I Love Lucy's

Well, we definitely didn't drive to dinner last night - although I never cease to be surprised how draining even a 15 minute walk can be in Austin's summer heat.

If you're an Austinite, you'll probably already know that Lucy's is the fried chicken spin off of local upscale eatery Oliva. If you're a tourist like me, you simply spotted it on the way to buy milk at the local HEB and thought it looked good. Either way, it's definitely worth the walk from central SoCo, no matter how warm the evening.

Lucy's seem to like frying stuff. Livers, gizzards, tomatoes, oysters - even meatloaf - all get popped in the deep fat fryer. This isn't a bad thing. Nor are the deep fried devilled eggs we had for a starter. Sorry, appetizer.

At long last we're getting the hang of eating out in America. Back home, we're used to eating out being the main activity of our evening - yet here, we've found ourselves walking out of even upmarket restaurants less than an hour after we entered them thinking "err, what now?".

[Devilled Eggs - Deep Fried]

If you haven't eaten in the US, the speed at which restaurants operate at can come as a surprise.

The nightmare scenario for a waiter is that there might be a moment in the evening when there is no food on the table.

This must be avoided at all costs, as if their tips get reduced by a dollar for every minute of food free table.

Entrees (main courses) always arrive as the last mouthfuls of starter are swallowed (if not earlier). Desert orders are taken halfway through the mains to ensure they arrive the very second the knife and fork are put down.

[All The Good Stuff]

We've tried explaining to waiters we're in no rush. We've even learned that the term for how us awkward Europeans do things is called 'eating coursed out'. But it doesn't work. Waiters hover saying "do you want your mains now?" every fifteen seconds. Food arrives, goes back, comes out again. You can sense a feeling of rising panic.

So at Lucy's we kept things calm by simply not telling them what we wanted.

[Pink but Powerful]

First we had a watermelon margarita (yum, far too easy to drink in quantity) while we read the menu. Slowly.

Then we ordered the devilled eggs, but wouldn't be drawn on whether we wanted anything else. (The eggs, by the way, are delicious).

For mains - when we did, eventually, order them - we went all-American. A basket of chicken pieces, corn bread, bowls of mac cheese and sweet potato. The waitress suggested putting honey (in little sauce sachets) on the chicken, and there's no doubt I'll be trying that at home.

A great meal, and we will absolutely be back. I need my meatloaf and gizzards.

Our top 5 US eating out experiences

Well, it's nearly time for our annual American adventure, so it seemed like a good time to look back at some of our top USA family food experiences. These aren't restaurant reviews - I'll leave that to the professionals - but our favourite examples of how fun, and downright foreign, food can be in the States. So, in no particular order ...

Kentucky Fried Chicken, somewhere in Massachusetts

[Chicken Livers? Pot pie?]

It was our first trip to America. It was dark and it was late. We were hungry. We were still shaking after the experience that was Boston's rush hour. We needed comfort food, and we spied a family favourite - KFC. A Zinger and chips would make everything good again.

As soon as we walked in, we knew something was wrong. This wasn't the KFC we knew from England. We expected to ask for fries, not chips, but this went deeper. Wedges? Mash? Green beans? "Comes with 2 sides and a biscuit". A biscuit? What in the name of God is going on here? Why are they giving me scones with my chicken?

I don't remember what we ate, but I know we ate in silence and got straight back on the road. Mash? Wedges? SCONES? 

Riscky's Barbeque, Fort Worth Stockyards

Look, I know it's for the tourists, but this place has a warm spot in the hearts of our family. It's the first meal we have each year after arriving in Fort Worth after our long transatlantic flight, and we look forward to this headlong plunge into Americana - stuffed animals nailed to walls, neon lights, witty signs promising to shoot trespassers - full-on BBQ themed chic.

And then there's the food - before the Hoxton American restaurant invasion, I'd never seen a beef rib before, let alone been offered as many as I could eat! And what exotic sides - home style fries, polish pickles and texas toast (I had to Google this - apparently it's double width bread that's too wide to fit in a toaster. Instead it tends to come fried. Go figure).

