kpurvis

As a writer, Holly, would you really be likely to note the bad after spending all day with someone? If you saw sloppy work in the kitchen or bad sanitary practices, would you feel free to include that in your piece, or would you feel restricted by the time and access that the subject gave you? But that's precisely what a reviewer must do. Consumer advocate is the most relevant part of a reviewer's job. Restaurant meals are expensive. Before I blow $100, you bet I'm going to look at the reviews. Several, if possible, so I get more than one point of view. And if I'm in Philadelphia and I look to see if you've written about the place, how would I know if you skipped it because it was bad, or skipped it because you haven't gotten to it yet? (Sorry, don't mean to pick on you, Holly. I'm just curious about the points you raise.)

Holly, those kinds of stories are certainly informative, and they are interesting. They're a form of food journalism. But they aren't reviews. The problem with getting to know people in the kitchen is that it's awfully hard to mention the negatives, and that's what a review must be free to do. Otherwise, it's not a review. In defence of disguises (although Bill has certainly addressed this better than I -- as I've pointed out on this forum, I'm not a reviewer, I'm a writer): A good reviewer is going to go more than once, and often as many as three times. If they know who you are the first time, you can be sure they'll be waiting for you the next time. Kathleen Purvis, food editor, The Charlotte Observer.

OK. I agreed I would only reply to things if I had some expertise to add. How about this, on the glass-bottle-tastes-better theory: My late dad worked for RC Cola/Nehi for more than 20 years, so I grew up around the soft drink industry. And my neighbor works for Coke now. She and I once had a discussion about why people think Coke tastes better in a glass bottle. As I recall, she said the reason is because glass is thicker than either cans or plastic bottles. Cans or plastic lose more of their carbonation, and hence their flavor, more quickly after opening. The Coke in the glass bottles doesn't really taste better, it's just that it's more likely to taste the same from first sip to last. It may also be because the traditional glass bottle is smaller, so you drink it pretty quickly. That also keeps its flavor from deteriorating. Kathleen Purvis, The Charlotte Observer

One point on the domestic issue that wasn't raised at the symposium (and probably isn't all that relevant here, but I feel like stating it!): My gratitude to the black working mothers who raised such a tremendously important generation. As a 45-year-old working mother, I have been told all my adult life, by everyone from politicians to my aunt, that "the trouble with the world today is that mothers have gone out to work, instead of staying home and raising their children. Every time I hear that one, I think, "What world are you remembering that didn't have working mothers? Black mothers worked. Textile mills and tobacco farms were full of working mothers. Every school I attended had female teachers who had children of their own. Since when is it new that women worked?" In the case of black women, I look at the generation raised by them, young people who had the courage to hold their heads high when they were spit on at lunch counter sit-ins, who stood up against police dogs and firehoses in Birmingham, who walked through crowds of screaming kids and adults to reach the door of a high school. I look at the people in my own generation who worked hard to get degrees and fueled the remarkable growth of the black middle class. And damn it, I'm proud to be a working mother, if I can do half as good a job as those working mothers did it. Sorry. Pardon my rant. It's off the point of food, I know. But cooking wasn't all I learned by hanging around in the kitchen.

Thanks, guys. And I had fun playing with Mayhaw Man and Dean at Southern Foodways this weekend. Mayhaw Man and William Hurt: Separated at birth. Who knew? But Suzanne, I have to be honest. Workload aside, the main reason I haven't posted is because I've been mulling the new format and debating what it means for a journalist. It's a debatable point -- Dean has certainly debated me on it! -- but I feel like e-gullet's new role as an information-gathering source puts me in a spot where I have to be more cautious about posting freely. It feels like it's more of an information gathering entity now, and less like "a chat over the backyard fence." Since it is a new media, standards are evolving along with it. But just like I can give interviews to competing newspapers but not write for them, I feel like I should only comment and weigh in as "Kathleen Purvis, food editor of the Charlotte Observer," not as "K. Purvis, private foodie citizen." I'm certainly glad to do that, and to share expertise when I feel I have something to add, much the way Russ Parsons does. But I'll probably do less back and forth.

Danke. See you in the park.

