"... a 'classic neighborhood tavern'... or perhaps a 'classic Midwestern supper club'... sold on the premise that it seems like the kind of no-frills local joints that once dotted the highway exits of Wisconsin.... I invited my friend from Madison to join me at Emmett’s on Grove.... When I asked if the restaurant resembled something from the Badger State in any way, my friend struggled to perceive any similarities, aside from the booths and the overall roominess. Nothing about the décor screamed 'Midwest' to me, but the ability to order a side of ranch with our pizza certainly nodded to the region’s culinary sensibilities. (This is not a criticism.) Our servers were also extremely polite, another midwestern trait, but that could have been our luck. We stayed true to the nostalgic vibe and split a simple pepperoni pizza, plus some arugula salad and — why not? — a baked potato because my friend’s mom eats one every day, and it felt like an authentic thing to do."
From "Haute Suburbia/Why do New York City’s hottest restaurants feel like they’ve been airlifted in from the Midwest?" (NY Magazine).
The headline and the text don't match up too well unless you stress "feel like" and take note of who's doing the feeling. But that's what restaurants do, create an ambience, and they're working with whatever's in the mind of customers who probably lack experience with the place the restaurant is purporting to evoke.
The writer of the article (Tammie Teclemariam) orders pepperoni pizza and deems it "true" in some sense having to do with her own feeling of nostalgia, which seems attached to absolutely nothing except perhaps her own past experience with pizza-eating. Ironically, pizza is the most iconic New York City food. Then she adds a potato and deems it "authentic," but I've never heard of anyone eating potato with pizza.
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It's TGI Fridays nostalgia. Who are these people? The same ones running Joe Biden?
the ability to order a side of ranch with our pizza
Ranch dressing on pizza is surprisingly delicious.
However, the dressing should be cooked onto the pizza, not slathered on from a side serving.
Is there a style template that says all food related articles must be written in the haute-snob vernacular? Or is this style just common to Wisconsinites? Secondary question: when is eating a pizza just eating a pizza?
"but I've never heard of anyone eating potato with pizza."
Yeah, that's a new one. Don't think I'll be trying that anytime soon.
The article's author is originally from Maryland, went to college in Maryland, then pastry school in France before becoming a writer for Bon Apetit in NYC. I'm at a loss to understand how she qualifies herself as an arbiter of what's Midwestern and what's not.
Here’s an idea. Don’t eat there.
If they're all drinking gin martinis and not BOFS then how pseudo-authentic to the midwest can it actually be?
The potato got me as well. Lived in the Midwest all my life and they are basically never served outside of the loaded baked potato skins appetizers or sitting next to a steak.
What do these urbanites in NYC know? If I want nostalgia I hark back to a pepperoni, peppers and onions pizza at Lidos--a pizza joint in a lower middle class suburb of San Diego in the 1959-1961 era. Now that was a pizza favorite of mine at the time.
Sadly, just as Thomas Wolfe said, You Can't Go Home Again, and although I have returned to Lido's a couple of times in the last 20 years on visits to San Diego they just don't do it like they did.
I have explained Eastern NC BBQ pork shoulder, or even worse, grits with red-eye gravy, to any number of people from "up north" and even gotten a few to try such staples of my native cuisine, and have been met with universal disdain. Polenta, however, is just fine by them, especially with the osso bucco. I suspect taste is not just subjective but also political in nature now.
rehajm,
Ironically, TGI Fridays is a NYC (Manhattan) creation.
"Alan Stillman opened the first TGI Fridays restaurant in 1965, in New York. He lived in a neighborhood with many airline stewardesses, fashion models, secretaries, and other young, single people on the East Side of Manhattan near the Queensboro Bridge on the corner of East 63rd and 1st Avenue, and hoped that opening a bar would help him meet women. At the time, Stillman's choices for socializing were non-public cocktail parties or "guys' beer-drinking hangout" bars that women usually would not visit; he recalled that 'there was no public place for people between, say, twenty-three to thirty-seven years old, to meet.'"
Are the portions enormous and the patrons even more so?
When I visit WI, I love it...beautiful scenery and nice people.
But 9 out of 10 people are a cardiac event waiting to happen.
Maybe AA doesn't get that in a university town, but it's kind of a shock coming from CA (and we're no lightweights here)...
".... plus some arugula salad and..."
A very loud signal that this restaurant missed the mark, probably by a wide margin.
At least most supper clubs do have baked potatoes, so they got that right.
