Dueling Cheesesteaks (and other gastronomic notes)

Some notes on food and drink in the Asbury Park/Ocean Grove/Bradley Beach area:

1) the cheesesteak at the hipster sandwich joint The Speakeatery is better than the cheesesteak from Palmer's Quality Meats in Neptune City, although both these cheesesteaks are exceptional (and both contain chopped-up hot cherry peppers) the Speakeatery version is more steak-like, featuring chopped top round, while the Palmer's Meats version is more like a think-sliced Philly version . . . and I want to try more things from both these places;

2) The Asbury Park Distilling Co has happy hour-- 10-dollar highballs-- and the aquavit is very tasty, just a hint of licorice/anise flavor;

3) The R Bar has jazz and dollar oysters on Thursday night, and it's quite the hipster joint-- the drinks are excellent, and the bartender is very very attractive;

4) the deal at Johnny Mac's House of Spirits is that if you order drinks you are entitled to one free mini-pizza-- but if it's crowded, then you have to wait in line to get your pizza, so take advantage of this deal early-- and they also have ping-pong, skeeball, and cornhole;

5) the mussels in coconut curry are excellent at Catbird in Asbury, as is the sourdough crust pizza-- the size and taste is similar to Talula's . . . but Catbird is BYOB, so though it's a bit pricey, you can save some of your dough and that way, when the bill comes,  you won't be sour.

Tana vs. Tony

I'm proud to say-- mainly because of the lousy weather due to tropical storm Erin-- that, despite being on vacation, I knocked out another episode of We Defy Augury . . . "Tana vs. Tony: How to Solve a Murder Mystery" features my thoughts (loosely) inspired by Tana French's "Dublin Murder Squad" series and Anthony Horowitz's "Magpie/Moonflower/Marble Hall Murders" series . . . but the episode is more about the two types of mystery novels, those in a series, where you know the detective and his or her methods-- and those stories that feature a new and unique perspective for each case . . . and, be forewarned: you will be quizzed.

Mystery Cookie

I surreptitiously took a bite of a cookie I discovered on the counter, assuming it was of the chocolate chip variety-- that's what it looked like-- but its taste confounded me, so I stopped eating it . . . and then I later discovered (from my wife) that it was a lemon blueberry cookie-- those weren't sour chocolate chips, they were blueberries!

Henry Rollins Would Go Swimming

During our vacation, I thought we had encountered all the different beach warning flags: green, yellow, and red . . . but today Ocean Grove had up BLACK flags-- rise above!-- and these flags indicate that if you go swimming you will DIE . . . very punk rock.

It's a Rush, Rediscovering Rush

It wasn't until I was 52 years old that I started to dig the pop fusion facility of Steely Dan, and now I am pleased to report that— in my 56th year— I am finally delving into another band I neglected in my youth: Rush-- I am listening to all the Rush albums . . . and truly enjoying them—I always liked the music of Rush, but I could never tolerate Geddy Lee's voice; that was a dealbreaker for me— but perhaps salt life here at the beach has mellowed my judgment, or maybe my ears are getting older and less sensitive— who fucking knows— but the other thing I have learned here at the beach is that when you go running on the sand on a windy day, you need to wear big-ass old-school over-the-ears noise-canceling headphones—and then you can really enjoy your Canadian prog rock, despite the angry ocean.

Weapons is the Bomb

There have been some good movies out lately: I like Weapons-- the new Zach Cregger film (he also directed the horror flick Barbarians) even more than Sinners and Mickey 17-- which were both fantastic . . . Weapons is Pulp Fiction meets It and it is perfectly paced; makes as much logical sense as a horror movie can make; does not treat its characters cavalierly-- as many a horror film is wont to do, especially if you're on the chopping block; and features a compelling opening mystery and a wonderful closing scene (where it looks like the child actors are having a total blast) so this one is worth seeing at the movies-- despite the record number of coming attractions (some of which looked decent, a new Ethan Coen film and a new Paul Thomas Anderson film).

