Don't go out for breakfast on Christmas Eve

Went by three trendoid joints in the Logan Square-to-Ukrainian Village axis this morning before I found a Greek diner that was open for breakfast. Was I crazy to think the world wouldn't have shut down that early on December 24th? (I do know some non-retail, office-type businesses that were open for biz today.) Would you have expected The Hot Spot, Flying Saucer and Flo to all be out of commission entirely today, as opposed to say, knocking off at 2 pm or something?

On the other hand, my wife popped into Fox & Obel after a mid-afternoon movie and they were selling all the fresh fish at rock bottom prices to move it before being closed for a day. (Which speaks well for their standards, I have to think.) She got gorgeous salmon for $5/lb., even though, coming from Kansas rather than Palermo, fish is kind of the last thing I think of making for Christmas itself. Anyway, I know where I'll be next December 24, at about 3 pm.

Oh well. Over and out. See you in a couple of days. Merry Christmas, or as the case may be.

Mike,

I had breakfast today at Edgebrook Diner. They were open their regular hours, but closed tomorrow and Sunday. They seemed to be more busy than usual for a weekday, but not as busy as they normaly are on weekends.

I just made a run through the Bucktown/Wicker Park area on Damen last night trying to find dinner with a friend. We finally swung by Sultan's Market on a hunch and found them open.

I was shocked to find every bar and restaurant shut down by 7pm.

Mike G wrote:... coming from Kansas rather than Palermo, fish is kind of the last thing I think of making for Christmas itself...

Mike,

No fish on Christmas in Palermo, just on Chistmas Eve, technically the last night of Advent, I surmise, and traditionally still a time of fasting for Catholics... at least in some places... Christmas in Sicily and southern Italy is a meat day.

Antonius

Roger that. I made a standing rib roast yesterday and none of the Italians present protested. One of them brought a rather kitschy (or so I thought) "tronco di natale:" a panettone-like cake stuffed with custard and citron and covered with chocolate, but shaped like a log. I was slightly addled by the sight of it, but several glasses of port restored my equilibrium.

No offense to others' cultural preferences, but my childhood orientation toward Christmas was colored so heavily by 1) our German-Mennonite background which manifested itself mainly in Christmas baked goods and 2) perhaps more importantly, the pop-culture ubiquity of Dickensian/Victorian Christmas imagery, that fish at Christmas just seems wrong, like a vegetarian 4th of July or an ascetic Valentine's Day ("Honey, as a sign of my love for you, I've bought you this heart-shaped box of buckwheat groats, and I got a babysitter so we can spend the whole evening meditating").

You need spend no effort attempting to convince me of the theological and cultural appropriateness of fish at Christmastime; I know all that, I recognize that this is merely my prejudice, born of growing up in a place where the indigenous fish are rectangular and live their lives in beds of bread crumbs at the bottom of the sea. Nevertheless, for me Christmas is only for large roasted meats and birds, massive tubs of potatoes and stuffings, rolls and Jello-mold salads and many, many desserts. Fish, even bought at Fox & Obel on Christmas Eve, is reserved for today, the first day of repairing the damage wrought by a month or more of fatty, Fezziwigian excess.

Choey wrote:One of them brought a rather kitschy (or so I thought) "tronco di natale:" a panettone-like cake stuffed with custard and citron and covered with chocolate, but shaped like a log. I was slightly addled by the sight of it, but several glasses of port restored my equilibrium.

I haven't seen one of those before and wonder — if this is a sort of traditional Christmas item — whether it's something that belongs to the cooking of the Monzù, the French-trained chefs of Palermo and Naples and other places where the Bourbons introduced French chefs into the southern Italian mix. It sounds like a bûche de Noël plus. Any ideas about that?

A

Oddly, someone brought very much the same thing to the dinner we went to last night, a footlong log-shaped thing decorated with candy leaves, and called it a buche de Noel, though my wife and I agreed after tasting it that it already had a perfectly good American name.

I can't find anything specifically identifying the origin or inspiration for the tronco di natale, so your theory is pursuasive (though this confection is also seen in Tuscany, which had no such French influence in cooking). The tree in winter ritual, probably an oak, goes back at least to pagan Rome as part of Saturnalia, but precisely when it turned up as a Christian Conifer Ding Dong is a subject on which Google is mute.

That's enough culinary dendrology for one morning. Back to the NYT crossword.

Ah, Mike G, great minds do think in concert.... I'm feeling braced right now, so I'm doing the crossword in ink.