by Holly Hughes
I’ll cop to being a little discriminatory. I’d assumed this third wave of hot chicken purveyors would dilute the product, at least a bit. When it was time to order, I asked the Hattie B’s cashier how their hottest (regrettably named “Shut the Cluck Up”) stacked up to Prince’s and Bolton’s. “Well, it’s a different flavor profile entirely,” she said. “We use ghost peppers. You’ll enjoy it.”
Fuck. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle that—one of my favorite snacks is McDonald’s fries with a sprinkle of pulverized ghost peppers—but I was well aware of the kind of havoc bhut jolokia can wreak on a stomach. My flight was in four hours.
The exterior of the chicken at Hattie B’s is darker than what I had at either Prince’s or Bolton’s. Apparently at the Shut the Cluck Up level, the spice blend incorporates habanero, ghost pepper, and Trinidad Scorpion. The cashier was right; the flavor profile is markedly different from a cayenne-centric piece of hot chicken. The higher up you go on the Scoville unit scale, the more the pungency of a chili registers as acidic. Thai bird’s eye chilies, habaneros, ghost peppers—they all release a fresh, floral essence that razors through other flavors as a trigger warning for the pain you’re about to experience. That bracing sensation—not pain, but the liminal back and forth between the brain and the palate signaling that you’re in for trouble—is, to me, one of the best feelings in the world. I ate on the back patio, overlooking the line to get through the door. Unlike the intimate scenes at Prince’s and Bolton’s, the Hattie B’s experience is broadcast. I invited people to watch me and my trembling fingers, completely fine with the idea of people noticing my trembling fingers and heavy breathing. I asked strangers to take pictures of my busted face; my experience became theirs.
There have been fascinating studies in recent years linking body temperature and mood. While he was at the University of Arizona, Dr. Charles Raison began experimenting with whole-body hyperthermia (essentially toasting people from the neck down at high temperatures). Raison’s study was inspired by Tibetan monks up in the Himalayan mountains who used special breathing techniques in their meditation, which studies have shown were able to increase the temperature of their extremities by 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Coincidentally, the capsaicin that binds itself to receptors on the tongue and other parts of the mouth can trick the mind into thinking that something is 15 degrees hotter than it is.
“Capsaicin-containing foods have the potential, like heat, to activate sensory fibers and function of brain areas involved in affect and cognition,” said Christopher A. Lowry, an associate professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, who worked alongside Raison in the heat studies. “So, the infrastructure is there for hot chicken to affect mood and higher order brain function.”
The hot chicken shack, then, becomes more than just a restaurant. It is a sweat lodge, a hot yoga studio, a sauna; it is a safe space to cry among strangers. There is no pretense; we all know the forces at work, beckoning those tears and beads of sweat. I once saw an old Chinese man at Chengdu Taste, my favorite Sichuan restaurant in Los Angeles, crying into his bowl of rice. I caught myself staring, and so did he. The man let out a nervous smile, and shrugged. My three days in Nashville were full of those moments. It struck me how the hot chicken trend has mirrored a recent boom in Sichuan restaurants in L.A.’s eastern suburbs over the last three years. The hot chicken shack in Nashville, not unlike the restaurants I frequent in the strange Asian bubble of the San Gabriel Valley, gathers a community, and, gimmick or not, everyone is there for the same reason: to feel the great relief of succumbing.
Last month, Jack White and his Nashville-based Third Man Records successfully launched the Icarus Craft, a space-proof vessel housing a turntable attached to a high-altitude balloon that floated out into the void. Sound, as perceived by humans, cannot be carried in the vast emptiness of deep space. Walking out of Hattie B’s, my face and arms went numb, tingling as I glided in the cool, post-drizzle breeze. I stumbled down the road, hearing only the faint ringing of my own body fighting an imaginary fire as I floated along the sidewalk and into what might’ve been oncoming traffic. Hours later, encased in a high-altitude vessel myself, 25,000 feet in the air and climbing, the hammers began to descend. I was Icarus.
