Duncan Hines (23 page)

In the dining room, he had certain culinary predilections. His face clouded over with intense annoyance when he swallowed a mouthful of soggy mashed potatoes or tried to chew a portion of ham that tasted like veal, or sipped muddy-looking coffee.
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However, what particularly vexed him were those restaurants that “denied their geography.” These he disliked passionately. Hines had no time for seafood in Nebraska or Mexican cuisine in Maine. A restaurant, Hines fervently believed, should serve the cuisine popular to the people who inhabited the area. He believed the best American cooking was regional cooking.
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Lobster in Iowa was simply not as genuine as lobster in Maine. A Kentucky hot brown served in North Dakota was simply a denial of the Midwestern state's German culinary heritage.
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When asked about the worst place to eat in America, Hines wouldn't name a candidate, but offered that “the most barren” stretch of good restaurants in America was “the region between Chicago and Indianapolis.” Between those two cities, he said, there was not one restaurant on the main highway that he could recommend.
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However, his focus was usually on good restaurants—particularly those that served regional specialties, which he urged all his readers to indulge in for a bit of roadside culinary adventure. He urged them to “insist upon fresh chowder in New England, freshwater fish in the Great Lakes region, soft-shelled crabs in Maryland, shrimp in the Southeast [and] Spanish
dishes in the Southwest.”
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Massachusetts may have been his favorite New England state when it came to food, but Maine was close behind. When he thought of the Pine Tree State, he thought of the clam chowder served in Portland. Said Hines: “It's a chowder thick with clams fresh from the sea, free of tomato. It carries the sweet breath of onion, it's enriched with salt pork.” Asked to describe a single word for it, he replied, “rib-comforting.”

Despite his acidic remarks about Southern restaurant cooking, Hines had more than a few favorite restaurants there. Maryland, he said, was the place to go if one wanted crabs. South Carolina was the destination for the palate that longed for okra and “corpulent” shrimp. Florida was the place to go if one wanted to indulge in devouring “giant stone crabs.” Florida also was home of the pompano, he said, “but cooks there invariably ruin it in preparation by adding a spicy sauce which muffles the delicate flavor.”
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The upper Midwest was full of surprises, too. The area comprising the Great Lakes states, he stated, was the best place to go if one wanted to dine on inland seafood. One of his favorite places in that area was the Fish Shanty restaurant in Port Washington, Wisconsin. Hines wrote that it had “long been a famous place for those who enjoy fresh fish caught right out of Lake Michigan by their own flotilla of troller boats.”
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Pennsylvania was the destination for travelers who drooled for the cuisine of the Pennsylvania Dutch. In 1938, noted Hines, one could still find places that served
schnitz und knepp
. Hines often spoke and wrote of the region's food, especially its “shoofly pie, that molasses crumb pie, so perfect for Sunday breakfast with salt mackerel and coffee. But try to find it in a restaurant!” The search was difficult. Ohio was the place to go if one wanted good average American cooking, like old-fashioned chicken with dumplings. “I don't mean that disgraceful travesty you get along with two leathery waffles,” he said. “I mean stewed chicken [that] is delicate in flavor, tender, the dumplings light as thistledown, cooked in ... rich creamy gravy.”

When Hines thought of the South, New Orleans often came to mind. Perhaps that city's top rated dish in his estimation was the Oysters a la Carnival. Describing the process by which the dish is prepared, Hines said “the oysters are chopped,…mixed with sauteed onion, garlic and herbs, blended with bread crumbs, heaped into half shells, crumbs over the top, butter dotted on, and baked.” When Oklahoma was mentioned, Hines thought of “black-bottom pie with crumb crust, a chocolate-custard base topped with a gelatin meringue,” topped with whipped cream, and sweet chocolate shaved over it.

