Every time I ask my dad about his hometown of Binghamton, a small metropolis of about 45,000 in upstate New York, he largely talks about spiedies. Spiedies, he explains, are the only best culinary delicacy recognized to man. They’re solely present in Binghamton, and locals are fiercely happy with them. Ask anybody from Binghamton to let you know about their city, he says, and spiedies might be the very first thing they point out. People pledge their loyalty to sure spiedie eating places, and for many years, house cooks who make them have been debating whose marinade is Binghamton’s best.
The truth that everybody in Binghamton is so obsessive about them has all the time baffled me. A spiedie is only a sandwich, and a really odd sounding one at that: marinated lamb, rooster, or pork on a skewer, cooked on a grill, served on an Italian roll.
I’ve all the time been interested in how a dish so easy could possibly be so nice, however I’ve by no means had an opportunity to strive one. I grew up in Atlanta, 900 miles away from Binghamton, and my grandparents left the town lengthy earlier than I used to be born. I’ve spent years looking for an excuse to go, partly to get a greater sense of my dad’s childhood, and partly to place his unbelievable claims concerning the god-tier high quality of the spiedie to the take a look at.
Final October, I discovered my alternative. Because it seems, Binghamton has a complete three-day pageant devoted to this sandwich, often called the Spiedie Fest & Balloon Rally. There can be live shows (together with, notably, a Barenaked Women present) and movie star meet-and-greets with actresses greatest recognized for starring in Disney Channel originals. For causes that had been unclear to me, a bunch of dudes would fly round in scorching air balloons. However the actual draw for me was the cooking contest, during which novice cooks would face off grill-to-grill to see who actually makes the perfect spiedie on the town. If there was ever a time to see if this sandwich was actually nearly as good as my dad made it sound, I figured Spiedie Fest was it. So it was that in early October, I discovered myself hurtling north on Interstate 80, sure in the end for Binghamton, house of the spiedie.
I arrived at Otsiningo Park, the place Spiedie Fest is held annually, at round 5 p.m. on a Friday. Dave Pessagno—a born-and-raised Binghamtonian in his 60s with a thick Southern Tier accent, who runs Spiedie Fest—had volunteered to be my fixer for the weekend. He zoomed as much as me in a golf cart and invited me to hop in. The very first thing he informed me was that again in highschool, he used to get hammered at my dad’s home when my grandparents had been out of city. “Friday nights after the video games, we might all go to the Schwartz’s,” he mentioned. “The events had been legendary.”
Pessagno drove me across the pageant grounds and gave me the lay of the land. It was a reasonably customary setup: carnival video games and rides, meals vehicles promoting corndogs and funnel truffles, distributors hawking varied bric-a-brac, and a mid-sized stage. I had anticipated to see spiedies all over the place I regarded, however there have been solely two tents promoting them: Salamida’s and Lupo’s.
I had Dave drop me off by the previous, the place a 20-foot-tall inflatable bottle of spiedie marinade marked the doorway. As soon as I’d gotten by way of an extended, snaking line, Marybeth Salamida took my order. Rob Salamida, her husband, cooked behind the grill. Andrew Salamida, their son, ran my lamb spiedie out to me. The sandwich was simply as my dad described: marinated meat on a roll, nothing extra. I took a chew.
The hunks of lamb, dusted evenly with oregano and thyme, had been as juicy as a filet mignon. They’d been soaked for twenty-four hours within the Salamidas’ marinade, which appeared to include lemon, garlic, pepper, and a mix of different unnamed spices. There’s no means for me to seek out out precisely what they had been: Those that make spiedies hold their recipes a intently guarded secret. Andrew informed me even he doesn’t know what’s in his father’s marinade. No matter it was, it was scrumptious. I devoured my spiedie in 45 seconds.
There’s something virtually transcendent a couple of spiedie. It’s the type of chew of meals that makes you shut your eyes and sigh.
I walked away feeling giddy, even type of excessive, and beelined to Lupo’s for spiedie quantity two. It was about 7 p.m., and so they had been dangerously near promoting out.
“You guys are simply gonna make it,” Sam Lupo, Jr., who runs the enterprise together with his brother, Steve, informed these of us in line. Sam’s son, Eliott, cooked furiously at a big, smoking grill.
This time I went for rooster. As I bit into it, I recorded a voice memo of my response, which, as I hearken to it now, feels like a tape you’d play in courtroom to have somebody declared criminally insane.
The rooster isn’t simply moist. It’s as if it bursts with juice once you take a chew, just like the rooster equal of a Fruit Gusher. The roll is tender and heat and simply barely soggy inside. There is no such thing as a style of rooster; the one style is the marinade, which is vinegary, peppery, barely lemony.
In case you inform individuals a couple of spiedie, they will giggle at you. “It’s meat on a stick, on bread.” However they do not perceive—and you may’t perceive, till you eat one—that there’s something virtually transcendent a couple of spiedie. It’s the type of chew of meals that makes you shut your eyes and sigh. It’s full. It’s complete. And it’s excellent.