Meta-Debate Tempered by Alcohol

You don't want to go down this road with your wife: arguing about who is more argumentative (although the Bradley Beach bar crawl with the Dom and Michelle Moccio is mollifying the debate-- we went to The Little Dog Brewery (Gretchen is the first female brewmaster/brewery owner in New Jersey and she is very nice and knowledgeable and her beer is amazing) and Wheelhouse Distilling (a cute young newly married couple-- a fireman and an accountant-- own this with another couple . . . best mixed drink I've had in a long time: in-house spicy watermelon mixer and their bourbon-- delicious) and then we went to the Bradley Brew Project and I drank a very hazy pale ale called "Unicorn Girls."

We Defy Augury: Ocean Grove Edition

My new episode of We Defy Augury-- "Bungle in the Jungle, Salt Life at the Beach"-- is (loosely) inspired by the Charles Portis novel Gringos and my time living in Ocean Grove . . . and I sincerely appreciate all my listeners, and trust me, you will receive a very special prize if you make it all the way through.

Only in Jerzee: The Theme Continues

Yesterday, I went to play pickleball at Wardell Park-- it's a fifteen-minute drive from the beach and a well-organized, busy place, but the skill levels of the players are a bit random: some decent players, some old folks, and some wild cards . . . but there was one solid player I had some good games with the other day and he grabbed my paddle and put me in his group and then when we went out on the court and I assumed we were splitting up because we were the best players but he had other ideas-- so this guy, a big Mediterranean-looking dude, he said to me, "over here shradool" or something like that-- it was one of those made up Sicilian words that my father always used as a catch-all-- and this guy looked a bit like my dad (thirty years ago) so that was something and then I realized that he just wanted to mercilessly crush everyone and that's why he adopted me as a partner and the game started and we were playing an athletic lefty who I had played before-- a decent player but mainly a banger-- and my partner leaned over to me and said, "all this guy does is smash the ball, so don't return his serve like a pussy" and I was like: "okay" because who wants to hit a return of serve like a pussy?

Five Minute Tour of the Jerzee Shore

Yesterday, I was sitting on the beach with Stacey and my wife and I had to pee and I didin't feel like going in the water because it was fairly chilly down on the beach-- and so I headed up to the boardwalk to the public bathroom and this five-minute trip embodied the Jersey Shore experience: when I first passed the foot rinsing station at the edge of the boardwalk, a beautiful, slender lady in a revealing bikini was washing the sand off her long tan legs and I was like, "the Jersey Shore is the best . . . " and then I walked up the steps to the boardwalk and I was confronted with another scantily clad lady, but this was quite a contrast-- she was skinny and gnarled and leathery, her wrinkles had wrinkles-- she was perhaps 87 (or 47 but spent WAY too much time in the sun) and I was like, "the Jersey Shore . . . oh the humanity!" and then I went to the bathroom and when I returned, a middle-aged woman was struggling to turn on the foot-rinsing sprayer and she asked for help and I told her she was pressing the wrong thing and she had to press the little knob above the sprayer and then the guy behind me said, "YAH GOTTA LEAN ON IT LIKE IT OWES YA MONEY" and I was like "yes! you could only hear a sentence like that, off-the-cuff, in perfect context, at the Jersey Shore" and now I really want to toss out that phrase in the right situation (a door that's jammed because of humidity? a stubborn beach chair?) but I'm not sure if I'm Jersey enough to pull it off.

Bunnies on a Trampoline Portend Doom

Daniel Boorstin was worried about "pseudo-events" and manipulative imagery back in 1962 and expressed this in his classic treatise The Image, but things have gotten far worse and far more absurd than he could imagine-- if you can't trust security cam footage of joyful bunnies jumping on a trampoline, then there is no image you can trust-- which will perhaps move people back towards reading books?-- books can be fictitious, fabricated, and meretricious as well, but you have more time to parse the logic and research the examples and maybe the book is published by an organization you trust?-- who fucking knows, but we are headed into fuzzy and ambiguous times.

 

Broken Harbor Breaks Bad

Tana French's novel, Broken Harbor, is a crime procedural wrapped inside a portrait of insanity balanced atop a real estate crisis —and it's hard to remember when the real estate bubble popped, because it has reinflated, but it was less than two decades ago.

