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Zingerman’s Roadhouse will be closed Thanksgiving Day, November 27.
We will re-open again at 11am on November 28 to satisfy any cravings which may arise during the “Black Friday” shopping madness. If you need your caffeine fix earlier than that, please drive through the Roadshow after 6am. They’ll serve up lattes and bagels with a smile!
There are a few things we can count on in life. One of them is our time. This season is naturally a point in our year when we focus on what’s important to us; our families and friends. That focus is especially important as we watch the chaos and calamity on our through our tv’s, radios and newspapers.
With all this in mind, the Roadhouse has prepared a holiday meal, just for those of us who have limited time, and want to spend it where it counts. Chef Julio has selected free-range turkeys and will cook them three ways. All-American accompaniments are perfect pairs to any holiday turkey. These are favorites of our customers and our staff, which prominently feature Cornman Farms produce, grown by Chef Alex Young at his farm in Dexter. Of course, Zingerman’s Bakehouse pies and breads will also be offered.
Check out the menu! Call us for orders by Monday, November 24 and we’ll cook so you don’t have to!
A Toast to Uncle Joe
This has been a steady core menu dish at the Roadhouse since we opened. It’s been on my mind this fall for two reasons. First off, I’ve had a steady stream of really positive customer comments about it of late. The second reason it’s on my mind this holiday season is because Uncle Joe Burroughs passed away this summer.
I’m not sure where to start this story so I’ll just begin it with the opening of the Roadhouse in the fall of ’03 since that’s the first time we served catfish here at Zingerman’s. It’s a classic American dish so it makes sense that we’d put it on the menu and it was pretty popular right off the bat. That said, we knew too that it could be better, so I started asking around about it.
Although I knew her only from her “modern” life in Boulder and from traveling together in Europe, Peggy Markel actually grew up in Alabama. (Unrelated—or at least not directly related—to catfish, she runs a cooking school in Tuscany and food tours in Italy and Morocco. See her website for more on her work—www.peggymarkel.com). And, it turned out that her Dad, Joe Burroughs, has cooked catfish almost every Friday night in the small town of Albertville where Peggy grew up.
“He always wanted his own fried catfish joint. He was famous,” Peggy told me five years ago. “People came from far and wide to our house for some of ‘Uncle Joe’s famous catfish.’ It was a hot ticket. My dad had a barbecue pit in the back yard that he rigged a gas line to. He would heat a deep, oblong cast iron skillet full of Mazola oil. Soon after, those delectable fillets lightly dusted with corn meal from being shaken in a paper sack would be sprinkled with the ‘secret ingredient’, and expertly slipped into the simmering hot oil. We never had enough money to realize his Catfish Café, but we had one anyway, every Friday night at our house with people going crazy over crispy fried catfish, hushlittlepuppydogs (aka, hush puppies), slaw and hot pickled jalapeno peppers that my dad grew and pickled himself from 12 different varieties. This all went down easy with a few beers (home-brewed by my uncle Charlie) from one of the outdoor fridge’s behind the barbecue pit.”
The ‘secret ingredient’ is garlic salt—not something that I use much of in my cooking these days. But, if Peggy’s dad was doing great catfish with that much success for so long it seemed sort of silly not to try it. And, lo and behold, Alex and I tested it and it really does liven up the flavor of the fish. And in honor of Joe, my friendship with Peggy, and his long-standing if unfulfilled desire to open his own restaurant, we named the dish on the menu after him.
As I said, above, Uncle Joe passed away this past summer. While I’m saddened for Peggy and her family, Joe lived a good life. To quote from Peggy’s nice eulogy: “‘Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay, gone are the years of the cotton fields away, gone from this earth to a better place I know, I hear the gentle voices calling…old..black…joe…I’m a comin, I’m a comin for my heart is young and gay..I hear the gentle voices calling…old..black…joe……..’
