Twitter sandwich Q&A

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OK, last one of these for a while, I promise. I got a lot of good questions yesterday.

I’m coupling these questions because they cover similar territory. The Primanti Brothers’ innovation is adding french fries to their sandwiches, a concept I found extremely strong in inspiration and slightly less so in execution due to some soft french fries (though with the added bonus of cole slaw).

When adding starch to the innately starchy sandwich, we must ask ourselves: Why? French fries are delicious pretty much anywhere, be they on top of a sandwich or beside it. But what can they add to a sandwich besides salt and some grease (and I mean no disrespect to salt or grease)? Unless they’re fried crispy, they just add a mushy layer of potato-stuff that could easily be drowned out by any of the more flavorful elements on a sandwich.

That’s where potato chips come in. They have the potential to add both the same salty, potatoey goodness of french fries as well as the elusive crunchiness, ever absent on even many of the best sandwiches.

The problem, of course, is that if your sandwich has much dressing or any greasier elements, the chips could easily become soggy and their effect ruined. The successful addition of potato chips to a sandwich requires both a strong sense of sandwich construction and efficiency in its execution. That’s no small feat, and I believe the reason most sandwich purveyors do not offer potato chips atop their creations.

Previti Pizza does a solid job of it, but you’ll note that in that review I mentioned how the chips “don’t hold perfectly hold their crunchiness.” Sentence fail in context.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Andrew. That’s a loaded question. For which type of food?

I generally keep three hot sauces in my fridge at any given time: Frank’s, Sriracha and Cholula. Frank’s is obviously there for wing-making purposes. The other two are pretty versatile and not at all like each other. And though I tend to use Sriracha for Asian-inspired foods and Cholula for Mexican dishes, there are times when you just want to try Sriracha on a taco or Cholula on your drunken noodles, and it turns out it’s all pretty delicious.

If I could only have one, I’d probably go with the Cholula — and not just because they sponsor this network (longtime readers of this blog know the Cholula bottles were present in the picture of my desk long before that deal ever came down). It’s got a thicker texture than most hot sauces, which I like, and good flavor even if it’s not the spiciest hot sauce in the world. Unfortunately I’ve yet to receive any free Cholula as fallout from that deal, which is total B.S.

As for mustard: Man, there are just so many different delicious types of mustard. I guess if I had to pick one, I’d probably go with Nance’s Hot Mustard — a smooth-textured and versatile but very assertive mustard, full of mustardy bite.

I love White Castle. I think the key to enjoying White Castle is moderation. The burgers are so small and delicious that you want to have like 15 of them, but the only way you’re going to be able to stomach them is if you limit yourself to three or four. Do that and you not only develop a taste for them, you start getting The Crave every time you see a White Castle. I’m pretty sure White Castle burgers are chemically addictive.

I don’t go there now as often as I did when I lived in Fort Greene and it was nearby, but I tend to get one regular cheeseburger, one bacon cheeseburger and one jalapeno cheeseburger. And every time I do, I have no idea why I bothered because they all just taste like White Castle. Delicious White Castle.

Worth noting: My father loves White Castle. Just f@#$ing loves it. He grew up near one and had to walk past it on his way home from high school, and I guess he developed a pretty strong dependence. He doesn’t get to go as often as he’d like, I think, because my mom doesn’t care for it and it’s a bit out of the way for him now.

A few years ago, he went to take my grandmother out to lunch and asked her where she wanted to go.

“What was the name of that place on Sunrise Highway in Lynbrook, with the tiny cheeseburgers?” she asked.

I imagine this had to be, for my father, the absolute best direction a lunch date with his mother could have gone. He asked her if she meant White Castle, and indeed she did. She had The Crave. So they went.

A week later, my father went back to take her out again, and eagerly asked her if she wanted to go to White Castle again.

“Oh no,” she said. “That’s the type of thing you only want once every 40 years.”

Twitter moving Q&A

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I am in the midst of the ever-frustrating apartment search. Incidentally, if you have an apartment somewhere on the east side of Manhattan that you’re looking to rent, email me. Especially if it is huge and way underpriced and you’re willing to cut a discount to a sports and sandwich blogger of moderate repute.

I imagine a lot of people would say, “cozy,” which means “tiny,” or “bedroom fits a queen bed,” which means “bedroom is the size of a queen bed.” But I’m going to go with “no fee,” which means there absolutely is a fee and they’re just straight-up lying about it.

I’m pretty early in the process, but I’ve gone to check out two “no broker’s fee” apartments only to be told when I got there that there was a fee, and that the one I saw advertised on craigslist with no fee has since been taken. How does that even work? Do brokers really list a single apartment with no fee just to get you in the door to a bunch with fees? And who gets that apartment? Probably no one, since it never existed in the first place.

