Denveater

Powwow for poobahs of daffy derring-do: The 10th Annual Okie Noodling Tournament Pt. 1

***Over the course of the next few days I'll spill all the half-baked beans I happily gathered at the 10th Annual Okie Noodling Tournament in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, while hanging with an array of insiders whom I'd now count among the coolest, kindest, oldest souls a person can be lucky enough to encounter all at once.***

 Let's get a few things straight:

Noodling, also called grabbling, is fishing for catfish with your hands, or, in some cases, feet—essentially grabbing hold of them from the inside by letting them clamp down on your arms & legs, risking digits in the process, & then wresting them loose from the riverbed nooks & crannies they occupy.

It's legal in a handful of states, including Oklahoma, where flathead catfish are the favored catch (& excluding Missouri, whose die-hard noodlers do it on the down-low while grappling with local lawmakers to get the papers pushed).

The tournament is held one day every July in the parking lot of Bob's Pig Shop, a venerable BBQ joint & de facto antique showcase of curios I've only begun profiling here.

On the eve thereof, the noodlers, who operate on the honor system, can head to any fishing hole they choose, so long as it's in Oklahoma, as of 7pm. They have 24 hours to make it to the weigh-in station, manned by OSU fisheries biologist Joe Bidwell & some of his grad students.

Meanwhile, thousands gather (4,000 this year, not a huge crowd by the standards of recent years until you consider the 100-plus-degree heat) watch noodling demos, slurp Sno-Cones & guzzle beer, chow down on ribs & of course fried catfish platters (more on which later), try their luck in catfish-eating contests & catfish cookoffs (more on which ditto)—&, to the strains of live country, cheer on the noodlers as they trickle in with their catches. As the deadline nears, the trickle becomes a gusher & North Ash looks like a pick-up parade whose poobahs—both human & piscine/piscatorial—are filthy, sweaty, bloody badasses.

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Prizes go to both the most massive beast & the poor puniest loser—the latter this year being 12 & the former being 

 68!!

Prizes also go to the biggest stringer, a group of 3. After the noodling queen is rather haphazardly crowned—

among the past queens onstage, including noodling king Lee McFarlin's wife & daughter (the 3rd & 4th from L, respectively), the leftmost one was in her cups in all kinds of ways—

the band plays on for the boozy crowd of proud rednecks, goofy hipsters, grandmas, toddlers, punch-drunk camera crews, hardcore outdoorsmen & the women who love them & vice versa into the night—& until they meet again next year.

(We straight for now? If not, or even if so, go here to get the cinematic scoop from filmmaker-founder Bradley Beesley & the gang.)

Bob's Pig Shop, Pauls Valley, OK: THE COOLEST PLACE ON EARTH?

We at Denveater grew up in big bad Oklahoma. 

Like megamesmerizers The Flaming Lips, like notorious Normanite & owner of great gourmet shop Forward Foods' Wampus (whom you may have met here), like doc-directing dynamo Bradley Beesley & spell-casting yarn-spinner 

 Phil Henderson—

fisheries biologist & proprietor for the past 3 decades plus of the beloved 76-year-old BBQ pitstop Bob's Pig Shop—I grew up in the Sooner State.

Unlike them, though, I can't take any credit for the global phenom that the Okie Noodling Tournament has become since its inception in 2000.

That said, this year, for the 1st time, I'm at least attending the bare-handed catfishing contest founded by Beesley & Henderson, scored in spirit by the Lips & rounded out by a Wampus-sponsored catfish cookoff.

The noodlers were off in a cloud of dust—or a spray of murk, I guess—as of 7pm CST this eve to go sticking their fists down the faces of ancient aquatic beasties, & they'll be due at the weigh-in in Bob's parking lot by no later than 7pm tomorrow (last year's piscine prizewinner was nearly 65 lbs.). 

