Yesterday I tagged along with my niece and sister on a Wonka-esque tour of Cincinnati’s most amazing flavored popcorn factory. We were humming “If you Wanna View Paradise” and doing the Wonka skip-walk as we entered the door. Al’s came to Cincinnati from Columbus and are on Main Street in Over-the-Rhine, where they’ve resided a little over a year. They’re a family run business and are called Al’s Delicious Popcorn.
They offer free tours twice a day, twice a week and they’re free! You get to taste an unlimited number of their over 100 available flavors and tour the popping, flavoring and shipping areas of the most amazing confectionery factory I’ve been to. I toured the Jelly Belly Factory in California last year, and I can tell you this was a much more amazing experience!
We learned a lot about popcorn popping. Al’s uses coconut and soy oil to add the flavoring to the popped corn. A red coconut oil is used for the caramel and other sugary coatings to give a darker hue to the popped kernel. And they use two types of kernels – butterfly kernels for their savory flavors and mushroom kernels for their sweet flavors. Their primary flavor vendor is local confectionery vendor Gold Medal, whose product Signature Shakes does the majority of the flavor work, but that doesn’t take away any of the brilliance of their flavorist, who nailed the taste of Cincinnati Chili in their flavor. I’ve had some really bad attempts at the Cincinnati Chili flavor in other foods. I was also impressed with their jalapeno flavored savory pops. Jalapeno is typically a hard flavor to recreate successfully.
The funny thing is that Gold Medal was originally the Kingery Company, founded in Cincinnati in the late 1800s, which was famous nationwide for their popcorn machines and vendor carts. You could say they invented the food truck. Also, interesting is that their machinery suppled our oldest confectioner, Doscher, with the machinery to make their signature Cracker Jack like product called Grandpa’s Corn Fritters. Along with Cincy made Hauck beer, Dosher’s Grandpa’s Corn Fritters were the first baseball concessions inAmerica in 1884, feeding Redlegs fans a full decade before Cracker Jack was introduced at the Chicago Worlds Fair. We should actually be singing “Buy me some peanuts and Doscher Grandpa’s Corn Fritters…” at the 7th inning stretch, to be historically accurate.
We got to taste their new not yet released Chicken and Waffles flavor, which was amazing, along with about 20 other flavors including, Pineapple, Cotton Candy, Bubblegum, Rice Krispies, Beer Cheese, Jalapeno Cheddar, Orange Creamsicle, Pizza, Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese, Chipotle Street Corn, Bacon Cheddar, Buffalo Ranch, English Toffee, Cookies and Cream, and Mint Chocolate Chip. All of the flavors were incredible. But the flavors that use oils like Orange Creamsicle and Mint Chocolate Chip are super strong and lasting.
Their top sellers are Cheddar Cheese, White Cheddar, Vanilla Butternut, Caramel, Columbus Mix, and Windy City Classic (Cheddar and caramel corn), Buffalo Ranch and White chocolate Strawberry, and are the most readily available. They also make seasonal flavors like pumpkin and many others.
The experience is super-inspiring for kids. My niece was offering flavor suggestions to the flavorist the entire time, one of which he promises he is making for the 4th of July – Pop Rocks Bomb Pop Flavor! He promised her the first bag. My niece also suggested a good product motto for them, “While you’re shopping, we’re popping!” She definitely inherited the product marketing gene! My mother taught us all about the “Yes-and” approach to hospitality and hosting. Kids who are now adults still talk about her massive alligator cake with candy corn teeth she made for our kid’s housewarming party upon moving into our Pleasant Run neighborhood in the 1970s.
My niece also decided that at her upcoming birthday she is going to have a popcorn flavor guessing contest for her friends supplied by Al’s. We learned Al’s also does specialty packaging and curated flavors for corporate and family events like weddings, anniversaries and divorce parties.
So if you haven’t been, the next time you make a trip to Findlay Market or have an afternoon free – check them out – your taste buds will be happy you did.
The adjective ‘clotted’ to most Americans brings up arteries, high cholesterol and a bad diet. But to the English it denotes a common condiment along with fruit jam to slather liberally atop scones at an English Tea. This past weekend I tried clotted cream for the first time along with my first tea service at the BonBonerie for a Derby Day Crime Tea. It was a super fun event. And, it’s pretty crazy-cool that BonBonerie is celebrating their 40th year in biz this year, founded by partners Mary Pat Pace and Sharon Butler. They make THE best linzer cookies in town, and I’ve bought their opera cream cake for many birthday events. You can have your own English Tea with a 24 hour ahead reservation.
My Crime Junkies group attended this event and, along with our ‘yes-and’ attitude we all dressed in appropriate fascinators and top hats. I played the character of Marshall Nays, the valet of the rich philanthropist who was stabbed in the back in his bathtub. I of course, turned out to be the killer.
I’ll come out and say I’ve never been a fan of the scone. To me, it’s too dense and sandy. I’d much rather invest my carbs and calories in a nice cheese or apricot Danish or Berliner donut. And, as far as the English tea service goes, I much prefer the savory course over the sweet ones. In our case the savory course included tea sandwiches of cucumber and Boursin cheese, and an English version of pimento cheese. There were also miniature savory thumbprints made with an herby tomato basil biscuit filled with jam. Finally there were some incredible mini buns of ham and cheese. We also got an additional treat of a slice of their house quiche of asiago and spinach made originally by their first French pastry chef for employees.
The sweet courses included chocolate fudge bonbons, blueberry poundcake, sweet tea cookies, fruit struessel bars, blueberries, red grapes and strawberries, with mini scones. We had a choice of three teas including blueberry, black English breakfast, and white mango, all of which were fantastic. And, as a special last touch we all got a fairly strong strawberry mimosa.
The English tea was developed by Anne, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, to help women ward off hangriness of eating a fashionably late dinner in the regency days of the popular Netflix series Bridgerton. Typical English teas consist of light cakes, scones and sandwiches. Traditional sandwich fillings are often cucumber, smoked salmon, coronation chicken or egg mayonnaise. Coronation chicken is basically curried chicken salad, made especially for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. I wonder if this will show up more regularly in England at afternoon teas due to her recent passing.
Clotted cream is a very thick cream with a much higher butterfat content than double (heavy) cream; weighing in at 64% and 48% respectively. For comparison, single cream is 18% fat, and full-fat milk is around 4%. Historically, increasing the fat content and removing the water content was a way of preserving cows milk, before commercial refrigeration. The higher the fat the slower of bacterial infection and spoilage.
Before I tried the clotted cream it was described to me as a sugarless and thicker version of our American whipped Cream. And it is pretty flavorless on its own. It does add a nice element to the plain scone, but I could honestly take it or leave it. I sway more to my Germanic ancestry for a good quark or cheese filled or stone fruit filled pastry, rather than my Anglo-Saxon heritage. J. R. Tolkien’s hobbits like Bilbo Baggins were quite fond of clotted cream. It stayed well in packs on long trips to save Middle Earth.
To make it more confusing there are actually two main types of English clotted cream – Devonshire clotted cream, produced in the county of Devon and Cornish clotted cream produced in Cornwall. But there is also clotted cream produced in Somerset, Dorset, and the Isle of Wight. There is really no difference to the outsider, they’re both made in the same slow heating process. The difference is really in taste, which is tied to what each cow eats in their pasture. Cornish clotted cream is yellower in color than that of Devon owing to the higher carotene levels in the grass that Cornish dairy cattle consume. So, since the clotted cream we had at BonBonerie was snowy white, I’m assuming it was Devon style.
