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| Silly Wabbit |
In honor of my dog Lucy's birthday yesterday I thought I would riff on the Minneapolis/St. Paul phenomenon called the Juicy Lucy or (Jucy Lucy). Several cities have a particular dish that is craved and cherished by local denizens (and occasionally despised by outsiders, such as Cincinnati's Skyline Chili, bleah) because they grew up on it and it tastes like home. LA boasts about Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, Memphis adores its Rendezvous BBQ, Kansas City hearts Winstead's burgers and Dallas likes shiny new things. But the good people of the Twin Cities' love affair with the Juicy Lucy is one boiled rabbit shy of a Fatal Attraction.
Per Wikipedia A
Jucy Lucy or
Juicy Lucy is a cheeseburger that has the cheese inside the meat patty in addition to on top. A piece of cheese is surrounded by raw meat and cooked until it melts, resulting in a molten core of cheese within the patty. This scalding hot cheese tends to gush out at the first bite, so servers frequently warn patrons to let the burger cool for a few minutes before consumption to avoid injury.
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| Molten Cheese Food |
Since I rarely pay attention to anything else when food is put in front of me my first encounter with a Juicy Lucy resulted in a blackened, blistered tongue and processed cheese lava flowing down my dress shirt and all over my necktie. This was not a particularly good look for me. Nonetheless, I understood and shared in the mania almost immediately.
Two bars on the same street in South Minneapolis both claim to have invented the sandwich:
Matt's Bar and the
5-8 Club. They differ in how they spell it; Matt's spells it Jucy, while the 5-8 Club uses the standard spelling. Shirts worn by staff at the 5-8 Club have the motto "if it's spelled right, it's done right" while advertising for Matt's Bar says "Remember, if it is spelled correctly, you are eating a shameless rip-off!"
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| Mmmm, Cheese Curds |
A lot of restaurants in Minneapolis have their own versions of the Juicy Lucy. The 2014 "Best Of MN" feature in the Minneapolis Star Tribune awarded top honors to Fika inside the American Swedish Institute. I had the pleasure of eating that one too, and appreciated that it was served open-face on a thick slab of rye/caraway bread. Not surprisingly, I am much more presentable after lunching with a knife and fork. Fika's JL had a wonderfully nutty Swiss cheese melted inside and it was topped with red arugula, grain mustard, and served with fried cheese curds and lingonberry ketchup.
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| Food Porn |
I brought the idea back with me to Dallas and shared it with talented chef Ryan Nagby at
Nicola's Ristorante Italiano. He created an Italian version of the Juicy Lucy, even going to the trouble of hand making processed mozzarella cheese out of real mozzarella cheese for its favorable melting point and because of his fanatic obsession with authenticity. It is only available at lunch or in the bar and it is not on the menu, so you have to say "Juicy Lucia" three times real fast and cross your fingers that Betelgeuse doesn't appear. I think I liked this version best of all but I wouldn't say that to any Minnesotans because I live prudently and try to avoid injuries.
I am surprised that the Juicy Lucy craze hasn't become more widespread, like how the disgusting dish called Poutines has ruined Canada, or the (thankfully departing) nationwide mania over bacon and pork belly. (I'm kinda over kale and quinoa, too.) There are a few places here in Dallas where you can get one but it hasn't really trended yet. It's a puzzlement.
PS Happy Birthday Lucy! (And to your twin brother, Buddy, too!)
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| Say What? |
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