World Cuisine -- Unhealthful but Delicious Taste Treats

Bollington Butty Bar

A butty is a staple fast food item in Yorkshire and other working-class areas in northern England. It consists of a large thick roll of bread filled with slabs of English (Canadian-style) bacon and cheddar cheese fried in the same bacon grease, and smothered with brown sauce. It lands in your stomach with a great satisfying thud (and stays there!) -- you will not need to eat anything else for at least 8 hours. One does not sit to eat this thing, but consumes it on the run (walking, or driving your car); you don't even eat it in a pub -- a pint of bitter would be superfluous.

Amsterdam MacDonald's

The Dutch wouldn't stand for your standard Big Mac fare as you are used to having it. They have really meaty hamburgers, and fries served with mayonaisse rather than ketchup, and really nice creamy cholesterol-ridden shakes. Delicious. (Brought to you by Shell Oil.)
Click this fish!
I don't know where Loughborough is,
but it has lots of fish & chips places

Fish & Chips, Frying Times

The only decent old-fashioned fish and chips away from seaside resorts is to be found on side streets in untouristed areas of English towns. Look for the place that's only open between 5 and 8:30 pm (10:30 on Fridays and Saturdays) and posts its "frying times" in the window. Go there 10 minutes after the latest fry, otherwise what you get will have gotten soggy in the to-go bin. Put lots of salt and vinegar on it and take it away to eat on the nearest park bench, or if it's raining, under the awning of a shoe store or some shop with mannequins or whatever else to keep you amused while you munch away using your fingers (forget about those stupid little wooden forks they provide you with that look like eroded popsicle sticks). Click here for the Leek Fryer Menu.

Sabella's Pizza, Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn

What pizza used to be before Pizza Hut and Dominoes. Plain old oily pizza with a thin hand-rolled crust, put your own garlic and oregano and dried red pepper on it, burn the top of your mouth if it's fresh out of the oven, or specify that you want it off the counter un-reheated. Order just a slice at a time, and eat it right there in the ambience of a place that is playing Italian-language soccer on the B&W TV in the back and has Sacred Hearts and Pietas as the only decoration except for magic-markered paper plates offering today's (every day's) special spinach calzone or the poor man's pizza-dough balls, a dozen for a buck. Yummie.
Did he wash his hands first?

White Castle Hamburgers

Belly bombers. This is listed here for nostalgic reasons, because I just can't handle these any more. Imagine: Road trip, it's 4 in the morning, you've been out all night, you're stoned on either booze or pot or both, and you are now HUNGRY. There is a roadside White Castle, where you can order twenty of these little belly bomber burgers for about a dollar apiece (they used to be something like 25 cents). Load up, pile back in the car, and you are now ready for the next topless joint. White Castle specializes in tiny little square meat patties with a hole punched in the middle to make it cook faster (and save on expenses), smothered in day-old onions that are fried on the same frying surface and piled off to the side; each burger can be swallowed in two chomps, or even one if you have a big mouth. Supurb American cuisine. If they'd had White Castles in ancient Rome, the Roman Empire would never have fallen -- the barbarian invaders would have been sick to their stomachs and incapable of sacking a city.

Howard Johnson's

Yes, those on-the-road places with the orange roofs and little steeple still exist, which is surprising considering that even the ubiquitous Woolworth's has folded. HoJo is the ONLY place I was ever taken out to for a meal by my parents when I was a kid (probably for good reason, as you will know if you ever go to a roadhouse and see how kids behave when taken out for dinner at any place that doesn't have a MacDonald's playland or some such thing). Anyway, HoJo's is so unchanged from the 1950s that you feel like you are in a time warp. Order the special of the day, and it will be the same as every other special of the day you ever had. Makes you feel really secure when you are otherwise depressed. The food sucks, but it is filling, and if you like cole slaw, that comes with everything. Why the turkey graphics? Because HoJo's is forever associated with Turkey Clubs, Hot Open Turkey Sandwiches, and Roast Turkey with mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy (click on one of the birds to read about them).

