Fried Twinkie, Al Fresco

Sept 6, 2012

On Saturday mornings during the warm months, Appleton, Wisconsin, closes College Ave. from Appleton St. to Durkee St. and holds a farmers’ market, which it calls a Farm Market. It has vendors, of course, both fresh food and handcrafts, including some that sell from trucks, such as this one brimming with corn.

There’s a bit of live music, too.

And some prepared food from food trucks. Note that Anthony’s has deep-fried Twinkies. I’d heard of such, but never had one. This was my opportunity, for a mere two-spot, to try it. So I did.

It was a lot like the fried dough you find at carnivals, except that it had creme in the center, all gooey and hot. Another member of our party spotted me ordering it, and later asked me how it was. “Fried death,” I told her, to conform to prevailing opinion about such a deep-fried creation. But I figured that one wasn’t going to shorten my life any more than the time it took to eat it, and that one deep-fried Twinkie per lifetime was probably enough anyway.

New Product Thursday

Sept 20, 2012

Corn and Chile Tomato-Less Salsa. Bottles of this product, containing 13.75 oz. (390g) of salsa without a speck of tomato, are available at Trader Joe's. In case you don't get the point, the verbage on the bottle exclaims (in all caps) NOT ALL SALSAS ARE MADE WITH TOMATOES! "Popular recipes found throughout Mexico & the Tex-Mex border region contain everything but the tomato. [Everything?] We searched for a tomato-less salsa & found a unique recipe with corn, red bell peppers, onion & jalapeño peppers..."

Like I've said before, I like good product-label advertising blarney, and Trader Joe's produces some of the best. The text on the bottle implies that intrepid culinary explorers fanned out throughout Mexico, enduring heat and illness and long bus rides on bad roads to seek out cafés and taquerías and hovels whose tomato-less recipes might be right for Trader Joe's selection of novelties.

Whatever it says on the jar, I have to report that it's a good salsa. But the real reason for that isn't mentioned anywhere in the advertising on the jar, with its listing of corn, red bell peppers, onion & jalapeño peppers, which are nos. 1, 4, 3 and 5, respectively, on the ingredient list. Rather, it's the no. 2 ingredient that makes the salsa sing: sugar.

Downmarket from Trader Joe's, but controlled by the same obscure German billionaires, is Aldi. There you can buy Simply Nature brand Sweet Potato Corn Tortilla Chips. Or maybe it's Simply Nature All Natural Food brand. "Simply Nature" is in much larger text (36 pts, maybe), while "All Natural Food" is maybe 12 pts. So maybe Simply Nature is the headline and All Natural Food is the subhead, to put like a journalist would.

Anyway, it drives home the point that "Nature" and "Natural" on food labels are completely meaningless. This particular product contains corn -- let's assume they mean maize -- and sweet potatoes as ingredients nos. 1 and 2. In as much as I understand the history of maize, it was created by Indians through selective breeding of much less useful ancestor plants, and exists only because of human intervention. So from the get-go, corn is as natural as Hoover Dam.

Never mind, the chips are outrageously tasty. Good, as it happens, with Corn and Chile Tomato-Less Salsa, but also other species of salsa that sport crushed bits of red orbs.

One more thing, not a food item. Yuriko came home not long ago with Valerie Bertinelli brand measuring spoons. I didn't know the actress had any lines of cooking equipment, but I don't know a lot of things. Included are four spoons, 1/4 Tsp, 1/2 Tsp, 1 Tsp, and 1 Tbsp, or 1.25 ml, 2.5 ml, 5 ml, and 15 ml. Google, at least, tells us that 1 Tbsp = 14.7867648 ml, though I'm not sure where the search engine got that number. Seems close enough.

The spoons are stainless steel with blue silicone handles, and are strung together on a small steel triangle like keys on a triangular keychain. They seem like perfectly adequate measuring spoons. The tag has English and French on it -- my guess would be for export to Canada -- and a small picture of Ms. Bertinelli apparently at a picnic table, spooning colorful food (fruit?) from a larger bowl to a serving-sized bowl. She's wearing a bright yellow apron and, either because it's an old picture, or through the magic of modern photography, about 20 years seem to have been shaved off her appearance.

