Please welcome Todd Starnes to the blogosphere
Todd is a native southerner and a news anchor for Fox News Radio in [gasp!] New York. You can check out his blog, Todd’s Journal here. Stop by and pay him a visit, folks. It looks like a promising read.
Oh, and you gotta love the introduction he penned for his blog:
I’ve left my beloved South to find my fortune north of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s a barren land — void of the blessings that make the South the promised land. The people are nice enough, but there’s no Waffle House, no Cracker Barrel, and for some reason, I can’t seem to get a glass of sweet iced tea to save my life. So enjoy the ruminations on my journey as a Tennessee Volunteer in New York City.
October 30th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
if people dont drink iced tea what do they drink? is it really that uncommon outside of the south?
October 30th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
is it really that hard to put a packet of sugar in your tea?
and yes, i’d never even heard of “sweet tea”, or “usweet tea” for that matter, until i moved to the south.
people drink sodas or water. maybe lemonade. then iced tea (unsweetened).
but i can understand your pain and i’ll feel for you from the other side of the line(not that the line exists in my original part part of the country). the hardest part of my moving to the south is also missing the foods i enjoy (chinese, korean, japanese, thai, indian, mexican, mediterranean and middle eastern, etc…)
October 30th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Beer.
But I do miss the Waffle Houses that got me through so many law school finals weeks….
October 30th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
I feel your pain. Try finding real pizza, calzone, or a well made chicken parmasan sandwich in Macon or Atlanta. I am sure there is someone who runs some place called “Escape from New York” or something similar that does a pretty good simulation–but it just isn’t the same.
NYC has some places that claim to be Southern–but everyone knows its as real as those countries in Epcot.
October 30th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
I’ve always thought a Southerner could do quite well here in Cincinnati. We have Waffle Houses, Cracker Barrels, and if you just head across the river to Kentucky, you can get sweet tea (in fact, you may get it even if you don’t want it, if you forget to ask for it “unsweet,” which really shouldn’t be a word but seems to be one nonetheless).
Just don’t order the “Cincinnati chili” expecting cognizable chili. Several years ago, a Southern friend of mine, during our first week of law school, ordered the local delicacy, put a heaping forkful in his mouth, and promptly spit it back out onto the plate!
And inBirmingham: Though I’m a staunch Northerner through and through, there’s a difference between “sweet tea” and sweetening tea with sugar. In the Southern version, the tea is brewd (I think!) with the sugar, so it’s truly infused throughout the tea.
October 30th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Hey y’all.
On a positive note, I must say the Yankees are a fairly nice bunch of folks. They’re just always in a hurry.
And on the subject of pizza — I sworn before the Lord Almighty I will never eat at Pizza Hut again.
I’ve been educated in the fine art of the New York pizza.
If you find yourself in these parts, you must travel to Little Italy and eat at Leonardo’s — the nation’s first pizza joint. Brick oven is the way to go. I’ll be posting an essay on pizza in the coming weeks.
October 31st, 2006 at 12:40 am
inBirmingham, if you’ve ever tasted cold, iced tea with sugar poured into it, you’ll know that it is practically nothing like tea that has been sweetened while being brewed. Sugar doesn’t dissolve all that well or all that evenly in ice. It really isn’t the same at all. You get a mouthful of bitter, unsweetened tea with lots of little sugar grains in it. When I first left the south I figured I could do exactly what you recommend and, to be honest, you’re better off just ordering lemonade or something.
October 31st, 2006 at 1:49 am
I think you mean Lombardi’s Pizza at 34 Spring St. (I don’t know from Leonardo’s but I do know NY pizza.)
Actually, while Lombardi’s kinda claims to be the oldest pizza joint in NY, it really can only lay claim to the name and the same street. The original Lombardi’s brick oven pizza was at 53 Spring St., across the street and to the west a bit. The new Lombardi’s and the old Lombardi’s have nothing to do with each other. That dated brick work in the new Lombardi’s oven hasn’t been there more than ten years. (Take a close look sometime at the pictures of the old Lombardi’s on the wall of the new Lombardi’s. And see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombardi%27s)
Arguably, the pizza joint with the most impressive provenance–a spin off of the original Lombardi’s and still in operation by the same family and using the same ovens in Coney Island–is Totonno’s Pizza. http://www.totonnos.com
That said, dumping Pizza Hut is essential, and Lombardi’s serves, even if it’s history is a bit made up, very fine pizza. Near perfect pizza, IMO. I shared a scrumptous pie there just the other night and it was the best pie I’ve had since a near perfect Totonno’s slice in August.
October 31st, 2006 at 2:33 am
It’s a testiment to the seductive power of pizza that a post on transplanted Southerners in NYC becomes a post on the best pizza in the Big Apple.
Like newborn ducks we imprint on the first things we see, smell, or taste. That is a powerful force. But it is interesting that for the imprinting to hold it has to be of quality. So once you been imprinted with quality Southern cooking–so substitute will do and you will be forever bound to it. If you are from Virginia you will be always biased to Smithfield ham or some other quality local as opposed to any other country ham.
But if you were given a cheap substitute (like Pizza Hut, which isn’t even pizza) to initially imprint on–your first taste of authentic pizza can be mindblowing. The same goes for Northerners who never had real Southern cooking–but when they finally get it they realize they have missed it all their lives.
October 31st, 2006 at 4:01 am
My favorite old pizza joints near Boston always seemed to use gigantic commercial Blodgett pizza ovens. Don’t remember brick ovens.
October 31st, 2006 at 10:59 am
you know what is harder to find than sweet tea? a good chicken fried steak. you get out of texas or oklahoma and it becomes a roundsteakless wasteland. ask for a dr pepper with that steak? fogidaboudit.
October 31st, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Generally in the north, iced tea (sweetened or un-) is a seasonal drink - only available from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
October 31st, 2006 at 1:40 pm
At lunchtime, when I haven’t yet eaten yet today, it’s almost painful to be reading about New York styled pizza. Oh, New York pizza, so cheap ($4 for two slices and a coke at my favorite joint near City Hall) and so good. How I miss thee.
I remember my first taste of non New York pizza during my first week of college in Atlanta. We ordered Dominoes. That, my friends, is not pizza. It still mystifies me that there are even Dominoes and Pizza Huts in the city.
Meanwhile, I’m in no man’s land here in DC/Maryland. Can’t get the good NY pizza, bagels, and other deli food, and can’t quite find a lot of good southern cooking. In other words, I am in food hell.
October 31st, 2006 at 4:13 pm
yawn. as a southerner who has lived in NYC since graduating from college, i am bored by people who move here and can’t stop talking about home. love it or leave it, dude! and spare me about not getting good southern food in new york - you can get anything you want here. ANYTHING. that’s part of the allure of living here. but try getting thai food at 4 in the morning in birmingham or nashville…
November 1st, 2006 at 1:18 am
I was just going to say, I don’t miss the restaurant food in lower Alabama so much when it’s possible to eat late night soul food–black, white, low country, and New Orleans–at a dozen places in Manhattan and another dozen in Brooklyn. If I get sentimental about Southern food here, it’s for New Orleans cafes and wayward BBQ joints.
November 1st, 2006 at 10:16 am
neil
if you want the green apple splatters you dont need that thai junk at 4am….you just need a hardy’s or carls jr’s