Beef, Bread, and the Holy Mess

This week was supposed to be elegant.

I had plans—with photos even. I was going to make Steak Frites from Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain’s French bistro bible. But then, a few nights ago, I decided to make burgers. Casual. Harmless. Easy.

Until the grill caught fire.

I’d fired up the Traeger, walked back into the kitchen to prep, and then my phone started shrieking like a horror movie final girl. A High Temp Error blinked across the screen. Not great.

Then the smell hit. Not wood pellets. Not meat. Something that wasn’t supposed to burn was burning.

Outside, black smoke poured from the grill. From the storage cabinet below to the lid above, it looked like a chimney from hell. I grabbed a gardening glove, yanked open the doors, and found my grease bucket engulfed in flames.

Cue the baking soda.

I sprinted inside, came back with the box, and flung it like a kitchen exorcism. The fire hissed, then vanished. But the foil protector inside the grill—designed to catch drippings—was also on fire. I doused it too. Fire: handled.

Crisis mode? I’m excellent. The cleanup, consequences, and figuring-out-what-went-wrong part? Not so much.
(Note to self: change out the foil if you grill five pounds of burgers. Probably.)

So no Steak Frites this week. That plan burned up with the grease bucket.

Naturally, I turned to Les Halles to soothe myself with another recipe. That lasted about 20 minutes—until I got irrationally angry at the font they used for the recipe titles.
(Don’t get me started. I will write a monograph on typography one day.)

ANYWAY…

I turned back to Appetites. The Roast Beef Po’ Boy seemed like a solid substitute. Cook the beef, slice the bread, drown it in gravy. Easy peasy.

Except “easy” doesn’t mean fast.

At high noon, I began. Four hours of braising a rump roast in dark stock and rough-chopped vegetables—mostly onions. The house started to smell like something sacred. Anthony’s instructions? Remove the meat. Let it rest for 30 minutes. Strain the gravy. Then put everything into the fridge until tomorrow.

I spent about 20 minutes trying to rationalize skipping that step. But it turns out, trying to thin-slice a warm roast is like trying to shave pudding.

Into the fridge it went.

Today, I reheated the gravy, sliced the beef, and laid it all gently on toasted French bread. A sandwich so sloppy it required elbows on the table, a stack of napkins, and a full costume change afterward. I didn’t just make a po’ boy. I summoned it—with dead-eye willpower and the ghost of Anthony Bourdain hovering over my shoulder.

Anthony loved food like this. Regional. Messy. Cheap and hot and a little unhinged. The kind of meal you eat with your hands and your whole heart. He once said, if you want to understand a place, eat what the broke locals eat when they’re celebrating.

This sandwich was a celebration of glorious imperfection.
A defiant little feast.

And because life is short and weird, I paired it with a root beer, as the ghost suggested.
Not Barq’s (too much high fructose corn syrup for my paranoia), but a zero-calorie ginger root beer with a slightly weird aftertaste and no risk of dietary homicide.

Together, the po’ boy and the root beer tasted like a road trip I never took. But, never say never.

🍴 Got a recipe you think I should tackle next?
Reply to this email or leave a comment. I love a good excuse to cook something weird.

In reverence and rebellion,
Michelle Davis
Your kitchen medium
cooking-with-anthonys-ghost.beehiiv.com