It's full-on comfort food - combine that with ultra-friendly waiting staff, and a huge Lone star beer, and we definitely feel welcomed to America.

House of Prime Rib, San Francisco

[Just like this in the UK, really]

Now, I've never actually eaten here, but my wife has, and it's definitely an experience. On the web-site it says "Old-school, English-style restaurant serving acclaimed prime rib & martinis since the 1940s" - and it's the English-style that tickles us. Trust me, San Francisco, there's nothing like this in England. 

Waiters in white linen and three foot tall chef hats push around giant domed trolleys containing huge rib roasts. Would you like it 'English-style' or the Henry VIII style? Would you like creamed spinach with that? Or would you like a half hour demonstration on how they convert a lettuce into an 'appetising' tossed salad? But there's yorkshire pudding, so it must be English.

If you come to England, don't go to a Beafeater. After this you'll be seriously disappointed.

(Thanks to John Pastor for the image)

Home Slice, Austin

I've waxed lyrical about this place before, and I will again. It's not just that they're the best pizzas in world (ah, hyperbole), it's the whole package.

Mexican chefs twirling pizza dough above their heads. Dark, cool decor and a hip crowd being served by gorgeous tattooed waiters. 'In Crust we Trust'. And trust me, I'll be eating there in a just a couple weeks.

The Old Country Store, Lorman, MS

Now, I can't claim to be an expert on fried chicken (although I've had fun cooking it), but many claim this place does the best damn fried chicken in the whole of Mississippi. Whether you agree or not, you can't fault it in terms of experience - and that's all down to the owner, Arthur Davies ('Mr D').

Mr D loves his customers (he spoke to every one of us), and he loves his chicken. In fact, he loves it so much, he just can't help but sing about it, in a delightful gospel baritone. Over to you, Mr D!

The Fried Chicken and Cornbread Diet

Probably the biggest problem with my annual foodie tours of the US is my ever expanding waistline - last year's tour of Texas BBQ and New Orleans added another stone (14lbs) to a body that hadn't quite recovered from the previous year's tour of the South.

[Fried chicken, cooling]

I've always been a bit of a half hearted dieter - I love cooking, eating out and being cooked for - so the diet will always start properly tomorrow. However, I might just have found a diet that works for me - and it involves fried chicken!

Well, okay, not directly - let me explain. It's a fasting diet - the '5:2'. For five days I can eat pretty much what I want (which I'm really good at) and for two I have to eat very little indeed.

Now, this might sounds like agony - and it is - but it's more than made up for by the five days of freedom. So how do I get through those two days? Well, I fantasise about food of course! Hardcore fantasise.

Last week, I got a bee in my bonnet that I would break my fast with the best chili ever made. For all of my fast day I researched, and boy there's so many options. Beans or no beans? Minced or chopped beef? Rice or bread? (For me, the answers were beans, mince, bread - sorry Texas!)

[Chicken, frying]

I dusted off encyclopedic tomes on American cookery and I read every single blog, online recipe and forum I could find. It took an entire day to source and cook the ingredients (three different types of dried chili, and I never found the Mexican oregano - on my shopping list for Texas this year).

And I produced the best damn chili I have ever eaten. It was so good, I'd cleaned the bowl before I had remembered to photograph it! If you'd like to replicate it, it was loosely based on this article and recipe from The Guardian.

This week, I wanted fried chicken and cornbread with an almost hallucinatory passion. Again, I devoured every article and opinion I could find. I decided on a shallow fried, skillet pan method. I didn't brine, but went for an 8 hour soak in buttermilk instead. I kept my seasoning simple - just salt, pepper and smoked paprika - but I did stumble across Colonel Saunders secret recipe on my travels.

The Guardian's well researched recipe agreed with my plans - so I followed their instructions and did a test batch for my daughter's dinner, which looked seriously delicious. 

[Seriously good cornbread]

As for cornbread, again the Guardian and I agreed on approach - a simple, toasted cornmeal soaked overnight in buttermilk. But I also wanted to try and replicate something I talked about in a very early post - Lockhart's cornbread. The Telegraph suggested pouring over butter and honey, and I don't need asking twice.