Yuriko didn't have the slightest idea who Valerie Bertinelli was. She was just looking for measuring spoons. But I noticed instantly. I think to fully appreciate Valerie Bertinelli's charms, it helps a lot to have been a 15-year-old boy in 1976 with access to American television.

Hello, Mr. Coffee

My idea of brand loyalty doesn't really extend to coffee makers, but I went ahead and bought a new Mr. Coffee at a big box retailer today. First, it wasn't any more expensive than the other brands, because a sale knocked off a few dollars. Second, I can be sure that the carafe from the old maker can be used as a spare for the new one.

It's a basic model. The more expensive coffee makers, including the Mr. Coffee brand, feature "programmable" features. Pass. First, because I doubt we'd ever use the more elaborate functions. Second, it's just another damn thing to break, and for all I know a failure of the programming functions might bollix the simple functions -- consumer engineering has occasionally been known to roll that way.

I can report that the new maker made a satisfactory cup of coffee this evening. At least there were no complaints. I hope it lasts at least five years, which would put its use at about $3.60 a year, not counting electric usage.

So Long, Mr. Coffee

I'd been paying some attention to the voyage of Curiosity, but in the last few days only enough to know that the landing was supposed to be today. I figured I would check its progress through the day, but I hadn't noticed that the scheduled landing time was very early in the morning here in North America. So I slept through the Seven Minutes of Terror. I opened up Google News this morning and there they were: numerous stories about the successful landing, an astonishing bit of spacefaring by an unbelievably complicated set of machines.

Here on Earth, more specifically in my kitchen, a much simpler machine gave up the ghost today, our Mr. Coffee. Relatively simple, I have to add, because I understand that Mr. Coffee represents a nifty bit of engineering itself, one that revolutionized home coffee-making in the early '70s, and introduced young TV-watchers to Joe DiMaggio.

I don't have any opinion about the quality of Mr. Coffee coffee, since I don't drink coffee. But Yuriko seemed to like it. Often, late in the afternoon, I would use it to prepare her some coffee to drink after she returns from work. Today, I loaded it up with coffee grounds and water, and flipped the switch. The little green light went on, but other than that, nothing. Tried it a few more times: still nothing. Cleaned it out and tried again. Nothing.

There'd been nothing unusual about the appliance's performance lately or any strange noises. No hint that the end was near after what -- six or seven years on the job? (I can't really remember.) Mr. Coffee just up and died.

Adios, Ultra Foods

Do fireflies prefer wet or dry summers? Can't say, but I did see the first fireflies of the season on Saturday evening. Just a handful, though. Maybe the dry summer so far will keep their numbers down, or maybe they're advance scouts for a firefly invasion.

Over years I've mentioned visiting a "discount grocery store" and almost each time it's been Ultra Foods of Hanover Park, Ill., one of a small local chain of stores anchoring a shopping center not far from where I live. From its parking lot, I saw a car floating in a pond; chanced across a box of Quisp there but didn't buy any; found peanut butter from Argentina there and did buy some; likewise some cookies from Columbia; bought domestic peanut butter for 88¢ a jar there during the peanut scare of early 2009; saw some shoplifters on a perp walk out of its doors; found Black Jack and Clove gum on its shelves; and more.

I got to know the place pretty well, in fact. Mostly I went there for its frequent discounts on soft drinks and a few other items, but we also enjoyed some of the deli's meats and cheeses, and the bakery's French bread and its doughnuts, some of which were very good.

Friday afternoon, I arrived to pick up some of these very items, though I'd noticed that there was no Ultra Foods circular in Wednesday's paper (the grocery circulars are, alas, one of the main reasons to hang on to the subscription). I figured it was left out by mistake.

But no: a sign at the Ultra Foods in Hanover Park said, THIS STORE IS CLOSING. EVERYTHING 20% OFF. What? That can't be right. Closing? Why? Didn't make its numbers? Lost its lease? I thought discount grocers had done well in the hard years since 2008, but it's always been true that the grocery business is a thin-margin high wire act.

The store had closed its bakery and deli, and was no longer restocking items that sold out. Certain aisles were practically empty. It was about as depressing as a grocery store can be without being visibly infested by rodents. One employee, a fellow about my age, was restocking some fruit, or maybe just re-arranging it. He looked miserable. I expect he was, since the ax hadn't fallen that long ago.

