Philly Cheesesteak

My only experience of Philadelphia so far has been from the inside of a train station, but thanks to a friend of ours who is a native we recently got to sample its most famous culinary creation, the cheesesteak.  This is a sandwich (in the American sense, which encompasses a broad church of bread-based foods, in this case it means it comes on a long roll) filled with thinly sliced steak and cheese, at the very least, with added extras depending on who makes it.

Our friend was kind enough to bring us two different kinds, one from Pat's, which has widespread reputation for good cheesesteaks (and is supposed to have been founded by one of the inventors back in the day), and one from Max's which is her personal favourite.

Max's was modestly wrapped in paper, Pat's was more promotional.

Having tried both of these I can honestly say that they were both fantastic but Max's clearly blew Pat's out of the water.  Apparently Pat's use processed cheese (only in America!) while Max's uses real cheese, and it really makes a difference.  And while Pat's added only onions Max's added some kind of tomatoey sauce which moistened everything up delightfully.  Here's a cross-section, Max's on the left, Pat's on the right.

Max's reminded me very much of eating a good steak and cheese pie back in New Zealand, which isn't surprising because there are many similarities.  Given that meat pies are almost entirely lacking in this part of the world, it's obvious that things like the cheesesteak fill the gap.

It's also clear that the City of Brotherly Love knows what its doing.  I've ordered cheesesteaks before in other parts of the country, even the state, and the genuine article is just in a league of its own.  I certainly know what I'll be eating next time I go to Philadelphia!

What I learned about Williamsport

Until last weekend I had only a glancing knowledge of Williamsport.  Even though it's fairly close by, I'd only passed through it once when we went to Niagara Falls two years ago.  About all I learnd then was that it is home to the Little League Hall of Fame, and general headquarters of the of all things little league.  That's little nippers playing baseball, to the uninitiated, but it's a pretty big deal in these parts.

This time I noticed that the little leaguers were flying an enormous American flag.  I was left wondering how big the one flown at the grown-up baseball hall of fame must be if the little league merits the flag they have.

Anyway, the other two things I knew about Williamsport were that it was the scene of an attack by Native Americans of some settlers in the eighteenth century, and that not far away over the mountains begins the basin of the Ohio River, which ultimately leads to the Mississippi (though I should mention I haven't checked either of these "facts" very closely).

After our recent foray I now know two more things about the town.  First, as I wrote the other day, they know how to lay on a book sale.  And second, where to get lunch.  For after we'd rummaged around the books we retired to the Bullfrog Brewery for pretzels and sandwiches.  Mrs Walles had turkey, cheese, apple and caramelised onions while I went for simple pork loin and both were excellent.  It's one of the many good microbreweries that litter this part of the countryside, most of which have their own bar attached where you can admire all the shiny equipment in which their product is busily fermenting.

We were both amused, as we looked for a place to park the car, that most of the spaces beside the brewery are reserved for an organisation that aims to fight alcoholism.  Maybe at the end of a long day fighting alcoholism the only cure is a drink?

Anyway, I am pleased to report that Williamsport is a very tidy and pretty place.  It's a large town with solid architecture in the middle of town, where we were, but that centre is not so large that it's intimidating.  Mrs Walles tells me that there are bad parts of Williamsport, but I didn't see any of them. 

I was very happy to visit and it is nice to see the centre of a town, since you so often bypass the centre when you're travelling here, and get no real feel for the towns you are passing "through".  We're sure to be back again, whenever books or sandwiches call to us again.

Service without a smile

Mrs Walles and I seem to have developed an odd affliction: when we go out to restaurants recently the waitress brings the bill to the table before we've even finished our mains, leaving no opportunity to order dessert.  Now anyone who knows us will attest that we certainly look like people who could be persuaded to peruse the dessert tray, so it seems likely we've just struck a couple of people who want to finish their shift.  Either that or they've decided we look like we've already taken advantage of the dessert tray enough and are withholding it from us for our (in their judgement) own good.

The other night we went to a favourite eatery.  We hadn't been out to dinner in a while and we planned to do the thing properly, but we were denied dessert again.  We'd also been going to order a little something to take home for lunch the next day, but we couldn't do that either.  I guess we could have piped up and said we wanted to order something more, but why should we have to?  And besides, then we'd be dealing with a snotty server and who knows what unsanctioned extras would find their way into the coffee?

This actually hurts her more than it hurts us - we just paid and left and picked up desert from Dunkin' Donuts.  She didn't get as big a tip as she might have, partly because we didn't appreciate the service, and partly because she missed out on 15% of whatever dessert, coffee and lunch would have cost.  It all goes to show that tipping isn't necessarily the good motivator that is supposed to be.  And also that it's easy to find bad service in America.  But - and I may have said this before - at least it's sincerely bad service.  Still, I think I'd rather have insincerely good service than sincerely bad service if it means the difference between a pleasant night out and an evening cut short. 

