IT'S A DRY HEAT

Things are changing in the old Mojave desert, especially in Yucca Valley, but maybe we knew that already. Hell, I’ve been going there long enough that I remember when the food options were pretty much limited to a Sizzler and a gas station hot dog.  Now there’s fine, or at least hipsterish, dining. Up in Flamingo Heights there’s now La Copine Kitchen serving beignets and flax and whey English muffins but I wasn’t feeling quite strong enough for that.

Parry and Harriet’s in Pioneertown remains my idea of a good time in the desert (that's Harriet and Pappy above).  I remember the first time I went there, 20 some years ago. I saw all the pickup trucks and bikes parked outside and thought it looked kind of scary, but I braved it and went in, and of course it was just fine.   I seem to recall I had a steak sandwich and quite a few beers.  It felt good – and there was a band playing that had a kickass lead guitarist.  There often is.  This is Giant Sand with Pappy and Harriet's as a backdrop.

 Returning there this weekend for an early Saturday lunch with a couple of Anglo-Dutch pals who are driving across the States in a rented RV, there were more bikes and bikers there than I’d ever seen, and it wasn’t even noon.  I guess the boys were having their brunch-time brews before hitting the road.  Before we were settled and served, the place had emptied out.

The Pappy and Harriet menu featured, would you believe (well yes, you probably would), kale salad.  I didn’t order it, obviously.  I had the Desert Burger, which you see here. (That stuff on the plate that looks like an explosions of cheese and fries, is in fact cheese fries.)

 There was no band playing at that time of day, though there was a gently decaying taxidermy moose right above our heads:

And there is the wall of fame, photographs of musicians who’ve passed through the place at one time or another.  There’s Peaches and Robert Plant – side by side but in separate frames – something symbolic in that, no doubt.

But the most impressive change in recent years in Yucca Valley has been the arrival of the Kimi Grill, an honest to goodness good quality Japanese restaurant, attached to the Travelodge motel on the west end of town.

The sushi looked like this – the squid with caviar was my favorite:

The sashimi looked like this – the salmon was the knock out:

I think they get through a lot of flowers.  And of course you may ask yourself, how does a restaurant in the middle of the desert get sushi-grade fish?  And I suppose the answer is they get it the same way that restaurants NOT in the desert get their sushi-grade fish.  I think we all know by now that freshness is no virtue whatsoever when it comes to sushi.

Elsewhere, only the very smallest change has affected the Route 62 Diner, which is now Carla’s Route 62 Diner.  Décor and menu remain the same, the latter featuring dishes named after rock and roll stars.  I had the corned beef hash and scrambled egg – pretty standard diner fare, but I felt better for knowing it was named the Buddy Holly.

Wisest to avoid the Chubby Checker, I thought.

BOURDAIN, HOMME AND QUINE AND HARRIET AND PAPPY (RIP)

I’ve been reading an interview Anthony Bourdain did for Yahoo TV.  One of the questions:  What do you think of people who Instagram their food?  Bourdain replies, “Look, I'm guilty of it, too. I think it's worth making fun of. We deserve to be mocked. It's a dysfunctional, even aggressive practice. Why do we Instagram pictures of our food? It's not to share. It's to make other people feel really bad. … It's basically a f--- you. You say, "Look what I'm eating, bitches." You don't want people to be eating dinner with you when you Instagram a picture of your food. You want them to be eating a bag of Cheetos on their couch in their underpants. It's a passive aggressive act.  That said, I do it all the time.”

I’d have thought Bourdain was way too cool to do Instagramming (even I feel like a tool when I photograph my meals) and I’d also think he’s too cool to do passive aggression.  Why not active aggression?  But I guess it’s all publicity to further his “brand.”  And hell, it’s not such a bad brand.

I went and looked at his Instagrams – some very enticing pics with some very terse titles, such as Lobster Night:

 Lunch Sicily:

The Glory of Spain:

And the one below has no caption at all but seems to be in South Africa. Pap Beef Curry – pardon my immature snigger:

I cut Bourdain plenty of slack for two, linked, reasons.    First, he knows a good guitarist when he hears one.  In an interview with Karen Brown for Etsy.com she asks him: If you could bring back four dead rock stars, who would you bring back?  After Johnny Thunders, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Joey Ramone – he goes for Robert Quine.  Robert Quine!!  All right!! – the only truly great bald guitarist or at least the only one who ever seriously fessed up to his baldness.  Brian Eno writes of him,” Our friendship clicked and resolved itself around the following: a love of wandering round New York and eating in obscure oriental restaurants” also of course “a feeling for music that was 'at the edge of music.'”