In Connecticut near the UConn campus in Storrs, there is a place called Willington pizza. The famous pizza there is called the Red Potatoe pizza... A plain crust with sour cream, sliced red potatoes, sharp cheddar
cheese, chives and your choice of bacon, broccoli or both. It is delicious!!!
Sounds to me like these people are not on a Keto diet. I grew up eating potatoes almost every day in one form or another, (Irish father), BUT never on the days that we had either pasta or pizza (Italian mother) for dinner.
My son-in-law is from Michigan and he told me about the unusual cuisine that he grew up eating. He now has a much healthier (Mediterranean) diet since marrying into our family. I gave him a pasta machine, which he uses regularly, and he also loves making pesto, broccoli rabe, and puttanesca sauce. He served the puttanesca sauce on Christmas Eve (which is traditional) at his parents home in MI…they loved it.
However, I do remember my mother telling me that during the Depression, my grandmother would cook a dish containing pasta and potatoes. It was cheap and filling. But, not recommended today especially with the obesity problem in USA.
I haven’t been into Manhattan since the pandemic, so I’m not familiar with these Midwestern Restaurants.These “haute-suburban restaurants” sound like places we still have in the suburbs of NYC. But, next time I visit, I’ll give one a try. Just hold the baked potato with Mac and Cheese.
Baked potato with a pizza?
Classic American tavern/diner? There should be a blackboard behind the counter with the daily special chalked on it. Such as: "Roast beef, mashed potato w/ gravy, green beans, and a dinner roll" or "Baked ham, mashed potato w/ham gravy, corn, and dinner roll".
No arugulas (whatever that is). Nothing on the 'side'.
The potatoes,: she didn't and no one does.
Pizza, NY is for people who know no better and do not mind the dripping on your shirt front. Chicago: Vito & Nick's, Dino's, Ricobene's. North side, south side and south of the loop, take your pick.
Thinking in reverse - what foods would someone in WI put on a menu of a "New York style restaurant"? (Not a deli and not a pizzeria, those are pretty easy.)
Get a house salad, prime rib, potatoes au gratin, and a brandy old fashioned, then you're talking, ana? (Is there an official spelling for the Milwaukee word pronounced Ay-na?)
Madison WI; home of the Applebee's of Italian food.
Cultural appropriation
But are the New Yorkers still too shame based to be seen eating at a Chik fil A.
TGI Friday's was a Manhattan invention. The first franchise outside NYC was in Memphis.
I never thought it was all that, but I wasn't their target demographic.
JK Brown beat me to it. Should read before commenting.
Are the portions enormous and the patrons even more so?
Well, the sort of author who doubles down on the carbs with pizza AND a potato is certainly on the pathway to pursiness.
I've eaten in those kinda places a lot during my rural north Iowa upbringing. They were 'clubs' from when they couldn't serve liquor by the drink so you had to buy a bottle which was held for you at the 'club' for your next visit.
You didn't go there for pizza .. maybe spaghetti (casseroled in red sauce) but more normally chicken or steak, fish on Fridays, baked potato on the side, no #$#@ arugula, iceberg lettuce in a bowl with some tomatoes and onions, later on they all got 'healthy' salad bars featuring a big bowl of chopped lettuce and a ton of prepared salads - macaroni, potato salad, coleslaw, carrots and raisins, maybe onions and cucumber slices.
In Texas, we have NY pizzerias or any given pizza place with Brooklyn style pizza on the menu (wide pizza with thin floppy crust). We don’t have Wisconsin or mid-west pizza places. Maybe Chicago style (thick deep crust pie), but less of those now that people are carb conscious. I’ve seen fries served at a pizza place and always thought it weird. I’ve never seen baked potato at a pizza place. I’ve been to seafood or steak restaurants with pizza on the menu, but it was for kids and no adult would order it.
"At least most supper clubs do have baked potatoes, so they got that right."
Yeah, with a steak.
"Maybe AA doesn't get that in a university town, but it's kind of a shock coming from CA (and we're no lightweights here)..."
Correct. The people around here look great. Near the university, it's hard to notice that anyone is downright beautiful, because the whole crowd in general is so good looking.
Narr said...
I never thought it was all that, but I wasn't their target demographic.
Most restaurants aren't. It seems though that NY snowflake food writers can't seem to understand that most of us aren't obsessed with food as they are.
"In Connecticut near the UConn campus in Storrs, there is a place called Willington pizza. The famous pizza there is called the Red Potatoe pizza... A plain crust with sour cream, sliced red potatoes, sharp cheddar
cheese, chives and your choice of bacon, broccoli or both. It is delicious!!!"
