Food: A Love Story (8 page)

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY FOODLAND

The first Sunday in February is a special day in the United States. It’s the day of the Super Bowl—the championship game between the winners of the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference. People throw parties to watch the game and judge the commercials. I love football and enjoy the commercials, but what I most enjoy is the food served at Super Bowl parties. What is served on Super Bowl Sunday feels like a homecoming of all the great unhealthy American foods. They are dishes that taste great with beer and are all easy to eat while watching television. What could be more American than that? Hot dogs, pizza, and buffalo wings are great examples of Super Bowl Sunday foods. After traveling all around this amazing country, I have discovered that the deepest appreciation of and love for these Super Bowl Sunday foods can be found in the Midwest.

I grew up in the Midwest, or the “flyover” part of the United States. To many on the coasts, the Midwest is mostly boring or, at its best, charmingly boring. While I don’t agree, I can empathize with this sentiment. I remember when I was
ten years old looking around at my small Indiana town that didn’t even have a McDonald’s and thinking,
I’m not supposed to be here. There’s been some mistake. Was I switched at birth? I am NOT a Midwesterner!
Of course, when I finally got to New York City, the first thing I discovered was that I am a Midwesterner. To the ethnocentric New York City comedy scene of the 1990s, comedians were Jewish, Italian, Puerto Rican, or African American, and I quickly learned that my ethnicity was Midwestern. I was a pale piece of white bread floating in a sea of ethnicity. And I loved it. To make matters more romantic, I was from Indiana, which to many is considered the trailer park of the Midwest or simply an “I-state.” I once had someone ask me if I rode a tractor to school. Obviously not, I explained. Only the rich kids had tractors.

In some ways it’s understandable why people have an almost dismissive view of the Midwest. It seems like everything in the Midwest was named in an effort to trick people into moving there. After all, the Midwest is not geographically in the West or in even the middle of the country. There must have been an exchange between someone loading up a stagecoach and a government official desperately trying to get people to settle in the Midwest in the early 1800s.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL:
I see you’re moving. Where are you going?

SETTLER:
Well, I heard about the gold rush in California. I’m heading out West.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL:
Have you thought about the … Mid … west?

SETTLER:
Midwest? Where is that?

GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL:
It’s close to the West! It’s in
the middle! Well, it’s in the eastern part of the middle of the western part of … well, there’s plains. And those plains are great. That’s why it’s called the Great Plains. In the Midwest.

SETTLER:
I think I just want to go out West.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL:
Did I mention the lakes in the Midwest? Great lakes. In fact, one is so great they named it Superior. There’s Great Plains, Great Lakes, great everything. Did I mention it’s the breadbasket of the country? Bread is free in the Midwest.

SETTLER:
Uh, okay. I guess I’ll go.

So in the true spirit of the American settlers, we set up camp in the middle of nowhere, were bored and freezing, and we created delicious food that would be perfect to eat in February while drinking beer and watching football.

Chicago

I grew up in Northwest Indiana, which is a suburb of Chicago. I love telling people in Chicago I’m from Indiana. There is usually a perplexed look of “Where’s that?” I then explain that Indiana is the bordering state, which is ten minutes away. I had one Chicago woman describe Indiana to me as “the state with the road to Michigan in it.” All these insults aside, I forgive you, Chicago. I love Chicago and Chicago food.

Chicago is famous for its deep-dish pizza, but that is not the only local specialty. If a city is lucky, they will have one food specialty. Buffalo has wings. Philly has the cheesesteak. Chicago has so many. The best hot dog, the best Italian beef, and, of course, the best pizza are all in Chicago. Now, before Northeasterners
get all defensive about New York–style/New Jersey–style/New Haven–style pizza, let’s embrace this fact: there is great pizza in many different cities, but Chicago is the
only
place to get deep dish. It’s the only place that deep dish makes sense. Only Midwesterners would be patient enough to wait an hour for deep dish or gluttonous enough to actually eat deep dish.

Just a little snack before I go onstage in Chicago.

Chicago deep dish takes forever to cook and costs as much as four New York–style pizzas. Chicago deep dish is a commitment. You arrive at Uno’s, Giordano’s, Gino’s East, or Lou Malnati’s and place your order, and then you wait and wait for what seems like a lifetime. At times it feels like they are purposely tormenting you to make the deep-dish pizza seem all the more appealing. I actually make a point of not showing up hungry when I go out for a Chicago deep-dish pizza. It would be torture. To kill time, you eat a salad with provolone, salami,
and pepperoncini in it and drink a pitcher of beer like you are preparing yourself for some kind of long, difficult journey of
waiting
. Finally your pizza arrives in a pan carried by your server with some kind of clamp contraption that I’m pretty sure is the same one they use to shape molten glass. After the first slice you are full, and you should be. You’ve eaten roughly three pounds of food that is baked on top of a crispy, cake-like crust. There is never a reason to eat more than one slice of deep dish, but you forge on. The wait has built an enthusiasm and excitement in you that can’t be quelled by just one slice. Most humans stop after two slices, but I like to think of myself as a superhuman. My brother Joe, who lives in Chicago, makes fun of my love for Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. “It’s for tourists.” I don’t care. Last March I brought my nine- and eight-year-olds for their first deep dish, and they thought it was weird. Weird? I immediately demanded a paternity test to see if they were actually my children.