So ... did I produce the best ever fried chicken and cornbread? Well, nearly. When I cooked the full batch of chicken later in the evening, it was harder to control the temperature and I nearly lost the crispy coating on some of the chicken. The cornbread was great - but you know, it would have liked more butter and honey. So one fast day soon, I know I'll be fantasising about how I'm going to make that meal again, even better.

The Great Southwest Canyon Road Trip - Cedar City to the Grand Canyon

[Oh dear, it's April and I still haven't finished my tales of last year's road trip. Apologies if this post is a little rushed, but I can't really tell you about this year's plans until last year is done and dusted. To remind you, a 'clerical error' (I booked the wrong hotel) meant we didn't end up staying in Bryce, as planned, but in Cedar City instead ...]

[Out of the clouds on Hwy 14]

It's telling that I don't have a single photo of Cedar City (the place we never planned to visit). It's a charming enough Mormon town, neat and tidy.

I can recommend the craft beers and pizza at the Centro Pizzeria without hesitation. But it never inspired me to take a picture.

We drove out of town on Hwy 14, along another scenic route that's only open half the year.

As it wound up back onto the plateau, to record breaking altitudes, my passengers were strangely quiet - was it perhaps they're now used to narrow winding roads with sheer drops on one side, and almost zero visibility as we climbed into the clouds? Or perhaps sheer terror had rendered them numb?

The highway takes you through high plateaus and ancient lava flows to join US-89, and then on to Kanab - once known as the most remote town in the USA, until US-89 reached it. Now it's a collection of little cafes and camping shops, and quite charming.

[Navajo Bridges]

From Kanab, there's two routes - US-89 and US-89a, and the windier roads and the promise of the Navajo Bridge made 89a the obvious choice. This is beautiful but desolate country, with the Vermillion cliffs towering over us on the left for miles and miles. Imagine the surface of Mars, but with the occasional glint of metal in the distance from the roofs of the Indian trailers. The poverty of the Indians in these inhospitable places is shocking - but I'll save my thoughts on that for another post.

We got to see another side of the Indians at the Cameron Trading Post, a popular stop just outside the east entrance to the Grand Canyon's South Rim. This place is a slightly tacky emporium for all things Indian - dream catchers, Navajo rugs - but after seeing their living conditions out in the desert, it's hard to begrudge their desire to make a quick buck from the tourists.

How we didn't crash on the approach to the Canyon, I do not know, as it's hard to drive safely while always looking out the right for glimpses of the world's largest hole in the ground. And when the clouds cleared and we had a chance to stop, woah, what a vast hole it is.

The next three days were spent taking photos that failed to capture the awe and majesty of the Canyon - but that didn't stop us, and thousands of selfie-stick waving tourists, from trying.

[A Very Big Hole]

The Grand Canyon South Rim is not a place to escape the masses, but the village has a strange charm.

This is where American mass tourism was born - with the Bright Angel Lodge and El Tovar Hotel complexes catering for the USA's first major tourist attraction in the early 20th century. The newly completed railroad brought thousands of tourists from the east and west coasts to gawp at the Canyon, much like we did.

Catering at the Bright Angel Lodge was enthusiastic, robust and a bit amateur - school dinners with a smile. The waiters were particularly sweet - each was a foreign student, with their name and country of origin on their badge. Alas, poor Svetlana from Sweden had no idea how idea how to open a bottle of wine and Rudy from Romania forgot our order, but you couldn't help but forgive them.

From the Canyon, we drove down to Flagstaff, for a little bit of Route 66. I've travelled the Mother Road before, and was hoping that Flagstaff would be as lovely as I remembered it - and of course it was. There's two historic hotels in the centre - last time I stayed in the Weatherford, and this time we stayed in the Monte Vista. I would recommend either!

After Flagstaff, we wound down the windows, pumped up the American rock classics, and powered down Route 66 towards Seligman. Well, we did for a bit, until I was told to turn off the 'old man music'. Seligman is the home of Route 66 kitsch, and always worth a stop for '66 t-shirts, coasters, bottle openers, badges and all the other paraphernalia you need for your friends back home.

