For almost a dozen years I have written approximately 750 words each week, never missing a week. That’s almost half of a million words (and almost that many pounds gained and lost, as my weight tends to fluctuate with the seasons and the travel schedule).

It’s the same routine each week. I get up early on Monday morning and start writing until I reach my 10:00 a.m. deadline. Then I continue to write way past my deadline. Occasionally, the timing of the Monday deadline comes back to bite me.

Last week, while in the middle of a caffeine-fueled, marathon journey through the Chicago restaurant scene, I stated that Girl & the Goat was my new favorite restaurant in Chicago. That was a true statement. It was written in my hotel room early Monday morning on the last day of the three-day excursion.

The problem with deadlines in the middle of a trip is that when a writer makes a definitive statement such as “Girl & the Goat is my new favorite restaurant in Chicago,” he better have completed his trip.

Monday evening I had reservations at Longman & Eagle in the Logan Square neighborhood northwest of downtown. Longman & Eagle is— by a long shot— my favorite restaurant in Chicago, and possibly one of my top 10 favorites in the country.

Longman & Eagle, located just across from the Logan Square train stop, is everything that I like in a restaurant. It’s dark, crowded, casual and hip. But most importantly they serve excellent food. Behind the bar, high on a shelf filled with liquor and a few stray odds and ends is a plaque with a Michelin star on it.

Longman & Eagle is a Michelin-starred restaurant housed in a dive bar. No pretense. To its core, it’s all about the food, the quality of the ingredients, the community, the energy, and the experience. One is likely to be seated by a foodie who made the pilgrimage from hundreds of miles away or next to a bearded, flannel-clad local from next door who is steadily making his way through the impressive whiskey inventory.

Longman & Eagle could actually be, and may actually be, classified as an inn. There are six rooms for rent above the restaurant. Jessica Herman in a piece for “Time Out Chicago said, “Think of it as crashing at your friend’s place that happens to have awesome local art, an Apple TV in every room, and a raid-able minibar stocked with Vosges chocolates and Coppo wine for 4am snacking.” And the showers are huge.

During this most recent trip to Chicago I ate at places with a total of four Michelin stars. The star that shines the brightest, however, was perched on the back bar at Longman & Eagle.

There were two instances where I pulled a maneuver my management team calls “The St. John.” I have on several occasions— usually in first course offerings— ordered a menu item that tasted so good that I stopped the dining flow immediately, and ordered another round of the same dish we just finished. At Longman & Eagle, I did this twice. That is a record.

We ate roasted marrow bones, pastrami-spiced pig’s head, wild boar sloppy joes, pork shank, and deconstructed rabbit pot pie. All of those dishes were excellent. But the two items I doubled up on were in another stratosphere. First a salad of compressed melon and fig with local greens, toasted pine nuts, artisanal goat cheese, and a honey-chili vinaigrette. Simple, delicate, excellent. Though the English pea agnolotti with roasted Trumpet Royal mushrooms, Grana Padano, and black truffle vinaigrette was the winner of the evening. After one bite I was flagging down the server to order another.

The second time we were made aware that we could add fresh morel mushrooms for $15.00. Note: The answer to “Would you like to add fresh morel mushrooms to that dish?” is always, “yes.”

The compressed melon and agnolotti dishes represented the best items I ate during the entire trip. Actually they represent the best dishes I have eaten in 2012, and I spent the first two months of the year in Spain and France.

They can call it “The St. John maneuver” all they want. I call it wise eating.

So here’s to another food-filled 12 years (deadlines and all), and hopes of many more meals at Chicago’s Longman & Eagle.

I’ve been coming to the National Restaurant Association’s annual trade show in Chicago, almost every year, since 1991. It helps our company stay on top of what is going on in the restaurant industry. We discover new equipment, notice new trends, and find goods and services that help us run more efficiently and effectively.

A secondary benefit to show is the exposure it affords. I love Chicago, but I love Chicago’s restaurants even more.

When I travel with Purple Parrot Café general manager, Dusty Frierson, we have one mission— to eat. It’s a serious undertaking and one that an untrained novice might not be able to handle.

Two weeks ago in Houston, Frierson and I ate a three-course authentic Mexican breakfast followed by enchiladas at one place, fajitas at another, and then a bacchanalia that involved six food trucks within a two-block area. All of that eating occurred in a four-hour span.

Trips to major cities involve careful planning, preparation, and research. Frierson meticulously planned this three-day excursion to the Windy City with the attention and precision of a field general preparing for battle.

Purple Parrot Cafe Chef Jeremy Noffke, and our friend Jonathan joined us on the trip to Chicago. The eating prowess of Frierson has already been established. Noffke— one of the most naturally gifted and intuitive chefs I have ever known— is a skinny guy, but he has an unrivalled passion for fine dining. Our friend Jonathan is a salubrious eater who had been living on a steady diet of egg whites and plain white rice before this trip. Welcome to the big league, Jonathan.

On our first night in Chicago, we hit six places— three Michelin stars among them— eating full meals in three of them, in a compelling, foie gras and pork belly-filled seven-hour span.

