Game 41: Dr. Larry Paben - Honeymoon Salad

Just like a newspaper that keeps editorial and advertising separate from each other, I divide the essay and recipe of each blog into two distinct posts. Magic Johnson quitting a job he hated has nothing to do with his mother’s recipe for sweet potato pie, so I’m not even going to attempt to tie those together, let alone 82 recipes/people.

That was not the case with Dr. Larry Paben’s Honeymoon Salad. I can’t tell if it’s a dentist joke or if the man on call to fix the Lakers’ teeth during the rough and tumble 1980s NBA was just a really weird guy.

I could only find a few things on the late Dr. Paben. One was a brief mention in 2003 about his death at 92. Turns out he was also the L.A. Kings’ dentist (hockey team dentists are a LOT busier than basketball team dentists) and retired from the Lakers in 1981. His full obituary reveals that the Nebraska-born “Doc” served in WWII as a U.S. Army Captain before he moved to the South Bay and opened up his own practice. “He was known for his wonderful wit,” it says, and “his sense of humor.” Okay, so he was just the kind of guy who, when asked to contribute a recipe to a cookbook, would rather make dumb jokes. I like that kind of guy.

I liked him even more after finding this mention of his dinner routine at Dodger Stadium, where he held season tickets behind one of the dugouts since its 1962 opening. I’m here to tell you as a diehard Dodger fan that the Dodger Dog is one of the most overrated stadium foods in America. It owes its fame to alliteration and Vin Scully. That’s it. Fortunately, Dodger Stadium has a very liberal bring-in-your-own-Echo-Park-food policy. Lassen’s pasta, taco truck mulitas, a Patra burger that you savor like it might be the last one before Patra’s is replaced by a Modern California Cuisine restaurant called Domaine or some shit.

Dr. Paben and his family did it big, bringing a picnic cloth and paper plates to lay over the dugout roof. And what did they eat? “Homemade coleslaw and carrot salad, a package of licorice, thermoses of lemonade and hot water (for chocolate and tea), plus hot dogs and fries from the concession stands.” Except for the licorice -- which I guarantee was of the black variety -- this sounds pretty good. “But Pablo, didn’t you just trash Dodger Dogs?”

Maybe the Dodger Dogs tasted better back then? Maybe they served them in buns that were warm and lightly toasted instead of the cold meat-receptacles that stick to the weiner like a Band-Aid? Maybe the skin was blackened and bursting from the hot grill preparation instead of dripping in perspiration from the boiled water that gives them life these days? Or maybe this was simply a family of drunks. For all my hatred of Dodger Dogs, when I’m two $17 beers deep and don’t want to wait to hit up the trucks outside of Short Stop, I’ll eat a Dodger Dog. It’s EXACTLY like tech bros drinking Soylent during an all-night coding session. Sustenance, no pleasure. Like a Honeymoon Salad.

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Honeymoon Salad