Lawton's Famous Frankfurts

When I was a kid my dad used to take us to this very out of the way hot dog stand in Lawerence, Massachusetts. It had been at least 20 years since we'd ventured to Lawton's Famous Frankfurts, but we set out one day last week to find out if it still existed and if it was as delicious as we remembered.

Lawton's is still in business in its original shack built out over the canal between two old mill buildings on the corner of rt. 28 and Canal Street in downtown Lawerence. The hot dogs are even more fabulous than remembered.

What makes a hot dog above average? Well, at Lawton's all hot dogs are a foot long. All hot dogs are cooked to order. And believe it or not all hot dogs are dropped in boiling oil to cook - yes, that is right, the hot dogs are deep fried. There, my friend, is the exact reason that these hot dogs have lived on in our memories for 20 plus years. The hot dog buns are buttered and toasted while your dog warms up in the simmering oil. And perhaps most exciting of all, the toppings include sauteed onions and sauerkraut. These were the best hot dogs any of us had ever tasted. Lawton's had spanned the varied tastes of three generations and satisfied everyone - no easy task, believe me!

Lawton's also serves hamburgers and lobster rolls, fries and onion rings, but I've never deviated from the basic Lawton's formula - hot dogs and lots of them. If one is planning on consuming two deep fried foot-long hot dogs - well, let's face it there just isn't room to try anything else.

Lawton's is a Pepsi only facility - bring your own diet Coke if, like me, that's what you want to drink. There is no inside seating either, although if the weather is good there are some benches along the canal. If it is raining you may end up eating those dogs in your car, but you won't mind - you won't even notice your surroundings - you'll be lost in happy hot dog contemplations.

This place is one-of-a-kind and highly recommended. Certainly well worth a detour on your next road-trip in northeastern Massachusetts.

Lawton's Famous Frankfurts
Established 1929

606 Canal Street
Lawerence, MA

phone: 978-686-9603

Lawton's opens at 11:00am all year round, but during the winter months closes at 6:00pm. In the summer they stay open until 8:00.

Call ahead if you are in a hurry and they'll have your order waiting.

New York City, Food and Fun

Shemetra, Sherina and Sara (just call me Shara) go to NYC

"New York, New York it's a helluva town,
The Bronx is up and the Battery's down..."

This week my friend Shemetra turned 40. It is shocking when my own friends started doing this… turning 40 really seems like something one’s parent’s friends should be doing. To celebrate the event properly, Shemetra planned a mom’s getaway weekend trip to New York City to see The Color Purple and to eat good food.

We ate a lot of good food, and I will get to that, but first The Color Purple. It was great. Fantasia, was truly wonderful in the lead role, and Oprah Winfrey showed up at the very same show we were at, creating quite a stir and giving us a little extra thrill. Then at intermission we noticed that Jane Fonda was in the theatre too. What a night!

On the drive down from Boston, I warned Shemetra that I wanted to go to a new gelato place on the Upper West Side called Grom’s. She was up for it so we worked it into our thoroughly mapped out schedule.

We parked our car at noon on Saturday and jumped on the subway to go up to Sylvia’s in Harlem for lunch. All the guidebooks we’d read warned us off Sylvia’s with language like, “Sylvia’s is an institution and the food tastes institutional, “ but we wanted to go there and see for ourselves. As it turned out, between Subway issues – no Uptown trains were running from Columbus Circle so we had to go Downtown to go Uptown - and then the wait when we finally got to the restaurant it was 2 o’clock before we were at the table looking at a full plate of food. Boy was it ever worth the wait.

All three of us ended up ordering the same thing – the rib and fried chicken combo with collard greens and candied yams for the sides. The greens were absolutely delicious – I could have eaten a heaping plate of just greens. The menu claimed the collard greens were cooked with smoked turkey, but Shemetra and Sherina said they could taste some pickled pork in there. I’ll have to take their word on that, but oh they were good. We all agreed the fried chicken was perfectly seasoned and perfectly cooked – it was scrumptious. I liked the ribs – they had been rubbed with a sweet rub and roasted and then finished with a spicy peppery sauce… for me the flavor combination of subtly sweet and hot and peppery was great. The candied yam was okay, but had a cloying sweet flavor in it that I could not place until Shemetra said it had too much vanilla in it. Actually I think it was imitation vanilla and it was certainly too much which was too bad because the yam was perfectly candied and would have been delicious. Cornbread came with the meal and it was crisp and buttery – quite buttery actually, but not too greasy.



We were far too full to order dessert there although I was tempted to anyway – peach cobbler was on the menu, but we were headed to bargain hunting on Canal Street and needed to stay mobile so I restrained myself and we headed back downtown.

