Breakfast #1
"The zine about your favorite meal. Tales of breakfast adventure! 48 JUMBO pages of unbridled fun!" Story titles listed below in red are linked to full-length articles below, web-published in their entirety for your hypertextual perusal. Order or trade for a full copy.
Table of Contents
What's This Zine About?
from the editor's desk
Letters
Getting Jiggy At Al's Breakfast
14 cramped seats and an abusive staff provoke personal bliss
Project Denny's
One man's never-ending quest to visit every Denny's in the world. An interview with p7a77.
Eggs
Preparation methods to piss off your breakfast cook.
The Wow.
An interview with Darryl Klukowski, the creator of the most foodtastic Embers commercial ever.
Canadian Bacon
What the hell is it? --by Saucy T
Poetry
Words from Zilla Sherritt Way
Re-views
Wisconsin breakfast memories, The Louisiana Cafe, The Mighty Fine, The Ideal Diner.
Recipes
A puffed oven pancake for the Pannekoeken fetishist, and hashbrowns tips galore.
Land Of No Breakfast
Scott Moriarity field-reports from Paris.
hammer
Terance Manly recounts an excursion to a New Mexico Waffle House.
The Unofficial Guide to Breakfast in Boston
The lowdown from a Beantown bachelorette.
Ask Dr. Food
All your food science questions answered.
Browsing
Oak Island, hackers, and dangerous places around the world.
_______________________________________________
Getting Jiggy at Al’s Breakfast
14 seats and an abusive staff provoke personal bliss
by V. Voelz
On Wednesday, February 24, I decided to try and shift my sleep schedule by drinking lots of beer. Sure enough, I woke up at 8 am (versus my usual 2 p.m. -- seriously). The morning sun came through my kitchen windows at an odd, low angle that I seldom get to see (I've been sleeping in late all winter), and I was excited. I had a breakfast date with Buddy (good friend and sax player in the Jaztronauts) at Al's Breakfast, and by 10:30 am I was peeling down the sunny freeway on my way to Dinkytown, KMOJ blasting through my back speakers.
I'd like to think that I discovered Al's Breakfast, but it was much like when Columbus discovered the New World: when I got there, it was very much inhabited already. I had seen people eating there through the window on my many walks through Dinkytown on the way to class, so at some point I guess I just walked in and checked it out. Needless to say, it was an epiphany -- why hadn't anyone told me about this before? -- and it marked my beginnings as a breakfast evangelist.
Now, there's so much I could say about the Al's experience (books could be written, and probably have -- my obsession is hardly unique), but the most interesting part of the morning was that Buddy had never been there before.
I met Buddy on the street, and we made our grand entrance into Al's. We made a fine-looking pair: me wearing a black stocking cap and an oxygen tube up my nose, and Buddy pimped out in his gig threads ready for a photo shoot that started in a few hours (with rising rockabilly stars The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir).
I didn't give Buddy much warning about Al's.
We grabbed a seat at one of the 14 counter stools (these are the only seats there, by the way -- customers still waiting to sit down stand behind you while you eat) and got a cup of coffee. After being ignored a third time at his request for a refill by the self-righteous and solitary waitress, Buddy seemed quizzical.
Ah, yes, there's a rich tradition of abusive employees at Al's Breakfast, especially on busy days. My friend Stacy worked at Al's, and she is a genuine breakfast dominatrix: for reasons unknown she would severely castigate any customer who asked for a glass of water. Best I can figure, it was either (1) a truly unfettered expression of waitress frustration, (2) a run-away inside joke, or (3) a strict conservation philosophy. Probably all three. Oddly enough, the gruff mistreatment kept me coming back for more. I loved it. I was her bitch. Plus, she really dug Night Ranger.
When it came time for Buddy to order, I recommended to him several favorites of mine (including their unstoppable Eggs Benny, and their kill-me-right-now-for-I-will-never-eat-anything-else-this-good hashbrowns). Instead, he entreated the waitress for advice, and she went back and forth with him for a while. This mopey ordering behavior continued until Doug Grina, the owner and head cook, firmly planted himself in front of us and said in his characteristic growl, "You tell us what you want to eat, and we'll make it." Buddy quickly compromised with a short stack of corn cakes and "wally blacks" (walnuts and blackberries), two overeasy eggs, and an order of hashóa respectable introduction for the uninitiated, I thought. I had the José with pepperjack cheese.
