I have not tried them. But at the public library I recently found New York Times book critic Dwight Garner’s 2023 book The Upstairs Delicatessen. It is subtitled On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading. On March 24, 2024 I blogged about his writing about one offbeat combination in a post titled Have you ever eaten a peanut butter and pickle sandwich? Bologna Sandwiches are another offbeat combination, and there is a Wikipedia page about them. On page 103 Mr. Garner said:
“The other sandwich of my West Virginia youth that lives on in my mind, and in my kitchen, to Cree’s dismay, is fried bologna. Robert Sietsema, the great New York City food writer, is a devotee. He once worked in a Texas hospital where there was, amazingly, ‘a hot vending machine that sold nothing but fried baloney sandwiches on biscuits, oozing grease and mustard.’ I’ve scoured eBay for one of these, to no avail. The fried bologna sandwich is probably the sort of dish Jonathan Gold was referring to when he wrote about ‘the secret ethic cooking of the Dumb White Guy.’ But everyone likes them. Henry Louis Gates is an admirer. He grew up in Piedmont, West Virginia, about two hours east of where my family lived. In Colored People, his memoir, he wrote about a brand of bologna I wish I’d known about: Dent Davis’s Famous Homemade Ring Bologna, sold at a bakery. Gates called it ‘one of Piedmont’s singular attractions … dark red, with a tight, crimson, translucent skin.’ “
For nine years I lived in Columbus, Ohio. Forty miles north is the village of Waldo. It is home of the G & R Tavern. There is an article about the sandwich at Roadfood, and also a four-minute YouTube video at WOSU titled G & R Tavern’s Fried Bologna: Historic Idaho Food Establishments – which describes how their famous ‘fried’ (really grilled) bologna round is topped with Monterrey Jack cheese, pickle chips, and onions.
The image from Wikimedia Commons shows a Blue Smoke Bologna Sandwich from Nationals Stadium in Washington, DC.
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