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What song is that you don’t want to hear?

My local daily news tells me a new burrito place is soon opening in Beaumont called “Freebirds” and another is soon to follow in nearby Nederland. The shop in Beaumont is taking over where Geo Burrito was located, which took over one of Novrozsky’s places which moved down the street in the Kroger shopping center at Folsom and Dowlen. Novrozsky’s is a pretty good local hamburger chain but I really don’t eat there much anymore since they seem to have given up making their great buffalo burger. I’ve never eaten at Geo’s, either at the aforementioned old Novrozsky’s or another ex-Novrozsky’s and ex-Geo’s on Calder and Lucas.

The reasoning for my not checking out Geo’s and why I likewise will probably not try Freebirds is because their style of burritos and other items are a little too tres chic for my taste. I like tacos and burritos that either come from a cart, or from a place where English is a second, or sometime third language. Or else, I like my own tacos and burritos that I have, well I don’t know if “perfected” is the right word, but have crafted over time. Others might not like those food items. But I do. If I want to make something for someone else I will make chili con carne, a great old Tex-Mex dish of which there is no right and no wrong. Or I will make some Jambalaya on the bayou me oh my yo.

Also, I am not too taken in by a place that is named for probably my least favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song. The only time I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd play was during their “Nuthin’ Fancy Tour,” on the best I can tell March 18, 1975, at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. A Wikipedia entry said “Free Bird” was on their “typical set list” for that concert tour so I might have heard them play it. I couldn’t guarantee that though. This would be during the time, also according to the Wikipedia, that “Free Bird” hit Billboard’s Hot 100 list at No. 19. Since all I had for a car radio was of the AM variety, back during that time while driving all around Mississippi or an occasional trip across South Louisiana back home for a weekend of Navy liberty to East Texas, I would hear “Free Bird” quite often. Ditto for a live version of “Free Bird” that peaked the charts at No. 38 in 1977. It is the same version that is played quite frequently on “Album Oriented Rock” FM stations or “Classic Rock” or whatever, played ad nauseum. The same song where LS asks: “What song is it that you want to hear?” and the answer is, unfortunately, “Free Bird.”

To shorten matters, I’ve long liked “Sweet Home Alabama,” “The Needle and the Spoon,” “The Ballad of Curtis Loew,” “Give Me Three Steps,” “Gimme Back My Bullets,” “What’s Your Name?”and a host of Skynyrd songs. It was quite a shock to hear, about 2 1/2 years later after I heard them in a great concert at USM, upon a beach in Guam from some “Good Ol’ Guamanian Boys” that Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, band members Steve and Cassie Gaines, the assistant road manager, pilot and co-pilot were killed on impact when their plane crashed in Mississippi.

I still like to hear the Skynyrd songs that I love to hear. I feel “Free Bird” has become a stereotype of the redneck Southern rocker who plays the song louder than it has a right to be heard on a stereo system that costs more than his 15-year-old pick-em-up truck does.

No, I don’t really like Freebird. I probably won’t like Freebirds burrito place either. I guess if someone, a guest, from out of town wants to try it, I will just to be polite. And I might like it. But I kind of bet that I won’t.

And, no the song I want to hear is “Sweet Home Alabama,” or perhaps “Give Me Three Steps.” Maybe even the Skynyrd version of the great J.J. Cale song “Call Me The Breeze.” I’d like to hear damn near anything by LS except “Free Bird.”

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Oh give me a home …

This evening I will make my first attempt at grilling a bison steak.  The 8-oz. hunk of dark red meat which I purchased yesterday from our humongous H-E-B store here in Beaumont currently sits in the fridge in a baggie with a touch of “extra light in taste” olive oil, a skosh of red wine vinegar, a smidgen of Worcestershire sauce and a sprinkling of black pepper and oregano. Whether that turns out to be the marinade that caught the calf, sort of kind of no pun intended, I shall see.

