Guissepe’s, an Italian Restaurant in Johnsonville, NY: A Review

Travel. Food. They go together like, well, like Ike & Mike sitting on, or at least near, the Steps of San Marco munching on cannolis. One does not diet on holiday.

Alas, I am not in Venice. But I hear that even those living in Venice may not wish to be in Venice, so perhaps the company I keep is well and just enough.

Still, I miss the Italianate presence of the bridges and the cafes and the churches with their adornments and statues and paintings. And the boatmen singing their mournful Venetian show tunes.

I decide to get into my very own gondola and row--there being no suitable gondolier about willing to navigate for me--to the nearest Italianate eatery, a ristorante owned and operated by a first generation Italian family worthy of the Doge’s kitchen itself.

It was not far, merely a push off into the canal seated beside our upstate New York home and into the general waterways. Several paddles later we--companion having an affinity to Italian penne rustica managed to enter a local regatta with a spirited gondolier and thus arrived in advance of my own skiff--as I say, we tied up our boats at the lagoon’s dock and heaved our heft onto the waterside bar & grill. Though we might as well have been tourists for all they knew, the locals greeted us with Ciao bella and so forth.

Yet, no room at the inn, all the stools were occupied at the bar, which I should note was curved with an ogee rim (quite nicely done, I pondered). But, like Jesu in the City of David a spot opened up for companion and I, and after a wink and nod toward the barmaid, we chose our aperitifs and appetizers.

There needs be said some few words concerning the Italian method of receiving guests. I don’t speak of greeting, of the reception, which is all well and good and gracious for all that. I speak of a kind of familiarity, as if the guest is not a guest but a family member long lost to the vagaries of time and place, a cousin back from the wars, a brother if not in blood then in life...the gusto della vita quotidiana! As such we received the welcome of cousins (cugini) and padri, nephews (nipoti) and mamacitas.

We drank the wine--what else were we to do with it? Bathe? Perhaps later. It was a spacious if slightly too chirpy chianti that served us admirably--I will note that its little straw basket seemed more than a bit of a fiasco (a pun I could not resist--the barmaid gave me a wink at least, for fiasco is Italian for “bottle”). The notes were melodic, and contrapuntal rhythms rhymed with the canal’s lapping against the marble foundation: I thought of the Palazzo Grassi.

Two signorinas sat beside companion and affirmed that we should attempt the Ali di pollo (chicken wings), and so, unable to dissent, we shouted into the kitchen--la cucina-- “Abbiamo bisogno di così ali per volare alle donne! (Loosely translated as “Get us some wings for to fly to the women!”)

As we drank our vino the escenario rose and sank to our eyes, the waters of the quasi-Venetian canals that wound their way about the place casting a spell--and even it smelling of tomato and oregano--a lustrous but mirage-y aspect to the entire surroundings. All seemed untethered as even the skiff upon which we sat--and drank--became unmoored.

We were adrift, both in body and mind. Were we to receive a vision as Dante received, which some aver was purchased after a plate of too-far-gone gabagool (capicola), the heavens opening up to allow us entrance?

The barmaid, introduced as Michelle, came undone only to re-doubled herself as a Madonna clone. Was this Raphael’s Madonna with a Book? (Was this a menu, or the Bible of Venetian culinary lore?) Were we to answer her query? What were we to speak to this paragon of virtue? I could not. I was as speechless as the deeper denizens of the waters beneath us, who also, I note, gazed upwards towards her in adoration.

But companion had no qualms. He ope’d his mouth as if to merely order chicken parm, but instead the spirit of Casanova, perhaps the most Venetian of Venetians, overtook him and he began to sing songs of such fervor that the fish themselves began to jump aboard his little boat. (He requested them fried with garlic and lemon.)

O Solo Mio, indeed. The Madonna wept, the cooks--cuochi--ran to the bar (well, a mixture of swimming and running was involved) their hands clasped to their lips, slack-jawed as they were, and his companion--myself--joined in with the bass notes suitable for the harmony of a 16th century polyphonic chant during the measure of exorbitant display by the tenor section of Te Deum exhibited by certain Gregorian choirs in 16th century Italy...or so I imagine.

But then we were interrupted by the chicken wings. O was there a crispier tang upon a bird’s flesh? Neanche per sogno! (No way!) These wings seemed not of aviary origen, but that of heaven, full of angels ascending like chickens which now remembering the flight of ancestors catch sight of the celestial firmaments and reach the Gate of St Peter as easily as Casanova woos the waitstaff.

And speaking of Casanova.

With the vino well dispersed by the chicken flesh companion had had to cease his oratorio, which allowed the Madonna to run off to pursue the other clientele, performing no doubt the tasks which Madonnas are oft commissioned: the drawing of beer, the tallying of bills, and the slapping of faces when off-putting comments are proffered.

The night was winding down. The waters even seemed receding. Televisions appeared before us...televisions? In Venice? It seems that the tourism industry has taken a toll on our Guiseppe’s, which the vino had hidden from our eyes. The Madonna now could no longer be seen. Companion forgot the lyrics. The fish swam to depths unrecorded.

It was time to go home. Or would have been had we found our oars. Ah, bless us, we had lost them to the sea’s behest. But no fear, for before us we had dozens of our little bony carcasses which did not only seem to be as large as a gondolier’s rèmo (oar) but was in fact larger and fit quite nicely into the forcola (oar lock). We were as fit as a fiddle played by Venice’s native son Vivaldi.  

