Recently, Ruth Reichl reposted an article she had written in 1986. “Adventuring with the Happy Eater” recounted a meal she shared with Calvin Trillin and a few other gastronomic celebrities (Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters among them). Now Trillin, if you don’t know his work, is no culinary snob—or rather he IS, but in reverse. Unimpressed with fancy eats, he generally sings the praises of foods that fly below the radar of other people (snobs). For example, he insists that the best restaurant in all of the US of A is Arthur Bryant’s barbecue joint in Kansas City.
Naturally, while driving across the Mississippi bridge a few years ago, I wondered about that. Then, just a few feet from the Missouri end of the bridge, I spotted a small sign: “Arthur Bryant’s, next right” (or some such directions). We hung that right, and drove into a part of town that was clearly in the midst of “urban removal.” Most of the buildings where poor (read: “black”) folks had once lived were gone. Nothing remained but small piles of rubble and weeds.
Except for one building.
Arthur Bryant’s was a simple storefront, in a place devoid of other stores. Inside were formica tables, and across the back, a wall of thick plexiglass that appeared to be bullet-proof. Behind that, workers manned the pits where vast quantities of succulent meats turned on spits or dangled from racks in the savory smoke. Stacked against the inside of the plexiglass was a wall of white pullman loaves. Next to the bread, a low slot, perhaps four inches high, and twelve inches wide, connected the pitmen with their customers. I leaned down to the counter and gave my order: a sandwich of barbecued brisket, burnt ends. My wife ordered something else, ribs maybe.
The pitman, who had hands that could easily palm a basketball, grabbed a heaping handful of meat—maybe a pound and a half or two— plopped it onto a paper plate, then plucked two slices of white bread from the window and leaned them up against the steaming tower of beef. He did the same for my wife’s order. At the right end of the plexiglass wall, someone collected our money—and offered The Sauce.
Rest assured; having read Trillin’s praises for The Sauce, we were not about to miss it. As we headed for an open table with our trays, I noticed a shallow glass-fronted case on the left-hand wall. Inside was a cartoon of the late Arthur Bryant standing at the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter asked but one question, before allowing the new guy to enter Heaven:
“Did you bring The Sauce?”
I ate all of my “sandwich” (enough for a family of four), and half of my wife’s. I used the white bread to mop up any traces of meat juices and sauce still on the paper plates.
And I would do it again.
Right now, if possible.
The reason I’m torturing myself, at the moment, is that much of what Ms. Reichel wrote seemed so familiar. Not her description of Trillin, but the structure of her piece, and even its ending, reminded me of something I once wrote about a memorable meal (in NYC, not KC). I know I’ve told the story before—so, if the name Zal Yanofsky sounds too familiar—coming from me—you’re not required to re-read it.
It won’t be on the quiz.
My Dinner With Zal
Did I ever tell you about my day with the late Zal Yanofsky, former lead guitarist for the Lovin’ Spoonful?
Decades ago, long before I was the upright citizen you see today, I was a struggling young illustrator/designer, living in an empty apartment in NYC. Well, pretty much empty: I had a mattress, a wok, an answering machine, and all the other stuff that an illustrator/designer needs. At that time, I was taking any kind of art job I could find—which ranged from some truly sleazy drawings for skin magazines to occasional spots for The New York Times.
One of my regular clients—regular in the sense of “repeat customer”—was a little rock band called The Camaros. They needed a logo, and posters to staple annoyingly wherever they could, etc. There was no money in it, of course, but it was steady, and it allowed me to cultivate the illusion that I was moderately hip. Two of the people from that band, Murray and Diane are good friends of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian. Murray you’ve probably heard—his day job was writing jingles for TV ads (he wrote the pseudo-Native-American stuff you heard in the background of the old Mazola—“We-Call-It-Maize”—commercials; the bass voice that sounded so authentically Indian was that of Murray Weinstock). Diane was the sultry singer/saxophonist of the group—you’ve probably never heard her. Once, in a recording studio, downtown—somewhere in the thirties, I watched as she recorded the vocal and sax tracks to a song called “Too Hot to Handle, Too Cool to Touch.”
She said she wrote the song about me.
Anyway, this is not really about Murray and Diane (who were married to each other at the time), but about their friend Zalman. When Zal left the Spoonful, he took all his money back to Canada—a lot of folks were going to Canada in those days—and opened up a luxury restaurant in Kingston, Ontario. Chez Piggy is, as far as I know, still going strong. Anyway, Zal came into town one day, ostensibly to visit the Weinstocks—but really to eat.
We all (some seven or eight of us) met at a Chinatown dive, where we ate practically everything on the menu. We began eating at lunchtime, and were still eating when it started to get dark. If you have any questions about who Chez Piggy is named for, forget them. I may have been, at one time, a serious trencherman—but Zal was unbelievable.
Appetizer after appetizer disappeared into his stringy beard—spareribs and wings and shrimp and dumplings and spring rolls. Soups of all descriptions vanished—leaving no traces but the residual droplets on his mustache—egg drop, hot and sour, sliced chicken with hot peppers. He marched triumphantly down the menu, making stops at each of the Seafood entries—shrimps, prawns, and scallops—all gone, he pranced through the Poultry—the bones of ducks and chickens tossed away like plucked feathers, he begrudged not the Beef—ignoring nothing, he promenaded proudly through each of the entrees listed under Pork. Virtually wiping out the Vegetarian dishes, he resisted not the dishes made with Rice, nor was he afraid of negotiating with Noodles.
He was no longer the skinny goofy-looking kid on the Spoonful album covers, but he was nowhere near large enough to explain his Rabelaisian capacity. I, of course, strained to keep up appearances. No one else even tried—people lay back on all sides, their bellies swollen like ticks, pathetically useless little legs and arms sticking out at their sides, staring in exhausted disbelief at this consummate consumer of comestibles. Finally, the meal came to an end.
Many in the room seemed to be relieved.
Acting as tugboats for each other, we nudged and prodded ourselves away from the table, and squeezed out onto the sidewalk. Refreshed by the cool night air, I sensed that Zal’s trip to the city was incomplete. I casually mentioned an unassuming corner place in Little Italy, where we could get some Espresso or Cappuccino, and some Cannoli, Pasticiotti, Sfogliatele, Pignoli, or—for the truly spent—perhaps a glass of seltzer with Tamarindo.
The man practically raced me up Mulberry Street.
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Thanks for this, Gary. A welcome change from the Trillin paean. Downright realistic by comparison.