Best Food Writing 2014

by Holly Hughes

  Of course, 1968 was eventful in far more profound ways. That spring my father, a loyal Democrat, had muttered, “Oh, no” and wept as Lyndon Baines Johnson announced he wouldn’t run for reelection. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were both assassinated. August brought the Democratic convention, with Chicago cops and protesters swaying in disharmony like a carpet at war with its own patterns. This was my introduction to America.

  Amid such unrest, that tuna sandwich represented tranquility. It didn’t taste like some confusing assassination somewhere, though the tuna in question might disagree. It didn’t taste like splinters from a billy club or life in a hotel. Saying it tasted like color TV is getting closer to the sensation. It was comforting, accessible. It tasted like democracy. One bite turned me American, launching a love affair with tuna sandwiches—and a quest to recover that magic moment—that continues to this day.

  As introductions to democracy go, tuna had the right pedigree. In the 19th century, it was immigrant food. Most Americans considered tuna a trash fish. But then sport fishing was invented, as per Andrew Smith’s American Tuna (University of California Press, 2012), and eventually the gentleman’s struggle to tackle one of the ocean’s most impressive predators popularized tuna and led to its exploitation as a cheap canned food for the masses.

  The lowly tuna sandwich became a common sight in diners and Automats after the turn of the last century, when, amid the burgeoning American mania for convenience, we fell in love with new food-packaging technologies. Though the canneries of the early 20th century went the way of other American industries—offshore—the U.S. today consumes nearly a third of the world’s canned tuna. Drained of its own oil to ensure its blandness and packed with water or vegetable oil, tinned tuna inculcated itself into our popular cuisine.

  As I look back, my adult love affair with the tuna-salad sandwich falls neatly into three Proustian phases. Back in 1988, having broken up with the girlfriend I’d moved to Los Angeles with three years earlier, I was living near the Hollywood Freeway and coming as close to turning into a barfly as I ever will. Since they were within walking distance, I made the rounds almost nightly of the local dive bars: the Gaslight, the Firefly, the shabby, venerable Frolic Room.

  Come closing time, the 7–11 on the way home was my final stop. One night I discovered they had added a new sandwich: the Tuna Laguna, a thing of glory encased in the convenience-store chain’s crust-challenged idea of a baguette. In an added touch of elegance—and compared with most bachelor food, tuna salad does become one’s operative definition of elegance—two puzzled-looking walnuts sat atop the filling, peering up at me like Dr. T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes in The Great Gatsby.

  Love was what I was looking for at the Gaslight, the Firefly, and the Frolic Room, but since I was not having luck at any of them, I fell in love with the Tuna Laguna instead. Soon I could almost taste those puzzled walnuts as I ordered one more beer while AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” blasted and pretty girls with trashy eyes vied with trashy girls with pretty eyes for the attentions of someone else. Soon I was not waiting until closing time. In short, the Tuna Laguna saved me from turning barfly.

  Luckily for me, by the time it was taken off the menu, I was no longer single. At home, my new wife and I were learning to cook, and 7–11s were a dimming memory. The handiest place to get a bag lunch near the office of the L.A. alternative weekly she and I both worked for was a twee shop called What a Friend We Have in Cheeses. Their tuna sandwich was a beauty. Thick sourdough, sprouts, tomato, and the gooiest havarti topped a hefty heap of tuna. I put on ten pounds in two months. That’s when I decided that I’d better work at home, but I felt no obligation to lose the ten pounds. I was married, and they were a very contented ten pounds.

  Flash forward to the present. That marriage is over. But in my capacity as GQ’s movie reviewer, my attendance at the Toronto Film Festival is ongoing. Each year I stay at the Metropolitan Hotel, home of Lai Wah Heen, one of the best dim sum restaurants in North America. My oldest film-fest crony loves the place. But he’s lucky to lure me there even once; I prefer the Subway around the corner. Every night I place the same order: “A six-inch tuna on Italian herbs and spices. Yes, cheese. Lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions. No, that’s it.”

