BLUE CUISINE: Food and Melancholy

Like this but with a plate of food instead

In what is one of the fabled conjunctions of literature and food, Marcel Proust wrote, “...worn out by the gloomy day and by the perspective of a sad tomorrow, I put into my mouth a spoonful of tea in which I had softened a piece of madeleine” and unleashed the flood of memory that became the seven volumes popularly known as REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST.  That taste of tea and that buttery, scallop shaped cookie “made life’s vicissitudes indifferent to me [and] in the same way that love operates, fill[ed] me with a precious essence: or, rather this essence was not in me, it was me.”

Proust’s cure for melancholy, practically speaking, is as ancient as Hippocrates. That imbalance of black bile (gr. melan cholie), one of the four humors, provokes an excess of cold and dry in the body.  The warmth of the tea and the softly yielding cookie restore a sense of well-being, of oneness with the self.

It was years before I understood why I sought out such odd little places of eat in the years immediately after my divorce. In Portland I would return over and over again to the now defunct Eve’s Kitchen in the older Fred Meyer Stores, Joe’s in the Basement or Tosis on Sandy Boulevard. Walking into them was (and is) like passing into a time warp.  The decor never changed. Plastic flowers, faded and a bit dusty, were de riguer.  Great hash browns at breakfast,  hot roast beef sandwiches every day, meatballs the size of baseballs,  old fashioned soups and dinner specials so abundant and inexpensive that the late Preston McMann used to say they deserved state subsidies. Yes, the carrots and the string beans were overcooked, both the turkey and the beef gravy were over thickened. But it was familiar, uncomplicated. That was key and you left with a smile and a take-away box.

Clearly humankind, like every other creature that roams the earth, is left with the undeniable imprint of the first foods they ate. We associate them with security and well-being.  As we grow a little older, especially if we are privileged with strong regional or ethnic food traditions, the mere mention of a dish returns us. The dietitians are misguided when they condemn the idea of the happiness that food brings us in response to the excesses of some. The early morning reveries of a cop dunking his doughnut into his steaming mug of coffee momentarily escapes the hard uncertainties of his day.  In that, he has a kinship across time and space with Proust.


Charles Seluzicki

Review This

Back in the day when I thought I wanted to write freelance articles about food, I was offered chance after chance to review restaurants. I shied away from the assignment. I didn't want to subjectively judge   the work of people who have invested time, money and creative energy in their business. Okay, maybe my standards would have been objective, but how many different people write reviews - visit yelp (don't really, haters hate, it's what they do) to get an idea. The Queen of the Cliche™, Ruth Reichl started as a restaurant reviewer and she is so much better than the 1000s of hacktacular reviewers who will run an establishment into the ground for sport. 

I see about 2 movies a year, yet I read movie reviews. I'm currently TV-less, yet I am thankful to the Onion's AV Club for keeping me up to speed on TV - the reviews are interesting cultural commentaries. Besides Jonathan Gold, I have never really read restaurant reviews, something about the genre that doesn't lend itself  Over at Chow, they have compiled the 78 most annoying words and phrases found in reviews. Even though I avoided reviewing restaurants, I can still be pretty sympathetic to the reviewers -  300 words isn't a lot to make your point. Deadlines. It's hard to write; to push yourself to be better, to say what you think, feel and know in an economy of words. What I can't forgive is cliche. They are lazy and there is a lot in this world that can be forgiven in this world but being lazy is not one of them. 

Some of the terms are hard to avoid like organic, it has a legal meaning. Others, like house-made, how to you get around that, is it made on premises, how else do you express that?

Here is Chow's list - annotated by me: Bold words lack creativity, italics are more of a WTF/huh. Red words/phrases should just not be used because they have all the subtlety of an Oliver Stone film.   

100 mile, addictive, affordable prices, ambrosia, annealed, artisanal, authentic, awesome, bad boy, cloyingly sweet, cooked to perfection, crazy delicious, cuts with a fork, decadent, deconstructed, died and gone to heaven, engorged, eponymous, falls off the bone, fellows, foodie, gastropub, gem, goodness, gooeyness, gutsy, haute barnyard, healthy, hidden gem, historic, house-made, I have seen God, I really want to like this place, in my opinion, inedible, local, locavore, meltingly tender, most unique, mouthfeel, munch, my kingdom for ..., napped, oh so ..., omg, organic, orgasmic, party in your mouth, piping hot, piquant, pocked, redolent, revelatory, sammie, sinful, sing, slurp, song, surreal, sustainable, symphony of flavors, taste sensation, terrific, think, to die for, toothsome, trio, tucking into tummy, ubiquitous, unctuous, underwhelming, you won't go away hungry, yummers, yummilicious, yumminess, yummo, yummy.

