Pesos for Pizza—The End of Civilization As We Know It?

A pizza chain with branches in five states is now accepting payment in pesos because 60 percent of its customers are Latino.

It's a private transaction. Legally, it cannot be stopped.

Nevertheless, opposition has formed. Some people think the chain is catering to illegal immigrants.

Should we assume that people with pesos in their pockets are here illegally? An interesting question. Here's a more important one: Should we permit illegal immigrants to live and work in this country?

Here's a question that shouldn't even be asked: Should we allow people to eat? That's a dumb one. Not allowing hungry people to purchase food is morally wrong. So I say good for the pizza people.

However, I would like to direct a question to all persons living in this nation, regardless of race, creed, or legal status: Do you really think it's a smart idea to spend your hard-earned money on franchise pizza?

We Do Concede That Texas Gave Us Our Dumbest President

The city of Athens, Texas, claims to have made America's first hamburger sandwich. When I spoke to the assistant chief of police, Rodney Williams, last week, he told me that there's even a plaque in the town square backing up that assertion.

Nobody really minded such presumptuousness until just last week, when a state legislator, Betty Brown, introduced a resolution making the claim official.

As all us Easterners know, the first hamburger sandwich was made at Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut. In fact, Louis' Lunch is still in the hamburger business, flame-broiling burgers in a weird vertical contraption and placing the cooked meat between two pieces of toast.

Life would have gone on nicely, everybody believing what they wanted to believe, if Brown hadn't made such a big deal over the Athens claim. I thought maybe it had to do with her being made chairman of budget oversight for the state's Agriculture & Livestock Committee, but her office said representatives of the city of Athens had come to her.

Now, it's pretty clear that nobody in this country invented the plain old hamburger patty. That goes back nearly a thousand years, to the creation of steak tartare.

And it's just as clear that nobody in this country cooked the first hamburger patty. Meat plus fire is a pretty basic concept, and somebody came up with the idea long before chopped meat found its way to North America.

So the best we can do in America is claim credit for the addition of bread. So which is it, Texas or Connecticut?

The answer: probably neither.

Most likely, the stupendous event occurred in the 1880s at either the Outagamie (Wisconsin) County Fair or the Erie (New York) County Fair—which, by the way, took place in Hamburg, New York.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, would like to us to believe that the first burger on a bun was prepared on a farm outside the city in 1891—it passed a state proclaimation to that effect, as a matter of fact.

Louis' Lunch didn't make its first burger sandwich until 1900. And it seems that Fletch Davis, who ran a lunch counter in Athens around the turn of the century, might also have come along a tad late. He's supposed to have created a sensation at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair by dishing out a burger between slices of bread. Indeed, a fellow with a stand did exactly that, but nobody is absolutely certain it was Fletch. And even if it were, it looks like he might not have been the first to come up with the idea.

It seems that neither Texas nor Connecticut is the home of the original hamburger sandwich.

By the way, if it's any comfort, it's clear that the first cheeseburger was made in California.

Well, Maybe Not All

The new issue of GQ has an excellent package entitled "All You Really Need to Know About Wine." I have to say, it's pretty good, and not entirely because I contributed an item called "Five Wine Tips That Will Change Your Life."

By the way, I wouldn't ignore these tips if I were you. This isn't the kind of pseudo-caring crap you get from Dr. Phil. This is practical information that will immediately improve your social life.

I'm so proud of those tips that I've come up with five more.

1. A waiter's corkscrew, resembling a folding knife, is the only kind of wine opener you need. Buy one with a foil-cutter that pops out of the handle. Novices will gaze at you in awe.

2. When ordering wine by the glass in a restaurant, always ask when the bottle was opened. If it didn't happen that day, keep asking until they come up with something that was. This greatly diminishes the risk of getting a wine that's gone bad.

3. Pay no attention to challenges from wine geeks. Particularly obnoxious questions include: (a) "Do you think this wine was fermented en barrique?"; (b) "Did the aftertaste linger as long for you as it did for me?"; (c) "Don't you notice a hint of brett?"

4. Learn to identify a corked wine—it often has a musty, wet, locker-room-towel smell. Allowing your guests to drink a wine contaminated with TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) is more embarrassing than walking around with your fly unzipped.