Until then, I'll be stuffing my own face in the museum of major mementos & cracker-ass curios (in the positive sense) that is the Pig Shop dining room.

no relation 

look familiar? see way above & below

While the noodlers are flailing all over Lake Eufaula (or wherever their secret holes are), & the toddlers are flocking & gawking 'round the catfish-&-human-filled demo tank, & the cookoff contestants are grilling up to their gills, I'll be chowing down on 

the marinated & chopped Pig Sandwich

with red pepper–spiked pickle relish & some of the best table sauce I've ever tasted (catch the splotch at the bottom)—a vinegary variation on Phil's great-uncle's sweeter original—plus satisfyingly soupy, lightly spiced beans on the side;

hand-cut, skin-on, perfectly crisped fries coated in Phil's own special blend of seasonings;

& lordy knows what all else I've yet to try—the babybacks? the tamales with chili (does not equal chile)? the prime rib on house-baked sourdough? a bowlful of that table sauce I'd lap up in a patch of sunlight like a kitten? (kittenfish?) in a flash?

Tune in this weekend to find out.

Sucking Eggs at Red Rocks Grill

A large, liberal American in the Whitmanian sense, with a bloodlust to contradict my bleeding heart, I can never help but marvel how a good collection of wall-mounted hunting trophies really ties a room together into some sort of cheerfully morbid petting zoo. And since the Director, the Constant Watcher & I happened to be hashing out our plans for MORRISSEYTOWN—an amusement park (or, as we like to think of it, dejection park) based entirely around the lyrical death throes of everybody’s fave frontman of phantasmironica—just as we entered the Red Rocks Grill in Morrison (coincidence? think not), we were pretty sure we'd come to the right place. Its furry decor 

 

at once inspired a brainstorm for our own Life Is a Pigsty dead-petting zoo & made for an ideal setting in which to sketch out the details of the Meat Is Murder concession stand. (Not to mention a fitting pitstop before catching Jaws up at Film on the Rocks.)

But we were wrong. Foodwise, it was not the right place. That much became clear with a glance at the menu, one of those faux-newspaper inserts listing such "Red Rocks Originals" as a BLT & a Monte Cristo (what dictionary did they get their definition of "original" from?), a Santa Fe pasta with chicken, green chili & cheddar startlingly served with a flour tortilla, & a teriyaki chicken dinner dolefully described as "two 6 oz. breast [sic] drenched in teriyaki sauce"—maybe one of the exceptions to the guarantee that "most of our food is homemade"?

Certainly I'll eat crow (could probably just pull one down off the wall) if the dinosaur eggs weren't the finest becrumbed, cream-cheese-product-injected jalapeno-like objects ever to roll off an assembly line out & out of a box. 

As for the "special jalapeno jelly" it comes with—I'm thinking raspberry from a jar with a drop of hot sauce in it?

The rest was neither here nor there. There was nothing particularly wrong with the Director's combo plate #4, for instance—a steak-&-bean burrito with green chile plus two shredded beef tacos. When I asked him how it was, he shrugged. The bite or two I took revealed a fairly mild green chile & not much else of note.

My taco salad with chicken was likewise just fine, with more lettuce under there than you'd think. If the salsa was made in-house, though, it did an amazing impression of Pace.

I think you must have to be pretty darn sharp to catch the sorts of nuances that would distinguish the Constant Watcher's Mexican burger from, say, a beef burrito, unless it's just the fries on the side. My own powers of observation weren't up to the task. I'm open to enlightenment on this one.

Either way I don't plan on coming back here to taste the difference for myself. One too many Mexican burgers and the next thing you know you're starring in Morrisseytown's Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others burlesque revue.

A Quick Bite of Toast

Toast's full name, Toast Fine Food & Coffee, says it all. This popular Littleton breakfast & lunch spot is indeed fine. I could just about end this post here.

Only since so many others apparently buy the presumed use of "fine" to mean "splendid"—"damn fine"—rather than "adequate," I have to wonder what I'm missing. Two possibilities come immediately to mind:

1) All the other AM options in Littleton (or the lack thereof), in the dull light of which Toast might indeed come across as fantastic.
2) All the signature items (putting aside for the moment my distrust of the concept of ordering wrong). 

