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Rear View June 2001 Connecticut Icons Steamed Cheeseburger by Charles Monagan |
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| Connecticut Icons For a state that's been around for as long as it has, Connecticut hasn't done a very good job of producing signature native foods or dishes. Go to the grocery store and you'll find Vermont cheddar and New York cheddar, but no Connecticut cheddar. Go out to eat and you can order Boston cream pie, Buffalo wings or Philly cheese steak, but no such thing as Hartford fries or Cornwall apple crisp. Indeed, as I've pointed out before in another context, Connecticut sits rather forlornly between Rhode Island clam chowder and Manhattan clam chowder without a chowder to call our own. | |
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Even the dishes that could be considered native to the state don't wear Connecticut name tags. When the hamburger sandwich was created at Louis Lunch in New Haven nearly 100 years ago, why on earth did they decide to name it after a city in Germany? (Just imagine for a moment a world plastered with McDonald's signs declaring: "Over 100 billion Newhaveners sold.") Similarly, when the first hot lobster roll was served along the Connecticut shore--very unlike the cold lobster-salad version elsewhere--couldn't whoever was in charge have put it on the menu as a Noank roll or Seaside Park sandwich? The same goes for the white clam pizza--why not call it a Wooster white pie, after the New Haven neighborhood of its birth? |
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All of which brings us to the steamed cheeseburger, perhaps the most peculiar and iconic Connecticut dish of all. "In out 30 years of traveling we have never seem one outside of centralConnecticut," say Jane and Michael Stern, the nation's leading experts on native and roadside foods. It is said that the steamed cheeseburger was first sold off the back of a mobile lunch cart in Middletown in the 1920s and later became an indoor feature at restaurants, mostly in Middletown and Meriden. It is still served in several spots in the area, including O'Rourke's Diner in Middletown, but the high alter of the steamed cheeseburger is a little place on Broad Street in Meriden called Ted's. At Ted's, the cheeseburger is the only food on the menu. Here you'll find the authentic steam cabinets with their rows of compartments into which proprietor Paul Duberek alternately places the ground beef and hunks of (Vermont) cheddar cheese. When both are thoroughly cooked, he places the beef on a hard roll, ladles the melted cheese over it, adds lettuce and tomato if you wish, and slides it across the counter. Duberek says he sells about 200 burgers a day. Business is steady, he adds, and although the steam cabinets he uses are no longer manufactured, he's confident he can keep the ones he owns in good repair. And a good thing, too--these Connecticut foods need a nice place to call home. |
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