The evening started at Carrie Nahabedian’s North Clark restaurant Naha. The service was outstanding, the appetizers were stellar, but the entrees left us a little unimpressed.

Before our early reservation at Naha, and as a last-minute addition to our dining schedule, I put our name on the waiting list at Frontera Grill across the street. I have often said that Rick Bayless knows more about Mexican cuisine than any chef in Mexico. He is one of the America’s most talented chefs and has a wall full of Beard awards and nominations to back up that statement. The waiting list was at the three-hour mark when I added our name. Before we left the list had grown to four hours.

Our next stop was Aviary, Grant Achatz’s cutting edge cocktail bar where the bartenders work their magic in a well-equipped space that looks more chemistry lab than back bar. There were immersion circulators running at full tilt in the back of the lab, and cocktails being smoke-infused inside of plastic bags in the front.

Maude’s Liquor Bar was like stepping into a Left Bank mainstay just off of the West Loop in Chicago. A second dinner at Blackbird proved that Paul Kahan hasn’t missed a beat since my first visit 10 years ago. Our friend Jonathan was ready to throw in the linen napkin after the Blackbird meal, but somehow gained his second wind and ventured on.

The visit of the night, and my new favorite restaurant in Chicago, was Top Chef winner and Beard nominee Stepanie Izard’s Girl & the Goat. Izard’s rustic room on West Randolph was loud and filled with more energy than any restaurant I’ve visited in years. The food was spot on, and Izard was working the pass well into the evening.

Girl & the Goat was so good, and so much fun, we returned twice on the same night. Our friend Jonathan made both trips.

The next day I ventured out after the trade show and grabbed a mid-afternoon seat at The Purple Pig. The packed-to-capacity Spanish influenced tribute to all things porcine was not on Frierson’s list, and halfway through my milk-braised pork shoulder and house-cured Iberico lardo I texted him and recommended he and Noffke stop in on their way back to the hotel.

Across town, our friend Jonathan was polishing off an entire deep-dish pizza (and no, it wasn’t of the egg white and rice variety) by himself. He was catching on. A lengthy trip to Big Star and a dinner at Michelin-starred Sepia rounded out the second day for me, as I threw in the linen napkin early on this night as the other three headed to Maria’s.

Two days down, one day to go. I am trying to figure out how to squeeze in return trips to The Purple Pig, Girl & the Goat, Publican Quality Meats, and Big Star while still visiting the remaining places on the list. Plain white rice is not on the menu and there’s not an egg white in sight. Jonathan might never be the same.

As a kid I enjoyed vacations at the Silver Beach Motel and Cottages. I have fond memories of the small old-school bungalows with tiny kitchens and walking to the jetty on the sugar-white sand beach before it shouldered so many condominiums. I recall floundering with Coleman lanterns at night, and my mother nursing one of the most wicked sunburns I ever endured. Nice memories, all. But what I remember most about my childhood visits to the Silver Beach in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the old-line restaurant in the center of the property that served excellent breakfasts.

Silver Beach

In the decade of the 1980s I lived in Destin twice. I can’t tell you much about the first stint other than I often made an early-morning trek to a small beachside joint called June’s Dunes where I ate excellent pancakes. During the second stint— one marked by cleaner living and clearer thinking— I had a blast.

In 1987, at 26-years old, in the months before I opened my first restaurant, I lived on the beach and worked as a waiter. It was the most stress-free period of my life. I spent time on the beach and out on the town, but the most monumental part of those days— in terms of my latter career— was hanging around the cafes and restaurants of the Panhandle where the culinary culture, influence, and impact seeped into my consciousness.

Destin had recently moved a few notches forward on the culinary scene. Broiled flounder was passé and new preparations and techniques were seeping in. Beachside Café hired a classically trained chef from Joey’s in Baton Rouge. He brought classical French and Creole recipes with him, but most importantly he brought future talent.

One can trace the culinary lineage of Destin restaurants from the kitchen of Beachside Café in the early 1980s. The chef brought young high-school aged cooks and dishwashers who held down summer jobs in the cafe, moved down after graduation, and then became chefs in their own right. They ventured out and opened their own restaurants, and they trained new chefs who ventured out and created the culinary scene that exists today.

Destin, Florida has always been influenced more by New Orleans and Baton Rouge than Miami and Key West.

I plan my trips to the beach exactly like I plan my trips to New York, San Francisco, or Chicago— around food. This most recent trip was mixed with old and new visits. Two standbys that I have kept in my culinary must-visit schedule moved off of the list permanently, as this time— like the last several visits— both offered sub-par food and service. We had bad experiences at two other restaurants on the trip, but I’ll add them to the one-more-chance list.

As much as I hate to see the decline of some places, I am excited to have found a new spot. Not “new” as in just opened, but new to me.

If I had a list of 10,000 possible names for my new seafood venture, “Stinky’s” would probably be number 10,001. But what do I know? The little seafood joint on CR 30A in Santa Rosa Beach has been packing them in for a few years. And besides, I named a place “Purple Parrot Café” that had nothing to do with birds, islands, Jimmy Buffet, or the tropics.