Craigslist is a tangled web of lies.

Yeah, for a while I basked in the attention but now I can’t leave my house without having to run from a crowd of screaming fans all like, “OMG TED BURG! SANDWICH!” It’s a lot like Hard Day’s Night, except with more sandwich. It’s overwhelming.

Seriously, though, we’re moving for a variety of reasons. For one, if I successfully pull off a move to a reasonable Manhattan location, I’ll cut about two hours per day off my commute. That’s so much time! Think of how much more TV I’ll get to watch!

The other big things I’m looking forward to about Manhattan are streetlights and sidewalks. I like to walk places, and just walking for the sake of walking. Neither is really possible or enjoyable where I am now. There are tons of beautiful parks and reserves for walking, but you have to set aside some daytime and take a car to get there, which I think defeats the purpose.

No I am not. But this is now my fourth time looking for a place to rent since I left my parents’ house in 2005. Every time I saw a bunch of awful places that seemed unreasonably expensive, then, eventually, one that was just way better than the others in every way.

I guess this is sort of the same phenomenon as your keys always being in the last place you look for them: Once you find a good place, you stop looking, so the only places you have to compare it to are all the terrible ones you’ve already seen. But I’ve never had a situation where I was weighing the benefits and costs of one place versus another. Every time it has seemed the place I settled on was the biggest, most reasonably priced and closest to where I wanted to be. So here’s hoping that happens again.

Twitter Q&A

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A little too harried today to craft anything cohesive, so here’s a Twitter Q&A.

It’s Ochoa. Butch Huskey epitomizes many things, among them the general meaninglessness of Spring Training stats, what a 245-pound man can do to catchers when plowing into them at full speed, and baseball’s rich tradition of great names. But since Huskey enjoyed a couple of reasonably productive seasons as a Met, it’s hard to call him an utter failure as a prospect.

For whatever reason — perhaps because the Mets acquired him in the Bobby Bonilla trade — it seemed like Ochoa came up to a lot more hype than Huskey did. In fact, I remember that Ochoa was the first player I had ever heard referred to as a “five-tool guy,” which was about the most hilarious thing my 14-year-old mind could process.

Soon after the Mets called Ochoa up, I went to a game with my brother and a couple of his friends. We managed to sneak down to the field level in right field, where we proceeded to commend Ochoa for every single thing he did in the game, proclaiming everything as examples of his tools. He took a couple steps toward first base from right field on an infield groundout, and I yelled something about backing up first base from right field being the elusive sixth tool. Stuff like that, all game long.

Eventually Ochoa acknowledged us, and we went absolutely ape. But from there it was all downhill for Ochoa as a Met. Until right now, I had forgotten that he ever put up productive seasons with the Reds and Brewers after leaving Flushing. He did finish fifth in the NL in outfield assists in 2001, strong evidence of at least one tool.

I don’t drink very often. I know so little about beers that if there’s nothing I recognize on a bar’s tap list I usually panic and wind up with something that tastes like fermented tar, which I sip politely until it’s about 3/4 done then leave it and walk to some other part of the bar hoping it doesn’t follow me.

When I do drink, it’s usually bourbon. And I know plenty of people will judge the hell out of me for saying this, but I rarely drink my bourbon straight. At bars I usually order it with seltzer, and at home I mix it with unsweetened green tea and a little lemonade (about three parts green tea, one part bourbon, one part lemonade). That’s the Ted Berg — order it by name, then explain it to the bartender. I’d like for this to catch on.

I also like a good frozen rum drink, where appropriate.

Yikes, that’s a tough one. I’m trying to imagine life without my pinkie fingers, and it’s not great. I don’t use my left pinkie as often as I should while playing the guitar, but I still definitely need it for that. And obviously both pinkies are very necessary for typing with any rapidity. Plus — and not to be Debbie Downer here — I’ve got the MS, so my dexterity is at times already limited, and I don’t know how much more of that I want to give up.

I guess there’s an underlying question of vanity here: Would everyone know I had given up two pinkies for a pair of Mets championships? Like would that be something celebrated at the parade — here’s this guy who for some reason had to give up his fingers for this! — or would I just be some eight-fingered fan in the crowd?

Either way I think the answer is no. Maybe that means I’m not committed enough, but I’d say it’s just optimism. I’m confident enough that the Mets will eventually win a World Series or two that I’m not willing to part ways with my fingers to guarantee it.

Toes I’d do in a second. Especially if it came with the promise that headlines after the fact referred to the Mets’ victory as “digitally enhanced.” I don’t think we make enough digit/digital jokes in general.