Other than the fact that I had to explain to him what a poached egg was, Buddy's a great guy. Like usual, we palled around in our conversation, and generally enjoyed trying to be more full-of-it than the other. Waiting for our food, we both lamented what a sham the Grammys were, and talked seriously about Internet privacy issues and our tax situations. At some point it hit me how dapper he looked all dressed up, and I said, "Dude, you are so Rico Suavé." He really was.
My José was frigging delicious. Buddy's hashbrowns never came, but it didn't seem to matter all that muchóit was all just a part of the show. Al's is the kind of place where you can just sit back and watch the waitstaff yell at each other and be happy with life. The clutter of sound and the amazing collection of crap covering all possible behind-the-counter protuberances are strangely relaxing. And the ever-shuffling motions of plates filled with breakfast fantasy food make for an irresistible spectacle.
But at Al's, you're also a part of the show. This idea is reinforced many ways: take, for example, that spunky waitress deliberately provoking you with verbal sparring, or the hot delicious food you ingest and ultimately incorporate into your physical being. I sit on my stool and try to absorb the raw feeling of Al's into my psyche. The short-order cook lingo, the music on the mix tapes, the hand-drawn menu, and most of all, the food -- they're all elements of a blissful breakfast brainwashing that I willingly succumb to. Chewing a succulent wedge of corn pancake, I'm left likening Al's to a "pure art experience"*: For what is art, and what is Al's, but simply the aesthetic impression it makes on you?
Mmmmmmmm.
Anyway, to finish the story, after we left Al's, we indulged in a spot of after-breakfast espresso at Espresso Royale next-door. In the corner by the to-go lids and napkins stood a huge vending machine-sized contraption with a screen and a keyboard. Garishly lettered across it was 'INTERNET ACCESS - $1' -- has the information revolution come to this? Yucky. And especially ironic considering we were only a block away from the massively computer lab-ridden campus of the U of M.
Then we both drove Nordeast-ward to Nye's Polonaise Room for Buddy's photo shoot. The other guys in the band all came in a big van, and they spilled out of it like the costumed villains in a ninja movie (except they were ninjas in vintage formalwear). That pretty much capped my morning.
Buddy was never charged for the hashbrowns.
*phrase stolen from Bill Carrothers.
_______________________________________________
The Wow.
An interview with Darryl Kluskowski, the creator of the most foodtastic Embers commercial ever.
by V. Voelz
V: How did you get the job of creating America's most beloved pancake man?
D: Basically it was just a really low-budget project. The agency I was at (Miller-Meester) had Embers as a client, and they just didn't have very much money to do any new stuff, so we came up with these two spots. We thought they had a little more money than they actually did, so it just ended up being that after we concept-ed them and presented them they said, "OkÖyou're going to shoot in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with this video crew," and we're like, "What?" It ended up being kind of a comedy of errors. We had about $500 per spot that we shot for them at the time -- it was pretty low budget. And so we shot on video, andÖyou've seen the results obviously.
V: And may I say, they are truly classic.
D: You either love them or you hate them!
V: I love them.
D: That's what it comes down to. There are people who look at [the ads] and either say, "This is genius," or "This is the foulest thing I've seen in my life." I've never quite known how to look at them. I mean, I like them. It's just that they're so bizarre, and I know how we got to where we were.
V: How did you come up with the idea of making a pancake man? Was it a "Eureka" moment?
D: Well, we were given the assignment to promote the 2.99 breakfast deal, and as I remember, we went to a coffee shop, had a lot of caffeine, and came up with all these concepts. A lot of them were pretty strange, and this was one of them. I seem to remember trying to make [the pancake man] out of the food, and it worked.
V: So the "Wow" breakfast was an actual menu item by the time you guys came upon it.
D: Yes -- the ingredients there made up the actual deal. We just had to come up with a way of showing the deal. I think I actually sat down at breakfast and made it. I was sitting there with it, and said, "Look, we could do this!" Of course, that could just be me dreaming at this point, a bunch of lies. But we did try it out, we made it work, and there he is. So yeah, those were the actual ingredients, we didn't come up with himóthose were the ones they wanted to have highlighted.
V: What were some of the other ideas?
D: We had stuff where there was a dump truck backing upóyou wouldn't see it, but you would hear sound effects of the dump truck unloading breakfast and showing what [kind of deal] you got. It was all about how much food you got.
V: So quantity, not quality.
D: Exactly. And you're reaching way back into my memory. Last week is hard enough for me, much less five years ago.
V: What did it take to shoot these commercials?
