The lead story in the Specialty Foods newsletter today really caught my eye. “Some 52% of consumers are monitoring the amount of sodium in their dietsand 26% read labels for sodium.” This seems simply incredible on the face of it, especially in the context of my new home in upstate New York where 77.8% of the populace pays no attention whatsoever to what goes into their gullet.
22% [of consumers] restrict the amount of salt that they add to food, but don’t watch the much greater amount of sodium that is in foods and beverages
18% say that “food and beverages low in sodium are one of the three most important components of a healthy diet”
26% read labels for sodium, and may make some decisions based on this info, but they are not following a regimen to control sodium in their diet
34% do not pay attention to sodium
Except for the last stat (which seems low), none of these numbers seems at all credible to me on a seat-of-the-pants basis. Do they to you? Perhaps this is some research from a survey that is skewed to make a particular marketing point? So let’s look at the original source material, the verbatim comments from the survey. Oops, they aren’t available. Instead Mintel offers a link to a webinar where we can learn about “Sodium: The Next Trans Fat?”
High school debaters learn that with a little digging, they can find a “statistic” to support any point of view. Perhaps in the Mintel survey, and I’m stipulating that there was one, they asked people “do you ever think about the amount of sodium in your diet?” and 52% said yes. That would still be a high number, but I’d accept it. Then maybe some creative marcom copywriter changed it to “monitor” which recasts the same stat as alarming or fascinating news.
One of my earliest bosses promised he was going to teach me to “lie with statistics”. I didn’t last very long at that position and don’t know what happened to that boss. Hmm…
It appears that the purveyors of fancy foods, and the consumers who buy from them, are ready to lead us back to fiscal health. The Javits Convention Center, which two weeks ago was so deserted you could picture yourself getting mugged during DM Days, was today so packed it was hard to make it down the aisles. Both exhibitors and attendees were delighted.
Miami's chocolate sushi rolls are made from dried fruit (standing in for the fishy parts), wrapped in rice crispies, then dipped in chocolate.
There’s always a big trend that emerges at the Fancy Food Show and this year it was, as one possibly might have guessed, fancy chocolate…. the stuff that soothes us and feels like an acceptable treat when life is hard. There was single origin chocolate (lots and lots of that), high end chocolate with handsome packaging, chocolate to eat with wine, even chocolate sushi. Runner up trend: tea, in both liquid and dried forms. Also the broad category of things you can make at home that feel like currently unaffordable restaurant meals: pasta sauces from Rao’s or Mario Batalli, premade soufflés guaranteed not to fall, spice kits with a recipe card etc.
Trending down: celebrities
Flavored water is still a strong category, while celebrity foods, energy drinks, artisanal salts, salsas and specialty vinegars—each a trend at one point—were hard to find at the show. Most surprisingly pervasive single item: sun dried tomatoes. Most popular booths among attendees on a New York summer day: anything serving iced desserts, or slicing prosciutto or Serrano ham.
My first DM Days in NYC is coming up since I moved to NY, and I’m debating whether to attend. (Crikey, it’s expensive, and I missed the early bird deadline!) I find that I am at least as fascinated by the sponsors’ warning against “suitcasing” as by the program itself.
Now, if you have young children in the house, please do NOT look that term up on Google. Stay here with me while we read on the DM Days registration page that “Anyone observed to be soliciting in the aisles, lunch tables or other public areas, or in an exhibitor’s booth will be asked to leave immediately.”
Now I guess it’s fair enough that a vendor who decides to stand in the aisle and distribute their brochures from a suitcase (I’d actually recommend an open carton on a luggage carrier, so you don’t have to constantly zip it open and shut as you would with a suitcase, but I digress) is stealing good money from this show which like others is probably financially strapped. But I’m worried that I, a freelance copywriter, might pull an article out of my pocket or use my iPhone to show a colleague a web page I’ve written—and be 86ed as a “suitcaser” who not only gets ejected, but is publicly branded in a very embarrassing way. (You did look it up, didn’t you? Then you know what I mean.)
I also think there’s a place for think-outside-the-booth trade show marketing of the type that Foodzie did at the recent South by Southwest Interactive conference. Foodzie is an up and coming mail order company “like Etsy, but food”—they find farmers and artisanal makers who are too small to have their own ecommerce site and they sell their food on the web. Their four partners were everywhere there was a line at the show, handing out samples of their vendors’ wares. Maybe they should have paid something for a both at the trade show at SXSW (which was extremely lame) but this is where they belonged, making their pitch to a captive audience of slightly buzzed developers and venture capitalists standing in line for free booze at some party.
