold on the streets of Lima to this day. The “green velvet” Chirimoyas are the pale-colored, shingle-textured fruit also known as the “custard apple,” although this appellation applies to many of its cousins in the Annona/Soursop family (not including, strangely, the actual Soursop, aka Guanábana), which also includes the “Sugar Apple,” and the American Paw-Paw. Cherimoya means “cold seeds,” in the Quechua language, a reference to the high altitudes at which they are grown. More musings on custard apples, meanwhile, can be found in the second of my Colombia trip report posts.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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