“This was a song our daddy used to sing to us at bedtime. When I got old enough to understand the words, I registered then and there how sad I would be when that time came around. Life without daddy Joe would be real sad. That time came Saturday, July the 12th, 2008, when at 90 he took his last breath. It is as sad as I always imagined it to be. But I feel better about it than I ever thought I would. To reach 90 having had a good life, no sickness and die in one’s sleep from old age and no regrets is cause for celebration.”
Shifting back from sadness to sunny memories of fish fries, she went on, “I can still remember how proud I was as a kid to learn how to take my fork and go up the spine of a freshly fried fish, still steaming, fillet it and dab it into some homemade ‘goush’: an equal mix of catsup and mayonnaise. It was so good, my sisters and I would turn on Elvis Presley and ‘do the mash potato.’ It became a regular theme.”
I’m sad that I never got down to Albertville to meet Uncle Joe in person. Peggy’s tales will have to suffice. That and the taste of this not particularly fancy, but nevertheless darned good fried whole catfish. If you’re into fish, give it a shot next time you’re in, and make a toast to Uncle Joe. I do every time one of great looking hush puppy and cole slaw laden catfish platters goes out to a table.
Tradition, Not Trend
I think the already really good American brunch at the Roadhouse got one step better when this one went on the menu. Of course it’s gonna take two years before people are tuned into this dish, but by then it’s going to be a signature item—unless you’re one of the few folks in Ann Arbor who grew up in Appalachia it’s going to sound strange but it’s a very tasty way to start your day. It’s “gravy” made with bacon and cocoa and milk, generously ladled over homemade buttermilk biscuits. You really did read that right—bacon and cocoa combined into one seriously good sauce ladled over those very nice homemade biscuits. I know this is one of the strangest sounding but, for me, most exciting things on our new food front.
I say “new” but it’s actually only new to us here—down in the Appalachians this is old hat. While it’s hardly universal I’ve come across a whole lot of people for whom chocolate gravy is the norm—they grew up with it. I stumbled on the dish while working on Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon; Stories of Pork Bellies, Hush Puppies, Rock ‘N Roll Music And Bacon Fat Mayonnaise. It was one of those culinary footnotes that, when I first heard about it, I thought people were probably playing with me. After all, if you were going to pick two “hot” trendy foods, bacon and chocolate would likely be at the top of the list. And of course when I hear that things are getting ‘trendy’ I tend to go in completely the other direction; as you likely already know, I’m pretty much always driven by tradition not by trends.
Turns out though that chocolate gravy made with bacon fat has been around in Appalachia for a long time. While it’s new to me and 99.7 percent of the other people around here, it’s very familiar comfort food of high order to the small minority of Southerners who grew up with. The quick story of its origin is that it likely dates back about hundred years. Since bacon fat is basically akin to “the olive oil of the South” (see the bacon book for more on that theory), it was used as the base for people’s everyday “gravy” making. (The term “gravy” is generally used down there for any sauce), including the standard milk gravy made for ladling over biscuits. So, back in the beginning of the 20th century when cocoa powder first started to work its way into the American interior it made the otherwise little experienced taste of chocolate accessible in the Appalachians. (If you’re curious, Hershey’s first rolled out its cocoa powder in 1894). Seems likely that looking for a way to add a touch of “luxury” to a rather bare bones life, Appalachian cooks would have added the cocoa to their bacon-based milk gravies. And in the process, chocolate gravy was born.
I’ve got much more written on this dish and its background for the bacon book—email me at ari@zingermans.com and I’ll be glad to send you the recipe. In the mean time you can head out to the Roadhouse on the weekend and we’ll whip you up a plateful of biscuits and chocolate gravy (with the bacon!)—it’s rich, it’s good, and it’s bacon and chocolate combined in one traditional dish! Hard to ask for more!
Zingerman’s Roadhouse will be closed on Election Day, November 4, 2008. As a “thank you” to our staff for all of their dedication and commitment over the past 5 years of operation, we are taking this opportunity to show our gratitude to them.
The Roadhouse will open again for regular business at 11am on Wednesday, November 5. The Roadshow staff will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6am to serve our drive-up guests espressos, lattes and breakfast bagels.
Thank you for your understanding!