The City That Knows How to Eat
BY BESHA RODELL
From Eater.com
For LA Weekly restaurant critic Besha Rodell, revisiting the zesty, multiethnic dining scene of Melbourne, Australia—her childhood home—more than lived up to her memories. Which inevitably led her to wonder: Why can’t Americans eat like this?
In 1976, Australia birthed three things: The AC/DC album High Voltage, the bratwurst stand at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market, and me. When I was a kid, my AC/DC-loving stepfather and I would brave the throngs in front of the bratwurst stand to claim our breakfast: Two regular brats, please, with mild mustard on half white rolls, along with a flat white for my stepfather made on the old espresso machine that grunted and whirred a few feet from the smoking grill.
After breakfast, we would embark upon our Saturday food-shopping ritual, a serious undertaking that circled outward through the Vic Market’s 17 sprawling acres of indoor and outdoor stalls. In the fruit sheds I could smell the edge of rot; in the chilly meat building whole carcasses hung, dead eyes staring. In the deli section, a vintage paradise of chrome and marble booths built in 1929, gold-painted lettering spelled out the businesses’ names and specialties: French pastries, tea, confections, cheese, olives, butter, bratwurst. I marveled at stalls festooned with hanging kielbasa, and stalls where they scooped thick Greek yogurt from tubs, and stalls with delicate European chocolates displayed like jewels. Shopping was a skill and a joy and a competitive sport. My stepfather haggled with the meat guy and selected the best vegetables hawked by old Greek men who shouted: “Bananabananabanana!!! Onedollaronedollarondollar!!!”
At the time, if you had asked me what I might miss most about my Melbourne life, the Markets wouldn’t have even crossed my mind. Boys, friends, record stores—these were the things I considered most meaningful.
In 1990, my American mother decided it was time for her to return home, and for the rest of us—four kids, one husband—to go with her. I arrived in Denver, Colorado, as a pissed-off 14-year-old with purple hair and a funny accent, separated from my father and my friends. My new home seemed to lack any discernible street life, only cars and tidy neighborhoods and malls. The most visceral culture shock came in the aisles of American supermarkets, which were sterile and bright and exciting in a morally ambiguous kind of way. The yogurt was different (sweeter), the candy was different (better), the cookies were called cookies, not biscuits. Rather than the vibrant, stinky thrill of Vic Market’s maze of stalls, in Denver, shopping for food was an act of sanitary consumerism. For my stepfather especially, the pleasure of shopping, and therefore of cooking and eating, was blunted. What had been a raucous joy became a cold chore.
My first true American friendship came once we left Denver and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Toby was a crazy goth gay kid who wore black-and-white-striped tights with jean shorts and Doc Martens and only ate fluffernutter sandwiches. Like the rest of my new peers, he seemed to revel in his general dislike of food. The first time I went to his house, we stood in his gleaming, stark kitchen while he piled marshmallow fluff onto peanut butter toast and listed everything he wouldn’t eat: “Meat, vegetables, rice, soup. I used to eat pizza but it’s bad for my skin.”
By the time I left Melbourne, my friends and I had already started throwing elaborate dinner parties together. We scoured the city for the best fish and chips, obsessed over new restaurants and declared our allegiance to old ones. Stuck in abstemious America, I poured most of my petulant, goth-kid energy into yearning for Melbourne like a lost love-of-my-life, a mythical home that no one in this myopic, poorly nourished country would understand.
“Australia,” Toby said as we stood in his kitchen, his mouth sticky with peanut butter. “T
hat’s in Europe, right?”
Do we not know how to eat in America? I felt that way when I arrived and I feel that way now, though we’re doing much better these days. (After all this time, I count myself as part of that “we.” I hold dual U.S./Australian citizenship, and embrace all the tricky and proud self-examination that comes with identifying, even partially, as American.)