5. Memorize a wine phrase that sounds intelligent. I continue to say, "Wasn't there hail in the vineyards in '83?" (There was, but who cares anymore?) Everybody, not just novices, will gaze at you in awe.

It's also a good idea, when you take your mother to dinner, to order a German Riesling Kabinett. Finally, you'll have done something to make her proud of you.

Up Yours, Pierre

Long ago, the wife of a three-star chef with a restaurant in the countryside told me that Americans should stop thinking that Parisians are rude to them. She said, "They are rude to everybody, even other French people."

It seems that after all these years, Parisians are finally acknowledging their bad manners. A Paris tourism office has started a campaign called "C'est So Paris" ("It's So Paris") to show foreign visitors how to deal with rude locals.

It says that visitors should act like Parisians. To assist them in learning the local customs, it has posted a list of insulting gestures in common use. For example, la moue, which indicates disgust, consists of pursed lips accompanied by a slowly shaking head.

The agency says that imitating such gestures will have you mistaken for a real Parisian.

Here's the problem: Who in their right mind would want to be mistaken for a real Parisian?

The agency has the right idea, though. The problem with us Americans is that we're too conciliatory, especially when it comes to dining in Paris restaurants.

It's in those places that we most come into contact with overbearing attitudes. I'm pleased that even the French think we should retaliate against it, but let's do it in our own way. Here's a list of the gestures that I recommend Americans ultilize when dining in the fine restaurants of Paris, and an explanation of what they signify.

Lips pursed, finger wagging in waiter's face: "No, I won't be having the $150 lobster a l'Americaine."

Middle finger stiff, pointed upward: "I'll pass on your leftovers du jour, too."

Legs spread, index finger pointed at crotch: "I find the 1976 Beaujolais Nouveau you recommended a bit too piquante."

Arm extended, mace uncapped: "Excuse me while I say howdy doo to that poodle sniffing around under my table."

Palm heel extended, poised for kung-fu death-strike: "I'd like to personally pass along my compliments to the chef."

Grenade out, pin pulled: "I'm sure that was an honest mistake you made with the check."

There's one more gesture the French seem always to understand, since they've utilized it so often in times of war. If you don't like the way things are going, you can always run like hell.

Yes, I'll Have Fries with That

Last week The New York Times printed a business section column with the headline, "I'll Have Fries and a Glass of Your Best Champagne." It was the story of a hungry wine expert stuck in a hotel with nothing but a room service menu and a ravenous appetite. She said what she accidently discovered was "the oddest pairing that's ever worked for me."

She ordered French fries and a glass of Champagne. She was astounded by what she called a "perfect pairing."

Champagne is absolutely the easiest wine to pair with food, so I'm flabbergasted by how often people decide a near-miracle has occurred whenever this takes place. They think Champagne is difficult, almost certainly because it has tons of acidity and millions of bubbles.

Here's what you do: Think of a glass of Champagne as a glass of beer. Works every time.

Of course, most people think of Champagne as ethereal and lovely, a romantic drink. Well, it might be that emotionally, but it isn't that technically. Champagne is one tough customer, able to stand up to salt, grease, and fat. The reason it is so often paired with caviar is that it washes your mouth clean of the salty, fishy aftertaste of sturgeon eggs.

The other day I drank Krug Rosé with smoked salmon. It worked fine. What remained of the bottle was even better the next day, when I paired it with hot dogs and beans.

There Is Wind Beneath Those Wings

Wings had a great image until chickens came along. The wings of eagles. The wings of fighter planes. The wings of Icarus. All of them glorious.

Chicken wings are not glorious. I don't know anybody who has ever roasted a chicken who didn't wish they weren't there.

The other day, I got a shipment of Buffalo chicken wings. I was not pleased. I'd been kind to someone, and their gift to me was two huge frozen packages of chicken wings from Buffalo, one version labeled "hot" and the other "BBQ." I didn't know what to do with them.

You might not believe this, but I'd never eaten a Buffalo chicken wing and had no interest in breaking my record. I'd been in Buffalo a few times back when the city had an NBA basketball team and I was a sportswriter, but nobody in Buffalo was interested in Buffalo chicken wings in those days.

