kottke.org posts about food
For some, a trip to Austria steers their gastronomic attention to wiener schnitzel, but for me, it’s all about the wurst.1 Following the good advice of a reader to ignore the sausages on offer in cafes and restaurants, we hit up every lunchtime sausage stand we could find during our visit for the real deal.
In Salzburg, the typical stand offers 8-10 different kinds of wurst, from the familiar frankfurter to the spicy pusztakrainer. You can get your wurst on a plate with mustard and a piece of bread or as a “hot dog” (in a bun with mustard and ketchup). For my first wurst, I had a kasekrainer, hot dog-style with ketchup, and it turned out to be my favorite of the trip. Melted cheese (kase) filled the sausage and the bun was perfectly crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Meg sampled a burenwurst. The next day, we hit up another stand; I tried the frankfurter while Meg had a delicately flavored weisswurst (her favorite of the trip). She speculated they didn’t grill the weisswurst because it would interfere with mild flavor; the spicer wursts seemed to be grilled.
From thence to Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. At 10,000 feet above sea level, we had an unspecifed wurst (the restaurant called it, basically, “the sausage of the day”) that ranks among the best food I’ve ever tasted, but that assessment may have been colored by the fact that we’d hiked up a glacier to get it. On our last day in Innsbruck, we surrendered to the comfort of cafe chairs and had bratwurst (mit sauerkraut und mustard) at a small place in the old town. After a hard day of walking, it beats eating standing up, which is how it works at the wurst stand.
Our final link in the sausage trail was Zurich, which is not in Austria but in the section of Switzerland near Austria and Germany. From a stand by the lake, we shared a pork-based sausage I forget the name of and another beloved weisswurst. Based on the relative unavailability of the wurst there, I get the feeling that the Swiss don’t take their sausages as seriously as the Austrians, at least in cosmopolitan Zurich. Not that the Swiss wurst wasn’t good; they just have other things to worry about…like fondue.2
But to focus entirely on the wurst is to ignore the equally fantastic brot (bread) that accompanies it and many other Austrian dishes. My favorite bread growing up in Wisconsin was called “Vienna bread” and I had always assumed that the cheap loaves we got at the local chain supermarket approximated something found in the Austrian capital. We didn’t get to Vienna, but the Austrian bread we had was indeed like the bread of my childhood…except about 1000 times better. The small, crisp roll we got with our wurst, called a semmel, was not unlike what’s called a roll or kaiser roll at an NYC deli. These rolls, accompanied by some richly flavorful butter, were also available at the complementary breakfast served at our hotel and I was tempted to violate the no-taking-food-from-the-breakfast-area rule and cram my bag full of them. If the bread at our hotel was that good, I can’t imagine what the best bakeries of the region have to offer. The French, whom I’ve always considered the champions of all things bread, might have something to worry about from Austria. Clearly, more delicious research is called for.
[1] Not that the rest of Austrian cuisine wasn’t uniformly excellent. I had a pork dish with spatzle in a creamy mushroom sauce at a Salzburg restaurant that I will crave for months to come. And that garlic soup at Ottoburg in Innsbruck! ↩
[2] I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize for the title of this post (the other option was “It was the wurst of times”). But count your blessings that you’re not reading an article on the yummy fondue we had in Zurich entitled “You’re damned if you fondue, and you’re damned if you fondon’t”. (I know what you’re thinking: “oh no, he fondidn’t…”) ↩
An outpost of Philly Slim’s, a restaurant specializing in Philly cheesesteaks, recently opened up near our apartment. In the weeks since its opening, the place has been near-empty every time I’ve walked past it. Without proper intel (i.e. a recommendation from friends or perhaps New York magazine), no one in the neighborhood wants to make the first move; when people wander by to glance at the menu, they take its emptiness as a sign that the food’s bad and head somewhere else for a meal. It’s a real catch-22 situation.
Last week, we were in the mood for some serious comfort food, so we tried out Philly Slim’s. And surprise of surprises, it was good. Really good. I tend to be disappointed by most steak sandwiches — the meat is usually thick, tough, and looks like it’s been boiled for weeks — but Philly Slim’s steak has a nice flavor and is sliced/chopped thin. The roll is nice & soft and doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the sandwich. The rest is pretty straightforward…Cheez Whiz, BBQ sauce, mayo, pickles, bacon, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and lettuce are among the toppings you can get on your sandwich. Add a Philadelphia-area soda, some onion rings, and a Tastykake for dessert, and you’re golden.
Bottom line: if you’re in the Union Square area and hungry, check out Philly Slim’s on University between 12th and 13th Streets. Ignore the lack of line and head on in.