The average dairy herd is mostly Friesian because they give a very high milk yield. However, their milk is low in butterfat. Double cream could be made, but it is more effective to have a proportion of high butterfat cows in the herd. Those breeds that have higher butterfat in their milk include Jersey and Red Devon (South Devon) breeds. You will also see Guernsey breeds. The herd could also include a small proportion of French beef breeds, that milk reasonably well and ensure that the male calves will fetch a better price at market.
Then there’s the whole debate of whether you put the jam on the scone first and then the clotted cream (Cornwall method) or the reverse (Devonshire way).
If you ask me it’s neither. In my perfect world, my tea service would have a heavy Kentucky influence and would include the following. The savory course would be made of pimento, beer cheese, and Benedictine filled sandwiches, with a few Tuba Baking pretzel nuggets and house ground spicy Dusseldorf style mustard for dipping. There might also be mini croissants of Carl’s Deli crab and artichoke dip.
For the ‘biscuit course’ there’d be raspberry filled linzer cookies, Mexican wedding cookies, and German pfeffernuse cookies. For the chocolate course, there would be bourbon balls and Ohio buckeyes. For the light cakes service, there’d be mini slices of BonBonerie Opera Cream cake or Black forest bars. And, to replace the scones, there would be Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuits with house made Ranch dipping sauce. For fruit, I’d include strawberries, local mulberries and blueberries. Are you listening BonBonerie?!
Uncle Woody’s made big news recently when the Kelce Brothers, Joe Burrow and Jeff Ruby made an appearance there after the Kelce Brothers live podcast show at UC. Uncle Woody’s is the last bar standing of all the many on McMillen and Clifton Avenue haunts from my college days.
Woody’s was me and my college friends’ happy hour bar AND our late night bar, as I was drinking my way through engineering school in the 90s. It had a nice front bar with patio, a cool back bar with booths and a sunken area, and perpetually flooded basement bathrooms. Back in the 90s the front bar and the booths in the back served decent burgers and fries and sometimes did a Sunday brunch. The sunken area in the middle of the back bar has since been filled in and the enormous moose head that hung on the back wall was taken down.
A newhire at my company still parttime bartends there and told me this past weekend the new owner Kendall Jacobson just introduced their new menu. Main items are the Woody’s Burger (bacon optional), chicken tenders, hot dog (chili optional), and nachos (with chicken or chili adds). There are all sorts of fried sides like fried pickles, mac and cheese balls, tater tots, Ranch fries, pretzel bits (pizza and cinnamon sugar) and cinnamon sugar donut holes. It’s all really just freezer to deep frier stuff with two heating wells for nacho cheese and chili – easy peasy. If that’s not enough for drunk or stoned UC kids, then I don’t know what is.
But the nostalgia for Woody’s also made me lament the loss of my other fave hangouts near there – Mt. Oley’s/R Club next door, Mr. K’s down the street, Ripley’s around the other corner, Inn the Wood, and Clifton Yacht Club. There was of course Christie’s Rasthkeller below Lendhard’s German-Hungarian Restaurant which is now a parking lot where we had our senior German Stammtisch and vied for the bocci ball court in the outside beer garden. Then owner, Frau Windholz, was a yearly donor of a gift certificate to our American Institute of Chemical Engineers raffle that funded our awesome senior trip to a conference in San Francisco. Even further down there were Burgundy’s/Prime Time. There were Top Cat’s, Sudsy Malones, and Daniel’s Pub on or near Short Vine.
Sudsy Malone’s showcased up and coming punk and rock bands. I saw a Japanese all girl thrash band there called Miss May. Cooters (later Vertigo) in the University Shopping Plaza on Jefferson hosted weekend Beat Night which played alternative music. Inn the Wood’s potato crisp could cure any weekend hangover. Prime Time (later Burgundy’s) had a light up dance floor and usually played more pop music. Mt Oley’s (later R Club) was where all the cool goth and punk alternative kids went to listen to the likes of Siouxsee and the Banshees. Ripley’s hosted one of my favorite funk bands, Shag. Top Cats at 2820 Short Vine was a super dive bar, but hosted good bands, including my brother Tom’s , Ravenlane.
The destruction of all these bars was largely due to UC campus improvement plan that leveled the old businesses on Clifton and McMillen and left rubble filled lots vacant for over five years like post World War II Dresden.
But the bar I miss most from that long list of no-longer-heres is Mr. K’s at 217 Calhoun Street. It was my earliest and most frequented bar because they notoriously looked the other way at fake IDs. Unfortunately, my and my high school buddies’ fake IDs were seized there during one of their crackdown periods. But, after drinking there underage for several years, it would be the setting of my 21st birthday.
Mr. K was Big K, or Nick Katsikas, the Greek man who owned it, and whose family owned many other restaurants over the years in Middletown and Northern Kentucky. Mr. K was son of Lee Katsikas. Lee and his brother Gus’ parents, John Katsikas and Caliope came solo to Virginia in 1913 from Samos, Greece. They were then joined in 1920 by Lee, and daughter Patricia in 1920, brought over by John’s Brother and sister in law, Theodore and Angela Katsikas. Gus was born in their short time in Virginia. They then moved to Middletown, Ohio, where John and Caliope owned the Katsikas Lunch Room, at 323 East third street from 1928-1935, and where both Gus and Lee got their start in restaurants. They would both own restaurants in Covington and Ludlow, Kentucky, but all their restaurants would have shady incidents associated with them.
There was one Middletown restaurant, called the Liberty Restaurant or Liberty Chili Parlor that served Cincinnati style Greek chili until recently. Even though there was connection between Cincy and Middletown’s Greeks, and Empress was founded several years earlier in 1922, it’s not known how the Cincinnati chili recipe and whose recipe made it to the Liberty. The restaurant was founded in 1925 by newly arrived Crete immigrants Gus Anthony Valen (1898-1976) (originally Valenike) and his bride Irene Tekakis. They had so much demand at their restaurant from the steel mill and factories in Middletown, they would butcher their own animals in the basement and use every bit to serve their customers. This is probably from whom the Katsikas family learned about Cincinnati style chili – then still called chili con carne or Mexican chili.
Gus Valen and his wife were founding members of the Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Middletown, for whom Gus was a President and at which Gus Katsikas was a cantor. Like the St. Nicholas/Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Cincinnati, they hold an annual Panegyri Festival.and were ground zero for the Greek community in Middletown.
Gus Katsikas left Middletown and moved to Ludlow, Kentucky in the late 1930s. He co-owned the Bellevue Chili Parlor at 407 Fairfield Avenue with Steve Zonas in 1940. Zonas came to Cincinnati in the early 1900s from Mexiates, Greece, a village north of Athens. He lived frugally in an $100 hotel room in downtown. When he died at age 87 in 1980, he left a fortune of $2 million to his village in Greece. In his retirement, Gus would move his family to Ft. Lauterdale, Florida, where he operated Egg and You Diner, and might have continued serving Cincinnati-style chili.
Lee Katsakis owned Lee’s Chili Parlor in Covington in 1952.at 10 East Fourth Street. He was sued by a man named Wallace Marshall for $6150 for 10 weeks of lost work and medical bills from allegedly tainted food he had at Lee’s Chili Parlor.