The wings came from a place called La Nova, which is apparently a pizzeria. Further insult. I couldn't even get wings from a place where the primary business is wings. In the enclosed promotional material, the owner called himself "The Wing King," but that didn't impress me. Everybody in Buffalo seems to have a wing identity, and such self-proclaimed titles are meaningless. In this world, you can call yourself just about anything and get away with it. I'm thinking of calling myself the Prince of Bel-Air.

I cooked the wings the way the La Nova suggested—22 minutes at 475 degrees. Seemed nuts. I was certain they'd come out shriveled and dry. I served them to two pals, a food-magazine editor and a cook, with nonvintage Delamotte Brut Rose Champagne. I knew the Champagne would be good, and it was.

We all went nuts over the wings. The chef preferred the spicy ones. She thought the heat was artfully added and enhanced the chicken flavor rather than overwhelming it. The editor preferred the BBQ, and found the sweetness "appropriate to a foodstuff of that particular size." (Food editors tend to talk that way.)

I found it astonishing that the wings could be both crunchy and moist, harmed not at all by reheating. A miracle. Reheating chicken is usually a bad idea.

I served the traditional accompaniment of blue cheese dressing on the side, not sloshed over the top. I didn't particularly care for it, legendary though it might be. The cook said she thought the dressing added an addictive component. In fact, she decided it was the combination of creaminess and hotness that had brought about the chicken-wing craze.

I learned a few things while researching the history of Buffalo chicken wings, which were indeed invented in Buffalo, apparently about 1964. If you go to Buffalo and want to fit in (and who doesn't?), never call them "Buffalo wings." They're just "wings."

I never found out what the people of Buffalo do with the remainder of the chicken after they've cooked the wings, the only part they seem to like. I guess it has to remain one of those culinary mysteries, like what the people of Paris do with the rest of the frog after they've eaten the legs.

I Know Best

Whenever a writer comes out with a list of his favorite foods—it's invariably a "top ten" list, of course—there's always somebody like me ready to complain that something better was omitted.

So it is with the January 8th issue of New York magazine, where the well-regarded restaurant critic Adam Platt names "The Ten Best Dishes Under $10." It's a fine list, except he left off the greatest of all under-$10 restaurant dishes in New York.

Topping my list, if I made one, would be the gnocchi at Hearth, in the East Village.

The chef, Marco Canora, is probably tired of being famous for his gnocchi, but it's been quite a while since that happened, and I suspect they would now make a list of "The Ten Best Dishes Under $10 That Everybody Seems to Have Forgotten."

There's plenty of other excellent food at Hearth, but you've never had gnocchi as good as these. Best of all, if you happen to be wandering through the East Village, which every visitor to New York should do, and it turns out to be 6 p.m., when Hearth opens for business, and you find yourself a little hungry, which is normal, and you're not going to be eating dinner until 10 p.m., which is pretty standard for you trendy East Village types, you can have a plate of these at the bar. The cost is $9.00. Also offered are uncommonly good wines by the glass.

Canora's potato gnocchi are about the size and shape of bay scallops. They taste a little like pasta and a lot like potato and come from the kitchen perfectly dressed, seasoned with exactly the right amount of parmigiano reggiano.

You will not have to guess precisely how much cheese to add. It's done for you. Just eat.

You do understand how unusual that is, don't you? You now know something in New York that is unsurpassed, convenient, and inexpensive. Why aren't you on your way over there?

Prince of the City, Take-Out Division

My friend Michael is a window man operating in Manhattan under stressful conditions. It has nothing to do with his job of selling replacement windows, which he enjoys. It has to do with his allowance for lunch, which is $20 a day.

He doesn't complain. He says he used to put way too much on his credit card, and then his wife put a stop to it. Now, each day, he gets a $20 bill from her, and it has to last until 5 p.m.

That would be swell in most small cities, where you can treat yourself to a three-course lunch at the Elks Club for well under $20. In Manhattan, you can't park your car during lunch for $20. So he's spent the past few years searching out the best sandwich spots in the city.

Last week he took me on a quick spin, stopping at each place. He says, "Except for the ones I love, I try not to repeat my sandwiches. And of those I love, I probably have them only one or two times a year."