For the past decade, in my work as a food critic, I’ve witnessed America’s food revolution firsthand, and seen how a combination of changing tastes and rising culinary ambition has reshaped entire cities. I lived in Atlanta as the New South’s food identity blossomed, and I’m now in Los Angeles, right as the world has finally stopped turning up its collective nose at the city’s culinary riches. I have massive amounts of admiration and respect for the chefs, farmers, writers, and cooks who have pushed America to this point. But something profound is still missing, something that feels like it’s at the very root of my homesickness.
Why am I still not over Melbourne? I’ve lived in Colorado, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, Georgia, and California, and all of them still, in some way, feel like home (except Colorado—sorry Denver). I spent 11 years in Melbourne (we moved there when I was three) and have now spent 26 in the U.S. And especially now, when avocado toast is taking America by storm (avocado toast is a 100 percent Australian invention, insofar as any one ingredient on a piece of bread can be), what is it exactly that I miss so deeply?
Traditionally, American chefs and food writers have looked to Europe to learn about cultivated eating. The story of the American ingenue taking her first bite of French baguette (with real butter!) or her first taste of a small, scarlet, perfect strawberry in a Provence marketplace—it’s so ubiquitous that it’s an utter cliche. America, we are told to believe, was settled too recently, was too influenced by industrialization, is made up of too many disparate cultures, and is burdened with too much shame to have a through-line of shared history that might allow a pure and pleasurable relationship with food. We fetishize Asia; we romanticize Europe. We reserve our most rapturous food epiphanies for travel.
But there is another young nation colonized by Anglos and defined by waves of immigrants that has incredible bread and strawberries and joie de vivre—America has just been too distracted by the kangaroos to see it. Beyond the cultural commonalities (including different brands of the same kind of shame), some of contemporary America’s biggest food trends are right out of my hometown’s playbook. Being from Melbourne and working in the American food world is like constantly being told—with great gusto—that the sky is blue. In the quarter-century I’ve lived here, I’ve seen America discover the joys of decent coffee, farmers markets become ubiquitous, and avocado toast spread like a plague. Food halls! Super creative breakfast using fresh ingredients and international flavors! Next-gen delis! All of these things have been happening in Melbourne since the 1980s, or in some cases, the 1890s. And not just as passing trends; they infuse the entire culture. The frumpily dressed grannies of Melbourne drink cappuccino and roast their legs of lamb with lemon and white wine and rosemary.
This isn’t just teenaged nostalgia talking: I returned to Melbourne this summer and discovered that the magic very much persists.
Melbourne is a port city, built around the seashell-shaped curve of Port Phillip Bay. For 40,000 years or so, it was inhabited by tribes of the Kulin Nation, hunter-gatherers who took advantage of its lush, temperate climate. French and British explorers began showing up around 200 years ago, and the area was colonized by the British in 1835. The Victorian gold rush in the mid-nineteenth century sparked an explosion of both population and wealth. The city’s grand, Victorian architecture is the kind of extravagance only gold could buy.
If the gold rush gave the city refined taste—during those years Melbourne consumed more Champagne than any other city on Earth—successive waves of immigration expanded its palate. The city’s famous cafe culture springs from a well-timed Italian influx: After World War I, the U.S. put policies in place that effectively halted the flow of Italians to America, and Australia became the favored alternative. Through a trick of timing and history, that switch from America to Australia coincided with the invention of the espresso machine. The Italian coffee culture that never quite made it to America blossomed in Melbourne. I know, I know—New York had an espresso machine in 1904 or whatever, but I’m not talking about one or two or ten cafes. I’m talking about hundreds of thousands of people who brought their taste for espresso with them.
Even before the rise of Italian cultural influence, the dominant Anglo culture built much of Australia’s social life around old, hulking pubs on practically every corner. Pubs have always been much more welcoming (and family-friendly) than any bars I can think of in America. That familiarity with a communal space primed Melbourne for the European-style cafe, another place in which to lead life publicly and socially.
