Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing) (37 page)

And what did Doug Broome do? I'll tell you what he did. He stripped off
his apron and pulled Betty Jean out from behind the counter. Then he triggered "Rock Around the Clock" on the juke. No one could believe it! He and
Betty Jean were dancing and doing red-hot solo kicks on their big breaks.

When the song ended, he announced that everyone was getting a $25 bonus
for working the Pentecostals, who had scriptural support for their stand on no
tipping. Then he flipped on the public address and sang out over the cars and
the neon and the night. "Ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls, I'd like to
take this opportunity to remind you that you are now eating at one of the
most famous drive-ins in the great Southeast. Our specialties are hamburgers,
steak sandwiches, and our famous fried chicken, which is served with lettuce
and tomato, carrot curls, pickle chips, and a side of fries, all for the price of
one dollar and forty-nine cents. And when you get home tonight and are
telling your friends about our fine food and fast service, please remember to tell them that we have been internationally recognized by none other than
Mister Duncan Hines himself. I thank you."

Then tying up his apron and angling his cap, he came back to the grill, and
with some newer, faster, wilder speed I'd never seen caught the crest and broke
it.

Well, Doug's gone now, and with him goes that high-pitched voice on the
P.A. and the nights and the music and the great curb girls out on Harden who
got us all in trouble. He's gone, and with him go those irreplaceable primary
parts of Columbia that shimmered out there under the cartoon-colored neon.
There will be no interstate cut-offs named for him, nor will there be a chandeliered Doug Broome Room at the Summit Club. But some nights out on
North Main or Harden or Rosewood, when the moon's right and the neon's
right and the juke box is thumping out some seventies jump or Fats Domino
is up on Blueberry Hill, it will be impossible not to see him sliding double
burgers and Sunday beers in milkshake cups down the counter. And if you're
as lucky as a lot of us who knew him, you'll probably see him pinch the curb
girl at the pick-up window and flash her that big smile and say, "Baby Doll, remember, there's no such thing as a small Coke."

While I was merrily failing everything at Wardlaw Junior High, Doug
Broome hired me at his first spot on the 1200 block of Lady. He taught me
everything: how to stay on the duckboards to keep from getting shin splints,
how to salt the duckboards to keep from slipping, how to keep track of incoming and outgoing orders, and a dozen things that made life easier behind
the counter. I copied his freewheeling moves with the spatulas and the French
knife, his chopping technique on onions, and his big showboat take-away
when he sliced a grilled cheese or buttered toast. It was a great way to begin a
career and see the world, and I probably learned more from him than any
teacher on down the road.

One day, years later, I interviewed him for a magazine, and it went like this:
"Billy, I swear to God, these chain operations are ruining the hamburger. Ruining it. Most of them come from up North to begin with, so what in the hell
do they know about any kind of cooking? Any fool right off the street will tell
you the minute you freeze hamburger and defrost it you ain't got nothing.
God Almighty, you slide one of those three ouncers out of a bun and throw it
across the room, and it will sail. I ain't lying, that's how thin that thing is." He
was eating his own Doug Broome Doubleburger and holding it out with true
respect and admiration. "Now you take this half-pound baby right here. I
don't care what you think you could do to it, there ain't no way in the world
you can make it any better. No way. I use the finest ground meat there is, the finest lettuce, the finest tomatoes and onions, and Billy, I fry this piece of meat
in the finest grease money can buy. Every one of these chains are getting their
meat out of Mexico. Ain't no telling what's in it. Hell, I read that in a magazine
put out by the United States Government."

He rolled on about how he had single-handedly gunned down the Big Boy
franchise when it came to Columbia.

Everybody in town knows I've always called my hamburger "Big Boy." Anyhow, they'd already steamrolled across everything west of the goddamn
Mississippi. And here they come heading across Tennessee. Then across
Alabama. Then across Georgia. But when they hit that South Carolina line,
I got out in the road and said, "Whoa now! You ain't franchising no Big Boy
in here because I am already the `Big Boy.' Gentlemen, you and me are
going to the courts."

And that's what we did. They brought in a wheelbarrow full of money
and eight or nine Harvard Jew lawyers, and all I had going for me was my
good name and my good friends. And Billy, we beat them to death. I mean
to death. They had to pay me sixty thousand dollars and every penny of the
court costs.

He paused and sipped his Coke. "Well, you know the kind of guy I am, and
you know I never like to kick a man when he's down. Those boys had all that
money tied up on promos and `Big Boy' neon, so I say, `Okay, y'all give me another ten thousand and I'll change my "Big Boy" to "Big Joy.""' I knew a few
of the facts, and I said, "Come on, Doug."

"Boy, why would I tell a lie about something like that? I'm telling you that's
exactly what happened."

Part of the story was true. Outside on North Main, the sign on the old "Big
Boy" read "Big Joy." But the eight or nine lawyers turned out to be one old retainer out of Camden. The sixty thousand dollars was right, but it went the
other way; Doug had to pay them. The ten thousand dollars never existed.
Doug was like that. Like all great storytellers, he was a consummate liar. A
great straight tale would be transformed into a richer, wilder mixture, and the
final version, while sometime spellbinding and always entertaining, would
have absolutely nothing to do with the truth.