At 5:45 we found ourselves in Time’s Square looking for a place to sit down and watch The Preakness before it was time to walk over and get our tickets for the show. We had actually tried to take a train up Broadway to get our much anticipated gelato at Grom, but had accidentally boarded a train that unexpectedly turned sharply eastward at 59th and headed toward Brooklyn forcing us to jump off precipitously at 5th Avenue. We ended up walking back to Times Square, momentarily giving up on the gelato. We ended up in the basement of Rosie O’Grady's Saloon. As far as I could tell it appeared to be the perfect tourist trap. Therefore I was oh so pleasantly surprised when I ordered my chocolate mousse with Grand Marinier and it turned out to be excellent… just like I make it, in fact, which is my hightest rating. I ate the whole thing - only allowing Shemetra a little taste to verify that it was of the highest quality - with a glass of Shiraz. It was a great horse race even if my horse didn't win.

Sunday we took a walk around midtown and I picked up a dark chocolate dipped glacee apricot at the Rockefeller Center Godiva store. The apricot was sweet, but with little trace of fruit flavor and the chocolate was unremarkable – my general feeling toward Godiva. We had passed the Teucher boutique moments before but sadly it had not yet opened for the day.

We stumbled on a street fair on 9th Avenue with vendors and music and all kinds of delightful things to try. The food was okay, but the atmosphere was festive and fit in perfectly with our celebration weekend. I got an above average falafel sandwich with “the works” minus hot sauce. It was fresh and tasty, but it was very hard to eat while walking and I was too preoccupied with staying clean in the midst of dripping hummous and tahini to savor the flavors and textures as they deserved. Then there was some shrimp cocktail with a nice bright cocktail sauce and some fried green plaintains which were okay, but could have been thinner and crisper. Sherina and I both spotted a sign for “Thai Food $1.00” which lured us in to try a mediocre chicken satay with a one dimensionally sweet peanut sauce… less than adequate. You get what you pay for I guess. I passed up the Arepas (sigh) and the empanadas and the Asian Chicken salad because there really is only so much a body can eat at one time – no matter how sorely tempted.

We were back in our car pulling out of the hotel parking lot at noon when I brought up the idea of driving up to 76th and Broadway to get some gelato at Grom’s. “You know you do get kind of obsessive about these things, Sara.” Shemetra pointed out. Hey, I’m the first to admit it. I am obsessive about food… its food for goodness sake… what is it there for, but to be obsessed over? I didn’t actually step into the store because I had to wait in the car on the corner of Broadway and 77th in an illegal spot, but the gelato was a revelation and well worth the weekend-long effort to try some. Shemetra and Sherina went in and met one of the co-owners and tried ever so many flavors, settling on vanilla in the end. They brought me back a dish of Gianduja, a rich and nutty chocolate hazelnut blend, smooth and creamy and wonderful. I’ll be heading back there soon to try every single one of their flavors… yum. It was the perfect ending to our New York food adventure weekend.

Sylvia’s – the Queen of Soul Food
328 Lenox Avenue
New York, NY 10027
Closet Subway: 125th and Lenox Ave.

Rosie O’Grady’s Saloon
800 7th Avenue
New York, NY 10019
Open Daily 11:30am, Dinner until Midnight

Empanada Mamas
763 9th Avenue between 51st and 52nd

GROM
IL GELATO COME UNA VOLTA
2165 Broadway
Upper West Side
New York, NY

In 'N Out Burger, Phoenix, AZ

At long last, I can finally say I've eaten at the world famous In 'N Out Burger. It feels a little anticlimactic actually, not at all what I expected. Maybe the build-up to the straightforward meal of burger,fries and diet coke was just too much for such a simple meal to bear up under. I'm not saying it wasn't good. It was good. It was fine. The burger, anyway, was better than okay. It just wasn't great or even really good and if I hadn't gone there on purpose knowing it was something memorable and special I doubt if I would have taken note of this meal at all. It would not have made much of a lasting impression. Believe me I'm not trying to be contrary. I was predisposed to be delighted, but it just didn't happen for me. Personally, I'm always slightly annoyed at those persons who feel they must go against the general popular opinion, but that's not what I'm doing here. I would love to be able to report that it was the best ever, but it just wasn't.

Okay, let's analyze it. The burger was a real burger - thinner than I prefer, but tasting fresh and solid and with a ragged handmade shape to it that just made you feel that it wasn't stamped out of meat in some far off processing plant. The burger was good. I didn't know about the sauce that came on it, I'm not usually a fan of those special sauces, but I ate it like that with the standard lettuce, tomato and raw onion and I liked it. Neither of my children had ever eaten a hamburger in their lives and they each ate their naked burgers on buns with ketchup (one even ate a second). No, the burgers were good. Not thick and juicy and homemade tasting like the Wild Willy's ones, nor as thick and tasty as the UBurger ones, but solid and more than acceptable.