Yet, after the bill was paid, after the salutes made, bows to curtsies, our Madonna reappeared as she seemed to wish us well on our way and say her good-byes. Companion’s glass rose--nearly empty though it was-- “Cin Cin” he blubbered, evoking the traditional Italian toast. I am quite certain that Madonna teared up. I also endeavored to rise, not an easy task as I was of course straddling the oar (now a chicken wing) and hadn’t recovered my sea legs. My mind reeled, and I attempted to grasp hold of some concept, some phrase, that might conjure up the night’s savory aroma of oregano and crispy chicken flesh. I thought of the Doge. I thought of the Steps of San Marco, the canals, the water lapping against the ancient marble. The paintings by Raphael, the brilliance of the Renaissance. The Madonnas. How to compass it all within the reach of a few words? I wished to sing, I wished to shout out--in Italian--the admiration I had for the place, for its food, for its people, for the language, a language of love, amore and friendship.

I made a motion with my oar, in order to move closer to the maiden. I kissed the air of her left cheek and then the right, moving my right hand around her waist as pasta winds its way around a fork. Ciao, bella, I said, though it may not have come off quite as I like (companion later said I had a bit of chicken between my teeth). But with a flourish I made off, quite skillfully considering the chicken leg oar, in my skiff.

Turning our heads back, we both of us sighed a Venetian sigh, emotional but eloquent, and exclaimed in our best vernacular, King to all!

'O sole mio

Sta 'nfronte a te!

'O sole, 'o sole mio

Sta 'nfronte a te!

Sta 'nfronte a te!

J. K. Rowling Manifesto

I have never posted--actually, re-posted--writings of others but why not? I've come across a piece by J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, and I want to showcase it. Although she speaks of an election in the UK many years ago, the sentiments still are appropriate to the US, especially in the dawn of the Trump neo-fascist era. So...

From The Times Online, J.K. Rowling writes:

I’ve never voted Tory before, but . . .” Those much parodied posters, with their photogenic subjects and their trite captions, remind me irresistibly of glossy greetings cards. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more general elections have in common with the birthdays of middle life. Both entail a lot of largely unwelcome fuss; both offer unrivalled opportunities for congratulation and spite, and you have seen so many go by that a lot of the excitement has worn off.

Nevertheless, they become more meaningful, more serious. Behind all the bombast and balloons there is the melancholy awareness of more time gone, the tally of ambitions achieved and of opportunities missed.

So here we are again, taking stock of where we are, and of where we would like to be, both as individuals and as a country. Personally, I keep having flashbacks to 1997, and not merely because of the most memorable election result in recent times. In January that year, I was a single parent with a four-year-old daughter, teaching part-time but living mainly on benefits, in a rented flat. Eleven months later, I was a published author who had secured a lucrative publishing deal in the US, and bought my first ever property: a three-bedroom house with a garden.

I had become a single mother when my first marriage split up in 1993. In one devastating stroke, I became a hate figure to a certain section of the press, and a bogeyman to the Tory Government. Peter Lilley, then Secretary of State at the DSS, had recently entertained the Conservative Party conference with a spoof Gilbert and Sullivan number, in which he decried “young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list”. The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.) Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown, and in it for all we could get: free money, state-funded accommodation, an easy life.

An easy life. Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy — even immoral — did not help.

The new Labour landslide marked a cessation in government hostilities towards families like mine. The change in tone was very welcome, but substance is, of course, more important than style. Labour had great ambitions for eradicating child poverty and while it succeeded, initially, in reversing the downward trend that had continued uninterrupted under Tory rule, it has not reached its own targets. There remains much more to be done.

This is not to say that there have not been real innovations to help lone-parent families. First, childcare tax credits were introduced by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor, which were a meaningful way of addressing the fact that the single biggest obstacle for lone parents returning to work was not innate slothfulness but the near-impossibility of affording adequate childcare.

Then came Sure Start centres, of which there are now more than 3,000 across the UK: service centres where families with children under 5 can receive integrated service and information. Unless you have previously grappled with the separate agencies involved in housing, education and childcare, you might not be able to appreciate what a great innovation these centres are. They link to Jobcentres, offering help to secure employment, and give advice on parenting, childcare, education, specialist services and even health. A National Audit Office memorandum published last January found that the overall effectiveness of 98 per cent of the childcare offered was judged to be “good or outstanding”.

So here we are, in 2010, with what promises to be another memorable election in the offing. Gingerbread (now amalgamated with the National Council for One Parent Families), keen to forestall the mud-slinging of the early Nineties, recently urged Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg to sign up to a campaign called Let’s Lose the Labels, which aims to fight negative stereotyping of lone parents. Here are just a few of the facts that sometimes get lost on the way to an easy story, or a glib stump speech: only 13 per cent of single parents are under 25 years old, the average age being 36. Fifty-two per cent live below the breadline and 26 per cent in “non-decent” housing. Single-parent families are more likely than couple families to have a member with a disability, which gives some idea of the strains that cause family break up. In spite of all the obstacles, 56.3 per cent of lone parents are in paid employment.

As there are 1.9 million single-parent votes up for grabs, it ought not to surprise anyone that all three leaders of the main political parties agreed to sign up to Gingerbread’s campaign. For David Cameron, however, this surely involves a difficult straddling act.