My cooking plans for my “exquisite” charcoal grill include first searing both  sides and cooking without any heat directly touching the meat afterwards. If that doesn’t work and my patience wears out, I can also move it over the hot coals and, to paraphrase an old Navy buddy, cook the “snore” out of it. My friend Danny Jordan, a native of Georgia, once asked by a chef in New Zealand how he preferred his beef steak answered: “I just want all the moo cooked out of it.” If you are able to access that little sound clip I embedded just now — provided by the National Park Service — you will hear a recording of a buffalo grunt or just however you care to characterize it. The NPS says that the sounds bison make range from a “pig-like grunt to an aggressive bellow.“

Human beings, saddled with the character and instincts we have from whatever time and space, often are moved to either pet some fine-looking creature or kill it grave yard dead. I probably would have done the former with a bison — I once petted a couple of grown tigers in a cage and played an improvisational game of hide-and-seek with a leopard in another cage — had it not been for the bison-specific  knowledge my Daddy passed along when he was still among the living.

Long-time readers, both of you, may remember this story but what the hay. My Daddy painted signs. This was when signs were still painted by hand. Of course, they may still do it that way “summers or the other,” as Pops used  to say. Probably the oddest sign he ever painted, certainly the strangest one I remember his having “written” was for a local sawmill owner who acquired a buffalo herd.

Now it was unusual to see a buffalo herd in my little East Texas hometown. I guess those folks I later encountered while in the Navy and “seeing the world” — people from Australia who naturally figured that because I was from Texas I rode a horse (I had, some) or that I wore a cowboy hat (for a time when I was 5 or 6) — might have expected anywhere in Texas that I had lived would be buffalo-infested. But that herd Mr. Williams had was the first buffalo herd I had ever laid eyes upon and vice versa. It would likewise be negligent of me to not mention that the land on which the herd grazed was not at all conducive to roller-skating, in case you think about the things of which Mr. Roger Miller sang.

All of that aside, the sawmill tycoon Mr. Williams had hired my Dad to paint a number of signs in red and black letters warning: “Danger: Buffalo Cannot Be Trusted.” Silly as that might sound, as if one of the woolly creatures might have cheated the owner at 7-card, the signs were actually a hedge against liability.

Had the following information been available back then, in the late 1970s, it would have been too lengthy for “Signs-by,” as my Dad was sometimes jokingly referred to because of his company’s name, to paint. Again, from the NPS:

“The best description of a bison’s temperament is UNPREDICTABLE. They usually appear peaceful, unconcerned, even lazy, yet they may attack anything, often without warning or apparent reason. To a casual observer, a grazing bison appears slow and clumsy, but he can outrun, out turn, and traverse rougher terrain than all but the fleetest horse. They can move at speeds of up to thirty-five miles per hour and cover long distances at a lumbering gallop.

“Their most obvious weapon is the horns that both male and female have. But their head, with its massive skull, can be used as a battering ram, effectively using the momentum produced by two thousand pounds moving at thirty miles per hour! The hind legs can also be used to kill or maim with devastating effect. At the time bison ran wild, they were rated second only to the Alaska brown bear as a potential killer, more dangerous than the grizzly bear. In the words of early naturalists, they were a dangerous, savage animal who feared no other animal and in prime condition could best any foe. A bull with lowered head, snorting and pawing the ground, with tail stiffly upraised, conveys a universal warning of danger to all nearby that is impossible to ignore!”

Maybe that is more than you want to read, nevertheless, albeit that sign about not trusting buffalo may have been the oddest sign my father ever painted, it certainly was one of his most appropriate works. For you see, Mr. Williams had quite a few people — the curious, the emboldened by stupidity or from what an acquaintance of mine used to call “Jesus in a Jar,” or even those stoned from some illegal but naturally-growing substance — who found their way up to the fence to pet the nice buffaloes. It would have taken only some tragic incident, some one infused with “Sweet Lucy” who met a buffalo head-on with the beast being clocked at 30 mph, to bring one of the area’s many well-known personal injury lawyers to stop by the bison herd, sniff around and declare: “I love the smell of litigation in the morning!”

