What he asked for was tomatoes. Not the passport he’d left at Christmas, not pictures of the newly-fruiting “vineyard”--two acres of Catawba—planted on family land in the hinterlands of Richmond, Virginia, and not my preferred, and his usual request, “just bring your sweet self”.
Jason requested a bushel of under-ripe, marigold-orange globes he hoped to push to Chinatown red utilizing a faint, distant sunbeam streamed from his Manhattan window sill. This is a man who believes in the power of free things from the air. In ten years of city living, he has yet to pay for his internet connection, preferring instead the spotty hospitality of his neighbors, whether they knew it or not.
“Bring me Hanovers. Lots of them. I’m craving a tomato sandwich.”
So I did.
The first thing he wanted after I dragged the wood-and-wire crate past the fish-eyed security door was a BLT. On the counter lay a loaf of bread, a rasher of bacon and a pilfered cutting board shaped like our home state, scarred and blackened, but clean and reporting for duty. I'd made that cutting board in shop class. Asstthole.
The only thing missing was mayonnaise.
“Where is the mayo?”
“Side door of the fridge.”
“Uh-Uh, don’t see it.”
“It’s in there.”
There’s much to learn from the condiment door of someone else’s refrigerator. Is it filled with ginger-pear preserves and homemade strawberry jam? Do you see two kinds of Sriracha, the garlickly gold capped chili sauce as well as the sharper, green capped version? Or, do jars of gherkins, picholine olives and salt-packed capers take up the most real estate? All are indicators of the owner’s economic status, global culinary inclinations and, tellingly, of their palate—whether it runs to sweet, hot, sour or a balanced combination of all three.
With tomato season nigh and BLT makings on the board, the one question I didn’t have when I looked in the fridge was Duke’s or Hellmann’s.
I couldn’t find the mayo because, as a Richmonder, hometown of C.F. Sauer,owner of Duke's, I hunt for the black-and-yellow lid when I fetch mayonnaise. Jason’s cold box held no such jar. The most important ingredient in deviled eggs, the one that guarantees tangy, custardy perfection, was absent. When I spotted the mayonnaise, under a cornflower blue lid, I felt as if I’d found his adoption papers in the refrigerator. Sometime in his decade of NYC living, my brother had become a Hellmann’s man.
Nationally, Hellmann’s sales are brisker than Duke’s, especially in NY. Hellmann’s also bears the distinction of being the first commercially available mayo in the US. Founded in 1905 by NY deli owner Richard Hellmann, a dapper man partial to pinstriped suits who wore a side part—a side part that looks foreign, dated, and, at least in photos, oily, as if slicked down with a dollop of mayo. I imagine Mr. Hellmann uttering classic NYisms (in a German accent) like “turdy turdy” for thirty-third or “are you ON line?” instead of the southeastern, “are you IN line?” that we grew up with and I give him pass for weird speech and oily hair. A hundred years ago the words "on line" didn't conjure images of porn or recipe searches.
After all, he was German. He lived in New York. And,he owned his own deli, where he sold his own mayonnaise. Those are sweet bragging points, even if Mr. Hellmann’s recipe called for sugar, an ingredient with no business in mayonnaise.
But, hearing someone like my brother, who lived in Virginia for twenty six years of his life, quiz “are you on line?” to a fellow Richmonder sounds affected and out of place, just like jars of Hellmann’s might look stacked an end-cap next to the Hanovers. But, Jason has asked just that while shopping at Ukrop's. I should have noticed his transformation. There were other signs.
I cringed when visiting Jason asked tattooed baristas for a “coffee light” and a “coffee regular” when what he should have said was “coffee with room for cream”. Jason deserved decaf and regular respectively and we sipped our cups of dissatisfaction happily.
“We should cut back on sugar and caffeine", we said.
“You should revert to the way you ordered shit for a quarter of a century when visiting”, I thought. New York is not a total emmersion experience. One can come home again.
Beyond how affected Jason sounded uttering “on line” and “coffee regular” in RVA, I found his vernacular and his mayo fetish unacceptable south-of-the-sweet-tea-line (which is located just outside of DC),just like double dipping at a party or wiping a booger on the seat of a Porsche 911. It was gross, shocking, wrong, especially in Richmond, where housing a jar of Hellmann's in an 804-area-code fridge means you’re not really from here (and your taste is shit).
Sugar, while perfectly acceptable in other southern staples, like Kool-Aide or bread ‘n’ butter pickles, shouldn't be found in mayonnaise. Duke’s is the only major label that does not sweeten its mayo. Thick, creamy, the color of pure cholesterol (though it has less cholesterol than Hellmann’s) Duke's is the only thing to spread on a summer-warm mater sandwich.
Who likes Hellmann’s anyway? Gabrielle Hamilton, owner of NYC restaurant Prune, does. And, after slogging through her recent book, Blood Bones and Butter, I decided this about Ms. Hamilton. Get off the cross and beg that nice Italian man back.
Bobby Flay is spokesman for Hellmann’s. He came to Richmond once.
Google Dukes and find just one spokesperson, Virginia Willis, TV personality, chef consult and doyenne of the Atlanta food scene , whose cookery books always include one of the following words: y’all and/or Southern.
Reminder:She’s also named Virginia.
On the web, Ms. Willis’ photo pops up next to a photo of Eugenia Duke in an image search, the woman who created mayo perfection in 1917. Homey, but serious, Eugenia looks like she was bottle fed mayo during a suffragette rally. Puffy cheeks, loose jowls, wearing the southern prerequisite pearl necklace (she was from SC), with not a pinstripe on her; her body could have been made of mayo. I imagine bumping into Eugenia in line and noticing, pleasantly, that her pores gush mayo like a popped zit when we touch. I’d ask her to squeeze my maters for me. She’d know whether they were ripe enough for BLT, or better stuffed with rice and baked. But then, Eugenia wouldn’t be making tomato sandwiches the first week of July, unless she lived in NY and was craving them, where she’d stand on line to buy her Hellmann’s.
