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In Search of the Perfect Roadside Repast
Apart from the AAA, Jane and Michael Stern just may be an American traveler's best friends. They certainly were mine in the summer of 1992, when I made a four-month, 48-state, 22,000 mile journey across the United States. I relied heavily on the Sterns' terrific travel guide, ROADFOOD. After all, who could possibly know, upon arriving for the first time in Bangor, Maine; Des Moines, Iowa; Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Barstow, California -- or while motoring the backroads, byways and interstates in between -- what culinary treasures await? It's often easier to simply snag a burger and fries at the local link of some national fast food chain and be done with it.
The Sterns refuse to brook such laziness. They continue to publish indispensible guides that would be, were there any justice in this world, found in the glove compartment of every single motorized vehicle registered in these fifty states.
Their new book, EAT YOUR WAY ACROSS THE U.S.A., continues in the tradition of ROADFOOD, though with a few helpful bells and whistles added. The book, which points travelers toward hundreds of culinary meccas in every corner of the U.S.A., from lobster shacks in Maine to Southern Calfornia taquerias, is studded with instructional sidebars, primers on everything from regional specialties to definitions of terms that vary from state to state (what's called chili is Cincinnati would never earn that tag in Texas) to lists of eateries the Sterns dub "splurges:" restaurants that carry a higher tariff than do the other spots the Sterns recommend but which offer a rich return on one's investment.
Caution: Writers at work
Although many of the restaurants mentioned in the book were serendipitous discoveries, others came highly recommended by the Sterns' avid readership. I decided it would be a treat to accompany Jane and Michael on their first visit to just such a recommended restaurant. I wanted to see how they went about the business of appraising a restaurant. Fortunately, the Sterns were amenable to having me tag along.
We arranged to meet at the cafe in the Hotel Edison, just off Times Square in midtown Manhattan. The Edison is one of Times Square's old-style hotels; it's been there for ages and its cafe has long been a meeting spot for theatre people (one section of the cafe is cordoned off and named in honor of playwrights Neil Simon and August Wilson, both regulars when they're in town).
The cafe's specialty is old-style Jewish comfort food -- matzoh ball soup, pot roast, that sort of thing. When I arrived, only three or four minutes past our designated meeting time, I found the Sterns already seated and nibbling on a plate of matzoh brei. "Once Michael's seated at a table," Jane said, with a laugh, "he can't resist ordering something."
Laughter seems a favorite Stern side dish, one that is served generously throughout the meal. They're an affable couple and clearly enjoy their work. They relish talking about favorite restaurants -- and the food they've enjoyed there -- and are not the least bit blasé about the topic, even after more than two decades of criss-crossing the country in search of hidden culinary treasures.
I wondered how many times the Sterns prefer to dine in a particular establishment before including it in a column or book; once, as it turns out, is often enough. "Most of the places have a very limited menu," Jane reminds me. "They've been doing it forever, you know. Like a barbecue place that's been doing the same thing for forty years. You eat the ribs and you can pretty much guess they're not going to be different in a month." It's not always so, however, with houses of haute cuisine. "I find the kind of places that we write about to be more stable, in a funny way, than, say, the New York restaurant scene because here, as soon as a restaurant's a hit, the chef leaves and goes somewhere else. Or you never really know when the "name" chef is there. At least, in the kinds of places we review, there's a Bub Sweatman and he's been cooking there for forty years. So if he takes a fishing trip for three days, God bless'em. He'll come back and he'll still be Bub Sweatman and he won't be cooking at some trendy place."
"Also," Jane adds, "we have a very strong reader base. We always get letters and e-mails from them. Not only do we gets tips from people about where to go but believe me, if a restaurant changes or isn't as we wrote, we hear about it."
Finding a Needle in the Culinary Haystack
How do the Sterns manage to recognize a worthy eatery, in the absence of a pointer from a friend or reader? "First and foremost is the aroma," answers Michael. "Barbecue is an obvious example but not the only one. Up in Wisconsin, you can smell the bratwurst cooking. You can smell biscuits throughout the South or a place in New England where they make great muffins and doughnuts. When you pull into an unfamiliar town, roll down the windows and sniff. We've found so many good restaurants just by following the aroma."
"You develop a sixth sense," adds Jane. "And adopt rules that are goofy and make no sense but somehow work. For example, I've found it impossible to get a good meal in a restaurant that has a mansard roof. I don't why. I've never had a good meal in a restaurant that has a photographic, laminated menu. In most cases, if you check out the cake and pie display case, and see that the desserts are pre-fab and don't look homemade, the rest of the meal is not likely to be good either."
"The most important thing to do, if you enjoy eating," offers Michael, "is to study, before you go on the road. Before you leave, ask 'What are the really great foods of this region?' so that you'll be on the lookout for them. If you're traveling northern Michigan, for example, and you pass a place with a sign that reads, 'Yes, we have pasties!', you'll think, 'A-ha, pasties are a really wonderful, unique thing in this part of the country' and it'll draw you in."
A facility for letting one's fingers do the walking is to be cultivated, agree both Sterns. Jane looks for restaurant ads in local yellow pages that offer quirky slogans (an ad for Irene's in Chicago boasts "Funeral lunches our specialty!") while Michael takes phrases such as "Tour groups welcome!" and "Banquets for up to 500" as sure signs that an establishment is to be avoided.
Michael is the more culinarily adventurous of the two ("I'll eat anything"!") but he even he has encountered regional specialties that were not to his liking. "Chitlins." he reveals. "I wanted to like them but...fried chitlins were okay but steamed chitlins!" He shudders at the thought of the chitlins steamed in vinegar that are considered a delicacy in southern Virginia. "I tried them and I just gagged! Not only didn't I 'get it,' I wanted to run screaming from the restaurant."
When the Sterns began their travels, in 1978, they worried that the country was becoming a bit homogenized, that it was on the verge of losing its regional diversity, but they now feel secure that this is not so. "We honestly thought, when we did our first travel guide, which was the first edition of ROADFOOD, that we were documenting something that was dying," remembers Michael. "Back then, we predicted, 'This is all going to be gone. The franchises are going to take over.' But it has not happened and I now don't see it ever happening. Just because the kind of food we write about, not being trendy, is such an important part of the culture. To most people, food represents something almost as dear as religion. It represents where they're from, who their ancestors were, how they were raised, how their family gathered around the table. And I think that there's still such a strong feeling for that that these restaurants are just never going to go away. Because people need them."
The Verdict
Which brings me to our meal at the Edison's coffee shop. Not wishing to cause any deviation from the Sterns' standard method of operation, it seemed appropriate that I defer to them when it came time to order. So the Sterns ordered for the table and we all shared, or "picked," as Michael termed it. The blintzes and matzoh ball soup were first-rate (indeed, Michael wondered if the matzoh ball might not have been the best he'd ever tasted) and the borscht, pot roast, gefilte fish and pickled herring were all well-received. Only the desserts were below par and by then we were satisfied enough that we didn't allow it to spoil our meal.
While most roadside gourmands will never have the opportunity to dine with the Sterns, every traveler can feel as though he or she has done so by turning to EAT YOUR WAY ACROSS THE U.S.A. The Sterns' sense of fun, their appreciation of good food and their love of the road is evident on every page.
-- Brett Leveridge
This interview originally appeared at BarnesandNoble.com
