Friend of Serious Eats and Roadfooder Stephen Rushmore embarked on an insane 50-stop journey with two other Roadfooders, searching for the best ice cream in New England. They covered six states and hundreds of miles and came to some surprising conclusions. Stephen gave us the scoop on his incredible ice cream journey.
As we head into the 4th of July weekend, hot dogs are everywhere. They're on our grill and on our plates. They're on our TVs (the annual hot dog eating contest on ESPN). And this being Serious Eats, they're on our mind. Let's discuss. We bring you Serious Eats' definitive guide to America's regional hot dog styles.
Photograph from Mr Frosted on Flickr
Bacon-wrapped hot dogs are grilled, then nestled in steamed bolillo rolls and topped with pinto beans, chopped tomatoes, onions, mustard, mayo, and jalapeños. Other variations could include any of the following: shredded cheddar, queso fresco, cotija cheese, salsa verde, and guacamole.
Everyone has, or at least needs, at least one truly local favorite joint in their lives, a go-to place for real, honest food served in a straightforward setting. I have a bunch of them in New York City, and I live and long to discover them elsewhere. Sometimes all it takes to discover a local favorite is friends who live in proximity to one of these gems. Our friends Tom and Vicky Kaiser have a house in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a shore town an hour or so from Boston that's just north of New Bedford, and they turned me on to the Oxford Creamery, a truly undiscovered and unhyped local fave.
Just how under the radar is the Oxford Creamery? Jane and Michael Stern, my friends over at Roadfood, live less than two and a half hours from the Oxford Creamery, and they have written nary a word about it. There are two books dedicated to seafood shacks, The New England Clam Shack Cookbook and New England's Favorite Seafood Shacks, and neither mentions the Oxford Creamery.
Just what is there to discover at the Oxford Creamery?
We asked our friends Jane and Michael Stern over at Roadfood.com to name some of their favorite doughnut spots. Grab your coffee—these doughnuts are hot!
Ride along with Roadfood.com's Michael Stern as he visits Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Connecticut, in this exclusive Serious Eats video. Pepe's, which has been making coal-oven pizza since 1925, invented the white clam pie, onto which fresh clams are shucked. It might sound a bit odd, but trust us, it's some serious eats.
While shooting the second episode in our Roadfood video series at Frank Pepe's in New Haven, Connecticut, we asked Michael Stern for some of his other Nutmeg State favorites—starting with a couple other New Haven classics and branching out from there.
Ride along with Jane and Michael Stern as they visit Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut. Louis' Lunch, in operation since the late 1800s, claims to have invented the hamburger in 1900, when a hurried customer asked for a quick meal he could eat on the go. With its unique gas grills and its strictly enforced no-ketchup policy, it's one of the quirky gems the Sterns are renown for ferreting out.
Today was not a good food day. I went to visit Roadfood pioneers and great writers Jane and Michael Stern at their house in Connecticut. I brought them a box of schnecken (pecan sticky buns) and a black and white cookie from Greenberg's, a classic New York Jewish bakery that is simply not very good anymore except for the schnecken and the black and white cookies. We had a blast hanging out and swapping writer war stories.
When I left, Michael told me I had to go to their latest discovery, Wave Hill, a bakery that made great rustic bread. Michael said it was on the way to my final lunch destination, the new Fairfield location of the seminal New Haven pizzeria Pepe's. It was all downhill from there. First, Wave Hill was closed by the time I got there. The sign on the door said they close at noon, and I got there by 12:10 or so. I was going crazy when I got there because I could see a few loaves of bread that could have been mine if I could just get in the door. I could also smell the bread, which smelled absolutely amazing. I also called the number on the door, and, yup, I got a recording.
Then I made it to the Fairfield Pepe's by 1 p.m. or so, and there was a big line out front and it was moving very slowly (maybe not at all). I tried to open the front door to the place and it wouldn't open. It turns out it only opens from the inside because they don't want people waiting inside. Talk about a warm welcome! I managed to slip in the door when someone was leaving and I asked the man at the counter how long it would take to get a pizza to go.
He said with a completely straight face, "My next to-go opening is at 2:40 p.m."
You see the kind of preferential treatment I get because I wrote a book about pizza. I've got such clout in the pizza community that I can't even get a pizza to go for an hour and forty minutes when I arrive unannounced at Pepe's in Fairfield, CT.
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