Yesterday’s Conservative manifesto makes it clear that the Tories aim for less governmental support for the needy, and more input from the “third sector”: charity. It also reiterates the flagship policy so proudly defended by David Cameron last weekend, that of “sticking up for marriage”. To this end, they promise a half-a-billion pound tax break for lower-income married couples, working out at £150 per annum.

I accept that my friends and I might be atypical. Maybe you know people who would legally bind themselves to another human being, for life, for an extra £150 a year? Perhaps you were contemplating leaving a loveless or abusive marriage, but underwent a change of heart on hearing about a possible £150 tax break? Anything is possible; but somehow, I doubt it. Even Mr Cameron seems to admit that he is offering nothing more than a token gesture when he tells us “it’s not the money, it’s the message”.

Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say “it’s not the money, it’s the message”. When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is “get married, and we’ll give you £150”, he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation.

How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life’s necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message — would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?

Suggestions that Mr Cameron seems oblivious to how poor people actually live, think and behave seem to provoke accusations of class warfare. Let me therefore state, for the record, that I do not think it any more his fault that he spent his adolescence in the white tie and tails of Eton than that I spent the almost identical period in the ghastly brown-and-yellow stylings of Wyedean Comprehensive. I simply want to know that aspiring prime ministers have taken the trouble to educate themselves about the lives of all kinds of Britons, not only the sort that send messages with banknotes.

But wait, some will say. Given that you have long since left single parenthood for marriage and a nuclear family; given that you are now so far from a life dependent on benefits that Private Eye habitually refers to you as Rowlinginnit, why do you care? Surely, nowadays, you are a natural Tory voter?

No, I’m afraid not. The 2010 election campaign, more than any other, has underscored the continuing gulf between Tory values and my own. It is not only that the renewed marginalisation of the single, the divorced and the widowed brings back very bad memories. There has also been the revelation, after ten years of prevarication on the subject, that Lord Ashcroft, deputy chairman of the Conservatives, is non-domiciled for tax purposes.

Now, I never, ever, expected to find myself in a position where I could understand, from personal experience, the choices and temptations open to a man as rich as Lord Ashcroft. The fact remains that the first time I ever met my recently retired accountant, he put it to me point-blank: would I organise my money around my life, or my life around my money? If the latter, it was time to relocate to Ireland, Monaco, or possibly Belize.

I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.

Child poverty remains a shameful problem in this country, but it will never be solved by throwing millions of pounds of tax breaks at couples who have no children at all. David Cameron tells us that the Conservatives have changed, that they are no longer the “nasty party”, that he wants the UK to be “one of the most family-friendly nations in Europe”, but I, for one, am not buying it. He has repackaged a policy that made desperate lives worse when his party was last in power, and is trying to sell it as something new. I’ve never voted Tory before ... and they keep on reminding me why.

Travel. Food. They go together like, well, like Ike & Mike sitting on, or at least near, the Steps of San Marco munching on cannolis. One does not diet on holiday.

Alas, I am not in Venice. But I hear that even those living in Venice may not wish to be in Venice, so perhaps the company I keep is well and just enough.

Still, I miss the Italianate presence of the bridges and the cafes and the churches with their adornments and statues and paintings. And the boatmen singing their mournful Venetian show tunes.

I decide to get into my very own gondola and row--there being no suitable gondolier about willing to navigate for me--to the nearest Italianate eatery, a ristorante owned and operated by a first generation Italian family worthy of the Doge’s kitchen itself.

It was not far, merely a push off into the canal seated beside our upstate New York home and into the general waterways. Several paddles later we--companion having an affinity to Italian penne rustica managed to enter a local regatta with a spirited gondolier and thus arrived in advance of my own skiff--tied up our boats at the lagoon’s dock and heaved our heft onto the waterside bar & grill. Though we might as well have been tourists for all they knew, the locals greeted us with Ciao bella and so forth.

Yet, no room at the inn, all the stools standing occupied at the bar, which I should note was curved with an ogee rim (quite nicely done, I pondered). But, like Jesu in the City of David a spot opened up for companion and I, and after a wink and nod toward the barmaid we chose our aperitifs and appetizers.

There needs be said some few words concerning the Italian method of receiving guests. I don’t speak of greeting, of the reception, which is all well and good and gracious for all that. I speak of a kind of familiarity, as if the guest is not a guest but a family member long lost to the vagaries of time and place, a cousin back from the wars, a brother if not in blood then in life...the gusto della vita quotidiana! As such we received the welcome of cousins (cugini) and padri, nephews (nipoti) and mamacitas.

We drank the wine--what else were we to do with it? Bathe? Perhaps later. It was a spacious if slightly too chirpy chianti that served us admirably--I will note that its little straw basket seemed more than a bit of a fiasco (a pun I could not resist--the barmaid gave me a wink at least, for fiasco is Italian for “bottle”). The notes were melodic, and contrapuntal rhythms rhymed with the canal’s lapping against the marble foundation: I thought of the Palazzo Grassi.

Two signorinas sat beside companion and affirmed that we should attempt the Ali di pollo (chicken wings), and so, unable to dissent, we shouted into the kitchen--la cucina-- “Abbiamo bisogno di così ali per volare alle donne! (Loosely translated as “Get us some wings for to fly to the women!”)

As we drank our vino the escenario rose and sank to our eyes, the waters of the quasi-Venetian canals that wound their way about the place casting a spell--and even it smelling of tomato and oregano--a lustrous but mirage-y aspect to the entire surroundings. All seemed untethered as even the skiff upon which we sat--and drank--became unmoored.