As Rebecca from From Argentina with Love and I sat with our faces up to our eyeballs in motorcycle-helmet-sized mugs of (good, actually) coffee, we could see out just well enough to survey the almost studiously plain dining room of naught but Formica & folk art—mostly in search of our somewhat scattered if sincere server, but catching frequent glimpses of lofty stacks of pancakes & French toast that, in their thick drippiness, looked, indeed, damn fine. And while some flavors can probably rot your soul in seconds flat—e.g., the Oreo-crusted cakes with hot fudge, marshmallow Fluff & (not "or" but "&"—oof) whipped cream—others seem truly inspired. Sweet-toothless as I am, carrot cake flapjacks with cream cheese sauce & pecans sound dreamy rather than cloying even to me. And as for the savory Santa Fe French toast stuffed with egg, chorizo, green chiles & mixed cheeses & topped with avocado sauce & smoked chile sour cream—the day my last drop of sexual attraction dries up is the day I order me up a big ol' plate of that flabtastic nonsense. Hell, two. 

As it was, though, I got the hefty-enough omelet with cheddar, havarti & gruyère, topped with pork green chile & accompanied by fried potatoes & rye toast.

And it was, yes, fine. I wonder in hindsight if combining 3 cow's milk cheeses that, on the spectrum of mild to pungent, all land somewhere in the middle is a missed opportunity—maybe a blend of fresh goat & smoked jack, say, would prove more distinctive. For its part, the green chile didn't ricochet around my mouth like the best, zingiest ones do, but I liked how thoroughly threaded through with stringy bits of pork it was.

Meanwhile, if I ordered wrong—or at least less right than the pancake pickers—Rebecca ordered wronger. A bit of her crab cake Benedict yielded more filler than crab under flat-out awful, gummy hollandaise with a weirdly sour, not lemony but acrid, aftertaste.

Of course, there are other answers to the question of what I'm missing. Like "the truth" or "my marbles." I appreciated what I saw on other tables, & the menu descriptions thereof, enough to think my assessment could be off & to ensure that I'll return. Plus, it's a challenge—if neither Toast nor Marmalade can ultimately cut the mustard, the field will be wide open for someone to launch Syrup or Schmear or some such & sweep the cafe competition. Eh?

The 9th Door: Lo, Warm Snacks!

I looked, & it turns out The 9th Door is an anagram for Oh, Hott Dinner! It's not quite as accurate as it is resonant, though.

It's not quite accurate first & foremost in a literal sense. A, grazing on tapas isn't de jure the same as eating dinner, even if it turns out that way de facto. In Spain, of course, tapas are essentially happy hour snacks; it's just that happy hour starts later & lasts longer than it does in the U.S., as does dinner afterward. (I remember reading somewhere maybe a decade ago that as their nation moved increasingly toward the 9-to-5 workday while their nightlifestyle held steady, Spaniards were becoming a chronically sleep-deprived people. Wouldn't it be a trip if the whole nation started a supersuave Spanish-style fight club?) B, tapas are as frequently served cold as, if not more often than, they are hot.

It's also not quite accurate in a figurative sense—at least not in my book, where what's hott & sexy is what's quiet & full of private corners for lingering in. I've never been here when it wasn't cramped to the point of SRO & the house music wasn't pounding. 

As for the quality of the food, it runs anywhere from hot to lukewarm—some things are great, others just so-so. I can't help but suspect The 9th Door's enormous popularity is to some extent by default, a reflection of its lack of local competition in serving even close to the real thing. (Which, it should be noted, may not be the case much longer; Westword's Jason Sheehan reported just this week on the soon-to-open tapas bar Ondo's.)

Take the tostas truchas & the tuna-stuffed fried olives, neither of which lived up to their appetizing promise.

 

Without enough of the advertised horseradish, the smoked-trout spread was fairly one-note in its fishiness; the olives, for their part, clearly came from a jar in the supermarket aisle, thereby defeating their own especially evocative-of-groves-by-the-sea purpose. 

Grainy polenta was a disappointment, too, all the more stark in contrast to the fatty excellence of the lamb & vibrant "mole verde," basically pesto, it accompanied.

But the pan-seared scallops—served as a tapa fria, believe it or not, with what I remember a sort of tomato-pancetta relish & sauteed greens—were a delightful surprise, full of nooks & crannies of varying texture & flavor to discover.  

And the fat goat-cheese-&-almond-stuffed dates were as delectable as they didn't look.