"When's the last day?" I asked my cashier, a young woman. She wasn't that upset, because she was going back to school in the fall anyway. She wasn't sure when the last day was, though. Whenever everything is sold off. Soon.

So long, Ultra Foods. I will not, as the sign also suggested, be visiting the Wheaton location, unless I happen to be there anyway. It's a fine store, but that's too far to go for groceries, especially the discount kind. Time to look elsewhere.

Modern Moxie

Recently at a specialty candy and beverage shop, I had the opportunity to buy a bottle of Moxie and drink it. Let it never be said that when such an opportunity arises, I don't have Moxie. I'd never had the drink before, which is a regional beverage associated with New England — Maine especially. I've read that it's considered "bitter," but I found it mildly sweet (its second ingredient is cane sugar) and not bad at all.

These days Moxie is made by the Cornucopia Beverage Co. of Bedford, NH, but like some other sodas, it apparently began as a patent medicine, meaning that descriptions of its early days are bound to be as much murky lore as history. Here's a short history anyway, courtesy the Marietta Soda Museum. Moxie lost the early cola wars, according to the site, which notes, "until 1920 Moxie was outselling Coca-Cola, but Moxie made the same decision that a lot of soft drink producers made when sugar prices skyrocketed. They bought large quantities to protect themselves from future price increases.

"Unfortunately, prices collapsed and they were forced to sell their product at a loss. This also meant that they didn't have the money for advertising so they cut back dramatically. They should have borrowed the money, because without advertising sales also declined dramatically and they never recovered."

According to the bottle, the unusual ingredient to modern Moxie is "gentian root extractives," another food term I had to look up, which took me from the murky world of 19th-century patent medicines to the murky world of 21st-century health web sites. As near as I can tell, gentian is a large genus of plants that grow a lot of places, some of which are considered good for what ails ya. It also flavors various drinks, mostly of European origin, that aren't Moxie.

One more thing: another part of the Moxie experience is listening to the "Moxie One-Step," evidently written to promote the beverage during those long-lost days when it was a rival of Coca-cola.

Item From the Past: Austin '88

On May 20, 1988, I flew to Austin for a long weekend. My old friend Tom was graduating from UT. Later, instead of detailing the weekend in diary form, I did a schematic.

I'm not going to transcribe the entire thing, but it shows my arrival on a United flight into Austin -- I'm surprised I didn't fly Southwest -- and then my movements afterward: to Tom's apartment, Kirby Lane for dinner, back to Tom's, and then that night's sleep, which was disturbed by cats. The next morning, we bought groceries, helped Tom clean up, and then went with a number of people to Carmelo's for the "Graduation Banquet," as I called it.

After that, we hung out awhile, eventually attending Tom's graduation. Bill Moyers was the commencement speaker. For dinner that night, we went to a place called Trudy's, a Mexican restaurant ("Saturday Night's All Right for Eating," I called the meal). That night's sleep was "smooth" -- the cats were quiet, I guess. The next day we had breakfast at a place called the Omletry [sic] and spent some time at Pease Park in Austin. I went to the airport after that.

The Joneses together for the occasion (from left): Richard, Lisa, Tom, Zan.

Tom, Nancy and I, during an interlude.

Mother's Day Spuds

A pleasant, at-home weekend. On Sunday the air was so warm and calm that I fired up the ovoid grill to burn excess sticks and convert raw meat into something juicy and fine. At their mother's request — for Mother's Day, you see — the girls did some planting outside, mostly in pots. Some flowers, some herbs. Spring's in full flush.

With the grilled meat we ate, among other things, mashed potatoes out of a bag. On Saturday I happened to be at a large grocery store, a hypermarket really, but not the one that allegedly (ahem) bribed its way to spectacular growth in a certain Latin American country. I saw a bag of Yoder's Whipped Mashed Potatoes (whipped 'n' mashed: their wills thoroughly broken, I'd say), "Like Mom Used to Make!" and "It's Grandma Good!"