We were adrift, both in body and mind. Were we to receive a vision as Dante received, which some aver was purchased after a plate of too-far-gone ossobuco, the heavens opening up to allow us entrance?

The barmaid, introduced as Michelle, came undone only to re-doubled herself as a Madonna clone. Was this Raphael’s Madonna with a Book? (Was this a menu, or the Bible of Venetian culinary lore?) Were we to answer her query? What were we to speak to this paragon of virtue? I could not. I was as speechless as the deeper denizens of the waters beneath us, who also, I note, gazed upwards towards her in adoration.

But companion had no qualms. He ope’d his mouth as if to merely order chicken parm, but instead the spirit of Casanova, perhaps the most Venetian of Venetians, overtook him and he began to sing songs of such fervor that the fish themselves began to jump aboard his little boat. (He requested them fried with garlic and lemon.)

O Solo Mio, indeed. The Madonna wept, the cooks--cuochi--ran to the bar (well, a mixture of swimming and running was involved) their hands clasped to their lips, slack-jawed as they were, and his companion--myself--joined in with the bass notes suitable for the harmony of a 16th century polyphonic chant during the measure of exorbitant display by the tenor section of Te Deum exhibited by certain Gregorian choirs in 16th century Italy...or so I imagine.

But then we were interrupted by the chicken wings. O was there a crispier tang upon a bird’s flesh? Neanche per sogno! (No way!) These wings seemed not of aviary origen, but that of heaven, full of angels ascending like chickens which now remembering the flight of ancestors catch sight of the celestial firmaments and reach the Gate of St Peter as easily as Casanova woos the waitstaff.

And speaking of Casanova.

With the vino well dispersed by the chicken flesh companion had had to cease his oratorio, which allowed the Madonna to run off to pursue the other clientele, performing no doubt the tasks which Madonnas are oft commissioned: the drawing of beer, the tallying of bills, and the slapping of faces when off-putting comments are proffered.

The night was winding down. The waters even seemed receding. Televisions appeared before us...televisions? In Venice? It seems that the tourism industry has taken a toll on our Guiseppe’s, which the vino had hidden from our eyes. The Madonna now could no longer be seen. Companion forgot the lyrics. The fish swam to depths unrecorded.

It was time to go home. Or would have been had we found our oars. Ah, bless us, we had lost them to the sea’s behest. But no fear, for before us we had dozens of our little bony carcasses which did not only seem to be as large as a gondolier’s rèmo (oar) but was in fact larger and fit quite nicely into the forcola (oar lock). We were as fit as a fiddle played by Venice’s native son Vivaldi.  

Yet, after the bill was paid, after the salutes made, bows to curtsies, our Madonna reappeared as she seemed to wish us well on our way and say her good-byes. Companion’s glass rose--nearly empty though it was-- “Cin Cin” he blubbered, evoking the traditional Italian toast. I am quite certain that Madonna teared up. I also endeavored to rise, not an easy task as I was of course straddling the oar (now a chicken wing) and hadn’t recovered my sea legs. My mind reeled, and I attempted to grasp hold of some concept, some phrase, that might conjure up the night’s savory aroma of oregano and crispy chicken flesh. I thought of the Doge. I thought of the Steps of San Marco, the canals, the water lapping against the ancient marble. The paintings by Raphael, the brilliance of the Renaissance. The Madonnas. How to compass it all within the reach of a few words? I wished to sing, I wished to shout out--in Italian--the admiration I had for the place, for its food, for its people, for the language, a language of love, amore and friendship.

I made a motion with my oar, in order to move closer to the maiden. I kissed the air of her left cheek and then the right, moving my right hand around her waist as pasta winds its way around a fork. Ciao, bella, I said, though it may not have come off quite as I like (companion later said I had a bit of chicken between my teeth). But with a flourish I made off, quite skillfully, in my skiff.

Turning our heads back, we both of us sighed a Venetian sigh, emotional but eloquent, and exclaimed in our best vernacular, King to all!

'O sole mio

Sta 'nfronte a te!

'O sole, 'o sole mio

Sta 'nfronte a te!

Sta 'nfronte a te!

A Gourmand’s Delight--Pangaea in North Bennington, VT

A chance comment from an acquaintance led me to happen upon Pangaea's in North Bennington. I had mentioned our quest to find the best local burger establishment and he asked if I had tried Pangaea. I told him that I didn't associate this very fine dining restaurant with a burger joint, but he explained that there is a lounge area that is quietly becoming known for its burgers. So, why not? Well, it is as close to a gourmet's delight as one may find in this quarter of the world, as the total on our burger assessment chart attests. Pangaea sky-rockets to number one with a score of 114 out of a possible 120, knocking The Bog into second place by half a french fry.

Pangaea
Juiciness	10
Size Matters	9
Sides	10
Price	8
Char-ability	9
Meat Type	10
Hand-ability	10
As Ordered	9
Server Issues	10
Taste	10
Ambiance	10
Parking Lot	9
	114

A city can be schizophrenic, a drunken walk down the middle of a street at night, lamp lights blazing a hazy way home after a tipsy sample here and there. You try to maintain the dignity of a middle route, but try as you might, you clumsily wobble your way this way, leaning to leeward but then overcompensate and careening to windward. What I mean to illustrate, is that a city is one way toward the hill, the encampment of the doers and shakers, the makers and mighty king-makers and another way down the path to the hovels of the lower casts, the poverty stricken and the bean-pickers. The have’s; and the have nots, to say it in fewer words.