While lending them the veneer of surgical refuse, the skin of serrano ham beat even the hard-to-beat, more typical cummerbund of bacon stuffed dates wear, at once pungent & delicately crackly. 

Paired with a few smart glasses of wine, above all the plenty peppery Errazuriz carménère (a long-lost grape of Bordeaux turned Chilean expat that's quickly becoming a favorite varietal of mine), it all made for a very nice meal—or, as the anagram would have it, an Icy Meal Never. That, I'd say, is a little more accurate than the one we started with. 

Pineapple is next! Mitch Hedberg's 20 best food jokes

Maybe because we're all in such memorializing moods these days, I've been thinking a lot about 1 of my all-time favorite comedians, the late Mitch Hedberg. I've paid homage to him before; he was a great one for food jokes. Whether or not his gloriously apparent preoccupation with snacking was a reflection of his tragic drug habit, he had a gift for the grub gag. 

Of course, he had a gift for the guffaw regardless of the topic; you can read a fairly comprehensive sampling here. Or, better yet, you can buy his CDs—including the 1 titled Strategic Grill Locations or the 1 that pictures him drinking a Coke—here.

***

I was gonna get a candy bar; the button I was supposed to push was "HH," so I went to the side, I found the "H" button, I pushed it twice. Fuckin' potato chips came out, man! Turns out they had a "HH" button. You need to let me know. I'm not familiar with the concept of "HH." I did not learn my AA-BB-CCs, god god dammit dammit. 

I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes I will drop it, so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. 

This is what my friend said to me; he said, "Guess what I like, mashed potatoes." It's like,"Dude. you gotta give me time to guess. If you're gonna quiz me, you must insert a pause in there." 

A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef.

When you buy a box of Ritz crackers, on the back of the box, they have all these suggestions as to what to put on top of the Ritz. "Try it with turkey and cheese. Try it with peanut butter." But I like crackers, man, that's why I bought some, 'cause I like crackers! I don't see a suggestion to put a Ritz on top of a Ritz. I didn't buy 'em because they're little edible plates! You've got no faith in the product itself.

I think they could take sesame seeds off the [McDonald's] menu and I wouldn't even care. I can't imagine five years from now saying, "Damn, remember sesame seeds? What happened? All the buns are blank!"...How's a sesame seed stick to a bun? That's fuckin' magical! There's got to be some sesame seed glue out there! Either that or they're adhesive on one side. "Take the sesame seed out, remove the backing, place it on the bun. Now your bun will look spec-tac-u-lar." What does a sesame seed grow into? I don't know; we never gave it a chance...What the fuck is a sesame? It's a street... It's a way to open shit... 

I like baked potatoes. But I don't have a microwave oven, and it takes forever to bake a potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes I'll just throw one in there, even if I don't want one. 'Cause by the time it's done, who knows? 

I went to a pizzeria, I ordered a slice of pizza, the fucker gave me the smallest slice possible. If the pizza was a pie chart for what people would do if they found a million dollars, the fucker gave me the "Donate it to charity" slice. I would like to exchange this for the "Keep it!" 

I like rice. Rice is great when you're hungry and you want 2,000 of something. 

If I was on death row and given one last meal I would ask for a fortune cookie. "Come on, 'long prosperous life!'" 

(Talking about his drink onstage) Look at all the limes in this goddamn thing! This fuckin' thing is tropical! Look at the limes, how they float. That's good news. Next time I'm on a boat and it capsizes, I will reach for a lime. Like I'll be water-skiing without a life preserver, people will say "Shit!" and I will pull out a lime. I'm saved by the buoyancy of citrus. 

My manager saw me drinking backstage and he said "Mitch, don't use liquor as a crutch." I can't use liquor as a crutch, because a crutch helps me walk. Liquor severely fucks up the way I walk. It ain't like a crutch, it's like a step I didn't see. 

What am I drinking? NyQuil on the rocks, for when you're feeling sick but sociable.

I'm an ice sculptor. Last night I made a cube. 

I saw this wino, he was eating grapes. I was like, "Dude, you have to wait." 

I saw this dude—he was wearing a leather jacket, and at the same time he was eating a hamburger and drinking a glass of milk. I said to him, "Dude, you're a cow. The metamorphosis is complete. Don't fall asleep or I will tip you over." 