  By festival’s end, the night guy knows my order by heart, and I can tell he thinks I’m weird. I don’t care. Movie viewing like this each day is the cinephile equivalent of looking for love at L.A. bars. My six-inch tuna on Italian herbs and spices provides the same comforting hedge against disappointment that the Tuna Laguna did when Ronald Reagan was in office and life and I were on the outs.

  Even back home in the States, Subway is my most trustworthy pseudo-Sholl’s fix. You have to admit that, when it comes to democratic eating experiences, the franchise is hard to beat, since you’re tasting something at once generic and, within limits, customized. It’s homely confirmation that the system works.

  In the 40-plus years since I first fell in love with that sandwich at Sholl’s, have I tried to re-create it? Many times. But I finally gave up, because there always seemed to be an ingredient missing. I’ve tried many elaborations on the default celery, onions, and mayonnaise. Would pickles do it? Would capers or olives bring back Sholl’s?

  Through all of these experiments, I’ve come to realize this about the democratic quality of tuna salad: You can get only so elaborate before you realize that if you’re in the mood for something fancy, you should make something else. I can live with some lunatic notions of what an ideal tuna salad should include: jalapeños and lime juice; edamame and miso; fennel and orange and crème fraîche; sriracha and sesame seeds. I’ve even dabbled in curried and lemon-pepper tuna salads. But I once made a food writer laugh by telling him why I drew the line at adding chopped egg: “That’s a drunk’s idea of tuna salad.”

  While my love of tuna sandwiches will never die, the truth is that no array of garnishes will ever feature the missing ingredient from Sholl’s. I now know what it was and why it’s irrecoverable. The missing ingredient is the evidence that even the tumultuous summer of 1968 could be benign. The missing ingredient is that I was a 12-year-old newcomer to my own country. The missing ingredient is that, as I beheld my first tuna sandwich, I didn’t yet know what one tasted like.

  THE CHEESE TOAST INCIDENT

  By Michael Procopio

  From FoodForTheThoughtless.com

  In a world of recipe- and photo-oriented food blogs, San Francisco’s Michael Procopio gives us something delightfully different: Offbeat, irreverent posts that spotlight how we feel about food, not just how it’s made. As a professional waiter, he knows exactly how the food goes down.

  The evening might have gone perfectly, if it weren’t for the cheese toast.

  And perfection was what Mrs. Lewis demanded from everyone the night she and her husband invited Debbie Reynolds to dinner. They were notoriously hard to please.

  It’s just a pity she didn’t think to demand it of herself.

  I spent my college years working for Harry and Marilyn Lewis, a married couple of advanced but painstakingly-achieved indeterminate age, who made their fortune from a chain of fancy hamburger establishments and enjoyed the sort of celebrity that sometimes comes from catering to the truly famous. They sold their small empire and, with some of the proceeds, opened a restaurant in Beverly Hills as bright and large and intimidating as Mrs. Lewis’s teeth, which she was rumored to have designed herself.

  My good standing with Mr. Lewis ended the day I expressed alarm over the raw, salve-covered flesh of his face, asking him if he was okay and had he seen a doctor. It was also the day I learned about the existence of chemical peels. And that he had, in fact, seen a doctor.

  My good standing with Mrs. Lewis, whose occasional visits to the restaurant were met with a mixture of terror and morbid fascination by most of the staff, began when I summoned the nerve to point out a critical error in her New York Times crossword answers. The look she gave me was appropriately puzzling—
part “who are you?,” part “how dare you.” She stared at me in this way until my life began to flash before my eyes, then returned hers to the crossword, rubbed out a few letters with the eraser on the end of her pencil, and without looking up said, “So what’s 26-Down then?”

  I wasn’t surprised when she chose me to wait upon her important business dinner with Miss Reynolds.

  I was initially excited by the prospect of waiting on Debbie Reynolds. After all, she had danced with both Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. And I heard she could swear like a sailor. I prayed she’d tell stories.

  But I was also annoyed. Harry and I didn’t like each other. Marilyn could be sweet as Splenda to me, but I knew that could change the moment anything didn’t go her way. But fortunately, I knew precisely what she expected of me because she had recently blessed the waitstaff with a short series of “service classes” at which she personally imparted her version of the finer points of table service. Serve to the left. Champagne corks should never make noise. Don’t say “parmesan cheese”—it’s like saying “cheese cheese.” We were given a written test to prove that we were listening.

