Fresh and Clean

The New Yorker recently published a lovely personal essay on nicknames by a fellow named David Owen. At once a memoir and a meditation, the article was a perfect February read. It was breezy and yet tightly crafted; and whereas it did contain a number of poignant moments, the essay scrupulously avoided melodrama, instead remaining defiantly light-hearted.

There's little place for such subtlety on this humble blog. Around here it's all cutlass-waving and damp handkerchiefs. All the same, it's hard to pass up a chance to talk about nicknames, given that the compulsion to rebaptize seems especially acute in the field of cookery.

We all know how judgments of taste can quickly turn into epithets. "Greasy spoon" fondly delineates a whole genre of classic diners. The appeal of working at a greasy spoon is that one can aspire to become a hash-slinger. On the less generous side, there's a street in the 5th arrondissement in Paris known to tour books as "bacteria alley." Analogously, yet no less unfairly, my father referred to the tin-clad snack trucks that came to the factory as "roach coaches."

Fast-food restaurants often find a special place in a family's basic idiom. In their capacity as surrogate nannies or cooks, they're recast as intimates. Unsurprisingly, McDonald's yields a host of polynyms and epithets, from the inocuous "Mickey D's" and the (often-ironic) "Golden Arches," to the imitative cry of "MaDonnads!" we remember from Eddie Murphy's stand-up days. In France, it's "MacDo"; in Germany, I am told, it's "McDoof."

And that's only one fast-food chain. Try listening to a Spanish-language radio station and not suddenly having the desire to go to "Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrger King."

Far more interesting, though, are the nicknames people give to food itself. A large number of them are nauseatingly cute; the British are masters in this category. "Bubble and squeak" is the English term for a mash of leftover potatoes and vegetables; in Scotland it's the ever more precious "Rumbletethumps." Like the game of mumbletypeg, this dish couldn't sound any more homespun. Both have disarmingly cutesy names, although the latter is far more dangerous.

My dear cousin grew up referring to boiled eggs as "noddies." My aunt would draw little faces on the eggs, and set them in little porcelain egg-cups. Then my young cousin would crack the egg with a spoon and cut off the top, first lobotomizing the poor thing and then scooping out its middle. Upon reflection, perhaps "noddy" wasn't a nickname at all, but instead a euphemism for the egg's unnatural fate– just as putting an animal to sleep means that it won't be greeting you at the door when you return home.

The crasser food nicknames tend to fall to the US military: given that soldiers dine in mess halls and that the food is cooked by "slop jockeys," this is hardly a surprise. Calling hot dogs "tube steaks" has always made me chuckle. More cringeworthy are the names for creamed chipped beef on toast, known most famously as "shit on a shingle." This is infinitely preferable, though, to the other name I once heard for it, which was "Skinned Injun." No joke.

Not all food nicknames, incidentally, are brief. At our favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Philadelphia, the Vietnam Palace ("The Palace") on 11th and Race, H. would order her favorite soup by means of its description. There was a children's soup they'd serve off-menu, which consisted of a clear chicken broth with noodles, greens, and steamed chicken. It was, in other words, chicken noodle soup.

A miraculous cold remedy and general spirit-raiser, this soup was notable as well for its clean, fresh flavors. So this is how H. would order it. "I will have," she would ask, with an eager pause, "that clean, fresh soup. You know, the one that's fresh and clean." The waiters always knew what to bring.