"Spiedies are God's gift to barbecue," says political aide Jeff Coudriet,"truly one of the culinary delights of the world." "There's nothing like them in Washington," sighs Jennifer Campion of Annandale. "A beer, a spiedie and a dartboard -- the best way to start a Saturday night," says WRC-TV weather forecaster Bob Ryan, who attended the State University of New York at Binghamton. If you've spent any time in that region of New York, you're probably salivating already. If not, you're thinking:
What the heck is a spiedie?

Spiedie (pronounced SPEE-dee) is not shish kebab, devotees insist, despite similarities. Instead, it's chunks of lamb, pork, beef, venison or chicken that are marinated for days in a tart, piquant sauce and then grilled on a metal skewer or spit, usually over charcoal or gas. A proper spiedie, skewer and all, is then inserted in sliced Italian bread. Pull out the skewer and you have a hot sandwich of the gods. People in New York's Southern Tier -- southeast of the Finger Lakes, just north of Pennsylvania-- adore their local specialty. They eat it at restaurants, buy it from street vendors and make their own at cookouts well into the cold weather.

They put on a whole festival in its honor: the annual Spiedie Fest & Balloon Rally, where thousands of people enjoy bands, fireworks, a craft show, hot-air balloons and a spiedie cooking contest. Winning recipes are published in the Binghamton newspaper.
Expatriots in Washington carry on the tradition. Trips to New York or visits from relatives involve a transfer of meat, marinade and even Roma's Italian bread. Ray Angelo of Rockville packs store-bought, ready-to-cook chicken spiedies in ice before starting the five-hour drive south from Endwell, N.Y. Darnestown pediatrician Faith Frankel goes home to Johnson City to stock up on marinade by the jugful. Others order it shipped overnight from Lupo's, Salamida's or Sharkey's. Says Kathleen Epps, a Gaithersburg Web technician originally from Endicott, N.Y. "I just got an eight-bottle order delivered to my door this week."

Why are these folks so devoted? Although spiedies are everywhere in the Southern Tier, they're found almost nowhere else. There's not even an echo at Safeway, Camden Yards or Galileo of the experience you can get at Sharkey's, Municipal Stadium and Lupo's Char Pit. There's also the aroma factor. "The smell of them cooking is so distinctive," Epps says. "You never had to wonder what was on the grill. I guess that's why they're so hard to forget." The Smell of Success.

That palpable smell and unique taste are primarily due to the marinade. "Spiedie sauce" secrets are passed down through families, and the merits of commercial brands are argued in taverns, on patios and in Internet chat rooms. The origins of the sauce are suspect; one story says the point of marinating for days was to make bad cuts of meat more palatable. "The essence goes through the meat," Frankel explains. "It penetrates the meat and makes it super-tender."

As for the name, spiedie comes from the Italian spiedo, or spit. According to John E. Harmon's "Atlas of Popular Culture in the Northeastern United States," the spiedie probably arrived with Augustine Iacovelli, who immigrated to Broome County from Abuzzi, Italy, in 1929. Iacovelli's marinade contained wine vinegar, water, lemon juice, garlic and mint, and the meat was lamb. Just lamb. No veggies, no condiments, no fancy wraps. This was peasant food, a favorite with foreign-born workers on the
railroad and at Endicott-Johnson, a shoe manufacturer. Later spiedies evolved into the great equalizer among social classes. Cook-off contestants have moved beyond lamb to pork, chicken, beef, seitan (a meat substitute) and venison and to variations such as Polynesian, honey and lemon. And in recent years, a worldwide diaspora of adult children and SUNY grads leaving the region, and IBM employees from Endicott and Owego being transferred, has meant big business for online meat and sauce shippers.

"IBM is basically the reason spiedies are spreading across the country," says Jan McCarty, a national product specialist based in Bethesda. McCarty has begun hosting backyard spiedie parties. When he introduced the dish to a few friends, "They all said, 'You have to do this big time.' So this year I had 35 people here. Everyone wants to cook their own on the grill."

Coudriet -- who has worked for two Southern Tier congressmen, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) and his predecessor, Matt McHugh (D-N.Y.) -- also holds an annual spiedie fest for friends and family, crafting his own sauce and importing loaves of bread from Jimmy Roma's North Street bakery in Endicott. He turns up his nose at standard hamburgers and hot dogs: "Spiedies are a much more space-efficient use of your grill, as you can line them up in rows on the skewers."

Thanks to Coudriet, spiedies have achieved a national honor: In 1999 the Library of Congress memorialized Spiedie Fest in its Local Legacies project. Right there on the Hill, it's documented in text, photographs, a videotape, posters, a program, news clippings and three bottles of marinade. Is this a hint of things to come? "Maybe I could open a spiedie shack on 18th Street," Coudriet muses. Frankel has had the same thought: "I've always joked that I want to open a spiedie shack around here." But she is joking. "You remember what happened to chicken wings?" she says. "People say they can make wings, but they're nothing like you get back in Buffalo. I'm afraid if someone started it here, it wouldn't be the same.

No way. I don't want anyone to butcher up spiedies."

Ellen Ryan is managing editor of Washingtonian magazine.
(c) 2001 The Washington Post Company