I had a piece of Carefree Sugarless gum and I was still worried. It never kicked in. I took it back to the store and said "Bullshit!" 

I like how a duck's opinion of me severely depends on whether I may or may not have bread.

 I can't wait to get off the stage, because I've got some LifeSavers in my pocket and pineapple is next!

The best for last:

When you go to a restaurant on the weekends and it's busy they start a waiting list. They start calling out names, they say, "Dufresne, party of two. Dufresne, party of two." And if no one answers they'll say their name again. "Dufresne, party of two, Dufresne, party of two." But then if no one answers they'll just go right on to the next name. "Bush, party of three." Yeah, what happened to the Dufresnes? No one seems to give a shit. Who can eat at a time like this? People are missing! You fuckers are selfish. The Dufresnes are in someone's trunk right now, with duct tape over their mouths. And they're hungry. That's a double whammy. Bush, search party of three! You can eat when you find the Dufresnes. 

Bonus food joke no. 21 here. 

Anise in Chains: a drinkdown between Osteria Marco & Paris on the Platte

In a bar in Prague at the turn of the millennium, I had my very 1st taste of the historically notorious distillate of wormwood & anise that is absinthe. Served neat, 1 glass went down like 3. Two felt like 6. On the 3rd glass you went to see your mother & that just felt like 1, but then you came back & it seemed like 3 spilling over into 4 (Wait, really? She's quoting The Jerk *again*?) So, in short, intoxication exponential. And as for that 1st step I took afterward—a doozy.

Naturally, a couple years back when absinthe finally became legal in the States, we were all hot to lounge around in our velvet waistcoats making like Baudelaire (ah, sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup / Of life and death my heart has drunken up!) & getting mesmerized by 

the flame of an absinthe drip. 

It's a classic prep meant to cut any bitterness. Here's why it fails: it dilutes the alcohol, thereby leaving the bitterest taste of all. So while the bartender at the delusionally named Paris on the Platte did the absinthe drip I ordered there recently right, with the flaming sugar cube on the spoon & the side carafe of H₂O & whatnot, drinking it was literally a matter of going through fire & water just to get a minor buzz.

Compare that to the tower of power that was

the pitcher of Charteuse Siero I shared at Osteria Marco with my dear old pal P & his lovely lady J. Oh, & a 3-foot doll. Long story. 

Containing no hard liquor—only housemade moracello (to backform an Italian word from the bar's own ear-grater, "blackberrycello"), Chartreuse, ginger beer & muddled mint with a splash of prosecco—the concoction is nonetheless part of a complete mindfuck the way 
 
was part of a complete breakfast when I was a kid (only supplemented by lots of wine in lieu of of toast & a grapefruit half). Like absinthe, Chartreuse is suffused with a) anise flavor & b) mystery, made as it is & has been for centuries in a French Alpine monastery 

only two of whose monks know the complete recipe at any given time (Bert Hardy pic too fantastic not to swipe from here at Time.com, eh?).

At 40 proof, it's also a spell stronger than your average liqueur. And I'd never have thought that its licorice edge could blend so smoothly into something as darkly fruity as blackberry cordial—much less that the two together could mingle with sprightly mint, ginger & sparkling white with such electrifying results, as if at a soiree infiltrated by the smartest, slinkiest international spies in Monte Carlo. But so they can. The word "elixir" fits. Better still, so does "steal"—the whole dang pitcher clocks in at under $30.

The immoral of the story: it's amazing how the flavor of anise, distinct & even sharp as it is, can go with the flow. Coffee & nut flavors pair especially well, for instance, whether you toss a few coffee beans into your Sambuca & light it aflame or mix pastis with coffee, Frangelico, almond syrup & whipped cream to recreate Sel de la Terre's unforgettable café moresque (a hot twist on the classic Mauresque). Absinthe, for its part, is really no different; fear not to free it from the fetters of water, the results of the recipe being far less romantic than the ritual.

And in the wake of our rendezvous with Chartreuse Siero—followed by a tryst with OM's amazing blood-orangecello (i.e. aranciasanguignacello—yes!)—we know from romantic recipes.

