Gut Instinct: Ruin Your Night

Whenever I’m feeling like a filthy degenerate, I like to pay a visit to Port Authority.

Despite Giuliani’s iron-fisted efforts, the blocks surrounding the bus station still brim with inflatable sex dolls, airplane bottles of vodka and dollar slices of cardboard pizza. Scallywags patrol glass-strewn streets, wetting their wizened whistles at Dave’s Tavern and the Holland Bar. Around Port Authority, drinking is serious business. And business is always booming.

The latest addition to this licentious realm is Blue Ruin (538 9th Ave. betw. West 39th & 40th Sts.; no phone). The dark drinking lair is a no-nonsense stack of bricks and shiny tin and a pool table, with the ol’ stars and stripes tacked to a wall. And there’s no knob on the men’s bathroom, turning the toilet into an accidental peepshow. “I did not need to see that,” a tattooed dude mumbled one night, catching me in midstream.

If the confines feel familiar, that’s because Blue Ruin once housed heavy metal hangout Bellevue, where Pantera pounded Pabst and bums tossed trashcans through windows like evil discus athletes. Bellevue was a very specific brand of liverpickling fun. So it was with great sadness that the space was replaced by bright, clean sports bar Why Not? It failed. To succeed, Blue Ruin has once more lowered the bar.

“Is this a knifing saloon?” asks my friend Aaron, my constant accomplice to houses of ill repute. “It’s just a little slice of happy hour heaven,” I reply. To my dwindling brain cells’ enduring detriment, every inebriant is two-for-one ‘til 8 p.m. Aaron and I hunker at the sticky bar. To our left: Several Spanish-speaking guys—a touch taller than the Wizard of Oz’s little people—are guzzling red wine and massaging one another’s shoulders. To our right: a gaunt grandpa who recalls David Carradine. In front: a busty bartender, her low-cut top and tendency to bend over leaving no question that her finest assets are silicone-free.

“Whaddya want, boyzzzz?” she asks, drawing out the z’s like we’re backup dancers in a teenybopper musical act.

The tap selection is tepid (Guinness, Stella and the typical undesirable Americans), but Brooklyn Lager is a lifebuoy in an uninspiring sea of swill. We both grab a $6 Brooklyn. “Attention, everyone, look alive!” the bartender bellows into a megaphone. Sluggish barflies flutter their heavily lidded eyes and straighten their slouches. Someone burps. Someone goes woo-hoo. “That’s better,” she says, pleased as punch.

One of the teensy men—eyeglasses like magnifying lenses—swerves to the bathroom. He stumbles back to the bar, chased by beefy men screaming “puta.” The little man’s companion holds back his mate, squirming in his grasp, as the shouts mount. In drips and drabs, I deduce that he purposely knocked the pool balls askew, breaking guy rule No. 231: Never mess with a man’s balls.

“Looks like you get to watch midget wrestling for free tonight,” David Carradine says, clapping Aaron and I on the backs. He laughs lustily, creepily, like a stranger with sweet candy. But before we roll out the spandex and baby oil, cooler heads prevail. The pool players defuse. Aaron and I resume drinking.The wee men beside us start imbibing at an accelerated pace.They finish full glasses of wine like water.They rub one another’s shoulders with renewed vigor, as if they’re corner men pumping up boxers.

Aaron and I scoot down a few feet, into the comparative safety of creepy David Carradine. Does he know Kung Fu too? The pint-size troublemaker moseys toward the rear, where a rainbow of balls race across green felt. What now? I wonder as he takes a left into the bathroom. Upon exiting the toilet—the pool sharks eyeing him warily—I see that he has transformed into a pinball. On jelly legs he bumps into a wall, before careening toward the bar and crashing into several men wearing Mets caps, sending beer foaming everywhere. They stand. “Lo siento,” he slurs, tossing down dollar bills and lurching toward the door. He hits it. His partner gathers his dry cleaning and staggers behind.They burst outside and lurch down Ninth Avenue, like wild ponies on the lam, just another average eve around Port Authority.

“Now that,” David Carradine says, turning back to his beer, “was the drunkest midget I’ve ever seen.”