In 1955, Lee Katsakis opened the Dixie Lee Steakhouse on Dixie Highway, featuring broiled lobster, fried chicken, lamb and pork chops, ham steaks, liver and onions, sirloins, T-bones, and filet mignon. Unfortunately he had a fight with a waitress that resulted in her being badly beaten and him getting arrested for assault.
In the 1960s Lee owned the Lagoon Inn in Ludlow and was arrested for serving alcohol without a liquor license. His son, Nick, inherited it and then added an addition for a teenage club called The Flame in 1967 that would be the breeding ground for Mr. K’s. Before opening Mr. K’s, Nick Katikas Sr., would also operate Coppola’s Chili.
It was cheap to drink at Mr. K’s, and maybe why there were so many fights there. My friend Darian was caught in the crossfire one weekend in those fights and had his jaw broken. He had to have it wired shut for several weeks and was on a liquid diet, which included blenderized Big Macs.
Every Monday and Wednesday were quarter beer nights at Mr. K’s. The place was shoulder-to-shoulder packed those nights, and surely breaking fire code. It was unusual if you didn’t get beer spilled on you due to the close quarters and massive volume of beer flowing. We arrived at 10 PM or later, which now is past my bedtime. Mr. K’s played OUR music, what was then called alternative music like the Cure, the Clash and Depeche Mode. We danced into the full-length mirrors surrounding the dance floor on the second level. All music was played from a tight DJ booth If you were smart and knew Mr. K’s was on the itinerary of a night out you wore your older shoes, because there was always a black gunk on the floor that stuck to your soles and sometimes even got on your jeans.
If you couldn’t wait for the exceptionally crowded and perpetually flooded bathroom, you could sneak out the side door and do your duty in the infamously named Piss Alley alongside K’s that led to Mc Millen.
Mr. K’s was where I first learned to drink. The bartenders poured famously strong Long Island Iced teas, whisky sours and gin and tonics, dolled out way to many Kamikaze shots, Flaming Gorilla Tits (Bacardi 151 and Kahlua), Cement Mixers (kahlua and some sort of yellow liquor that when swilled in the mouth it turned into this cottage cheese like mix), and Bloody Brains. Mix any of those with the cheap, probably watered down beer on quarter beer night and you were bound to have a messy evening. There was even a house shot concocted by Nick Katsikas, Jr., called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, a neon green drink with questionable and unknown ingredients.
Apparently you could eat there too- fried things like French fries and wings, but I wouldn’t have trusted anything foodwise that came from the bar. None of the Katsikas family Cincinnati style chili was ever served there to my knowledge. But Mr. K’s was not known as a place to eat. At least the alcohol they served was inherently sanitary and certainly affordable.
The epic acoustic musician Bob Cushing played on the first floor bar every Friday night and there were wet T-shirt contests upstairs.
And, the last song of every night was Come on Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Everyone got their messy selves on the dance floor to dance to it. Then, like clockwork the lights came on and the DJ announced verbatim, “”If you do not work here, if you do not sleep here, if you do not sleep with somebody who works here, or you’re not friends with somebody who sleeps with somebody who works here, then get the F&*k out!!”
And then we all trailed off to get food to sober up for the drive home. It could have been Wendy’s or McDonald’s on Calhoun, but more likely it was the Ludlow Avenue Skyline, owned by Greek immigrant brothers Peter and George Georgiton where we would be accosted by the older late night waitress Squeaky. Their first cousin Steve Stavropolis owned Gourmet Chili in Newport, Kentucky.
Another Greek Georgiton family Peter and his sons Mike and John, owned Papa Dino’s Pizza on the corner of Calhoun and Clifton, serving Cincinnati style coneys and ways alongside their pizza.
Oddly enough, the Katsikas family did not own the Acropolis Chili next door, which by my time was a huge dump. It was owned by Tom Mirkos, and later passed on to his son-in-law Joe Kennedy. The order line had a huge plexiglass shield from drunken hangry college kids letting out of Mr. K’s and the other bars. Acropolis had an earlier location on the nicer Ludlow Avenue strip, next to the bar that they owned, The Golden Lions Lounge. They had a great multi-color bulb-lit sign that went to the landfill along with their restaurant. It’s too bad, it would have been great on display at the American Sign Museum in Camp Washington.
Nick, Jr. and his mom Betty sold Mr. K’s in 1996 for $150,000. It then became the Loft for a brief period of time before it was closed and sat vacant. It was then demolished, along with most of the other bars on Calhoun and McMillen for UC’s campus renewal project.
Although it was for sure a hole in the wall, there is no other bar that comes close to the fun factory that was Mr. K’s.
Hot Dog with Ketchup,Mustard,Relish and Onions – Photographed on Hasselblad Camera System
We’re getting close to warm weather grilling season and the age old question comes to mind, “How do you top your dog?” Well, in Cincinnati, there’s only one answer to that question – with sauerkraut, of course. And, by dog we mean Cincinnati Brat. Be it warm or cold, sweet or spicy, with or without caraway seed or pineapple, sauerkraut is Cincinnati’s number one ‘dog’ condiment. And although our bland American Vlassic version is the now de facto standard, there are local Ohio companies like the Pickled Pig, Fabulous Ferments, and Cleveland Kraut, bringing us back to the non-pasteurized, tasty fermented versions of our original Germanic ancestors. Sauerkraut is at the Red’s stadium and certainly all the outdoor festivals. But for the rest of the nation, there are different pickled condiments that top dogs and other meat sammies.
I’ll go on the record by saying my preferred brat toppings are threefold – creamy hot horseradish, cold crunchy sauerkraut with caraway seed, and spicy Dusseldorf mustard. I’m maybe a bit of a color matcher with my condiments– red goes with red (ie. Ketchup with hot dogs and metts), yellow or white goes with white (ie horseradish, kraut and Cincinnati brats).
And what makes a good American pickled relish? Is it super chunky or smooth and homogenized? Is it sweet and sour or sour and bitter? Is it green, yellow, red, or brown? Is it crunchy or gloppy? These answers are bundled into the individual regional tastes and their legacy relishes.
And one last question. Is there an American relish geographical line that goes diagonally from Texas to the Pacific Northwest, under which salsa and chili sauces prevail over pickled condiments?
According to Statista in 2021 Mayonnaise was the top selling American condiment, followed by Ranch Dressing, ketchup, salsa/chili sauces, mustard and relish last. Other reports say that in the last few years both salsa and sriracha have surpassed ketchup in condiment sales. But our OG American condiment, pickle relish, keeps getting pushed further and further down the chain.
According to the Cincinnati German Pioneer Association, the first commercial producer of sauerkraut in Cincinnati was an immigrant from a village called Rulzheim am Klingbacke in the Palatinate – Nikolaus Hoeffer (1810-1875). His father Georg Franz was a poor linen weaver and subsistence farmer and Nikolaus helped out the family after school and learned how to make one of the staples – sauerkraut. When he immigrated with his family in 1832, they carried with them their prized kraut cutter – basically what we would call a mandolin – which cuts the cabbage into thin slices for fermentation. He sold kraut by the barrel to German and the Anglican immigrants of Cincinnati, with whom kraut became a popular side. They also needed some digestive aid with their heavy meals of Welsh rarebit, Scottish haggis, English meat pies and dense Irish Colcannon.
At the turn of the last century, if you were to step into a Findlay Market pickle stall, you’d see a lot more variety in sauerkraut. Scanning advertisements from some of those Findlay market sauerkraut vendors, we see there were other varieties of kraut, including turnip kraut, ‘sour heads’, and red cabbage.
