Here is a link to the talk I gave last Wednesday at the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York City:
I know it’s fashionable to make fun of Cracker Barrel, but if you’re a celiac – or traveling with one – it’s about the only place at an interstate exit to get a gluten-free meal.
Yesterday the Miami Herald ran a front page story about the dining scene in Broward (“Not a culinary wasteland”). Its focus was on Michelin ratings, so upscale restaurants were discussed and small ethnic places ignored. In an essay on Florida for The American Scholar (Winter 2024), I wrote about the differences between Miami-Dade and Broward, and made the heretical claim that Broward is the more diverse county. One example I gave: “Miamians were famous for never crossing the county line, but foodies drove north for our Korean and Vietnamese restaurants.” https://theamericanscholar.org/florida-man/
Saturday evening we drove to Pastis in Wynwood for my birthday dinner. Originally we had planned to go to Joe’s Stone Crab, where we last dined in 1990, shortly after moving here, when my visiting parents were treating. But at the last minute I decided that eating at Joe’s outside of stone crab season would be like watching the Bruins at Fenway Park – a memorable experience, to be sure, but not the classic one.
At Pastis, we sat outside in the lovely front terrace. The bread was delicious – slathered with salted butter – and the music terrible.
“You’re 73,” Hania said. “Look around at the people here. They don’t want to listen to Edith Piaf.”
Sunday’s Times also carried a long article about the new pope, which included a few paragraphs about his years at Villanova. “He majored in math and attended Masses that were sometimes interrupted by shouts of ‘Hoagie Man!’ when a guy selling subs passed by.”
The Hoagie Man was an institution at Villanova, at least in the ’70s. You’d be studying in your dorm room, dinner a distant and unpleasant memory, and suddenly you’d hear the welcome cry of “Hoagie Man!” followed by the Pavlovian sound of a box full of hoagies – Italian, roast beef, ham & cheese – being dragged down the terrazzo floor in the hall. The day Pope Leo was elected I texted a former classmate, wondering if the papal apartment would now be getting nightly visits from the Hoagie Man. But I never thought of the Hoagie Man as a disrupter of Masses. He announced his presence upon entering a dorm, late in the evening, far from church.
Saturday evening we went to hear Seraphic Fire at St. Nicholas Church in Pompano Beach. Walking in from the back I saw something I had never seen before: a church food truck. The white lettering on the blue side identified it as “The Holy Grill of St. Nicholas” and included the slogan “Our COD is an Awesome COD.”
In his address to the audience before the concert, the priest said that the truck has served over 68,000 meals to the homeless in Broward County. Afterwards, he told me that it also appears at festivals, where it serves Scotch eggs and Guinness-battered fish and chips. Hence the awesome cod.