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Issue 11: August 2007.
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American Fried Questions
by William Walsh

A text derived from American Fried (1974) by Calvin Trillin, used with the author's permission

I don't suppose your friends took you to Mary Mac's on Ponce de Leon for a bowl of pot likker, did they? Who would have ever guessed, for instance, that the old Mexican street near downtown Los Angeles that looks as if it was restored by the MGM set department and stocked by one of the less tasteful wholesalers in Tijuana would have one place that served delicious, hand-patted soft tacos packed with picadillo or chicharron? How can an innocent traveler be expected to guess that he is going to be subjected to the old Hollywood mystery-film trick of hiding the real jewel in a case full of paste imitations? Who controls the city council here? They have plates there? What do you mean “plates”? How can people talk that way? What Mario's? You went to the original, you're sure, on Colorado? And you did ask for extra sliced tomatoes? Who wants to spend his time shelling almonds? Do you ever get hungry, Fats? Just what did you eat on a big day in Kansas City the week you gained seventeen pounds? Ever had their chili dogs? Is life worth living, Fats? Where else could you forget a restaurant like this? Who would wish such alternatives on a pal? But did you like it? Did it make you happy? Did you clean your plate? You sure you want angel food cake and a glass of milk? Where do you usually go in Chinatown? Is that place still good? How could I begrudge Ben an additional day of rest, I asked myself, when I could come in any weekday and have my choice of baked farmer cheese with scallions or baked farmer cheese with vegetables or even baked farmer cheese with pineapple? Who was I to complain about a little break in my Houston Street routine when there were millions of people all over the world who would never taste Russ & Daughters’ chopped herring? Isn't she cute? Is the whitefish good? Could he now plan, as the final blow, cutting off my supply completely? Will the place be run the same way? Where would that leave me? But what if that person—the same person who has tasted the clams—happens to have a wife who would commit armed robbery for the right piece of chocolate cake and that wife has found the chocolate cake served in a restaurant in Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, to be necessary to her continued happiness? What was a responsible person to do? Launch a citizen's inquiry to ascertain where justice lay between Nathan's and its pizza slicers? Cross the picket line but only eat hot dogs and French fries, which happen to be the best things at Nathan's anyway? Not go in but, in fairness, explain to the picketers that the decision had been based on cholesterol rather than political considerations? Is an eater being fair to the family he supports if he substitutes for Nathan's hot dogs some inferior lunch that so depresses him he performs badly at his daily task? But what if the son he supports grows up to be a radical professor of Latin American Studies and says one day, "Father, did you break the picket line of the possumbyistas?" You think they have any plain chicken? You're not going to have another piece of strawberry pie, are you? What should I order if I don't want to start with the plain? What could possibly be in a seven-way? Red-eye gravy? Is it too late to turn back to Kentucky? How come everybody in the Village who wants to work as a waiter says he's really an actor? What do I want with actors? Did you check her teeth? Does she share her food? Guess what Tricia Nixon Cox's favorite recipe is? How did you know about ketchup? Who, after all, would have ever expected to find the Great Dried Beef in the Sky (not to speak of a superb fried seaweed dish) across from the Golders Green Tube stop? Would I go to a French restaurant in Juárez? Could it have been a mere coincidence that J. Willard Marriott, who owns what is presumably the kitchen most likely to get the contract, is a personal friend of Richard Nixon, a president who had a history of eating cottage cheese with ketchup (the "old Nixon" we've heard so much about) and has raised a daughter whose favorite recipe is made with canned soup? Is it just happenstance that the Big Boy hamburger defended by William Edgett Smith as the best hamburger in the world—a defense that remains inexplicable by any rules of logical argument—is produced by a company that is now a totally owned subsidiary of the Marriott Corporation? Y'all got a license to serve them fresh vegetables? Have you tried our meatless chickenlike product? Could it be, I wondered, that a crowd of dieticians had actually been lured into Joe's Jungle? Does justfolksism go that far?