We did not like our french fries at all. I was shocked about this since I had reports of amazing fries at In 'N Out Burger, but these were terrible. None of us liked them. The texture was reminiscent of styrofoam and that in itself was enough to turn us off. Maybe they were having a bad day or maybe they just weren't to our taste, but UBurger beat them out in the french fry department for sure - even Wild Willy's whose fries are mediocre at best beat out the fries we had yesterday... they were just plain bad.

There is one point that I should mention. As we sat around the dinner table later that day discussing the In 'N Out Burger experience - and my dismay at finding it less than what I had anticipated - my husband asked about price. That's when the lightbulb went off in my head. That's the reason In 'N Out Burger is so great - it was incredibly cheap - certainly as cheap as McDonald's, but the food, with the exception of the french fries, was far superior. Wild Willy's is expensive (and takes a long time), UBurger is a little faster and cheaper, but not really cheap, In 'N Out Burger was cheap, very cheap and pretty fast (well, compared to Wild Willy's anyway). In 'N Out is high value - if you have to eat fast food then it is the place to go.

One final note: the store was amazingly clean. We wandered in around 3:00pm for lunch and were lucky enough to arrive at a moment when only two people were in line ahead of us. Ten minutes later, when we were sitting down at our table the line was out the door... amazingly this place is busy all day and they still manage to keep it spotless. The tables around us were wiped off as soon as they were vacated and the floors were swept up continuously. Everything seemed shiny and fresh which made the experience of sitting down and eating our burgers much more enjoyable. I found their operation quite impressive.

So was In 'N Out all I hoped and expected it to be? No it wasn't. But at least I've been now, I have my own opinion (and not all the other ones I've read and heard) and I get it now. That's a great feeling. Check it off.

Redendo's Pizzeria & Pasta, Fountain Hills AZ

Redendo's
Pizzeria & Pasta
New York City
circa 1940s

Fountain Hills, AZ
480-816-1356

We'd been traveling in Northern Arizona for four days and I was tired of chili that stayed with me all day (and night) and burgers and fries. We'd somehow missed lunch between Tonto National Monument and Scottsdale and it was now 3:00pm and we were all starving and getting cranky. I was trying to gently nudge my family unit toward Subway - it always seems the least objectional fast food destination, but my husband saw a big sign in a strip mall that said "Pizza and Pasta" and he turned toward it. (sigh)... I wasn't expecting much.

We'd already had pretentious and mediocre pizza at Picazzo's in Sedona - overpriced and not very good. This place looked like mediocre pizza at best with the added bonus of at least not being over priced. Boy was I wrong.

They had homemade pesto with Pecorino Romano. They had a choice of cheese and they made me an excellent pizza with goat cheese, spinach, sauteed mushrooms, artichokes and kalamata olives. It was amazing. The girls had a cheese pizza which they loved. My husband had a giant Greek salad covered with two kinds of olives, roasted red peppers, feta, tomatoes... it was amazing.

I realized that this place was a great find about halfway through my third slice of pizza and so I resolved that I must try their homemade tiramisu. It was wonderful - a tiramisu to write home about for sure.

This is not the stylish neopolitan style pizza, but real "old fashioned" New York style crust that is thick and crunchy and substantial around the outer edge of the pie... not super thin, but toothsome and delicious.

I highly recommend this place for the next time you are passing through Fountain Hills and are ready for a really good meal.

Healthy and Delicious Fast Food - am I dreaming?

KnowFat! Lifestyle grille

www.knowfat.com

It appears to be a fast foot style restaurant, but if you EAT-IN your food will be brought to your table on real ceramic plates and you’ll get to eat it with metal flatware. There are burgers and fries on the menu, but the burgers are made from lean beef, turkey or Bison and the fries are Airfries that are baked in the oven. You really know that your are in an alternate universe when you get your receipt - in addition to listing how much money you spent it tells you how many calories your meal was and how much protein, carbohydrates and fat were in each item. Whoa baby - I've never seen anything like this before.

So how does all that fat conscious food taste?

Well, I loved my steamed quinoa with roasted Mediterranean vegetables and lean sirloin tips and turkey tenderloins (591 calories, 60 grams of protein, 48 grams of carbs and 15 grams of fat). There just aren’t many places to get quinoa outside of the home kitchen so I was charmed by the novelty. The meats were lean and the low fat sauces were tasty. It was a very satisfying and tasty experience. On top of all that I knew exactly what I'd just consumed thanks to my handy dandy nutritional analysis on my receipt. Some folks might think that kind of reporting is too much, but I loved know exactly what I was eating.