Sounds good! It made me think that there are some dishes that combine potato and bread. I thought of the potato knish... something you could traditionally find in NYC. There's also the potato pasty. These are Cornish, but there is a traditional association with Wisconsin:
"Mineral Point, Wisconsin, was the site of the first mineral rush in the United States during the 1830s. After lead was discovered in Mineral Point, many of the early miners migrated from Cornwall to this southwestern Wisconsin area. Pasties can be found in Wisconsin's largest cities, Madison and Milwaukee, as well as in the far northern region along the border with Michigan's Upper Peninsula."
In Madison, there's Teddywedgers.
'Near the university, it's hard to notice that anyone is downright beautiful, because the whole crowd in general is so good looking.'
So you've never been to Hollywood?
: )
Well, that ain't no Wisconsin supper club she's at. No pizza allowed (with or without a freakin' baked potato). Or arugula. It's iceberg lettuce all the way with maybe cherry tomatoes, onions, croutons, etc. And Fridays you have to get the fish, whether it's Lent or not.
New Holstein is the Supper Club capitol of the world, highlighted by Schwarz's in St. Anna. I go there every time I'm visiting. I got a brandy old fashion the first time, but I hate the damn things so just once for old time's sake. I was a bartender for a time at a Knights of Columbus hall in Fond du Lac and I swear 40% of the orders were for BOFS's. JAYsus.
I'll admit to being charmed by the placement of "sprawl" and "suburban" in the same sentence. It was a signal from the deep mind of an urban dweller. After all, a true environmentally-conscious urbanite thinks first of sprawl when they hear the word "suburban".
Well, maybe second after "icky".
Back in the late 1970's when pizza was still a bit exotic in Ireland, I remember seeing a guy piling boiled potatoes (boiled spuds being an option with pretty much everything...) on top of his pizza then eating the resulting mess with a knife and fork. I still eat my pizza with knife and fork. My children mock me for it...
"However, I do remember my mother telling me that during the Depression, my grandmother would cook a dish containing pasta and potatoes."
Pasta e patate.
JK Brown said...
rehajm,
Ironically, TGI Fridays is a NYC (Manhattan) creation.
...a delicious irony I'd say, given the 20-somethings comparisons to the midwest...
It was just after 6 o’clock on an unseasonably pleasant Wednesday, but the guy at the door was already out of luck. It would be at least half an hour for a seat, he was told. By 7, the wait had only grown longer...
I'm reminded of Tom Wolfe's caricature of New York's younger generation and their tolerance of the incivility of putting your name on a wait list upon arrival at the restaurant. Have they never heard of a reservation?
These new kids must find that too elitist...
"split a simple pepperoni pizza, plus some arugula salad"
Arugula Salad? A wedge of Iceberg is more like it with some [mayo and ketchup] sauce. Nothing on the side, except the bottomless coffee mug.
Potato with pizza is very French. In Occitanie, they like it sliced on the pizza with lots of mayo. And cheap wine.
Potato and bread = Chip Butty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_butty
The potato got me as well. Lived in the Midwest all my life and they are basically never served outside of the loaded baked potato skins appetizers or sitting next to a steak.
Around the Cincinnati area there are restaurants called Skyline Chili. They serve a "Cincinnati Style" chili. Since the originators of that style of chili were Greek, it is way more Mediterranean than Tex-Mex. It can be served in a bowl with crackers, on top of hotdogs (called coneys), on spaghetti and on a steamed potato.
https://www.skylinechili.com/menu/
TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...
Thinking in reverse - what foods would someone in WI put on a menu of a "New York style restaurant
Oh That's easy! Clam Chowder (the good tomatoie type, not the bogus milk crap)
The continuing saga of New Yorkers viewing the rest of the world as if they (the New Yorkers) had been dropped in Bosnia without a translation app. It's all so foreign here, Emma."
There are so many wonderful regional foods, music, culture, traditions, and landscapes throughout the US. You can check them out and enjoy them for what they are, or you can sit back in New York and wonder at the horror of it all.
Or...you can move to Florida (like so many of my neighbors) and complain about things not being like they are in New York. Or just send in your comments as a possible article to NY Magazine who will gladly slide it next to their hagiography of Sandy Cortez.
So many options. That's the joy of living in New York!
JK Brown said...
"Alan Stillman opened the first TGI Fridays restaurant in 1965... he recalled that 'there was no public place for people between, say, twenty-three to thirty-seven years old, to meet.'"
3/3/22, 10:30 AM
Seems to me the original Fridays had phones on the tables so one could chat up the lovely lasses at a table across the room to facilitate the meeting process.
