“I always added the bacon drippings to the potatoes,” owner Axel Roelz, chef and owner of the Marshall House, confessed when I was working on California Home Cooking.
“But I didn’t tell me customers because they would get upset.”
This was during the height of America’s fat phobia. When customers asked for the recipe, he’d give it to them without the bacon fat part, and they’d return to say theirs wasn’t as good as his. But they didn’t want to know why, not really. When he was giving me the recipe, I knew something was missing and pressed hard until he ponied up his secret ingredient.