Yet a town, a small town--really, only a village--can magnify this schizophrenia, and where the city’s ailment is expected and some even might say enjoyably quaint, the village experience can leave one perplexed, and stunned to the point of stupefaction. And yet, this need not be an unpleasant experience.

Thus was the visit to North Bennington, VT, home of Bennington College, famed for its independent, liberal streak, its writerly and artistically inclined folk--Shirley Jackson comes to mind--but is also as down-home Vermont as one might imagine. The folks there are plain folk, honest as people sometimes are, hard-working and home-spun. The contrast is unmistakeable, palpable.

On a burger quest we had not factored in this schizophrenia; burgers, we thought, were found in the wild, in the bush, so to speak. We had not imagined a gourmet’s delight, a heaven’s fount of burgers, made of angel wings, with halos as buns, soft as clouds, where a waitress is more maitre'd or wine steward (except with ground beef).

Yet. We stood facing Pangaea, which really ended up being twin receptacles of a union of opposing qualities: the right side contained a more embellished--garnished, one might say--restaurant than one usually finds in a small Vermont town; while the left side looked suspiciously like a, well, bar, though it was noted above the door that it was instead a “lounge.”

We slid our business cards under the door and awaited some announcement. None was forthwith. My companion rapped thricely, and anon we made our appearance within the threshold. The lighting was dimmed and a pleasant young woman greeted us with a smile and said something which neither companion nor I could quite manage to decipher. Seeing our perplexed expressions, this young lady repeated herself and then I finally understood that she had spoken to us in French! “Ah, mais oui!” I said, reverting back to my youthful days during the Provence summers--it seems it is just like riding a bike.

We followed her to a table by the windows where we could observe the comings and goings of the quaint townsfolk that might appear--though they didn’t. Still. She expeditiously produced the menus -- we informed her of our quest for burgers and that a menu for our purposes was pointless -- and ‘she introduced herself as Julie. This was pronounced Jool-ee.  Companion--as he later informed me--felt Julie’s expression changed noticeably on the mention of a “burger.” I personally did not notice this. Still, she led us to believe that the hamburgers --she nearly choked on the word-- would be better described as  “la viande de vache hachée.” OK, we said. That’ll work.

Julie gave us a moment to reconsider our food choice, and suggested we begin with drinks. “Two beers,” we uttered, apparently in a tone fit for farm life and menial labor, for we noticed that our waitress was at the same time exasperated and startled by our taste for common brewskies. “But,” she mewed, “of what vintage, of what…” Here she seemed to struggle with the common tongue, as English seemed not her native language. “Ah,” she continued, “terroir! Of what ees zee necessary terroir?”

“Terwhat?” Companion was perplexed. “Just give us whatever you think best,” he said, finally realizing that this was the road less likely to cause major mishaps along the way to culinary absolution. She seemed quite pleased with the solution, nodding in our general direction as if to complement our good sense.

A moment later she appeared along with two pilsner glasses, one accompanied by a bottle of Altesino Brunello di Montalcino Montosoli di Hoppi, 2007. The other, setting it down before companion, she informed us was a singularly de-hoppified 2015 Budweiser. She mentioned that Companion did not appear to be the type to enjoy a finely crafted brew. And of course, she was correct.

Now, although Julie seemed immensely well-informed on all matters gastronomic, we stuck to our guns and ordered two plates of burgers and fries. “But,” she begged to inform us, “we do not have just burgers. We have... selections. You must...select.”  

The menu contained what appeared to be hamburgers but as we did not have a working knowledge of French, we were at a loss. Pointing at random, we made our selection, hoping the hamburger gods rained fortune down upon us. As Julie smiled, we thought ourselves quite the gourmands, and pretended to an expertise and familiarity that, truthfully, was quite beyond us.

After some minutes of scintillating conversation concerning the respective bowel habits of deer and bear (Companion has been known to partake of hunting trips up north), our waitress reappeared, presenting two plates of the most mouth-watering examples of beef--sorry, boeuf-- I have ever sampled. It was shown to us as if to kings sitting on thrones among a parley of nations. The meat, cooked to perfection, glistened dew-like, lightly salted, sitting on a garden bed of onion and lettuce with mushrooms flowing in a sauce of...oh, of some chef’s secret divising.

It tasted as if the French language could be lassoed and penned, then ground to a pulpy deliciousness, and mingled with an ancient vintage of Bordeaux aged in charred oak barrels. The burger--Julie coached us--should be sniffed first, allowing the aroma of the organic grasses which the cow had previously fed upon, to waft its way into our gullets. Then, satisfied with the smells of Provence and the Languedoc lingering upon the palate, we were instructed to bite a small bit of the burger shifting it from one side to the other, thus coating the palate with what Julie noted should be "Un repas de la gastronomique bonné et de la finalité!”

“Sure is!” we said. “Magnifique,” Companion chirped in.

“Now,” she fairly shouted, “spit it out!”

Not accustomed to spitting out our food, especially such delicious burgers such as we currently had within our very grasp, but not wanting to disappoint our waitress/drill sergeant, we did as we were told.

She said that all trained eaters --those in the know, the au courant, those apprized and educated as to what it means to...eat-- knew enough to sample the taste of something well-prepared, as one samples a work of art with the eyes, or a piece of music with the ears. “One does not insert a Picasso into one’s stomach,” she said.