Another Germanic immigrant, Theodore Kunkel opened his pickle and sauerkraut stand at Findlay Market with the market opening in 1852. According to family lore, Theo had been caught hunting on the Kaiser’s land and deported. His stand sold a kraut cornucopia of turnip kraut, sauerkraut, and pickled beets, beans, and onions.
Turnip kraut, called sauerruben in Germany, has a different flavor than sauerkraut. It can be made with shredded turnips or rutabagas, or a combination of both. It has a sweet- radish-like or mustardy bite that mellows over time. Many Germans like it better than the standard sauerkraut. This is a version of kraut that didn’t stand the product test of time, at least in Cincinnati.
Sour heads are harder to find these days. Kaiser Foods used to make and package sour heads up into the late 1980s, but no longer make them. They’re a pickled whole head of cabbage that originated from Eastern Europe, in particular, Bosnia. The Bosnians use the whole pickled leaf in their stuffed cabbage, called sarma.
Red Cabbage, or rotkuhl in German, is even another variety. It’s a sweet and sour version of sauerkraut, using red cabbage and is often seen accompanying sauerbraten or schnitzel and a side of spaetzli, the German macaroni. It’s my favorite and why we don’t use red cabbage to make sauerkraut balls or as a topper on brats is a mystery to me.
So what is Tyroler kraut that Herr Hoeffer brought to Cincinnati with his cutter? It’s pretty simple and probably the grandfather of the one that we are all most familiar. Tyroler kraut uses cider vinegar, white cabbage, natural sea salt and caraway seeds. Most say that Austrian or Tyroler kraut is a bit sweeter than typical American sauerkraut like Vlassic stuff, which I say is pretty bland and unflavorful. I was raised on sweeter krauts – my mom always sliced up an apple to stew with the kraut she used to pair with our pork loin or other mains and Germania throws in pineapple bits with theirs for an acidic sweetness.
Before ketchup and now salsa or sriracha took the number one used condiment, Americans used pickled relishes to top their flavorless boiled and grilled meats. Relishes go back to the late 1700s, but gained popularity in the 1850s in America. Pickling was one of the best ways to preserve your veg for the winter, usually in a vinegary salt or sugared brine. The sweet and tang gave flavor to the usually bland dishes of early American cuisine.
These evolved into regional pickled toppings for dogs. There is Chicago’s neon green pickle relish and Italian Giardiniera. There is New Orleans’ Sicilian olive salad muffaletta topping. There’s the South’s many versions of Chow-Chow, and the northern Amish equivalent. There’s New York City’s sweet onion relish. There’s Canada’s ketchup vert. And of course, there’s Cincinnati’s sauerkraut.
The American pickle relish family tree starts like most food stories with a Germanic American immigrant named Heinrich Johann Heinz. In 1869 Heinz and a partner opened Anchor Pickle and Vinegar Works, the same year the Cincinnati Red Stockings threw out their first pitch. For the first few years, business prospered, employing in 1872 one hundred workers and selling sauerkraut, pickles, vinegar, and horseradish under the name of Heinz, Noble and Company.
Horseradish can be considered a niche subset of pickled relishes because it is typically only used on roast beef, pastrami or corned beef. Coming originally from Russia and Ukraine, it is rarely used as a dog topper unless by a horseradish aficionado, like myself. Interestingly enough, Americans like heat on their tongues and throats but not in their nasal passages. I like that the heat of horseradish goes away, while the capsicum heat from a pepper stays and burns a hole in your tongue.
H. J. Heinz company had been producing a relish called Chow-chow since the 1870s. Chow-Chow is a southern born catch-all relish. Recipes for Chow-chow from South Carolina date back to 1770. It’s a relish made from chopped green tomatoes, cabbage, mustard seed, onions, hot and sweet peppers in (usually) white vinegar. Variations can contain cucumbers, celery, carrots, beans, asparagus, corn and cauliflower. It has always been a chunky, non-pureed relish.
Heinz made a deal with luxury UK retailer Fortnum & Mason in 1886 introducing Heinz baked beans to the UK, which made it into the traditional English breakfast and catapulted Heinz into the British market.
Two years after introducing the UK to American baked beans, they introduced a sour pickle relish called Piccalilli. Legend has it that the recipe originated with Napolean’s chef. It was a mix of green tomatoes, gherkin pickles, cabbage, cauliflower, onions, turmeric, mustard, vinegar, and spices having a bright yellow color, rather than the green of today’s pickle relish. It, however was not as popular as the relish Heinz introduced the next year. British today use Piccalilli to go with eggs, toast, and sausage. There’s even a rare piccalilli made in a former Dutch Colony called Surinamese Picalilli made with garlic, sambal, and Madam Jeanette peppers.
The India Relish Heinz introduced to the U.S. and British in 1889 was loosely based on chutneys of India, then part of the British Empires. It was a sugared and vinegared mix of pickled cucumbers, green tomatoes, cauliflower, white onions, red bell peppers, celery, mustard seed cinnamon and allspice. Pickle relishes in India contained in addition to the American relish ingredients sesame oil, lemon juice, ginger, and garlic.
Heinz also started making a relish called Ploughman’s Pickle, because it was typically part of the traditional ploughman’s lunch of bread, cheese, cold cuts, and fruit. While Heinz still makes the Ploughman’s Pickle and India Relish, mostly for the British Market, Branston Pickle made by Crosse & Blackwall is the most popular British ‘pickle.’ Named after the small village near Burton, Staffordshire, Crosse & Blackwell first produced Branston Pickle in 1922, the same year the Kiradjieffs invented Cincinnati Style chili.
The recipe had been made locally in homes for many years and was purchased in 1921 from a local woman named Mrs. Caroline Graham, who lived at Branston Lodge and made it with her daughters Evelyn and Ermuntrude. Mrs. Graham was a biological researcher, and this knowledge helped her find the perfect blend and ratio of its 23 ‘secret’ ingredients. Those ingredients include carrots, gherkins (pickles), marrows (squash), courgette (zucchini), onion, rutabaga and tomatoes. It also contains some sweet fruits like apples and dates. In addition to the preservatives of vinegar, lemon juice salt and sugar it contains cloves, coriander, mustard seed, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper and cayenne. Malt vinegar is the acid of choice and finds its way into may other UK condiments. It seems the British palate is accepting of sour and bitter paired together, at least more so than the American palette – we are more into sweet and sour. To me the biggest flavor of Branston pickle is the malted, brown-sugary flavor as if the HP sauce were made into a chunky chutney, or if mincemeat pie filling were made more savory and less chunky. For me it seems too rich for a cold cut Sammie, but might be a good topping for a pork loin.
Getting back to chow-chow – it’s origin remains somewhat of a debate. Some say that it found its way to the Southern United States during the expulsion of the Acadian people from Novia Scotia to their settlement in Louisiana. Is that where Evangeline went and separated from her love Gabriel who found his way to Louisiana’s Acadia? Some suggest the name chow comes from the French word chou for cabbage. But there’s also an Acadian dish called maque choux, which is a warm and spicy mix of corn and peppers. It is thought to be an amalgam of Creole and Native American cultural influence, and the name is likely to derive from the French interpretation of the Native American name. It contains corn, green bell pepper, onion, and sometimes garlic, celery, okra, and tomato, but no cabbage or chou.
