The Eighth Wonder of Chicagoland
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IN THIS ISSUE: Consider the spaghett, and free NYC’s cookbook maven.
Appetizers
Spaghett Real
I have witnessed the growing popularity of the spaghett with equal parts delight and chagrin. (To the unfamiliar, the spaghett is a built-in-bottle cocktail made by replacing a quaff’s-worth of Miller High Life with Aperol and a squeeze of lemon—a DIY bottled beer spritz, if you will.) Delight because I have long championed this particular combination of ingredients. I make no claim of propriety, but my college housemates and I wiled away the (particularly nihilistic) summer of 2009 sipping from quart-sized Mason jars filled with ice, Pabst Blue Ribbon, a splash of Campari or Aperol, and lemon. Chagrin because I am of the opinion that the spaghett represents a uniquely bad way of mixing these things together. It’s simple thermodynamics. What happens when you mix bar-fridge-cold (read: never quite cold enough) cheap beer with a shot of barroom-warm red Italian bitter? A tepid tipple, that’s what! The novelty of holding a bottle of beer that is actually a cocktail will never make up for the fact that the drink is almost never served at an even remotely palatable temperature. The only acceptable remedy to this situation is making sure that both the longnecks AND the bottle of adulterant are kept in an ice well (or cooler) before being married and served. Otherwise, you’re better off doing as we did back on the porch at 123 South Professor Street and pouring it all over ice. —Amiel
Treat Slotnick With Kindness
Since late August, the block of 2nd Street in the East Village where Bonnie Slotnick runs her beloved independent bookstore Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks has been overrun with Harry Styles fans lining up at a pop-up store, sponsored by American Express, linked to the pop star’s month-long residency at Madison Square Garden. The non-cookbook-buying fans, corralled into queues with retractable black nylon line stanchions, have been bad enough, but this past weekend, Slotnick, 72, got in an argument with a security guard for the store—and ended up in jail. In her words:
There was absolutely nothing in the cell. They took the handcuffs off, but I couldn’t read anything, and I didn’t have my watch. I basically walked in circles and did bodyweight calisthenics and stretches.
I also sang. I discovered that the acoustics are really good in there, especially under the HVAC unit. I sang “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” which are like prison and depression songs.
She was released after almost getting stuck in the Tombs overnight. Read her interview over at EV Grieve. —Sam
The Eighth Wonder of Chicagoland
By J Lee
Pad see ew, but crispy
Chicago, like any great American city, and maybe more than any American city, is a city of specialties. There’s the hot dog, and the pizza, and the other pizza. There’s the pizza puff, too, and the Tom Tom tamale, the Italian beef, the jibarito, and the mysterious local tradition of aquarium-smoked rib tips, cooked low and slow behind giant panes of glass.
When I was a kid growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I didn’t realize these things were special. I thought that everyone everywhere called soda “pop,” and if they didn’t they were a “jagoff.” I thought that Pulaski Day was a national holiday. And I thought that you could walk into any Thai restaurant and ask them to make your pad see ew crispy.