Gastronomy Domine

It is difficult looking back over the road trip to forget a key highlight being the various regional things we ate and drank which are of exceptional note.  Here they are in no particular order:

Chicago Pizza 
Probably the stodgiest thing I've ever eaten in my life.  In London 30 years ago there was a restaurant called the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory (closed now sadly) which I went to often.  Their pizzas were certainly deep dish but not this deep dish!  The pizza takes 45 minutes minimum to cook through but its worth the wait.  It just amazes me how even slim and small people can wolf back immense hunks of this pizza.  We shared a one person pie and left barely able to waddle, let alone walk!

Giordano's deep dish offering

Memphis BarBQ
Memphis BBQ is dry which is just how we like it.  That way you can taste the meat not the sloshed on sauce covering up any fault in the cooking.  It was great particularly when sprinkled with the dry rub after being taken off the grill just prior to serving.  That gave a wonderful extra something to the meat, usually ribs and brisket for us.

Lamb Ribs
Why hasn't anyone thought of serving lamb ribs the same way as pork ribs?  You get the trimmed down, so called French cut, racks of lamb which are nice in their own right.  But just wait and try lamb ribs barbecued the Memphis (i.e. dry) way.  Fantastic.  When you think about it lambs have exactly the same rib set up as pigs so why wouldn't they have spare ribs too?  Well they do and probably its the butcher that knows just how lovely they are so doesn't allow them to get out to the public at large.  He gets to keep them for himself instead.  Don't blame him at all.

Rendezvous BBQ in Memphis' dry rubbed lamb ribs

St. Louis Pizza
The other side of the coin to the deep dish is the wafer thin, hellishly crispy, cut into squares piece of deliciousness that is the St. Louis Pizza.  Lord knows why they do it this way, I am just glad they do.  Just fantastic.  We had one for breakfast one day which is a really good time to eat this type of pizza.  I think any time is good to eat this type of pizza actually.

Toasted Ravioli
What?  It happened by accident when a chef accidentally dropped a ravioli into a deep fat fryer.  OK its fried and anything fried tastes good, right?  We only had it once and it was ... OK.  Crispy for sure on the outside which is interesting but the inside remains a bit on the stodgy side.  Glad to have had it but I won't rush back for more.  And the title... no idea why its called 'Toasted' as its actually deep fried.  Could be because it sounds more healthy to be toasted.

And what we missed, again in no particular order:

St. Louis BQ
This is the wet cousin of dry BBQ with gushing amounts of sauce sloshed all over the cooked meat.  To be honest we didn't try that hard to eat it.

Frozen Custard Pie
Huh?  Just as it sounds except place in freezer and cut chunks off to eat... like an ice cream.  Never saw it.

Alligator and Shrimp Cheesecake
Honestly.  We went to a good cajun style restaurant and this was on the menu.  A bunch of guys came in after we'd eaten and went through a bunch of Louisiana favorites including steamed crawfish, oysters done a variety of cooked styles and this.  Imagine a cheesecake covered in shrimp and alligator and that's exactly what it was.

It would be wrong to talk about eats without what should wash it all down so in no particular order:

Mint Julep
I'd practiced by having a julep with coriander in Cayman a short while before which was ... well ... so when we were in Kentucky we just had to have the real thing that is served in gallons at the Kentucky Derby.  Made with bourbon, mint and sugar syrup over ice, this drink is not to be taken lightly at all.  I cannot imagine drinking more than two of these without the ability to retire to a quiet, cool, dark room for a nice lie down.

Old Fashioned
Made with bourbon, syrup again and something else, I think sweet vermouth, this tastes like velvet and warms you from the inside top to toe within two minutes.  About this time you also lose the feeling in your teeth so probably have another which really is a bad idea without the ability to retire to a quiet, cool, dark room for a nice lie down.

Old Fashioned on the left and Mint Julep to the right

Bourbon
This of course is unfair as there are hundreds of varietals all made with the same loving difference as the finest scotch whiskies.