Well, this was to have been about bison, buffalo, six of one, half-dozen of the other, which is marinating in my icebox. Have you ever heard of an icebox? Then you’re too old! My buffalo steak is much leaner than beef, has less in cholesterol, has zero carbs, and contains 24 grams of protein per serving (2 servings for me.) The 8-ounce steak cost about $6. Which more than favorably compares to a more marbled, fatty beef ribeye. Either way the bison is splurging a bit for me. But nonetheless I am just curious to see just exactly how my, hopefully, medium-done bison steak tastes.

Bison or buffalo, you make the call, is getting more popular and demand is outstripping supply in some places. My favorite buffalo hamburger is no longer served at the local eatery where I would once stop. Nolan Ryan, yes, the baseball player and now executive of the Texas Rangers team, supplies much of this particular restaurant’s beef. It is Angus, by the way. I suppose that is, as opposed to Brahma.

I hope my steak and baked sweet potato tastes as good as I have been imagining while writing these lines. If not, perhaps I shall seek a nice home, home on the range, where the camp cookie knows his bison butt from first base.

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America’s best chili? Sez who?

Lists are, as I have mentioned here before, the big ticket item of the Internet age. I have read a little about why lists such as “The Best 100 Places Not To Live” and “The 50 Places Where You Wouldn’t Want To Be Caught Dead” are such popular Web fare. One reason is that lists are quick reads that capture your attention. As for other reasons, I hesitate to reveal them lest someday I might want to use them for a list.

Writers do not necessarily have to go out and hunt down material for their lists. That is both good and bad. It’s good in it saves time and money for the magazine. It’s bad because it saves time and money for the magazine. I mean the best way to write about a subject, if at all possible, is to get out and literally see it and touch it. It’s like one of my favorite Jimmy Buffett lines: “Don’t try to describe a KISS concert if you’ve never seen one … ”

This subject comes to mind thanks to a list with very misguided information published by Bon Appetit magazine denoting “America’s Best 10 Chili Places.”

Now I have never visited any of the 10 listed  places the writer suggests are America’s best because, as the writer rightly acknowledges, I like others feel my own chili is the best. The No. 1 chili spot might well deserve a place on the list. At least I have heard of it. Perhaps that is because I have heard colleagues of mine in Washington, D.C., mention Ben’s Chili Bowl before. I’ve never eaten there. The reason is that I have a rule semi-written in semi-stone that says not to seek out cuisine when visiting a good distance from home which you can find that is much better in your own back yard or on your own table.

I did eat some nachos at the restaurant-bar in my Kansas City hotel the night I arrived but only because I was hungry and nothing else on the menu looked good at the time. Why not nachos? Texas. That is where I’m from and where I live, son. Or as that Lone Star poet Ray Wylie Hubbard half-sings: “Screw you, we’re from Texas.”

My own home state is also why I am displeased with the “best chili” list. Only one Texas selection is listed, that being Tolbert’s Restaurant in Grapevine, Texas. I can’t say for certain whether Tolbert’s would be a good pick since I have never eaten there. The late journalist and chili aficionado Frank Tolbert was known for his contributions which made chili the “national food of Texas.” At least the magazine writer shows his appreciation for a bit of the Texas history of a “bowl of red.”

The fact is, chili is a Texas dish through and through although with its name en español, chili con carne or chili peppers with meat, it sounds exotically Latino much like Chop Suey sound Chinese. There is some dispute over the origin of chili. Some say it was the product of Canary Islanders who settled in San Antonio in the early 18th century. And despite the lore of the Mexican “chili queens” who hawked their bowls of the aromatic dish while dressed in brightly, colored dresses on the San Antonio streets of the 1880s, the cowboy connection to chili remains a popular theory or myth depending on who tells you the tale.

Legend has it that cowpokes from Texas on the great cattle drives of the late 19th century would eat chili served by their Mexican cooks who brought along some of their native spices and hot peppers. This meat for this chili allegedly came from leather-tough longhorn cattle, which after being spiced and peppered up while cooking for long periods of time, turned out to be pretty good.