“Certainly not!”I said. “Certainly not,” said Companion.

We took another small bite, moaned a bit, and spit it out onto our plates. Satisfied with her charges, she made a quick exit as other patrons were beginning to file into the restaurant.

As we were left to our own devices, we then made a mad dash to eat, and to our heart’s content. With every new bite, we became ever more enraptured, ever more passionate with our boeuf, our frites--which I must say were as croustillant mais aussi doux que le bas du dos de la femme.

What did that mean? I have no idea. I cannot say but only that Companion and myself became enraptured with French with every new bite of boeuf and frites so that by the end of our repast we were speaking in a language that, if Hugo or Flaubert were seated with us, they would have been perfectly at ease.

“La viande est particulièrement bien choisi, je pense, pas vous? Oh, oui, mais si les frites étaient moins parfait, il aurait tout gâché. Pourtant, nous ne devons pas nous inquiéter. La perfection est notre allocation.”

Ah oui. Notre nuit a duré aussi longtemps que la nuit doit. Mais maintenant, nous devons aller. La lune est pleine, l'estomac tellement. Bonne nuit, et toi, juste bien.

Julie, nous vous remercions. Nos vies notre plein-remplis maintenant!

Ah oui.

Ah oui!

Kevin's and The Lottery in North Bennington, VT

Our first selection on our hamburger quest was Kevin's in North Bennington. The astute reader will puzzle him/herself regarding the lateness of our review, but it is due merely to the dull acumen of this author, who found himself pondering inexplicably on how precisely to frame the critique so as to best prepare new patrons of that establishment for what we found to be a superior dining experience (regarding hamburgers only, it needs to be noted, as we did not sample other delicacies, such as the odd fritatta or burrito--very odd indeed since Kevin's does not serve Mexican dishes to my knowledge, anyway).

After visiting Kevin's, we thought our quest a very short one, indeed. Kevin's, as I have noted before, was our first stop and we thought it so superior, of such high quality, that we questioned whether we could ever find another tavern to surpass it. (The loyal follower of this blog will have noted by now that we did indeed find another eatery that even surpassed Kevin's.)

Appended below, you will find our ratings. Kevin's achieved a very respectable 104.5 score, with both our burgers showing a high-caliber juiciness, taste and size (we gave Kevin's a nine on the size meter--it would have achieved a perfect ten but since this was our first stop on the quest we thought it best to give some room for a perfectibility that we in fact never saw surpassed). This reviewer has remarked that Kevin's locale is the same as in the famous short story by Shirley Jackson (who lived in North Bennington), The Lottery, which he assumes the reader is familiar with. Hopes, at any rate. The full story is found below the ratings queue below.

Juiciness		10
Size Matters		9
Sides		9
Price		9
Char-ability		8
Meat Type		8
Hand-ability		9
As Ordered*		10
Server Issues		9
Taste		9.5
Ambiance**		8
Parking Lot***		6
		104.5

The Lottery @Kevin’s in No. Bennington, VT

The evening of April 27th was clear and moonlit, with the fresh coolness of a full-spring day; the flowers

were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. That is, they would be if it were but a month from now. Today’s blooms were still dozing in this half-frozen Vermont landscape. The villagers had been gathering for some time now around the village square, large piles of what appeared to be stones had been built up into little mountains by the boys nearby Kevins, a small pub and restaurant right on the main street.

Companion and I had set out for this establishment on hearing of its excellent fare and thinking we might settle for a burger and fries --as they had an excellent reputation for same-- we worked our way in through the crowd which seemed to have its epicenter on the eatery. The people seemed quite pleasant and asked if we were here especially for the lottery. “No, not at all. Just the burgers.” They laughed and let us know that some others had beaten us to it. A man, introduced to us as Old Man Warner, shook his head sadly, muttering only that things twernt what they used to be.

A few boys ran through, jostling as they went, and the bar keep, a Mr Dickie Delacroix, yelled after them to behave as better befits a sacred holiday such as it was--”and put those down!” He yelled, as the boys were seen stuffing their pockets from the corner pile.

It looked like we had a long wait, but two gentlemen--Steve Adams and Mr Graves--rose suddenly from their seats proffering to us their roosting place. “You new to town? Not for the Lottery?” Mr Graves wanted to know. Companion said that the only lottery he was after was to pick the best burger in the tri-state area. This received a smirk from Mr Adams, and a guffaw from Mr Graves, who moved on over to the mountain in the corner, which grew ever higher as we sat waiting for the table to be cleared and our order--already on our minds-- taken.

We didn’t have to wait overlong, as our waitress, a middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks, came and settled the area and began to orate on the specials for the evening. “Tut, tut,” companion let fly, “we have decided on the order; indeed we had decided weeks ago!” And with that we summarized our plan for discovering the greatest example of a burger anywhere (within the tri-state area, that is) . “Well, if my name ain’t Tessie Hutchinson! Hey, Dickie! These gents are here to review your burgers!”

After that we were transformed into minor celebrities. Numerous folk rose to greet us and shake our hands. Mr Summers, Bobby Martin, and Henry Jones, and his brother Bobby, all came up and made us feel quite at home. “Here for the Lottery?” they all seemed to want to know. “ “Just the burgers,” companion let on. And another laugh. Old Man Warner, who appeared to be as old as the ramshackle black antique box sitting on the bar, again could be heard to mutter, “Pack of crazy fools--I hear up north they be thinking of giving up the lottery. Ain’t what it used to be, sure to tell.”