NYC Dirty Water Hot Dogs

Your sidewalk hot-dog vendors with the yellow umbrellas (preferably selling Sabrett's) provide one with the tastiest and cheapest meal in New York -- your hot dog with mustard and saurkraut, or onions. The stuff sits in boiling water all day, so you won't get poisoned no matter how revolting it looks. A hot-dog maker, some Greek guy or somebody like that (although you now see Muslim women doing what used to be a male thing: but you don't see any women shining shoes yet in the train stations), usually whips the thing together with great speed and panache and sloppiness all combined. The fact that this service to the public is so good and well entrenched insures that they have enemies in city hall who try to suppress them because of the deli lobby. But that is a losing battle for the pols, thank god. They used to cost a quarter (that dates me), but are now about $1.25 -- still a bargain considering that the hot dogs at Yankee stadium cost about four bucks and don't even come with sauerkraut.

German Hot Dog Wagons

Talk about hot-dog wagons! Go to a city like Nuremburg or Frankfurt. You can get about five different kinds of 'wursts' -- or pickled herring if you want that instead -- on any street stand. Nice plump juicy sausages that put frankfurters to shame (why they call American hotdogs frankfurters is a mystery, because they don't even half resemble the real thing). Comes served with a chunk of French bread, not in a roll. Pig-out heaven: you don't need to go to a restaurant and order wiener schnitzel for some huge amount of money, you just put out a Deutch mark or whatever for your Bratwurst, Weisswurst, Blutwurst and then go wander on to visit Albrecht Dürer's house.
Apply hot mustard liberally

Click this to see something really gross
(but it was delicious on French bread)

Roast Meat

I am not a vegetarian, although I respect animals and would rather not eat them. However, given the fact that one's appetite overrules one's ethics in the immediate term, well, feast your eyes on this butcher-shop window, and don't think about mad cows. (Notice, however, the difference in price between beef and lamb in England, almost the reverse of the US.)
Also Rans: Kentucky Fried Chicken (hasn't been the same since the Colonel died). This stuff used to appeal, but old chicken-faced Frank Purdue kind of turned me off to the sort of animal torture he became associated with. I mean, they might be stupid birds, but they are denied the simple pleasures of life that even chickens have a right to, in those appalling poultry factories. I'm perfectly willing to eat the damn things, but I don't approve of their being deprived of normal "chickenhood" lives before they've been fattened up enough to end up in the frying pan.

MacDonald's (USA) -- can't resist a Big Mac, but even so it's lousy, and lots of times stale, having sat under the hot lamp for awhile. That soggy 'special sauce' (which is Russian dressing) is delicious. Their big campaigns to diversify, especially into "healthy eating", are ridiculous. MacDonald's was better back in the 1960's when they served just 15-cent burgers, fries, and milkshakes.

Burger King, Roy Rogers, Wendy's etc. -- OK, good enough, but not worth going out of your way to get. They try to suck you away from Big M by offering bigger burgers and salad bars, or claiming their burgers will not give you cancer because they are broiled not fried. If you are an afficianado who can rank the burger places as to quality, you have more subtle tastes than I do -- I'd just as soon stick with White Castles.

Your local Chinese take-away. Absolute crap for the most part, but fairly tasty. We all do it when we can't think of anything else, but you can support the Chinese community better by just patronizing their laundries. All of the multitudinous offerings on a Chinese menu come out of the same pot, into which they toss the chicken or shrimp and a different sauce to make you think you are getting General Tso's special recipe (he must have been a famous gourmand to have all these things named after him) -- maybe it's just a matter of tossing in the hair of a frog.

However, if you go to Chinatown for the 'real stuff' I would definitely recommend that you avoid jellied duck's feet. Also, when they serve you 'squab' they leave the bird's head on so you won't think it's pigeon (as though anybody would know the difference by the shape of the head) -- doesn't matter, you're supposed to eat the whole thing, bones and all, except for the beak, which you can use as a toothpick (or you can take the heads in to work the next day to gross out the girls in the office, which used to amuse me oh so many years ago, but not any more).

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Do you like hot pepper sauces? Click here for the Hot Sauce Web Page.

A link for New Yorkers only

Finally, click HERE for a web page about junk food in the Home.

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