Live to Eat

I’ve been researching Singaporean culture in preparation for the upcoming year, and from what I’ve seen, food plays a crucial role.  Various food-related activities such as eating, talking about food, listening to people talk about food, and blogging about where to go for the best food, all seem to take up an inordinate amount of your average Singaporean’s time. 

Since I myself spend the majority of each day thinking about what I have eaten, am eating, or will be eating in the near future, I cannot but applaud Singapore. There are classy restaurants, bars, and diners aplenty, and street food like you've never seen before in the form of Singapore’s world-famous hawker centers.  Hell’s Kitchen chef Gordon Ramsay even challenged several hawker chefs to a cook-off recently, and they won by popular vote.  

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/07/08/gordon-ramsay-defeated-by-singapore-hawkers

Not only that, but hawker food is eminently affordable - you can get a full meal in most hawker centers for the price of a slice of pizza in New York.

Sounds pretty good, right?  Well guess what, Singapore... I'm not impressed.  I hail from Rochester, New York, and we're no slacks in the cuisine department.  Unfortunately, our culinary expertise is not well known internationally (to be fair, it's not well known in the US either, including many areas of Rochester).  Nevertheless, I bristle in patriotic defense every time I hear someone say that the food in Rochester is garbage.  

"Excuse me," I say, walking right up to the aforementioned hypothetical food critic, "but you're dead wrong.  Our food is in no way affiliated with refuse, rubbish, or trash!"

"Oh yeah," retorts Mr. Wise Guy Critic, "then why is Rochester's only identifiable contribution to world cuisine called a Garbage Plate?!"

Well... damn.  He's got me there.  It is true that our signature dish, the meal that put us on the map (although that might actually have been our crime rate), is called the garbage plate.  But you know what?  It's tasty!  And the garbage plate has a long and storied history, one that can match anything the Singaporeans talk about on their food blogs.  I've done a little research to support this claim, so kick back, grab a beer, and please read the following on an empty stomach.  This is the story of the garbage plate.

Back in the day (around 1918 or thereabouts), Nick Tahou opened a restaurant in Rochester called Hots and Potatoes. There was one dish on the menu that had essentially everything you could cook in the kitchen, all put on one plate to become an affordable meal that would stay with you approximately until your next paycheck.  Nick's son inherited the restaurant (now called Nick Tahou's) and created the classic garbage plate that we still love today, which consists of two cheeseburgers over a bed of macaroni salad and home fries, liberally covered by a melange (that's french for big mess) of meat sauce, ketchup, and mustard.

Other restaurants quickly jumped on the bandwagon, realizing that garbage plates were the perfect item for drunk college students on a Top-Secret Food-Finding Mission between midnight and 4:00am (I don't know about you, but I've certainly been there).  It is unknown what precise thoughts went through the mind of the first student to try a garbage plate, but it probably went something like this:

Drunk College Student: Whoa... when I throw up this food in about 40 minutes, it's going to look exactly the same!!! ...awesome...

And the rest, as they say, is history.  In more recent times, garbage plates have become a part of our cultural heritage - in many high schools, for example, the successful consumption of an entire garbage plate is a coming-of-age ritual signifying that a boy has become a man.  Since my family moved to Rochester before my junior year of high school, I experienced a good deal of culture shock when I realized what was expected of me.  "I'm supposed to eat that?!" was my sentiment.  With time and perseverance, however, I came to relish the excitement, the danger even, of downing a plate and subsequently wondering whether I was going to projectile vomit over everyone in my US History class.  It was like a game of Russian Roulette, except if I lost, so did everyone else...

But enough of that trip down memory lane.  I only indulge in it now because soon enough, my memories will be the only place where I can savor the sweet, sweet taste of a garbage plate.  For exactly that reason, earlier this evening I went to my hometown's equivalent of a hawker center: the infamous Hungry's Grill.  Before you ask, yes, there is a bar next door called Thirsty's.  We are nothing if not a pragmatic people, we Rochesterians (Rochester-ites?  Rochestinians? Ah, screw it).

It was the best garbage plate I have ever eaten - seasoned, perhaps, by the bitter but poignant knowledge of my imminent departure to a land where food is not compared to garbage, even in jest.

As I sit here digesting, I begin to feel a deep sense of peace and tranqui- bleeurgh.

...Whew.  Hey, you know what?  That drunk college student was right - it really does look the same as before!