D: We had I think an afternoon ó well, no, we did them in a day, because we shot both of them with this video guy over in Eau Claire, and he cut them all together in the same day. And it was done in some TV station in Eau Claire where the guy worked because they could swing a deal. I guess Embers advertised on their station or something. It was a real strange experience, that's for sure.
V: Who was the filming team composed of?
D: There was me and Ron Kanecke, who was the writer at the time, andÖprobably a creative director who oversaw stuff. When we went to the shoot it was just me and Ron and I think one of the Embers owners' sons who was there to oversee. He was there to make sure we weren'tÖ.maybe he was just there to see what was going on. I think that's why he was there.
V: To make sure you weren't defaming Embers?
D: Because we wouldn't want to do that. I don't even have a copy of the spot anymore. I don't even know where it is.
V: Is it archived someplace?
D: That's a good question. It probably exists on some 1/2-inch tape somewhereóI don't even know.
V: Could you describe how the spot went?
D: Well, it was pancake man, and then it went into title cards for the offer and how much it was, and then it went to logo. So it was pancake man for 15 to 20 seconds of the spot, and the rest was just title cards. And he was on a plate on a tabletop in a booth at Embers. I don't remember if the Embers was open or not [when we shot it].
V: Working with food has to be kind of tough. How did that work? You were cooking all this food in the TV studio?
D: We actually had the guy at Embers make the food for us. He wasn't a professional stylist, and it was just on video, so it looks like hell (laughs). It was basically raw eggs and raw bacon going on that little guy. It was pretty bad.
V: Who was the voice of the pancake man?
I ended up doing the "Wow" voice, because we couldn't afford voice-over talent or anything. Actually, in the place we ended up shooting we even had the janitor doing stuff -- we ended up just grabbing people to do the voice and it ended up being mine that we used.
V: And how did that voice go?
D: That was justÖ.just sort of "Wow". It was just a real dead pan voice, and he was just a tired little pancake. And by the way, he is affectionately known as "Jolly Joe Pancake". We always spoke of him in that fashion.
V: Now what actually happened to the pancake man? Was he eaten by one of the crew at the end of the shoot?
D: No, as I said, a lot of the food was almost raw, so you couldn't eat him. And if you look at him, we shot him in reverse, so we had everything on there and then took it off so that we could run it in reverse and make it look like we were putting it together. And if you look (if you ever get a chance to see the spot) there's actually a little grease stain where his nose used to beÖ. So there's stuff like that. It was poor quality filming.
V: I don't think you should underestimate [these spots'] significance....
D: I know, you just can't get that kind of low budget -- you couldn't pay to have that kind of that low budget. You couldn't replicate it if you tried.
V: There also was some kind of music [in the ad], wasn't there?
D: Oh, I don't even remember. Was there?
V: Yeah, I don't remember either, but my brother was telling me that it's something like [sings: "BOM BOM Bing!"] ó some weird, annoying little catch thing.
D: There probably was, I really don't remember. Boy, I don't remember that at all. And actually, I worked on the spot with Ron, so he's just as culpable in this as me.
V: The "Wow" was just one of a series of spots, right?
D: There was another one that never ran.
V: So somewhere hidden in a vault somewhere, there's a lost spot?
D: Very, very low budgetóreally bizarre. It looked like it was shot with a lightbulb in a basement. It was pretty bad. That one was truly bad. [The "Wow" spot] at least could be released into the world, and allowed to live.
V: This "lost episode" intrigues me. Could you describe what went on in that spot?
D: Oh, that was soooo bad (laughs). That one was basically a really bad drawing on an easel pad of a stomach. And a hand came up with a pencil and just whacked it, and it said, "This is your stomach. When you're hungry, it doesn't care where you go, it just wants to be filled up." It was lit so poorly and done so poorly that it was just bad. It was bad. It was a bad spot. I'm frightened to even think about it.
The fact that anybody even talks about this anymore is amazing to me.
V: But people obviously remember this.
D: They do, which is frightening, because now of course they're actually running commercials with actual budgets, and I don't know if anyone even sees them.
V: That brings up another question: Embers has sort of revamped their whole strategy, and they're going after the Denny's/Perkins niche. They used to be so unassuming and have really cheap spots. Has Embers changed since when you were doing spots for them?
D: No, the actual restaurants I don't think have. I haven't been in one in like a year or so. And you know, I'm not even from this area, but I've been to a few Embers, and they kind of vary wherever you go.
