Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [50]
Aside from the food, one of the pleasures of dining at the Carnegie is eavesdropping, which you do whether or not you want to, because you are seated so close to other people. We remember a visit several years ago when one little old lady sitting near us shouted to her friend across the table, “Today I saw the doctor.” The sparrow-size woman actually had to crane her head high to see over her sandwich—a mountain of pastrami combined with an inch-and-a-half of chopped liver sandwiched in rye. “His office is nearby. I make my appointment in the morning, so I can come here when I am through.” She expertly hefted half of the mighty sandwich in her two tiny hands, inhaling steam wafting up from the warm pink meat. Before taking that first delicious bite, she proclaimed loud and clear for all the table to hear: “First I have my treatment…then I have my treat!”
Charlie the Butcher’s Kitchen
1065 Wehrle Dr. at Cayuga
716–633–8330
Buffalo, NY
LD | $
According to Charlie Roesch, proprietor of Charlie the Butcher’s Kitchen, it was beer that inspired the invention of beef on weck. He believes that back in the 1880s a now-forgotten local tavern owner decided to offer a sandwich that would induce a powerful thirst in his patrons. He had plenty of coarse salt on hand for the pretzels he served, so he painted a mixture of the salt and caraway seeds (known in German as kummelweck) atop some hard rolls, cooked a roast and sliced it thin, and piled the meat inside the rolls. As a condiment, he served hot horseradish. Slaking the thirst these sandwiches induced, beer sales soared. And Buffalo’s passion for beef on weck—customarily served with fiery fresh horseradish and accompanied by schooners of cold beer—was born.
As Mr. Roesch stands at his butcher block rhapsodizing about his favorite subject—the cuisine of western New York—an attentive patron waiting at the order window of his restaurant offers support: “If Charlie the Butcher says it’s so, it’s so!” declares the loyal customer before ordering a beef on weck with a smoked Polish sausage on the side.
Charlie the Butcher’s fans consider him the ultimate authority on meat of all kinds. Although he is a young man who has operated this restaurant only since 1993, he is hardly a Johnny-come-lately on the Buffalo beef scene. His father was a butcher, as was his grandfather (their slogan: “You know it’s fresh if it comes from Roesch”), and he still manages a butcher shop and food kiosk at Buffalo’s century-old Broadway Market. To honor the family trade, he wears a white hard hat on his head and a butcher’s smock over his shirt and necktie as he works at counters in the open kitchen at the center of his restaurant. His menu, we should note, extends well beyond beef on weck, and everything else we’ve sampled is first rate: Buffalo-made hot dogs and sausages grilled over coals, chicken spiedie (a boneless breast that is marinated and grilled), and such daily-special sandwiches as meat loaf (Tuesday) and double-smoked ham (Monday). The beverage list includes the local favorite, loganberry, as well as Charlie’s personal favorite, birch beer.
Clare and Carl’s
4731 Lake Shore Dr.
518–561–1163
Plattsburgh, NY
LD (summer only) | $
A Michigan is a small, porky frank bedded in a cream-soft bun and topped with mustard, onions, and a sauce made from a little tomato, a lot of spice, and finely ground beef. Where do you find one? Not in Michigan, where similarly configured weenies are known as Coney Islands. The Michigan is unique to New York’s North Country between the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain. It resembles not only the Coneys of the Midwest, but also the New York Systems of Rhode Island and the Texas weiners of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Someday, someone has got to create a chili-dog map of America, which we imagine would be more complicated than the sequence of nucleotides on a DNA strand.
At Clare and Carl’s, the oldest Michigan stand in Plattsburgh (since 1943), a newspaper story posted on the wall says that the region’s unique weenies owe their name to a Michigander