Though the boom of Italian immigration to Melbourne began in the 1920s, it wasn’t until 1954 that the first real Italian cafe opened. Pellegrini’s, located on Bourke Street in the middle of Melbourne’s Central Business District, brought to fruition 30 years of espresso-loving immigrants making Melbourne their home. My father, who was 20 at the time, remembers that opening distinctly. “There was nothing like it, there had been nothing like it before,” he says. “It was the beginning of Melbourne becoming what it is.”
Pellegrini’s is still open, with its red mid-century signage, checkered floor, and a menu and atmosphere that have remained unchanged for more than 60 years. If it established Melbourne’s cafe culture, its longevity reflects another key facet of the city’s dining persona: The persistence of old-school family-run places that cater to the same people decade after decade. These restaurants used to be everywhere in the U.S., but we’ve lost many of them over the past half-century. It’s not just a loss of history; these restaurants are surrogate family who know your tastes and the names of your kids.
I’ve always been a sucker for the kinds of fantasy novels wherein a hidden world is revealed, just beneath the surface. Melbourne has a lot of that. Many of the most interesting places to eat and drink are down alleyways, which wind through the guts of the city’s center and grow odd little businesses like weeds.
Down a lane in the central business district, there’s an unassuming door with a stairway leading up off the street. Up the stairs is a ’70s-era room with faded posters of Europe on the wall and a blackboard menu listing the day’s specials: pasta, grilled fish, stewed rabbit with rosemary and olives. This is the Waiter’s Club, an Italian restaurant that has served as a hangout for journalists, gangsters, and—yes—waiters, for 70 or so years. It’s also one of the restaurants that raised me. There are a few.
A mile or so away in Collingwood, Jim’s Greek Tavern is easier to find, but in its own way it feels even more like an insider’s club. On the way to your table, the host will walk you by a large glass refrigerator case filled with meat and fish: tiny pink lamb chops, coils of octopus, glistening whole snapper, carefully arranged translucent pinkish brains. That trip past the meat case is the closest Jim’s comes to a menu. After you’re seated, a brusque waiter, usually of the older Greek variety, will come by the table. “What do you want?” he’ll bark at you. “You want some dips? Some meat? Fish? Eh?” At that point the negotiation starts. You try to remember things you saw in the refrigerated case, and he decides what you’re worthy of eating. Everything is grilled simply, with olive oil, herbs, and maybe some lemon. You get pretty much whatever they decide you get.
“Do you have wine?” you might ask.
“Nah. Not really.” But then later, once you’ve earned your waiter’s approval, he’ll ask if you prefer white or red and then plunk down a half-full carafe. “You drink this. You like it? I’ll bring you another.”
This is very Greek, but it’s also very Australian, like you’re being served by a gruff but loving family member. A few years back while eating at Jim’s, our waiter was scolding us and
feeding us so parentally that my stepfather said to him, “I might just start calling you Mum.”
The Waiter’s Club, Jim’s, and other places like them are the foundation of Melbourne’s eating life, one in which hospitality means something far more personal than the transactional nature of business. The city’s dining history is also its present, not for nostalgia’s sake but because there’s continuity. Traditions aren’t easily discarded; they’re a source of pride. I feel looked-after in these restaurants in a way I’ve only experienced in the most service-oriented fine dining establishments in the U.S.
Over the 60 years since Pellegrini’s opened, its influence—and the influence of the many immigrant restaurants that opened after 1954—has meant great coffee, and it’s meant something much more. From early morning until late night, Melbourne’s sidewalks are clogged with tables and chairs and people eating and drinking and sipping lattes as trams clang down the streets. Out in front of the Vic Markets, people carry their bratwursts and croissants and share happy conversation before they do the week’s shopping. The cafes of Melbourne are not just places where great coffee happens. They’re places where breakfast happens, where lunch happens, where mid-afternoon drinks and people-watching happen. Woven into the fabric of the city as surely as the tram tracks that crisscross its streets and the wrought iron that spindles across the facades of its Victorian row houses, the cafes of Melbourne are where life happens.