The winner scoring an italic, a bold and a redline, even beating the recycled Food Network catch-phrases, is in my opinion... Of course it's your opinion, you're writing the review.

Rules of Engagement?

When 2011 began, I was going to see how long I could go without eating out or ordering in. I wasn’t even sure if it was possible to avoid food that had been prepared in restaurants for any amount of time, so  I went with basic guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. They are:

           

            • Don’t pay for prepared food – either eat-in or to go.

            • No pre-made food at the grocery store -it's the same thing.

But what does really mean?

The problem with the first guideline is - can I eat food at a restaurant if I’m not buying? No is the general answer but I gave myself some wiggle room. I do all sorts of favors for people, have people over for dinner and bring friends food when they’re squeezed for time, money and energy. People like to say thank-you in different ways, the obvious way to respond to a dinner invitation is to reciprocate but not everyone likes to host (small homes, aversion to cooking, having people over upsets their cats) (last one is for real), so an invitation to dinner at a restaurant is proffered from time to time. The acknowledgment of small professional courtesies and general thoughtfulness (it happens occasionally), is an offer to take me out to lunch.

It’s rude to say no when people want to return a favor or kindness. It turns out when I tell people I’m not eating out this year, they understand and it has been the year of gift cards and flowers when people feel a need to thank me. I was going to allow myself a birthday dinner and if I flew anywhere, a flight delay would necessitate eating more than 2 ounces of chex mix. If I ever can afford to travel again it probably won’t be this year and for my birthday, red beans and rice and bread pudding are always better than going out.

My second guideline requires a near Talmudic parsing of the words. I can buy ham, bread and mustard but I can’t order a sandwich from the deli counter. Also, no prepared frozen foods – fine I don’t own a microwave, although I do use one frequently at work. I don’t eat cereal, so that doesn’t need a ruling but that would be pretty close to a pre-made food. Some of this gets so arbitrary – Yogurt is fine, cheese okay but anything that already has yogurt and cheese in it, no. A loaf of bread, fine: a bagel though, I feel that violates the law.  Beer, well it’s not like I can or want to make that myself, so I can drink beer - Even though I can and have made bread and yogurt but I couldn’t reasonably make a decent bagel, I have made these distinctions. This all gets muddied up.

Rather than restrict myself to drinking beer out of the fridge, I can buy beer in a tavern/pub, but I can’t order fries while there. I don’t think I’ve had a cocktail outside my home this year. Cocktails aren’t technically food - my main objection to them is that I can’t make them at home, better & cheaper than going out. Yet, I feel getting a beer isn’t cheating, but cocktails break the spirit of my challenge. Besides drinking beer and not ordering food is hard – makes me feel like I’m living the commitment.

Even though my year of eating in is more than ½ over, I have my first two real challenges coming up. I’ve been invited to a cocktail event, then there’s Michael Dickman’s wedding (Besides witnessing their vows, this is an opportunity to drink back some of the booze he has taken off my hands over the years, how can I pass that up?) – both will have food prepared in a professional kitchen. Do I get to eat at the wedding reception? What about the cocktail thingy? Booze but no food? Pretzels but no canapés? I don’t know. Do snacks count, what if I fill up on snacks and don’t eat dinner, does that mean I ate out? Two drinks and go home is probably it, avoid the food, but I like food.

I don't love rules, lists and polices; I hate splitting hairs, parsing deeper meaning from the obvious. Like trying to ascribe meaning the oeuvre of Michael Bay, sometimes you just have to let things be what they are. I need some help.

                       

                      

COUNTER CULTURE

Charles Seluzicki is back and we love it.

Saucyman’s vow not to eat out for a year is no doubt creating a hunger for reflections on consuming food in public spaces.  

Recently I had cause to research an etching owned by my friend John Crichton entitled “Hot Dogs” (1934) by Minnesota WPA artist Clement Haupers.  It is an evocative period piece showing all levels of society- ladies with fur collars, workers, office types- mingling at a counter eating that most ubiquitous of American sandwiches, the hot dog, with mugs of root beer.