Slideshow of Gerald Panter’s photos of the fast food stands of Los Angeles. “Menus which featured hamburgers and hot dogs seem to have given way to those featuring tacos and burritos, while former purveyors of such Mexican fare now feature teriyaki and other Asian specialities.”
Three Mexican fisherman were found alive after 11 months of drifting on the Pacific. They survived on raw fish, rain water, and sea birds. Immediately after being resuced, “they chowed down”. (via bb)
Apologies for the lack of posts over the last couple of days. I’m back in the midwest visiting my folks. I’m doing great; they have sausage shaped like beer bottles here!
Orgasm or excellent marinara? Can you tell the difference between the faces of Food Network celebrities and porn stars? Might be a little NSFW depending on where you W. (via ed)
Study: hungry men prefer heavier women than men who are full. Presumably, if you’re hungry, you’re more likely to be attracted to someone who looks like they might know where some food is.
A few photographic reports of meals at El Bulli, Ferran Adria’s highly regarded restaurant in Spain.
I Like Killing Flies is a 2004 documentary about Shopsin’s, a unique NYC eatery. Playing at NYC’s Cinema Village this coming weekend. See also Shopsin’s menu design and Calvin Trillin’s classic NYer piece.
One of the most enjoyable presentations at Taste3 was by mad scientist David Arnold, who made gin and tonic onstage, but without the tonic. (He added the fizz directly to the gin with a CO2 canister.) Pete Wells recently profiled Arnold in Food & Wine magazine. And here’s an article from IT World.
One of the first reviews Ruth Reichl wrote as the New York Times food critic was of Le Cirque, a fancy French restaurant in midtown Manhattan. In the now-famous piece, immortalied in her memoir, Garlic and Sapphires, Reichl compares the service she receives at the restaurant as a welcomed reviewer with that as an average Jane. From the review:
Over the course of five months I ate five meals at the restaurant; it was not until the fourth that the owner, Sirio Maccioni, figured out who I was. When I was discovered, the change was startling. Everything improved: the seating, the service, the size of the portions. We had already reached dessert, but our little plate of petit fours was whisked away to be replaced by a larger, more ostentatious one. An avalanche of sweets descended upon the table, and I was fascinated to note that the raspberries on the new desserts were three times the size of those on the old ones.
Thirteen years later, current food critic Frank Bruni reviews the newest incarnation of Le Cirque in today’s Times and echoing Reichl’s technique, finds that little has changed:
I also experienced Le Cirque’s famously split personality, half dismissive and half pampering, depending on who you are. On my first visit, when a companion and I arrived before the two other members of our party, a host let us know we should wait in the bar area not by asking or telling us to go there but by gesturing silently in that direction with his head. Most of the seats were occupied, so we stood. Over the next 10 minutes, no one asked us if we wanted a drink or anything else.
After we were taken to our table, servers seemed to figure out who I was and offered to move us to prime real estate with better sightlines. (We declined.)
So on a subsequent visit I sent three friends in ahead of me. One sat at the bar for 15 minutes without getting a server’s attention, and a bartender quarreled with the two others when they asked that the charges for their Champagne be transferred to the table. At a place as self-consciously posh as Le Cirque, such a request should be granted instantly.
But I was treated like royalty when I showed up, and on another night, when I dined with a filmmaker whom the staff also knew, soft-shell crabs, which weren’t on the menu, appeared almost as soon as she mentioned an appetite for them. They were fantastic: crunchy, meaty, sweet.
I can’t imagine wanting to go someplace like that when there’s so many other places with food as good or better and where the service is friendly, helpful, and accommodating for everybody. I guess that’s the side of New York I don’t like.
Here it is, the awful truth. After sampling In-N-Out Burger twice this past weekend (a cheeseburger with raw onion and, 4 days later, a Double Double w/ no onions) and having had several Shack Burgers this year (my most recent one was a couple of weeks ago), an adequate comparison between the two can be made. The verdict?
The Shake Shack burger wins in a landslide. It’s more flavorful, features a better balance of ingredients, and a yummier bun. On the french fries front, In-N-Out’s fresh-cut fries get the nod.
Courtesy of Mena, something to keep in mind: a cheeseburger at In-N-Out is $1.85 while a similarly appointed Shack Burger is $4.38, almost 2.5 times as much. SS french fries are nearly twice the price of In-N-Out fries. The burger comparison is an unfair one because, despite its location and style, Shake Shack is a restaurant and In-N-Out is a fast food joint. That the burgers are even close enough to compare — and make no mistake, I still love the In-N-Out burger — says a great deal about In-N-Out.
Newer posts
Older posts
Socials & More