Suitcasing? Perhaps. But also effective marketing.
P.S. After the colorful definitions at the top of my “suitcasing” Google results, I scrolled down and found that the International Association of Events and Events offering various anti-suitcasing tools including this poster which you can download here.
After the writeup on Texas barbecue, several folks asked if I would repost my original brisket recipe as text, not an image, for easier reading. Here you go. I’ve added a few thoughts on technique, in italics. This recipe came to me in a package of materials purchased through some kind of multilevel marketing exchange back in the 80s. You would pay the sender $1 for the packet and then send it on to 10 new people, each of whom would send $1 to you. For whatever reason, this did not make me rich, but the recipe is worth all of $1 and more.
5 Easy Steps to Delicious Brisket
(8 to 10 lb. Brisket)
1. First – Rub salt, pepper and brown sugar on both sides of brisket. Leave the fat side up thru entire cooking time. Unlike some, I recommend lightly trimming away the fat while still leaving a good layer over the meat. If you don’t trim at all you are going to end up with a lot of tasty smoked fat.
2. Second – Put on smoker “fat side up”. Remember not open flame, just hot fire with smoke. Charcoal broquett is fine. Smoking is cooking with indirect heat, in which the fire is in another part of the grill and the smoke and heat are drawn across the food by the way you manage your airflow. The good smoky flavor is going to come from chunks of hickory or oak (I find mesquite and apple too light in flavor) that you will soak for 30 minutes or more before adding to the fire. Also, you need a source of moisture, such as a pan of water inside the cooking vessel, to humidify the cooking atmosphere and concentrate the flavor.
3. Third- Leave on smoker for 3 hours checking fire every 45 minutes so bottom of brisket won’t burn. During this time you should be steadily replenishing the charcoal and wood chunks for a constant smoky fire. I like to leave the smoke vents open at the beginning to build up a good fire, then shut them completely to grab all that sweet smoke, then open them a little just before the fire is about to go out and leave that way for duration of cooking.
4. Fourth- To finish for perfect tenderness wrap in foil, put in loaf pan, and finish in the oven at 325 degrees for 2 to 3 hours. The last hour of cooking in oven, test by sticking a fork in brisket at both thick part and thin part. When fork goes in easily without force it’s done.
5. Fifth – Unwrap; let cool slightly before slicing. Remember: Never put B.B.Q. Sauce on brisket while cooking. The smoke gives the flavor and the oven gives great tenderness.
Brisket with perfect smoke ring from Snow’s BBQ, Lexington, Texas.
It isn’t hard to make good brisket. (Brisket = barbecue, at least for the purposes of this article.) You need a reasonably fatty piece of meat, USDA Choice or higher. You need a rub containing brown sugar for a nice crispy crust. You need a smoker with a good tight seal to keep the smoke in while letting air circulate so the fire won’t go out. You need moisture, in the form of well soaked wood or chips and a steaming pan inside the cooker. And most of all you need patience. Have all those elements at the ready and you can look forward to a tender and tasty piece of meat several hours hence, whether you use a massive smoker and aged hickory logs or a backyard kettle with chips on top of charcoal.
It is, however, hard to make great brisket. And that is why Texans of all ages and social perspectives travel considerable distances to taste the best that can be had. On a recent trip to South by Southwest I found myself on such a journey, repeating some of the same itinerary as when I coming down from Dallas in my college days not a few years ago.
Original dining hall at Smitty’s BBQ, Lockhart, Texas.
First stop is Lockhart, 30 miles south of Austin by a fast country highway. This is the home of Smitty’s and Kreuz’, two establishments with near-identical menus and customs. The tale is that the owner of Kreuz died and had a son and a daughter, and he left the business name to the son and the original smokehouse and market to his daughter.
For a proper Smitty’s experience you need to go in from the original entrance on a sidestreet, not the big parking lot next to the highway. You will pass through a long dark hall lined with hard wooden counters and benches. When I was young these walls had big dull knives hanging on chains. You would buy your meat by the pound, bring it to the counter, and hack it with a knife to your liking. I assumed somebody came along and wiped the knives clean at the end of the day. Even so they would not pass today’s health regulations and today the hallway exists only as a relic.