Or it could have been Max & Erma's. Same era.
So..they're doing this trend again. We went through this in NYC back in the 1990s and then all those places died out and regional cuisines and fusion cuisines became popular. Living in the Garden State now, I'm glad I don't have to put up with a changing restaurant scene and can stick with tried and true places that span generations.
California: Shakey's Pizza chain serves mojo potatoes and pizza together with chicken wings.
"Cultural appropriation"
It sounds more like cultural denigration. The author is clearly looking down on "Midwestern" cuisine. It's another anthropological "gorillas in the mist" type visit into an a primitive culture.
"Sadly, just as Thomas Wolfe said, You Can't Go Home Again, and although I have returned to Lido's a couple of times in the last 20 years on visits to San Diego they just don't do it like they did."
Wolfe's meaning, of course, is that one cannot go home again because you have changed, and thus you experience old haunts with a changed perspective. You cannot undo the changes in you that alter your perceptions of old surroundings that now seem strangely alien.
Well, that ain't no Wisconsin supper club she's at. No pizza allowed (with or without a freakin' baked potato). Or arugula. It's iceberg lettuce all the way with maybe cherry tomatoes, onions, croutons, etc. And Fridays you have to get the fish, whether it's Lent or not.
Thank you, Anthony, for saying what needed to be said. I've never cared for the BOF, but I do enjoy a glass of dark beer. (And a Brandy Alexander for dessert.)
Ann
Yes, pasta and patate! You just validated my sweet memories
of Mom and Grandma. Thank you.
I so miss the midwest supper club/steak house. Being of the same vintage of our host, it is the sights and smells of my youth.
Hardly any left in Iowa, Still run across a few in Wisconsin. I found one in Dubuque last fall, Son taking over after Dad passed. Good vibe, great service, great hand cut steak. 30 years ago frequented a place where "everybody knew your name" Owner ran the bar, or cooked when needed. He cut his own beef, from aged quarters. The best fillet Mignon I have yet to find.
Midwest Steakhouse is Cloth table cloths and Napkins. Hot bread brought to the table. Dinner salad, MEAT. Hash browns with cheese or baked potato. Brandy Alexander or Grasshopper after diner drink.
Wait till a bar there calendars a meat raffle.
Potatoes--with very few exceptions--tempt me not at all. Baked spud and steak? Fuhgeddabowdit.
We visited some old friends in SoCal in 2005 or so, friends who never cooked. Given they kept a house full of cats, that was OK anyway.
We ate at Chilis once (ugh), Marie Callendar's once (more expensive ugh), and The Claimjumper once (enormous platters of not awful food, so still ugh).
Around here we only have Chilis (ugh).
OTOH we gots da Q!
Great kid invention: peanut butter and crushed potato chips sandwiched in white bread.
'Great kid invention: peanut butter and crushed potato chips sandwiched in white bread.'
Sounds delicious...much better than peanut butter and mayo that my wife's family favors...
Pizza, argula and potato? - never saw it. What I noticed when I came out here was food linked to occasions: Fish fry on Friday. Tailgate food on game days - wings, beer. Celebration food for weddings, baptisms, ordinations, graduations - roast beef, boiled potatoes and hard liquor. Wisconsin grilling which is all-season grilling - neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor hail will stay these chefs from the swift completion of ribs. Wisconsin grilling mottoes: 1. "First brush off the snow" from the Weber charcoal (for sure) grill. 2. "Remember the side toward the wind will be much cooler" Shorts are not required year round for authentic Wisconsin grilling though I've read they are required in up state New York.
Supper Clubs were just that. A club you joined. The "dues" were 12X ??. ?? being the price of one meal. Including all the fixing and 2 highballs. The point was to get you and the misses there once a month. We joined to force us out of the house at least once a month. With small kids it was easy to get house bound.
I think another underlying factor was liquor. Iowa didn't have liquor by the drink until the 60's so being a member of the "club' might have gotten around some of that. In Wisconsin. Lots of towns were "dry". That's why so many supper clubs were out side city limits. Richland Center was the last city to go wet back in 1986.
Martin's potato rolls make the best hot dog or hamburger buns.
https://potatorolls.com
No not baked potatoes anyway. Shakey’s “bunch o’ lunch” was all-you-can-eat buffet of pizza, “mojo” potato wedges and fried chicken. So two fried foods plus pizza! But no baked taters. We loved it as hungry teens and twenty-somethings. It seemed over salted and the fries were limp last time I tried it about ten years ago.
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