RochesterSubway.com : From the Mailbag: Zweigle’s and Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans

From the Mailbag: Zweigle’s and Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans

August 23rd, 2016

Every once in a while we like to share fun stuff from the Rochester Subway mailbag. Here’s an email from a Rochester expatriate now living in New England. John Zicari is keeping tabs on his old home town by following sites like ours, while longing for some of the finer things in life. John writes…

Just wanted to send you a message of thanks for the great things you do. I moved to New England 22 years ago from Rochester and know what a great place the Rochester area is. Most of my family still resides there but I do not make it back to visit very often. Your website offers so many unique, intelligent and interesting points of views on all things Rochester that I await impatiently each new posting.

I love the old pictures that accompany the articles and always find what you write about interesting. So many people, when they live in an area, find nothing but bad things to say about the place. I realize things are not perfect, but there is such vibrancy and fresh thinking going on there – only positive results can occur.

Living near Portsmouth NH I am constantly reminded of the history all around. But I am also reminded of the homogeneous demographics around here leaving a rather bland (read white) mentality. A good Italian bakery, a Ukrainian festival or something other than fried seafood is hard to find around here!

My sister recently sent us some Zweigle’s hots and i found a recipe for Grandma Brown’s beans to round out our feast. A real Rochester banquet.

So keep up the excellent work that you do and know that there are people out there loving every word and image you put out! I am a descendant of Irish canal workers who appear in the Rochester City Directories in the 1840’s and Italian immigrants who arrived in 1914, all who contributed to what Rochester would become. So I proudly wear the mantle of someone from there! (warts and all)

Thanks again.

John Zicari
York, Maine

On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur

• • •

Tags: Grandma Brown's Baked Beans, Rochester, Rochester NY, Zweigle's

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6 Responses to “From the Mailbag: Zweigle’s and Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans”

tom the backroads traveller says:

August 24, 2016 at 6:14 am

Thanks for the link!
Kit Stappenbeck says:

August 24, 2016 at 9:28 am

My brother writes so well – and I absolutely agree with all he has to say here. I am a Rochesterian and will always be – and not afraid to say it out loud! I add my thanks for your great website!
RochesterSubway.com says:

August 24, 2016 at 1:25 pm

Thanks, Kit!
Richard Long says:

October 1, 2016 at 1:53 am

Had a guided tour of Grandma Browns bean bakery around 1955. Great people who were proud of their product and doing their jobs right.
Alan says:

January 22, 2017 at 10:12 pm

One of my dearest hopes is that Grandma Browns is never bought by a big corporation and destroyed. I’m living in the South now and terribly miss all of the good food of Rochester.
Richard Long says:

January 26, 2017 at 6:26 pm

Another of Rochester’s gifts to the world of fine dining, the Popping Ball Park Hot Dog occurred as the result of a machine malfunction at Max Russer’s meat packing house on Jay Street near the intersection of Ames..

Back in the early 60s the thermostat on one of Max’s meat lockers malfunctioned, and the meat it contained froze. Max decided rather than throw out perfectly good frozen meat to grind it into the next batch of hot dogs on a half and half mix with fresh meat, without thawing the frozen meat.
Everything looked fine when the hots went on trucks for delivery, and it was a few days before Max heard the hots were popping open on grills.

Thinking on his feet, Max promptly announced to reporters that the popping hots were an experimental product that had somehow escaped the factory.
That was dutifully reported on Radio and TV, and Max’s phone was ringing off the hook from stores wanting the popping hots. Housewives were demanding them, and Max had a problem. He had to figure out what had happened to begin with, and then get to grinding frozen meat into sausages.
Then he had to buy the house next door knock it down and install a big walk in freezer to meet demand.

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From the Mailbag: Zweigle’s and Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans

6 Responses to “From the Mailbag: Zweigle’s and Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans”

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