Eating out was a rare occurrence when I was a kid growing up in East Baltimore in the fifties.  Mostly there was not much discretionary income.  Not that I felt denied.  Quite the contrary.  If I walked down Lombard Street with my mother to Broadway, it was a treat to stop at the Read’s Drug Store counter for a coke and even more special if we could linger over a hot dog special when shopping was done.  Likewise, the highlight of outings with my Uncle Frankie when my cousin Johnny was visiting was the counter at the local bowling alley for a package of peanut butter crackers and a coke.  On some special days, our outings might end at the outdoor counter at the end of Broadway Market.  There the food of choice was either the codfish cakes (“coddies”) sitting out on their own tray with a pot of mustard or the delicious little burgers, already cooked, kept warm on the grill and nestled in a rich onion gravy.

All of these foods were cheap and good. If you were from the neighborhood, they were your street food, familiar and, as far as we were concerned, classless.  Like Haupers’ etching everybody was comfortable in that space together.  

Folks in Baltimore might eat at more upscale counters like Morgan Millard on Roland Park or in the department stores downtown.  But going upscale if I was downtown with my mother would mean going to Kresge’s 5 & 10 or the big downtown Read’s. Then, as a teen, I remember the Kresge’s on Hartford Road. In the summertime they had a string of balloons festively hung over the seating.  If you ordered a bannana split, the waitress would pop the balloon you chose to see how much it would cost.  You never forgot the day when you got your bannana split for a penny.

Of course, as time passed, as you got to know the ladies who worked the counter, their were other benefits to be had. The tuna sandwiches got bigger, both of the last two pieces of chocolate cake might end up on you plate or you got a mountain of fries on your order. All this happened with a wink and a bit of friendly banter punctuated with “There you go, hun. Can I get you anything else?”

I love counter space. I seek it out. You are closer to the food and its preparation. The waitresses are closer too, more in touch. You overhear their conversations and may even be included in them. There is an air of familiarity that invites an exchange with a neighbor on the stool one removed from yours. I have met the mothers and fathers of waitresses and travellers passing through town. There are always the regulars, of course, the folks who sit in the same seat and have a coffee or a sandwich every day.  Once, I swear, I met a man from Georgia at a counter in Portland who struck up a conversation because we had both ordered the same special. Before I knew it he was telling me about how the kids in his family in the rural South were all “dirt-eaters.” I knew this practice, not uncommon in some impoverished locales, whereby kids got their minerals the old fashioned way.  But I had not actually met a real dirt-eater.

Sometimes I like it that way. The accidental encounter that comes  when the fat lady coming in from the rain squeezes onto the stool next to yours or the squirmy little kid who just might remind me of me and who needs somebody to hear his bitter complaints about how his mother did not cut up his grilled cheese sandwich the exact right way.


Charles Seluzicki
July 2011

New Old Post

I wrote a newish piece for the Portland Farmers Market blog. It's on my friend the Bing cherry. Well, I co-opted information from previous blog posts here and here and here. Then I added a quote and a couple pictures from a local grower and it's like new. Who says I don't recycle.

Hard year for growers. Wet and cool, the weather is about 6 weeks behind where it should be - the sad part about having late May weather in mid-July - doubt early October will act like August. While overcast days that barely crack 70 are rough in the city, it is hard to try to grow something in this, especially if you make a living doing this, one could literally lose the farm.

My year of eating in continues. My new go-to food is the Wee Mi or perhaps you prefer baby bun mi. I am amazed at how many sandwiches I can eat, that I can enjoy - As someone who likes to sit down with a hot meal, I didn't see that coming. When the bread is good, the fillings are kind of secondary. Stuffing grilled sesame chicken along with pickled carrot & daikon into crusty bread from Vietnamese bakery doesn't make me a culinary genius, just a fortunate eater. 

Finally, my new favorite song in the world, Hard Times by Gillian Welch. A gentle nod to Stephen Foster but still original and relevant. I know, I am recommending something with a banjo in it - a 'musical' instrument that sounds like it combines the harmonic qualities of a migraine with the percussive feeling of a hangover, but here, it works, and that's something I never saw coming. My choices on YouTube were hand held iphone concert footage and this more fitting compilation featuring footage from Paper Moon and Ms. Welch's performance. I imagine the copyright holders will get it yanked soon enough, so enjoy. 

