"Chris Schlesinger, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, opened East Coast Grill, in Cambridge, in 1985. Originally from Virginia, Schlesinger considered his mission to spread the word to the Northeast about the difference between grilling foods and barbecuing. He spent a year sampling barbecue from Mississippi, Texas and the Carolinas before opening Jake and Earl's Dixie B-B-Q, also in Cambridge, in 1987. His new book is, 'The Thrill of the Grill'."
"With its dual character as both a necessity of daily life and a delight to the senses, food has a long history as a tool of sorcery. This tradition originated in the days when the physical world was considered merely an imperfect reflection of the spiritual world, and every mundane act was therefore rife with cosmic implications."
"Back at the dawn of culinary history, even before some cave-dwelling Escoffier thought of suspending food over flames, a more primitive culinary theorist threw some food into the coals of a dying fire and left it there to cook. As cooking goes, that's about as primal as it gets."
"In the South, people still gather wild field cress, also known as 'creasy greens.' Field cress can be eaten raw only when very young, but a less aggressive version of its rather biting flavor can be approximated by garden cress or, most commonly, by watercress. All of these cress cousins have small, glossy, dark-green leaves on tender, rather leggy stems, and varying degrees of pepperiness."
"Those who visit Jake and Earl's might ask where the name comes from. Mr. Schlesinger wanted to call it Jake's Dixie Barbecue because 'Jake is what older people in the South call young boys and it's my dog's name.' Ms. Wheaton wanted to name it for her father, Earl, a surgeon in New Jersey. They compromised."
East Coast Grill & Raw Bar 