Modest fare

It may just be my nicotine-withdrawal munchies, but the topic of food seems to be everywhere lately: Hidden Kitchens specials, the steady stream of food book stories and recipes, the Very Special Places series that has highlighted traditional diners, ice cream and hot dog stands. Also, my lunch hour is approaching soon, but not soon enough.

One lack I have noticed in the food discussion so far has been tavern fare. Time was when beer was considered an essential part of a balanced lunch. In Potsdam, in the '60s and early '70s, the best place for the balancing act was Blanche's, a modest green brick establishment tucked between the Roxy Theater and the Arlington Hotel. Blanche and her brother Harold ran the show, dispensing draft and bottled beer along with the core elements of tavern lunch--burgers, dogs, chips, pickled eggs (AKA "boneless chicken dinner"), and French fries topped with a mysterious fluid made from "brown gravy base." I've never been sure what kind of creature a brown is, but this concoction constituted half of many 50-cent lunches during my lean college years.

The other half consisted of a "frosty," which was one pound of draft beer tapped off into two pounds of glass mug that had been chilled to near absolute zero in the freezer behind the bar. Oh yeah. One day my friend Paul walked up to the bar and asked Harold for one. He drew the brew and said, "That'll be 25 cents." The guy standing behind Paul asked for the same. Harold said, "That'll be 30 cents." "Wait a minute--you charged him a quarter!" he protested. Harold gave the bar a thoughtful wipe and told him "Price had to go up sometime."