One of the few food memories I do have of my dad is his trying to make the perfect fried egg. He had supposedly been a cook at the start of WWII. But military mess food then was powdered eggs, ersatz coffee, canned and mystery C-rations covered in “chocolate.”
My sister and I were 7 and 5 respectively when he decided to show us he could cook breakfast in our newly renovated “modern” (for 1962) kitchen. He braved the spattering bacon and fired up a separate frying pan for the eggs. He put a pat of butter in to melt and was explaining about the difference between fried, sunny side up and over easy, boiled, poached and scrambled eggs.
Any line or short order cook will tell you that working the breakfast rush is a particularly miserable gig because every egg order is a “custom” order. Every diner has a personal relationship with his eggs, given his childhood experience. “Scrambled” can mean “scrambled wet” or “ scrambled dry.” “Lightly beaten” can mean where threads of the whites show in the yellow. “Sunnyside up” might mean with a set, cooked skin on top gained by putting the pan in a broiler or salamander for the last 5 seconds. But "over easy" always means: “no popping the yolk.”
Father's Day, a holiday synonymous with grilling, is just around the corner. The image that comes to my mind is my dad having complete mastery over the grill with his grilling tools in hand. I'm sure this year there will be plenty of fathers wearing #1 Dad aprons standing by the grill ready to barbecue a number of different meats, hamburgers, and hot dogs. But how about taking over the reigns for dad this time around? Just tell him to relax and enjoy a beer while you grill up an impressive meal.
At six years old, I sat down after Sunday morning cartoons and wrote my very first story. The illustrations were nothing to speak of, but the premise went something like this:
For more than 20 years, my dad, Howard Johnson, owned a very popular restaurant on the Upper Westside of Manhattan called the Cellar. The Cellar was a special place and at the time of its inception in 1973, there were very few, if any, black-owned restaurants outside of Harlem below 110th street. Ironically, my father bought the Cellar from another Black man, who owned it for a few years but decided to sell after having lost his appetite for the place. Despite its location in a multi-ethnic neighborhood, the clientele had become “too Black” for him.
Since Father's Day coincides with the start of summer, grilling is the best way to celebrate male parenting.