He has yet another virtue: He can move through the city like no other man I know. He picked me up at a train station in Harlem. In the next four hours we stopped at seven sandwich shops, ordering and eating his favorite sandwich at each. Occasionally, we ate at a table. Sometimes we used the floor of his hatchback as a table—he travels with an old sheet and a six-pack of paper towels.

In order, here are my favorites:

1. Lamb Sholley, Tamarind Tea Room, 41-43 East 22nd Street
Chunks of soft, marinated lamb with homemade tomato chutney and a tamarind-mayonnaise sauce wrapped in whole-wheat flatbread. Yogurt sauce on the side. A brilliant combination that could only have been better if the flatbread had been freshly made.

2. Braised Short Rib, Starwich, 1055 Lexington Avenue @ 75th Street
Almost the winner. The problem: You must ask the counterperson to skip the crumbled blue cheese, which ruins an otherwise perfect sandwich. Savory meat, fabulous focaccia-challah roll, mild red-onion compote. Bonus: Charge your cellphone for free while you eat.

3. Chicken Picnic on a Bun, Yura & Company, 1292 Madison Avenue @ 92nd Street
Such a good idea. Spicy coleslaw, boneless fried chicken, bread-and-butter pickles on a roll. Might have finished first if chicken had been hot. Bonus: All pastries half-price after 3 p.m.

4. Philly Cheesesteak, Carl's Steaks, 507 3rd Avenue @ 34th Street
The Philly cheesesteak impeccably transferred to New York. Said Michael, "I believe I've eaten 15,000 cheesesteaks. Everything I said about not eating the same sandwich twice doesn't apply to cheesesteaks." The shop has a lovely worn-out look. Bread squishy, meat steamy, onions watery, cheese gooey. Ahhh, home.

5. Basil Chicken Salad, Corrado, 960 Lexington Avenue @ 70th Street
Sort of dainty. Mild wheat bread, creamy chicken salad, bits of cucumber, lots of basil. Very good now, but in summer, basil season, should be superb.

6. Napoli, Daniele's Piadina, 64 West 22nd Street
Son of panini: Grilled flatbread stuffed with mozzarella, prosciutto, arugula. Great balance. Packed in box reminiscent of one used for McDonald's apple pie, making it perfect for eating while driving.

7. Kibbe, Amir's Falafel, 2911 Broadway @ 113th Street
Particularly welcome, inasmuch as Manhattan isn't kibbe country. A blend of ground beef and bulgur wheat in a too-thin pita. Falls apart easily, so dine in a moving vehicle at your own risk.

Inasmuch as every one of my friend's sandwiches was admirable, I asked him if he expected to be crowned the sandwich king of New York. He shook his head and pointed out something even more phenomenal. Not once had we paid for parking, other than to put a few quarters in meters.

"I'm very good with sandwiches," he said, "but I am the meter king of New York."

A Simple Idea

Much is being written in praise of Momofuku Ando, the Japanese businessman who invented instant noodles. He died this week at the age of 96.

Just what was his genius?

Was it helping feed the hungry masses of Japan after WWII?

Was it having his original product, Chicken Ramen, taste of chicken rather than pork or beef? (Chicken, he once said, is eaten by every culture, shunned by none.)

Was it packaging his noodles in a waterproof polystyrene container?

Was it creating the first instant-noodle museum? (The Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum opened in 1999.)

Was it sending vacuum-packed instant noodles into space? (Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi took them with him during a 2005 mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery.)

In my opinion, it was none of those things.

What this man did was market a brilliant and convenient dining concept. It goes like this: Add hot water.

Now that was a smart man.

Fantasy Update

In a mixed-message piece entitled "Dream Jobs that Aren't," a writer for CareerBuilder.com interviewed three people who have fabulous-sounding jobs that turn out not to be so wonderful, after all, but are much-loved nevertheless. (Shouldn't bringing up kids have been one of them?)

One of those jobs is restaurant critic.

The writer, Meg Donohue, sums up that job this way: "Eat delicious meals at fantastic restaurants and expense every morsel, sit in your pajamas in the cozy comfort of your home while you type up your opinion of the meal, get the thrill of seeing your name in print, eat more delectable freebies, write, repeat, then wait for the paychecks to roll in."