  At the beginning of service that night, I told my manager to give away all the other tables in my section—I wanted to devote my full attention to Marilyn, Miss Reynolds, and Harry. I’d be damned if I’d let any cheese cheese within 20 yards of them.

  When the threesome sat down to dinner, I offered them drinks. Miss Reynolds would have white wine. For Mrs. Lewis, a J&B on the rocks with a twist. For Harry . . . I don’t remember. They chatted. They smiled. I stood back and scanned the table for flaws. Plates of food came to them: crab cakes, salad . . . they nibbled and talked and drank a little more. I poured Miss Reynolds more wine. I brought Mrs. Lewis a fresh J&B without her asking. She patted my wrist approvingly.

  Things seemed to be going well. Debbie Reynolds had a hotel in Las Vegas. Harry and Marilyn wanted to open a restaurant inside of it. They made small talk, but the chatter on the Lewis’s end seemed as unnatural as their chemical and surgery-altered faces. Everything was fine, but the conversation didn’t flow. So I made certain the alcohol did. As I leaned in to top off Miss Reynolds’s glass, she paused the conversation to pinch my cheek and tell me I was adorable. When she did this, I caught Marilyn’s eye. She looked annoyed because I was pulling focus away from her.

  So I did what any true professional server would do—I stepped away from Miss Reynolds and the table as a whole. And then I did what any true professional enabler would do—I went straight to the bar to order another J & B for Marilyn—a stiff one. I gently placed the sweating glass in front of Mrs. Lewis as visual proof that I cared more for her than I did Carrie Fisher’s mother. But really, I just wanted to see her to get plastered. I brought another drink of whatever-it-was for Harry, too.

  It seemed to be working. Marilyn relaxed. Miss Reynolds laughed. Harry seemed less ineffectual than usual. I changed plates for the dinner course as unobtrusively as possible and let the food flow out to the table in slow progression.

  The white bean chili was met with success, as were most of the other dishes that landed in front of them. Marilyn leaned back in her chair a bit, scotch in hand. She flashed a smile to expose her enormous designer incisors as she surveyed the room. Everything seemed to be going perfectly.

  That is, until she spotted the cheese toast. Harry and Debbie were chatting away, but Marilyn was no longer participating in the conversation. I watched the gradual change of expression on Mrs. Lewis’s face. Her painted lips, so recently expressing pleasure, slowly closed like red velvet curtains over the Cinemascope wideness of her teeth. I could feel the whole room going dark. All she could do was stare at the slice of cheddar-topped bread in front of her. Then she suddenly forced her mouth upwards again, but the overall effect this time was more crazed than happy. Harry noticed Marilyn. Debbie noticed Harry noticing Marilyn. The table fell silent and I stood by helpless.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Mrs. Lewis said quite calmly. She rose from the table in her white pantsuit, picked up the plate of offending toast, and slowly made her way across the dining room to the kitchen expediting station. The cooks saw her coming and scattered like roaches.

  “WHO MADE THIS?” she screamed. Everyone in the granite and steel restaurant could hear her, but no one dared to respond.

  “WHO. MADE. THIS. CHEESE. TOAST?!!!?” There was one line cook who didn’t run. He seemed to have been so transfixed by her insane stare and her fiery orange mane of hair that he was instantly rendered immobile.

  “DID YOU DO THIS?” she demanded. “DID YOU?!!!? CHEESE TOAST IS TO BE SERVED HOT IN MY RESTAURANT! THIS. . . . THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!!!” As she shrieked those last words, she slammed the plate down onto the counter. The cheese toast bounced from the plate and hit the poor cook in the chest. The plate itself rebounded and smashed on the floor.

  But I knew that plate wasn’t the only thing that was smashed. Mrs. Lewis, having found an outlet for her expression almost as satisfying as her time spent designing gowns for Marlo Thomas, made her way back across the stunned dining room to rejoin her guest and her husband.

  I didn’t know the proper thing to do in this sort of dining situation. Mrs. Lewis hadn’t covered it in her classes. As I wondered whether or not it would be a good idea to serve them more alcohol, Debbie Reynolds broke the unbearable silence.

