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Written by asap
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Tuesday, 27 March 2007 |
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Which is better, the hamburger around the corner or the ones you scarfed late nights all through college?
Which is better, the cuppa joe at the diner down the highway or the Kenyan roast at Starbucks?
Which is better, that roasted fish with rosemary and lemon last weekend or the one on the plate in front of you, the one you ordered with thoughts of last week’s pleasures still floating through your head?
Taste tests. Unscientific, untrustworthy and undeniably addictive.
Now, in my experience, just about everyone is susceptible to the allure of the taste test. And there are so many reasons we’re drawn to the idea.
Bragging rights. (’You call that a great slice of pizza? I’ve got a place for you ....’).
Curiosity. (’These may be the crispiest, lightest, most splendiforous french fries that have ever passed my lips. But wait, could there be even better ones across the street?’)
The taste test itself. A plate of four different kinds of bacon, each one to be tasted, tested, and tasted again.
And not to get too Kumbaya here, but for all our differences and inability to see eye-to-eye, one thing that seems to cut through all the static is food. Few things spur as much passion. If you can connect over a beloved food — whether it is a bakery’s warm chocolate chip cookie or a spicy bowl of tripe — you’ve got a connection.
———
But back to the taste tests. The biggest complications are time, distance and most of all, memory.
The best way is to approach it scientifically. Get the subject at hand, literally — the hamburgers, chocolate bars, muffins, caviar or whatever’s caught your fancy should all be in the same place at the same time. But that isn’t too realistic, is it?
The logistics are near impossible. Most food, except for store-bought, needs to be eaten where it’s cooked. Roasted fish, hamburgers, even pizza — all fade beyond recognition and past any reasonable standard of judgment if you haul them home. And forget trying to coordinate it all.
We’re left with the imperfect option of eating a dish somewhere, then eating it again somewhere else, some other time. Not so easy to judge.
Still, you know we’ll try. I can’t help it.
There was a memorable day and night of hamburger eating in Los Angeles. Fatburger, In-N-Out Burger, the Apple Pan, and, somewhere past midnight, Tommy’s Original. I left partial to In-N-Out. But memory has blurred my distinction among such stellar options. I must return for a second go-round.
Cliches shouldn’t be laughed at, so when Philadelphia beckoned I readied myself for cheese-steak testing. Pat’s and Geno’s were each a glorious mess of peppers and velveeta, but I gave the edge to Tony Luke’s with its roast pork, broccoli rabe and provolone. (Heresy, apparently, to traditionalists).
Years of travel to and living in New England have spurred years of comparison among lobster rolls. I’d have to give the nod to a well-known roadside stand called Red’s Eats on the west side of the Sheepscot River in Wiscasset, Maine. Though The Ice House in Rye, N.H., is too delicious to ignore.
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This could go on and on. Cuban sandwiches, french fries, hot dogs, fish tacos, samosas, barbecue, ramen, fried chicken. My in-laws are on an unending quest for a doughnut that can measure up to a shop that closed down five years ago.
Because once it becomes about comparing some meal or treat that you once loved, it’s a tangled knot of memory and tastebuds.
And for me, one obsession stands out: Porchetta.
On one long, ravenous tour of Italy we had two great porchetta sandwiches: Slices of garlicky pig, roasted with a mess of parsley, rosemary and who knows what other local herbs, served just faintly warm on crusty bread. One sandwich was at a city market in Florence, the other a stand on a sparse road through Umbria.
I’ve never found another porchetta that comes close, and I’ve tried and tried again.
It took me years to not jump like a dog named Pavlov anytime a cookie-cutter restaurant with an Italian name dropped the p-word. I’ve tried to recreate the dish myself many, many times. High heat, low heat. Pork loin, pork shoulder, suckling pig. Heavy on the rosemary; no, parsley; no, chervil. No luck.
I’ve mostly accepted it’s now just a dream, an elusive standard I’ll never attain again — until I get back to that market in Florence and look for the counter with a whole hog sitting on top of it.
And even then, I worry: How will it stand up to the memory test?
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asap columnist Robert Tanner has eaten his way around the world as a national writer for The Associated Press. Hear him introduce himself here: http://tinyurl.com/29zxud | Only registered users can write comments.
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