Negroni
This drink is made to different recipes in different places.  The basic ingredients are gin, campari and sweet vermouth but if you delete gin and add bourbon, you get the Peabody Hotel Memphis twist.  However if you take some port, put it in a barrel for 4 weeks and then add the aforementioned traditional ingredients you get the Missouri Athletic Club twist.  Both are really scrummy and if you are wise, you definitely have another and abandon further plans for the evening but instead seek out a quiet, cool, dark room for a nice lie down.

Barman Robert's Negroni from the Missouri Athletic Club

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Home of the King

Its been a few days since our visit to Graceland, Elvis Presley's home in Memphis, and I have been thinking about it quite a lot.

Firstly, by today's standards its not that snazzy a place and when you go inside it really isn't so cutting edge that you'd think Elvis crazy.  He took a lovely, big traditional home already called Graceland (Elvis being a fervent Christian loved the name, so kept it) and turned it into a family home.  He moved his mum, dad and granny into the house who helped in the office and cooked his meals and generally looked after him.

Elvis' living room

OK he had 3 TV's in the basement (not that big a deal today of course) so he could watch the 3 TV networks then available -- Elvis was an avid reader and had read that the President had 3 TV's for this reason too.

Showing on the TV when we visited were The Outlaw Josey Wales, Dr. Strangelove and Get Smart. Elvis was a big Monty Python fan too and loved reading.  

And the basement was a bright yellow.

And he had really great leather sofas and chairs.

This was a home.  Elvis' home.  He loved it.

Even his cars weren't that spaced out.  Elvis loved cars and bought, sold and gave away loads of them all the time.  His entourage in particular made out pretty well in this respect.  But he didn't sell or trade his mum's favorite pink cadillac!

I could rave about the place but really its a place to visit.  We went early in the day and paid for the full VIP package (everything but you get to the front of the line).  We spent over 3 hours there and by the time we left the huge car park was full of cars and the grounds were full of people... of all colors and nationalities, and of all ages too.

Elvis wasn't a song writer but he got co-credits for 'All Shook Up'

Today 'Elvis' is no doubt trademarked and his 'brand' is still worth a fortune.  I was trying to figure out who actually owns it all seeing as Elvis and his parents plus granny are all dead -- buried in the family memorial ground in the garden along with Elvis' still born twin -- but then of course his daughter, Lisa Marie is still around ...and visits regularly.

A very young Elvis

The Graceland experience really is a celebration of Elvis' life and legacy and focuses on all the good bits in his life (there are a lot).  It avoids much of anything about the Colonel and his addictions -- ironically Elvis was a non-smoking, teetotaler. His problems were apparently due to 'prescription drugs' issued by quack doctors.  The parallel with Michael Jackson in this respect is interesting.

I just loved it all!

Stairway to Cleethorpes

In the past few days we've been in Music City USA (Nashville) and Music City USA (Memphis).  Both claim pre-eminence for some reason or another ranging from birth of the blues, home of country music, home of the Grand Old Opry, the first (and second) place that Elvis ever recorded, Elvis' home town... the list goes on.  But I think it comes down to time, place and the name.

The original Opry

Of course being sited where they are helped.

Imagine you're a poor farmer or share cropper who is struggling to make a living in the southern states in the 1920's and even worse in the 1930's.  What do you do?  Well people did one of two things: they went north or west... along Route 66 to the Promised Land (aka California where land was cheap, fertile and being given away).

If they went north, they used highway 61 which goes up the Mississippi River, the dominant geographical feature here and before interstate highways THE main artery of the region.  First stop was the major staging port of... Memphis, next was Nashville or St. Louis and finally you ended up in the factories or building the new sky scrapers of Chicago.

Some made the entire journey, others stopped along the way and when they stopped they looked around for things to do and when it came to writing songs they found happily that both Nashville and Memphis are great names to rhyme with.  You can't do that with Cleethorpes.

