This past weekend’s Hoboken Arts & Music Festival marked the inauguration of that magical time of year known as “Street Meat Season,” where gastronomical gypsies wheel their carts in and out of town on the breeze peddling their intestinal crap-shoot (no pun intended) to any sucker willing to shell out the ducats. Without fail, I am perennially just such a sucker.
There’s something about street meat that draws me in – whether it’s the novelty of its occasion, the enticing, exotic aromas or the pure thrill that comes from challenging your constitution to the ultimate “gut check.”
But my one beef with street meat vendors is not so much the potential vagaries of their cooking standards, but rather their apparent lack of consideration for the product once it’s out of their hands and into mine.
There’s no sadder moment of clarity than finding oneself standing on a street corner over a sewer grate in a rainstorm fighting with a gyro as lettuce, tomato and cucumber sauce fall from a measly sheet of wax paper and wash away in the flood. Racing to devour the sopping mess of a sandwich as onlookers shield their children from the grizzly sight I come to the only obvious conclusion of what’s gone wrong with my life to that point – too much juice.
Read into that what you will, but for my purposes here I’m talking about the juice on the gyro.
Is there no thought into the fact that once you drizzle that runny slop onto the sandwich it begins to corrode the meal from the inside? Two bites in and the whole glorious bonanza collapses like a California hillside. There’s no fun in that, in fact that’s just wasteful. If they’re not going to do it for the sake of the customers, then for the love of God, do it for the meat – it deserves more respect than that!
So this summer I’ll be making a point to curb the condiments on my street meat, not so much for any health reason, but for the simple fact that I have to carry this sandwich around for at least the next 30 to 45 seconds, and I’d prefer it not run down my arm and melt all over my fancy street fair ensemble (usually the one pair of shorts I feel comfortable in and a previously soiled t-shirt – but that’s not the point). I’ll get my dirty water dogs easy on the kraut and mustard, I’ll get my sauzeege light on the peppers and I’ll order my gyros gentle on the juice.
That doesn’t make me less of a man, I just like to look good when I’m strolling through a public venue voraciously stuffing food in my mouth. After all, I have my image to think about.
Christopher M. Halleron, freelance writer/bitter bartender, writes a biweekly humor column for The Hudson Current and websites in the New York Metro area. He spends a lot of his time either in front of or behind the bar in Hoboken, New Jersey where his tolerance for liquor grows stronger as his tolerance for society is eroded on a daily basis. Feel free to drop him a line at c_halleron@yahoo.com.