All the Umbrellas Look the Same

Another beautiful fucking beach day-- for most of us . . . but not for the little blonde girl who wandered two beaches from her family (and for her parents, who called the police) but my wife was on the case, got the girl to a lifeguard, who drove her from Ocean Grove over to Bradley Beach, where she was reunited with her family.

Salty Concession

To get my wife to stop nagging me about my habit of swimming alone in the ocean when there's a riptide, I told her she could up our life insurance policy.

Change of Pace, Place, and Space

Spending an extended amount of time in a different place and space has got to be good for my gradually atrophying brain-- I have to really pay attention when I'm walking around inside our little rental, as there are slanted ceilings, a twisty set of stairs, and a small kitchen: there are lots of places for me to hit my head or stub my toe, if I'm not careful-- and this is a good wake-up call for my brain . . . the same goes for walking and biking around-- we're going to be here for nearly a month, so I'm learning how to drive, walk, and bike some new streets . . . yesterday, my wife and I biked inland to Sunshine Village park because they have some outdoor workout equipment and it took some navigating to get there (including a weird bridge with stairs over Route 18 . . . we found an easier way to bike home) and I have to remember this when I'm teaching-- I have to move the students and the seating arrangements around as much as possible, so that the kids bang into things and can't figure out where to sit.

Tana French is The Bomb

I just finished The Trespasser by Irish-American mystery writer Tana French-- this is the sixth book in her "Dublin Murder Squad" series-- but each book is from the perspective of a different detective, so she does away with that whole "Sherlock Holmes genius detective trope" and instead focuses on how each case affects (and is affected by) the particular detective working the murder . . . and while I've read her books in no particular order (I also read Faithful Place and In the Woods in the Murder Squad series and her stand-alone novels The Wych Elm and The Searcher and I just started Broken Harbor) I am realizing that she is perhaps the best living mystery writer-- she is definitely a cut above Ruth Ware, although I love a Ruth Ware thriller-- so if you haven't read a Tana French novel, pick one at random and give it a shot, I doubt you'll be disappointed.

Salt Life

A cool, cloudy day here at the beach so I'm back at the coffee shop-- but this time, taking some advice from my wife, I have ordered my coffee "for here," and so I get it in a little blue mug, and then I can get a refill . . . anyway, lots of adventures in the past two days-- I oculd really get used to living down here:

1) yesterday, Stacey came to visit, and we spent some time at the beach, and then we went out for drinks and food in Asbury Park;

2) we visited the Black Swan for all-day Tuesday happy hour-- all alcohol is half off-- so we had some fancy drinks and apps . . . get this, in ANOTHER refurbished bank-- so I'm writing this sentence in a refurbished bank in Ocean Grove and we had drinks in a refurbished bank in Asbury-- fucking wild-- and while the food and drinks were great, Stacey and I did feel a strange and very random tapping on the metal foot rail but we couldn't exactly figure out which bar patron had the nervous feet;

3) then we went to Barrio Costero, the upscale Mexican joint, for Taco Tuesday-- three tacos and a spicy margarite for $15-- which is a deal at this place-- and there was no room at the bar so the hostess seated us at the "chef's counter" and we watched the kitchen in action-- it was quite impressive and I certainly got my money's worth-- I asked the head chef a lot of questions (she was saying "hands!" not "hits!" and the spritzer was full of lime juice) and we noticed that EVERYTHING was prepped and labeled, so they were really just assembling and cooking, for the most part-- an excellent experience;

4)  this morning, I shook off the alcohol and took Lola to the Asbury dog beach-- she enjoyed that . . .

5) after the dog park, I geared up and made the short drive to Wardell Park for some pickleball-- as usual, everything was organized and there were some decent players-- I ended up playing for nearly three hours;

6) post-pickleball, I cooked up some leftovers, collapsed on the couch and I read my Tana French novel until I fell asleep-- 

7) Catherine got home from her book club outing in Bradley Beach, and she's making some eggplant parm in our tiny kitchen-- she made the sauce yesterday with tomatoes from her garden and now she's prepping the white eggplants (also homegrown) and I took a lovely picture of this-- it's not easy to work in this little kitchen so that's why I cleared out (too many cooks=no good) and I did get a free coffee refill (but the AC in this old bank sucks).

