gastropoda

I can’t say I’m sorry to see so many seriously bad old-time restaurants dying on Columbus and Amsterdam lately, but it is a little disheartening to see that so many of their glitzy replacements are all following the latest food merger from hell. I call it Glasian — with the first two letters, of course, coming from Gloppy. At a time when Americans are becoming so much more sophisticated about nuances among ethnic cuisines, what’s with this herd instinct to turn out one menu under Thai, tempura, Vietnamese and sushi? It almost makes you long for the good old days when the ubiquitous mixed marriage was China-Criolla. At least that had historical precedent.

Anyone else notice the insidious trend on a couple of the “serious” food blogs? It’s creeping Rachaelism. Throw out an EVO here, and a yum there, and pretty soon you’re talking real drivel.

And speaking of dreck, and not feeling bad about it, the NYT’s sin was not only hiring a wrong-about-absolutely-everything wingnut but allowing a “contributing columnist” to phone in a few centimeter-deep thoughts to be awarded prime display. Chicken soup gives you colds. Breast-feeding gives kids allergies. This tossed-off crazy salad made Andy Rooney look like Socrates crossed with George Carlin.

But then these are high times for misdemeanors down by the Taj Sulzberger. What was that Chipotle Grill Bizday/Metro/Styles mishmash all about, anyway, besides filling up column inches amid the house ads? And the Indian restaurants viewed through the cloudy eyes of an academic? The hell he says. Holy Mother of Teresa: I’m an alien but eat with my hands at Saravanaas, and so do half the regulars there on a given day (fingers make amazing pincers for rice and sauce). The only good part was that it made me even more appreciative of how vibrant and rapidly evolving the real India is. What would a sociologist long out of Bologna possibly make of Molto?

My consort and I once ate dinner at a Lower East Side restaurant where the chef was huge, the main courses were gargantuan and the salad was ridiculously dainty. When I spotted the perpetrator, I understood instantly: She had no idea what a normal appetite might be. And guess where she’s consulting today? For a newish service that delivers “diet” meals. I suppose the One Fat Lady was otherwise occupied.

My Philadelphia tipster tells me there’s a new restaurant down his way called The Ugly American — which I guess means Yankee Go Home was taken. Apparently the food is as misguided as the name, so it’s no real threat in the long term (especially not with Cheddar ice cream), but I think it is worth hammering what a strange way this is to showcase domestic cheese, beer and wine. Can you believe the South Park movie guys have a better ear for euphony? Their fine dining establishment would surely be called America, Fuck Yeah!

A more clever writer than I had the perfect take on DI/DO’s bizarre take on food allergies in children: Someone looks to have been poached in the crazy sauce. And if Mr. Sneaky Food gets away with saying worse than that on national teevee, why are we all so hesitant to call a pignoli a nut?

I had actually dropped $6.95 on a copy of Harper’s in December after spotting a cover line on how hyped that “trend” is, and I had actually thought the debate was closed after reading that taut takedown. Fear is America’s most lucrative industry anymore, though, so it’s no wonder the next allergy item I read was on Slashfood: Some delis in Wegmans supermarkets will no longer allow unaccompanied minors to order food for fear of the big A. As if it wasn’t bad enough that you can no longer get a peanut on a plane and have to suffer pretzels that would choke a Chimp. Forget the nanny state. The crazy mommy state is going to be the death of all of us.

Let the economic experts who have done so well so far duke it out over whether we are headed for or already in a recession. I’m going to take my cues from restaurateurs forgoing great-but-pricey birds in favor of Bell & Evans (in the land of the one-eyed critic, the blind steward is king) and from food magazines foretelling their publisher’s troubles. You know it’s a leading economic indicator when the Journal of Conspicuous Consumption does a whole issue on high/low eating. Never a discouraging bean was ever seen in those pages. Gold cards must be getting kicked back all over America.

At the same time, it makes me uncharacteristically sad for my profession to see how the national epidemic — greed with a capital G — has infected so many restaurateurs. I was half-tempted by Park Avenue Season for my birthday until reading it is being sued for stiffing employees. Pastis and Balthazar are accused of being just as venal. And the guy who cleans up with those strange Cinema Cafes just got caught with his hand in the sales-tax till, as the Shore owner did before him. The food world has always been exploitative, but now either more bad behavior is going on or more evildoers are getting caught. And if it’s the latter, could the restaurant investigators maybe head over to the banks now? Or the oil companies?

I might get excited about chocolate if it and I were the last things on earth, but mostly I can look at it and move on to the cheese course. My consort, of course, would mainline the stuff if he could. So when I got an invitation to a preview of a seemingly swanky chocolate buffet way the hell downtown, I RSVP’d for two to split the ennui with the bliss. Big glasses of Champagne waiting at the door looked promising, but then we started sampling. I’m an old ho, so I know you take a bite and move on rather than expect the lame to soar on a second taste. But poor Bob was struggling to do justice to the pastry chef’s prolific handiwork. Finally, even he crapped out and said: “Why am I thinking of Pepperidge Farm?” Well, let’s count the ways, beginning with “chocolate peanut butter cup apricot sauce,” moving on through “chocolate apricot Jell-O” and continuing through “chocolate rice crispy treat.” “Fluff ball” is also a term you never expect to encounter on a menu outside of Applebee’s. What finished it for me was the “chocolate covered apricot pate de fruit.” French Chuckles should be so spectacular they need no Hershey’s. What was most mystifying was who the target audience might be at a time when chocolate connoisseurship is out of control. For this mediocrity they charge $75 (including the Champagne), but it is also packaged in weekend getaways that go up to $40,000 (for the Can’t But Me Love, the release said). The organizers describe the selection as sinful. It’s the right word, wrong meaning.

