Hospitable No Reservations

A la Bourdain on his Top Chef blog, I’m commenting on last night’s South Carolina episode of No Reservations, as South Carolina is my home state and my Dad – yes, Lake Erie is his name – was that fat man showing Anthony around Sweatman’s BBQ.

I braced myself (three glasses of wine in one hour) for the worst after my Dad forewarning me that he hammed it up for the cameras, and seeing previews rife with Southern clichés the week before. I thought for sure Tony would use his wit and sarcasm to rip South Carolina a new hole in between praising Southern food. Actually, he always seems very gracious and thankful to his hosts on camera, and my Dad wholeheartedly proclaimed Tony and his entire crew the nicest bunch of people ever. It’s just Tony’s bread and butter snark that can sting if you take everything he says to heart. You shouldn’t. And I shouldn’t have expected the worst.

Tony starts off in Charleston, the rightfully tourist-packed historic seaside city of palm trees and stately mansions. First stop is Hominy Grill. I think everyone stops here first, and for good reason. Hominy Grill serves up classic Southern food that’s made correctly and with care. You don’t have to fear gallons of grease and slop.

I can’t get Tony’s comments about Rachel Ray dining on $40 a day out of my head, though. At $40 a day, Rachel's a cheap ho... uh, cheap-0.

Next up, is a stroll through the side alleys and church yards of Charleston with Southern foods catalog proprietors, and prize-winning Southern cookbook authors, the Lee Brothers. Tony and the Lee’s are on their way to a party dressed in tuxes. Don’t let Tony’s observation that Charleston dresses up at night fool you. You’re not going to find guys crowding the streets in tuxes unless someone’s getting married, it’s a fancy-dancy party, or a lets-get-dressed-up-for-shits-and-giggles party.

What you should brace yourself for while in Charleston are men (old and young) in pale blue seersucker suits...or pink polos with khaki Bermuda shorts, and Docksiders without socks. Women (mostly older) will be sporting fugly hats, sleeveless polos, theme-embroidered (palms, martini glasses, frogs, etc.) Capri’s, and bedazzled and bejeweled kitten-heeled sandals – all coordinated to the enth degree. Your black dress and leather thigh-high boots are going to be out of place. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

While at the party, the Lee’s discuss Southern foods offered in their catalog – boiled peanuts, green tomato pickles, and Jerusalem artichokes – that those who have left the region yearn for and miss. It’s true. I’ve written about each one.

Oh, oh. There’s my Dad on the screen. My Dad ran down the way to cook barbecue, the wood used, the difference between barbecue and grilling, the four types of barbecue sauce, and the history of barbecue, all the while creating great soundbites in an enthusiastic Southern Accent. His secret: emphasize two words in every sentence – it doesn’t matter which two. I’m glad to say that I laughed, not cringed, through the entire segment. Fittingly, my Dad is a ham.

Then it’s off to the Civil War re-enactment camp, where Tony couldn’t have summed up better how I think of these wool-clad history enthusiasts – somewhere on the nerd continuum between stamp collectors and trekkies.

Then to visit and learn about the Gullah people of the Low Country and their culture. I think they found the easiest to understand Gullah people ever. It can be hard to understand their language, and I even grew up with my Momma reading me stories written in the Gullah dialect.

Frogmore Stew? Sorry, don’t eat meat and missed it when I did. Drag hunting? Ain’t never experienced that before.

At Jestine’s Kitchen, Tony tries to order the entire menu in an effort to get all the classics in before retreating North. But before they eat, Tim Driggers, a local food writer, irreverently prays and offers up some Ramones and The Stooges albums. Yep, we's crazy, fun, kind people.

Now, I missed who that woman was sitting at the table in Jestin’s, but she mentions chocolate cake with mayonnaise dressing on top? I’ve heard of chocolate cake made with mayonnaise acting like an oil, but on top? Can I get some of what she’s smoking? And a slice of that cake?

Hey, it’s the Lee brother’s again! This time they’re shuckin’ oysters at an outside oyster roast. I swear, no matter where Tony goes he’s always sucking on oysters – and pig.

The show concludes with Tony proclaiming himself a true believer in Southern hospitality, but confused about why the ubiquitous pineapple represents hospitality. I don’t know why either. Without looking it up, I’d say a pineapple is a very nice gift, and you’re a very nice person to give someone a pineapple, and a very nice person if you get a pineapple

So, here’s a pineapple for you, Tony, for not ripping us a new hole and being so very nice to my Dad.

My Dad Just Teleported Into My Livingroom

Aaaaagh! I just saw my Dad on the preview for next week’s South Carolina episode of No Reservations. (I broke down and ordered The Travel Channel for this occasion.) After Tony comments about how he wants to eat a whole lot of barbecue, my Dad says,” It’s all you can eat, so we’re goin’ ta fill you up!” in a lovely, thick Southern accent.