[I can't have one, apparently]

I got a double fix of Route 66 in Kingman, as the town was the host to this year's Route 66 festival (I was lucky enough to catch it in Galena, Kansas, the year before).

This gave me a chance to coo over some shiny American classic cars, before the final haul across the desert back to Las Vegas - including the obligatory stop for a vertigo inducing view of the Hoover Dam.

So that was it, Road Trip 2015 had come to end. I gave back the keys to the trusty Mazda CX-5 - we'd done 1,163 miles together - 2,410 if we include my Texas trip.

Time to start planning 2015 - oh, who am I kidding, it's already booked. I'll tell more later.

Krispy Kremes in the Waffle Maker and other Doughnut Musings

[Worth the messy waffle maker!]

Last night I put a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut in my waffle maker. Why? Because the Internet told me to.

Now, obviously I don't do everything the Internet tells me. That could get messy. But this I would wholeheartedly recommend - the end result is sticky, chewy and quite delicious. Many thanks to OhBiteIt for the tip!

(Oh, and it did get messy - don't use your much loved, American import, can't be cleaned with water Waring Pro for this, whatever you do. The waffle iron fills with sugar that's almost impossible to get out and burns horribly. Many thanks to my lovely wife, Angie, for eventually getting it clean).

[My photo isn't as pretty]

Cambridge has been invaded by US sweet-and-fast food recently - first Cinnabon at Lion's Yard, the Dunkin' Donuts at the Grafton, and now Krispy Kreme at the Grand Arcade.

Personally, I find all of these just too sweet - I'm more of a fan of American savouries - and all push you to buy in ridiculous quantities.

For our waffle experiment, we needed just six doughnuts - but we left with twelve. Why? Because twelve is just 45p more expensive than six. So we now have six in the freezer waiting for me to come up with an easy clean solution to the sticky waffle problem.

However, like bacon and pancakes, that cloying sweetness leads to another very American idea - combining them with something intensely savoury.

I first encountered this at District Donuts Sliders Brew in New Orleans. We had their 'fancy' doughnuts - if memory serves me correctly, I had apple and cinnamon and my wife had salted caramel - but what everyone else seemed to be eating was their 'Croquenuts'.

[Mmm. Doughnuts]

These were griddled doughnuts filled with ham, cheese and bechamel sauce - obviously inspired by the French croque monsieur, but served in a way that could only be dreamt up by Americans. They look delicious - and dangerously messy. All I could see was cheese and sauce dripping out of the ring doughnut's hole ...

I've since discovered that this savoury doughnut wasn't a one off. My friends on Facebook didn't share my enthusiasm for this - the 'The Bacon Mac & Cheese Donut' by Philly based PYT. I thought it looked awesome.

So this was my prediction - Doughtnuts will be the next Cupcake. The next food trend to cross the Atlantic will be the artisan Doughnut, that we'd see Doughnut pop-ups in Hoxton within the year, and I was right - here's Dum Dum Doughtnuts on Bethnal Green Road.

So come on Cambridge, let's join in. Let's not let the Americans take over. Cambridge needs a proper, local-run doughnut shop, selling both sweet and savoury. And will I volunteer to do the taste testing.

Bread & Meat, Cambridge - A Review. And a Very Good Sandwich.

[Mmmm. Meat]

My original title for this post was going to be 'the best sandwich in Cambridge' - but not only would that set off a hyperbole alarm, I worry I'm not qualified to make that judgement.

I haven't tried the delicious looking focaccia at nearby Aromi, or the ciabatta at Urban Shed (currently rated no2. place to eat on Tripadvisor!) or the pizza-oven baked breads of Charlie's on Burleigh Street.

But I will say one thing for sure - this was a seriously, no joking, not messing, hyperbole free really really good sandwich.

Bread & Meat sits in the trendy Peas Hill food quarter, along with independents like Aromi and Smokeworks (and chains like Cau, Jamie's and Zizzis). Sitting there, I was again reminded of the Eriana Taverna (where Smokeworks now resides) - a Cambridge institution with a menu the length of the Old Testament. Now the fashion is towards much smaller, or even single item menus. Flatiron and Burger & Lobster in London leap to mind, or even Steak & Honour closer to home, with its almost zen like simplicity (cheese - or no cheese?).