Here's a tip

Last night I was discussing the blog with an acquaintance and I said one of the things I was trying to get across was all the unexpected little differences between New Zealand and the US.  Since we were in a restaurant I gave the example of having to hold on to your cutlery between courses (not that I said cutlery, since that only means knives here - yet another little difference).

I almost brought up tipping as an example, too, but then realised it wasn't a very good example because I knew about tipping before I came here.  What I didn't know, however, was the details and mechanics of it all.  It's been an adjustment, but it's just something you have to get used to.  Initially I was reserved about handing over tips because in New Zealand I think that many people are embarrassed to take a tip.  But here they want your money, and many don't mind fawning over you to get it.

If you go into a restaurant and order some food eventually the bill will arrive.  The first thing you have to do is take the total and add on 15-20% (and in your head, no less...I mean c'mon!).  As a New Zealander, with a mild repugnance towards the idea of tipping, it took me quite a while to get used to adding on so much for service, even when the service is quite bad.  There are people who say that you don't have to tip at all if the service is bad enough, but I've yet to see anyone walk the walk on that one.  But it's just a part of life here, and it's how the waiting staff make their money, so even though everyone bemoans tipping they all go along with it.

It took me even longer to get used to how the tip is paid.  The exact approach depends on whether you are paying by cash or card and whether you have exact change or not.  Many places you pay at the table, others you pay at the counter.  There are apparently subtle clues to tell you which is which, though I haven't become attuned to all of these yet.  Tips are only for service, so in places where you aren't served at your table you don't have to tip...except that there are some slightly ambiguous places like the barbecue joint we frequent where you order and pay as you enter but someone brings out your food.  That mystery was solved when we found that they had a tip jar near the door.

Restaurants aren't the only things that demand tips, though.  When you arrive at any reasonably big hotel you practically have to fight off the small army of bell boys trying to snatch your bags so that they can get a tip from you.  If the doorman of the hotel gets you a cab you have to slip them a couple of bucks.  And the cab driver needs a tip - notionally in the same 15-20% range but generally whatever makes the fare up to a good round number which is often much more than that.  Airport shuttle drivers get a tip if they lift your bags.  Hairdressers expect a tip.

If you're living in a small town like we are then tipping isn't a day to day thing.  But in a big city like New York the money flows very freely - has to flow freely or the service dries up.  On the other hand if you tip well, and they remember you, you will often get the royal treatment.  So it can be hard for the tipping-averse to get accustomed to, but in the end it is worth it.  That's my tip to you.

Fish in a dish

Today's post is only tangentially related to the Washington trip (you'll be relieved to hear if all the marble has been getting to you).
Instead it is concerned with something I had taken for granted in New Zealand but sadly cannot here - access to good fish.  Now the fish in America is very good, as long as you are in the right place.  Central Pennsylvania is not really the right place.  When I first arrived here, aware that the trip from New York takes about four hours on a good day, I realised that fish this far inland might be a bit sketchy.  And I was right, though perhaps not for the right reason.

You can get excellent fish here, you just have to know where to go.  After a few forays that ended badly (taste wise...I haven't eaten any properly bad fish here) I've come to realise that it's only worth ordering fish in restaurants if someone I trust has recommended it.  The other night Mrs Walles and I went out to a place where we had been advised the all-you-can-eat haddock and chips was good and it was excellent.  So good that I had two platefuls.  I've also had very good seafood at a Japanese hibachi place.  But then if you were looking for somewhere that was pretty much guaranteed to have fresh fish, a Japanese restaurant would surely be a good bet.

Though fish here is generally lacklustre I don't think this is because of our distance from the coast right now.  It seems more likely that in the time before fast transportation when the coast was even more remote people here just didn't have a lot of experience with cooking and eating fresh seafood.  I think you can see this in the way that a lot of restaurants serve fish - baked and smothered in cheese sauce, the kind of dish that's designed to stifle any flavour of the fish itself.  It's a conservative region and I can easily see this indifference to fish passing from one generation to the next even as access to good seafood improved.

I'm not sure if that's the explanation, but it's still a fact that it's hard to find good seafood around here, so I'm very grateful to the friend who gave us the tip the other night.  I don't have to wait until we visit a coastal area to get my seafood fix anymore (as I did in Washington).  The new place has me hook, line and sinker.

Who's the boss?

We had a power cut this morning, for about an hour.  One of our neighbours knocked on the door to check if the power was off here, too, which saved me wondering if it was just something wrong with our wiring (which wouldn't surprise me, given the way things are set up in this house, but maybe that's an American thing...).  He was annoyed because he'd just put a load of laundry in the drier, I was annoyed because I'd just started cleaning the bathrooms and there is no natural light in either of them.

See anything odd about this picture?  Fifty years ago I doubt it would be two men stuck with the domestics to do and no electricity to do them with.

Anyway, this inversion of gender stereotypes pleased Mrs Walles very much when I told her about it.  And not surprisingly because there are (especially in conservative places like this) expectations about men and women.  Case in point: the bill in restaurants.