Whatever the origins one might want to believe the starting point for chili pretty much always begins somewhere in the Lone Star State. That is why only one chili place in Texas — rated No. 9 out of 10 at that — is sort of a disgrace to the memory of the Texans who contributed to that spicy, gut-filling dish which can be eaten any day of the year but is really great on cold days such as we have experienced over the past winter in much of the U.S. Speaking of which, I had some chili, albeit on a hot dog, today at James Coney Island. JCI is a Houston chain of hotdog restaurants started in the mid-1920 when Tom and James Papadakis, Greek immigrants, made their way to Houston and began a dynasty from the $75 in their pockets. The brothers flipped a coin, according to company history, to decide which one’s name would grace the sign of the eatery. If you can’t guess which one called the right side then no chili for you!  The hotdog chili was good at the I-10 restaurant, just as I remembered it from a previous dine-in, and I saw quite a few folks who seemed to be very happy with just a bowl of the JCI red on the rainy, cold February day.

Was the chili as good as mine? No way, Jose.

Probably my favorite chili joint is the Texas Chili Parlor in Austin. I have eaten there, mostly for their chili burgers but also for their bowl of what I liken to Goldilocks sampling the famed bowls of porridge. The parlor, only a block or two from the State Capitol, features bowls of chili distinguished by their heat factor. There is from least hot to hot, hot, hot:  X, XX and XXX (X is too mild, XXX is too hot, but XX is just right!) I’ve always liked their burgers and their chili, but since most of my business over the years were in the vicinity of the Capitol it was a handy place with a cozy atmosphere. The place is festooned with all manners of crapola and judging by the pols or reporters you see who come in for a meal or cold one you see Texas isn’t as large as one would think the second largest state should be.

I would also recommend the chili at Jason’s Deli. The homegrown Beaumont chain has a heck of a deal offering half of one of their sandwiches and a bowl of soup. This includes gumbo and chili. My favorite is a “Half Muff Special,” which is a half muffaletta with a bowl of soup, chili or gumbo. Their seafood gumbo is very good but the chili is tasty as well.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer suggestions for Texas chili made at Texas restaurants other than the two I have offered. It is just too hard to improve on perfection and that is my own bowl of red. I just believe as a hardcore Texas chili-head that only one of the best 10 bowls of chili can be found in my home state has got to be hogwash. If you think I am being pig-headed, ethnocentric, melodramatic or any of those other multi-syllabic words then you are correct. No. 5 best in New York City. New York City?

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Wigged out Baptists — KC bound — Good eats at Starvin Marvin’s

So I see those lunatics from the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka plan to protest at the funerals of those killed in Saturday’s shootings in Tucson. The  Rev. Fred Phelps and his gang of Baptist jihadists go wherever there is publicity so they can spread the gospel of anti-gay hate. Amazing those folks with their syllogism that the departed in these shootings and others including KIA American soldiers died because a) God Hates America  b) Because we have turned our backs on God’s way especially by allowing homosexuals in our midst. Well, maybe that isn’t really a syllogism perhaps it is 1/2 a syllogism, or even a half-assed syllogism. It’s been awhile since I studied logic.

I can’t believe these folks from Kansas call themselves Baptists. I’ve been around Baptists all my life. I went to a number of Baptist churches in my younger days. And I can honestly say I never came across any devout Baptists, any devout Christians for that matter, who were such antisocial jackasses.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Speaking of Kansas, I should be in or near there one week from today as I am supposed to go to Kansas City next week thanks to one of my sidelines. I expect it will be cold. It”s been cold the last couple of days. Here on the Texas Coast a 45 degree day, especially one with wind chill in the 20s or 30s passes for cold. Well, in my estimation it is cold. Have I mentioned lately that I  live in Southeast Texas because it is usually pretty warm here? That’s not the only reason, but that is a major one. We also have the best chili in the world in Texas. And the biggest dips**t for a governor. But that’s not really a plus.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Today I had lunch for the first time at Starvin Marvin’s, kind of in the neighborhood. I was a bit afraid it might be too rich for my blood as their TV ads kind of give that impression but the place that is best known for its ribs and hand cut steaks had a reasonable lunch. I had what was the special, which I believe is called their Texas Club. It looks pretty impressive coming from the kitchen as the sandwich is stood up on its ends. I found it a good eats nonetheless with several meats and cheeses. I smelled garlic somewhere, perhaps on the toast perhaps in the meat, if you can smell it you know it’s there. The price with a tip was about $11 for just myself. A little high, perhaps for a sandwich and steak fries and iced tea, but not really, not these days. They have a huge outdoors area with a large fireplace, that was stoked up on “hot” today and some other outdoor fires were burning while plastic helped keep some of the cold out. Still, I wasn’t brave enough to try it.

