Guilty Pleasures: Eddie Crane

By OWEN MORRIS

Eddie Crane owns The Drop, aconstantly innovative Martini Corner Bar. We sat down in The Drop’s swank digs and Crane told me what he eats when no one is watching. (Or rather, what he used to eat.)

When I’d be hungry at my grandma’s house I was allowed to make my own sandwiches. I don’t remember how young I was but I remember being pretty young. She had baloney with the red string that you had to take off and it was always frozen so you thawed it out by running it under cold water. Then, American cheese — but it was the kind that came in a block with ten slices. There was never mustard or mayonnaise but I always wanted something to spread so I used chunky Skippy. I’d put that all on Wonder bread to make a sandwich and it became a taste I really like; a baloney and cheese and peanut butter sandwich.

I know that sounds disgusting, but it’s really quite good. I especially like the white bread because you take a bite with the peanut butter and it sticks up on the roof of your mouth like a perfect horseshoe and you have to peel it out with your tongue. But that’s kind of the irony of getting to be me. I worked at Capital Grille for six years and ate Beluga Cavier and dry-aged steaks. But I grew up mostly eating — and I swear to God, I must have eaten a thousand of them — baloney and cheese and peanut butter.

Today, though, I stay away from baloney. When I met [wife] Molly, I’d have baloney and I’d eat it with the American cheese or worse, Easy Cheez. She said to me, and I’m quoting her directly, “Those aren’t foods.” I was like, “What do you mean those aren’t foods? It’s cheese and it’s meats,” to which she replied that it’s not real cheese and it’s not real meat, though technically it is.

So after three years of being with her I eat real cold cuts that you get from the deli and real cheese from a block of cheese that is aged.

I do miss the baloney and cheese and peanut butter, but after eating real meat and cheese for a while, there’s something weird and rubbery about baloney. I know it’s processed — I watched Modern Marvels: Cold Cut and they showed how they make baloney and it’s disgusting. But that didn’t really deter me, it just lost its luster of youth. Within the last year I literally went shopping for those items so I could have the sandwich. White Wonder bread; Skippy Extra Chunky, Kraft American Cheese and Oscar Meyer G&A and I made it. But it didn’t taste the same. It’s not even real bread! It’s like fake bread, fake cheese, fake meat, the peanut butter is the most real food there. It’s all so processed. I did six years in the Army and ate a lot of MRE’s and they probably have a shorter shelf life than the processed foods.