When he traveled to Los Angeles, Hines could never stifle the urge to pay a visit to the Melody Lane restaurant and sample their tamale pie. “This,” he said, “has a delectable filling of ground steak and green peppers, of ripe pitted olives with grated cheese and corn meal [and] hot peppers, but not hot enough to make the mouth smoke.” Another dish that brought Hines to California was the crab custard served at the Valley Green Lodge in Orick. He described the dish as “sweet lumps of crab meat…baked in a rich sauce, scented with onion, zested with tabasco, bedded under a blanket of buttered crumbs.”
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He was full of regional culinary knowledge; all anyone had to do to unearth it was ask him a question and he would empty his head.

Although Hines enjoyed foreign food, it was hearty regional American food—victuals prepared over a hot stove all afternoon—that most gained his admiration and affection.
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Escargot did not make him salivate, but sliced hickory-smoked country ham did. His penchant for regional food items occasionally resulted in a preference for oddball food items—such as maple syrup salad dressing, a delicacy he could find nowhere else but in Vermont. As stated earlier, his favorite culinary region was New England; by contrast, his least favorite area was the American South. Good Southern cooking he said, was a myth. Except in private homes, there was not any. “Why, most of the people who hang out [restaurant] signs” there, Hines thundered, “have been raised on side meat and dirty, greasy beans. They've never tasted good food.” Speaking his mind about the South's turnip greens and
“pot likker,” Hines remarked that it tasted like “like broiled crow with tobacco dressing. I can eat it, but I don't hanker for it.” And when he spoke of Maryland's fried chicken, he informed all who would listen that “it can be good, but too often it conceals a multitude of sins. Instead of fine young chickens, the cook has killed a few old roosters or tired arthritic hens, parboiled them and embalmed them in the icebox. Later they are warmed, covered with hot batter and served up unctuous and sizzling.”