Pineapples Don’t Grow on Trees

Sherwood Schwartz, creator of so much after school pablum, notably Gilligan’s Island and the Brady Bunch, passed away yesterday. Even if everyone on the cast ended up hating him over syndication royalties and massive overexposure that typecast them beyond being able to work (seriously, Bob ‘Gilligan’ Denver never even did a turn on Law and Order), Mr. Schwartz will always have a soft, fuzzy spot in my heart for Gilligan’s Island’s use of broad, physical comedy. I know people have written Master’s dissertations on this, but there really is something funny about Gilligan getting hit in the head with stuff, funnier than a safe or piano falling on a cartoon.

Not Photoshopped Around

One of the many projectiles that struck Gilligan’s addled cranium was a pineapple. I was well into my 30s before I discovered that pineapples don’t grow on palm trees; they’re put there by set designers. The pineapple fruit actually grows from a tropical perennial. It does grow from seed – but most cultivated fruits are seedless, then the seed needs to be pollinated. The easier way is just to plant the crown of the pineapple in soil if one has a year and a half to wait, water and nurture.

I think of the pineapple as quintessentially Hawaiian, but they aren’t even native to the Pacific/Polynesia, instead the wild pineapple is native to Brazil and spread out across the globe via Portuguese trade ships. Just as the eggplant is an aubergine to most of the world, the word pineapple is an Anglicization of the Spanish pina - or pine cone. And the fruit does look like a pine cone in a way, but most cultures incorporate the phrase nana or anana - a Tupi Indian word meaning excellent fruit, into the local name of the fruit. The French call the ananas.

The pineapple is an excellent fruit, 12% sugar to 2% acid, but it is a bit of a freak too. Like all the acid is concentrated on the outside, making the fruit sweeter near the core. And it isn't isn’t one fruit, but a cluster of 200 or so fruits growing in two interlocking helices, eight in one direction, thirteen in the other, each a Fibonacci number. Wild fruits in Brazil have flowers that only open at night and are pollinated by bats. Pineapple is rich in bromelain, an enzyme that helps break down connective tissue in meats – ah ha, there is a reason to nail a pineapple ring to a ham with a clove, except that bromelain is deactivated at moderate heat, meaning using canned pineapple bypasses this natural tenderizer. On the upside canned pineapple means the bromelain won’t mess up a Jello-salad.

Unlike many fruits, there is no reserve of starch, so the pineapple doesn’t become sweeter after picking, only softer, degrading due to the damnable bromelain. Unlike many, the pineapple needs to be picked ripe allowing the fruits 4 to 6 weeks from maturity to expensive tropical compost. Despite a reputation as a member of the jet set, most of the travel from Malaysia and South America, where most of the crop is grown these days is done via refrigerated cargo ships Soft fruit makes transportation difficult and an estimated 90% of the fruit is processed for canning.

For the next post, I am working on a piece about cherries for the Farmers Market that I will cross post here, then we’ll head back to tropics for some coconut facts after that. 

COQUINA SOUP

Friend of the Blog, Charles Seluzicki climbed out from the pile of books he was buried under to offer this sweet and mostly savory post. Glad you made it out alive. 

Watching the last Space Shuttle launch yesterday morning filled me with nostalgia for the summer of 1957 when our family lived in Coco Beach, Florida.  My father worked as a technician in the space program and, while he could not talk about his work for security reasons, we knew that he was in the pill box at the Cape during each launch doing something important.  The night before a launch, he would tell me and my sister Judy to be on the beach at 7am and we could watch.  The view from the beach to Cape Canaveral was crystal clear and close, almost intimate for such a powerful spectacle.  And they would fly- Nike, Mercury, Atlas- a tower with a tail of fire, surely entering its grand arc and then breaking the sound barrier as it disappeared or exploding in the air or suddenly going silent and dropping into the ocean.

Most mornings though were filled with another kind of excitement:  beachcombing.  I would run through the dunes in front of our beach house at dawn in search of whatever the ocean had kicked up on shore the previous night.  After a quick survey of the beach, I enjoyed digging for coquinas (“co-keen-ahs”), tiny clams, no bigger than a child’s fingernail and pastel hued. Their show of color against the light, khaki-colored sand was always a wonder at first light.  At some point a person strolling down the beach told me that while they were too small to eat, you could cook coquina and make a tasty soup. At ten years of age, this oyster eating Baltimore city kid was going to gather his lunch.  So I embarked on my first truly independent food adventure.

