Roadfood Digest

When we recently polled the readers of Roadfood.com about their favorite clam dish, fried clams was the decisive winner over second place clam chowder.  Out of the 1152 people who voted, only five chose clam hash, no doubt because few people have ever had the good fortune to sample it.  As far as we know, the only restaurant that serves clam hash is Pat’s Kountry Kitchen (Roadfood.com review) in Old Saybrook, CT, where it is the house specialty.  If you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Pat’s at breakfast time, we urge you to get a plate, and ask for it cooked crisp.  Assuming you enjoy clams, you won’t regret it!

Burgers just squeaked past eggs and hot open-faced sandwiches as the most popular thing to eat in a diner, in our recent Roadfood.com poll.  It’s easy to forget, for those of us that live in diner country, that many regions of the US are diner-deprived, as many Roadfood Forums posters lamented.  We’ll be happy to trade some of our diners to these folks for a few of their town cafes!

 

Roadfood.com readers love the egg rolls at old-style Chinese restaurants (don't forget the duck sauce and hot mustard).  There was some confusion over just what an "old-style Chinese restaurant" means.  A lot of it probably depends on how old you are, and where you are from, but what we had in mind was the kind of Chinese restaurant you'd typically find in the New York suburbs (and presumably many other places) in the 1950's and 60's - in fact, they were the only kind of Chinese restaurants that existed outside of Chinatowns.  Nobody knew from Szechuan, Fujian, and Hunan cuisines.

Many of the same dishes are still available today, usually from small take-out shops, but the food has mostly lost its fluxy, as if it all comes from an enormous centralized kitchen in Peoria.

About half of Roadfood.com readers thought hot dogs make the best street eats.  Pretzels and falafel also come from carts, ice cream sometimes.  Pizza?  Not a cart food, but often sold from storefront pizzerias by the slice, for eating and walking.  Other choices suggested by Forum posters: grilled meat on a stick, roasted nuts, gyros, Italian ices, tacos, corn dogs, yakisoba, clams on the half-shell, poutine, French fries, sausages on a roll, and corn-on-the-cob!

Most Roadfood.com readers are traditionalists when it comes to french fries, preferring ketchup over all other dips combined.  Some other dip suggestions from the Roadfood Forum: vinegar, honey mustard dressing, steamed mussel broth (!), and spicy tomato mayonnaise.

A thread on the Roadfood.com Forums reminded us: it's not too late to place an order for Bissinger's chocolate-covered fresh raspberries, available only in July.  Here's a description from our Roadfood.com review of Bissinger's: "It's not for the St. Louis bricks-and-mortar chocolate shops that we sing our highest praises.  It's for the fruit.  Blackberries and raspberries, in particular.  Surrounded by fondant and coated with dark or milk chocolate.  The fondant combines with the juices from the fresh, ripe berries to create a luscious syrup.  These are similar in concept to chocolate cherry cordials, except the fake, processed cherries are replaced by in-season blackberries or raspberries, and that makes all the difference.  These are simply among the finest candies imaginable."

July is raspberry time.  The blackberries are available in September.  Know that shipping these delicate, leak-prone candies in summer is a challenge; Bissinger's knows how to get them to you in good shape, but it'll cost you.  A lot.

As kids, one of us used to request veal parmigiana every year for our birthday meal.  We rarely get veal parm these days; who knows why?  But it still sounds wonderful to us. Also to many Roadfood.com readers, judging by the recent Roadfood poll.  Spaghetti and meatballs and lasagna tied for second place.  And as many readers pointed out: where were ravioli and eggplant parmesan?  Yes, of course they belonged on this list!

The recent news that Starbucks is closing 600 under-performing stores, and the thread about that news in the Roadfood.com Forums, got us thinking about how much we dislike chains, and yet how much we like Starbucks.  We recently got back from a 10 day trip to the Denver area. We must have visited a Starbucks about once or twice a day while we were there. Yes, even though there were plenty of good independent coffee shops to be found. Here's why, in decreasing order of importance:

1) Outside of the New York area, it's the only place you can count on finding a copy of The New York Times. Other than the big bookstore chains, everywhere else is hit or miss.

2) The bathrooms. Available without buying anything, clean and private.  If we’re in the car, we just use the GPS to search for the nearest Starbucks.

3) Good breakfast places often have lousy coffee (this was common in Denver). When that happens, we make a quick post-breakfast stop at Starbucks for the real thing. The Pike Place blend is a compromise but they often have something stronger on tap too. We have to admit we love the coffee.

4) Late afternoons we often recharge with either an Arnold Palmer or a Coffee Frappuccino. They just taste good and are incredibly refreshing.

All that despite the fact that we hate chains.

 

Walleye is the Midwest fish of choice for Roadfood.com readers, followed closely by trout and perch, according to the recent website poll.  Pictured above is a plate of walleye as served at Scott’s Harbor Grill in Traverse City, Michigan.  Says Michael Stern, in his Roadfood.com review: “Its meat is dense, moist, and ineffably flavorful with a delicacy that is a world apart from the seafaring taste of ocean fish.”

Roadfood.com readers pick up their eating tips from a wide range of sources, according to last week’s poll.  The hotel/motel desk clerk was named most often, but policemen and truck drivers are also popular sources for the inside info on good local eats.  Many readers also pointed out that bartenders (not one of the offered poll choices) can also often point you in the right direction.