How's that for a double matriarchal seal of approval? But I doubt that my mother ever added hydrogenated cottonseed oils, sodium benzoate or sodium acid pyrophosphate (to protect color) to her mashed potatoes. (What color?) Besides potatoes, however, the main ingredients were butter and salt, which are the soul of mashed potatoes.

Anyway, the main selling point was that the sale-by-day was that day, so that a 2 lb. bag cost me 99¢, compared with a regular price of more than $3. Sold. It took about five minutes of nuking and stirring to get the contents ready for the table. For bagged and microwaved spuds, they turned out pretty good. Not an always-alternative to actual mashed potatoes, but much better than dried potato flakes in a box, which I lost any taste for years ago.

The Ultimate Cheddar Cheese Curls

Not long ago, a bag of the Michael Season's the Ultimate Cheddar Cheese Curls came into the house. In appearance at least, they're a Cheetos-class snack food, made by Seasons' Enterprises of Addison, Ill. (the varied apostrophe usage is theirs).

The blarney on the bag is fairly thick: "Our crunchy curl is made with organic corn and then, while it's still hot, we let loose an avalanche of real cheese! Glorious, creamy, tangy, incredible cheddar cheese — and that's what make this the finest cheese curl you've ever tasted." But come to think of it, I wouldn't mind witnessing a cheese avalanche (from a distance).

Because of their passing similarity to the famed orange snack food, my expectations were low for Michael Season's. I've eaten enough Cheetos in my life, but not all that many in recent years. It's one of those things I've mostly lost my taste for. As you probably should. So I was pleasantly surprised when I tried them. They're a lot better than Cheetos.

A site called Snackerrific.com puts it well: "The cheesiness is far more genuine than I remember Cheetos being, and far better. The texture was crunchy, with a satisfying snap. The curls are surprisingly dense, lacking the dissolution factor I remember from my experiences with Cheetos."

Today I discovered that neither Lilly nor Ann likes them. "Why not?" I asked. "These taste more like actual cheese." My observation was dismissed. "They aren't Cheetos, Daddy!"

The Big Red Grill

Late last week I had lunch at a Weber Grill here in the greater northwestern suburbs. Instead of a bovine-based meal, I picked the crabcake sandwich and was well rewarded for my choice. I also went back to my car and fetched the camera, just so I could have a picture of the big red grill outside the restaurant.

 

There aren't quite as many Weber Grill locations as I'd thought. In fact, there's only four: the one in Schaumburg, another in Chicago that I visited some years ago, one in west suburban Lombard, and one in Indianapolis. The one Chicago has a large grill hanging over the entrance and a bronze statue of a griller and his Weber just inside the door. I didn't notice any art of that kind at the Schaumburg location.

"Watch our chefs masterfully prepare steaks, burgers, chops and chicken to your desired level of doneness on real Weber kettles grills," the restaurant web site says. "The grills are very similar to the Weber Ranch Kettle, but modified slightly for indoor restaurant use. (Notice they are not porcelain coated since it doesn’t rain indoors.)... that’s real charcoal they’re piling into those grills, heating them up to about 1500° F. Our chefs heat up about 2000 pounds of coal per day, using a genuine Weber Chimney Starter just like you would at home."

Not just like me. I don't have a real Weber, just a generic ovoid grill, and I haven't gotten around to getting a chimney starter, though I've seen them at work.

The Gabuttø Burger

The Gabuttø Burger, according to the place that serves Gabuttø Burgers, is a "special blend of ground beef and ground pork. By adding pork we have achieved a juicier meat patty than traditional all-beef patties." Could be. The patty was tender and flavorful, especially with the addition of the demi-glace sauce that comes with a regular Gabuttø, making it something like the teriyaki burger that Mos Burger serves, but not quite the same. I see that Gabuttø also offers something it calls a teriyaki burger, which may be much closer to that much-liked Mos creation. (Much liked by me.)

I noticed the Gabuttø stand at the Mitsuwa food court in Arlington Heights some time ago, but never got around to trying it until Saturday when Ann and I were there. It's a brightly colored stand, mostly red and yellow, located between a coffee-and-tea shop and a stand that serves tonkatsu and the like. Gabuttø has about a dozen varieties of burger, and offers "flavored fries," which are much like you'd get in a lot of places, with one difference.

