Whattsa Schmatta U

NOW LOOK. I love New York as much as anybody. Which is to say I probably love it more than I ought to. I do, in fact, know a coupla people who don't love New York. One because he grew up there and spent a substantial amount of his adult life there, and I guess that can make you see the negatives in starker relief than is strictly healthy for holding romantic notions of the place. The other because, as near as I can tell, he's an idiot. But that's kind of beside the point.

The point, if I have one, and I am not entirely sure I do, is I love New York. The City. Manhattan. The clear inspiration for today's lunch, an Italian sausage sandwich with peppers and onions. (Back to construction in a moment.) The first one of these I had at the North Carolina State Fair, Road Company, when they were encamped at the local fairgrounds right outside Charlotte when I was seven or eight. They called it a Coney Island. It was good. The second one I had off a cart in New York, down in the Battery if memory serves. It was way better. Not just because it was in New York. The Metrolina Fairgrounds tends to cheapen any experience, especially food experiences, since the whole place smells like garbage. (Yeah, I know. But this was in the Battery, or at least someplace at the South end of the island, and far enough from the Fulton Fish Market-- still open in those days-- that the breeze off the harbor was all you really smelled.) The sausage was better, the peppers and onions were better, the bun was better, and the whole combination was just better.

The third one I had was in Philadelphia. It was just wrong.

For this one, the sausage is an Italian flavored with green peppers and onions the local Harris Teeter features. The onion is white, the pepper is yellow, and yes, of course, there's a drizzel of my beloved Plochman's yellow mustard. On top is a mixed layer of cheddar and provalone, which worked out even better than I imagined: buttery and sharp and velvety, providing a wonderful counterpoint to the rest of the sandwich. Part of the magic of this, I think, is that it si a bundle of near contradictions: the peppers and onion are sweet and squishy, the sausage is savory and chewy, the bun is starchy and slightly crisp (and chewy in precisely the way the sausage is not). Balanced against all that, the cheese layer makes perfect sense.

The movie of the day is this.

I had been meaning to watch this a coupla different times, but both times I came in late enough that I felt like waiting for the next opportunity. (And hey, let's face it: it's an HBO doc project, it's gonna play until their mathematical model shows every man, woman and child in America has had a chance to see it.) Today was that day. It happened to come on right about the time I had completed the day's early tasks and was ready to start lunch. And it proved to be just about exactly what I was hoping for: a healthy mix of New York porn and worker's rights history. A bit pendantic in spots, but not so bad as you'd notice if you were not looking for it-- and clearly I was.

I did have a hard time watching the transitional bits going into the fourth quarter, where the elephant in the room no one wanted to mention by name is fact that you cannot make a profit manufacturing clothes unless your workers are making, and eating, dirt. This was also the point where the filmmakers seemed to assume their audience would either appreciate the snarky contrast in the sweatshop conditions under which the clothes of celebrity-whore designers are produced, or else simply not care. I am probably reading that wrong, but I did get kind of a squirmy feeling at that point. In the end, they did seem to be awfully on the side of the textile set: pay for your clothes, people! Screw Wal-Mart!

So do I recommend it? Hard to say. I started out wearing my black Gotham Girls Roller Derby tee shirt, which no doubt helped jump start my New York nostalgia, but I do think that the sausage monster was more than satisfactory, just short of illuminating, in fact. Saranac Lager was probably the perfect match for it too. The HBO joint is probably not much you don't already know if you know anything about the history and current state of the designer textile industry-- or if you have any affinity for New York immigrant clans, for that matter. And there were some bitchin' streetscape shots too. Which might not matter. I mean, if, say, you grew up there. Or if you're an idiot.