I filled my sand bucket half full of coquinas and presented my mother with my plan.  We rinsed my pink and blue and silvery white jewels and set them in a pot of water to boil. When they were deemed cooked, I tasted. Nothing. Or, practically nothing. The water was just barely flavored. I tried a time or two again but with the same result. And then I went on to other things.  Later that summer, after my father’s work was done, we drove down to the very tip of Key West.  Somewhere there is a picture of me standing by the Route 1 sign with the ocean at my back.

On that road trip I did indeed order and try coquina soup in a restaurant and it was really good.  Somehow I did not have the presence of mind to ask how this was accomplished but I know now that the approach must have been the same as the method used by the French for their silken mussel soup known as “billi bi.”

Sweat some onion and/or shallot in butter but avoid coloring it, add generous helping of shellfish, a bay leaf and a sprig of fresh thyme or Italian parsley, a generous splash of white wine and cover until the shells pop open and release their liquid.  The idea is to extract the most concentrated essence of the fresh shellfish. Strain, taste for salt, add hot cream and finish with a pinch or two of sweet paprika.  Traditionally eaten chilled, it is also excellent- and a very different soup- hot. Julia Child thought this recipe for mussel soup more elegant than vichyssoise.  To my youthful palette New England clam chowder paled in comparison to the delicate sweetness of that coquina soup. O, to taste it again!


- Charles Seluzicki

What a Difference a Difference Makes

Congratulations to Colorado – the state boasts the lowest obesity rate in the US. Good work Coloradians, if you had the largest population, in the body mass sense, it could be forgiven considering of all states the cold, dry conditions of your state almost requires a protective bratwurst layer to protect from the elements.

The bad news, if this were 1995, at its current rate of obesity Colorado would be the fattest state in the US. Back in 1995, Mississippi, then as now the fattest state, had an obesity rate of 19.4%. If then were now, ole Miss would have the smallest percentage of obese people in the US. Currently, 1/3 of its population is obese.

Veg ala Oklahoma 

The good news, only 16 states reported increases in obesity rates, 34 states remained static while no one reduced the rate.

Everything is Ok in Oklahoma – they still eat fewer fruits and vegetables than any other state. Way to beat Alaska with that, Sooners.

The full report is here and you can geek out on the stats. Couple things to keep in mind – this report is put out by an organization that is funded to combat obesity, not that means they fudge numbers, spin the data or are insincere, just that they exist because there is an obesity rate.

The other thing: I am a little over 6’2” and 204 lbs. I am technically obese, last year at 195, I wasn't and I'm still wearing the same pants. I have low blood pressure, I am very active, I am thick in the thighs, not so tight around the waist but according to body mass index, the standard used in all these metrics, and I am obese. Just saying.

What is really fascinating is the poorer the population, the bigger the population. And taxing soda isn’t going to reverse this trend people.

Michigan, one of 10 most obese states, recently decided to do something to combat this - by citing a vegetable gardener for growing [stuff]. I guess her relative health made every around her feel bad. Story here. Scuttlebutt is that if she agrees to compost what she grows, she can get her time reduced. 

Frying, On a Sunday Afternoon

“Let’s not forget frying is a pretty violent type of cooking” – Russ Parsons

Having vowed to go the entirety of 2011 without buying takeout or eating in a restaurant, is pretty much the equivalent of forgoing all deep-fried food. You never think about how ubiquitous the fried foods are until you go without. I miss fried foods, I especially miss French Fries. Atkinsers be damned but a life without carbohydrates is no life at all. Hands down, the potato is the most popular vegetable in the US – 117 lbs. per person, 41% (48 lbs) of those are consumed in the form of French Fries. Only 28% of potato consumption is “fresh” which doesn’t really mean fresh at all, it really means unprocessed, people are still more than welcome to take their potatoes home and fry them.

See what I mean?
The Ketchup dispenser is mounted
on the rearview mirror. 

The next veg in line is lettuce, on average we eat 28 pounds of leafy green things a year, except 17 of those pounds are iceberg, so maybe we just get a lot of lettuce in our fast food. While anyone can cut a head of lettuce up and call it salad, French Fries, good steamy on the inside and golden brown on the outside fries are much harder to make than the sight of a 16 year old dropping baskets into the fryolator would lead you to believe.