  She looked directly at Mr. Lewis and said, “I’ll bet she’s a real bitch to live with, isn’t she?” He and Marilyn laughed uncomfortably. And then she finished them off in what I can only describe as her Unsinkable Molly Brown voice, “But you know, Harry, I’ll bet you’re a real pain in the ass, too!”

  They didn’t laugh at that one, but she did. I excused myself from the table, got my manager to watch over the mess for a minute while I ran outside and around because I knew it wouldn’t do for my embarrassed owners to witness my own, uncontrollable cackling. I returned to the table with an appropriately neutral expression.

  Debbie Reynolds didn’t stay long after the cheese toast incident. She made her excuses, thanked her hosts, and went home. There was to be no dessert. And, thanks in part to a plate of tepid cheesy bread and plenty of Justerini & Brooks on the rocks, there was to be no Lewis-owned restaurant in the Debbie Reynolds Hotel.

  From that evening on, Miss Reynolds has been at the top of my list of favorite people. Because, apart from having starred in my favorite Hollywood musical of all time, she managed to do something I’d always wanted to do—call out the appalling behavior of my bosses—and gave me one of the most satisfying laughs of my life as she did it.

  For that, I salute her whenever I eat a piece of cheese toast. And when I do eat it, I always eat it cold.

  BECAUSE I CAN

  By David Leite

  From Leite’s Culinaria

  Founder of the award-winning Leite’s Culinaria website, and author of The New Portuguese Table cookbook, David Leite is an avid and accomplished home cook. Like any talent, that skill isn’t always appreciated as it should be—but it did give him the power to settle a not-so-petty score.

  The journey that culminated in my realization of the wonder that is homemade ketchup was long and circuitous, and, as sometimes happens, littered with the body of a friend.

  One autumn night in 2000, our friend Geoffrey slunk back in through our kitchen door, a waft of cigarette smoke trailing behind him, as he hoped to avoid his wife, Sarah, who was helping The One clear the dishes from the dining table so we could play cards. Geoffrey leaned against the counter while I washed dishes.

  “The lasagna was great,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  It wasn’t, actually. It was an anemic imposter, devoid of the beef, veal, pork, and cheese that define the true Italian diva. Instead, it contained zucchini, peppers, and broccoli rabe layered between spinach noodles. Geoffrey was in his green-food phase.

  Geoffrey was the worst kind of vegetarian. He was the sort of self-righteous, self-appointed mayor of Meatlessopoli
s who never cared how he inconvenienced the unconverted. Whenever he and Sarah came to dinner, I had to haul out a special skillet, one that had never experienced the sizzling, seductive sear of cold meat on its surface, because Geoffrey insisted he wouldn’t eat anything cooked in a pan that had touched meat.

  On top of all that, he was lactose-intolerant—say hello to dairy-free “cheese”—and also a bit of a hypochondriac. Half an hour or so after we would pour wine, he’d rub his forehead, grab the bottle, and mutter “sulfites” as he scrutinized the label. Then he’d turn his eyes heavenward and shake his head, looking to all the world like one of those beleaguered saints I used to read about in my catechism workbook when I was a kid.

  Every time the two of them came over for dinner and cards, which was often, I not only tied myself into knots trying to come up with something to serve him that The One and I could at least choke down with wan smiles, I stomped through the supermarket seeking suitable meat alternatives and scoured the local liquor stores in search of a specific wine no one had ever heard of (and which we’d never, ever be caught dead drinking on any other occasion), all in the name of friendship.

  “Oh, and the sauce? Fan-tas-tic!” Geoffrey turned his back to the sink and nonchalantly cleaned his nails with a toothpick. I, on the other hand, was so angry my back teeth began twerking. I redoubled my efforts scrubbing the nubbins of noodles from The Great Un-Besmirched Pan.

  “Yeah, I got some beautiful second tomatoes,” I said, trying to keep the conversation going. “So I made a sauce. I’m making homemade ketchup, too. I think it’ll make a nice gift.”

  With that, Geoffrey lowered his head and looked as if he was squinting over a pair of spectacles. Judgment rippled across his face. “Why on earth would you go through all that work for anyone?”