So far so good. Then I needed to run a more stringent test. I brought one of my daughters. Let’s see how their low fat fast food does against her pickiness. She ordered one of the kids’ meals which came with a huge plate of baked French fries and three breaded (but not fried) chicken tenders and a drink (612 calories, 30 grams of protein, 70 grams of carbs, and 13 grams of fat). She ate it all so it couldn’t have been too bad. I stole a few fries out of sheer curiosity and found them very crisp and crunchy, but the taste was a little off for me. The chicken tenders were really delicious – very well seasoned.

For this second visit I had a chicken teriyaki and broccoli burro – which consisted of the a lowfat, whole wheat tortilla filled with steamed brown rice and the chicken and broccoli (680 calories, 39 grams of protein, 105 grams of carbs and 10 grams of fat). It was fine, although certainly nothing to write home about. I felt very healthy eating it and quite contentedly full after.

So would I eat there again? Yes – especially if they were a choice at the food court or in an airport (they will soon have a store at Logan International Airport). It isn’t the best food I’ve ever eaten, but it beats the usual suspects of fast food places hands down. In a situation where my only choices were Pizza Hut, KFC and McDonalds I’d pick the Knowfat! Lifestyle grille every time. My daughter said it was fine, but she won't be begging me to take her back any time soon.

I love the idea – maybe they could refine the food a little more. They have restaurants opening all over the country so check out their website to see if there is one near you to visit and test out.

Eccles Cakes - who knew?!

I walked into my local Irish bakery yesterday to get a little nibble and to waste a few minutes out of the cold while the girls and I waited for our train to the city. The Celtic Crust makes wonderful scones - the best I've had on this side of the Atlantic - and excellent Irish Soda bread and mediocre everything else. While the girls and I studied the display case, a gentleman in front of us in line ordered "one Eccles cake". Hmmm. Here was something new. What is an Eccles cake? Never heard of that before. The sign in the display case said it was made of "puff pastry, raisins, and brown sugar." It looked like a round flaky tart dotted with raisins and sprinkled with sugar. Interesting.

Then the gentleman who had just ordered one started talking. To me. He was obviouly English and said he used to live in Eccles and knew a thing or two about Eccles cakes. These examples that I saw before me, he said, were a very near approximation of the original. Fancy that - a newly discovered pastry and the world's leading authority on it, all in one accidental encounter - I had to have one.

So how was it? Well it was flat and flaky, sweet and rather sticky and it had plump sweet raisins sandwiched in between the sheets of pastry here and there. It was tasty and certainly sweet, but not an instant favorite. My curiosity was completely satisfied, however, and I went on my way content in the knowledge that once again I had left no new food item go by untasted.


For the history behind,and recipe for, Eccles Cakes follow this link (take particular note that the cakes were banned by the Puritans "due to their juicy and exotic richness" : http://www.salford.gov.uk/living/yourcom/salfordlife/aboutsalford/salfordlocalhistory/localhistory-eccles/ecclescakes.htm

McDonald's and Me

I don't actually hate McDonald's. In fact, and this is not easy to admit, I really enjoy the taste of their food. Like most everyone else, I love their french fries. I really enjoy eating their Quarter Pounder. The problem I have is that after I've happily consumed it all I end up feeling rather sick. That being the case, I tend to avoid the Golden Arches as much as humanly possible. Today, for some reason, the cosmic forces moved my orbit just a little too close to the McDonald's at Boston's South Station for me to escape the gravitational pull of the Happy Meal. I was escorting three hungry children who wanted to go there and since this was their trip to the New England Aquarium I had to give in and bought everyone lunch at McDonald's.

There was a long line - the first of many that we encountered today - so I had some time to consider what exactly I could get for myself that wouldn't leave me feeling queasy. I considered the grilled chicken sandwich, but in the end I opted for the asian salad with grilled chicken. The salad was remarkable in one way - it was completely tasteless. The only thing in it that had a distinguishable flavor were the mandarin orange slices. The chicken tasted like salt and not much else. Those quibbles aside, the salad did fulfill my immediate requirements - it filled me up and didn't make me sick.

The girls gobbled up their happy meals and then started in playing with the toys. Here's the kicker - those happy meal toys were one of the best things that happened to us. The girls played an elaborate game with them on the 20 minute walk to the Aquarium, in the 30 minute wait in line to get into the Aquarium and then later when we were waiting for our outbound train at the station. The toys turned all that waiting time into a fun playtime. I guess that means it was worth the trip to McDonald's... although it is hard to admit.