Bourdain is also a fan of the desert – he’s done at least two shows about the Mojave, and in one of them he and Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age go to eat and drink at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, a place I know somewhat, and a place I became aware of because of that other great guitarist and desert guy Howe Gelb, who used to live close by, though this pic is obviously taken in Arizona.

And here are Bourdian and Homme at the bar of Pappy and Harriet's, where I have frequently sat.

 I think Bourdain rather overstates the desert weirdness of Pappy and Harriet’s – the place is often full of kids and old couples doing line dancing, but I do believe their steak sandwich with thinly sliced Santa Maria BBQ topped with grilled onions and shredded cheese on toasted French bread  - $11.95, is pretty much unbeatable.  It’s what I always get when I’m there but I’ve never been so uncool as to take a picture of it.  Others, I’m sure have felt no such inhibition.

DESERT GASTRONOMY

I don’t suppose many people go to the Mojave desert in search of haute cuisine, and if they do they must come away very disappointed.  Still there are one or two oases. The Bun Boy in Barstow does an OK meatloaf, though you go there for the old world vibe rather than the food.  Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown serves up a pretty decent steak sandwich, but you’re probably there for the live music.

One place I always find myself going to is La Casita in Yucca Valley, actually in the corner of a mall parking lot, within hailing distance of a Food 4 Less and a furniture store named Kelly’s Future.  Haute it ain’t, but a Mini Fiesta Tostada and a Corona, in the middle of a hot desert afternoon, always get the job done.

In fact I think the restaurant must have changed hands in recent years, and very possibly changed its name too.  Until I wrote this blog entry I wasn’t even sure what the name was.  In the Nicholson household it’s always been known as “that decent Mexican place in Yucca Valley.”   And I first went there because I was attracted by the plaster sculpture outside.

Even back then she’d lost her hand, and eventually she lost her arm, and then she disappeared altogether.  I hope she went to a good home.  Maybe they got rid of her because she didn’t look authentically Mexican.  Now there’s a painting out front of a mustachioed hot pepper in a sombrero. I like him well enough but I’d like him a lot more if he was in three dimensions.

Further evidence that the citizens of Yucca Valley don’t much care for fancy victuals: the local antique store there had a copy of Larousse Gastronomique, on sale for at least the last couple of years.  I always thought of buying it, and I know a true gourmet would have bought one decades ago, but it always seemed a little pricey, and frankly I wasn’t sure how much actual use I’d get out of it.   Now however, the antique store is getting rid of the book section and last weekend everything was half price.  So I’m now the owner of the first American edition of Larousse Gastronomique, 1961, “the internationally famous bible of cooking … But until now it has only been available in the French language.”

I think I was right about just how much use I’m likely to get out of it.  I’m pretty sure I’m never going to tackle any of the recipes for garden warbler or calf’s mesentery.   But the book is a wonder nevertheless. Needless to say, the recipes tend to be a bit heavy on the aspic and the foie gras, and when in doubt the tendency to toss in a handful of truffles. But I’m very grateful to the book for describing the taste of certain things I suspect I’m never going to eat.  The fenowlet, for instance, “a variety of pear which tastes slightly of aniseed.”  Nipplewort, “a plant similar to the sow-thistle.” Ivrogne de Mer (a small fish), “it’s flesh is tough, but it is nevertheless edible.”  And occasionally forewarned is forearmed “The flesh of the avocet,” Larousse tells us “although quite delicate, savours of the food it lives on, which consists almost entirely of fresh fish, worms and aquatic insects.”  There’s no entry for Mexican cookery, but mescal does get a mention.  The illustrations and photographs are just wonderful.

And of course the book contains the notorious entry on rat, which we’re told was “elevated to the rank of comestible during the great siege of Paris in 1870.”  Larousse also says that “rats nourished in the wine stores of the Gironde were at one time highly esteemed by the coopers, who grilled them, after having cleaned out and skinned them, on a fire of broken barrels.”  Wine stores and coopers are probably in short supply in the Mojave.  Desert rats on the other hand – we got ‘em.