We're Rollin' Out
The Friday Newsletter celebrates diners, drive-ins and dives today with micro-regional food and drink delights, fresh rock music, a taut, exciting novel, and much more!
It’s sunny outside! What a concept.
I feel like I start every one of my Friday Newsletters with talk about the weather, but… well, I’m going to talk about the weather this week. This has been one of the two weeks we get each year here in the Ohio Valley—one in the spring, one in the fall—where everything just lines up perfectly from a meteorological standpoint. It’s been sunny, cloudless and warm, but without the oppressive humidity (or bugs) of summer.
It is, objectively speaking, the perfect weather.
Weather like this makes me want to hit the road. It makes me want to roll down the windows, crank up the radio, and drive fast in search of something fun to do. Something new.
If you’re new around here—and, thanks to the influx of subscribers brought in through Substack’s welcome debut of the Twitter-without-the-bad-parts Substack Notes feature, many of you are—here’s what’s happening: every Friday on The Action Cookbook Newsletter—for, oh, the last 192 Fridays in a row—I share with you Seven Good Things. This always includes, in order, a recipe, a drink, some music, a book, something to watch, something to talk about, and finally, a selection of readers’ pets.
It’s a good formula, and I love bringing it to you every Friday morning.
Today, I’m structuring my selections loosely around our favorite hangouts—the places we feel like skipping off work to head to on a sunny day like this, everywhere from the old-school diner to the dive bar to the concert hall. I’ve got regional delights in food and drink, some loud, pure rock music, a taut, thrilling novel, and much more on tap.
It’s Friday, friends. Let’s roll out.
7) First, the diner.
It is a well-established point of fact that I am a fan—nay, a champion—of regional food oddities. It’s practically the mission statement of this newsletter, or at least the portion of this newsletter that’s about food.
I openly love Cincinnati-style chili—haters be damned—and I’ve used previous Friday Newsletters to feature my take on such regional recipes as Michigan-Style Almond Boneless Chicken, Chicago-Style Pizza Puffs, Columbus, Georgia-Style Scrambled Dogs, and Kentucky Burgoo, among others.
(Paying subscribers have access to all my recipes in this easy-to-browse archive.)
Heck, I even drove out of my way on a business trip in Pennsylvania to confirm the existence of “Altoona-style Pizza” last year.1
So, naturally, I was both intrigued and delighted when reader Trenton pointed me in the direction of a much-loved regional delicacy that I hadn’t touched on yet: The Michigan Olive Burger.
It’s said to have originated in the 1920s in Flint, at the “Kewpee Hotel Hamburgs”, a chain whose brand still exists (mostly in Ohio) as Kewpee Burger, though that name has changed hands and the original is now known as Halo Burger—it’s complicated.
Point is, it’s a thing in Michigan, and it’s delicious: a simple beef burger topped with swiss cheese and a mixture of green olives and mayonnaise. You could trek up to Michigan to get one. Heck, the annual Olive Burger Festival is set to take place the last weekend of June in Lansing.
Or, you could just join me in making one at home, because the one I cooked up was pretty dang good.
Michigan-style Olive Burger
(serves 4)
1 pound ground beef