Food: A Love Story (5 page)

My food geography of the United States, while unscientific, is very personal (and brilliant, in my personal opinion). My hope is that one day, schools, businesses, and prisons will have the Jim Gaffigan American Food Map hanging in their libraries and/or bathrooms. We all have our own unique dreams.

I believe the United States is composed of five major food areas:

•  Seabugland (Northeast Coast)

•  Eating BBQland (Southeast/Parts of Midwest)

•  Super Bowl Sunday Foodland (Midwest/Parts of East)

•  Steakland (Texas to Upper West)

•  Mexican Foodland (Southwest to Texas)

And smaller unique areas:

•  Wineland (Northern California)

•  Coffeeland (Pacific Northwest)

Some of my geographic areas of food blur into other food geographic areas. The greatest example would be Texas, which is a convergence of Mexican Foodland, Eating BBQland,
and
Steakland. I’m not being generous here. It would be unfair to not put Texas in all three of these major food geographical areas. They just do things bigger in Texas. Louisiana and New Orleans in particular are unique to the food geography of the United States. It’s almost as if the Mississippi River flowed all its special food excellence down, and it drained into New Orleans. There are, of course, other exceptions to my regional distinctions, but first let’s explore these major areas on the Jim Gaffigan American Food Map.

SEABUGLAND

You will notice on my food geography map that I’ve identified the northeast coast of the United States as far south as Maryland as “Seabugland.” By
seabugs
I mean those so-called food items you call “shellfish.” On the surface, naming an entire section of the country after shellfish might appear like an oversimplification. After all, the Northeast boasts many other regional food specialties, and most coastal areas of the United States are littered with shellfish, and I emphasize the word
littered
. However, shellfish are an integral part of the northeastern identity. Whenever someone does a bad Boston accent, it’s either to say “wicked” or “lobstah.” Lobster is as much a part of the New England personality as is the hating of all things New York City. All along the northeast coast you find this obsession with things that live in shells. Coastal Connecticut, New York City, and Long Island have a long-standing love affair with oysters. Maryland is not Maryland without crab. I know, technically Maryland is “Mid-Atlantic,” but it must be included as part of the East Coast bug-loving culture. If you can catch something in a net and crack it open for food, those bug lovers will eat it.

Shellfish are not for me. I’m from the Midwest, and outside of the occasional shrimp cocktail, I had limited exposure to shellfish—or any other kind of seafood, really. I’m still not sure I (or anyone, for that matter) would recognize a scallop in its natural form. Are those the things that stick to the side of the aquarium? Who knows? The French may refer to seafood as the “fruit of the sea,” and scientists may call shellfish “crustaceans,” but to me they are creepy-crawly giant insects on the bottom of the ocean. I have a rule that if food looks like something that would crawl out from under a refrigerator, I don’t put it in my mouth. If you like shellfish, do me a favor: next time you see a really big cockroach, just tell yourself, “If that could swim, I’d eat it.” I always imagine fish in the ocean swimming along, looking down at the ocean floor, seeing shellfish and thinking,
We have to get an exterminator up in here.
There is a reason why Red Lobster and exterminators have the same image on their signs. Shellfish are bugs. They have a shell like a bug. They have tons of spindly legs and crawl around like bugs (I have a four-leg maximum on things I’ll eat). They even have antennae like, well, like monsters, frankly. Shellfish are probably monsters. You don’t have to watch any sci-fi movie from the ’60s to understand my point. Consider the following: If you went home and saw a chicken in your house, you’d think,
Why is there a chicken in my house?
If you saw a lobster in your house, you’d think,
We have to move.
This is because there is not a nickel’s worth of difference between a lobster and a giant scorpion.

New England: Lobster

“Lobstah!” Finding lobster on the menu is fancy. It is rare and pricey. “Oooh, they have lobster.” Lobster is so special, restaurants go so far as to have tanks of live lobsters with rubber
bands on the claws. The lobsters always seem to be peering out with a curious expression.

LOBSTER:
What are you doing here?

PATRON:
I’m going to eat you.

LOBSTER:
Ha, ha. Yeah, right. Hey, Harvey, this guy thinks he’s going to eat … Harvey? Where’s Harvey?

In some lobster tank restaurants, diners can choose their own lobster. I always found this strange. “Um, I guess I’ll take that one that is really struggling with the rubber bands. He seems rather appealing. Why don’t we boil him to death?” I’m always perplexed why I’m involved in the decision process. I wanted to have dinner, not play executioner.

All this ritual that I imagine makes PETA members squirm is supposedly justified, given everyone’s love of lobster. And people do love lobster. For many, it just doesn’t get better than lobster. “I love lobster!” I usually nod in agreement and say, “I like butter too.” Really, butter is what makes lobster so good. Each bite of lobster is usually submerged in a small bowl of paradise, also known as butter.