The novelty of the fries is that you add the flavoring yourself, not in the form of sauces, but from individually labeled shakers the shop provides -- shake one and out comes a flavored seasoning: original, wasabi, garlic and butter, corn soup flavor, ranch, sour cream and onion, nacho or curry. I tried the original. The concept was a little more interesting in conception than execution, since it took a lot of shaking to make the fries only a little more flavorful, but the seasoning was good, once I figured that out.

I checked later to see whether this is a chain I've never heard of. The one in Arlington Heights seems to be the only one, but maybe they dream of franchising.

What's with the ø? I don't believe the proprietors are Danish or Norwegian -- it seems they're Japanese, or perhaps Japanese-Americans -- and at their web site they use the phrase "støre infø," and "flavøred fries," so my guess would be that it's just a way to distinguish the name. I didn't ask. Maybe the next time I go, very likely for the teriyaki burger and a different seasoning on my fries, I'll ask.

The Tamale Spaceship Truck

During my recent visit downtown, I also caught sight of the Tamale Spaceship truck.

On the side of the silvery vehicle is this figure.

According to the Tamale Spaceship's web site, "We are a catering-food truck company based in Chicago area featuring the authenticity of Mexican cuisine. We are inspired by Luchadores (Mexican Wrestlers) with a mission to bring to the streets homemade tamales with authentic regional dishes and classic moles from all over Mexico."

Still, I wonder. Does that creature help sell tamales? Maybe it does. I might have bought one myself, if I hadn't had lunch already, and if the driver had been around.

Bowling for Soup

Got a new client, so these have been busy days. I'm also going out for events now a bit more than I used to, which mostly counts as a good thing. Because sometimes I stumble across items like the following.

I went to a small expo last week and saw several structures like the one above. They were in the atrium just outside the meeting space. My notes fail me on what this particular item was supposed to represent, but as the picture shows, it's built out of canned goods, mostly ravioli and pork 'n' beans. It was built to raise money for the Northern Illinois Food Bank. You "voted" for the nonfresh food structure you liked best by putting at least a dollar in the collection box near it.

Not quite all the structures were built of cans. The one above, for instance, was called "Bowling for Soup." The lane is made of spaghetti boxes and the pins are bottled water, with only a few cans of soup holding up the boxes of Saltines. I liked this one best, so it got my dollar.

Sasaya Coconut Drink

The first weekend of March was as cold, gray and windy as any in early December or late February, complete with snow on the ground that didn't melt (some, anyway). It all represented a touch of the winter that was in short supply this year. Bah, who needs it.

Mostly I was indoors, though I did spend a short time at Mitsuwa, the Japanese grocery store in the northwest suburbs. My single impulse purchase during the visit was a can of Sasaya brand coconut drink, which happened to be discounted. Over the years I haven't had much luck with finding many East Asian canned beverages that I like, except for some of the vending machine offerings in Japan such as Simba Milk Tea (bought warm) and my favorite genki drink, Dekavita C. I haven't ever taken a cotton to any of the grass jelly drinks, for instance.

I put Sasaya in the refrigerator for delayed gratification, but in a few hours Ann found it and wanted to try it right then. So I split the can with her. Turns out that Sasaya is pretty tasty, looking like milk but not as heavy, and sweet with more than a hint of coconut. Small wonder, since the ingredients are water, coconut juice, sugar and "natural flavors." The nutritional value of the drink is low, except for a gram of dietary fiber and a lot of the saturated fat one needs to get through the day.

Sasaya is a product of AGV Products Corp. of Taiwan. Looking into AGV Products Corp., I found that -- according to taiwanexporter.net -- the company also produces [all sic]: "Pickled cucumber, pickled lettuce, fermented oriental [?], pickling melon in sauce, jumbo pickled bamboo shoots, chilisauce, mo-bo tofo, tuna slice, dr. thompson congee:mushroom & chicken flavor, scallop & egg flavor, neo neo pearls, milk peanut soup, neo neo ten huba, red bean with jelly, barley drink, sugar cane asparagus drink, sasaya coconut drink, milk tea, ho-eat bifido yogurt drink."

I have to try me some Neo Neo Ten Huba, I think. But not any Sugar Cane Asparagus Drink.