Chowchow is simply a cold, pickled vegetable relish. And, there are two main varieties of this relish. There’s a Northern style and the more famous Southern version. Southern varieties usually contain some combination of bell peppers, sweet onions, green or red tomatoes, and cabbage, while Northern versions that originated with the Amish communities of Pennsylvania contain other veggies like cauliflower, carrots, or beans. Amish chowchow is also typically made with a sweeter brine.
A lesser-known variation of chowchow is found in Canada’s Maritime provinces and is made almost entirely from green tomatoes and onions. It’s sometimes called ketchup vert or green ketchup. In the maritime provinces like Novia Scotia, it’s served on salt cod. In Prince Edward Island, it’s served over their fish cakes, over casseroles and with beans. In Ontario it’s served on cold roast beef. And in Quebec it goes with tourtier, the French Canadian meat pie.
Even among Southern states, there is much debate about what goes into chowchow. Alabama barbecue restaurant Full Moon jokes on its menu that chowchow is “a spicy sweet relish that is a staple in Southern kitchens and a source of fierce (and usually friendly) competition at county fairs.”
The Old Mill in Tennessee, one of the oldest continually operating grist mills in the country that has its own restaurant, sells six varieties of chowchow, from Vidalia onion flavor to a super spicy version. But, in Tennessee, chowchow is specifically made with apple cider vinegar instead of the more commonly used white vinegar.
Chow chow as a condiment appears to be more versatile than other regional pickled relishes. In addition to being dolloped on top of burgers, dogs and brats, it’s also used in potato salad, tuna salad, macaroni salad, deviled eggs, on pulled pork or sloppy joes, and mixed with cream cheese for a dip.
Ok then we have the Italian and Sicilian influence on American pickled relish condiments. Any Chicagoan knows that a proper Chicago dog is an all beef frankfurter such as Vienna Beef lain in a poppy seed roll, topped with yellow mustard, neon-green sweet pickle relish, chopped white onions, tomato slices, a dill pickle spear, pickled sport peppers and celery salt. With all that bring and sour, one wonders if the inventor had just lost his taste from the Spanish Flu or Covid!
The unique color of the relish, often referred to as “neon green,” is created by additing blue dye to regular green pickle relish. The first use of Chicago-style neon-green relish on a dog has been attributed to different restaurants, including Fluky’s and Superdawg just around midcentury. There’s no good explanation of why the blue color was added to the relish, but mid-century America was the age of neon signs and bright Art Deco color, so maybe that is some of the reasoning.
And each of the ingredients on a Chicago dog are a nod to the main immigrant groups – Polish and Eastern Europeans, Germans, Italians and Ashkenazi Jewish. It’s a cornucopia of the Chicago immigration story.
Another purely Italian adder to hot dogs in Chicago is called Giardiniera. It’s an oil preserved condiment that’s similar to the New Orleans olive salad served on muffaletta (Italian preserved meats sammies). The only difference is that Chicago giardiniera has more veg like carrots, cauliflower and celery than its New Orleans Sicilian cousin. The most popular version of the muffaletta olive salad is made by New Orleans’ Central Grocery, the supposed inventor of the muffaletta sandwich.
There are other regional pickled condiments for use as dog toppers. Tony Packos, the Eastern European sausage restaurant in Toledo, Ohio, has a combo mustard relish, as does Mt Olive. There are also kraut-mustard combos made by gourmet brands like Fischer & Wieser.
New York City’s ‘dirty water dog’ hot dog push cart vendors use a special sweet onion relish, along with sauerkraut and brown mustard to top their local dogs. This New York style onion relish is usually made with sweet Vidalia onions, ketchup, hot sauce, cinnamon and chili powder and has a red color rather than a green or yellow like most other relishes.
I’ll admit that I am a huge fan of the mint chutney that is the third to the spicy onion and tamarind chutneys served as condiments in today’s Indian restaurants. And I might go off my color-matched condiment modus by mixing the two on a hot dog. I think that would be amazing. I’ll call it Dann’s India Dog.
In wake of a new round of Frisch’s restaurant closings this month by their venture capital owners, I wax nostalgic about how their quality has nosedived in the last few years and what I miss about the Old Frisch’s.
Frisch’s used to be a great place to go for a fresh salad and a great burger and fries. It used to be indicative of Cincinnati and our regional food tastes. At one time you could actually get a Cincinnati style threeway there. I am of a certain age, so I still remember the last of the car hop Frisch’s like the one on Spring Grove Avenue. It was a treat to pull up, yell your order into an oversized speaker and have someone bring your order out to your car.
First and foremost I miss the original onion rings. They were real cuts of onions breaded and fried perfectly. They weren’t all the same size because they were actually cuts from one onion, so you would get the small inner sections (which were my faves) and the large outer cuts. Now they use standard Cisco-type freezer-to-fryer onion rings that are all the same size and don’t have the great crunch and strong onion flavor.
I miss the days when the items on the salad bar were fresh and not thawed frozen. Just in the last month at the original Mainliner Frisch’s I saw how the cucumbers were goopy on the inside of the slice and different colored on the outside – the forensic evidence that tells me they came out of the freezer that morning. The lettuce is wilted and they no longer have the fresh peas or the gloopy Thousand Island Dressing that I always loved on the salad.
I miss the old cod fish logs on the fish sandwich that had great breading and were doused in large dollops of that amazing tarter sauce and freshly grated lettuce. Now the company has resorted to the standard Cisco-esque frozen fish sticks. I mean this was THE fish sandwich that spawned the 1965 Rob Groen-invented McDonald’s Filet-o-fish during post Vatican II Catholic Friday meat fasting. Now, I’d choose the FOF over the Frisch’s fish sandwich.
I missed when the new owners took away the rye buns and the amazing crushed ice. Well, Cincy protested and the owners brought back both. Duh – Cincinnati is a Germanic rye bread town from way back. You can’t take away our rye-bunned Swiss miss, brawny lads, and fish sandwiches. WE.WILL.REVOLT!!
Although I don’t eat the hot fudge cakes anymore, which used to be my jam in the raging metabolism days of my youth, I’ve noticed they’ve shrunk quite a bit from the original 4” X 4” cut of cake. And, the last time I tasted one, the cake was less browny-moist and more dry overcooked crumbly cake. You can’t make up for a dry crumb with hot fudge sauce and ice cream.
Speaking of shrinkage, the burgers have shrunk in patty thickness and diameter as well. Funny, because in their commercials they show a thick juicy burger. Where that version is, I’d sure like to know.
The marketing overall is not bad, but I think their marketeers are confused who their market is. They market to a higher demographic, but they put forth such low-end quality you really can’t see where the marketing and the product meet. Good meals for a good value should still be the marketing mission they aspire to.
As Pony Boy said in the Outsiders, “Nothing gold can stay.” And I know, I’m sounding like a crusty old man in my lamenting, but pretty soon there won’t be any Frisch’s left in the city. And, then, what will happen to the most important relic of this 75 year old legacy – the tartar sauce?
On a recent trip to Atlanta, I was introduced to Genepy, a traditional French herbal liqueur from the alpine regions of Savoy. It is a mild herby drink, usually taken neat, with flavors of chamomile. Instead of being distilled with herbals like gin, it is steeped in a clear spirit like vodka or pure grain alcohol. Although it is sweetened with sugar, it is less sweet than most digestif liqueurs. It’s also popular liqueur filling in Swiss Chocolates.
