It’s halfway gone.

(Pat’s B.B.Q. in Salt Lake City)

Today we found ourselves needing to make an excursion to the the south side of Provo, and, desiring some food on our way there, we took the initiative and finally visited Sammy’s, just off Center Street on 100 West in downtown Provo. Before reaching Provo we were almost sucked into the Five Guys fever that is sweeping Orem and the rest of the Wasatch Front, but luckily for me Gin was strong in the cause of trying the place in Provo, and so we stuck through our hunger until we arrived at Sammy’s.

Walk in and the place feels immediately comfortable. The staff is super friendly. The customers seem to be regulars. Seating is at bar stools around a counter, behind which they ask you what toppings you want on your sandwich and finish putting it together right in front of you while you sit there.

An endearing Provo detail is the wall display for “Supernal Scripture Totes,” apparently handcrafted for $15 each. (I know my wife will roll her eyes that I call this a Provo detail, but where else but in our Mormon college town are you going to see something like this?)

Sammy’s has a great, simple menu. Everything is fresh and made from scratch. For entrees, they mainly feature hamburgers and chicken breast sandwiches, with pretty much anything that you could ever want on a hamburger available for toppings: grilled onions and mushrooms, homemade guacamole, pineapple and teriyaki sauce, bacon or pastrami (that ubiquitous Utah hamburger topping), several types of cheese, and of course the usual lettuce tomato ketchup mustard mayo type toppings. (I neglected to check whether beets were available as a condiment, but there’s always next time.) I tried Sammy’s Masterpiece, a burger with provolone cheese, grilled onions and mushrooms, guacamole, bacon, barbecue sauce, lettuce and tomato. At $5.99 it was a little pricey when compared to many local burger joints, but it was absolutely delicious. The abundance of excellent toppings puts it over the edge. In addition to the burger, what really hit the spot were the sweet potato fries, which come with one of the best renditions of fry sauce I have ever tasted. The picture below depicts Gin’s burger, which didn’t have as many goopy toppings on it as mine (already half-eaten by that point). Those fries are incredible.

Perhaps best of all are their real homemade pie shakes. Yes, you read that right. They have a case full of various flavors of pies, and for $4.00 they cut off a slice and blend it with soft serve ice cream for one of the best shakes you will ever taste. I know this sounds kind of weird; I certainly had my doubts, but at the waitress’ recommendation of the banana cream, Gin and I shared a split coconut/banana cream pie shake, and it was far better than I imagined it even possibly could be. This was another item eaten too quickly for a photo; you can see what was left of ours in the picture above, behind the burger plate.

Sammy’s has been in business for almost a year, and it is an absolute prize of an establishment, a quality place oozing with local character. They have tried to make a hip burger joint and college hangout spot, and in my opinion they have totally succeeded. Only one complaint: there was no music playing?! Come on guys, at a place like this you’ve got to kick out the jams.

My mouth is red from having just stretched to consume that giant burger.

Sammy’s has a blogspot blog of some sort. I haven’t explored in too much detail, but here’s the linkage: http://www.sammyscafe.blogspot.com

Sammy’s
27 North 100 West
Provo, UT 84601
801-805-9208

There’s a special feeling that often comes to me after eating hot dogs for a meal.

I guess I have to admit that hot dogs are a personal favorite food.  I now recognize this because, when I’m left to my own devices at the grocery store and/or subsequently at home, as I am tonight, I have a great tendency to buy them, cook them, and eat them.

Hot dogs really have a lot going for them.  They have a great flavor. They are inexpensive and extremely easy to prepare.  They give one the satisfying impression that one is eating something meaty and substantial.

But that’s not all; in addition to aroma, they exude nostalgia.  The frankfurter has a storied history that is deeply entwined with many pleasant elements of American culture: baseball, barbecues, camping, street vendors, amusement parks, drive-ins, kids meals, and our desire to give things new names when we decide we don’t like the country they came from.

And yet, examined without all these culinary and cultural trappings, the hot dog is quickly revealed as one of the most bizarre food items imaginable.  Processed from the vaguest of origins and with a truly nonsensical name, the hot dog is far more abstract a food than any other sausage I can think of, except perhaps bologna.  They contain high amounts of sodium, fat, and preservatives called nitrites, which I know nothing about but are supposed to be unhealthy when ingested in high concentrations.  These strangenesses and apparent flaws, one can easily argue, originate only in the admirable desire to make good use of all resources and plan for the future.