From this you emerge into the pit room, a dark smoky atrium which probably should be visited in summer heat for a properly hellish atmosphere. You will gingerly step past an open fire to get to the counter. In the background a butcher is prepping meats on a butcher block and a counter person will scoop up your order for “hot rounds” (sausages tied together at the end), brisket and ribs by the pound.
You’ll also get a few slices of white bread in case you want to make a sandwich, or crackers if you prefer. The counter person weighs your food and delivers it on a large piece of butcher paper atop a smaller piece of butcher paper (this is your plate) and you carry this into a big dining hall where you can buy sides and soda or beer. There’s sauce on the tables, not the sugary abhorrent “BBQ sauce” found in supermarkets but a thin red mixture that’s like a mild Tabasco.
I always take my first bite neat, no sauce. I am looking for a smoky dryness, an intense flavor of beef combined with the effect of long smoking. Even though brisket is a fatty cut, it has gone through hours of cooking and lost much of its original weight and the first taste and mouth feel should not be fat, pleasurable though that may be. And I don’t want chewy meat. Fall-apart tenderness is a plus, but not mandatory; what is essential is that the texture of the brisket should not distract from the taste.
My meal was a rib, 1/4 pound of brisket and a hot round. The rib was tender but the brisket wasn’t, and it had a row of fat across the top. (Even though brisket is sold as “fat meat”, a thoughtful butcher will trim off this layer before weighing.) And not a lot of smoky flavor. I’m not a sausage person, but the hot round was pleasant, a coarse grind of beef and pork with pepper flecks mixed in and (I think) a bit of grain for density. A side of cole slaw was forgettable.
Identical sausage twins in Lockhart, Texas. Kreuz is on the left (I think.)
Next stop is Kreuz’s which needs less description because everything is pretty much the same as Smitty’s except that the building and the smoke pit room are recently built. But you’ll find the same meats and the same procedures, down to the pair of straight-edged spatulas the server uses to scrape the meat from the butcher block onto the serving paper.
I can’t do a straight up comparison, however, because Kreuz’s was out of brisket! That’s right, they’d sold the last of it shortly before my arrival and no more would be ready for a while. So I had to settle for a slice of “lean”, or barbecued shoulder. It was surprisingly tender for “lean” and tasted fine on a sandwich. The rib was suspiciously light in color but had the smokiest flavor of anything so far. The sausage was fine and tasted a lot like Smitty’s—which isn’t surprising because they apparently come from the same source (see photo).
If you’re headed to Lockhart I’ll send you to Smitty’s, I think. The food is marginally better at Kreutz’ but not enough to make up for the atmosphere at Smitty’s. Still, neither one will give you the best barbecue I’ve had in Texas. For that you have to wait until Saturday and journey a little farther, in a different direction, to Snow’s in the tiny and out of the way town of Lexington.
Snow’s caused a stir in winter 2009 because it was named over the Lockhart twins as the best barbecue in Texas by Texas Monthly, and soon after that the lines were out the door on Main Street and the barbecue was selling out by 10 am. It’s a tribute that the folks at Snow’s (who have other jobs and only smoke for the weekends because traditionally that is when the ranchers brought their cattle to auction) kept their good humor and quality and perspective through it all. Now (4 months after the article) the lines are down to a manageable size again.
What makes Snow’s the best? First, the brisket is sublime. Mine had a perfect smoke ring… pink around the edges of the meat and also pink inside along a layer of fat separating two layers of muscle. (Brisket is the “chest” of the animal, in the very front between the two front legs where a number of muscles come together in a criss-cross arrangement.) And not only was it fork-tender, it fell apart at the first touch of the fork.
Ribs were at least as good as Kreuz. (You may have guessed that pork ribs aren’t really my thing. If made from a commercial pig, they have a pleasant and not very complex flavor and you really can’t go wrong so long as the excess fat is cooked away.) And the sausage was crackling with goodness, cooked until the interior fat was boiled through the skin leaving it crispy and the interior hollow in spots.
Aside from the meat, what makes Snow’s special is that they are good marketers of what they sell. And this is important. It is one thing to bite into a perfect apple in a farmer’s market, something else to dine in a restaurant where a good chef has taken the trouble to ensure that everything is coordinated for a satisfying experience. Snow’s does this where the other establishments don’t.