V: Well, especially now with the new "Embers America" campaign.
D: Yeah, I'm not really sure what that even meansÖ. At the time when we did [the ads], I met the guy who owned EmbersóCarl Emberg I think was his nameóand he was just this guy who wanted to do cheap commercials and get them on the air. I don't know if they still own it or not, because when the people [on the new ads] are on TV, and they say that they're the people that own them, that's not the guy who owns Embers*.
V: Really?
D: Not that I know of. It's not the same guy that I met who supposedly owned Embers.
V: They're such bad actors that you would think they would have to be the owners.
D: Well, those aren't the people I met. Maybe somebody else took over, I don't know. But at the time they were just real low budget commercials that they just wanted to get on the air.
V: In your career, was this a major stepping stone for you? Where in your career did this lie?
D: Well, that was a $500 spot, and now I'm at a huge agency where it's $500,000 to $15 million per spot. And we do things "big time" I guess. I don't know the advertising is any better, butÖ. You know, it kind of came in the middle of my career. I hadn't done much TV before that. I had done some minor TV stuff, but by far, that was the lowest budget spot I've ever done.
V: Would you put something like the "Wow" commercial on your resume?
D: No.... You know, I'm trying to think if I've ever shown that to any other agencies. Because I know when we ran it, it was really weird -- I couldn't gauge people's reactions, whether they loved it or hated it. And I still don't. Again, either you do or you don't. I've never been able to tell if it's good or not.
V: What was Embers' reaction to the spots?
D: I don't know, but they ran the hell out of it. It was on the air constantly. After a while, it was like, "What are they doing! You've got to stop!" It ran during the day, at night, in the morningóit was always on the air.
V: Well, everybody eats at Embers!óall sorts of demographics.
D: That's true. They're open twenty-four hours, aren't they? I don't know whether the ad kept running because it was all they had, or because it was working. I really don't know what happened.
V: Did you do market research as to how effective the ads were?
D: No, we never did. We heard from some people that they really liked it, and Ron actually said he heard from people that everyone from Uptown really loved him [the pancake man]. And I've been at other agencies where somebody knew I worked on it and they asked me to do the voice. They were really excited, and I was like, "OkaaayÖ." We don't know how well they worked. Obviously not well enough because he's not still aroundÖ.
V: But the fact that he's still remembered is strong testament.
D: Well, he's remembered by some people obviouslyÖ
V: ...yeah, maybe I'm just a freak.
D: I don't know if Embers wants to remember him.
V: Did anything ever come to you because of the Embers spot? Did anyone ever say, "Hey, who did that?"
D: Yeah, some people called because they knew our agency did it, and people we knew in town wanted to know who did it. Like I have said to other people in the industry, no one can really tell whether it's genius or just evil. I know it sounds odd, but either you love it, or hate it, and I've always been on the fence about it. Years from now when a satellite picks it up in space, we'll see what people think then.
V: As far as your current career is concerned, what kind of stuff have you done that people might recognize?
D: I worked on some stuff for Dominos PizzaÖ. The thing I'm most proud of (that people may know about) is that on Saturday mornings I did the Dr. Cravin stuff for kids. It looks a lot like Action League Now, which is a show on Nickelodeon about a little plastic guy who runs around and gets hit by cars and eaten by dogs and falls into garbage trucks and stuff.
V: Where do you like to go to breakfast?
D: You know, I don't eat breakfast usually. I don't go to Embers very often, if that's the question. I think I've only been there two, maybe three times since I've been in Minnesota now for five years.
V: Did you have to eat there as a prerequisite for making the spot?
D: Yeah, we had to go try their food. They vary in quality, they're okay. I'm not going to hammer them for that. Anybody can make a pretty good pancake.
V: Many people -- myself included -- agree that the "Wow" commercial is a bona fide cult classic.
D: Yeah, I think that's where it falls, in that cult range, because it does seem to be that style of commercial.
V: How do you feel about creating such a lasting cultural icon?
D: I don't know, he seems pretty cool. I've always had a fondness for him, because when you look at him, you say, "God, that's weird." I think that's about as far as I ever have gone with him. I wish I had a copy of the spot so I could look at it again with a lot of hindsight, to see if it's as bad as I think, or if it isn't so bad.
Actually I feel pretty good about it. Because if you listen to him, he's supposed to be excited, but he's not. That sort of summed up everything, I think.
Darryl Kluskowski is an art director at Campbell Mithun Esty (CME) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is happy, yet continually amazed that people still remember the "Wow".