Beer of the Week: Full Sail Session Black

It’s Monday, and you know what time that is: Beer of the Week! This week’s beer is the Full Sail Session Black, a flavorful lager the color of my heart. This beer’s a tasty summer indulgence, a lager fit for folks that hate lagers. Thirsty? Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: Thanks for the Mammaries

In my short, eventful life, I’ve shoved many a breast into my mouth.

Mainly, the mammaries have hailed from chickens, like the crunchy, juicy cluckers from Fort Greene’s No. 7 (7 Greene Ave., betw. Oxford & Fulton Sts.) or the East Village’s first-rate The Redhead (349 E. 13th St., bet. 1st & 2nd Aves.), which makes waist-busters as fab as anything fried down South. But no breast experience could prepare me for what I ingested in northern Africa.

Armed with Pepto-Bismol and a fistful of credit cards, I recently vacationed in Morocco. The trip was my girlfriend’s fancy, but her vegetarianism made her a terrible dining partner in a country where lamb and camel are consumed by the metric ton. Fortunately, our companions were Parisian pals Emily and Bati, a Frenchman who favors snails, pigeons and duck tongues by the dozen.

“The quacking makes them extra delicious,” he said when I saw him six months ago, sucking flesh from the appendages at Flushing’s Sichuan star Little Pepper (133-43 Roosevelt Ave.). He’s a fearless eater, unafraid of offal or fermented stinky tofu. The more unfortunate—and cheaper—the comestible, the happier he is. Even better, Bati is forever famished.

“Let’s eat,” he ordered, upon our arrival in sun-baked Marrakesh. After 14 hours of flight, including a layover in Brussels, where I drank monk-made Orval beer at sunrise, I was eager to devour Morocco. In Marrakesh, that meant visiting the teeming city’s chaotic heart: Djemaa El Fna. Once the site of public executions (its translated name is “assembly of the dead”), the expansive square bristles with snake charmers, henna artists, zooming scooters, guitarists wearing live chickens as hats and street vendors, their aromatic meat smoke swirling above the hubbub.

After every evening’s Islamic call to prayer, numbered food stalls materialize in regimented rows. Sweaty chefs in white smocks ignite stoves and stack hills of veggies and skewered kebabs. Pushy hawkers proffer menus and boasts (“Hey, Starvin’ Marvin, our food is finger lickin’ good,” one grinning salesmen says; “Five-star Michelin,” another says, gesturing to a grease-covered bench). The scene recalls Red Hook’s ballfield vendors, as run by the East Sixth Street Indian gang on amphetamines. But like basset hounds on the hunt, Bati and I sniff out deliciousness.

A thin, circular bread loaf is split and swollen with hard-boiled eggs and potatoes, then sprinkled with fresh herbs, cumin and pepper-spiked harissa. Harira (bean soup) is soothing and chickpea-packed, while pinkies of sausages are greasy guilty pleasures. Still, what’s the fun of visiting a foreign country and subsisting on victuals you can identify? Dining abroad is about escaping your culinary comfort zone by opening your mind—and mouth—to new-fangled foodstuffs. In love and dining, everything is fair game.

In Beijing, I speared a rooster’s gelatinous, chewy cockscomb. Kazakhstan provided a quivering mass of camel tripe. And in Marrakesh, Bati and I sat at a stall displaying lamb heads, their teeth frozen in macabre smiles that might’ve inspired the Joker. “Are you a lily?” Bati asked, rubbing his hands and licking his lips.

“I’m more of a poppy,” I said, ordering a quarter head. It was dunked into a gurgling, oily stockpot, then hacked apart as casually as a cold-blooded killer—jawbone shattered, brain matter splattered like gray jam. The gory spectacle resulted in meat shards that were sharp, rich and satisfying, provided I ignored the blackened lamb eye sockets staring my direction. While Bati scooped up brown nose bits, I turned my attention to a Christmas ham–size hunk of meat the color of flan. In flawless French (Morocco’s second language, thanks to colonialism), Bati inquired as to the food’s origins.

