A PARADIGM SHIFT IN POKER SNACKING

I have never played a game of poker . . . er . . .uh . . . unless you count the one time at Camp Ramah, summer of ’63, when a couple of sharpies conned me into a game of strip poker . . . and I wound up running to-and-from the next cabin clad only in my tzitzis.

My boys, Scott, Joey, and Ben, however, are world-class pokeristim. I have yet to compute the stakes, but Scott, my eldest, nearly doubled the size of his house, Joey just bought a very gemutlich one, and Ben, the runt of my litter, has a two-bedroom apartment in New York. I rest my case

As every Jewish event has its own cuisine, poker played by former Yeshiva-bochorim needs to assert its own culinary identity. Devising a menu for young, upscale guys is no easy task, because they always grouse about the absence of quality and diversity of poker-night snacks: No more Buffalo wing dripping pepper sauce . . . too plebian and messy. No more nachos cracking under the burden of salsa . . . too trite. No more guacamole-residue to grease the cards and chips . . . too gauche.

And they’re right. You really can’t do anything exciting to jazz up poker food, unless you hire Wolfgang Puck to replace “Five-Card Louie.” And anyway, the Austrian’s pizza is too prissy.

Thus, I say change the concept, if you cannot change the cuisine:

Serve nothing during each hand except maybe soft drinks. Once the spirited competition of each hand of poker has concluded, let the competition really begin.

Fill shot glasses with a splash of costly or cheap vodka, from Belvedere to Smirnoff. Only the “dealer” knows which is which. For the rest, it is a blind tasting.

After a l’chayyim, down go the shots, one by one. The players rate the quality or try to figure out which is which. (I can always tell Grey Goose, uh-huh.) Four shots each? Be sure to choose a designated drive.

A few hands later, do the same with cheap-versus-classy beer: Bud? Old Milwaukee? Theillier La Bavaisienne? Mestansky Pivovar Havlickuv Brod Lev Lion Pale Double Bock? OK, OK, so I got their names off a website. (http://beergeek.stores.yahoo.net/index.html)

The host is in charge of making or procuring the varieties, so everyone can enjoy the nuances. Or s/he might assign the others to help with the task. After all, everybody has his/her own concept of tuna salad. The possibilities are infinite. Enlist a domestic partner, or as we used to say, “wife,” to do (some of) the procurement.

After the next hand, try the same kind of tasting with tuna salad, chopped liver, Kiddush wine, lox, scotch, cookies, those iddy-biddy gefilte fish balls, cheeses, sauces, meatballs – anything you can spear with a toothpick or in a shot-glass. Never serve anything that has “roll-up” or “crudités” in its name. Rate each round, guess who made it, or just fress. Give prizes to winners – perhaps six-packs of Theillier La Bavaisienne.

Or, I’ll give you something really off the wall: Get a slab of ahi tuna. Cut it into ¾ inch cubes. Flash fry, preferably rare. Put a dab of cocktail sauce in a shot-glass, then the tuna, then a dash of vodka. Down it. A tuna shooter. One of my special favorites: The slider. A teeny hamburger steamed inside a gooey bun. Why not try the same with a couple slices of brisket, corned beef or salami? You can read the definitive saga of the slider at http://www.99w.com/evilsam/ff/whitecastle.html.

As the evening progresses, the players will become pleasantly sated. They have had tastes from a bountiful table bearing all kinds of interesting food and drink. With each ensuing hand, kings start looking more like jacks. Cards become secondary to competitive fressing, and no one will ever again complain about his/her domestic partner coming home smelling of cigars.

It’s just like Henry Herbert Knibbs always said: And far behind the fading trail, the lights and lures of town. So we played the bitter game nor asked for praise or pity. (All right. I got that off a website, too}