Flickr user fugutabetai syashin

This story also appears in the OC Weekly

If you spent your youth with the McRib, you’re just happier than a hog in slop right now with the re-launch of that sandwich at every US McDonald’s franchise. I admit it: I liked them as kid, but I’ve since learned about real barbecue, and welcomed the news with a shrug.

All the same, I caved in to the hype yesterday and tried to get one at a South Bay location. My first one in close to thirty years, and what happened? Sold out at 5 p.m. What the hell? It’s a vast Faux-Q consipracy, isn’t it? I’m on to your little scheme to froth demand, Mr. Ronald McDonald.

McDonald’s would have pulled off a much bigger marketing & PR coup if they did a nationwide rollout on old favorites from other corners of the globe. For instance, did you know McDonald’s sold crab cakes in their Maryland restaurants, or that you could order roasted green chiles in their New Mexico stores? For a corporation that practically invented global uniformity, they tip their hat heavily to local markets and regional food favorites. Here are five of the better ones.

1. The McLobster Roll, New England.

Those lucky Mainers can get lobster rolls every day of the year. Hopefully better than the one at McDonald’s, but what’s not to love about chilled, chopped lobster meat, mixed with a little mayo or melted butter, and placed in a butter-grilled, top-loading New England style roll? So what if McDonald’s version is a little dumbed-down and the lobster meat is chopped so fine it looks more like tuna fish salad? They’re still lobster rolls, and dammit, we need more of those here in SoCal.

2. Beef Fantastic, Hong Kong

Flickr user selva

The Beef Fantastic from Hong Kong

The name is a Cantonese pun on the word “fan,” which means rice. It’s no longer a permanent item, but neither was the McRib in the US. So as long as we’re uncrating the archives, how’s about a gluten-free teriyaki beef sandwich for the McDonalds here? Picture a toasted “bun” of seasoned rice cake holding teriyaki beef, grilled onions and lettuce.

3.Teriyaki McBurger, Japan.

Flickr user sidesmirk

That’s pronounced “makku baagaa,” and I’ve eaten this while living in Japan. Teriyaki is mainstream enough that Americans would like this sandwich. The teriyaki sauce serves the same function as the BBQ sauce on a McRib, flavoring the usual grey McPatty and giving it a palatable color.

4.Ebi Filet-O’, Japan.

Never mind the Engrish noun-before-the-modifier syntax. Ebi is Japanese for shrimp, and it’s a panko-breaded patty of shrimp and surimi served with Thousand Island dressing. Shrimp is America’s most popular seafood, so bring us the McShrimp Patty and the cute spokesmodel (chosen for her name, Yuri Ebihara), McExecutives! And if you won’t do the McShrimp Patty, then get SpongeBob  in the kitchen and release the McCrabby Patty!

5. McAloo Tikki, India.

Flickr user opoponax

Hey Ronald! How about some vegetarian options beside salad and fries? The beef-free restaurants in the Indian market make a sanitized version of the street food Aloo Tikki. It’s a spiced potato and pea croquette on a bun. Even as a carnivore, I’d be all over that if they’d only spare me the 20-hour flight to Mumbai.

Just got back from Salt Lake City, where one of my college roomates married his honey. Congratulations to Matt and Julia. Being a food blogger and not a people blogger, I’m only posting food photos from the wedding.

Matt was a bread baker at Deer Valley Resort. His pastry chef made their cake.

The cake has beer in it. Can you see it?

Four layer carrot cake with sour cream frosting

Beer. Plenty of beer.

Matt’s dad Richard is a beekeeper. A battalion of bears awaited the wedding guests. To order your wedding favors, contact:

Catskill Mountain Beekeepers Club
Richard Ronconi
484 Ravine Road
Berne, NY 12023
Phone: 518-797-3922

On the way home, I noticed this vending machine that Satan installed near the ticket counter at the Salt Lake airport. The Dark Lord taketh your money and the TSA taketh your food. You can not has cheezburger past security.

French fries, pizza, fried chicken, and cheeseburgers all dispensed from the same machine. Where’s the milk shake? I want my milkshake, dammit.

Tombstone pizza out of a machine must be good. It’s sold out. Gotta be good, right?

Bored on the Fourth? Got the Weber grill going and just waiting for nightfall and fireworks to begin?

Try cheese racing.

You’ll need:

• One charcoal grill, not too hot
• Individually wrapped cheez food slices
• Some alcohol lubricated friends
• More alcohol lubricant

Each player casts a slice of cheese on grill.
The player whose cheese fully inflates first wins!
If you’re a rules and stats type, reference the full official CRASS (Cheese Racing Association) rules.

19th century California cattle ranchers threw massive beef barbecue parties that lasted for days and fed hundreds of thousands of guests. At a time before refrigeration allowed for distant shipments of fresh meat, California ranchers raised cattle primarily for their hides and tallow. The meat was a byproduct, and these parties were a way to get rid of all of it in one big, beef blowout.

The Culinary Historians of Southern California recently threw a picnic for their members at the Palomares Adobe in Pomona that recreated the mostly lost art of earth pit cooking. Californios brought this technique from northern Mexico, where it is still practiced today, but in America, it’s a rarity to see people cooking this way. Charles Perry, the Historians’ President and an LA Times food writer, invited me to help tend the fire the night before the picnic.

John Rabe of KPCC covered the event for his weekend radio show, Offramp. Listen to his podcast (RealPlayer format), or my audio file of Charles Perry describing the pit and the cooking process (wav format).

The Palomares Adobe, a historic preservation of a prominent 19th century cattle rancher’s home, built an area for the specific purpose of cooking earth pit barbecue. It’s on the left of this photo. Here, culinary historian Richard Foss makes kindling.

The pit is five feet deep, and lined with steel. We’d eventually fill this hole almost all the way with burning logs.

Over the course of the night, we burned down most of the oak logs in the background.

After five hours, the pit is mostly full of flaming logs, and the red hot steel indicates a temperature near 1100 degrees F.

Meanwhile, the oregano and garlic seasoned beef roasts (top round and shoulder clod) have been double wrapped in cotton sack cloth and burlap, and marinate in vinegar.

We laid down a steel grate on top of the burning logs, and added the meat to the pit. The steel plate, at left, covers the pit and smothers the flames. A layer of earth is placed on top to seal out most of the air. Managing fire temperatures in a hole in the ground is a whole different game than using modern barbecue equipment!

After ten hours of slow cooking over a smoldering bed of oak coals, the beef is ready to serve.

The meat is unswaddled…

… and has cooked so tender that it falls apart with a nudge. There is no smoke ring, but it’s absorbed an almost tannic, oaky, smoke flavor different from any Southern barbecue I’ve eaten.

Slow cooked barbecue isn’t just about the food that ends up on the plate, but all the things that happen when people slow down, tend a fire together, and cook for hours on end. Before webcams and YouTube, strangers sat around fires and entertained each other with great conversation, and I enjoyed this other lost art with the Culinary Historians. Sitting next to an unlikely campfire set a few hundred feet from Pomona’s busy Arrow Highway, we travelled back in time to glimpse how Californians from another era might have socialized and feasted.

See the rest of my Flickr photo set here.