Local Flavor by Andy Scheer

A breakfast burrito at a delicatessen? Why is a place called the East Coast Restaurant & Delicatessen — especially one that touts its pastrami, corned beef, and bagels — offering burritos?

Perhaps it’s no more unusual than a supposed New York-style deli existing at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Across Colorado, burritos appear on nearly every menu. 

 

I still remember my first encounter with one — in the late 1960s. My parents drove the family to a camp on Lookout Mountain, west of Golden, Colorado. There we discovered something not found in the northwest corner of Ohio: a Tex-Mex restaurant.

My parents convinced me to try something exotic: a burrito. And with it a soda pop not sold in the Midwest — something tasting vaguely of carbonated prune juice called Dr. Pepper.

These days, restaurants seem homogenized. It takes work to find authentic regional cuisines — the distinctive touches a writer can use to insert local flavor into a piece of fiction.

Breakfast at RJ's

Were I writing from a visitor’s perspective about Kansas City, I’d find a reason to risk polarizing readers by include a scene at Gates Bar-B-Q rather than Arthur Bryant’s. Or I might take them for a breakfast of burnt end hash at RJ’s Bob-Be-Que in Mission.

Writing about Florida’s Space Coast, I’d let readers sample the corn fritters and rock shrimp at Dixie Crossroads — with a special mention of the aquatic-themed murals. Love those manatees!

A "slopper" at Gray's in Pueblo, Colorado

And if I wanted to evoke the old steel town of Pueblo, Colorado, I’d take readers to Gray’s for a “slopper”— an open-face cheeseburger served in a soup bowl and drenched with freshly made green chile sauce. Nothing quite like it.

If you were writing a scene in a restaurant nearby, what menu specialty would give your readers a true local flavor?

Nitty Gritty Details by Andy Scheer

My Saturday car shopping trip alerted me to a detail I'd forgotten in my novel.

My story won't include car-shopping -- at least not for anything like a 2004 Jetta wagon. But when my son-in-law inspected the spare tire compartment, I remembered a telling, tiny detail.

The Jetta's previous owner lived where all the roads aren't paved. While the detailers had cleaned and polished the rest, they'd neglected the spare tire bay. All around the tire, and inside some hidden storage compartments, we found a layer of fine, tan dust.

Suddenly I remembered my years of driving unpaved roads to work – the billowing clouds that followed me and the fine layers of silt that worked its way into every crevice.

It's something my protagonist, a jazz musician in 1925 Indiana, would regularly experience. That's where things get tricky. To my character, it's a normal detail of life. But it's also a subtle way to give readers a sense of that era.

Likewise the smell of coal smoke, the hiss of steam, and the fine black grit that blows into the open windows of coaches behind a locomotive. Start the trip with a white shirt and by the end of the day it's gray, with darker deposits around the cuffs and collar. Good thing those celluloid Arrow collars detach.

At my upcoming visits to antique car museums, I plan to pay special attention and take lots of photos of pre-1925 models. I know only a few of those details will make their way into the story. But at this point, I can't know which.

I want to include enough grit for my story to ring true.