You can get a plate with sides (solid Texas renditions of mustardy potato salad and vinegary slaw). You can have endless, very good, smoky pinto beans at no extra charge. You can take it outside and dine on picnic tables surrounded by barbecue pits and assorted rolling smokers which I assume are used to cater events in other locations. And you can even get it mail order since they’ve discovered if you smoke once a weekend you might as well smoke again (on Saturday, while the counter is open) and freeze that meat and send it around the country.
But Snow’s does have a weakness and it is their sauce, a sour blend informed by the insidious Carolina influence which has spread across Texas in recent years like Johnson grass. (Thank goodness there is no “pulled pork” at Snow’s.) . Do not under any circumstances put it on your food until you have tasted the meat naked, followed by a trial squirt of the excellent Cajun Chef hot sauce on the table. This should be all you need, especially because Snow’s meat tends toward the salty side and the hot sauce acts as a corrective.
It’s nice to know that the best barbecue store in Texas still has room for improvement. I will be back.
Like CES, the January 2009 Fancy Food Show is down a bit in both attendees and exhibitors. But there’s still room for people like Mr. Bacon here, and his product Bacon Salt which is based on the premise that “everything should taste like bacon”. It’s all vegan and there is a bacon survival kit including bacon chapstick, bacon flavored vegan-aise etc for converted vegetarians who miss the taste of bacon.
Footnote: Fancy Food is where food purveyors, mostly regional distributors or mom-and-pop shops, come to present their offerings to potential retailers or food service clients. There are also a number of international country-sponsored booths though those are really down this year.
Cole slaw, that happy transformation of cabbage into a tart and appealing salad, has to be one of our most healthy, tasty and also inexpensive foods. So why is it that when we order a meal with a “side of cole slaw” these days it’s often served in a micro-cup that would be better suited to sample collection in the doctor’s office?
My theory is that this is related to the predatory financial practices that got us into our current mess. Once you’ve settled on a business model that markets home equity loans to widows on social security, why stop there? Let’s wring a few more pennies from the populace by downsizing the cole slaw served with their early bird specials.
Which is all the more reason that the pictured side of cole slaw, at Compton’s in Saratoga NY, is so reassuring. This is what a side of cole slaw should look like. (Note also the romaine and 3 slices of tomato which are not even mentioned on the menu—a garnish reminiscent of a bygone day.)
I’ve been through multiple market downturns in my copywriting career. Each time, I had some clients who took the stance that you need to maintain or even increase your marketing budget because that’s when you buy market share, on the cheap, from competitors who are cutting back.
Compton’s is doing the same thing in their marketplace, and they’ve won my business. I’m going back at lunchtime for a burger… and a side of cole slaw.
I’m finishing up a project that had me writing web product copy for over 150 different cuts and preparations of beef, pork and lamb. I need to describe each one in a way that makes the reader understands how it’s unique. A lot of this has to do with taste. Or does it?
So much great food writing is about the experience surrounding the eating—the origin of the ingredients, the way they’re prepared, the environment in which they’re consumed. Tasting itself is when all these elements come together—it’s the payoff for being in this place, at this time, eating this food. And if it’s good, that first bite and the flavor released becomes a time capsule or shorthand for remembering the entire experience.
Prepared dishes are easier to describe because the flavors play off against each other. The other day for lunch, for example, I had the Pork Bacon Sandwich at Cam Huong in Oakland’s Chinatown. The crunchy baguette lends crispness while showering my lap with crumbs. Mayonnaise adds sweetness and lubrication. Cucumber sliced and pickled daikon and carrot shreds provide coolness, crunch and slight acidity. Jalapeno means more crunchiness plus the anticipation of a delayed reaction mouth tingle from the aromatic chili oils. And all this is a backdrop for two meats. The “bacon” is one of those Asian special-pork concoctions that has very little taste but the slippery mouth feel that we love from fat. And the other pork, shredded, is cooked with salt and red spices and ends up with a gamy intensity which we recognize as the essence of meat. The day laborer who’s grabbed the seat opposite me asks how is it, and I say “great”.
By comparison, how does a New York steak taste? I find myself writing about musculature and where the beef comes from on the animal in part to make the reader an expert so they’ll feel comfortable presenting this expensive meat to their guests. And when it’s time to deliver an institutional message it comes through sounding like this:
“Eating dry-aged beef is as sensual and satisfying as drinking well-aged wine. The flavors have deepened and mellowed. The taste is concentrated, an effect brought about by moisture loss and by changes in the meat itself. Natural enzymes in the meat break down the fibers, enhancing the taste with a delicious nutty flavor and tender texture.”
