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Best Ever
August 14, 2006    File under: America , Intake






I'll say it again, the sliced-brisket sandwich with home-cut fries fried in beef fat they serve at Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City, MO, may be the best lunch in these United States. If not, then it must be one of the top five, my other candidates being:

  • Wayne Monk's Lexington #1 Barbecue in Lexington, North Carolina: coarse outside brown with exra dip, with the German-style slaw, per house preference
  • sliced pork sandwiches at Byron's Barbecue in Auburn, Alabama (last I was there, they were still $1.60 each)
  • Dreamland Barbecue in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, after a long plane ride ("No potato salad, no cole slaw, don't ask.")
  • Galatoire's, New Orleans (is it? will it?)

...

This was a wonderful birthday celebration, a hot, sweaty, heat-indexy day in Kansas City, early fog followed by continuous sweat.

A roll through the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art with a Bourgeois, a de Kooning, a Marsden Hartley, a Lesley Dill, and an Anne-Boyer-esque exhibition of Elissa Armstrong's little creatures. I was asked if I would like to use a pencil rather than a pen, to which the answer is, in general, no, though I thought it best to oblige.

Then sweating at the Liberty Memorial.

Dinner at Fiorella's Jack Stack at the Freighthouse. Best beans in the world. Ever. No contest.

Sleep in. Late breakfast at the Classic Cup: grillades and grits.

Then back to Denver. Nice rain, and it is cool.

Thank you.









Kansas City has a lot on Denver — I admire the scale of the buildings downtown, the old lading houses and the newer highrises, and the density of the development there. I think their new Kansas City Star building kicks our new Denver Newspaper Agency building twenty ways to the Sunday circulars. The barbecue is most certainly better. Their river is real river. With water.

Kansas City also wins the Most Ludicrous Driving Award, with special mention in the rapid-lane-changing, three-lane-left-turn, negative-angle-left-turn, unpredictable-stopping-in-the-middle-of-a-traffic-lane, pedestrian-interface-difficulty, jaywalking, and walking-against-the-light categories.

Sorry, folks, but you know it's true.

And it's strange. Bad, aggressive, and careless driving back home always seemed an index of the hopelessness of the situation, an expression of the knowledge that there's nowhere to go. Speed wasn't necessarily about getting there faster but about spicing up a dead-end trip.

Is this the way it is in Kansas City?

I'm even more perplexed by the fact that, besides a generalized dislike of the Broncos, many Kansas Citizens seem to admire Denver and want to go to Denver and even to turn parts of KC into parts of Denver. Or maybe that's just a qualification for any bartender job in KC.

...

Now it's back to work. Some new poems, some work on the starlings manuscript, two essays to complete, syllabi, classes next week, and soon a new issue of Copper Nickel, for which stay tuned.

Until then—




  

Posted by Jake Adam York at August 14, 2006 9:55 AM



COMMENTS

All this talk of barbecue makes me yearn for fall.

I love to cook outdoors when it's cold. I love the smell of the charcoal in winter wind. I'll be firing up the old grill again before too long. I need to smoke a pork butt. I've not done that in a while.

Posted by: Jeff Newberry at August 15, 2006 2:01 PM




You are absolutely right about Bryant's! I've been eating there since I was about 3 years old, almost 50 years now. It's hands down the best. But always remember, saying "the best" about ANY Kansas City bbq is sure to start a religious war!
~BG

Posted by: BG Roberts at August 17, 2006 10:35 PM




BG,

You're right: it's risky to declare a best. I've eaten at about 40 of KC's (100?) barbecue joints, and there's a lot to crow about. But Bryant's is what I wanted this year, and that's what I got.

Wish I could have made the festival...

Jake

Posted by: Jake at August 18, 2006 8:19 AM




Your blog is making me hungry . . .

Posted by: JSR at August 26, 2006 1:30 PM