This is what used to be Rocky’s Road House and who knows what before that. It’s now part of the “Beaumont music scene” and it was the first place I’ve been in years where I knew every song playing from the sound system, from The Doors “Roadhouse Blues” to “I’m Free” from The Who’s “Tommy.” Impressive to an old rock n’ roll fart like me. Oh, and the waitress told me the truth, at least in her mind, about certain menu items. Give that gal a raise. For dang sure give her a good tip. Good atmosphere, reminds me of the Armadillo Palace in Houston.

Whether the name of this bar and grill — they have happy hour specials — was influenced by the little African cartoon character from “South Park,” I don’t know. I do know I had to wear my heaviest coat today which has a hood and it sometimes makes me look like Kenny from South Park, as in “Oh my God, They killed Kenny, you bastards.”

Starvin Marvin’s

2310 N. 11th St.

Beaumont, TX

(409) 234 5002

Deep O’ Meter: 4.5

(I occasionally do a restaurant review. I decided I would put my own stamp of satisfaction/dissatisfaction upon those eateries with the “Deep O’ Meter.” Eight Feet Deep, the name of this blog inspired it so an 8 on the Deep O’ Meter would be the best you could get. You won’t see many of those. I am pretty picky about restaurants, yeah, sure you are. The 4.5 I gave Marvin’s is above average.)
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No buffalo for three weeks?

Every now and then I like to treat myself to a buffalo burger at a local Southeast Texas-Southwest Louisiana chain called Novrozsky’s. This is, I understand, not to be confused with the Houston Roznovsky’s hamburger chain. Well, maybe you wouldn’t get them mixed up. Mr. or Ms. Know It All!

To my dismay, Novrozsky’s was out of buffalo for their buffalo burger. I went ahead and bought a regular cheeseburger while telling the girl taking the order that the reason I came was for their buffalo burger. She mentioned that to the manager and the manager began telling me an interesting story about why they were out of buffalo, or bison, meat and would not have any for three or four weeks.

Bison raisers had begun liquidating herds what with the economy, according to the manager. But meanwhile the demand for the leaner, healthier buffalo meat began to grow like crazy. Thus the supply chain was falling behind and, even more interesting the manager said, it could be five years before the buffalo market would be back to normal. Five years?

That the manager took his time to explain all of this to me was impressive, hungry as I was. I also don’t doubt that what he told me was something he had been told by his suppliers or perhaps his corporate types. But I have been unable to find that herds had begun to be knocked off and even though supply is shorter than normal there doesn’t seem to be as much as a shortage as I interpreted there was, at least from the manager’s explanation.

No doubt, demand seems to be outstripping supply of bison meat. An executive of the North American Bison Cooperative told Adweek that the consumers have really seized upon — not literally — buffalo meat even though there is a record price differential between bison and beef.

I don’t know whether someone is blowing smoke about the herd liquidation or whether it is a fact. I tend to trust the manager’s story because he took time to tell me, something at least. That’s better that about 95 percent of what casual restaurants and fast food managers take time to do these days. I seriously do appreciate as well the manager telling  me why I can’t get another bison burger for three weeks.

Perhaps the restaurant can’t get the meat to meet their profit margin, or perhaps there is a hitch in the supply chain. There is no question that Americans have begun to discover the tasty and not-so-artery-blocking wonders of buffalo meat. Whatever the reason I can’t get it at the restaurant that makes my favorite buffalo burger, it’s like I said. I can’t get it. At least for three more weeks. That’s a bummer, dude.