[People at Tables]

So Bread & Meat is not a classic sandwich bar of old, with tubs of gloopy fillings in a refrigerator cabinet, ready for ladling into your choice of white, brown or baguette. At its most basic, it's simply a choice between pork or beef. Porchetta or topside. There's a veggie option, a daily special, wedges or slaw for sides, but that's it.

Now I love restaurants with short menus, because that should mean they've had to a chance to practice, to get it right, to tinker and tune and get their dish close to perfection. Bread and Meat did not let me down.

I went for the roast pork - in my mind a sandwich well overdue a re-invention. The novelty of the hog roast at the village fete has long passed - soft white bap, flavourless meat, teeth endangering rock hard crackling, salty grey stuffing and ladles of baby-food like apple sauce. Well let me assure you, if that was the nadir of pork baps, Bread & Meat was its apex.

[Bicycle in Cambridge Cliche]

Here we had freshly baked ciabatta that actually tasted of olive oil. Pork that tasted of pig, a lovely mixture of meat and unctuous fat. Light as air crackling, of the sort I wish I could produce reliably at home. And no baby-food sweetness - instead a vinegary salsa verde to cut through the fat.

This was an extremely good sandwich - but is it really the top dog (or pig)?

There's a sense we're having a bit of a local sandwich revolution at the moment - and obviously, as a service to you, dear reader, I feel I should try them all so I can feel truly qualified to judge the very best sandwich in Cambridge. Watch this space!

5 American Christmas foods you won't see in the UK - and 5 UK foods you won't see there!

 [All American Christmas Lunch!] 

We in the UK have had a long love affair with American food. The latest trend is Thanksgiving - there might not be a single Wampanoag indian in the whole of London, but that doesn't stop us giving thanks that we can gobble down more turkey - Amazon tell us that sales of Thanksgiving foodstuffs are up 804% since 2011.

So what about American Christmas traditions? aren't they the same as ours? We've all seen plenty of Christmas dinners in American movies. There's a big turkey in the middle of the table, just like ours, and plenty of bowls of steaming, err, stuff. There's the question - what exactly is in all those steaming, delicious bowls? I had to investigate ...

[Green Beans and Onions]

1. Green beans. Now the Americans share our love/hate relationship with the Christmas sprout - but there's another vegetable even closer to their hearts. The green bean. Now I'm ambivalent about this humble bean - occasionally I'll have them gently steamed alongside my steak, but that's it. Well, it's on every American Christmas menu I can find - and no simple steaming here.

Nope, to be completely authentic we need Green Bean Casserole. This dish was originally created in 1955 by the Campbell soup company and even has its own Wikipedia entry. To simplify, take 2 cans of french beans for 1 can of Campbell's mushroom soup and half a tin of French's French Fried Onions. Stir. Bake. Eat. If more is more, add cheese.

2. Candied Sweet Potatoes. I can imagine how this one happened. Someone, somewhere, complained that their sweet potato wasn't, well, sweet enough. Ha, that's an easy problem to solve. Like the green bean casserole, the basic dish is almost brutal in its simplicity. One can of sweet potato or yam. Half a cup of brown sugar. A quarter of a cup of butter. And the all important secret ingredient - one and a half cups of marshmallows. Bake. Eat.

[Candied Yams]

I've actually eaten this delicacy in Memphis, and I'll tell you now, it's not subtle. It's like cake filling. Don't over do it.

3. Corn. Like most English people, I've got half a bag of icy sweetcorn in the freezer. Occasionally we've been known to boil a corn-on-the-cob. But what had never occurred to us was to mix it with the same weight of whipping cream. Oh, and add butter. And parmesan. Bake. Now we're looking at a proper Christmas dish.

4. Dinner rolls. You'd think, after all the sugar, butter, cream and cheese above, you'd never need more carbs? Don't be silly. You need bread. It's not optional. If you want, you can get seasonal and bake them into a wreath. The word I keep seeing in the recipes is 'buttery', and I suspect we're talking unsalted buttery too - to my tastes, American rolls are strangely sweet. But don't you dare leave them out.