Next Monday at 10 p.m., I’ll be drinking heavily while glued to the tube. Dad (he recently found my blog – ‘cause there was no way I was gonna tell him I write this crap), I hope you were a good boy for the cameras.

I also spied cliché Civil War reenactors and a beat up pickup truck, so am a little wary. I hate Southern clichés.

Foodies In My Family

Bear with me on this post – it’s a whole bunch of personal information as an excuse to run a photo of a very famous food guy. (Go ahead. Scroll to the bottom. I’ll wait.)

While I profess to be opinionated about food, I would never declare myself an expert on food. I don’t know everything there is to know about food, but I do know what I like, and have been exposed to some mighty good food since I’ve set foot on this earth. I have my family to thank for that. They’re all foodies, in a sense.

My mother’s parents were farmers – not the kind that grows a thousand acres of corn as a commercial commodity, but they were farmers in the more traditional sense. They grew a plot of tomatoes, a plot of corn, a plot of butter beans, and a plot of cucumbers destined for the local farmer’s market and the local folk's bellies.

My mother is an excellent cook. We ate a home-cooked meal every night, and school lunches came in brown paper bags packed with love by mom. When I was younger, the only time I set foot in a fast food restaurant was on school field trips when the bus pulled in to McDonalds – how pathetic of the schools. Of course, I’m not that sheltered; I was later acquainted with fast food restaurants in high school when I started getting out on my own.

My mom taught me how to cook by letting me stick to her side and help her in the kitchen; I was the pot stirrer, the cheese grater, the bean sheller, and, of course, the brownie bowl licker. Thank you so much, mom, for feeding me wholesome, delicious love cooked up every night.Granddaddy chefs it up while I keep his chair warm

My father’s parents were city folk. My granddad was the chef while he was in the Coast Guard; they asked who could make biscuits and gravy, and he raised his hand. Later, he sold restaurant equipment and designed commercial kitchens. I remember sitting at his drafting table, unrolling blueprints of the interior of restaurants and gazing at all the circles and squares.

Granddaddy was also famous for his catfish stew and hushpuppies, which were not only requested at home, but at large events where he would lord over the stew in a huge, cast iron cauldron set over a flame. My granddad taught me to skin a catfish (this requires nailing the fish to a tree and pulling the skin off with pliers) and pull molasses candy (Granddaddy had a fierce sweet tooth).

My sister has worked in the gourmet food industry since she was sixteen. She started at a retail gourmet food and wine store, and over the years has been a personal chef and a pastry chef. She even made the cover of the Chicago paper many years ago with a soup inspired by my Granddad, and has dined with the likes of John T. Edge. She currently is a wine and cheese buyer for a Southeastern competitor of Whole Foods . She’s has lived and breathed food since she was a teenager, and when she has her game on is quite the little food snob.

My brother has worked in the food industry most of his life, too, but as a server in restaurants. Don’t take serving lightly. Many are truly professionals in this field, and he was one of them. Unfortunately, you won’t be served by him any more. A life changing event led him to pick up and pursue his dream of sailing. Godspeed.

My dad is, the only way to put it, a wine and food connoisseur. We might have been the only family in our neighborhood that had a wine cellar back in the 1970’s. We might have also been the only family with a dad that kept the “good” chocolate locked in a safe (shit you not), so that the kids didn’t eat it all.

My dad is very opinionated, and it must have been from him that I learned to critique food. To everyone’s embarrassment at the table, he never hesitates to send food back at a restaurant and loudly voice what is wrong with the food and how it should properly be prepared.

My dad also has some weird talent or personality trait that I was not born with which enables him to envision, organize, and create festivals – I’m talking large festivals that thousands of people attend. This has been going on since I was a child, and embarrassingly leads to pictures of your dad in papers. He currently is the founder and president of the South Carolina Barbeque Association, a very serious association that does not take barbeque (ussage: noun, specifically pork; and transitive verb, "barbecued") lightly, and sentences like, “I have discussed going to all butts as opposed to whole hog and butt” are not a joke. Of course , he created a barbeque festival, and disseminates his trained troops to smaller festivals throughout the state. Anthony Bourdain, his camera person, and my Dad.

So, this all leads to the picture of Anthony Bourdain and my Father. The fourth season of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations begins July 30th, and my dad was filmed for a segment on the South Carolina episode coming up this fall. Being the go-to barbeque guy in South Carolina, my dad hooked Tony up with some real barbeque and schooled him on the way it’s done. My dad had a blast that day, and said Tony was down to earth, polite, funny, and an all and all nice guy – contrary to what you might imagine him like from his sarcastic side seen on TV and in his books. And, yes, he does smoke that much.
God knows what potentially embarrassing thing my Dad just said?

I can’t wait to see what snarky comments Tony edits in if my Dad makes it into the final cut. You guys will have to tell me about it (tape it), since the Travel Channel is not one of the one hundred cable channels I pay obscene amounts of money for.

So, that’s my family, and why I am the way I am. Sue them, not me.