I tasted it at the hipster new French restaurant called Little Sparrow in the form of a highball with gin, lime cordial and tonic, with a mandolin slice of cucumber. It’s the perfect fizzy, acidic drink for spring and summer, and went well with my order of spargel (white asparagus) salad, and seafood bouillabaisse.
So, when I got back to Cincy, I had to compare with my fave local French Restaurant, French Crust at Findlay Market. I went on a Friday to get the lunch tray special at the bar and talk to my favorite bartender, Billy. I asked Billy if FC had Genepy and they took me on a journey of Savoy French cordials, which included the more well-known and stronger tasting version of the Alpine French herbal liquor – Chartreuse – which comes in a honey sweetened yellow version and a less sweet green version.
Billy told me that Chartreuse is nearly unavailable in the U.S. these days because the French monks who make it have slowed down production, even if the worldwide demand has spiked in the last few years. If you can find it, Billy told me, you will pay over $70 a bottle. Lucky for me, French Crust had both yellow and green Chartreuse, so Billy made me a fizzy Chartreuse cordial in a tall highball glass beautifully lined with three mandolin slices of cucumber.
I was happy that both the food and the drink experience was just as good or better than my over the top fabulous experience I had at Little Sparrow in Atlanta.
Although it’s been made for over 400 years, Chartreuse was made popular again by American bartender Murray Stenson in the 1950s, who unearthed a recipe for the Depression era Last Word cocktail, which is just like both my Genepy cordial in Atlanta and my Chartreuse cordial in Cincy, but with the addition of maraschino liqueur. It was probably popular because the strong taste of Chartreuse covered up the wonky flavors of cheap bathtub gin. There’s another popular drink of it called the Champs Elysees which includes Cognac and another called the Yellow Cocktail, which uses Suze.
The story of Chartreuse begins in 1084 when a group of monks arrived in the valley of the same name to begin a life of quiet solitude. What the monks didn’t anticipate was the brutal winters. They had to sustain themselves and also find a way to support their lifestyle. They decided on mining the iron ore in the region until King Louis XIV enacted a law that forbade cutting down the trees which provided the charcoal fuel for their steel blasting furnaces.
Luckly, they got a super secret recipe from French army office Francois Hannibal d’Estees in 1605 for a herbal elixir that could be made from the plants roots and botanicals in the Alps surrounding the monastery. The monks perfected the recipe and named it after the valley in which they lived. Originally sold as a health tonic by the monks, it became so popular by 1794 that the monks created a lower alcohol version that is still bottled today. The recipe remains a secret today, known by only two monks, who for security purposes do not travel together.
The monks were expelled during the French Revolution and again in 1906 and started making a version in Tarragone, Spain, that was far superior to the version being made by their former plant that was nationalized in their absence They returned to the valley in the 1920s. but moved production to Voiron, France. Even though a new distillery with 2.5 million liter capacity was finished in 2018, they only make 1.5 million liters per year, which does not satisfy world demand propelled by the current craft cocktail trend. The pope apparently reminded them that they are monks, not businessmen.
This story has a direct parallel to the Benedictine monks who made Norton and Catawba wine in Covington from 1870 to Prohibition, originally for altar wine, but 90% of their business turned out to be for secular consumption.
As a child whenever me or my siblings were sick, my mom would make us milk toast. When our systems were barely able to ingest anything, milk toast was a treat. And it was pretty simple. It was just buttered toast immersed in warm, sweetened milk. It was tender and just what was needed to mend our tummies back to health. My mom knew just how long to leave the bread soaking in the milk before serving it to us. It was so good that sometimes we’d ask for it for breakfast when we weren’t sick.
Other variations of milk toast include salt and pepper, vanilla, cinnamon, cocoa powder, nutmeg and even raisins. Ours was not so fancy. When the term milk toast is used to describe somebody, it’s usually not a compliment. It means that they’re mild, unassuming and spineless.
In addition to milk toast’s healing powers, it also has the power to stop wars. There’s a wonderful story and painting depicting just that in Reformation era Switzerland. The moral of that story is that people who eat together don’t kill each other. True statement.
During the Reformation, Switzerland was split into two factions – the Catholics and the Reformed Protestants. In 1529, conflicts were brewing – the troops of the Reformed Canton Zurich marched towards the Catholics in inner Switzerland. The conflict is called the Erster Kappelkrieg (The First Kappel War). But you can’t call it a war because the conflict ended without any battle. And that’s because of Milk Toast, or as the Swiss at the time called it, Milchsuppe or Milk Soup.
While the troop leaders were negotiating, the foot soldiers of the Canton of Zurich and of Zug were socializing and cooked a soup together in a large pot which was placed directly on the border between the two cantons. Supposedly the people from Zurich supplied the milk, while those from Zug supplied the bread. This meal of reconciliation took place near the city of Kappel am Albis. Today, there is a stone monument, the Milk Soup Stone, a reminder of this peaceful meal that avoided a war. It is certainly the only monument to Milk Soup or Milk Toast in the world.
In the Swiss version of milk toast some of the other ingredients are onions, garlic, chicken broth, nutmeg and caraway seed. Hopefully, like me, you had a Milk Toast Mom (MTM), but if you didn’t you can easily become one for your own kids or younglings
Everyone is scrambling to find a place to see the solar eclipse in the Path of Totality this coming Monday on April 8. Luckily for us, the path of totality goes through nearby Dayton, Ohio. But we can see about 90ish% of the eclipse right here in our own backyards, so I don’t see what all the fuss is about the path of totality. I mean the song Total Eclipse of the heart lasts longer than the 2024 Total Eclipse – the single version of the song lasts 4 and a half minutes, while the Total Eclipse is only predicted to last 3 and half to four minutes.
In my defense, I have bought my ISO certified viewing glasses so I can see it wherever I decide to view it.
What is the fave snack of the total eclipse? Well Moon Pies, of course. For $9.99 you can get an Eclipse Survival Kit consisting of four mini chocolate moon pies and viewing glasses. Or you can try what some of the local bakeries are putting out in advance. Leave it to them to take advantage of this four minute holiday event. Those that are leaning into it are doing a fantastic job in my opinion.
NCH Bakery is making purple and yellow eclipse cakes, eclipse cookies, and what look like eclipse cream puffs.
Busken is not to be outdone with their eclipse cookies which go on sale today. They’re taking their awesome almond shortbread cookie, that they make their smiley face cookie with – icing it in chocolate icing with a special sparkly finish, and an outline of yellow icing.
Oddly enough, Servatti who typically leans into any holiday has not announced any specific eclipsed themed confections on their website or on Instagram.
The Cheesecakery in Madisonville is completely leaning in with probably the most extensive offering of eclipse themed confections. They’re making a galaxy macaron, Chocolate eclipse cheesecake cupcakes, Galaxy Cheesecake cupcakes (and whole cheesecake versions), galaxy cake pops.
The Cannoli Guy in Covington is offering an eclipse cannoli.
The BonBonnerie is offering beautiful eclipse themed cookies too.
Dobos Bakery in Piqua is making yellow Eclispe cookies with black sprinkles.