What's in a name?

Stinky’s Fish Camp is a casual seafood restaurant with excellent fresh fish options and oysters prepared in several different styles. The usual suspects are there— Beinville and Rockefeller, but the winners of the bunch were raw oysters topped with ceviche. Excellent.

Barbeque shrimp and crawfish pie gave the standard Panhandle nod to New Orleans and the fresh redfish and grouper were first rate.

Though this quick trip was a hit-and-miss proposition (out of six restaurant visits, only two were exceptional), Stinky’s lived up to the pre-billing.

Raw Oysters topped with Ceviche

Whereas I am saddened to see some of my old standby go-to restaurants begin to decline, I’ll always have the smoked tuna dip and Thai dishes at Harbor Docks. They never let me down. Ever.

In 1987 I worked at Harbor Docks for six months. There were two Thai ladies in the kitchen at lunch— Ms Dang and Ms Long. One of them is still there, and the fried rice, egg rolls, and stir fry are as good as they were when I used to sit down and eat them on the deck between shifts. During this visit my wife ordered a sesame shrimp entrée with coconut rice and a perfect cucumber salad. It was light, delicate, and healthy. My daughter ate trigger fish, and my son ate his weight in fried crab claws.

Ultimately, we go to Harbor Docks for the smoked tuna dip. It is the best on the planet. By far. No question. End of discussion.

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Both of which are considerably larger after this most recent visit to the Florida Panhandle.

Harrison and claws

Harbor Docks Smoked Yellowfin Tuna Dip

1 lb Yellowfin tuna loin, chopped then smoked
1 Tbl Creole Seasoning
2 tsp Black Pepper
1 /2 cup Hellman’s Mayonnaise

Mix together and store refrigerated for up to five days.

I wasn’t doing anything rough and rowdy, just leaned back and the welding on the swivel/tilt mechanism underneath the chair cracked and my big fat rump fell backwards. Once I got back up and into the chair it fell forward.

That brings the official count to three broken executive leather office chairs in the last four years.

It’s not the chair’s fault. I purchase sturdy, well made, executive office chairs and usually test them out in the store and check the welding underneath before I buy them. An office chair is important to me as I spend a good bit of time in one each week. It is the behind-the-desk perch from which I write columns, peruse accounting reports, dodge salespeople, avoid phone calls, and occasionally take short naps. OK, sometimes they’re long naps.

The broken chairs have a simple explanation. Most know about the “Freshman 15”— the mysterious 15 pounds that attaches itself to most college freshman’s midsection during the first semester of their freshman year. It’s a result of being away mama’s home cooking and closer to establishments that specialize in barley and hops. I was the victim of a freshman 15, a sophomore 10, a junior 10, and since there was a 21-year gap between my high school graduation and college graduation I totaled out at a net 60-pound gain as I ate my way towards a bachelor’s degree during a very lengthy college career.

This latest executive office chair casualty is a direct result— not of a freshman 15, but— of the Mississippi 20.

I recently spent six months in Europe and, at one point during the journey, had dropped 40 pounds. As we moved into Spain last December, most notably southern Spain where they fry almost everything, I added on a Spanish version of the freshman 15— the Seville 6.8 (kilograms). So I came home with a net loss of 25 pounds (11.34 kilograms).

Like you, I’m a little baffled as to how that happened, because my main job in all of the 17 countries I visited was to eat. That’s it. Eat and write about eating. I took that job seriously and lost weight while doing it.

However, the morning I arrived back in the U.S. I weighed myself. I was pleased with the 25-pound loss and wasn’t missing the extra chins that were lost with it. Though the next morning when I stepped on the scales I had gained one pound. The next morning I gained another and the next morning another. Seriously, I was gaining a pound a day, and I was probably eating less than I had been eating in Europe.

After three weeks, I had gained 20 pounds. I had no other explanation than the Mississippi 20.

Yet how could it be? In Europe I ate pastries every morning. The breads in Italy and France were amazing and I visited a bakery every morning during the trip. Pasta anyone? I ate my weight in pasta during the 10 weeks we traveled from the southernmost point of Sicily to the Italian Alps. I reveled in the heavy cream and butter-laden recipes of France, and felt right at home devouring fried foods by the plateful all over Spain. All of that, and somehow I came home with a net 25-pound loss.

Last week I read a piece in the New York Times by Karen Le Billon author of “French Kids Eat Everything.” In that piece, the Oxford educated PhD turned blogger wrote of the French diet from baby food to school lunches. She wrote of how French kids eat broccoli, beet salad, baked endive and cauliflower casserole at school. They only have one snack a day and the government promotes that theory.

“French parents teach their children to eat like we teach our kids to read: with love, patience and firm persistence they expose their children to a wide variety of tastes, flavors and textures that are the building blocks of a varied, healthy diet,” wrote Le Billon. “Pediatrician recommended first foods for French babies are leek soup, endive, spinach and beets.”