In n'Out Burger v. Uburger v. Wild Willy's

Let me get this off my chest: I’ve never been to In n’Out Burger. I’ve read about them, I’ve heard a lot about them, I even have an In n’Out Burger beach towel, but I’ve never actually eaten a burger there. I feel the pressing need to make a trip out to Southern California or Las Vegas (the only place they have restaurants) in order to try them out, but without an expense account it will just have to wait. So why is In ‘Out burger relevant to this discussion of two local burger joints in Boston? In ‘Out burger did it first and has been doing it for a lot longer (and is a lot more famous).

These three stores are all in the same business – made to order, hand pressed, freshly ground meat hamburgers, fries and shakes. They are in the fast food business, but they aren’t really fast. Their food isn’t really cheap, but you can’t really mind too much, because it is so good.

Uburger, which just opened within the last month, in Kenmore Square, has the heart and soul of a fast food place - despite the fact that it is one of a kind, it looks and feels like a hip chain restaurant. The food is way better than McDonalds or Burger King – they don’t even belong in the same sentence really (so sorry) – but it still feels like it is doing the same kind of business. The burgers are very good – the fast food burger of your dreams really – freshly made with shredded lettuce and tomato. The French fries were amazing – thin, fresh cut, shoe-string fries that were crispy and just salty enough… three cheers for those fries. Very decent onion rings – in a side-by-side comparison I almost always prefer onion rings to fries so it really tells you something about their fries that I liked them better. Their limited menu includes hot dogs – a fabulously big grilled all beef dog – chicken sandwiches and salads (including, believe it or not, a field greens with pear, walnut and gorgonzola number). The place is very clean – if you eat there you won’t be walking around looking for a clean table – they are all wiped off and rubbish free. Next time I get tickets to a Red Sox game I’m smuggling my Uburger meal into Fenway. Lunch for two was $12 and the wait for our food was about 10 minutes.

Wild Willy’s, in Watertown Square for over a year now, is a place to go get a homemade burger that you don’t have to make yourself. The burgers are handmade and thick, grilled over an open flame, they always ask you how you want it cooked (you can tell Uburger, but they won’t ask), served on a buttered grilled bun with whole leaf lettuce and an ample slice of tomato. The burger is more distinctive here – different, not necessarily better. The fries at Wild Willy’s are a disappointment – also fresh cut from real potatoes on-site, but too thick to crisp up, they are kind of soggy and never very good. The onion rings are fabulous. They also have shakes and salads. No hot dogs here, but chicken tenders as well as delicious chicken sandwiches – very moist chicken breast with a lot of flavor. This place is more of a theme restaurant with western saddles at the counter for my kids to play on, a replica of an old Chuck Wagon in the center of the eating area, and western murals on the walls. There is also table service – of sorts. You order at the counter and bring a wooden numbered block to your table where it will be delivered after about a 10 minute wait. Lunch for two is about $15. Neither fast, nor cheap, Wild Willy’s is definitely a lunch destination.

After all that field research I can’t decide which is better. I like them both. They are much more difficult to compare than I anticipated going into this study. I guess the only thing I can do is eat at both of them a few more times… I’m sure a few more hamburgers will clear things up. A few more chicken sandwiches. A few more salads. I can see I have my work cut out for me.

The River Cafe - London

The River Café
Thames Wharf Rainville Rd
Hammersmith, London, W6 9HA
020 7386 4200
http://www.rivercafe.co.uk

If you have to pick one nice restaurant to eat at in London, pick The River Cafe and go for lunch.

I made my reservation on their website months before I went because I knew I wanted to eat there and I'd work everything else around that.

Does it seem crazy to go to London to eat Italian food cooked by an English chef? Yes it does. Oh well, crazy or not, it is one of the best meals you’ll ever eat. Everyone has written about this restaurant so there is no need for me to go on and on about how great the food is. The food is great. It is pristine. It is, what all food should be, delicious.

I started off with a grilled squid with rocket. The squid was nicely charred on the edges, but very tender and juicy. The rocket – which I’d never had before – was fresh and peppery and reminded me of arugala. My main course was pan-roasted pheasant wrapped in bacon with sautéed chard. I wish I could make swiss chard that well – then everyone in my family would eat it. For dessert I asked the waitress if I could get half a slice of each of the two tarts they had that day - one lemon and one pear-frangiapane. They were both excellent, but the lemon, which was carmelized on the top and so delicate it wiggled on the plate, was so wonderfully lemony it won the day.

One of my top ten meals.