Tag: #Foodwriting

  • “Sugar, Memory & Mercy at Largomarcino’s”

    “Sugar, Memory & Mercy at Largomarcino’s”

    A man who’s tasted disappointment in the places that once defined him learns to guard his nostalgia like a brittle heirloom. After Happy Joe’s went corporate cold, I flew home to Albuquerque, full of disappointment and regret. But the Quad Cities still keeps a few sanctuaries, and chief among them is Largomarcino’s—the century-old candy counter where sugar still gets its hands dirty.

    Walk through the front door, and you feel the floorboards remember you, even if the staff doesn’t. The glass cases shimmer with rows of turtles, truffles, and creams—each one lined up like choirboys who secretly spike the hymn wine after service. Behind the marble counter, brass soda taps glint under amber pendant lamps that refuse to be updated. The air smells like vanilla bean and sweet cream spiked with a quiet note of fryer oil drifting in from the lunch nook in the back. It is, mercifully, the same as it ever was.

    I once brought a girl here on a first date, sure that the scent of caramelizing sugar and the soft clink of long-handled soda spoons would say things my teenage vocabulary couldn’t. We shared a sundae, so overloaded it listed starboard. She laughed; I tried to look like the kind of man who casually knows about old-school candy parlors. Truth? I just needed to show her a place that felt like honesty in a world already hustling counterfeit cool. Largomarcino’s obliged. That date briefly made me king of a realm where chocolate crowns are handed out freely, and the only recession is the one your dentist warns you about later.

    On this recent visit, I half-expected the specter that haunts old favorites: the new logo, the laminated menu, the weary cashier whose corporate smile never quite reaches the eyes. Instead, I found the latest generation Largos still behind the counter, still calling regulars by name, still Loading chocolate into various little boxes. The soda fountain stools squeaked the same protest when I sat down, the way old friends groan but scoot over to make room.

    Lunch was a club sandwich—no reinvention, no aioli, just Midwestern humility between slices of white bread—followed by Diet Coke (Yes, I see the irony). I picked handfuls of candy bars and orange-covered chocolate for the friends back in Albuquerque who have heard me sing this place’s praises like late-night gospel. I bought a bag of Bourbon caramel bites for myself, just in case hunger struck early and I regretted it later.

    Is it worth the eventual dental bill? Absolutely. Is it worth the added miles on the treadmill? Hell yes. But more than that, Largomarcino’s is worth the faith it restores—that somewhere, beyond the safe neon glow of fast-casual chains, flavor, and family can still stubbornly share a roof.

    I carried my haul out into the Midwest humidity, sugar sweat already forming on my brow, and realized something simple: places like this don’t just sell candy. They sell mercy. A soft reprieve from processed sameness, a reminder that craft and care can outlast the quarterly report. You taste it in the snap of a dark chocolate almond bark and in the carbonic tickle of a handmade phosphate. You taste the persistence of people who keep stirring copper kettles because machines can temper chocolate, but they can’t temper the soul.

    I will keep coming back as long as there is a back to go to. And suppose the world ever swallows Largomarcino’s the way it swallowed Happy Joe’s. In that case, I’ll tuck the bourbon bites in my pocket, let them melt down to sticky echoes, and remember how good it felt to stand in a room where sugar, memory, and mercy still mingled, still mattered, and still refused to sell out.

    By Kyle Hayes

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  • Bread and Memory: A Loaf, A Legacy

    Bread and Memory: A Loaf, A Legacy

    By Kyle J. Hayes

    Some smells don’t just linger—they haunt. Not in the way a ghost knocks a glass off a table, but in the way they slip beneath your skin, settle deep in your chest, and curl around your ribs like something half-remembered.

    For me, it’s bread.

    The scent of dough rising—warm, yeasty, patient—takes me back to a church that no longer smells like bread and a family that no longer lives above it. The first name I knew it by was “True Faith.” Later, it became Penson Temple Church of God in Christ, named after my great-grandfather, George Penson. It sat sturdy in Chicago, a place where Sundays were long and the sermons longer, but there was always a rhythm to it. Scripture, music, prayer… and the rising of bread.

    Upstairs, above that sanctuary, lived my grandparents. And on certain Sundays, before the Holy Ghost stirred the congregation, something else stirred first. A batch of dinner rolls, tucked under a clean towel, warming in the silence. The smell would drift down into the pews, enveloping the base of the pulpit, blending with the scent of lemon polish and the aroma of old hymnals. And somehow, in that mingling, the church felt even more sacred.

    That recipe is gone now. Nobody wrote it down. Nobody learned it.

    We lose it to time, just as we lose so many things we assume will always be there. We didn’t think to ask, or we didn’t know it mattered. And now, when I bake bread, I am not trying to recreate it exactly. I know I never will. What I am doing is chasing a feeling. Trying to knead memory into flour, water, and salt. Trying to bring back the ghost of a moment I didn’t know I needed to preserve.

    In that pursuit, I’ve learned more than I expected. About precision. About patience. About what happens when you try to rush something sacred.

    And I found this recipe—a humble, sturdy loaf. Nothing fancy. Just good sandwich bread. The kind that makes you feel like the house is full, even when it’s not.

    My Favorite Sandwich Bread Recipe:

    • 350g (1.5 cups) warm water
    • 3g (1 tsp) instant yeast
    • 530g (4 1/4 cups) bread flour
    • 12g (1 tbsp) sugar
    • 20g (1 1/2 tbsp) olive oil
    • 125g (2/3 cup) ripe poolish or sourdough starter
    • 11g (2 tsp) salt

    To Make the Poolish (Preferment):

    • 65g (about 1/2 cup) bread flour
    • 65g (about 1/4 cup) water (room temperature)
    • A pinch of Active Dry yeast
    1. In a small bowl, combine the flour, water, and yeast.
    2. Stir until the ingredients are fully incorporated into a smooth, wet dough.
    3. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a clean towel.
    4. Let sit at room temperature for 24 hours or until bubbly and fragrant.

    Once your poolish is ready, use 125g (about 2/3 cup) of it in the recipe above.

    Instructions for the Dough:

    1. Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook. Mix on low for 3 minutes until just combined.
    2. Increase to high and mix for an additional 6 minutes until smooth and elastic. (To mix by hand, knead vigorously on a floured surface.)
    3. Place the dough into a bowl, cover it, and let it rise at room temperature for 2 hours.
    4. After 30 minutes, do a strength-building fold. Cover.
    5. After another 30 minutes (1 hour into rise), repeat the fold.
    6. Let rise for the remaining hour.

    Prepare a 13″x4″x4″ Pullman loaf pan by oiling it with olive oil or butter.

    1. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and gently de-gas it with your fingertips.
    2. Shape into loaf and place seam-side down in Pullman pan.
    3. Cover and let the dough rise for 1 hour or until it has reached 3/4 of the height of the pan.
    4. If using the lid, slide it on before baking. If baking uncovered, lightly score the top of the cake.
    5. Bake at 425°F (218°C) for 40-45 minutes. Remove the lid after 35 minutes if the top is covered and brown.

    Cool completely before slicing.

    The bread will speak for itself. But it will also say more if you let it.

    It might remind you of a kitchen you haven’t stood in since you were eight. Of someone who made space for you in a world that didn’t. Of a church that held both gospel and gluten.

    I bake to remember. I bake to reclaim. I bake because the world is loud, but bread rises in silence.

    And sometimes, that silence smells like home.

    By Kyle J. Hayes

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