OK, after missing this place in its incarnation last summer, I've been drooling all this summer. I'm flying in on Sept. 9 and will probably get through airport hell/hotel checkin about 1:30 or so. Can anybody tell me if they'll still be open in September? Should I set my sights there for a late Thursday lunch?

There's a Key lime tree in my parents' yard in West Palm Beach that's been there since before we moved in in 1970. My experience has been that it bears all year. Every few years, it tires and goes on a break for a month or so, but then it perks up and goes right back into production.

Varmint says they serve a great BLT. Huh. I thought Varmint was a leg man. Good ol' Cafe Risque. What would the trip down I-95 be without them? When my son was learning to read, they made road trips so much more interesting. Son: "Mommy, what's an adult toy?" Me: "Never mind, son -- they take too many batteries."

Oh, I'd agree with that one. I'm permanently tired of stories in "Bon-Gour-Sav" about food in the South that start with some variation of "In the land of chicken-fried steak and grits, who'd expect to find (fill in the blank) . . ." (I'd expect to find it, Colman! And do, all the time.) My favorite example of pre-set expectations (and I apologize if I've posted this story before, but it still makes me laugh): A friend's husband is a free-lance camera man. A crew from a national food show was coming in to do some show or other. When they called him to make arrangements, he was actually asked if the road from the Charlotte airport was paved. Excuse me? You mean the roads that lead to the second and third largest banks in America? "Well, lemme take this straw outta my mouth and ax Goober if he's done finished with that cee-ment truck yet."

And once you're in Wilmington, I just did a story on food in Wilmington that should still be posted at www.charlotte.com. It has a long list of restaurants and food places. The three best that I tried were Port Land Grille, Caffe Phoenix and Circa 1922.

Nicely done, Tim Cee, and I'm with you on about 99 percent of it. Getting pegged as one of the nation's barbecue writers is its own special hell, and I treasure a letter to the editor that I keep pinned up in my cubicle. (A Myrtle Beach woman got incensed because I described Southern weddings as cheap champagne and dyed satin shoes -- she ended with the line "Ms. Purvis may be a writer, but she is definitely not a Southern Lady." Guilty as charged! And damn proud of it.) However, I am puzzled by this part: "Here in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have loads of great new restaurants featuring some truly innovative chefs, yet such places never get so much as a peep of press, outside of a few postage stamp-sized reviews." I've written more than peep about innovative chefs, my colleague Helen Schwab has written far more than a postage stamp, and your own publication's Tricia Childress writes almost every week about smaller ethnic restaurants and writes frequently about cutting-edge chefs. Her recent piece on local chefs from the CIA was an example. Yes, we occasionally write on New South cooking -- I was just assigned to do another small piece recently -- but it's a legitimate food-news topic. And we do a lot more than that on chefs who aren't doing anything remotely Southern. Helen's reviews of Jim Alexander at Zebra, Tim Groody at Sonoma and Town and her recent coverage of Ilios Noche and Il Nido come to mind. Is that an example, perhaps, of the same thing that the Southern stereotypes stem from: Seeing what you're looking for?

My apologies -- that should have been "silly girl." Or as I would usually say it: "Miz Gourmet MA'AM."

Aw, thanks, bubba. Better to be a hero than a gyro. Or a zero.

Silly boy -- because with a nickel bag of peanuts and a 10-cent RC, you could pour the peanuts in the bottom of the bottle and end up with something that tasted like a candy bar for 15 cents. And because of the elusive perfection of salty/sweet. My addiiction to salty/sweet combos still drives me to sprinkle Junior Mints in my popcorn at the movies.

Murray's in the Market has a nice little picnic tray, usually manchego, almonds and dried fruit, that's a pretty good deal. I've picked them up as a cocktail snack for my hotel room. (If I have time, I duck into that wine shop beside the market and get a split of sparkling wine to go with it. A girl's got to travel with some style, after all.) And I always grab a tub of marcona almonds at Murray's to take back to Charlotte, N.C. I can get The Peanut Shop marconas in town, but they seem drier and not as good as the ones at Murrays. I haven't been there in a couple of years, but the pizza at Two Boots iwas in the not-bad category when I took my son to N.Y. Unfortunately, I'd put everything else in the food hall in the give-it-a-miss column.