Wisconsin

Every December Jeannie and I and our five hundred children travel to Milwaukee for the holidays. It’s hard enough to eat healthy during the holidays. In Wisconsin, it’s impossible. We usually are in Wisconsin for about ten pounds. That means one week for those of you who have never visited Wisconsin. That is how time is measured in Wisconsin. Well, it should be.

“How long have you been in Wisconsin?”

“Forty pounds.”

“Oh, you came during Summerfest.”

I don’t know if it’s possible to visit Wisconsin and not gain weight. Eating healthy doesn’t seem like an option in Wisconsin. I don’t think they even sell salads. And why should they? Wisconsin is the home of the butter burger, the kringle, the
bratwurst, and cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. Eating healthy in Wisconsin makes as much sense as going to rehab in Amsterdam. It just doesn’t work.

Some of my favorite things on this planet are from Wisconsin: beer, bratwurst, cheese, and, of course, my wife, Jeannie, in that order. Good food is everywhere you look. If you visit someone’s house in Wisconsin, a cheese plate is put out. It could be eleven in the morning or ten o’clock at night. There will be a tray with Cheddar cheese and summer sausage. As a result of this plethora of edible happiness, people in Wisconsin eat all the time. Eating is important in Wisconsin. Even their beloved Green Bay football team is called the Packers. The state is about eating. It makes sense that the serial killer from Milwaukee was also eating his victims. He was simply doing what a serial killer from Wisconsin should do.

Cincinnati

Often there seems to be logic behind a local specialty. Omaha and Texas should have great steaks, given the cattle that are raised and packaged there. Italian beef in Chicago and bratwurst in Wisconsin make sense, given the Italian and German immigrants who settled there. From my uneducated viewpoint, chili makes no sense for Cincinnati. Even what they do with the chili in Cincinnati makes no sense. They serve it over pasta. Yet somehow it works. Chili in Cincinnati is not just a local culinary specialty. It is an industry. There are thriving fast-food chili franchises in the Cincinnati area. The story goes that a Greek immigrant in the 1920s wanted to cater to the local taste buds, so he started serving chili over spaghetti at his hot dog stand, which I’m pretty sure makes no sense whatsoever. Either way, Cincinnati chili does appeal to people like me who have trouble deciding between two entrées. I’m always amazed that
they have drive-thru chili places. For sure, the most dangerous item to eat in a car would have to be spaghetti, with chili a close second. I’m surprised they don’t make you eat it with chopsticks. Texting while driving seems less complicated.

St. Louis

St. Louis is famous for its thin-crust pizza, which almost seems like an overreaction to the Chicago deep-dish pizza, but when I contemplate St. Louis food I think of toasted ravioli. Maybe in St. Louis they call a deep fryer a toaster, because I’m pretty sure St. Louis toasted ravioli is just deep-fried ravioli. Calling deep-fried ravioli “toasted” is a little like calling World War II an extended argument. Toasted ravioli are delicious, but you have to eat them right away or they will turn into rocks. “When did you cook these?” “One minute ago. Now we call ’em St. Louis Diamonds.” Many people don’t know the St. Louis arch was constructed completely out of toasted ravioli a minute after they came out of a deep fryer.

Buffalo

Okay, Buffalo is not
technically
located in the Midwest, but it is a Great Lakes city with a Midwestern heart. The mere fact that it is the birthplace of buffalo wings makes it an honorary Midwestern destination. I’m not sure how eating chicken wings covered in spicy sauce makes watching sporting events on television so appealing, but it does. I assume most of you savages reading this eat chicken wings, aka buffalo wings. Those are baby chicken wings you are mindlessly dunking in delicious blue cheese dressing. I don’t like to eat the baby bird’s wings. I’m not a barbarian. This is why I prefer to eat their legs. I’d rather not take away a bird’s ability to fly. I realize some of
you are thinking,
Jim, while you are brilliant and handsome, you must realize chickens can’t fly.
How do we know chickens can’t fly? Maybe the chickens have become too dependent on those legs. Legs are just making birds lazy. Have you ever seen footage of a hippo crossing a river? There’s always a bird sitting on its back. How lazy is that bird? It’s going to take that hippo ten minutes to cross that river. That bird could just glide across. It’s pathetic, really. That bird sitting on the back of the hippo, I want to eat its legs. Mostly because I’m pro hippo. I relate to the hippo. The hippo kind of looks like what would happen to the rhino if it ate only Super Bowl Sunday foods. Based on the appearance of the hippo, it is surprising that it is not indigenous to the Midwest.

MEXICAN FOODLAND

I hope it’s not considered offensive that my favorite food from the southwestern part of the United States is the food from the neighboring country of Mexico. It shouldn’t be insulting, given that Texas and parts of the southwestern United States were once part of Mexico. We may have taken the land after the Mexican-American War, but at least we were polite enough to keep the food, culture, and most of the street names. I’m convinced that anyone who doesn’t like Mexican food is a psychopath. Mexican food is so good, you’d think the real immigration problem would be fat guys like me sneaking across the border
into
Mexico. I always imagine a pudgy blond guy being led by handcuffs into a paddy wagon saying, “I just needed some
good
guacamole!” It is a known fact that it is impossible to eat quality Mexican food and not be in a good mood afterward. Even bad Mexican food is better than 90 percent of all other foods.