Lupo’s and Salamida’s had obliterated my skepticism. I used to be all of the sudden satisfied that the spiedie was the best sandwich on Earth. And I turned obsessive about discovering out what sort of culinary genius had gifted it to this world.
Each Lupo and Salamida are integral to the historical past of the spiedie. However the saga begins with one other household: the Iacovellis, who immigrated to Binghamton from Abruzzo, Italy, within the early twentieth century.
Within the Thirties, two Iacovelli brothers, Camillo and Augustino, opened a restaurant referred to as the Park View on the north aspect of Endicott, an Italian enclave simply exterior of Binghamton. It was there that the spiedie was born, in keeping with Paul Van Savage, a neighborhood meals historian. Augustino coated cubes of lamb (then an affordable and extensively obtainable meat) in a dry rub, skewered them, and roasted them over a mattress of coals. As they cooked, he basted them in what he referred to as “zuzu,” comprised of pink wine vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, mint, and an undisclosed mix of Italian herbs and spices. When the meat was finished, he served the skewer with a slice of Italian bread. He referred to as the dish a “spiedi,” quick for the Italian spiedini, which interprets to “skewers.”
Augustino’s spiedis shortly grew standard amongst Italian households in Endicott, who began making them at house and tweaking the recipe to their liking. Enterprising younger males arrange grills exterior of neighborhood bars and offered spiedis to hungry patrons as they stumbled exterior. They turned a fixture on each Endicott restaurant menu and at each yard cookout. Over the subsequent few many years, they made their means exterior of the neighborhood and cropped up all through the bordering cities of Binghamton and Johnson Metropolis, which, along with Endicott, make up the “Triple Cities.”
In 1975, a younger Rob Salamida turned the primary particular person to place spiedie marinade in a bottle. He batched it on the pool desk in his dad and mom’ basement, and ordered a couple of hundred bottles labeled “Salamida’s State Honest Spiedi Sauce.” After they arrived, he found that the printer had by chance positioned an “E” on the top of the phrase “spiedi.”
Salamida’s sauce took off. He by no means bothered to repair the spelling on the label, and for no matter motive, everybody in Binghamton simply went with it: From then on, the city’s signature dish was recognized not as a “spiedi,” however a “spiedie.”
Within the early Eighties, the evolution of the spiedie took a pivotal flip. For 50 years, it had solely ever been made with lamb. However when Sam Lupo, Sr.—who had been promoting spiedies for many years at his eating places and Endicott meat market, Lupo’s—developed a coronary heart situation, all of the sudden, lamb was off limits. His son, Sam Lupo, Jr., cooked his dad a rooster spiedie, figuring it is perhaps a more healthy choice. He was shocked to seek out that rooster spiedies had been simply nearly as good as the unique, perhaps even higher, and he determined to promote them at his household’s companies. “We begged individuals to strive it, and so they had no curiosity,” Lupo, Jr., mentioned. “The primary yr was a complete flop. The subsequent summer time, we tried it once more, and it took off.” With that straightforward change from chewier, harder lamb to rooster, spiedies exploded in reputation. They went from an Italian-American specialty to a Triple Cities mainstay amongst residents of each stripe.
The appearance of the rooster spiedie solely intensified the controversy over who made the perfect marinade in Binghamton. Salamida and Van Savage, the meals historian, determined it was excessive time to settle it. In 1983, the 2 previous pals organized a spiedie cook-off at Otsiningo Park, inviting everybody who talked a giant recreation about their spiedie to place it up for judgment. Sixty-five individuals signed as much as compete. Salamida and Van Savage took out an advert within the Binghamton Solar-Bulletin, figuring a couple of dozen spectators would possibly come watch the showdown.
“11,000 individuals confirmed up,” Van Savage mentioned. “I bear in mind trying round and saying, ‘Holy shit. The place did all these individuals come from?’ Rob was cooking spiedies and promoting them, and I used to be operating the competition by the seat of my pants. I didn’t know what the hell I used to be doing. We lined up all these judges—means too many. They’d this convoluted rating sheet that I got here up with, which had classes to write down numbers on. Then we would have liked a rattling pc, which didn’t exist. A few volunteers had been sitting at a picnic desk with a handwritten spreadsheet the place they tabulated the scores, and it took means too lengthy. It was a large number.”
Spiedie Fest expanded on its choices over time, including live shows, carnival rides, and extra to the lineup. (Scorching air balloons entered the equation in yr three, when Salamida’s distant cousin, Roy Rogers, requested if he and his buddies may pilot their gasbags on the cook-off.) By the Nineteen Nineties, it was drawing roughly 100,000 attendees yearly.
As soon as Spiedie Fest’s organizers began reserving big-name bands, live shows turned the occasion’s greatest draw. With every passing yr, Van Savage informed me, people appeared to care much less and fewer concerning the cook-off. By the 2000s, simply 20 to 30 native cooks had been throwing their hats into the ring. This previous October, solely 4 participated.
“The Spiedie Fest is now an establishment,” Van Savage mentioned. “However the spiedie contest has develop into a stepchild of the entire occasion.”
