If my childhood were a candle, it would smell like Worcestershire, ketchup and brown sugar. As an adult, I like to mix equal parts of them for a makeshift sauce that glazes everything from tonkatsu and barbecued chicken to chargrilled kalbi and juicy hamburger steaks. It’s a glossy-sweet motif in my life, this flavor profile, something I had often at Korean cafes along Buford Highway growing up in Atlanta. It’s what I imagine the color brown to taste like — which is to say, delicious. And in the pantheon of nostalgic, sepia-toned foods, there is for me nothing more everlasting in its charm than Salisbury steak.
This dish of burger patties tenderly distended with bread crumbs and a little egg, all smothered in a savory brown gravy, was named after Dr. James Henry Salisbury. In his 1888 book, “The Relation of Alimentation and Disease,” Salisbury famously recommended that sick patients eat broiled ground beef at every meal (for health reasons). People have mixed feelings about his namesake dish, understandably. In the United States today, it might be most known as a TV dinner. Memories of red-boxed freezer meals eaten on plastic trays in front of prime-time Nickelodeon make this a convenience and comfort for some. For others, it’s simply out of fashion, or a reminder of harder times.
In 2015, Esther Park spent her 24th birthday alone in a Seattle hospital after a car hit her while she was jogging. She vividly remembers the meal that was served that day: Salisbury steak. Luckily, she had only a few fractures from the accident and was able to go home after a few days, but now, years later, Park associates the dish with that solo birthday. “I don’t discriminate against the Salisbury steak,” she says, “but I don’t celebrate it either.” It symbolizes, for her, both difficulty and resilience.
Jeremy Umansky, a Cleveland native and a chef and an owner of Larder Delicatessen & Bakery, says Salisbury steak is on the menu of nearly every Eastern European-influenced restaurant in the city. It has a strong visual and flavor identity in this country, especially thanks to brands like the Cleveland-based Stouffer’s that have popularized the meal in their frozen dinners. “You could take the position that it’s a lost or forgotten Cleveland food,” Umensky says. But Salisbury steak, in some form or another, belongs to many cultures — German frikadellen, Japanese hambagu and Korean hambak steak all come to mind. You’ll also find a version at Jollibee in the Philippines and Zippy’s in Hawaii. If you didn’t grow up eating it at these kinds of places, then you may have learned about it on Neopets, the online virtual-pet community that mesmerized children in the early aughts.