Husted Collection Curios: Trade Winds Cookery, 1956 (sneak preview: fish popsicles!)

***Part of a semiregular series about my findings at the Margaret Husted Culinary Collection—a remarkable, undersung cookbook archive whose 1000s of specimens run the gamut from serious historical finds to quirky treats like this.***

In all its exotic mystery, the cover of Trade Winds Cookery: Tropical Recipes for All America by Norma A. Davis (not to be confused with  )

naturally caught my eye, filling me with urgent questions: What's that native girl doing on an 8'x8' island with a bunch of groceries? How did she get there? How long can she stand like that? Shouldn't someone send for help (like maybe the guy who drew her picture from the deck of his passing yacht or something, the heartless bastard)? Etc.

                                 

The recipes didn't disappoint, equally lush with illogic. Take the caviar ice cubes from, uh, Santo Domingo. Because when you think "sturgeon eggs," the republic that comes to mind is the Dominican one, right? Or, okay, Soviet, close enough. At any rate, what a clever idea, eh, freezing caviar with a little onion & lime juice in a tray so you can pop a cube or 2 into a nice cold glass of boutique vodka? 

Oh, wait. The cubes go on a plate with buttered toast points. Of course—why didn't I think of that? After all, what's a party without some stickless fish-egg popsicles & soggy croutons? (Seriously, am I missing something?)

For the record, I actually made some with tobiko, minced onion & lemon juice, thinking they'd make a good snack out of a shot of my fave bison-grass vodka. Here's what they look like in one of the tarantula-print candleholders the Director mistook for bar glassware when he bought them (speaking of lush illogic, especially since we use them all the time). Here's what they taste like—what they are, which is good if you don't mind bottoming up the dregs of piscine ova. (Hey, waiter, there's a flying fish fetus in my booze.)

Another startlingly dreamy-sounding recipe that I haven't made yet:

 

Avocado is a fruit, after all, used to make ice cream & smoothies the equatorial world over. Mashed with sugar, chocolate liqueur & a little citrus for balance, it'd make a fine dessert indeed—although I'd think seriously about substituting Amarula or Kahlúa for crème de cacao, just to up the intrigue a little. 

Really, the book's full of such breezy, balmy attention grabbers, from fried grapefruit

to this:

Should some enterprising reader be inclined to test any of the above, I'd welcome a guest post. 

Hey, ho—let's go! LoHi SteakBar A-OK on day 2

Okay, technically, B-OK. But to be B-OK on your 2nd day in business is in itself A-OK, eh?

So  like Joey & Johnny & Dee Dee too Mo & L & I got all revved up & ready to go to this brand-spanking already-hot spot in the East Highlands pronto on the strength of the juicy name alone, which covers more ground in 12 letters than any of the world's La Maison de la Casa Houses ever could, never mind their obscure minimalist postpostmodern equivalents (see, e.g., Root Down, a name you could be forgiven for thinking referred to anything from a BBQ shack to a raw-foods temple). But with "LoHi SteakBar," you know you've got your comfort zone, your upscale twist, your meat, your cocktails. (Plus it's an anagram for Aloha Brisket.) What more do you need? That's it & that's all you need, to quote Steve Martin in The Jerk—not one other thing.

Except this potted salmon. 

And this hummus. 

If I were down & getting kicked out of LoHi like Navin R. Johnson from his mansion, those would totally be 

my ashtray & my paddle game. 

In light of LoHi's easygoing, all-American bar & grillesque ways, both struck me as the unlikeliest of delights. The salmon was unusually creamy—less straightforwardly fishy than The Kitchen's, say, & more like taramosalata. Like postnatal taramosalata (heh). The hummus, meanwhile, we ordered skeptically on the waitress's rec but were convinced on sight by the gorgeously bubbled, soft & airy flatbread—& on taste by the fresh, light, clean, red-peppery spread itself.

Perhaps erring a little on the side of lightness & cleanness, however, were the gnudi—essentially flourless dumplings with ricotta & spinach—in tomato sauce.

Appealing as its simplicity was, all that the dish ultimately seemed to lack was a sufficient dash of S&P—just a little more would likely have brought out the full flavor of those basic ingredients.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum was the blue cheese fondue with housemade chips.

