Roadfood Digest

A new Shake Shack, in NYC, opens at 366 Columbus Avenue, near 77th Street, next month (October).  See the news in New York Magazine.  The photo above is of the original Madison Square Park location (at 23rd Street); see Stephen Rushmore Jr.'s Roadfood.com review.

Tourist stops in Le Mars, Iowa (known as The Ice Cream Capital of the World) feared a drop in business this summer, what with the high gasoline prices, and the completion of the Highway 75 bypass that allows north-south travelers to avoid passing through town.  Turned out business has been as good as ever!  North-south traffic through town has dropped, but east-west traffic has increased.  And “staycation” visitors have boosted business at places like Bob’s Drive-Inn and Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor.  Read Magdalene Biesanz’s story in the Le Mars Daily Sentinel.

That’s a Bob’s hot dog pictured above, with loosemeat topping.  Michael Stern, in his Roadfood.com review of Bob's, says "these dogs are natural-casing beauties with a real snap to their skin."  See also the Roadfood.com review of Blue Bunny.

Christopher Hirst writes about his pursuit of the perfect hamburger for London’s The Independent.  Along the way he throws in a good deal of history and research.  Some of the keys to a good burger: lots of fat, and added water.  Did you know that a third of Americans will have eaten ground beef in the previous 24 hours?  And that, in Great Britain, Burger King serves something called The Burger, which consists of Japanese Wagyu beef with white truffle, onion tempura prepared in Cristal, and Pata Negra ham?  It will run you £95.  Now that’s a Whopper!

Pictured above is a hubcap burger from Cotham’s Mercantile in Scott, Arkansas, from Michael Stern’s Roadfood.com review.

Kim Severson of The New York Times practically traces a Roadfood.com route through central New York, visiting a slew of Roadfood favorites (although Roadfood is never mentioned), including Jim’s BBQ in Candor (Roadfood.com review; see photo below), Dinosaur in Syracuse (Roadfood.com review), Sharkey’s in Binghamton (Roadfood.com review), Doug’s Fish Fry in Skaneateles (Roadfood.com review of the Cortland location), the Ithaca Farmers Market (Roadfood.com review; see photo above), and the Cornell Dairy Bar (Roadfood.com review)!  She might have added more than the very few seemingly token eateries that Roadfood hasn’t already written about, to help make it look at least a little more legit… nonetheless, it’s a fun read.

Bill Cosby eats free.  All others pay cash.  Mr. Cosby told the Washington Post about Ben’s Chili Bowl half-smokes: “You can describe it the same way a wine connoisseur would be able to tell difference between a pinot noir and a merlot."  Ben’s Chili Bowl celebrated 50 years of half-smokes this week with a show Thursday night at the Lincoln Theatre in D.C. featuring Mr. Cosby and Roberta Flack.  And yesterday, there was a block party celebration in front of Ben’s with Mayor Fenty and Ben’s founder Ben Ali.  Read all about Ben’s Chili Bowl in The Washington Post.  Here’s a companion piece in the Post.  And here’s a Washington Post photo gallery of Ben’s.  And Aamer Madhani here writes a post-block party ode to Ben’s for The Swamp, the Chicago Tribune’s Washington blog.

See the Roadfood.com reviews of Ben’s Chili Bowl.

Lamps are either born ugly or made ugly.  At least, those are the two categories in the Ugly Lamp Contest, sponsored by Lynn’s Paradise Cafe of Louisville, which takes place each year at the Kentucky State Fair.  This year’s ugly contest took place yesterday, and the Grand Champion Ribbon went to a lamp made of hideous men’s ties.  If we’re lucky, we’ll see the lamp on a table at Lynn’s, where many of the entries end up after the fair.  Read the story in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

See the Roadfood.com review of Lynn’s Paradise Cafe.

Larry Roberts of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recounts a life in hot dog eating, from asking his father to peel the natural casing off a Coney Island Nathan's dog as a five-year old, to wondering if there are hot dogs in heaven at one of his current Pittsburgh-area favorites, the Red Caboose in Rostraver.  Mr. Roberts even includes a recipe for a Spicy Pepper Glaze, which he suggests you brush on a batch of hot dogs before topping them with finely chopped sour pickles and raw onions.  Sounds great to us!  See his story here.

Those are two Coney Island Nathans franks in the above photo (Roadfood.com review).

Detroit Red Wings players and personnel each get to keep the Stanley Cup for a day or two.  When it was assistant equipment manager Chris Scoppetto’s turn Wednesday, the Connecticut native brought the Cup to his favorite New Haven pizzeria and placed it on a table near the checkout counter for all to admire.  Read Tom McMillan’s blog entry in the New Haven Advocate and Henry Chisholm’s story in the New Haven Register.

See the Roadfood.com review of Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletana.

If you’ve never been to New Mexico during the chile harvest, when fresh chiles are fire-roasted in countless fields and parking lots, blanketing the landscape with their sweet perfume, then you are missing one of the essential and most pleasurable of Roadfood experiences!  And as John Larson writes in The Mountain Mail of West-Central New Mexico, the season is almost upon us.  Green chiles should be ready within a week or two, red chiles a few weeks after that.  Read the story here.

Jane and Michael Stern answer some questions about Roadfooding for BudgetTravel.com.  Their best advice?  “Probably the biggest mistake is looking for something familiar. For us, the whole point of traveling is to experience the place we are, and that means eating the food people there eat, the way they eat it. That could range from Indian pudding in a Maine diner to carnitas tacos from a truck in South Tucson. In other words, be adventurous! Try new things! Meet new people!”

The photo shows fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, broccoli casserole, and fried green tomatoes at Mary Mac’s Tea Room in Atlanta, GA (Roadfood.com review), where they say they would begin a Southern culinary journey.