I have to say, she got it right. (I prefer drawstring PJs, myself.)

The problem is that the woman she picks to interview about the job of restaurant reviewer is a freelance writer who doubles as the food, wine, and travel editor of a lifestyles magazine. All this woman does is complain about the weight she's gained. (Okay, she also worries that she has too much power. For goodness sakes, get a hold of yourself, woman! Nobody has less power than a freelance writer.) The woman puts the blame for her weight gain on restaurant reviewing, winemaker dinners, and cooking at home.

Wrong person to interview.

First of all, nobody in their right mind goes to winemaker dinners. The food might be wonderful and the wine sublime, but listening to winemakers discuss soil composition is so boring I never actually eat anything—I tend to pass out and fall off my chair during the soup course. So any weight she gains at one of these things is entirely her fault, not that of her job.

Gaining weight from her own cooking belongs to the stop-me-before-I-kill-again school of complaining. Considering her profession, you'd think by now she would have learned that melting a quarter-pound of butter on her pasta doesn't promote weight loss.

Then there's the third problem, eating gargantuan meals in restaurants in the course of her restaurant-reviewing job. Almost no critic gains weight from meals eaten in restaurants. Most critics pick at the food. But there is a reason we get fat.

I figured it out in the early '90s, when I was writing one of my first restaurant reviews for GQ magazine, this one on the food of New York's posh Hamptons. I invited the legendary New York Times restaurant critic Craig Claiborne, who lived out there, to dinner with me. When I suggested we have dessert, he declined, explaining, "I always love to have a bowl of ice cream when I get home."

Indeed, so do I. That's the problem. Restaurant critics gain weight once they're home, but not from cooking gourmet meals.

For most people, dining out is a form of recreation. For a critic, it's work.

So when restaurant critics want what everyone else takes for granted—a little comfort food—they take off their shoes, hit the sofa, and dig into the cookies and ice cream.

Okay, I admit some critics don't—the skinny ones. In fact, most restaurant critics, myself excluded, are a remarkably fit bunch with stunning self-control. How awful it must be to live that way.

More Bratwurst Brain Damage

The time-honored concept of the "last meal" has a new meaning.

You probably think of it as the lavish spread offered to death-row prisoners before they go to their final reward. Not so in Milwaukee. Some funeral-home directors wish to serve hors d'oeuvres and drinks in the visitation room where the dearly departed are on display, thus adding festiveness to what traditionally have been grim proceedings.

Guests will eat, drink, and chat, presumably saying nice things about the deseased instead of bad things about the food ("Now I know what killed Old Enos—the cheese puffs").

The newly departed will not dig in, of course. However, he or she will add a bit of gravity—or perhaps a better term might be dead weight—to the proceedings. I would recommend that the parties include coasters embossed with the likeness of the angel of death. Nobody likes to see unsightly ring-marks on a brand-new wooden casket.

"We're not in the funeral business. We're in the hospitality, family-event business that just happens to involve the person who dies," undertaker Mark Krause said to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He's serious. He has taught a continuing education class called "Would You Like Lunch with That Cremation?"

I have to assume the purpose of serving food is to make sure that everybody who is everybody—to say nothing of everybody who is a body—shows up.

"We're moving from a ceremonial base or agenda to a social agenda in the course of serving families," said Ron Hast, publisher of Funeral Monitor newsletter and Mortuary Management magazine. Why stop with the families? Why not throw in a complimentary subscription for the deceased, the publications delivered graveside? A possible promotional jingle: "Give the gift that keeps on giving to those who aren't living!"

Now, both men have a point. Compared to funerals of yore, our present method of conducting such ceremonies is abrupt. A few words, and down they go.

We used to cherish our funerary superstitions, my favorite being the primitive hope that the passing was temporary and if the body was allowed to hang around for a few days, it might spring back to life.

We also had weird food rituals, the most chilling being the role of the sin-eater, a despised and unclean individual who ate food off the body of the dead and thus took his sins upon himself. (A restaurant critic would be particularly well-suited to this task.)

Actually, I suspect Milwaukee-style funerals will ultimately prove to be not particularly abnormal at all. After all, what are cocktail parties but occasions where we stand around next to somebody who has absolutely nothing to say?