When you ask for the bill (or check - ooh, look at me) it comes to the table and invariably it will be placed in front of me.  Because I'm the man.  Even though we live in supposedly enlightened times and it's usually Mrs Walles doing the honours at the moment, it still comes to me.  And not just in little ma and pa places, big chains, too, where you might think some carefully thought out company policy would make them put it in the middle of the table or something.  Maybe they tried that and all the men felt insulted and emasculated.  Or maybe nobody really thinks about it - except they do, because Mrs Walles does and I don't imagine she's alone.  It's just strange.

Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and fold some clothes.  A fella's work is never done!

Drinks with dinner

I don't know if this one is just because I'm unworldly or whether it's a genuine American phenomenon, but Americans seem to make a strict habit of drinking (in the general sense, not just alcohol) with each meal.  Having a drink with a meal doesn't weird me out, but having one with every meal took a little time to adjust to.

Before I came here I would have a cup of tea at breakfast and maybe after lunch.  Sometimes I'd have something with dinner, especially if I was out, but I didn't make a habit of it.  Now we are together, Mrs Walles and I have something to drink with every meal: coffee and juice with breakfast, tea or something cold with lunch and something cold again with dinner.  When in Rome...

On the whole this is a good thing, especially at home.  Here there is always orange juice in the fridge, and sweet iced tea and a plethora of fizzy drinks - even diet ones - that New Zealand manufacturers apparently have yet to discover.

In restaurants, though, things are usually more bleak.  Americans drink juice at breakfast but not other meals, so you can't usually get it unless the place serves breakfast.  There is always a standard line up of Coke or Pepsi products, most of which are packed with sugar (or, rather, high fructose corn syrup, the sweetener of choice in this corn-fed land).  Your options are pretty much diet cola or water, unless you're feeling rakish with respect to calories, and even that doesn't expand the range much.

There are exceptions, of course.  Perkins, one of our regular places, has chocolate milk and shakes on the menu, and another restaurant chain called Ruby Tuesday (ah, Ruby Tuesday) offers not only juice but delectible exotic juice cocktails with limitless refills.

But in general, the drink options seem limited.  Not any less limited than they might be in New Zealand. But in this land of plenty - where you can have your food customised about a hundred different ways - the relative dearth of drink choices leads me to think that those drinks with dinner aren't supposed to be enjoyed in their own right, they're just lubrication to help the food go down.

This all makes me sound ridiculously petulant and ungrateful (not to say that I'm not) but really, I think I'm starting to understand the American attitude.  After all, when the food is this good - and it is really good - who cares about the drinks?

Dining out on dining

There are many remarkable things about food in the US, not least the scale of things.  For example they have the temerity to call this a sandwich:

If you look closely you can just see the bread peeking out from beneath a mountain of corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and thousand island dressing.  Technically I suppose the bread makes it a sandwich, but only in the way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic.  By the way that particular combination is a Reuben sandwich for the uninitiated and it is delicious - just make sure that the bread, even token bread, is rye and toasted.  They don't have to be monstrous, that's just how they make them at the Carnegie Deli in New York City.

Big portions don't really confound me - my appetite can hold its own here - but there are lots of little things that took my by surprise.  Like the convention in restaurants that you hold on to your knife and fork between courses.  If you leave them on your plate they're whisked away and don't return, so you pretty much have to lick them clean and sit them on your napkin.  I still get caught out by that one.

My biggest restaurant faux pas so far happened after I'd already spent several months here and dined out a number of times.  What I hadn't done was to order salad - for one thing it comes out at a weird time and for another who needs salad when you're tackling with the mutant sandwich or a steak the size of a tire?

This time, though, the salad came with whatever I'd ordered.  Fine.  Then came the fateful question: what salad dressing did I want?  I should have asked for a list, that's what I usually do, but I got cocky and just went for it.  I knew what I wanted, what any reasonable Kiwi would have asked for.  "Mayonnaise" I said.

It didn't help that this was one of the unusual occasions when we were out with a large group.  As I recall the table fell silent and all heads turned in my direction.  I could sense concern for my mental health from several of my dining companions, worried perhaps that I might suddenly turn dangerous and have to be restrained.  The waitress looked faint.  Somebody repeated back "Mayonnaise..." and then added "...on salad?" with a tone of both distaste and incredulity.

Because, you see, Americans don't put mayonnaise on salad.  They put it on sandwiches, they make other salad dressings from it, like ranch or the aforementioned thousand island, but they definitely do not put it straight on salad.  If I can save one person from the humiliation of asking for mayo with their salad in a US restaurant, this blog will have been worth it.

They did bring me mayonnaise, in the end, because another thing restaurants do here is take customers wishes seriously - more on that another time.  I think it may have hurt them on the inside to do it, though.

I eventually recovered from the embarrassment.  I've even ordered salad since.  With ranch dressing, thank you.  And I always ask for a list of the options if I'm not sure what they are.