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Featured Articles
In this age of naming burgers, most relate
to size; Beanie Burgers relate to quality...
26APRIL2009
The Gahanna Grill's chef, fry cook and kitchen boss, Beanie Vesner, will go down in Ohio food history with a stack of food carrying his name, the Beanie Burger. His pile of good eats is distinctive because he's the only one to shove it out to servers to tote to tables.
Gahanna Grill as a watering hole for the neighborhood opened in 1939, possibly at the time to be able to serve beer and liquor to benefit parched palates brought about by years of Prohibition. Beanie didn't sign on until around 1975. He was the sort of grill cook who never used recipes and seldom used exacting measurements. He once told me he cooks for himself. I'll go along with that.
Server Shelli King, a reguler server, also uses her teacher-talents
to hoist a Beanie enroute to a table. (Photo: Philip Vaughn)
After I first wrote about the Beanie Burger, I went back with a Channel 10 TV crew. We wanted him to walk us through his creative steps from raw ground beef to plate. To do that, we all went out the back door, crossed the alley, to a meat market in the middle of Old Gahanna. A butcher saw Beanie and hauled out a haunch of cow. Back in his then quaint kitchen, so small he had to pivot rather than walk from station to station, he peeled off its protective wax paper and grabbed a handful of red beef. In all these years his measurement, a ball of beef, is said to be "around 10 ounces." Two or more at a time hits the hot grill, He patted them down with a heavy spatula, grease popping, smoky puffs rising, all in sync, same grill, with a pile of steamy chopped white onions getting a grease wash.
Cousin, there's Beanie's trademark, abundant grilled onions. And there's Beanie's link with a kindred burger spirit from deep hills in Depression-era history of West Virgfinia. The Boomer Burger...Boomer, WV, I vaguely recall that I once experienced a Boomer Burger. Mountain-era recall by a friend described a Boomer Burger as ground meat anything fried and served between two thick white bread slices holding "anything from a root cellar."
Foods stored in a root cellar are always in season, onions, turnips, apples, carrots, spuds, cucumbers, cabbages. And of particular note, but very seasonal, ramps. Once pulled from ground, a ramp is a delicacy best grilled in butter and served over any red meat. Rabbit works, but squirrel's better.
Beanie never had the pleasure of serving ramps because they are seldom found in Ohio markets north and east of Jackson County. Ramps are festival food in Richwood, West Virginia, as popular as pumpkins in Circleville.
A Beanie Burger doesn't wait around for fresh seasonal stuff. They are standard today with Beanie's fist-sized ball of beef patted down and then secured in soft buns with, at varied levels, iceberg lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, pickles, bacon and cole slaw. They are dripping with his tangy slaw.
When I did the initial review of Gahanna Grill, it was the ink-on-pulp version. For Channel 10, I wore a tuxedo and sat at the bar between two burly regulars washing down Beanies with long necks. Before the creek rises, I intend to trip out to Gahanna for a refresher. A Beanie is $7.99. Long necks extra. - D.P.C.
Gahanna Grill
82 Granville St.
Gahanna, Ohio
614-476-9017
Reservations: Are You Kidding?
www.gahannagrill.com
Ohio's Flying Farmer, Richard Jensen,
Delivers organic to Columbus Restaurants
11 April 2008
Richard Jensen spent 22 years as an OSU professor in Aviation Psychology, When asked this date if he missed the aviation turmoil rattling off front pages around the world, his answer was something rather negative. Frontier Airlines in bankruptcy today. Skybus, Columbus based, is history. Five commercial airlines quit this month of April. So be it. Jensen is at peace with his world in a most engaging place and pursuit. He's a commercial farmer of organic produce and beef serving Central Ohio restaurants and selling at farm markets in Clintonville and Westeville.
Richard Jensen
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But his business future may be serving the finer restaurants. Two to date get his meat deliveries: La Tavola and Westerville's Uptown Market Bistro, both highly acclaimed in legit reviews.
For an update on what a working farm produces, this memo from Jensen: "This week we transplanted a lot of stuff including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, arugula, Bibb lettuce, romain lettuce and more than I can think of here....well, snow peas, shelling peas and radishes."
Jensen's rural creation could be called the Model Farm. Ten years ago following OSU retirement, he created a farm model - no spreading mechanical acreage - to plant, cultivate, eat and sell the food basics that sustain life. He has 250 acres about 40 miles northeast of Columbus. One hundred acres are wooded, a source for his maple syrup.
For the real introduction to an Ohio gem:
www.flyingjfarm.com
To talk to the source: 740-967-4030.
E-mail: Rjensen@core.com
Carolyn Claycomb, update on one of
the finest chefs ever to grace Columbus...
April 2008
In the hurried growth period the 1980s when fine dining restaurants made their mark in Columbus, one of the best, highly acclaimed Carolyn's, German Village, was a classy signature of Carolyn Claycomb. The native of New Orleans, a graduate of Tulane University, a culinary graduate of Columbus State, a holder of gold medals from the International Culinary Olympics, a protege of Master Chef Hartmut Handke, and creator of the CSCC Culinary academy - now resides in a world class culinary capitol - Singapore. A Columbus loss.
Singapore, a city where the two major pasttimes are shopping and eating, experienced 10.2 million visitors in 2007. Chef Claycomb and husband, Jerry, then a professor at Ohio State University, were in that number. They remained in the city, described by the chef when she sent the picture above, by asking us to "notice the beautiful flora and sunshine...this is a 24/7 thing in Sing....happy happy."
Besides safe streets, flora and sun, the city-state is noted for restaurants and international cuisines. The city plays host this month to the World Gourmet Summit, the world's top chefs and vineyards showcasing their finest. Singapore, already a playground for the finest of everything, soon will complete work on a new International Cruise Terminal. That should give more fame to the city. And, soon, casino gambling finds a new home. As to whether Chef Claycomb decides to lend her calling to her new homeland, we're waiting.
= DPC
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