[Christmas Jello Salad]

5. Christmas jello salad. I've never seen salad on a British Christmas table, but my idea of salad isn't the same as an American's. We're not talking a bag of Tesco salad leaves and a gloop of salad cream here. Instead, there's rich and creamy salads, such as the Waldorf, salads with cheese, nuts and rich dressings. Of course!

But the salad that made me stop in my tracks is the Jello salad. Described to me by my American friend, Chris, I thought this might be a peculiar Texan dish, so strange it might only unique to their family? Nope, a quick Google shows me a hundred recipes, but the approach is always basically the same. You need a green jelly (lime), a red jelly (cherry) and a clear jelly (lemon). Create and set a green layer, then mix cream cheese and marshmallows with the clear jelly to make the white layer. Set again. The pour on red. Then you have the three layer festive delight pictured!

So why is this a salad? Is this eaten with the main course or the desert? Chris, help us out here!

And in return, what dishes are we unlikely to see travelling back across the atlantic?

[I want these]

1. Roast potatoes. Mash is the American potato dish of choice, and it's likely to grace our table too. But one thing this anglo-irish house would never be without is roast potatoes. We might replace our turkey with beef, but would never, ever skip the roasties.

To my American readers, a word of advice - if you've never had these, then either try cooking them yourself or try them in Englishman's kitchen. Never eat them in an English sunday-lunch pub or an all-you-can eat carvery. These hard, leathery, bland frozen-and-deep-fried pockets of nastiness should be avoided at all costs. The best roasties are always homemade. In goose fat. I am so hungry right now.

2. Roast parsnips. The rest of the world considers parsnips as animal feed. Yet we roast them, along with our potatoes. What does that tell you about the British? Sweet, slightly chewy. That's parsnips, not the British.

[These pies aren't made of meat]

3. Mince pies. Right, let's get this straight. Mince pies haven't contained mince since the 18th century (except, perhaps a little suet if you're being authentic). This little pie has a long history, brought back by the Crusaders from Middle East (where the combination of fruit and meat is more common). The minced tongue and veal is now replaced (and perhaps improved) by alcohol soaked fruit.

Eating them - in our house certainly - has a degree of tradition. First, you gently peel off the lid. Then you cram in the same quantity of brandy butter, and perch the lid back on top. The butter melts into the hot pie, which you then liberally douse with cream. Now I'm feeling faint.

4. Brandy butter. What do you mean you don't have brandy butter in the US? It's pretty much what it says on the pot - brandy, butter and sugar, whipped together. Christmas pudding wouldn't be the same without it.

[Flaming Pudding]

5. Christmas pudding. Ah, but of course you don't have Christmas pudding either! This isn't a pudding in the American sense. It's more like a heavy cake comprised of dark sugars, bread crumbs, alcohol soaked fruits (again) and nuts. It's served hot, with lashings of the aforementioned brandy butter. Oh, and we set fire to it too. No, really.

And as a bonus - Christmas Crackers! Now, these crackers aren't food, like saltine or Graham, but they are a tradition that seems to stay firmly on this side of the Atlantic. My friend Chris (of salad jelly fame) tells me the story of when his family attempted to introduce a little 'old fashioned Englishness' into their Christmas - having spied these, no doubt, in some British period drama.

[Don't eat this]

During dinner, each cracker was carefully unpeeled and unwrapped, the hats worn and the jokes told. This tradition went on for years until Chris' English wife demonstrated their proper use - two people take hold of each end and pull - inside the cracker is a little bit of gunpowder, as used in a cap gun, which goes off with a satisfying crack. At this point the cracker then sprays its contents across the room, and you're sent scurrying under the table to find the small plastic gift. Such fun!

And finally, you really need to start celebrating Boxing Day. No, we have no idea why it's called that either. But it does mean you can eat the same food all over again.

Happy Christmas!

Further reading (and inspiration)

Christmas Traditions: Britain vs. America
10 Ways Brits Do Christmas Differently to Americans