A Fergus' Ark Two-Color Postcard, With Commentary

My brother Jay recently sent me a batch of blank postcards. I was glad to get them, since my supply is down to only a few hundred. The nearby resale shop that used to sell me cards at 25¢ each, or even 12.5¢ on sale days, has jacked up the price to $2 and $3 a card. At that price, forget it.

One of the cards he sent depicts Fergus' Ark, a floating seafood restaurant formerly in Wilmington, NC. The card must be 50 years old, and produced as cheaply as a color card can be -- a two-color printing job, which just screams cheap.

Note the writing on the card. Someone made a comment on the restaurant, presumably after a visit, and it wasn't favorable. "ordinary no good no atmosphere expensive for what one gets"

This is scanned from the back of the card. Not the entire back, which has a space for writing a message and a address like any postcard, but only a corner of the card. The mascot fish wears a top hat and carries a cane, for that touch of piscine class.

The Cafe Fear Museum web site tells me that "the first Fergus’ Ark (1952-1965) was a floating restaurant moored at the foot of Princess Street in Wilmington. The ship the Ark, originally named the General Frederick C. Hodgkins, was built in Wilmington in the early 1920s. According to the restaurant’s menu, the Ark had been a banana boat, a floating casino, a quarter boat for members U.S. Coast Guard in World War II, and, in 1946, the U.S. Maritime Commission’s office space. Then Ivon Eldridge Fergus (1914-1998) bought the Ark in September 1951 and converted it into a restaurant.

"The first Fergus’ Ark closed in February 1965 so that a coast guard facility could be built in its place. Mr. Fergus then opened a Fergus Ark on Market Street and two others on Carolina Beach Road and Oleander Drive. At one point, Fergus owned four restaurants... As for the Ark, it was initially sold to a Florida businessman. Over the next decades, it changed hands a number of times yet it was still afloat in the 1990s, serving as the office of a Florida boating supply company."

The Coke Freeze

So there I was, shoveling snow from the driveway late Saturday morning. Frozen precipitation had visited northern Illinois on Friday in quantity. Unless there's a snow blower active nearby, shoveling snow is a fairly quiet time: the softened hum of traffic in the distance, your own breath, or panting, the thump of your pre-heart attack heart beat, the tap-tap-tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker. Wait, what?

It usually isn't until March sometime that I hear the characteristic woodpecker pecking, but I heard tapping from a tree above, with eight or so inches of snow on the ground below. It didn't fit. I looked around and there it was, tapping away, high in a neighbor's tree. Maybe the winter has been so warm -- until about 10 days ago -- that there were some grubs in that tree for the bird. Or maybe he just likes showing off.

The January cold has taken its toll, especially on a Coke can accidentally left outside of the garage refrigerator. The contents expanded and the top popped off. I decided it needed to be documented.

This is the bottom of the can, compared with one that didn't freeze.

This is the can, viewed from above. To make the can stand up, I put a stapler next to it.

The frozen contents look a little unappetizing, but after the frozen Coke slush melted, it was drinkable.

Brazil, Where the Nuts Come From

The following description from a product label just about made my day. Sometimes that's all it takes. The product is a can of mixed nuts, nearly empty now, because they are tasty mixed nuts. For the record, Southern Grove brand, sold at Aldi.

The can says: "Peanuts product of USA and Argentina and Mexico, Cashews product of Vietnam and India and Brazil, Almonds product of USA, Brazil Nuts product of Peru and Bolivia and Brazil, Hazelnuts product of Turkey and USA, Pecans product of Mexico and USA."

An international festival of nuts, if there ever was one. I was glad to learn that at least some of the Brazil nuts come from Brazil. Also, I stumbled across the Brazil nut effect because of a Google autocomplete. I knew it was worth getting out of bed today, even with temps in the single digits.

Item From the Past: The Salt Lick

Driftwood, Texas, in the Hill Country west of Austin, has a number of charms, but the one I remember best is The Salt Lick. It does one thing and does it well: barbecue. In January 1993, Yuriko and I stopped by on the recommendation of an Austinite friend, and feasted on beef, sausage and pork ribs -- you can get all that on one plate, and we did.