“He said it was a woman’s tit,” Bati said, puzzled. A woman’s tit? A breast, I surmised, running the phrase through my foreign-translation filter. Sure, why not try the breast of lamb! The breast was hacked into bite-size bricks, then served sauce-less. I grabbed a chunk and, beaming like a beheaded lamb, incisored it in half. This was unlike any sheep I’d consumed, almost sexual in its sensual lusciousness.

“There’s nothing like sheep breast,” I boasted to Bati.

“Do you know what you’re eating?” he asked, pushing away the plate.

“I’m eating—oh, no,” I said, as the dots connected like a terrible constellation. There is no breast of sheep; I was eating a sheep’s breast, the nipple-covered mammary glands fit for suckling baby lambs.

“No,” I moaned. I envisioned a mama sheep bleating mournfully, unable to feed her offspring, their tiny mouths grasping for nipples now entering my digestive tract.

“Yes,” Bati said, grabbing another gristly lump of lamb face, its smile long vanished. “Looks like you’re a lily after all.”

Beer of the Week: Hell or High Watermelon

Thirsty? Thirsty! In this latest installment of Beer of the Week, I pen tale about 21st Amendment’s wondrous watermelon-tinged wheat beer. It’s a summer-friendly gooder. Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: Finding the Far East (of Queens)

I should’ve eaten that sandwich before agreeing to anything Matt Levy offered.

“Come on, let’s bike to the eastern edge of Queens and tour Fort Totten,” said my friend, a licensed New York City tour guide.

He’s hyper-enthusiastic about sightseeing ancient structures, like a history-loving Jack Russell terrier. “I have the hurt,” I moaned. The previous eve, a pal’s backyard bash featured a keg of Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold.The Belgian-style pale ale possesses an alcohol percentage not intended for all-day drinking.

Needless to say, I drank it all day. I felt lie I’d been mauled by a meat-tenderizing mallet. “Buck up,” he said, “and get on your bike.We’ll eat something delicious!” “But I’m busy…” I trailed off. I was wearing busted boxers, watching a blazingguns episode of The Wire. Outside, the sun shone klieg-light bright. Getting wasted was no reason to waste a day. I drained my Diet

Coke and burped. “Fine,” I said, “let’s roll. Maybe we can go to David’s first?” Recently, I’ve become addicted to Bed- Stuy’s David’s Brisket House (533 Nostrand Ave., betw. Herkimer St. & Atlantic Ave., 718- 783-6109). The Jewish deli, a reminder of the neighborhood’s torah-worshipping time, sits amid jerk-slinging Caribbean canteens.

David’s toils in undeserved semi-obscurity. While Katz’s, Carnegie and 2nd Avenue Deli receive plaudits aplenty for their brined beef, David’s meat is just as succulent and half as expensive.

Five bucks buys a sandwich layered with rich corned beef, peppery pastrami or gravy-covered caramelized brisket. It’s affordable comfort food for uncertain times.
“We’ll eat on the way,” Matt said when we met up. He eyeballed a bike map, tracing his long finger through Brooklyn and Queens, past LaGuardia and Flushing, settling on a distant nub jutting out like a benign tumor in Little Neck Bay: nearly 20 miles. I gulped.We departed. I screamed.

“Oh, this is not making my hangover go away!” I shouted, as SUVs honked past. Though Queens is a marvelous melting pot, where 100-plus languages are spoken and durian popsicles are sold beside Serbian cevapi, there’s one unwelcome breed: bikers. I hugged the road’s shoulder as a Lexus, then a Camry, then an Accord nearly sideswiped me into the hereafter.

Is this adventure worth my life? I wondered, as we white-knuckled past speeding cars and braked to a halt at the water-fronting Fort Totten (time elapsed: two hours). This Civil War structure was built to defend New Yorkers from the Confederates. To gauge the fortifications, the army test-fired on every under-construction fort. If it withstood the barrage, the fort was finished; if not, they’re scrapped.

Using a newfangled shell, soldiers shot Totten. A wall shattered. The fort remains unfinished. “How about that?” Matt said, eyes ablaze with history. He ran his finger over the jagged hole, as empty as my stomach.

“How about some lunch?” He caught my drift.We departed the failed fort, setting sail down the bucolic Cross Island Parkway.

