Posts Tagged ‘Connecticut’

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 2000 Gourmet Magazine In New England, doughnuts are an art. We needn’t argue their humble virtues in contrast to such upwardly mobile pastries as scones and croissants or the meretricious muffins that pass for breakfast nowadays. Nor is it necessary to enumerate the ways in which a well-crafted … Continue reading Yankee Doughnut Dandies

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 1999 Gourmet Magazine Hot dogs, the most American food of all, defy the regimentation that has made hamburgers, prime steaks, pancakes, and pizza such conspicuously successful franchise opportunities. (There are more than 23,000 McDonald’s around the world; Nathan’s Famous, the country’s only major hotdog chain, has fewer than … Continue reading Yankee Top Dogs

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 1999 Gourmet Magazine Pancakes make people happy. Arriving at the table in the form of short stacks or lofty towers, or fanned out like a haul of soft gold medallions, they are a simple indulgence that demands sweet syrup and defies seriousness. In a too-complicated world, a plate … Continue reading Pancakes

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 1998 Gourmet Magazine It is a bright, blue-sky day in July. A scoop of cool vanilla ice cream is perched atop a cone. Lick it, and your tongue tells you that the silky white orb is so softened by the summer sun that it’s about to drip sweet … Continue reading New England

By Jane and Michael stern Originally Published 1997 Gourmet Magazine Like pork barbecue and Creole gumbo, clam chowder is a charismatic dish that incites not just appetite, but loyalty: Devotees hold forth with near-religious zeal as to where the best is made and what, exactly, is the proper way to make it. The overriding clam … Continue reading Mystic, Connecticut

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 1997 Gourmet Magazine Before Ralph Nader, cars were fun. For generations of joyriders, a purring V-8 was a vehicle for play and pleasure. “Companion of carefree days” is how Chevy advertised itself in 1950, when few people behind the wheel worried about such mundane concerns as safety and … Continue reading Curbside, America

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 1996 Gourmet Magazine As a matter of principle, we are committed to finding food with ample fat, from marbled steaks to chocolate cakes, but even we sometimes yearn for light fare. On our beat, finding it isn’t easy. In some cafés, “diet plates” are not-so-dietetic bunless burgers with … Continue reading Healthful Detours U.S.A.

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published 1995 Gourmet Magazine What Kentucky is to bourbon and Havana is to cigars, Connecticut is to pizza—the capital, where the benchmark is set and excellence assumed. Nowhere else on earth are there so many good places to eat pizza; why, it’s practically impossible to find a bad one … Continue reading Pizza

By Jane and Michael Stern Originally Published in 1994 Gourmet Magazine Clad in shining steel and accoutered in neon and Naugahyde, diners are cheap thrills, American style. Although most are in the urban east, where the handsomest among them were manufactured in the thirties, forties, and fifties, they fit in anywhere you find them, on … Continue reading O’Rourke’s Diner