Doug had charisma and Doug had style, but it wasn't until later that I realized what a profound effect it had on me. I was on a New York talk show hustling a novel. The host had led me down the garden path in the warm-up,
promising we'd discuss pole beans and the best season for collards. But when
the camera light came on, his voice dipped into low and meaningful. We dis cussed the Mythic South, the Gothic South, Faulkner's South, and the relevance of the agrarian metaphor. I was a complete disaster. And then he asked
me how I would define style. It was a high pitch right across the letters, and I
dug in and took a full cut. I told him about one day during a rush at Doug's
on Harden Street. There were a dozen customers on the horseshoe counter,
and a man came in and ordered a cheese omelet. I'd never made one before,
but I'd watched Doug do it. I chopped the cheese, broke three eggs into a
shake can, added milk, and hung it on the mixer. Then I poured it out on the
big grill. I'd used too much milk, and it shot out to all four corners, where it
began to burn. I almost panicked. Then I remembered Doug's long, smooth
moves with the spatulas and pulled them out of the rack as if they were Smith
and Wesson .44s. I began rounding it up. As I worked I flexed my elbows and
dipped my knees and did his little two-beat rhythm behind my teeth. I kept
clicking and kept moving and just at the critical moment I folded it over,
tucked it in and slid it onto the plate. Then with parsley bouquets on the ends
and toast points down the sides, I served it with one of Doug's long flourishes
and stepped back.

The man forked up an end cut. He chewed it slowly and closed his eyes in
concentration to pick up the echo taste. Then he laid his fork down and, with
both hands on the counter, he looked me in the eye, "Young man, that's the
finest omelet I've ever put in my mouth"

I wound up telling the stunned interviewer that that was style, and all you
can do is point at it when you see it winging by and maybe listen for the ricochet. I don't think he understood, but I knew I did. I knew that style wasn't an
exclusive property in the aristocracy of the arts. A jockey, a shortstop, a usedcar salesman, or a mechanic grinding valves can have it, and the feathertrimmed hookers selling their wares out on the Two Notch Road are not without it. And Doug Broome had it, and he knew he had it, and he staged it with
wild clothes and great music and strawberry-colored Cadillacs and backlighted it all with red and yellow and purple flashing lights. There will never
be another like him.

It's early in a Friday lunch shift at Uglesich's, and already owner Anthony
Uglesich (pronounced "yu-gul-sitch") is fielding calls about "the transition."
Tethered to the restaurant's front wall by a metal pay-phone cable, he reassures the caller with equal parts authority and ambiguity.

"Yes, ma'am," he says, "We're still open. No, ma'am, we haven't decided."

A group of dressy conventioneers-name tags partially concealed under
winter overcoats-presses through the narrow doorway, letting in a blast
of cold, wet wind. The party searches the tiny room for an open table or a
maitre d: They find neither. Instead, Uglesich leans over to welcome the new
arrivals. Caught between his caller and his customers, he taps his pen on his
ever-present ordering pad.

"No, ma'am," he says into the phone. "We don't know how long. I might be
here half a year, might be another year and a half."

Workaday sounds from the adjoining kitchen-the clank of saute pans
against burners, the burble of deep fryers-punctuate the conversation. He
motions the group to a stack of laminated single-sheet menus. "Well, thank
you, but it's a lot of hard work, and my wheels ain't what they used to be. But
we're around for now. Yes, ma'am. Monday through Friday. We're open 'til
four. Thank you. G'bye."

Uglesich rests the phone in its cradle. From his perch behind the stainless
steel bar he now turns his full attention to the newcomers.

"C'mon in," he says with a serious smile. "What can I getcha today?"

In the past few years, Uglesich has fielded many similar calls from customers concerned with the future of his Central City restaurant. Despite its
shabby exterior and less-than-prime location, Uglesich's eponymous eatery
has become a culinary landmark for locals and a pilgrimage site for foodcrazy travelers.

From its humble beginnings as a 192os-era neighborhood bar and oyster
house, Uglesich's remains a ramshackle, ten-table eatery-but now one with a fan base that includes high-profile restaurateurs Emeril Lagasse, Susan Spicer,
and Frank Brigtsen. It's also one of the local establishments most recommended by the national food press. Here, visitors can continually rediscover
a prototypical diamond in the rough, even if their simple lunch comes with
a bottle of Belgian Trappist ale and sets them back thirty to forty dollars a
person.

"There's always one iconic restaurant that exemplifies what New Orleans
food is about, and for a lot of reasons, Uglesich's is that now," says Jonathan
Gold, national restaurant reviewer for Gourmet. "There's an amazing amount
of thought put into the food. It's rooted in traditional Louisiana cooking, but
it's not hopelessly old-fashioned. If you get off the plane and go to Uglesich's,
you get the feeling there's no other place in the world you can be."

Uglesich and his wife/cooking partner, Gail, have perfected a menu that
balances deep-fried New Orleans classics with their own innovations: succulent shrimp stuffed with herbed lump crabmeat, delicate sauteed oyster
"shooters" drenched in a cane syrup/sun-dried tomato vinaigrette, peerless
grilled speckled trout, or the spicy-tart shrimp Uggie, tinted red with three
different chiles.

"They do the classics better than anybody," says Susan Spicer, the culinary
mind behind Bayona, Herbsaint, and Cobalt. "But he can also come up with
something that's totally surprising. It's ALL moan and groan good. They're always on this eternal quest, open to exotic flavors while staying deeply rooted
in the local ingredients."