We headed west into the neighborhood of Bayside. Or so we thought. “Where on God’s green earth is Douglaston?” I asked, as we pedaled around an upscale suburban town peppered with lovely Queen Anne and Victorian homes. Wrong turn, Matt said, consulting his creased map. “But we just biked up that hill,” I said, pointing to a thigh-burning incline.

In any journey there comes a point of boiling conflict, often caused by faulty direction-sense.When you’ve gone astray, it’s easy to assign blame for troubles, both real and imagined: You’re the reason I’m tired, hungry and short. A more difficult proposition is finding a solution and mending bridges.

“Let’s just get Gatorade,” Matt said. He crossed the street and parked in front of lowslung brick buildings, one with a vintage DELICATESSEN sign. I followed, steamed. But how quickly anger can become pleasure.

Inside Douglaston Delicatessen (44-23 Douglaston Pkwy., at 44th Ave., 718-631- 3353; Queens), the air conditioning was a cool kiss. I ordered an Arnold Palmer (50-50 iced tea and lemonade). The tart-sweet ambrosia was an instant restorative. I smiled, my sun-beat skin receiving a reprieve. Calm and hydrated, I noticed the glass display case containing homemade turkey and roast beef, its core as pink as Valentine’s Day.

Matt and I exchanged glances. Here was heaven in the heart of hell.We each ordered a hero (just $6 apiece), topped with tangy pickles, crunchy lettuce and amply spicy brown mustard. Then we pedaled to a nearby park, and while Chinese teens played basketball, stuffed ourselves with tender, moist roasted turkey and beef: Meat as good as mom ever made. In far-east Queens, I’d found a happiness that’d eluded me all day. “Now,” Matt said, as we unlocked our bicycles, “we just have to find our way home.”

Gourmet.com: Eight Great Saison Beers

Oh, hi there! For my latest Gourmet.com column, I pen tale of wondrous saison beers, the spicy thirst-quenchers originally created to keep farm workers hydrated—and well-lubricated, as they toiled under steamy suns. Thirsty? Drink it up!

Beer of the Week: Port Brewing Hop 15

Oh, look! Two beers of the week in one week! How’d that happen? Easy, I spent the last week eating lamb mammaries and brains in Morocco, the land of rugs, enchantment and grifters galore. There’s a certain sense of American shame when a six-year-old boy tries to connive you in no fewer than three languages. Anyhoo, this week’s brew: Port 15’s citric bomb the Hop 15. It’s a heavenly IPA, bold and beautiful and all those adjectives I get paid pennies to pen. Thirsty? Drink it up!

Beer of the Week: Duck-Rabbit Rabid Duck Russian Imperial Stout

Mmm…morning-time is thirsty time for beer. My latest exploration into delicious inebriation is North Carolina’s Duck-Rabbit Rabid Duck Russian Imperial Stout, a knockout brew I review in this week’s Slashfood column. Thirsty? Drink it up!

Gut Instinct: Feeling Butch

Back in frigid February, the news hit like a razor-covered sledgehammer. My favorite butcher shop, Coney Island’s Major Prime Meat Market, was shuttering. Septuagenarian flesh monger Jimmy Prince was closeting his cleavers and trademark neckties. This meant no more dry-aged steaks and fresh-ground “murder” burgers.

“Maybe you’ll eat fewer hamburgers this summer,” my girlfriend said hopefully. She’s fearful of my early death and encourages me to consume comestibles that never mooed, quacked or oinked.

“No, I just need enough murder burgers to last me till September,” I replied. I headed to Coney, where Prince held court one final afternoon. Major’s long, snaking line contained a neighborhood cross-section of zaftig grandmas and pot-bellied papas, burly construction workers and harried moms, paying their final respects to the meat altar. Butcher shops, like post offices, are great egalitarian meeting grounds. My turn: I ordered several dozen ready-to-freeze murders. “I know summer is months away, but I just wanted to stock up for barbecue season,” I said. I smiled wanly, as big-band tunes glided from the cassette player.

Prince paused, his hands full of raw, red cow. “You know what,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m really going to miss barbecue season. It’s…my favorite time of the year.” His eyes drifted off to a happy land, where coals always glow white-hot.