They eat well it’s true. But there are a ton of McDonald’s over there, too. My weight gain was not due to diet, as I came home cooking most of the dishes I had been eating over there.

The Mississippi 20 is a direct result of not walking. That’s the only thing I can conclude. Everything else is the same, or better. The main difference between my life here and my life over there was that I walked miles and miles every day and never once thought about it.

We would hit a city and start walking in the morning and not stop until it was bedtime. I imagine we averaged well over five miles a day. We weren’t running or jogging, just walking— to the Vatican, through the Louvre, up the hill to the Parthenon, into the Tuscan countryside hunting for truffles, walking all of the way.

Ultimately the problem is the problem. Sitting in the office chair is leading me to the eventual destruction of the office chair. Tomorrow I start a new campaign: Save Our Office Chairs. I will forego the short naps at my desk and vow to walk 20 miles a week and see if that will combat the Mississippi 20 that is currently forcing me to loosen to a new belt notch. I’ll keep you updated.

Onward.

Pineapple Sorbet

1/2 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup karo syrup
1 Tbl fresh lemon juice
1 large ripe pineapple, rind and core removed and cubed, approx. 5 cups

Make a simple syrup by placing the water and sugar in a small sauce pot and heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Cool the syrup completely.
Place the simple syrup, karo syrup, lemon juice and pineapple in a blender. On high speed, puree the mixer until it is smooth. Strain the mixture through a fine strainer and refrigerate for one hour.
Following the manufacturer’s directions of an electric ice cream machine, freeze the liquid. Remove from the ice cream maker and store covered in the freezer for 2 hours before serving. The sorbet may be made and held in the freezer for one week.

Yield:
1 quart

Minted Cookie

1/2 cup Butter
1 /4cup Sugar
1 medium Egg
1/2tsp Mint extract
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups Flour
1/4 tsp. Baking powder
10 Peppermints, crushed*

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar; beat in egg and extracts. Sift flour and baking powder together, stir into mixture. Refrigerate about 1 hour, or until dough is firm enough to roll. On a floured surface, roll to 1 /8-inch thickness and cut with cookie cutters. Sprinkle the tops with the crushed peppermint pieces. Bake 10-12 minutes.

Yield: 12-16 cookies

To serve, scoop the sorbet into serving dishes and place 1-2 cookies along side of the scooped sorbet.

Part of my job is to travel and get ideas to bring back to our restaurants. Sometimes I find things in little dive bars and joints when I wasn’t looking for inspiration or ideas. Other times some of the most sought after, and upscale, locales offer nothing tangible other than inspiration to keep going and growing. Many times I am so excited about a recipe or concept that I write about it, and then work it up for one of the restaurants.

The key is getting out there and seeing what is going on. The most inspired I’ve been in the last decade was during the 10 weeks I spent in Italy and the month I spent in Spain. The Italian food culture intrigued me— the freshness, the simplicity, and, most of all, the taste of the cuisine. In Spain I fell in love with the tapas mindset and the beauty of operating a full-scale restaurant with a very limited staff.

One of the most popular recipes I’ve developed in the last year was the house salad dressing at our new Italian concept, Tabella. People love this dressing. It’s tart, it’s light, and it tastes like no other dressing out there. People come in just to buy the dressing and take it home. In the last year we have sold well over 20,000 salads tossed in Tabella house dressing.

The interesting thing about that recipe is that I didn’t have to travel anywhere for inspiration. I had been eating a version of it my entire life.

I love salads today. I have enjoyed them all over the world, but I grew up with a severe disdain for salad. I had a fairly sophisticated palate for a Mississippi kid in the late 1960s, but lettuce wasn’t in my culinary repertoire. In my pre-teen years I would only eat the hard white core of iceberg lettuce, dry. In my early teens I only ate salad if it had bottled creamy Italian dressing on it.

My salad days and lifelong love affair with all types of salads began with a recipe from a friend’s aunt.

My lifelong friend, Amy— with whom I spent two years of kindergarten, 12 years of school, and a few years of college— had an aunt named Tina. I didn’t know Aunt Tina very well, but I do remember her being a chaperone on our senior trip, and for that job she deserves sainthood. I mainly knew Aunt Tina because she was the creator of the aptly named, Aunt Tina’s Dressing.

I began eating salads because of Aunt Tina’s dressing. It was sold at the annual Episcopal church bazaar, and the recipe passed from household to household. Everyone I knew back in the early 1970s in my small hamlet of Hattiesburg knew about— and served— Aunt Tina’s dressing.

These were the days after green goddess and before the junior league salad with the walnuts and ramen noodles. Aunt Tina’s salad truly ruled the day.

Aunt Tina’s salad dressing was such a part of my childhood I published the recipe in my first cookbook. In the back of my mind though, I always wanted to use it in a restaurant application.

When I was deep in the recipe-testing process in the weeks before we opened our Italian concept, Tabella, I brought the recipe for Aunt Tina’s dressing in the kitchen hoping it might serve as our house salad dressing. I made the salad I had grown up with, and then thought about how it might appeal to customers in an Italian restaurant. It didn’t fit.

I liked the tarragon vinegar and apple cider vinegar aspect of the recipe, but blue cheese and paprika didn’t fit in the flavor components of our concept. On my second pass at it, I switched the blue cheese to Parmesan cheese, omitted the paprika, and substituted olive oil for canola oil. That was it. Done deal. A salad was born.

Sometimes it’s as easy as that.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the late, great Aunt Tina, and hopefully she knows that her dressing kicked off my life-long love affair with salads and was the inspiration for one of my most popular recipes, ever.

Aunt Tina’s Dressing

1 /3 cup Tarragon Vinegar
4 Tbl Apple cider vinegar
2 tsp Black pepper
1 Tbl Paprika
2 tsp Salt
1 /3 cup Blue cheese crumbles
2 tsp Garlic, minced
1 cup Canola oil

Place all ingredients together in a glass jar and refrigerate. Shake well before using.

I walked into my office yesterday and the mail was stacked neatly on my desk as usual. There were a couple of bills, several solicitations, a thank-you note, a letter from a column reader, a few pieces of junk mail, and— on the top of the stack, front and center, addressed to me— a letter from the AARP.

Actually, it was an authorized dispatch from the “office of the chief executive officer” of the AARP in Washington D.C. I fumbled for my reading glasses and clapped my hands twice to turn my lamp on.

How could this be? I’m only 50-years old. Yesterday I was planning a trip to Panama City as a senior in high school. A few blinks later I was walking with a bachelor’s degree as a senior in college. Today, according to this group, I am just a senior. No title before or after, just “senior” and eligible for discounts at participating restaurants.

The AARP stands for American Association of Retired Persons, or retired people, or retired podiatrists. I’m not actually sure which, because nowhere in the official literature is the acronym explained. This group is so well known they are a stand-alone contraction. They are the KFC of lobbying groups.

Looking at the unopened envelope, I was expecting a lot of material and a pretty heavy sales pitch inside. But there was very little information about the organization and its goals and principles inside the correspondence. I guess that the retention rate of 50 year-olds might be low, so they figure that the first round of communication need only make a brief introduction. According to friends who saw their fifth decade come and go many bowls of bran cereal ago, this will be the first in scores of solicitations as I begin to creak and falter my way through seniordom.

There was, however, a free insulated travel bag in it for me if I signed up today. They were serious about this insulated travel bag. It was dangled in front of my soon-to-be-cataract-filled eyes all throughout the letter, on the outside of the envelope, the inside of the envelope, the back of the envelope, next to the hard-plastic membership card, and as a postscript directly below Addison Barry Rand’s— the aforementioned chief executive officer— signature. “P.S. Return the form above to receive your Insulated Travel Bag— FREE.”

At every turn there was something about the free insulated travel bag. I’ll admit I don’t know too much about being old. But having an insulated bag to carry around with you must be an extremely important part of the process.

After reading further I learned that the membership card they enclosed was only a “temporary” membership card. They needed my $16 before I could receive a “membership kit” and an “official” membership card.

I began to wonder if people at movie theatres and buffet restaurants scrutinize AARP cards as much as we do in the bar business. Do senior citizens get carded? Would the cashier at Shoney’s look closely at the card, then up to my face to see if I might actually be a senior? Would I pass? It’s like spring break in reverse, you’re actually better off if you don’t pass the scrutiny.

For $16 the AARP promised me a 12-month membership in their organization, free membership for my wife, a free subscription to “AARP The Magazine,” access to discounted products (Metamucil, anyone?), 10 issues of the “AARP Bulletin Paper,” and access to discounts on several goods and services.

Whereas the offer to extend my wife free membership is a noble gesture, I am not sure the office of Mr. Addison Barry Rand knows exactly what would be in store for me if I offered said wife— who is nowhere near retirement age— a membership card to the AARP (even if there was a free insulated travel bag included).

Though, in the end, it might be the insulated travel bag that seals the deal for me. They hawked it so effectively I might spend $16 just to see the thing. Though I am not sure that— in this decrepit state— I will be doing any more traveling.

It seems like yesterday I was a member of the KISS Army. Today I am about to be a member of the AARP.

There might be one major problem. One would think that membership in the American Association of Retired Persons mandated that said member be retired. I am not retired. I don’t plan on retiring soon. I might never retire. Though I think I’m going to join the AARP, because, over the course of writing this column, I have come up with several uses for an insulated travel bag. Now pass the Metamucil.

Tomato, Onion and Cucumber Salad

1 /2 tsp Garlic, minced
1 /4 cup Red wine vinegar
1 tsp Dried Basil
1 /2 tsp Black pepper, freshly ground
1 Tbl Orange juice
3 /4 cup Olive oil
1 tsp Salt
3 cups Ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, diced
3 /4 cup Vidalia onion, thinly sliced
1 1 /2 cup Cucumbers, peeled, seeded and cubed

Combine the first seven ingredients and mix well. Toss with the vegetables and refrigerate. Chill for three hours before serving. Best if made a day ahead. Yield: six to eight servings

Most of the world sees comfort food as a rare treat or guilty pleasure. To many, it’s an every-once-in-a-while food item that can satisfy our hunger, make us feel good, and take us back to our mother and grandmother’s kitchens, all at once.

The beauty of Southern cuisine is that most of what we eat on a regular basis is considered by the rest of the country to be comfort food.

I found a list of “comfort foods” on the Internet. It listed items such as: Chicken pot pie, chicken and dumplings, fried chicken, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, apple pie, and banana pudding. Down here we just call that “dinner.” Those are food items many of us— the lucky ones— eat in a typical week.

To me, a comfort food is something that is not in a weekly— or even monthly— rotation. It should be a treat. It’s the food that gets me excited before a meal, makes me happy during a meal, and makes me grateful after the meal.

Based on those criteria, boiled fresh-Gulf shrimp would qualify as my number one comfort food.

Boiled shrimp are seasonal, so the “not in a weekly— or even monthly— rotation” criteria holds true. It is definitely a food that gets me excited before I eat it. It most certainly makes me happy while I eat it. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that there has ever been a time that I sat down to a plate of freshly boiled shrimp and haven’t been extremely grateful that I just ate a plate of freshly boiled shrimp.

Boiled shrimp are the ultimate coastal comfort food. Boiled crawfish are fine. They are popular in this part of the world. If I am at a crawfish boil, I will eat boiled crawfish and be content. But I’m mostly eating them because they are there and that is why I came. Though if I am at a shrimp boil, I will eat. I will smile. And I will be grateful.

Boiled shrimp also take me back to my childhood, to summers on the Gulf Coast, and in the kitchen of my childhood home. My mother boiled shrimp well and she boiled them often. She is responsible for my love of comfort food growing from a fondness to a passion.

Her meatloaf left a little to be desired, but she more than made up for it when she cooked gumbo or boiled shrimp.

Comfort food is gratitude.

These days I am “all about” comfort food. Since returning from an extended trip overseas, I have eaten chicken pot pie at least once a week for the last eight weeks. I never sit down to a plate of chicken pot pie that I don’t feel grateful. Seriously, it’s one of my favorite comfort foods and I am grateful to be eating it every time I eat it.

Yesterday I ate boiled shrimp and I was grateful before, during, and after.

Life is too short to be eating foods that don’t make me grateful— grateful to have a wonderful family to share a meal with, grateful to live in a country that has such a bountiful amount of food, and grateful to live in the South, where the food just tastes better.

Boiled Shrimp

3 qts Water
3 Tbl Crab boil, powdered (or 2 Tbl liquid)
2 Tbl Creole Seasoning
2 Bay leaves
2 Lemons, quartered
4 Tbl Salt
1 Tbl Black peppercorns, whole
1 tsp Cayenne Pepper
2 lbs Fresh Gulf Shrimp, large, head on, and unpeeled

Place all ingredients except the shrimp in a large saucepot and bring to a boil. Turn heat down so the mixture comes to a fast simmer. Continue to boil for 20 minutes. Place the shrimp in the simmering liquid. Stir well, cover, then remove the saucepot from the heat and let the shrimp steep in the hot liquid for 8-10 minutes (or until just cooked through). Remove and drain shrimp. Spread on a cookie sheet and place in refrigerator to cool. Or eat right away. Yield: six to eight servings

Cocktail Sauce

1 1 /2 cups Ketchup
1/4 cup Lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1 /4 cup Horseradish, prepared
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 /2 tsp Black pepper, fresh ground
1 1 /2 tsp Salt
Hot sauce to taste

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate two hours before serving. Yield: two cups.

Not advice-style tips such as, “Plant your corn early this year.” No. I lived off of gratuity.

Gratuity is what paid my rent, paid the household bills, provided transportation, put food in my belly, and a diploma on my office wall.

My entrée into the restaurant industry was as a server. It’s where I fell in love with the business and developed a passion for serving and feeding others.

Spending seven years in the trenches and 25 years employing thousands of servers tends to make one appreciate good service.

I am a serial over-tipper. I am a server’s dream. I know what they go through and what they deal with on a daily basis. I have worked consecutive doubles on busy weekends with barely enough time to eat between shifts. It’s tough, but for someone who loves this business, it’s rewarding.

After my 14 year-old daughter returned from spring break with friends, I was asking about her week. Other than a wicked sunburn, the time off from her studies seemed uneventful. We gave her a little money before she left to cover meals, and she took some of the Christmas money her grandmother gave her to spend on souvenir-type stuff.

It wasn’t until she returned, and we were discussing the meals she ate during her trip (always the first topic at our home), that I realized I had never had a parental father-to-daughter discussion about how and why to leave gratuity.

Between my wife’s discussions about… well, stuff that mothers and daughters discuss, and my lectures on various topics from why we need to turn off lights when we leave the room to the social impact of the Beatles over the course of the sixties and how that has influenced today’s music (important stuff), I had never covered how and why she needs to leave a tip when she’s dining out. It’s something that I have always taken care of, and something that she probably took for granted.