But what about foods that are already hybrids of different traditions -- the Italian/Cajun food in New Orleans comes to mind immediately (Mosca's "Barbecued" Shrimp). Or even the adaptations made to barbecue by settlers from different home countries, such as mutton in KY or sausage in TX? None taken, Ms. S. On barbecued shrimp, et al, that's why I'd say foods change, rather than suffer. Foods and the English language both continually evolve. And that's why I find them both so endlessly fascinating.

I second the motion. Hot Blenheim's and bourbon are made for each other. And on the ice tea, you have to have a sprig of mint. (And yes, it is Ice Tea, not Iced Tea.)

Thanks, Andie. I'll try that.

For the same reason North Carolinians shouldn't mark French, Asian, New American, and dozens of other cuisines and products down as things they enjoy elsewhere and go about their business, limiting themselves to barbecue and fried fish! True, and I suppose I'm just indulging in a bit of devil's advocacy here. (Hey, Suzanne started it with that crack about the South's inability to make an egg cream!) And yes, I'm usually the first to start sputtering when someone suggests that the only food of interest in the South is traditional Southern food. But, just to toss out another point for debate: Isn't that an extension of the logic that makes us think we should be able to have good tomatoes in January and strawberries in the fall? Sure, we can import them from Chile all year round. But that doesn't make them good. Yes, we should expand our culinary networks and creative chefs should be able to play and expand and explore. But there are some iconic foods that are going to change -- maybe not suffer, but certainly change -- if you take them out of their natural habitats. If I were in Rome, I'd certainly miss chocolate chip cookies. But I wouldn't expect to be able to walk into any bakery and buy them. If I did, I'd probably spend a lot of time pondering how the Italians interpret the Tollhouse. But what I should really be doing is saving my calories for biscotti!

On the same idea as the pillow case, I have a cotton salad bag that I bought in a kitchen supply store somewhere along the way. It seems to work well. I wash the lettuce and shake it dry as soon as I get it home from the farmers market, then put it in the bag. The bag "breathes" but is also absorbs excess moisture, and since the lettuce is washed and ready to go, it's fast for making salads and sandwiches. I've kept lettuce for more than a week that way. On a related note, though, a lot of the lettuce I buy in the farmers market now comes with the root attached. Has anybody noticed a difference in whether removing the root before you store effects the time the lettuce will keep? Common sense seems to dictate leaving the root on, and yet I've noticed that when I do, the leaves seem to get limp faster. After all, roots need to be in a growing medium and in my refrigerator, they aren't.

A lesson and a visit are always welcome, Suzanne. But you raise a point I find interesting: If I wanted egg creams or lox, I'd certainly consider a trip to New York (or Miami -- I had my first lox on a bagel at Wolfies in Miami Beach when I was 10, so it will always be my standard). I wouldn't expect North Carolina to yield a good egg cream or decent lox, and I wouldn't fuss because it didn't. But New York has this fixation on barbecue that puzzles me. It's sort of a collective attitude of "We have the best of everything, so we should have the best barbecue, too." Well, no. You don't have the lifestyle, atmosphere or history that would have given rise to great barbecue. So why the obsessation with declaring New York a barbecue capital? Why not just mark barbecue down as one of those things you enjoy when you're somewhere else and go about your business, enjoying your lox and egg creams and chewy bagels and good pastrami?

That depends, Steve. Are we talking neon-white? Sort of like Doogie Howser posing as a poly sci major? That would be our boy.

Sorry to answer a question with a question, but how are the ribs at Nancy Lee's Pig Heaven on Lexington in the 80s? They have sections of their menu listed "Pg" and "No Pig," and I have friends in the neighborhood who love the place. (Plus, they serve pigs ears.) So I'd be curious if anyone thinks they're a contender. (They're easier for a midtown visitor to reach than Queens or Riverdale, frankly.) Only thing I've had there was listed "sliced barbecue" but was really more like country ham in a sweet/salty sauce.

I'm curious, William -- how did you find the cole slaw? I've noticed that the cole slaw at every restaurant that claims to serve barbecue isn't really a Southern-style cole slaw. It's the crunchy kind, heavy on the celery seed, that I'd expect to find next to a corned beef sandwich.