“Mine too,” I said, gulping down a lump of sadness. It was an era’s end, another nail in the coffin of old New York. Major was irreplaceable, but it needed to be replaced. As my murder supply dropped, dwindled, then disappeared, I pedaled around Brooklyn, searching for a throwback shop where meat wasn’t sold in bloody Styrofoam. On a recent perambulation to East Flatbush to nab a fiery goat roti at

On a recent perambulation to East Flatbush to nab a fiery goat roti at Nio’s Trinidad Roti & Bakery (2702 Church Ave., at Rogers Ave., 718-287- 9848) and a honey-glazed donut at oldtimey Nostrand Donut Shop (1449 Nostrand Ave., betw. Martense St. & Church Ave., 718-826-3008), I noticed a neon sign reading MEATS.

It’s the calling card for Michael’s Prime Meats (1412 Nostrand Ave. betw. Linden Blvd. & Martense St., 718-284-8344; B’klyn), whose loping, cursive-font sign appeared in an era when beef was for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I entered the shop. It’s like coming home again for the very first time. Sawdust speckles the floor, while amply proportioned women speaking in island lilts order goat-shin meat. It’s a dizzying, carnivorous Disney Land.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been here,” I tell the white-haired counterman. I’m as wonderstruck as I was the first time I had sex: What have I been missing for so very long?

“Well, we’ve only been here 79 years,” he replies, introducing himself as Al. I tell him my name. “My grandson’s name is Josh. I’ll never forget you.” Happiness surges through me; my grandparents long ago passed on, so I take grandpa kindness wherever it’s allotted.

Family-owned Michael’s has held this slice of Flatbush since 1931, as demographics shifted from Italian and Jewish to West Indian and African. Sure, there’s a higher demand for ox tails than Italian sausage, but locals’ demand for flesh has remained constant. Seeking guidance, I tell Al my needs—a backyard BBQ, no steaks. “All chuck,” he says, pointing to the beet-colored ground beef. Sold. Next, he suggests store-made sausages. I grab a pound-and-a-half of spicy Italian, the white-paper package labeled zap and pow. Lastly, there’s Michael’s specialty: chicken-breast burgers, big as Frisbees and chunked with onions and green peppers. The burgers are virtually fat-free, a bearded co-worker adds, advising me to cook them frozen, on low heat; luscious fat’s absence means they’ll burn like a baby in the Caribbean sun.

I thank Al profusely. “Come back soon,” he says, confident his product will make me rush back, an addict eager for another hit. He’s right. That afternoon on the Weber, the burgers cook juicy and mineral-tangy, only needing salt and pepper.

The Italian sausages swell like pork balloons, retaining their succulent snap and zippy heat until the first spurting bite. And the chicken burgers, well, color me convinced.

Oftentimes, grilled poultry is as tough as a dog bone. But these chicken burgers are marvels—moist as a medium-rare steak.

“Look, I’m eating healthy!” I tell my girlfriend, shoving fowl into my mouth. She spears an asparagus. “What about these?” she says, holding the pencil-shaped veggie aloft like the Olympic torch.

“I think you’ve got me confused with another vegetarian you’re dating,” I say, plotting my next trip to the butcher named after my middle initial.

Gut Instinct: My Mandate

“Do I have to put out?” my friend Aaron asks, that fearful look crinkling his eyes, the one so common in teenage girls following dinner and a movie. Food plus film equals third base?

“Not if you don’t want to,” I say, heeding my maxim: one need not squeeze the berry for the sweetest juice.

“No strings attached?”

“No strings attached—just three hours at dinner with me. I’ll let you gaze into my eyes. If you want.”

“The things I do for a meal…”

“A meal with beer, might I add.”

Our man date was set for Lusso (331 West Broadway at Grand St., 212-431-0131), a sunny Italian newbie in Soho. Though I shun red-sauce cuisine like a leper, tonight’s dinner is too attractive to avoid: a booze pairing starring Italian beer. I can easily name-check Belgian ales and West Coast hop bombs, but my Italian intelligence begins and ends with fizzy, forgettable Peroni. Hell, Italy’s beers are largely belly-bloating golden lagers.