As Mo put it, after the first couple of bites something overpowering in it began to wear on the palate—not, I think, the blue cheese itself; maybe dijon? Something sharp & smoky at any rate. The chips were a touch greasy, but impressively thin & satisfyingly crackly.

Full as we were all getting by now, we had to remind ourselves where we were—this wasn't some Dip & Dumpling Den, this was the SteakBar. If we didn't eat steak & drink deep we might as well be tasting not this particular Pierian spring.

(Granted, we were already on our 3rd round by this point. It's probably equally true to say that, deeply drunk as we were all getting, we needed to remind ourselves where we were besides in our cups. Especially Mo with her ginormous—make that vodkanormous—

caviar martini  .)

So both she & L opted for steak frites—the strip steak with bearnaise & the ribeye with shallot sauce respectively.

Me, I slobbered all over the open-face steak sandwich on plain ol,' good ol' meat-&-mushroom-jus-soaked white toast—a terrific midnight snack that just happened to overlap with dinner. 

And actually it was almost midnight when we polished off our 5th-round—amazing, ultra-light & fresh (apparently chef Sean Kelly's mantra—but once again, given the place-name, who'd a thunk it?) banana daiquiris, nothing like the near-pudding they used to pour in the era of Rupert Holmes & fern bars—& blitzkrieg bopped our way out the door, agreeing that Kelly & crew really appear to have something here—something, like good steak itself, rare for all its familiarity. 

Love & marriage at Lucile's Creole Cafe

Hunger's a crock around most of the clock I'm on; love of food, food, food means never having to say you're hungry (or full, for that matter). But there is one time of day when stomaching the least bite sounds like a chore, anything more than that a downright dung-sweeping labor of Hercules—& that's early-to-mid morning. So when my friend Rebecca of From Argentina With Love suggested breakfast at the Wash Parkish outlet of Lucile's, I figured I'd just stick with chicory coffee (great, by the way—bracing but not bitter). Sure, it'd have been nice to give the repertoire a whirl since I hadn't been there in 15 years, when I used to brunch at the Boulder branch. But a doughnut's just a doughnut, even if it's a beignet, right?

Right. But a homemade biscuit's not a doughnut. It's a little bit of what I live for. And this was one of the better little bits I've encountered in a long spell. Not least for being, as bits go, giant (what, 6x6x3, maybe?).

 Funny I should  say that,  though, really,  because  texturally  Lucile's  biscuits aren't  standard-  bearers—not so  much the  layered, flaky  disks of  roadhouse  tradition  as snack cakes,  with a loose,  round crumb. 

But that crumb conveys so much buttery savor you can eat the things plain. And since the butter served on the side's foil-wrapped crap, such full flavor's key, especially for someone lacking the sweet tooth that true appreciation for Lucile's housemade preserves deserves. (That said, the orange marmalade's nice & heavy on the rind.)

So as long as I was snarfing after all, I got a side of red beans. Hey, it's not like I was suddenly ordering up a slop bucket. We were still just talking sides, right? 

Right. That's what we were talking. But it ain't what we were eating.

 

What we were eating was a big ol' bowl of rich, spicy, soupy beans & ham cooked on the bone. Salty but not too salty, thick but not too thick, it was so good I kept gobbling until I thought I couldn't eat another bite—which is when I came across a huge chunk of pork shaped exactly like a boomerang. I felt like throwing it on the off-chance that it would come back to me later, just when I needed it most.

As Rebecca lingered over her Eggs Jennifer—basically Eggs Benedict with spinach, tomato & avocado instead of ham, plus grits & spuds—

 

she pointed out the okra & grilled shrimp skewers the bartender was threading & arranging in a pint glass for bloody mary garnishes, & it occurred to me how beautiful they looked—like a bouquet. Then it occurred to me that, were I ever to become a white-clad bride, I'd want my bouquet to be a giant bloody mary. It'd be a nice day for a red wedding.

Then it occurred to me I might want to get married for that reason alone. Hey Lucile's, clear me an aisle; I'll be back, dragging the Director behind me—kicking & screaming, at least until we can figure out how to put a scotch into the buttonhole on his lapel.