However, in a culture where fat and salt are readily available and we can preserve food through refrigeration, the hot dog has a new reason for its particular form and function.  A food often marketed and fed to children in a culture in which many are completely detached and ignorant of the sources and production of the food we eat, the hot dog is one of our most successful attempts at nullifying and mollifying ourselves out of recognizing the animal-ness and living-ness of our food sources, perhaps more so even than the hamburger or the chicken “nugget”  or “strip.”  Now more than ever, the hot dog is an iconic American food item.  Let’s please not start discussing the corn dog, though, or we’ll be here all night.

There it is, that special feeling just hit.  There are several more hot dogs left in package in the fridge;  I am sure that I will be eating them sometime soon, in the days ahead.  I don’t like to to let food go to waste.  But still, my stomach roils and rises up in a cry of betrayal, just now realizing that it has been tricked yet again.

[Ball Park Franks]

Cooking chili. As the water started to boil, the pinto beans rushed to the top and jostled each other, mosh pit/street fighting style.  It was pretty fun to watch.  Possibly the highlight of my day.

Wow.  This has certainly been a week.  This week I started writing a novel, voted and had part in the somewhat collective feeling of hopeful euphoria at the election of our new President, acquired two fun new toys, failed at continuing to write the novel that I began, stood on the sidelines of a weirdness and meltdown in my once happy fun office workplace that I still don’t quite understand, and cooked a couple of genuine dinners right here in our little home.  This is a week that should be recorded, and yet all I have to show for it are several half-written blog entries and eight pages of nonsense that were supposed to be the start of a novel that was/is to be drafted entirely in the month of November.  So, for lack of any other, more-fully-realized expressions of my thoughts and feelings of this week, I begin with this post, which is now almost at its end.  Hopefully I will finish up those other fabled posts soon.

p.s. I’ve been trying to write about the San Rafael Swell for a month now, and I won’t let myself post pictures unless I’ve written about it first.  Sorry.  The apocryphal promises of posts continue.

Wandering around the grocery store again, daydreaming of all the things that I could cook if I only did cook.

Okay, as you might have noticed, the Froz-T-Freez isn’t an actual Drive-In. It’s only a blog. And this is how it got started.

Years and years ago, I had daydreams of opening a record store.

But that doesn’t really explain anything.

Concurrent and somewhat coincidental to my frequent record-store-owning-and-operating daydreams, I came to develop a love of what I would call “authentic” fast food establishments: hamburger/shake stands with car hops or walk up windows, taquerías, Hawaiian plate lunch Drive-Inns, roadside diners (still haven’t really found a good one of these yet), etc. The smaller the town, the better. The more local and idiosyncratic the menu and condiments, the better. Secret menus or code names for certain items or variations of preparation, known only to the initiated, have come to play a big part in the mythology.  Another key factor is what James Murphy refers to as borrowed nostalgia.

At some point in my daydreaming, the obsession with drive-ins began to converge with the record store thing. It went through many iterations, but the final business model was that of the record store soda fountain. It would simply be a new variation on the drug store soda fountain which permeated America in days of old. The sodas and shakes would be authentic, the jukebox would be free, the soda jerk would be friendly and accommodating yet have impeccable musical taste, and the hipness and diversity of the kids who hung out there would be almost utopian.  Strange that in my daydreams I wanted to own and operate a teenage hangout when in reality I usually can’t stand places that are teenage hangouts.

But anyway. It turns out that I don’t really want to open such a business badly enough to devote my heart and soul to it, so it remains a pleasant daydream. And instead of a record store soda fountain, I have this here Froz-T-Freez. I guess my ultimate goal is to be that friendly and accommodating soda jerk with impeccable taste. I’m not in it for the money, so I tend to stock the racks only with the things I love. If you’re browsing you may find things you already know and like, or you may find something new.  But we cook everything to order, so if something’s not here that you would like on the menu, just let me know.  We may actually have a secret name for it already.

Still numb from having three cavities filled this morning. Now drinking a Mexican Coke.