In the last decade, though, wine-loving Italy has seen a groundswell of bang-up microbrew eries, such as Birra del Borgo and Le Baladin, helmed by flavor magician Teo Musso. He and fellow Italian brewers are applying wines’ nuances and barrel-aged complexties to beer. They’re crafting sprightly saisons and licorice-hinted stouts that, like a robust Tuscan red, demand to be sipped from spotless stemware, not slurped from a plastic funnel.

Tonight’s dinner features four beers and courses. That’s about three courses more than I normally share with guy friends. Normally, “meals” equal greasy slices, wolfed while swerving down the sidewalk and shotgunning brown-bagged Coors Light. Moreover, I’m terrified of white-napkin restaurant dinners’ forced intimacy. Eye contact and attention is focused on your dining companion. Forks are required, as is four-letter-word-less conversation and, more often than not, pants. And drinking myself comfortable, while not discouraged, is unfeasible: In this icy economic climate, who can pay restaurant mark-ups to get smashed? When dining with my girlfriend, I must sneak to the bathroom to slug

Old Overholt rye from my flask. But a beer-pairing feast, where inebriation is built into the $60 price tag, I can get behind— before falling on my face.

Aaron and I arrive at the anointed time, sliding into a cozy two-top. “Why thank you for pulling out my chair,” I tell him, testing this newfangled concept, manners.

“No, you’re welcome,” Aaron says, playing his role.We settle in, bromanticism lubricated by the first quaff, Birra del Borgo’s Genziana saison. It’s tart and funky with a honeyed backbone, and serious bitterness arising from gentian flowers. The food is crisp skate with lip-puckering lemon and capers. The saison and seafood are mates, supporting and complementing one another. “Just like friends are supposed to do,” I tell Aaron.

Course No. 2—dry pork chop, mushy pepper stew, butter-glazed green beans—falls short, as does Borgo’s ReAle Extra India pale ale. I favor floral, weed-like West Coast IPAs; by contrast, this is caramel-sweet, with a maltiness that weighs down my tongue, preventing me from saying anything nice. Our dining ship is righted with crunchy potato nibs topped by grilled hanger steak, its minerally tang contrasted by a dollop of Gorgonzola butter.The breath-killer’s companion is Birrifico Barley’s Sella del Diavolo, a tongue-tickling amber ale that tastes like fresh-baked biscuits. “I like biscuits,” I tell Aaron, making small talk. “I like…this beer,” he says, swigging.

“Would you like more?” the waiter asks. Our bobblehead-doll nods net us another dose of liquid joy.

Three courses down; two hours have passed. By now I’m typically twiddling fingers, antsy to be anywhere where folks don’t fold my napkin whenever I urinate. Instead of foot-tapping restlessness, I’m hot-tub relaxed.

Chalk it up to good food, copious beer and no stress. When finedining with a sweetheart, terrible food can ruin a romantic weekend. But when fine-dining with fellow dudes, even rubbery chicken and shoe-leather steak is a step up from inhaling Rudy’s free hot dogs and Croxley Ales’ dime chicken wings.

I loosen my belt.A waiter glides over. He’s beaming, bearing the evening’s final tipple: Birrifico del Ducato’s Verdi, an imperial stout brewed with chili.The stout decants the color of crisp bacon, and its flavor is equally moan-worthy: uncut cocoa and coffee, with a marvelous burn that slowly incinerates my tongue.The Verdi is coupled with a cloud-light tiramisu. It’s tasty, but Aaron and I prefer to drink our dessert.

“To us,” I kid, clinking glasses tenderly, as the evening disappears down our throats.

Beer of the Week: He’Brew Rejewvenator

Hey! Are you thirsty? Good. Because I just started penning a weekly column for AOL’s Slashfood dubbed Beer of the Week. It’s pretty self-explanatory: Every week, I pick my favorite beer and pen tale of the tasty tipple. Oh! Alliteration! This week: the date-filled He’Brew Rejewvenator. It’s Jew-licious. Like me.

Gut Instinct: Provel Me Wrong

I have the best cheese in the world,” the vibrantly inked host says, shuffling to the fridge in his scuffed white shoes.