Dave Finally Achieves Stereotypical Blogger Status!

 

In all my years of writing this blog, I have never once (until today) sat down in a hipster coffee shop, connected to the wifi, and wrote my daily sentence while drinking a cup of high-end joe-- but here I am, in Odyssey Coffee in Ocean Grove, stimming on caffeine, sitting at a counter, listening to some kind of chill-hop jazzy techno-beat, and crafting my sentence-- but it's a bit nerve-wracking trying to write in here, as I'm trying to guard my screen from prying eyes because I'm sure there are other bloggers in here who will steal my shit at the drop of a hat, so I've got to stay vigilant-- but my eyes aren't very good so I need to use a very large font, so youngsters can read my screen from across the room, those fuckers-- and honestly, there's too much stimulus in here anyway, I can't focus on anything but all the white people walking by and all the white people in here and the very soothing music-- it's starting to drive me crazy . . . smooth saxophone over a chillaxing kick drum?-- and really I don't know how anyone writes anything of quality when they are in one of these places and this will probably be the last time that I attempt this (although I do love the coffee!)

Perfect Beach Day . . . Too Perfect . . .

Another perfect beach day . . . or near perfect: I pulled the wagon down early while Catherine was at the grocery store and got set up-- there was plenty of open space (because it's Monday) so I placed the chairs and umbrella at the high tide line, with an unobstructed view of the water, but the two old ladies next to me had piercing voices so I moved over a bit and then I really got set up: I laid down in Cat's low-rider beach chair and put my feet up on the taller Tommy Bahama beach chair-- so I was horizontal to the sand-- and then I put on my headphones and started listening to a podcast about America's failure to build high speed railway lines . . . it was sweet while it lasted, which was about three minutes-- then a family comprised of a harried mom and four children invaded my space-- and there was so much other beach space!-- and they were loud, they were chaotic, the rental umbrella guy put the umbrella way too close to mine (notice the thin sliver of sun between the two umbrella shadows) and then a portly kid started digging a hole that was destined to go underneath my beach chair . . .I was so ensconced in this family that I think people around us thought I was the dad-- so I got up and moved once again . . . and there I remained for many hours (my wife came down with sandwiches, which was lovely) and I knocked out quite a bit of a Tana French mystery novel (The Trespasser) and perhaps tomorrow I will invade some other person's space, just to see how it feels.

Things Are Quiet, Too Quiet

Cat, Lola, and I are settling in to our beach rental in Ocean Grove . . . we had coffee this morning at Odyssey Coffee- which resides in the old bank on Main Street, you can drink your coffee in the vault, if you don't want a window view-- and then we walked through all the lush gardens and Victorian architecture to the Asbury Farmers Market and waited in a very long line to buy some sourdough bread (Benchmark Bread) and then we went over to C'est Cheese and bought some cheese to accompany the bread-- and last night, for the first time in my life, I made espresso martinis with Mr. Black and they were delicious-- and the weather is beautiful, there's a breeze off the ocean, and this is shaping up to be a lovely and relaxing end to the summer (which is the start of every horror movie ever).

Let's Move It Along

Yesterday, I finished my first (and perhaps last) P.D. James mystery novel, A Taste for Death, and while I enjoyed the central mystery and grisly murder, the book became a bit of a bombastic slog in the middle-- too much furniture and interior description, too many interviews, too many characters-- I guess I enjoy my crime fiction a little less realistic, a little more meta, and much faster paced . . . because I am certainly not going to crack the case, so I don't want to spend forever reading about it.

Il Gattopardo

 

My new episode of We Defy Augury, "From Sayreville to Sicily: The Effect of Setting on the Psyche," is (loosely) inspired by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's great Sicilian novel "The Leopard," but I get some help explaining the theme from Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen.