MAISON PICKLE DELUXE FRENCH DIP

It is hard to estimate the importance of French culture in America. From the Louisiana Purchase to Alexis du Toqueville to Marquis de Lafayette to freedom fries, France has played an integral role in shaping the American imagination, including its very real palate. I am tempted to demonstrate the differences between the two, pointing to the bread being crusty, chewy and savoury, or soft, white and sweet. There is a reason that we say ‘this is the best invention since sliced bread’ in the settler societies. But, I am always tempted to look for similarities, to find out what brings people together even if they retain a certain individualism. In that way, the root of the Franco-American love affair is to be found in a shared revolutionary spirit, a kindred desire to overturn monarchs even if that means installing tyrants in their place. They have both encouraged a society that is passionate, grand, dramatic, which comes through in imperial presidencies with cults of personality complete with entourages, tanks and triumphant music.

The revolutionary spirit in cuisine though is somewhat different, with France perceiving itself to have a tradition to uphold; an empirical reality that means good taste is to be found in the palate of every citizen. However unenlightened the average Frenchman gets, he will always know how to dress a salad. The same cannot be said in America, notwithstanding that, at the top end, they are able to do it with the very best. Rather than excelling at delicate croissants, it is the processed donut that becomes the apotheosis of common taste here. I say this as someone who loves to eat in both nations, particularly in Paris and New York, where you can find Japanese or Chinese or North African that lifts you up by your very bootstraps.

What all revolutions share is a desire for the new, a reset button that marks a year zero and allows the people to re-boot. This is there in Paris to which one only need to cite Adeline Grattard’s restaurant yamT’cha that fuses French and Cantonese into something wholly new. In the American case, this has meant the proliferation of new dishes and the re-working of flavours into distinct combinations. This comes about is in fusion food such as the celebrated Korean-Mexican. As delicious as that is, French and American is the dominant fusion, at least when it comes to the meeting of cultures (rather than chefs and New World ingredients). It is there most explicitly in the dishes from New Orleans, but we get it in New York too. I am not talking about the steak frites and onion soup that one gets at Bar Olivier in Park Slope or the coq au vin at French Roast just down the road. I am speaking here of American dishes that betray a French influence. One exemplar of this is the Deluxe Beef French Dip from an Upper West Side haunt called Maison Pickle.

The French Dip is a sandwich of thinly sliced roast beef served on a baguette with a side of jus that you dip your sandwich into, hence the curious name. There are competing claims as to who invented it, but it is a toss up between two Los Angeles restaurants. This is a rivalry that started in 1908 between Cole’s Pacific Electric Buffet and Phillipe the Original. At Cole’s you dip your own sandwich while Phillipe serves it ‘wet’. The use of ‘French’ in the title comes from the type of bread used and the dip tends to be quite thin, not something thick like hummus or yoghurt or aioli. There are variations of this found in Chicago and across the Midwest, but it is not synonymous with one place like the cheesesteak is in Philadelphia. To be certain, it is part of the burgeoning sandwich culture of America. What should be noted is that the French do not have something similar. In that way, the bread has crossed the Atlantic but, in a revolutionary twist, is now part of a new dish.

In the Maison Pickle version, one first notices the mood of the restaurant. As it is French in America, it is built for romance. The dim candlelight takes a little while to adjust to and the waiters in white shirts pour water out from silver jugs. Across Broadway, there is a cinema with flashing bulbs and they cast shadows across the bar. People come here on dates, or date nights when the kids are asleep around the corner, or pop in for tuna nicoise on their way home from the office wearing cashmere jackets and wondering where the day’s stocks ended up, scrolling through news about NFL players kneeling in protest of this president. K and I first came here before we went to Murder on the Orient Express, spending our daily budget on two glasses of (very good) wine and pull-apart bread that was garlicked to high heaven before being entertained by a campy interpretation of a classic tale.


Tonight though, we have come for French Dip sandwiches. I take mine Deluxe Beef and it comes with strands of onion that are like necklaces of caramel, a rich gooey gruyere fondeau that is silky smooth, and packed with rare roast beef that is thinly sliced. And, of course, a side of jus that is thin, perfect for dipping into or drinking as a soup. I love it and make short work of it. But, as with any revolution, there are dissenters, and K has a few things to say: 'the most disgusting eating experience'; 'it's repulsive and I never want to eat meat again in my life'; 'this is for people with gout, you might as well be dipping it into fat'. I have learnt that it is not good trying to persuade her otherwise (especially with raw meat or fish), but she agrees that the atmosphere is convivial and it is a welcome place to be when it is cold outside. That makes her enough of a fellow traveler for me.

Maison Pickle 
2315 Broadway, New York, NY 10024
Subway: 1 at 86th. 
Open 9am - 4am on weekends.




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