“Did you leave a tip, Sweetie?”

“Yes, dad.”

“Did you leave 20 percent?”

“Huh?”

“You should always leave 20 percent” (I know many disagree with this, but I’ll cover my serial over-tipping in a minute). So how did you calculate the amount to tip?”

“I just leave three dollars every time.”

“No, no, no, no, no!” I said, and then took a deep breath realizing it was my fault for not explaining the system, yet. “You should leave 20 percent.” Then I covered the easy way to figure 20 percent— take 10 percent of the total and then double that amount— and she had it.

Fortunately, she eats like a bird and so, more than likely, she was tipping above 15 percent the entire trip.

I over tip. I can’t help it. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I know that many times, when service is slow, that the server had nothing to do with it. There are so many factors— the dining room getting seated all at once therefore overtaxing the kitchen, one cook getting behind in his station through no fault of his own, a large party’s check that was rung in just before yours, even management not setting up a good enough system to run an efficient operation. That’s no reason to penalize a server who is making $2.13 per hour.

Yep, $2.13 per hour. That is minimum wage for servers. Many are still shocked to learn that. These are young men and women, sometimes older men and women, who are working to support children, pay tuition, pay bills, and feed families. Most don’t have hefty benefit packages that might be offered in full-time “career” positions.

I might leave less than 20 percent if the server was outright rude or blatantly inattentive, but I can’t remember the last time I ate somewhere and had that type of experience. But I feel guilty about it even then— most of the time.

In Europe, it’s an entirely different situation, and one that I had trouble figuring out because it changes slightly from country to country. Servers are paid a salary, and tipping is only done in cases of extreme satisfaction. I still couldn’t do it. There is something deep down in my soul that requires that I leave a substantial tip. So, from Copenhagen to Istanbul and Budapest to Barcelona, I left gratuity for my server.

I am sure many of them wrote it off as a “Stupid American” but I can handle that.

So what have we learned today? 1.) Robert must have been in college for a long time if he was a server for seven years. 2.) Mothers are better at explaining serious “daughter” issues. 3.) If you are a server, and my daughter is sitting in your section, you might have to help her with the 20 percent calculation. Otherwise you’re in for three bucks.

In Budapest the local citizenry eat 95 percent of their meals at home. Therefore, most of the restaurants in Budapest are international in theme and scope as the locals have had their fill of Hungarian cuisine at home and, when dining out, look for anything but goulash and the like.

We ate one of the best Japanese meals ever at Nobu in Budapest. We had just come from three weeks in Greece, Turkey, Albania, and Croatia and were looking for something light. Nobu— one of my favorite New York restaurants— was a much-needed deviation in the routine.

I found a Chinese restaurant in Athens that was more authentic than any restaurant I’ve eaten in Chinatown and we dined there three times.

Most of the time we stuck to local cuisine. For a 10-week span in Italy, I ate over 200 Italian meals. In Spain, I submerged myself in the tapas culture and in France I always deferred to the locals.

On typical one-week trips and vacations, I always practice the eat-as-the-locals-do rule. Though it is tempting when so many food styles are available, many times within the same city block. Even in the European capitals where every imaginable food is available, the one ethnic cuisine missing is Mexican.

In Meteora, Greece, after a two-week run of too much lamb and potatoes, we found a restaurant on a town square that overlooked a park. The cuisine was Italian-Mexican, which we quickly learned are not two foods that should be fused. The next day at lunch we hopped back on the Greek-pita train and unfortunately ate a gyro filled with— you guessed it— lamb and fried potatoes.

At home, my family’s go-to ethnic cuisine is Japanese. Running a very close second is Mexican.

In my hometown we have a couple of authentic Mexican restaurants and a dozen that seem to offer the same food from the same cans. The most authentic Mexican concept is a place called Mama Alma’s. A husband-and-wife team who are assisted by other members of their family operate it, and I am a huge fan. I can go in to Mama Alma’s and just say, “Fix me up, Mama,” and I know everything will be taken care of. Every time I’ve done it, I have been pleased.

Many times we eat Mexican because my daughter likes cheese quesadillas.

Note: I can make a cheese quesadilla at home that will be 10 times better than anything she gets in a Mexican restaurant, but for some reason— to her— a cheese quesadillas taste better when served in a Mexican restaurant.

Last week, in one of the lesser Mexican restaurants my wife ordered a Fajita Salad. There was nothing authentically Mexican about this monstrosity. It was a salad in name only, and a salad in the sense that lettuce was probably involved somewhere in the preparation. I couldn’t see any lettuce, but it was in the menu description, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

This thing arrived at the table in a giant, flattened-at-the-bottom taco shell that sat flat on the plate, yet the sides were upright. It was a big as a baby’s head and was filled with layers of chicken, bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, more cheese, and, I suppose, some lettuce. It was more of a jumbo taco than a salad.

I began to think that our culture may have moved a little too far away from the salad concept. How else can one explain chocolate pudding and Jell-O at a salad bar? Too many times lettuce is just used as a vessel to carry cheese and cream-based dressing.