A part of the rationale could also be that, as of late, most people don’t make their very own spiedie marinade. Spiedies have gone the best way of so many different area of interest, regional meals in America: The place when you had no selection however to labor over them within the kitchen, it’s now simpler, and sometimes cheaper, to purchase them on the retailer. After Salamida caught his marinade in a bottle, Lupo adopted swimsuit. So did Wegmans, a regional grocery chain.
“Some individuals will solely use the Salamida’s, and a few individuals will solely use the Lupo’s,” Van Savage mentioned. “However the selection of bottled sauce has changed the household recipe.”
Although it’s a dying artwork, there are nonetheless a handful of parents conserving the home-cooked spiedie alive. Notable amongst them is 60-year-old Ray Parkes, a soft-spoken, genial man. He’s the undisputed king of the Spiedie Fest cook-off. Over the previous 20 years, he’s taken house greater than 30 first-place plaques from the competitors.
When this yr’s cook-off obtained underway, the opposite three contestants eyed him warily. The competition’s organizer gave everybody the go-ahead to fireside up their grills, and the cooks scrambled into motion. However Parkes barely moved. He lit his coals, casually fanning them with a chunk of cardboard, and regarded round, smiling softly. In a Tupperware container by his grill, hunks of lamb floated in a thick, purplish marinade. Once I requested Parkes about his recipe, he informed me he didn’t have one. “I simply add in substances till it tastes good,” he mentioned.
The dice of lamb he gave me stopped me in my tracks. It was, bar none, the perfect chew of meals I’ve ever had.
Most folk marinate their spiedies for a minimum of a day, typically as much as three. Parkes limits that to eight hours. On the day of the competitors, he awakened at 3 a.m. and eyed out a combination of oil, vinegar, garlic, shallots, parsley, oregano, and basil, together with a handful of different spices he wouldn’t reveal. After soaking cubed lamb within the marinade for 3 hours at room temperature, he refrigerated it and “gave it a shake each as soon as in awhile.” About an hour earlier than the competition kicked off, Parkes tossed it in his automobile and drove to Spiedie Fest. “It’s not prefer it’s rocket science,” he mentioned. “It’s only a marinade.”
Quickly after the cook-off started, the air was wealthy with the aroma of roasting spiedie meat. The competition’s judges walked stone-faced from grill to grill like a few Southern Tier Paul Hollywoods. They sampled every entry in deliberate bites, whispering conspiratorially and jotting notes on their rating sheets. I adopted them and tried every spiedie, saving Parkes’ for final.
The dice of lamb he gave me stopped me in my tracks. For a second, the whole lot went silent. All of my colleges had been absorbed within the act of tasting this one excellent morsel: juicy, tender, piquant. It was, bar none, the perfect chew of meals I’ve ever had.
For the umpteenth time, the judges topped Parkes’ spiedie “Greatest General,” together with “Greatest Lamb”—although that second one wasn’t actually a contest. Not like in years previous, Parkes was the one one to serve lamb, the meat of selection for spiedie purists.
It was a tremendous, unseasonably heat Sunday in October, however solely a handful of individuals had proven as much as watch the cook-off, and most of them gave the impression to be associated to the rivals. There have been 1000’s of individuals on the pageant that day—driving bumper automobiles, shopping for tchotchkes, standing in line to fulfill a 23-year-old actress named Peyton Record. It made me a bit of unhappy to suppose that the majority of them didn’t even appear conscious the cook-off was taking place.
I puzzled concerning the spiedie’s future: what would occur as soon as Parkes stopped coming to the cook-off, and whether or not anybody would possibly step as much as substitute him. I puzzled if spiedies, as soon as so celebrated by Binghamtonians, had been a vestige of one other period, fated to be forgotten as soon as Sam Lupo, Jr. and Rob Salamida retired. I puzzled if in the future, I would come again to Binghamton in search of a spiedie, solely to seek out that it doesn’t exist anymore.
Then I remembered watching Andrew, Rob Salamida’s son, dutifully operating spiedies from a scorching grill to 1000’s of hungry prospects all weekend lengthy. I remembered Eliott Lupo sweating by way of his shirt whereas he cooked kilos upon kilos of lamb in his father’s tent. Lately, Eliott’s dad lastly let him in on the household recipe. In a couple of weeks, his spouse would give delivery to a child boy. Eliott informed me he couldn’t assist however wonder if his son would possibly take over the household enterprise sometime.
I walked off the pageant grounds a methods, sat on a rock, and smoked a cigarette. It was virtually time to go house. I stared on the pavement, vacillating between hope and despondency. A golf cart pulled up subsequent to me and stopped. It was Dave Pessagno, Spiedie Fest’s organizer.
“Identical to your dad,” he mentioned. “Lengthy hair, smoking a butt, off within the nook—identical to your dad.” He laughed, shook his head, and drove away, leaving me alone on the outskirts of Otsiningo Park, watching everybody break down their tents and pack it in till subsequent yr.
Drew Schwartz is a senior employees author at VICE. Comply with him on Twitter.