Another subject that raised his ire was the food served in hotel restaurants. Hines's frequent public denunciations of the hotel industry's kitchen practices had by 1939 led to his being invited by hotel owners “to appear at their conventions and give them straight-from-the-shoulder advice.” Hines took advantage of these invitations so he could have a forum to address his concerns. His biggest complaint concerned the hotels' managers, claiming they were foolish to let their guests take their meals a block or two away when all they had to do was institute a few simple reforms. They were insulated from the real world, said Hines, “they never get around except to other hotels like their own. They spend a lot of effort on efficiency and checking little items [for] waste,” but they “never find out what average people are eating.”
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As early as the 1920s, Americans were beginning to forsake hotel food for that served in the roadhouse and highway inn, despite the potential dangers they posed. The main reason for this trend, Hines said, was because big hotels prepared their meals “without imagination.” And he had a villain in mind whom the industry could blame for all its economic woes: the efficiency man. This individual, he griped, was the person who told them how to save money—usually at the diner's expense. “The efficiency man has discovered,” he said with contempt, “that pork shrinks with proper cooking. Pork should be well done…but in a large enterprise underdone pork will serve a great many more portions than well-done pork. The same thing holds true with turkey. Boiled turkey will provide more portions per pound than roast turkey, but good turkey is roast turkey.”
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And the best way to serve roast turkey, Hines thundered, was when it was basted with wine and butter.
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Exposing the efficiency man's crimes against hotel food was yet another reason why Hines caught on with the public. They liked what he had to say, and the way he said it. And newspaper and magazine editors did not ignore their readers' desires. Therefore, in scores of articles, Hines gave the public plenty of tips as to what motorists who wanted to eat well when traveling should look for. In one article he stated that “the highway inn which serves no liquor is likely to be more painstaking about its food than the more exciting place which does.” Hines liked Scotch and soda, and he listed many places in his guidebooks which served liquor, but he noted that while “liquor may attract a crowd,” after a few cocktails or highballs,
any
restaurant patron would find the food good.
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Good restaurants were not his only concern. Within a few months Hines also came to believe he could help change Americans' eating habits. His agenda changed as his fame grew. His philosophy in this regard evolved slowly over the next few years in piecemeal fashion. But when he formed an opinion and chanted it incessantly through the many organs of that day's media, Americans read and listened to what he had to say—and assented their approval. An example can be found in his fellow Americans' eating habits, which he deplored. Hines believed the remedy for this deficiency lay in education, and he thought himself to be the perfect teacher. As the 1930s gave way to the 1940s, he became more vocal on this subject. He believed the more the public knew about proper diet, the more rapidly they would change their ways. He observed the average American “wants his food in a hurry. He likes it well prepared, but he is unwilling to wait while it's cooked to order.” To Hines's mind, the most “sinister” influence “in the modern social order” was the drugstore lunch counter. “In the Middle West, the younger generation is being raised at the lunch counter. How in God's name can anyone who regularly eats drugstore snacks ever be expected to recognize a good meal when it's served?”
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The drug store lunch counter fostered two more of his “pet peeves,” one of which was the penchant to overeat, which he scorned and found repulsive, for it contradicted his philosophy
that one should eat in moderation. The other irritant was Americans' tendency to “bolt it and beat it,” believing the consumption of a meal should be undertaken slowly, leisurely. A meal was something to savor—not wolf down. Finally, he did not believe in dining at bargain-basement prices, stating once that “usually the difference between a low-priced meal and one that costs more is the amount you pay the doctor or the undertaker.”
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As Americans adjusted to a war economy a few short months after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Hines published the 1942 edition of
Adventures in Good Eating
. With the nation in domestic chaos, he was not sure how well the book would do financially. He expected the worst. What happened at first, however, surprised him. All three books sold more copies during April and May 1942 than they had the entire previous year. “No doubt,” Hines observed, this was “brought about by the fact that defense workers and their families are now using my books when they are on the move from one part of the country to the other.” More interestingly, for the first time
Adventures in Good Cooking
was outselling
Lodging for a Night
.
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Nevertheless, the Second World War made matters difficult for Hines's business, but not in the way one might expect. Between 1942 and 1944 America had to cope with gas and tire rationing, a move which curtailed all nonessential automobile driving. However, Americans could accumulate rationed gasoline coupons. If they saved enough of them, they could take a trip to a nearby city or across the continent. While Hines's business suffered during this time, it did not fare as poorly as he initially feared; people had to travel, and therefore they continued to buy his books. As the nation
mobilized for war, millions of Americans were transported back and forth across the country, usually via train. During the course of their travels many transients found themselves in unfamiliar cities. Because they often found themselves in strange locales and were thus unaware of good places to eat and sleep, many men and women bought his guidebooks to locate them.
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Indeed, for many servicemen a Duncan Hines guidebook was a required possession, particularly when they were on leave. Likewise, Americans not in uniform also found the books useful, particularly on those occasions when they visited their loved ones in the armed services.
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Although gasoline rationing hampered Hines's ability to investigate potential dining and lodging facilities, which annoyed him, he nevertheless tried to travel as much as he could. But in the early days of the war, most of his time was spent dealing with a restaurant industry thrown into confusion. Confident that America would win the war, even early on, he saw it as his mission to raise the morale of the nation's restaurateurs until the storm passed. He dealt with all sorts. Some restaurant owners were nervous over the uncertain turmoil that gas and food rationing would have on their businesses. Some restaurants had more business than they could handle; others had virtually no customers at all, particularly if they were located miles from a metropolitan area, where most soldiers tended to be stationed. To boost their confidence and to help them analyze the current state of affairs, Hines held several regional meetings for his “family” members.
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It was during this time that politicians began to seek his advice. Before the Ohio State Health Commissioners' Conference in September 1942, Hines testified he would grade restaurants, scoring them according to cleanliness. “I'd like to see letters six inches high on the entrance door,” he told them, “and front display windows showing the grade of the restaurant, and if I operated a restaurant, I would add under the grade
Our Kitchen Is Open For Inspection By Our Guests
. And then I would add another sign:
No Pets Allowed In Kitchens Or Dining Rooms Regardless Of Who They Belong To.”