Talk about a confederacy of dunces — the great WSJ story on how horses are suffering as the economy goes to hell is a telling example of what happens when the Chimp’s incompetence meets the cretinism of bleeding-heart airheads. Letting high-maintenance animals starve because the slaughterhouses have been shut down is not exactly enforcing their rights. There are worse things than butchering Trigger for dinner.

Am I the only $15-a-year sucker wondering why a magazine would run a cover line touting a pull-out guide on “what’s in season now” right alongside a photo of pancakes topped with wild  blueberries? It is the February issue, after all, and said fruit is a long time gone. Then again, the contents page features a frittata filled with asparagus. And don’t even get me going on the hypocrisy of a big name nattering on about eating less meat in the same week he’s insisting millions of readers run out and buy honkin’ slabs of pork. Having grown up in Arizona before the Colorado started running dry, I also have to say that any “green” issue that includes a fat advertorial promoting Las Vegas pretty much undermines itself. Even if the city could turn wine into water, it’s an eco-disaster no amount of local cauliflower could ever carbon-offset.

Here’s a budding trend ripe for nipping: The tip jar at Amy’s Bread in the Village is now labeled the “karma cup.” If there are countinghouses in the afterlife, I’m taking another look at reincarnation. But even that Bush-era innovation is not as fucked up as the Chowhound “reviews” posted a couple of doors away on the Murray’s Cheese window. Not only can any establishment cherry-pick favorable ones, but the potential for fraud is unprecedented (check out the first alleged everyman’s swoon over at menupages for a new place with an unfortunate name off Columbus). The one venue where autofellation is actually possible, after all, is the internets. But I guess the faux touts could be dumber: They could have come from Zagat.

If you read only the Human Scratch N Match in the Daily News, you might think her employer has no copy editors. Having done that work for so many years, I suspect they’re just the all-too-common passive-aggressive kind. If she wants to say ricotta is exhilarated, they are going to give her that and all those extra commas she likes so much. If she wants to drop a little fancy French and confuse a mouth with a log, the idiocy is all hers. Grapes permeate, dessert proffers, a journey is storied — they’ll slap a headline on it and move on to something more important, maybe the toilet habits of ready-for-rehab celebrities. But I hope whoever handled this latest assault on the language at least had a pang at letting porchetta into print with the description “light on its feet.” Sounds like the walking dead in Babeland.

My decision to always eat incognito at Pearl Oyster Bar was validated when I stopped in for a late lunch at the bar next to three not-small women whose order was sent to the kitchen with a “VIP this, show ’em some love.” They were whimpering trying to finish their over-heaped plates while I was feeling beaten not even halfway through my usual skate sandwich. Those portions are beyond generous even for the hoi polloi. (I am always absurdly grateful when friends benefit, though.) Besides, who needs extras when you can hear a repeated dis of “Anthony” for advising diners never to order fish on a Monday, or overhear an explanation of the draconian 2:30 cutoff of lunch orders (the tiny kitchen needs every second to prep for dinner)? It’s the best place in town for lunch and a show.

Sometimes the horseshit you read actually makes perfect sense. For a developer contemplating a Ferry Plaza-esque market in a city that has Greenmarkets, Grand Central, Chelsea Market, Fairway, Zabar’s, even Dean & Deluca, not to mention Chinatown and Curry Hill and E.B. White’s reality of myriad small towns all connected on one island, of course the right consultant would be a guy who thinks that what this city needs is a biscuit purveyor in the most remote location imaginable. Batali on a tripe truck has a certain appeal, but really. The whole project reeks of Bridgemarket. Which means it will end up as a Food Emporium at best. And next they’ll be telling us little plates have supplanted big-ass steaks. . . .

Speaking of misguided markets, the newish Holy Foods on the Bowery is easily a lower level of hell. I wandered in to warm up on a brutally cold afternoon and wound up almost weeping trying to get out — the place is ridiculously huge and Pan’s labyrinthine in its layout. Not to mention scarily empty. I had stupidly thought I might be able to at least pick up some fish for dinner while thawing my digits, but the surprisingly understocked case was looking rather ready to meet its mortician (marked-down Dungeness crab in particular struck me as rent-a-meal). Clearly, what this city needs most is the neighborhood-wrecking fifth St. Peter’s going in near me.

“There Will Be Blood” may have been painful — I could barely walk after three hours crammed in my seat — but it was worth it not just for the sharp relevance but for two scenes. One takes place in a restaurant where the evildoer oilman (or is that redundant?) brings his son and uncouthly demands “steak, whiskey and goat’s milk” before another table of slightly slicker petroleum scumbags comes in and not only knows enough to wait for a menu but immediately starts nattering away 2007-style, wondering whether the fritters are the way to go. Cash v. class, the eternal struggle. Even better was the ending, when the profiteering E.O. is living in luxury but still eating just steak, and obscenely overcooked steak at that. It pretty much illustrates why restaurants in rich neighborhoods are inevitably so abysmal. Money can’t buy you taste. No wonder I have visions of GoFuckYourself eating his meat before it can even coagulate.