America, We Have a Problem
America, we have a problem. No, it’s not the Grand Canyon-sized gap we just discovered between what we thought our Constitution protected and what it actually protects. No, it’s not the fact that 21% of our children — in civilization’s richest society(!) — live in poverty, although that’s pretty bad. And no, it’s not even spam… or the impossibly small boxes on rebate forms… or the whole airline or cable TV industries… or having to change your computer passwords when you just figured out a great system to remember them.
No, America’s biggest problem is under-fried fried food. There… now you know. I realize that some of you are thinking this is a joke, how is this a serious problem? To use the only appropriate vernacular for responding to such situations… “ahh’m ‘a tell ya.” (Will this one day be a single word, “ahmatelya”? Even that paragon of writing, William Strunk Jr., educates us that language is ever-adapting. Ahmatelya.)
I can’t take it anymore. When I go to a restaurant and order french fries, I have to ask the server if it’s necessary to request them well-done. If the server does not respond instantly, knowingly… if there’s a moment’s hesitation, the “die is cast” and I know I have to ask for them well-done. “Burnt,” I might even ask.
Allow me a brief diversion, albeit a relevant one. In a previous lifetime I installed point of sale systems at retail drycleaners, and on occasion I would take customers who were attending group training sessions to lunch. One customer asked the waiter for a hamburger “Pittsburgh rare,” which means burnt on the outside and rare on the inside. It’s related to “T-O — T-O — T-O,” throw-it-on, turn-it-over, take-it-off, but nicely charred. [Did you know, if the story is true, that Pittsburgh rare is from the days when steel-mill workers would throw a slab of meat on a red-hot ingot of steel, turn it over, then take it off… and it was black on the outside and rare in the middle? Believable.] Then he proceeded to ask for fries, “burnt.” A man after my own soul, he’s apparently been to the purgatory of inadequately fried fries. After a brief interlude of a table full of people during the workday seeing who would be the first to order a triple Martini (it was the 90's), the waiter came out with his fries and put them down in front of him. He looked at the “fries”; he looked up at the server; the server looked down at the fries; the server picked them up and carried them back to the kitchen. And perhaps unbeknownst to me, on that day my own passion (and tireless-and-tiresome obsession) for fried food actually being fried, was born.
Since that time, I too have angered and befuddled waiters with this odd and frustrating pursuit of food that’s actually cooked sufficiently to the stratospheric standards of the French chef and palate. I’ll be brief in describing my family’s least favorite example of my pursuit, trying to get lasagna that isn’t made on the spot, but more properly was made some time long in advance. Waiters generally will wrongly presume I’m hoping for “freshly prepared” food, but on reassuringly frequent occasions, they nod knowingly and report “It was made yesterday or this morning.” All hope is not lost.
But the situation is at its most dire with that staple of the greasy-spoon diner, “home fries.” It’s virtually impossible to get properly fried home fries anywhere. They have to be started hours in advance and sit on the grill preparing for their future stardom, thinking, planning, practicing… until they are crisp, dry, crunchy… with caramelized brown-red edges. They can’t just hop on the griddle then run onto the stage in ten minutes.
Fast-forward to the present day, and several ‘work lifetimes’ in the intervening years. I happened one day to to go to a well-known urban ‘diner’ and was glad to order corned-beef hash. Being in a hurry myself, and seeing an already harried and sparse wait staff, I neglected to pre-persecute them on the manner and done-ness of their supposed hash. And I was duly punished; it was cooked while I waited — a physical impossibility for foods that need crisply charred edges — and mushy. The crime was punctuated by the fact that this was not just any diner, but one that purports, by its very name, to carry the ‘diner’ mantle. Alas.
Young people, if you grow up and work in the food world, fry the &!#$%!# food. Burn it. Crisp it. Wait till it’s done. The world’s largest restaurant chain, McDonald’s almost went bankrupt a number of years ago and its first remedial action was to properly fry the fries. I told you this was serious.