French Fries, the good ones need to be fried twice, first at a low temperature and a second, shorter frying at a higher temp. The separate fryings pretty much cultivate the desired results: The initial low-fry cooks the interior of the potato, converting the starch into a fluffy, baked potato-like consistency. This takes 8 to 10 minutes at the high, but not high for oil temps between 250-350°f – water boils at 212, oil being more viscous, holds more energy and can be heated to much higher temps. 

The second, higher temp, happens at 375-385°f and what a difference 50 degrees make. It doesn’t seem like all that much, but think of it more as what separates a beautiful 75° day and a wintery 25° day. The shorter, in this case 3 to 4 minutes browns (caramelizing the sugars and proteins) crisps the exterior of the fry.

Elementary 

For the home cook, this is much work – peel, slice, prefry, drain & cool, crank the heat and brown. Plus the residual scent, well you know how realtors advise to bake cookies or boild vanilla and cinnamon before a showing, deep fat frying is about the opposite of that, it isn’t the smell of home. Plus it takes an incredible amount of oil to fry something properly – a good rule of thumb, twice as much as you’d think. Fresh oil, out of a bottle won’t brown stuff, frying oil needs to be seasoned to properly brown items. But old oil smells like the parking lot of a Florida Long John Silver’s in August. Recovery time, the ability to raise the oil’s temperature - so the steam leaves the potato rather than the oil gets absorbed by the potato - is difficult unless you have a special machine with heating elements submerged in the oil.

But like I mentioned, I miss my fries, so armed with a cast iron pan, which retains heat, an instant read thermometer and 6 bucks in oil and another $2 in potatoes, I made some good fries, but I have a sneaking suspicion, I could have done better walking down the street and spent $3.50 on a large basket and another dollar-fifty on a beer and had a better experience.

Saucyman Goes to White Castle

Previously on Saucyman…

Hamburger Steak had slowly evolved from a specialty item of hand chopped beef favored by German immigrants into a sandwich. Along the way, the beef was ground, cooked at primitive setups – the booths, fairs and street vendors of the early 20^th Century - the Ur-Food Carts, and was sold cheaply as a workingman’s food. Not quite reaching ubiquity or the iconic American meal but growing in popularity.

Harold, Kumar and Neil Patrick look more fun

Then, well, The Jungle. Upton Sinclair’s book about exploitation of immigrant labor and dirty, dirty food was released in 1906 and it’s tempting to say made a generation of vegetarians – Kellogg’s and other health movements were gaining traction at the same time. Given the cultural zeitgeist, hamburgers were viewed as suspicious and gained a reputation as impure, mixed with offal and fillers.

The burger could have been reduced to fair food if not for two enterprising gentlemen from Wichita, Kansas. Edgar Waldo Ingram – Billy to his friends and detractors financed the expansion of Walt Anderson’s White Castle System. White Castle offered a limited menu: 5¢ hamburgers, soft drinks, coffee and pie. Workers were required to wear uniforms and maintain hygienic standards. Architecturally, White Castle buildings, based on a motif of the Chicago Water Tower, one of the few buildings to survive the great fire, were located near bus and streetcar lines. White Castle was serious about the white, Ingram saw white as the color of purity and both the whitewashed exteriors and the white tiled interiors stressed cleanliness.

The White Castle System took on the hamburger’s sordid reputation and framed their kitchens with windows so customers could see both the cooking but the grinding of meat into burgers. Ingram, who bought out Anderson in 1933, originally contracted with local butchers to make multiple delivers throughout the day before becoming big enough to source their own product. Ingram, bless his heart was also emphatic that condiments like ketchup and mustard be administered by the patron, not by kitchen.

White Castle expanded east, eventually growing to 131 stores in 1931. They also spawned a few clones notably, White Mama & White Tower. Even in the worst of the Depression, White Castle was selling over 40 million burger a day. Even though the Depression couldn’t do the chain, nickel burgers were a small luxury in hard times, suburbanization stunted the chain's growth. The Interstate system, the car and McDonalds all conspired against White Castle’s mostly urban public transportation hub based outlets, setting a downward slide for many post-war years. 

But as Harold & Kumar can testify, White Castle did not slowly fade away, the chain, which is still privately held has expanded 420 outlets (compared to McDonald’s 30,000+) and is directed by Ingram’s grandson.

Enjoy your holiday cookouts be they burgerific or burger free and more posts next week.