Defending the Gonzo Sandwich
Food seemingly made in Frankenstein's laboratory has a bad reputation. It shouldn't.
Luther Vandross was a titan in the R&B industry. Recording such awe-inspiring songs as “Power of Love” and “Here and Now.” He was taken from this earth in 2005 at the young age of 54, victim of a string of health problems that ended with a myocardial infarction. Vandross’ silky smooth voice and pristine production live forever in the halls of music, a staggering artist whose appeal crossed over genre lines. He was, if you believe the legends, spoken about in hushed tones in Black neighborhoods, in chat rooms, and finally on the animated show The Boondocks on Adult Swim, a culinary titan as well. Legend has it, one day, he craved something savory and sweet. Rather than going the snack route, he took a Krispy Kreme glazed donut, cut it in twain, and used it as the bun for a cheeseburger. This legend is disputed, and no one knows if the Luther Burger is a tribute or a slander. Either way, the legend of gonzo food claims the legendary late soul singer as one of its founding fathers.
Another founding father is the purveyor of the R U Hungry food truck on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. In the 1970s, the grease truck cut the middleman out of serving a cheeseburger platter and just dumped the French fries on a sandwich with the burger patties themselves. Thus, the “fat cat” sandwich was born, and it spawned several other “fat” style sandwiches that the truck and its copycats over the years have developed. Then again, if French fries on a sandwich is qualification for gonzo food, then Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh predates the grease trucks at Rutgers by four decades. They’ve been putting fries and cole slaw on sandwiches since 1933. Either way, the reputation of the United States as a Frankenstein’s laboratory of culinary horrors is not entirely unearned, although I would call these creations net goods for the world of casual dining.
While college grease trucks and working class sandwich shops and all-time soul singers are the ones who got the ball rolling on these kinds of monstrosities, credit must go to ballparks around the country for pushing the boundaries of how far gonzo food can go. Before I move on any further, I probably should define the term “gonzo food.” Basically, I would define the term as any kind of food that is so unnatural that it should inspire genuine revulsion from classic chefs and food purists, but that may or may not have the charm and more importantly flavor to attract a wide following. To wit, Jacques Pepin is one of my most respected people in food, but I would not want him telling me which bullshit creation is good or not because I would suspect he looks at a ballpark menu and gets chills up his spine. Rather, I would take the advice of Casey Webb, the current host of Man Vs. Food who eats this kind of shit for a living. All food is good food unless it’s not good food anyway. Gonzo food is just a category.
While the definition to me is subjective as hell, the categorization of it falls into three different bins: extremes, wide contrast, and “everyone in the goddamn pool.” The extremes category is just that, food that is taken to its extreme, whether by size or capsicum content. If you see someone making a 10-lb. burger or using bhut jolokia AND Carolina reaper AND capsicum extract to flavor their wings, you’re seeing someone making extreme food. To me, this is the most boring category. It requires absolutely no finesse; just make it as big or as hot as possible. People in this gonzo food category are like the craft brewers who only make IPAs because it’s easy to dump hops into a vat.
The second category is where I’d place the Luther Burger. Wide contrast is putting foods together that you don’t necessarily think of as going together. Obviously, using various pastries as sandwich buns is one category, but you can think bigger and look at things like peanut butter and jelly ribs as wide contrast gonzo foods. You don’t think to put either ingredient on a pork product, just as you don’t think of putting a burger between halves of a donut (or between two donuts if you’re nasty). However, the best foods in this category have threads that hold the combinations together. Peanut butter and jelly ribs, for instance, seem incongruous on the surface, but various Asian cultures, the Thai especially, have been combining peanuts and pork for centuries. The jelly half works because pitmasters for years have been developing sauces with fruit base. Sweet sauces are the standard, at least outside of North Carolina. One thing that Memphis and Kansas City can agree on is that the sauce has to have some kind of sugar in it. What is jelly but a fruit-based accoutrement for the rich and savory pork ribs? The Luther Burger works on the same principle. You want the burger to be the star, but you also don’t want a bland or stiff bun. A Krispy Kreme glazed donut is anything but bland and stiff. Sweet and savory aren’t meant to be segregated forever.
“Everyone in the pool” is where the French fry sandwiches fall in. Much like the extreme foods, these can be easy to fuck up by having too free a hand. Like the wide contrast foods, there’s an art to putting these dishes together. Basically, you have dishes that have a wide swath of ingredients dumped into the same vessel, the more chaotic the better. Nachos, pizza, hot dogs, and bloody marys are the prime culprits here. If you’re too careless with what you’re dumping into the mix, it’ll look like a garbage plate, and not a Rochester Garbage Plate, which is actually well put-together and a legitimate point of regional pride along the western tiers of New York State. Look to the R U Hungry fat cat and the classic Primanti Bros. sandwiches. The former is a superconstructed cheeseburger. You’re going to eat the fries anyway, so why not eat them in the same bite as the burger? The Primanti Bros. sandwich goes even further by giving you another sandwich staple, cole slaw, in the same bite without need for a fork. Think of it as a witch’s brew and not the vat of jungle juice you made at frat parties when you were in college. Every ingredient should fit like puzzle piece.
So, now that I’ve defined what gonzo food is, the question becomes “Why do ballparks and arenas tend to be hubs for gonzo food?” I’ve been going to sporting events for nearly three decades. One constant, even more than the team I’m rooting for losing, is that buying food at the ballpark can be a non-starter for how expensive it is. When you go to a game of any kind, you’re in a captive audience. You can’t just get up and head down to Taco Bell to raid the dollar menu on the cheap. What you spend on a value meal, you’re spending on a single component. Remember that the vendors themselves don’t control the prices as much as the people in charge at the stadium are, and no one loves price gouging more than the asshole in a suit who is grossly misinformed as to the price of produce:
For major league venues, charging all that money for food is a constant. The gonzo food comes in as a way to make people think the crazy shit they’re purchasing is worth the money being charged. It’s clever tactic. For minor league venues though? The gonzo food itself can be the draw. Bill Veeck is an infamous figure in baseball history because in times when he was too cheap to spend on a winner, he would have crazy gimmick promotions to get people out to the ballpark to see his awful, no-good teams play baseball. He intentionally signed Eddie Gaedel, the shortest player in Major League Baseball history, as a way to sell tickets. Minor league teams doing crazy things like Star Wars night or Bark at the Park is the direct descendent of Veeck’s chicanery. Gonzo menus are also part of that.
What’s the craziest food you’ve ever eaten? Leave a comment!
So what should you do when you encounter a crazy item on a ballpark menu? I would suggest trying it, but there are some caveats. If a ballpark, or any eatery for that matter, doesn’t have good regular food, the gonzo food is gonna suck too. If you’re a regular at whatever venue has the gonzo food, you’ll know if it’s got a better than average shot to be good just by having gone to the various stands or semi-autonomous restaurants within. Each venue’s specific concession stands are also not uniform, so you should do some research beforehand. If you’re stopping into a new arena or visiting out of town, do your research and read reviews.
I am a food epicurean at heart. I believe there’s no wrong way to eat as long as you’re not outright stealing from indigenous cultures while muscling them out of the foray. There are ethics involved, obviously, but if everything else is equal, the gimmick sandwich you find at the Sioux Falls Chucklefucks home stadium is just as valid as the prix fixe menu at The French Laundry. Besides, if gonzo food is good enough for one of the greatest R&B artists and producers of all-time (allegedly, of course), it’s good enough for you. Take the dive; eat the sandwich.