Kevin’s was a small establishment, divided into a pub on the north side and an eatery on the south. We had seated ourselves in the area of liquid refreshments as they had several closely arranged tables there for pub fare. All total, restaurant, pub and kitchen, were not as long as a stone’s throw from end to end.

But as companion and myself have often found out, closeness within an eating house often brings surprisingly positive results in terms of flavorful concoctions as well as seasoned friendships. Here we had been bombarded with handshakes and hello’s and how-are-you’s. The place was a welcoming one, and the people seemed a  gregarious and affectionate sort.

Tessie soon brought out our burgers, large whelps of meat, heaped high as boulders! And lying next to them heaved a bed of fries that seemed more numerous than the gravel on the drive outside. Companion and I reached for the catsup at the same time and as we did so simultaneously squirted such a fountain of tomato-y goodness that it splattered all over and down our plates to the fries below. Ah, goodness!

The burger fit the reputation of the place, a rock-solid emblem of flavorful character that mirrored the villagers in their own standing in the town as men and women ranking high in station, honor, and rectitude.

After we smoothed down our hair and faces, now a bit tussled with burger-juice and catsup, looking as if we had been in a fight from dawn to dusk, we finished our meal in near silence, enjoying every bite, hardly pausing to comment on its savory goodness. And just as Tessie had delivered to us our bill, Mr Summers, in front of the bar, raised himself high on a three-legged stool and picking up the old black box, paused to show it to everyone’s satisfaction.

“Now, you know what this day means. Guess we better get started, get this over with, so's we can go

back to work. Anybody ain't here?" No one said anything, so he began the process, pulling slips--they appeared to be duplicate bills of fare from the day’s business--and read the names off methodically, one by one.

"Allen." Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."

He moved on through the alphabet until he came to the middle, as he paused rather dramatically. He turned the slip over showing a dark grease spot. “I can’t read this name,” he shouted. Tessie came over and read it to him, then turning in our direction, she then whispered into his ear.

Mr Summers stepped down off the stool and walked over to our table. “What is your name, sir?” he inquired, rather ceremoniously I thought for we had been introduced not long before. “All right, fellows.” Then he again lifted the bill high over everyone’s heads in order for them to better inspect the ticket.

“Who’s got it? Who is it?” we could hear people whispering throughout the crowd. “Is it Tessie? Did Bobby Martin get it?”

“All right, folks,” Mr Summers said. “Let’s finish quickly. Night’s almost here.”

The villagers made for the pile that had grown so high in the corner. After a bit, companion and I were in the center of a circle of townsfolk holding those stone-like objects. If we hadn’t been weighed down by the recent meal we might have high-tailed it out of there for such was the look of terror on the faces of those surrounding us.

But what we had taken as terror was in fact a look of some grudging resentment toward us, for we had apparently stumbled on a windfall of an entire year’s worth of burger and fries--or at least I had, for companion hadn’t paid a tuppence on the bill and so wasn’t even in the drawing. But the look of jealousy quickly gave way to acceptance as the townsfolk gnawed on the “stones” (which were in fact chocolate chip cookies as tender and moist as any I have ever sampled--do I need to openly declare the thoughts that had recently run through my brain?) with a wave of delicious satisfaction coming over each and every one of them--myself included as I raced to pocket a dozen or more.

You could have knocked me down with a feather.

Foggy Notion, or The Life and Notable Adventure of our Knight-errant in New York.

[Foggy Notions, otherwise known as The Bog, has become our current leader on the burger meter, scoring an impressive 112 points (out of a possible 120). Leading the way were perfect scores in Juiciness, Sides, Meat Type, Handability, As Ordered, and Taste. We were going to give it a 9 for taste, just to give room for improvability, but that seemed such a remote possibility we are going to allow for the ten. As for Sides, companion had fries which were crisp, though companion did allow for some room for even more crispiness, and my own selection of onion rings were perfection, even allowing for the possibility that there could have been a larger quantity. I suppose one could always have more of a good thing, especially with companion's constant pilfering.]

...and now for our more detailed review: readers take note that this pushes the envelope.

Foggy Notion, or The Life and Notable Adventure of our Knight-errant in New York.

In a certain corner of New York, the exact name of which I choose not to recall--but oh yes, in Cambridge, NY, a city whose stature, if it were a person, would stand less than the average height of a green grocer, not that a grocer is necessarily short in stature but certainly, at least in this authors experience, less than that of a tavern owner--there came one evening, for the sun had dipped below the horizon some minutes before, a man of some ingenuity, if by ingenuity one means distracted to the point of lunacy.

It was this man that accompanied me--truly he bade me follow as a squire follows his knight, fully laboring under the weight of spare armor and carrying the saddlebags of sustenance that are necessary on trips far and wide, which knights are generally supposed to perform.

It was after many years of acquaintance with this personage, a man I would dub tranquil and sedate at most times (troublesome at his worst but that was seldom) and a man of some entertainment, not to be undervalued in that quarter, that I became most accustomed to his sometime variant tactics, for he would at times jump up off his seat to further some adventure. This normally would be an imagined jousting or swordplay; often it would be merely acting as governor of some island kingdom. And so, when he took me under his wing on this particular evening, it was not so unusual that I was led to believe that anything untoward would effect itself.