My favorite salad is one of the simplest preparations on the planet— arugula, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and extra-virgin olive oil. That’s it. It’s a very common salad in Tuscany, where arugula is sometimes called, “rocket” or “rucola.”

The arugula should be lightly dressed and tossed with the balsamic vinegar, first. Less is more. This makes sure that the flavor stays on the greens. Gently toss the almost-dry leaves in the vinegar and then add a little salt and freshly ground pepper. Extra-virgin olive oil is added last.

The typical 3-to-1 (oil over vinegar) rule for vinaigrette preparation should be reversed for this salad— three parts vinegar to one part oil. Even still, the arugula is barely dressed, still crisp, and not weighted down by liquid.

Arugula and frisee are my favorite lettuces. Both are peppery, have texture, and leave iceberg and its bland, watery cousins in their wake.

One of my favorite “Seinfeld” episodes involves a fight with George, Elaine, and another woman about a “big salad.” Maybe we should start focusing more on flavor than size. The jumbo fajita salad should be tossed (pun intended) along with salad-bar pudding and Jell-O into the waste disposal of history.

As a kid I ate typical breakfasts enjoyed by most people in this part of the world— eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits. I do remember eating a lot of sugary cereals, but I ate oatmeal, too.

When I spent the night at a grandparent’s house I ate pancakes the next morning. Both grandmothers made excellent pancakes, but the recipe was from my maternal grandmother, and is still used today.

Dads cook breakfast. As a matter of fact, next to grilling, it’s the number two reason men get in the kitchen. Each father has his own “daddy breakfast.”

My maternal grandfather was the man around our house, but his “daddy breakfast” was nothing I wanted any part of— salt-cured mackerel and scrambled eggs. It was a meal he had eaten that in Nashville when he was a boy. The smell of the kitchen, alone, made this boy reach for the closest Pop Tart.

So when it came time to create my version of a daddy breakfast, I just cooked things I liked to eat, and items I knew my kids already liked but rarely got to eat.

The daddy breakfast at my house consists of thick-sliced bacon, cooked crisp in my over-sized cast-iron skillet, biscuits, eggs, and hash browns cooked in the bacon grease left in the skillet. Occasionally I will throw in pancakes, too.

The bacon has to be thick sliced and the second batch in the skillet always cooks better than the first due to the bacon grease already in the skillet. Once the bacon is finished I keep the skillet hot and pour in the hash browns. Sometimes, depending on how much bacon I have prepared, I have to add a little canola oil to the skillet.

I have tried several different versions of hash browns, and food snobs will scoff at this method, but store-bought frozen hash browns work better than freshly grated, every time.

I just use Ore Ida hash browns from the frozen food section. They aren’t the shredded ones, but the small cubes. I take them straight from the freezer and dump them into the hot bacon grease over medium high heat (be careful if the hash browns have excess ice crystals). Shake the skillet a few times to coat them in the hot oil and then let them cook until they get crisp and easily move around in the skillet. Don’t move them too much during the middle of the cooking as they will stick to the skillet and tear apart. A cast iron skillet is a must as it does the best job retaining heat and helps the hash browns get crisp. Add salt and pepper at the end of the cooking process.

Over a shared breakfast in Aspen back in the early 1990s, Julia Child explained to me how she prepares scrambled eggs. I still cook them her way, “Just a touch of water and just a touch of milk, don’t over whip, melt a small amount of butter in a skillet, add the eggs, be gentle and don’t overcook them, plate the eggs while there is still a slight wet sheen to them. Add salt and pepper to the eggs on the plate.”

When it comes to biscuits, I will admit that I don’t usually make homemade biscuits. It’s not that I don’t know how, but it is easier to steal biscuits from my restaurants— where the pastry chefs make them from scratch— and save all of the flying flour in my kitchen. I know it’s cheating, but my kids don’t care.

Pancakes are love.

It’s true. I associate love with pancakes. Doesn’t everyone?

Think about it.

I don’t know if— outside of a commercial dining establishment— I have ever had anyone hand me a stack of pancakes that didn’t love me. Conversely, I have never cooked pancakes for anyone in my home that I didn’t love.

To hell with candlelit dinners, you want to show me some love? Get out the griddle, the spatula, and my grandmother’s pancake recipe.

Show someone you love them and cook them breakfast, today.

Muz’s Pancakes (revised)– Love On A Plate

1 cup All Purpose Flour (or 1/2 cup A/P flour + 1/2 cup pastry flour)
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1 Tbl Sugar
1 Egg
1 cup Buttermilk
1 /2 cup Milk
1 /2 cup Melted Butter

more melted butter for finished pancakes

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly. Mix liquid ingredients in a separate bowl. Gently add liquid ingredients including 1 /2 cup of butter, and stir until just incorporated. Do not overwork the batter.

Cook pancakes on a lightly greased non-stick griddle. Pancakes should be turned only once. They are ready to be turned when bubbles form in the middle and the edges appear cooked. Just before plating, use a pastry brush to spread the additional melted butter on top of the pancakes. Top with real maple syrup.