“I like cheese!” I call out idiotically, my inside voices escaping. I pour another cup from the growler of Sixpoint’s Eight Days of Wheat, the Brooklyn brewery’s refreshing summertime sipper. On the grill, spicy sausages plump and red peppers blister. It’s a languid back-deck BBQ, the kind occurring citywide—even here in Jersey City.

It’s not the distance. I’ll happily trek to Queens’ Caribbean Richmond Hill to devour Brown Betty Restaurant’s fluffy aloo balls, or consume cumin-laced lamb at Flushing’s Little Pepper. But the Jerz is a geographical and psychic obstacle, the butt of Brooklynites’ jokes, the same kind Manhattanites crack about Brooklyn: What pea brain lives in that backward backwater? Or perhaps I’m too miserly to pay $1.75 to PATH across the Hudson.

There was reason to fork over the fare. My girlfriend’s former co-worker and boyfriend relocated to a Jersey City loft. To celebrate, they hosted a BBQ, catnip to this grill-lover. Still, what type of boyfriend would I be if I easily succumbed to my girlfriend’s simple desires?

“I’ll go,” I say, pausing a few beats, like pregnant gals do before informing their hubbies of egg-sperm success, “provided that you buy my PATH ticket.”

“It’s never easy with you, is it?” she asks.

“That’s what makes this relationship so rewarding,” I reply, pulling on my meat shorts: frayed, cutoff jeans, the back pockets stained black with ash, grease and dried morsels of no fewer than five delicious animal species. And so we’re soon lounging on the wooden patio, packed with fragrant potted herbs and Styrofoam coolers stocked with icy Pabst. Cottonwood trees send their feathery seeds flying, creating a cotton-ball rainstorm. A few settle onto the grill and instantly incinerate. It’s hard to conjure a finer spring afternoon. I will soon ruin it.

“My mother sent me five pounds of this cheese,” the host says, proudly setting down a rectangular block of white, soft…something. “She shipped it in dry ice.”

“Moms are good like that,” I say. My mother, though, tends to send my girlfriend the lion’s share of gifts, perhaps encouraging her to put up with my ceaseless crap and give her the grandchildren she craves. “But what did your mom send you?”

“It’s Provel,” he says, in the reverential tones people speak of their lord savior.

“Come again?” I say, wondering why he omitted the -one. Provel, he explains, slicing the cheese into soft crumbles and sprinkling it over sizzling burgers, tastes like his St. Louis childhood. I grab a piece. His childhood tastes like adhesive caulk flavored with Liquid Smoke.

“This is not cheese,” I inform him, spitting on his sacred cow. And I’m right: Provel isn’t cheese. Since it lacks the USDA’s required moisture content, the St. Louis foodstuff is a white pasteurized cheese product. It’s constructed from cheddar, Swiss and provolone—Italian-style American cheese, if you may. Like Velveeta, Provel is soft and gooey at room temperature and possesses a low melting point. Its invention was deemed an improvement upon mozzarella, creating a pizza cheese that melted smoothly, without any stringy consistency.

Plastered across a cracker-crisp crust, smoky, gooey Provel defined St. Louis signa ture pizza. To thin-crust New Yorkers or deep-dish Chicagoans, this combination is pizza sacrilege. But to St. Louis natives, reared on Provel, it’s pizza as it was always meant to be. Taste buds sometimes have no reflection on taste. Instead, they’re conduits to comfort.

When I return to Dayton, Ohio, I book it to El Greco’s Pizza Villa. Since high school, I’ve dined at this shag-carpeted greasy spoon serving an idiosyncratic Italian-Mexican hybrid: Tacos are topped with provolone and green onions, then served with buttery garlic bread. It’s heretically delicious. And in my blue periods, I hunger for it fiercely, pacifying food to reset my inner equilibrium.

But I have consumed too much beer to connect the empathetic dots. “This does not instill my faith in St. Louis cooking,” I declare, forgetting the city’s lovely, liberally sauced ribs. His face darkens.The smoke billows. He rises to tend the grill, delivering medium-rare burgers to the gathered crowd— mine minus cheese.

“Next time, I’m bringing the cheese,” I joke, adding,“I’ll even cut it.” His cough, then silence, are ample clues that there won’t be a next time.