_______________________________________________
Recipes
A puffed oven pancake, and hashbrowns tips
When the Pannekoeken chain of restaurants went bankrupt, Joe and Jennifer Weismann became very nervous. Where would they get their weekly fix of Dutch open pancake? How would they entertain their Dutch oven pancake-loving friends? How could they prevent their whole life crashing down around them, a life based entirely on Dutch oven pancakes?
Luckily, they found this recipe:
Puffed Oven Pancake
1/4 cup butter
6 eggs
3 cups milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
In a cast iron pan (skillet), melt the butter in 400? F oven. Mix together the eggs, milk, sugar, flour, salt, vanilla. Pour into pan over melted butter.
Bake for about 30 minutes at 425? F. Reduce heat to 375? and bake until puffed around edges and center is cooked (it will not slosh, but instead seems set if you move the pan).
Remove from oven and serve piping hot with topping of your choice: real maple syrup, fresh fruit, brown sugar, sour cream, strawberries, etc. Serves 6-8, depending on how you slice it, and how hungry people are.
Hashbrowns tips
Here are some tips for making hashbrowns at home. The term "hashbrowns" holds different meaning for people around the country. So to clear things up, let me first say that I am not talking about cubed or sliced potatoes, nor am I talking about "American fries". I am referring to grated potatoes, browned on a frying surfaceói.e. real hashbrowns.
Cooking hashbrowns can be a real pain in the ass. You can't just grate a raw potato and throw it on the grill with favorable results. I knowóI've tried it. Once grated, enzymatic browning sets in and the potatoes start turning green. Also, they take forever to cook: while crispy on the outside, they may be perfectly raw on the inside.
The trick is to cook the potatoes ahead of time. You can even do this a day or more before, and they'll keep in the fridge (because they're cooked and won't brown). I'll often cook ten to twenty potatoes at a time, giving me enough hashbrowns for the whole week.
In a big pot, boil a mess of potatoes for about 5 minutes (one or two medium-sized potatoes per serving). Then pick a potato and cut it in half. On the inside you should see that the potato starch has gelatinized and become more translucent, except for an inner core of uncooked potato. The demarcation between the cooked and uncooked zones should be quite distinct. Test a potato every minute or so, and when the core decreases to the size of a nickel, the potatoes are done. You don't want to cook the potatoes much past this, or they will become mushy and overcooked.
Now, before you start euphorically grating potatoes, keep in mind that they take a while to cool. (A slippery, burning-hot potato is hard to hold for long.) Run them under cold water for a while if you are impatient. Grate them with the skins on -- it's less of a pain and it will add color and flavor.
When it comes time to fry up the taters, there are several schools. Some like to scatter the gratings around the griddle, much like you'd stir-fry vegetables. But I prefer to grab a handful of hash and make a dense, smashed-down pile. This gives the hashbrowns a nice moist center, and prevents the pile from breaking up when you try to flip it.
Since the hashbrowns are already cooked, all you have to worry about is crisping them up nicely on each side. You are essentially deep-frying the thin outside layer of the hashbrowns, so use a well-oiled skillet. In fact, you may even want to pour oil directly onto the hashbrowns themselves and let it seep down to the frying surface. But be prudent -- too much oil makes a soggy mess.
Inevitably, your first few tries will be awful. You may have to experiment with how hot the skillet is to optimize the browning time. Too low of a temperature and the hash gets soggy with oil from sitting there so long. But you'll get the hang of it.
Once you master the basic technique, there are lots of ways of personalizing your hash. In the last minute of cooking, you can melt cheese over the top (covering it with a small lid helps). I like to stick a couple fried eggs on top, and then melt cheese over that. You can also try dicing up onions, green pepper, mushrooms, tomatoes, jalapeños, sausage, etc., with the hash.
I have recently been experimenting with adding sweet potatoes (yams) to the grated potatoes. I have found that a 3:1 ratio of potato to yam makes a good balance: the sweetness and flavor is there, but it's not overpowering. You do have to cook them a little differently before you grate them, though. In general, yams take longer to cook than potatoes, but they also get a lot mushier when they are fully cooked. Boiling them for about 12 minutes is a good rule. You also need to peel the yams, but only after they've cookedóthe skins come off much easier this way.
Keep on experimenting with hashbrowns. They are a uniquely American dish, and I feel it is our patriotic duty to extend the tradition. With a little patience, a whole world of foodtastic fun can be yours.
--Vincent Voelz
