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Kenny
Shopsin and his restaurant Shopsin's General Store have been
New York institutions since the 1970s. Everyone who has been
to or even just heard of Shopsin's has an opinion on it. Some
say owner/chef Shopsin is rude and foul-mouthed, the restaurant
looks chaotic, and there are too many rules. Others swear
by Shopsin's smart and delicious comfort food and think Shopsin
is a funny, big-hearted genius. Appropriately, Eat Me,
Kenny Shopsin's philosophy-and-cookbook is funny and profane.
Just like at his restaurant, readers get more than food: They
get jokes, political debates, and incredible stories about
outlandish characters.
As the
famously crabby Shopsin declares in his book, you're either
a Shopsin's person or you're not. Shopsin says, "We can usually
tell if someone is going to work out the minute he or she
walks through the door—or even sooner… I hang a menu
out in front of the restaurant, which a lot of places do in
the hope of enticing customers to come inside by showing them
what they have to offer. I do it for the opposite reason.
I put the menu there to dissuade people from coming
in."
The Shopsin
rules get discussed at various points in the book. Yes, there
are rules, but right now there are only three: no cell phones,
no parties over four people, and everyone must eat a meal.
Previous rules included no take out, no mentioning the restaurant
in print (Calvin Trillin once referred to it in an article
as "the Bubble Gum Store") , and no duplicating what other
people have ordered. But at Shopsin's, it's easy to order
something different—there are literally hundreds of items
on the menu, which is reproduced in all its crazy glory in
Eat Me.
Almost
all the recipes are incredibly easy and use easy-to-obtain
ingredients (except Fox's U-Bet vanilla syrup used in the
bread pudding French toast, which may be hard to find outside
of New York). It's what Shopsin calls the Goodnight Moon
approach to cooking, after the famous children's book in which
a boy discovers that everything he needs in life is at hand.
"To be a good cook, to turn out good, honest food that satisfies
your individual tastes, it is all about having the kind of
confidence and self-awareness that comes from Goodnight
Moon living, in which you are happy with what is already
in your life."
Shopsin
admits, in the prologue, that he doesn't have recipes, and
sometimes dishes will differ so drastically from one visit
to the next as to be almost unrecognizable. He says "I don't
do it differently on purpose. It's just that everything I
cook, every time I cook, is an event in and of itself." So
having the recipes presented in this lovely book doesn't really
mean the reader will be able to replicate what Kenny does.
But with a little confidence, one can put a personal spin
on things.
In many
of the recipes, Shopsin defends his ingredient choices, such
as Aunt Jemima frozen pancake batter for the decadent Shopsin
pancakes, called Ho Cakes and Slutty Cakes. "Anybody who is
tempted to question my use of frozen pancake batter might
want to stop and think about what pancakes really are. They
are flour and milk drowned in butter and some form of sugar.
They're crap. As far as food value, you might as well take
Crisco, whip it up with some powered sugar, and spread it
on your face."
With
his recipe for corn chowder, Shopsin tells the story of one
of his favorite waitresses, Kate Peterson. She got into a
dispute with a customer over the chowder, which used to be
made with bacon. Peterson refused to return the soup or have
another made without bacon because back then, the food was
what it was, no substituting or eliminating ingredients. When
the customer said to Peterson, "Don't be a hard-ass," Peterson
poured a glass of soda over the customer's head. Now customers
can get corn chowder with or without bacon.
Many
of the Shopsin's favorites are here: bread pudding French
toast, mac and cheese pancakes, chicken tortilla avocado soup,
and his famous sliders. There are many pages devoted to eggs:
how to buy them, how to cook them, and what to put in them,
and even a nice little section about his observations of people
eating eggs.
Many
recipes and reminiscences refer back to Kenny's late wife,
Eve, and her special way of doing things. Shopsin's is really
a partnership between Kenny and Eve, and now his children
have also been made partners. Two of the children, Zachary
and Melinda, work in the restaurant full time and contribute
sections to the book. Another, Tamara, works there on weekends
and, along with Jason Fulford, did an amazing job designing
this book, making Eat Me look as clever and fun as
her father's restaurant. Eat Me is a great cookbook for chefs,
foodies, and even for people who don't like to cook. Kenny's
philosophy could inspire people to get into their own Goodnight
Moon world.
(October,
2008)
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