The Salt Lick Pavilion, a venue for large events, is located near the restaurant itself. "An 8,000 Sq. Ft. Open Air Pavilion on the Banks of Onion Creek, a Scenic Setting Available for Private Parties, Weddings, Receptions, Company Picnics & Seminars," as the sign puts it.

I'm glad to know that Salt Lick is still around, and in fact has another location in Round Rock, Texas, northeast of Austin, and an outpost at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. One of these days, I'm going to visit again. I'm sure the other locations are fine, but I'll hold out for the original, sitting at the long tables of the Salt Lick in Driftwood.

Franks Diner, Kenosha, Wisconsin

I've been to a diner or two in the Upper Midwest. But none quite like Franks Diner in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We were there recently, as a side trip to another southern Wisconsin destination. It's one of those places whose charms are not visible from the sidewalk.

Enter through the unremarkable front door and inside you find something much more remarkable: a genuine rail car-style diner dating from the 1920s surrounded by that brick exterior, which was added later (but probably not too much later). The main room, long and narrow -- narrow as a rail car -- features a stone-top counter with 18 stools and a narrow food-service area behind the counter, complete with a large griddle given over mostly to the preparation of Franks' specialty, the Garbage Plate, more about which later.

The place had that diner smell: eggs and meats and hash browns and coffee. It also had that diner sound: the murmur of conversation, workers calling to each other, silverware scraping plates, metal clinking metal, the hiss of the griddle.

It was packed. A row of people sat at the counter, while others were at booths in the small rooms added to the counter room. A line of people waited for their seats in a long row behind the people at the counter. When seating was free, the people at the front of the line squeezed between the people sitting at the counter and the people behind them in line to reach either empty counter seats, or a small door that went to the rooms with the booths.

Franks Diner has a history. The Jerry O'Mahony Diner Co., a corporation whose specialty is long lost, built the original rail car-style diner in 1926 in Bayonne, NJ. Taken to Kenosha by flatcar, "there was some real excitement in downtown Kenosha when six horses pulled Franks Diner to the spot where it stands today," notes the Franks Diner web site. "Anthony Franks, who first learned of the unique restaurant opportunity through a magazine article, paid $7,500 plus $325 in shipping charges to launch his business. He added a dining room in 1935 and a larger kitchen in the mid 1940s."

I have to add that $7,825 in 1926 dollars was quite a risk, totaling more than $95,500 in current dollars. Mr. Franks must have really wanted to make a go of it, and I'm glad to say that the Franks family owned the joint until 2001. The current owners have only had it for about a year, and apparently have not meddled with success. At one point, an enormous man -- large of height, large of stomach, bald and wearing a white apron with food stains -- emerged from the back kitchen, and by his conversation with someone else, I knew he was one of the co-owners. "Did you have a good year?" I asked him. "It's been great," he said.

Diner authenticity is one thing, but without Franks' great food, the restaurant would have vanished long ago. The star of the show is its Garbage Plate, a concoction of hash-brown potatoes, eggs, green peppers, onions, jalapeños (if you want them), and a choice of three or fewer meats (or including no meat). The thing is seriously large. The standard Garbage Plate has five eggs, while the half plate has three. Most of the people I saw leaving Franks were carrying to-go boxes probably full of garbage, so to speak. Yuriko and Lilly split a full Garbage Plate, and I was able to sample some. Wow. My own meal, a couple of large pancakes, was superb, but not as good as garbage.

The Wasabi Kit Kat

January brought winter cold, but no snows yet. Odd how I've been acclimated to snow. It seems like something is missing, and I guess it is. But I expect we'll get slapped with a blizzard before too long -- just not this weekend, which will be in the 40s, they say.

Nestle does not make wasabi-flavored Kit Kat chocolates for the U.S. market, but I got a hold of "fun-sized" one recently, a genuine example of made-in-Japan-but-not-for-export candy. That's true even though there's an English slogan on the package: Have a break, have a Kit Kat.® Japanese packaging is peculiar that way, and I've given up trying to figure it out.

At first, the taste is standard Kit Kat chocolate. But then you sense a faint but unmistakable hint of wasabi, the same spice as on sushi, though dialed down considerably. It's strange. It's completely out of place. It must be an acquired taste. I don't think it's ever going be exported to this country, so few will be the Americans who acquire the taste. I will not be one of them.