But don’t leave it to the bakeries. Columbus, Ohio, based Jeni’s Ice Cream has rolled out four flavors to coincide with the eclipse. It’s a collection that brings together Nebular Berry, Cosmic Bloom, Purple Star Born and Supermoon. They can be ordered online and come with eclipse glasses. This collection is said to be inspired by a fictional flight through the galaxy. They gathered all the alien fruits they could find and transformed them into colorful, cosmic ice creams. Like a fragment of a half remembered song, the flavors feel familiar but out of reach – layered to spark curiosity and keep you guessing. And to remind us that we’re all made of stars, no matter what planet we came from.
National Chains are also making deals. Krispy Crème announced the release of their new “Total Solar Eclipse Doughnut” in honor of the big event. The treat is described as an Original Glazed Doughnut dipped in black chocolate icing with silver sprinkles, “piped with a buttercream made with Oreo pieces, and a whole Oreo cookie in the center.” The new doughnut will be available between April 5 and April 8 while supplies last.
For less than five minutes, a few lucky SunChips fans will be able to get some limited edition solar eclipse-inspired chips for free. The brand, produced by Frito-Lay, is partnered with astronaut and researcher Kellie Gerardi to launch the Solar Eclipse Limited-Edition Pineapple Habanero and Black Bean Spicy Gouda flavor.
The limited-edition snack will go live at 1:33 p.m. CT on April 8, the moment the eclipse will hit North America, and fans will only have 4 minutes and 27 seconds (estimated duration of the solar eclipse’s totality) to get their hands on some.
Pittsburgh’s smiley face cookie is donning approved eclipse glasses.
For me, I could just go for some confectioners’ sugar topped cardamom crescents or Greek kourabiedes crescent cookies.
The 20th century’s first First Daughter Alice Roosevelt, later Longworth, was known as a rabble rouser. President Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “I can either manager the country, or manage Alice. “ She developed a spiky tongue and famously said, “If you have nothing good to say, then honey , sit next to me,” I’m sure she was a fun person to be around at a party, unless you became the object of her scorn.
She made her debut to society in 1901 as the President’s daughter in the White House. She very quickly was introduced and set up with some of the world’s richest and most eligible bachelors. And the first two of those suitors would have led her to a life of either eating spicy gumbo or konigsburger klopse (Prussian Meatballs). Instead she chose for her partner Cincinnati scion Nicholas Longworth III, speaker of the house, great grandson of Cincinnati Wine Baron Nick Longworth I, and owner of the fabulous Rookwood Mansion in Hyde Park.
Her first international suitor was Prince Heinrich of Prussia, the younger brother of Kaiser Wilhelm. He visited America from February 22 to March 11, 1902 to christen the Kaiser’s yacht Meteor being made in New Jersey. The Prince arrives in New York City, takes a day trip to Washington, D.C. for a men’s dinner hosted by President Roosevelt at the White House and Capitol, and attends the launching of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s new yacht “Meteor III,” christened by Miss Alice Roosevelt, at Shooters Island.
The morning he arrived in Washington, the Prince called on Teddy, Mrs Roosevelt and Alice. Alice commented on him, “ We all liked him. He was unaffected and agreeable, the type of bearded royalty that looks somewhat like king Goerge of England and the late Tsar (Peter Romanov) of Russia” – all of whom shared very close DNA as grandsons of Queen Victoria. After the men’s dinner Alice, her parents, the Prince, his entourage and other officials headed on a special train to Jersey City, followed by a ferry to Shooter’s Island where the yacht was waiting to be christened. On the ferry Alice talked to the prince but she was more interested in his young uniformed officers and said, “I was much taken with the young officers in their smart German uniforms.” Oops faux pas number one.
Wine importer George Kessler placed his business card in the menus at the White House Men’s dinner to promote Moët & Chandon Champagne which was served at the presidential dinner and other key events during the royal visit. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who reportedly became annoyed when he learned that his imperial schooner had been christened with a bottle of Kessler’s French Champagne instead of a German wine. Oops faux pas number two.
Alice smashed Kessler’s champaigns on the bow saying, “In the name of his Majesty, the German Emperor, I christen t his yacht, Meteor.” She then cut the last rope that held the ship and she slid into the water. Alice said, “The Prince gave me a bunch of pink roses, congratulated me, shook hands and kissed my hand, and we all trooped over to a lunch given by the shipbuilding people, leaving after a few minutes to get on the supervisors boat to go over to the Hohenzollern, the Emperor’s steam yacht that had come over with Prince Henry. There we lunched and further ceremonies took place. The Prince gave me from the Emperor a bracelet with a miniature of the Emperor set in diamonds, also a book of views of Berlin. During the lunch the Prince made a speech to Father, then Father made one to him, then the Prince toasted me.”
After the dinner, Alice’s parents went back to D.C., but she stayed in New York for the gala opera which the Prince attended. Alice was too busy jumping from box to box to visit friends and thus only spent a little time with him when the Prince came to call on her at one of her friends’ boxes. And faux pas number three. The third time is the charm!
Alice made a heartfelt comment about German-Americans, though, in her biography, “It always gives me a rather grim amusement to recollect the days when we united in saying what fine citizens the German-Americans were. We praised them to the skies; they came over here to escape oppression, we said, yet had never abandoned the best traditions of their fatherland: how fine it was that they had their German language newspapers, kept their old customers, never lost their affection for the Old Country; we spoke highly of their admirable qualities. Then came 1914, and in a brief space of time, any one with a German accent was suspected of disloyalty.”
Prince Henry returned to Washington to attend a memorial service to President McKinley at the U.S. Capitol, followed by an extended train trip on a special rail car to the South and West US left New York on the “S.S. Deutschland”. Prince Heinrich had a book written about his travels to America mentioning alice, but no more correspondence between he and Alice ensued after the visit and their time together.
Another big social trip was in February of 1903 to visit with John Avery McIllhenny and his mother, in New Orleans and Avery Island, Louisiana, for two weeks during Mardi Gras. This trip was documented in Alice’s own autobiography and through newspapers in New Orleans and across the country. It could be a book in itself along the lines of a Real Housewives Girls Trip episode. She went with the beautiful and also cheeky Root, Edith Root, the daughter of Eliahu Root, Roosevelt’s Secretary of War.\
Above image: John McIlhenny’s Rough Rider uniform at the Tabasco Museum on Avery Island.
John McIlhenny was son of the founder of Tabasco sauce empire, Edmund McIlhenny. He had been a rough rider with Roosevelt and when he came back to Louisiana, he served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1900 to 1904 and then the state senate from 1904 to 1906. A close companion of Roosevelt, he accepted his offer to help oversea the US Civil Service Commission, during which he enacted numerous reforms which streamlined the federal bureaucracy. On paper, he was a perfect match for Alice, already well vetted with her father.
Although the family lived on Avery Island, they stayed in the city off Prytania Street for much of February at the home of banker James T. Hayden while the Haydens were away in Egypt. Carnival week is filled with events from the competing krewes and secret societies. Alice described their whirlwind schedule. “For a week we went nearly every evening to a carnival ball, the Atlanteans, Momus, Proteus, and Comus, and to a small dance, the Carnival German, and to a benefit opera as well!”
In true Alice fashion, her actions kept her hosts on their toes. According to the Tabasco archives, McIlhenny’s son Jack later recounted that while John and Alice were walking through a courtyard, Alice pushed the elder McIlhenny into the water. His mother, Mary Eliza Avery McIlhenny, began scolding Alice before John jumped in and reminded her that it was the president’s daughter she was speaking to. The girls also had a chance to get out and play tourist a bit. On a trip to the Crescent City Jockey Club with Rear Admiral Schley and General Wheeler, Roosevelt (an avid equestrian like her father) bet on a long shot mare named L’Etrenne, who ended up winning to everyone’s disbelief. The horse’s owner, Edward Corrigan, sent Roosevelt a horseshoe from L’Etrenne after hearing the story.