Now in this particular corner of the world there are sometimes occasion to fortify oneself in any of several inns that pockmark these tracts of lands, farmlands mostly, though a stone’s throw from any place you might find yourself standing will hit the broadside of some enterprising sort. Such is the picture of this occupied territory, energetic...yet not overly so.

My friend, after a days labor which left him huffing and puffing so that I thought he might have been taken hold of the consumption--or at least a very common cold--and after I had harangued for quite a long time concerning the unavailability of such foodstuffs that might be called sustaining and fortifying, I say my friend agreed that he too was in such a state of hunger that he might faint dead away if there were not found some ready nourishment at hand.

Just as my friend made use of these words, garbled though they were by much weakness occasioned by his famished state, he and I heard the cry of a thousand giants, or at least that was the thought which occurred within my friend’s addled brain. I do allow that the sound was quite deafening, a full-mouthed roar that Jove himself may have unleashed upon some poor shepherd in an Athenian meadow. But turning my head I spied what indeed was only just nearby, twelve or so bikers wearing skullcaps and black leather suits, and loudly accelerating their motors so that if it had thundered directly above our heads we would not have been made aware of it.

Still, fortune smiled upon us, for the bikes had been driven into the lot of a nearby inn, of the name Foggy Notions. At least to me it seemed an inn, a place of burgers and fries and ale, since within the windows I could see the lights advertising such fare.

Alas, to my friend’s addled mind the establishment was seen as a castle, and the bikers were but knights charging within. He made some mention of siege warfare and waiting thirty days or so till the castle surrenders itself, but as I made plain to him, we did not have one day to wait, much less thirty.

He agreed to charge the castle and take it, making use of my own strong right arm, of course, as well as his; and any and all within would soon be his prisoner. I averred that there still might be found a burger within, if we hurried.

And hurry we did. At the entrance, we were greeted by a maid (my friend thought her a maid, though I tended to the opinion that she was more likely someone’s grandmother) who thankfully did not seem to pay any attention to my friend’s protestations and accusations. When he stated--and quite forthrightly so I must say--that any and all within this castle (for such he still believed despite the barman’s presence and the families taking their leave of dinner, and the several televisions showing what must have been the latest Yankees vs Red Sox encounter), that any and all would be his very own vassals, she merely nodded, saying to him, “I’m thinkin’ I’ll have some of what he just had.”

Though I expected my friend to be joyous at his apparent victory, and the taking of a castle with nary a bruise or scratch, much less the severing of one’s more delicate parts which anyone will tell you is quite possible when attacking castles, is quite a good and fortunate thing. But though Lady Fortune seemed to smile brightly on my friend, he took a deep long sigh and seemed as doleful a knight as any that anyone might have imagined at that particular instant.

“I know what will cheer you up,” I said. “A burger and fries!”

“And ale?”

“And ale as well, of course!”

And our maid, or grandmother, as the case may be, soon brought our order to us, and not a moment too soon, as the Knight of the Doleful Countenance (as so I re-named him) was just about to attack the television set which he mistook for the one eye’d relative of Cyclops.

The burger seemed a potion of the order of the Balsam of Fierbras, which my knight friend explained could cure a man even after being cut in half on the battlefield, as long as the nurse was of sufficient beauty and continually said the Pater Noster while performing her necessary duties as nurse and surgeon. For he quite perked up and I thought even began to make some sense of the place when he looked up, finished chewing his burger, and stated quite emphatically, “I say, this is the best burger I have ever eaten and if that isn’t true then I am not the bravest knight in Christendom!”

I did heartily agree, for my own burger had found its way into my stomach so fast that one might have thought chewing to be optional. And the fries were, it should be noted, quite equal to the burger: crispy and cradled in oil--not overmuch--and salted just so that it made one wish for another ale...and there! One readily appeared.

Our blessing should have ended there, with a successful battle and castle taken, and a grandmother rescued to boot, as well a meal to match, but for another bout of madness on the part of my friend, who immediately after quaffing his drink, took umbrage at some leather-cropped biker making unchivalrous comments at the baseball game, which my friend again insisted was Cyclops’ brother-in-law.

I will not make a longer story out of one that already seems an epic even not including the details of the scuffle which ensued...other than to say that there were so many punches thrown (though seldom landed) that even I in my saner moments thought that perhaps Cyclops himself had found his way to come to the aid of his long-lost family member. Tables were tossed, and the air held such a quantity of dust and debris that I thought it opportune to hightail it out of there, and dragging my friend to his feet we somehow did manage to escape. But the Knight of the Doleful Countenance could not just leave the way he had come. A knight, after storming a castle, apparently leaves with some amount of booty, at least a horse that might match his own grace and stalwartness. And that is how we found ourselves riding off, he on a black steed, whose braided mane was whipped by the wind, and myself, riding a rather pink-ish bike that must have been that of a lady friend of the gentleman our good knight had punched in the face just as we made our exit.

But no matter. We had found our adventure, as well some awfully good burgers and fries. And as my faith abounds in the security that nature’s changing course affirms constancy in shifting sands, and that knights of doleful countenance must by now represent  some ill-bade fortune indeed, I can assert that though things be high or low, reasonable or foggy,  a good burger can make a bad day much better.

Juiciness	10
Size Matters	10
Sides	8
Price	9
Char-ability	9
Meat Type	10
Hand-ability	10
As Ordered*	10
Server Issues	8
Taste	10
Ambiance**	9
Parking Lot***	9