gastropoda

At least the Big Homme was gracious enough to let me be invited to his meet-the-staffs lunch, and I’ll be base enough to say they were best new chefs of my year. I was mostly glad I went for the opportunity to ask some questions I might be intimidated to blurt out at a real party, like: How hard is it for a foreigner to get a visa to work in an organization that clearly prefers foreigners? (Answer: Harder all the time.) Mostly I came away feeling glad I had a couple of dollars to tip the coat check girl: Our currency is worth less than pesos. The BH rep at my table said everyone at late dinner at Daniel the Saturday before was either French, Spanish or British, and some had flown in just for the weekend because America is now the 99-cent store of countries. I guess that explains the boom in $40-and-up entrees even in restaurants in my neighborhood. Which is great: The Cubans get iPhones and Americans get Chili’s.

In a similar vein, the contrast on the same day between noble and crude reactions to what really is shaping up as a depression was pretty fascinating in DI/DO and the WSJ. The former was cheering rising prices that might make Americans realize crap is not unleaded when it comes to human fuel; the latter was cheering the awful truth that people who might be priced out of Applebee’s etc. would never be able to pass up dollar meals (even the sorry exploited souls grinding that scary meat). I would have lost the morning in total despair if not for reactions from either coast to the source of the main reading matter. One described it as “forgettable as a PIN,” the other as warranting attention “coming close to the length of an average dump.” Which I suspect is longer than it takes to cook something instantly steamable in a microwave.

Then again, any editor passing through there hits the same wall. No good ideas go unrepeated. I was reminded of that adage “there are no new stories, only new reporters” when the NYP dredged up not one but two blockbusters that were actually novel during my indentured servitude: chefs surveil you while you eat, and people — get ready! — steal shit from restaurants. Next we’ll be reading about scary stairs. . . .

Both my parents were WWII Marines who knew from KP, and I still cannot conceive of anyone ever using the word “spud” in actual conversation. But not one of the countless regurgitations of the press release I read failed to shuffle “potato” out in favor of “spud” by the second graf. What, “brown tuber” was taken as a synonym? Even worse than the idiotic flack-talk transcribed into print on- and off-line was the easy bait of a ridiculously overpriced item — if the Pentagon were so transparent with $55 baked potatoes, or $81 burgers, we could halve the $12 billion wasted every single day. And somehow I don’t think it’s truffles pushing up that tab.

Maybe I’m a natural-born cynic, but my hype-ola antenna went up immediately on skimming an ode to the Cheddarhead state as the new artisanal wonderland. Over the years I have turned down more free trips there than the Schnorrer has taken best new restaurant jaunts. But even I was surprised to open my door a few days later and find a big box on the mat from the hip new purveyor whose arrival made the story Twaddle-worthy. I always wonder why subjects think anyone wants to write about them because they have just been written about in one of the most-read newspapers in the country. And here’s how “cutting-wedge” the story was: The sliver of exemplary cheese in that big box has been winning awards since 2001. Hit me with your swimming suit. . . .

I have no good excuse for not noticing this sooner, but Taste of Home is ruint. Totally ruint. At a party a while back I ran into a founding editor of another food magazine who lamented that its new owners had decided to turn a Jaguar (or something) into a Ford Taurus, never realizing they had bought something unique. But you gotta wonder about an investor who has no clue that the future of publishing is niche and decides to turn its lowrider into an SUV. I was flipping through and started realizing I couldn’t tell the “flavor packed” sandwich layout from the Mrs. Dash ad and it struck me: Isn’t this the magazine whose readers choose it primarily as a respite from endless shilling? The class cleansing is bad enough — the disappearing of so many hometown cooks and their weirdly fascinating reality (and ’dos) — but to replace them with Cool Whip and Gallo? My in-law equivalent has subscribed for me as an Xmas gift for more than a decade, but I’m going to respectfully request that she throw her $12.99 Conde Nasty’s way this year. At least I’ll get ads that look less Everyday. And I am really and truly sick of GE Profile kitchens.