Above image: The ‘darkies” who Alice says in her autobiography sung to her and Miss Root during their 1903 visit to Avery Island.
Following the Mardis Gras festivities the girls continued their travels, first to Avery Island to the McIlhennys’ estate, where she saw the ‘small building where the tabasco sauce industry started and the darkies sang us some plantation hymns.” The island was home to the world’s largest salt mine at the time, and the family held a reception for Ms. Roosevelt inside the mine, with tables and chairs carved from salt, and a statue of Lot’s wife also fittingly made of salt.
In a thank you note to Mrs. McIlhenny upon returning home, Alice said, “I don’t ever expect to have quite such a good time again.” But her rowdiness towards her suitor didn’t ingratiate her with either mother or son.
The funny thing is that Cincinnati-invented Frank’s Red Hot outsells Tabasco in the world.
It was on another diplomatic trip to Asia in 1905, where Alice met and came to know the playboy Nick Longworth. They were married in 1906 in the East Room of the White House, but their marriage was fraught with alcoholism and infidelity. She did not like Cincinnati, nor her mother-in-law who insisted she was THE Mrs. Longworth. Alice had her revenge, after her husband’s death she sold the Rookwood Mansion to the developer who demolished it and developed the upscale neighborhood that exists today toff of Grandin Road today.
Alice went on to live in her townhouse in Embassy Row in D.C., where she wrote a political column, and befriended the Kennedys, the Nixons, and many other politicos. She is the longest living daughter of a president, living to the age of 96.
This week is Holy Week and Good Friday marks the end of the Lenten Fish Fry Season. And, while I’ve been to the best here in Cincinnati, and one in Manhattan, I’m intrigued by the fave fish dish of my paternal Grandmothers’ family from Franconia. My Grandma Norma Schaeser Woellert’s grandmother was Anna Maria Victoria Scharold Gehring. She was born in 1831 in a Franconian town called Hochstadnt an der Aich. She came to Cincinnati along with at least three other siblings (brother Caspar Andres, and sisters Franziska and Kundegunda} from there who had settled in Harrison, Ohio. She shortly moved to Newport, Kentucky, where she married a Saarland, Germanic immigrant, John George Gehring, who was part of the Germanic clothing and tailoring industry in Newport. She raised 11 children and pooled her money to buy a large home, still standing in Newport, at 739 Central Avenue, where my Grandmother grew up.
Above image: L to R – Anna Scharold Gehring, Franziska Gehring Schaeser and my grandmother Norman Schaeser Woellert and the house they shared in Newport, Kentucky.
While most of Anna Scharold Gehrings immigrant family were tailors, the predominant industry in their hometown was carp raising. Starting with monks in the 11th century, the citizens of the Franconian towns along the Aich river dug out carp ponds to raise fish for their Lenten meat fast. Thank you enterprising Germanic monks for this, the pretzel, and, of course Bock beer! The Benedictine monks of the Munchersteinach Monastery boosted the carp industry with over sixty ponds, but their monastery was destroyed in the Peasant’s War of 1525. The carp ponds were left unscathed.
The area around the Aich river has very thick impermeable clay, that is not very good for farming, but excellent for making carp ponds. Today there are over 7000 ponds on both sides of the River Aich, stretching 80 kilometers from Bad Windsheim to Neustadt, to Hochstadt and beyond.
The carp season lasts from September to April. This begins a tourist season where locals and out of town gourmands come to sample this truly spectacular fresh version of carp. The best time is late Autumn in September to November. The carp are fed only grain to supplement their natural food of mosquito larvae, snails or worms. No fishmeal, soya or other high-performance feed are given, unlike most of the farm raised fish we get in the United States. The carp then grow naturally for about three summers. Most inns and restaurants serve carp that is pulled fresh from their own ponds. They are put in freshwater holding tanks after removal from the ponds to remove any mossy flavor in the rare case there was a certain type of blue-green algae in the ponds.
The version of carp raised around the Aisch river are Cyprinus Carpio, or the mirror carp. It has a high back and yellowish belly and scales only on the very top of the back that shine like mirrors, giving it its name. The legend is that monks were only allowed to eat what did not protrude over the plate. These local carp are shaped perfectly to fit the round plates. The meat is said to taste nutty, not fishy at all, and has a healthy amount of fat and valuable unsaturated fatty acids and omegas. Aischgrunder carp is an EU-protected geographical indication, and pond farming has been included in Germany’s intangible cultural heritage, because the carp feeding, pond maintenance, and fishing are all done by hand in the traditional way. There is even a yearly inducted Carp Queen who becomes a spokeswoman for the industry.
The two most prominent prepared dishes with Aischgrunder Karpfen are Karpfen Blau and Pfefferkarpfen. Karpfen Blau or Blue Carp is prepared with a method called Blaukocken or blue cooking. The trick to making this dish is minimally handling the fish to preserve the outer mucous layer before boiling it in a vinegar or a beer bath. The natural reaction between the fish and the acidic bath produces a distinct blue sheen that enhances the flavor of the carp. Karpfen blau is traditionally served on Christmas eve and custom holds that a scale from this Christmas carp should be kept in one’s wallet to bring prosperity in the New Year. It is served with horseradish laden whipped cream, fresh dill, and lemon slices.
Even more popular is the Pfefferkarpfen preparation. It is battered with a pepper laden, light batter and pan fried whole. Germanic southeast Indiana has its pepper battered chicken. What if Northern Kentucky was the home of pepper fish. The whole fish -head on and tail curled up is a presentation most Americans aren’t used to and frankly turned off by. The crunchy tail and pectoral fins are actually considered a delicacy and are the first things eaten off the Pfefferkarpfen. The fried pepper carp is served with potato salad and lightly dressed greens and a local Helles or Pils beer from one of local family breweries in the area- Dobler, Windsheimer, Loscher, Hofmann or Prechtel. One 12th generation brewery called Zwanger makes other beers like IPA, honey beer, chocolate-strawberry stout, but don’t let a local catch you slurping anything other than a pils or helles.
Many of the Cincinnati beer barons were from Franconia, including Johann Caspar Bruckmann who started the Cumminsville Brewery for whom Anna Scharold Gehring’s grandson-in-law would be a star bowler, and which was his and his family’s beer of choice for three generations before him.
Three other Franconian beers are famous – Rauchbier (smoked beer), Ungespundetes (lowly carbonated beer – yuck, sounds like flat beer to me!), and Zwickelbier (unfiltered beer for the more chewy beer afficianado.) But again, these are not the preferred beers to accompany the local carp. Try them with a beef sausage dish or a non-fish protein.
Local creative chefs have dreamed up some other carp dishes for a little upscale variation. There is carp sushi, carp burgers, carp sausages (Nuremburg, famous for its sausages is just an hour south), and something called Carp Crisps – thin strips deep fried and served with a sour cream Calvadoss sauce. Another delicacy is the baked roe of the carp, known locally as “ingreisch” which means innards. I am the only weirdo in my family who does not like black pepper, but I do love fish, so maybe it’s time for me to try and make my own Pfefferkarpfen.
dannwoellertthefoodetymologist 