So, science and nature come together to make magic which translates to user satisfaction. Appealing? I hope so. One of the greatest challenges, I found, is that there are actually only two words that describe this experience—“taste” and “flavor”. Can you tell me some others? Another word, “tenderness” which is universally used as a compliment for really good steak, is more closely related to the amount of fat than anything else. While “texture” is a promise, that when you bite into this stuff it WILL be tender, or perhaps crunchy, or maybe it will coat your tongue with the eggy creaminess of a rich sabayon.
Food writing may be hard, but it is easy and fun to read because it is so experiential and suffused with the joy of life. My personal favorite example, and in fact a book that was mentioned by many of the chefs I interviewed, is Heat by Bill Buford (that’s an Amazon.com ordering link). Buford, whose day job is an editor for The New Yorker, decides to see what life is like as a line cook at a Mario Batali restaurant. Before we know it, he’s made a lifelong commitment to a summer job carving meat in a Tuscan village. Go get it, and read it. But be sure you go hungry.
This afternoon I was in Pasadena for a meeting that ended early, so on the way to the airport I slipped into the mysterious zone between the Golden State Freeway and the Alhambra hills to visit A-1 Eastern Pickles, on Johnston St. As I’ve done several times since I saw their phone number scrawled on the wall of a Greek deli in the 1980s below the word “pickles”, my plan was to buy a case of 4 1-gallon jars of fresh kosher dills for the ridiculous price of less than $12, then try to eat and share as many as I could before they became too bitter to enjoy.
But—today I discover they stopped selling the gallon cases 2 years ago, because “nobody was buying them.” The kosher dills are now available solely in a 5 gallon drum, hardly airline carry-on material.
I stumbled out in to the hazy sunlight and moved on to my next ritual stop, the subs at Giamelas on Los Feliz just east of the Golden State, a few miles north. Would these be gone too, perhaps my fault because I haven’t told people about them or eaten them more frequently? No. The subs, price list and even the serving and kitchen personnel were exactly the same as when I was last in town in July.
Here’s what I order and my ritual: the Italian Cold Cuts sandwich, no mustard or mayonnaise (why do they even ASK?), Italian dressing on the side, plus lots of their little yellow chili peppers and the carrot sticks which become flavored by association when they are wrapped with the peppers. The “regular” is $4.50 and the large is $4.95—ooh, tough choice!
The kitchen, which has not changed since I first went to Giamela’s some 20 years ago, is perfectly organized for preparation of this meal. The cook splays a soft sesame roll on the counter, like getting a diaper ready for a baby. He reaches into the reefer and pulls out a setup of mortadella, coppa and provolone on wax paper. He whacks the setup lengthwise with the back edge of a knife to score it and make it easier to mold to the bread. Then scoops of diced tomato, lettuce, pickle and onion are added with an artful chorography involving a slotted spoon dancing up and down the bread.
I used to get my sandwiches dressed but they got too sloppy before I was ready to eat them. So now I bring down a little jar with a tight lid and transfer the dressing from Giamela’s flimsy container (which once popped open in the Hertz parking lot—disaster) to my own more substantial one. Then it’s on to the plane with my sub. Tonight I was back in Oakland and on the freeway home at 7 so I spread a towel on my lap, poured on the dressing, and ate as I picked my way toward the Bay Bridge. Perfection.
I don’t really want to insist this is the world’s best sandwich. A Burger House cheeseburger and Carnegie Deli pastrami are also pretty good. But meanwhile, who’s interested in going in on a 5 gallon tub of pickles? We’d need to bring our own gallon jars, convene before A-1 closes at 3 pm (the neighborhood’s not safe after that anyway), then offload from the tub in order to avoid paying a hefty deposit.
My personal recipe for brisket, which I acquired from a multilevel marketer in the 1970s. It’s important to use USDA Choice meat, neither a higher nor lower grade. I’ve never tried the sauce. Don’t need it.
Cole slaw, that happy transformation of cabbage into a tart and appealing salad, has to be one of our most healthy, tasty and also inexpensive foods. So why is it that when we order a meal with a “side of cole slaw” these days it’s often served in a micro-cup that would be better suited to sample collection in the doctor’s office?