Both cities though are fabulous for music aficionados, rather less so for other types of culture seekers.  Both cities have created sections devoted to music bars, honky tonks and dives that locals avoid like the  plague but which we happy tourists flock to.

And then there are the museums too.  Country Music Hall of Fame, the Smithsonian's Museum of Rock and Soul, Graceland, the Gibson Guitar museum ... these are the ones we went to.  There were loads more that we didn't all along the same theme.  Having gone through days of touring I am amazed how much can be said about stuff.  But then again I'm a fine one to talk seeing I do drone on in these blogs about nothing in particular.

So highlights in brief:

Country Music Hall of Fame -- simply terrific.  I didn't think I could spend 3 hours in a place devoted to country music but there was certainly enough.  Interesting how it all began with a Brit back in the early 1900's who decided purely from an anthropological view to track the similarities in British and Celtic folk songs in the remote bits of ex-colonial America, like the Appalachians.  He found that the songs were very similar but the instruments used were different which made the sound different too.  Fewer bagpipes, more twangy things.  He wrote a book laying down 100 or so tunes that had never been written out before and that was that.  Country music was now born.

Rock and Soul Museum -- wonderful.  Being a fan of both genres I found it interesting how the former came from basically one guy (Elvis) who wandered into a small recording studio called Sun Records in 1954 with $4 and asked to record a song for his granny's birthday.  He did and the engineer noted that he wasn't bad but somewhat derivative of all the droney country singers of that time.  However a short while later he rolled back again and asked to try out a few more songs.  The producer, Sam Phillips, said sure, Elvis handed over $20 and was introduced to a couple of musicians hanging around.  They recorded a couple of throwaway country ballads and when Sam went out for a while they decided to bang away at a couple of other things.  So just fooling around they tried a soul song by Arthur Crudup called "That's Alright Mama" but at twice the pace.  Sam came back unannounced and asked what they were doing.  Elvis apologized and said he wouldn't do it again but Sam said no, please do it again.  It sounded good.  So they did it again ... and 2 weeks later that first single was released and rock and roll was born.  And Elvis had a band too.

Elvis' choice of a soul tune (and later of blues and gospel tunes) brought black music to the ears of the mainstream and so launched the financially successful careers of a host of black musicians who would otherwise have struggled to become mainstream.

This is a very simplistic and brief rehash of all that stuff and I know I'm cutting corners in the explanations which made sense to me anyway.  The sociological stuff was a bit intense and I don't think it was just music that broke down the racial barriers in the 1960's.  It helped of course but was only one of many things happening at the time.

Graceland -- fantastic.  I've read quite a few biographies and autobiographies of musicians I like and with very few exceptions I've been disappointed as most of the stars are unpleasant, selfish egotists.  I don't much want to delve too deeply into the Elvis myth to shatter another but the Graceland view was that he was an exceptional guy.  It certainly is managed with taste and panache that Elvis I think would have approved of.  There were however no later on pictures of a chubby Elvis or details of the less seemly aspects of his life.  But then again this is a celebration not an expose.

I came away more of a fan than I arrived.

Gibson Guitar Factory -- so many things to touch and play with I was however disappointed in the end that I came out just as bad a guitarist as I was when I went into the factory/museum/shop.  I did get to play some beautiful guitars and wish I could have done better justice to them.

Others, mainly miserable spotty youths, had a great time and actually played pretty well which made me no happier either.  However one such youth actually bought one of the beauties and as he was talking to the world weary sales associate, you could see the beam on his face and the underlying excitement that he'd actually bought one of THE best guitars in the world.  Gibson only make to order.  By hand.  And really someone sits down with each majestic piece of work with a razor blade and trims the edges to give all the axes that white trim which ALL Gibsons must have.

I wish I'd bought one.  Not necessarily to play, you understand.  Just to hold some times.  I'd have chosen the E335.

The E335 as played by Alvin Lee at Woodstock in 1969.  They are still red but without those stickers