Chowing Down
Some food writers come for the cheesesteaks. Others for Stephen Starr. Jim Leff of Chowhound set off for these parts in search of the extravagant shrimp bars of North Philadelphia.
A couple weeks into his two-month hunt for great American eating, the co-founder of the people's-written Chowhound site pulled into Philadelphia, following his nose to chickpea falafel in Center City, pho on Washington Avenue, Indonesian adobos on a South Philly corner and then, most memorably, to North Philly's epicurean pleasures.
In the poor, largely African-American northern reaches of Philly, there are bars with inexpensive drinks, inexpensive bar snacks, and extravagantly priced shrimp. We're talking $15-20 for a half dozen shrimp. I've never understood this phenomenon. As a jazz trombonist, I've hung out and performed in black bars all over the country, but I've never spotted extravagant shrimp elsewhere. Only in north Philadelphia.
The N.Y.-based Leff comes from the school of food writing where the adventure can be as tasty as the dish. He describes pulling up to the bulletproof window of the imposing pink edifice at 4600 North Broad where Sid Booker's Stinger La Pointe commands the corner. Leff whipped out his digital camera and started shooting through the car window.
A rough-looking fellow in a van that was randomly driving by pulled up right next to me, and, scowling in mistrust and malevolence, asked me who I'm suing. I replied sunnily that I'm not suing anyone, and explained that, I am, in fact, a food writer out to find the best shrimp in Philadelphia -- and that I suspected I may have just hit pay dirt with Mr. Booker, the Colonel of Shrimp. Scowl turned to puzzlement, and then resolved into a glimmer of respect. "Man, those are the BEST #$%^#$%^ SHRIMP IN TOWN," he hollered, driving off.
Leff talks of this man as the sort of spirit guide that Indian yoga masters talk about - a deva. "I'm sure I'd just encountered a chowhound deva - with neon wheel rims and a really, really loud stereo, no less."
His order: a boat of golden brown fried shrimp and spuds.
They weren't, as I'd feared, gloppy with multiple sauces. It was almost as if fries and shrimp had been tossed in a wok with hot sauce (I don't think she'd applied cocktail sauce). The thinnest film was dried on, crunch was retained, counterpointed with a few happily soggy spots. I discovered that adding ample salt and pepper to Trappy's Red Devil creates an entirely different result from any of those seasonings on their own. The shrimp were excellent, but the french fries were screamingly good.
The shrimp cost $18.50 per dozen. The bar was closed, and he's sure he missed something, though he's not sure what. He left still not understanding the culture of North Philly's pricey shrimp bars.
What I like about Leff is that he can find an epiphany in a potato chip rack at a Pennsylvania Dutch country market. Here, he's describing at trip to New Holland, Pa., where he was stunned to find a collection of Good's chips, both red and blue bags. (He savors the reds.)
It's as startling as if a Truffaut film were to get top billing at a suburban multiplex. My pulse raced, my brow grew moist, and once I'd exhausted my camera's flash, I compulsively loaded up a shopping cart with $30.17 worth of snack products.
He talked about his philosophy of chow by phone Wednesday from Florence, Ala., where he was waking up after a fine meal at an unlikely place, the Marriott, where he ordered shrimp and grits. "It's just what you order at a Florence Marriott restaurant," he said. "I'm glad I didn't get the Chilean sea bass."
Actually it isn't necessary traveling 2000 miles to find great food, he says. "If I'd stayed in Philadelphia the full period I would have had experiences just as delicious. There is so much treasure hanging low and heavily out on the trees, ripe for the picking. It really doesn't matter where you are. I haven't been to New Orleans or San Francisco or The Village. I'm just going places and finding amazing people who refuse to seek maximum profit from minimum effort, which is the American way now.
"There's an ancient way of being, which is to serve your fellow humans, to nourish them, make them feel hospitable. So I'm trying to find the hold outs and the kooks and the geniuses who still think that way."
While Sid Booker's was a successful catch, it wasn't his best find in Philly.
That came at West Berks and North Taney Streets where he found a group of young kids cooking crabs in a tarp-covered roadside shack.
They worked amid buckets of squirming crabs and buckets of spicy cooked crabs (the spice blend was nothing you've ever had before -- I think the kids just went to the grocery and bought random spice bottles and shook indiscriminately, but it's pure genius).
He's posted an mp3 of his trip to the crab house. He warns about the audio quality:
Please understand that you're hearing a recording made in a car strewn with severed bits of crab, as if a Tasmanian devil had whipped through the area. My clothes were stained and greasy from head to foot, my hands were completely caked with spices, my lips were swollen with chili -- the whole scene must have looked straight out of Silence of the Lambs.
I've never dined in North Philadelphia. I'd like to check these places out. They sound yummy.
Fantastic post. I love Chowhound, and Jim Leff's writing. You've done a great job of conveying what's so amazing about him. I love the bit in his post (Dispatch #8) about the people at the Reading Terminal Market repackaging potato chips. A few years ago, my wife went to an Amish stand to buy some cornish hens. Finding that there were none remaining up front, the woman who took her order walked to the back of the stand, pulled out and ripped open a package of Perdue Cornish Hens, and threw them in an unmarked bag. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Daniel Rubin
Went to the terminal yesterday. A non-scheduled visit, so I had to try to remember the right place to find those potato chips. It was one of those days - found a parking space with a broken meter, got a giant cup of coffee from Olde City and wandered around the whole place slowly, hitting all the Amish places until I saw the row of clear bags packed with yellow chips. Are these from Good's? I asked the girl behind the counter. Yes. The Red ones? Yes, Red box. They were about $2.50 for these home-style chips made in Lancaster County since 1928. Brought them home, thinking I had just acquired the key to the universe in an unmarked bag. Actually, they were very nice potato chips.
Sid Booker's Shrimp is the best, ever. Hands down. I was raised on that shrimp. I've yet to eat any that were better. And, it's not all that expensive. 10 bucks for 1/2 dozen, and 20 for a dozen. It's about the same that you'd pay for crappy shrimp at any of those chain restaurants that everyone adores. Seafood is just a generally expensive product. Heh, I've never drank at the bar, though, in all the years I've went there to eat shrimp. Perhaps I should.