GUY 1:
How can I eat three sticks of butter?

GUY 2:
Well, I found this giant swimming sea scorpion. Maybe if we boil it to death …

Drawing my inspiration from Julie Andrews in
Mary Poppins
, I think it really comes down to “a spoonful of butter helps the bug meat go down.” In, of course, “the most delightful way.”

Even the experience of ordering lobster contributes to its mystique and popularity. Lobster is often listed on the menu as
“Market Price,” which is code for “you can’t afford it.” The “market” always seems to be the most expensive market in the area. Lobster also is a unique food that requires its own wardrobe, the lobster bib, which indicates not only that consuming lobster is messy, but also that people don’t mind looking like a toddler while they do it. A nutcracker is conveniently provided to the lobster connoisseur so that those who dare seek it out may earn the bounty of the lobster meat in the claw. A lobster knife is used to expertly dissect the tail. The ultimate entrée in some steakhouses is often lobster tail served alongside a steak. Yes, somehow the tail of a giant scorpion that can survive in saltwater is the gold standard of accompaniment to a steak. I feel that in life these two animals would have been enemies, but there they are together on the plate in some kind of phony, glorious unity: cow and bug tail. I don’t even feel completely comfortable eating a chicken’s wing, and some people crave eating the tail of a lobster? “Is that the area near the lobster butt? That’s what I want, a little turf and bug butt. Mmm.”

The World Is Your Oyster

A century ago a visit to New York City involved a mandatory stop for oysters. It was like getting lobster in Maine or a house for five dollars in Detroit. You had to do it. New York City was where you would see a Broadway show and eat a boatload of oysters. Oysters and clams piled up along every murky dock on the East Coast. Oysters were so abundant that Long Island even has a town called Oyster Bay. I imagine Oyster Bay one hundred years ago as a big hole filled with oysters with just a little bay in it. Now finding clams and oysters in their natural habitat is a rarity. What happened? You guessed it. We ate them all.

Scientists have recently declared oysters to be functionally extinct. Apparently 85 percent of the world’s oyster ecosystems have been destroyed. Only 1 percent of the natural oyster population remains intact as a result of our voracious consumption. Oysters are now an expensive delicacy. I just don’t get it. I don’t even understand how mankind started eating oysters. I’m not saying there were tons of food options back in the 1700s … but oysters? Really? How hungry would you have to be to make that leap? Maybe two guys were having an unproductive day of fishing.

MAN 1:
Nothing biting over here.

MAN 2:
Nothing here either.

MAN 1:
I’m hungry.

MAN 2:
Me too. Hey, I found a rock with a snot in it. I was thinking of eating it.

MAN 1:
Um, okay. Go ahead.

MAN 2:
(
slurps up the oyster
)

MAN 1:
What does it taste like?

MAN 2:
Pneumonia.

Often on the menu, oysters will be listed as “oysters on the half shell.” As opposed to what? “In a Kleenex?” Even the way you are supposed to eat an oyster indicates something counterintuitive. “Squeeze some lemon on it, a dab of hot sauce, throw the oyster down the back of your throat, take a shot of vodka, and try to forget you just ate snot from a rock.” That is not how you eat something. That is how you overdose on sleeping pills.

It’s not just the East Coast that follows this weird and disgusting tradition. These rare and endangered oysters are found in many coastal areas across North America. It seems wherever
there is a murky dock with brackish water, oysters and clams can grow or spawn from whatever creates them. There are East Coast and West Coast oysters. There are oysters from Prince Edward Island and the Puget Sound, and supposedly they all taste different. “Oh, this snot from a rock from this filthy dock area around San Francisco tastes more snotty than this snot from a rock from a filthy dock area on the Gulf Coast.” I’m not sure how the price of an oyster is determined. “Oh,
this
snot from a rock is from the filthiest dock in Nova Scotia! Let’s charge two hundred dollars for it.”

I only ate the lemon.

I understand I am in the minority in my view that oysters are only slightly less disgusting than their culinary cousin, the Rocky Mountain oyster. Some of the arguments in favor of oysters seem absurd: “Oysters are an aphrodisiac!” We know
this is a scientific fallacy, but why would anyone ever believe such nonsense? I could just see some guy approaching a woman in a bar. “What do you say you and I get some snots from a rock and see what happens? Maybe we’ll end up at my place. Maybe we’ll end up at the emergency room. Let it happen, baby.” Aphrodisiac? It is more believable that after you eat an oyster you’re so happy to be alive you’ll sleep with anyone.

Once I had a friend defensively point out to me, “Pearls come from oysters.” I never really understood his reasoning, but I explained I make a rule to not eat things that also make jewelry. Diamonds come from coal, but we aren’t dipping that into cocktail sauce. I would think that, given that pearls do come from oysters, we would NOT eat them. It seems like a prank played on some not-so-bright business partner.