gastropoda

When it comes to language, the fish truly does rot from the head down. Start out turning “torture” into “enhanced interrogation techniques” and before you know it “fancy” has lost its meaning. The idea of an “Un-Fancy Food” event to counter the original is totally down the rabbit hole. My friend Rolando, who actually opened a restaurant at one point to avoid the shit show that is the Javits Center in summer, has it right when he says it is all about making America fat, not about any “high-flown” or “expensive” products. For every artisanal cheese, there are 32 aisles of white chocolate-raspberry-bacon dips and crappy candies and tortured meats and seasoned-to-saccharine olives. Suffice it to say that a surprising number of attendees are in wheelchairs, and not because they are wraiths — they are too large to even waddle. The real “fancy” food had to have been down at the alt-event. 

The only reason I ever set foot into Duane Reade is to use the Chase cash machine rather than gimping all the way over to Broadway, so I always feel like an Estonian in my first supermarket — there’s so much stuff in one place in this neighborhood dominated (so far) by independents in tight quarters. Lately I’m feeling so cheap I waited behind two other users rather than surrendering two bucks to Banco Popular, and so I had lots of time to scan the merchandise. Which is how I spotted Natural Cheetos. Could there be a more absurd oxymoron? I actually went to the web site to see what might make them qualify and am still mystified (is it the expeller-pressed oil?) But not as baffled as I am by a crazier question: Considering who the biggest consumers are (literally and figuratively), why would you use that word as a selling point? Aren’t all those guys sitting in their moms’ basements typing in their adult diapers more likely to respond to Intelligent Design Cheetos?

We’ve come a long way from those scary old days of duct tape in every room, judging by the reaction to the media-induced killer-tomatoes frenzy. CNN’s poll the other day showed respondents were about equally split on giving up the salmonella balls in wake of the news that our bureaucrats have let us down once  again. This story has yet to unfold completely, but what’s fascinating me is how a whole food group was condemned when increasingly it looks as if the problem was what it so often is: One “restaurant” chain. We need a new Agatha Christie to write food who-dun-its. Was it the tomato or the egg, or the spinach or the cantaloupe? But that series wouldn’t last long. The culprit would always be greed. Enjoy your 99-cent burger while you can.

I’m sure I totally annoyed all the photographer friends to whom I forwarded a very funny blog post about the worst job in the world: microstock reviewer, that poor sucker who has to sort through all those quadrillions and quadrillions of super-shitty photos submitted for sale online for literally pennies. But now I see there is actually something emerging that is far worse. The Guardian says a chips-and-chemicals producer is running competitions for amateur ads. The latest winner was made for less than 10 pounds (not exactly chimp change: that’s almost 20 bucks, U.S.) “Bet you can’t eat just one” transmogrified by entrants internationally sounds like a call to Dr. Kevorkian.

I always used to say the best steak I ever had outside Spain was a slab o’ buffalo at the Bridge Cafe way back in the last century. Because I’m not a “real” food person,  though, I can also admit that flesh from non-cows does make me queasy, so I have to say I don’t exactly seek out the other red meat. Even so, the Harper’s story on the savage efforts by cattle ranchers around Yellowstone to wipe out the last descendants of the beasts that were here when Columbus landed is sickening. If the argument is not ironclad, the descriptions of the bison themselves and their indigenous world are heartbreaking. Read it and shit (from salmonella and E. coli).

A very scholarly friend tipped me off to the latest silliness in the cat food aisle: Chicken Tuscany. And Turkey Tuscany. Not to mention Yellowfin Tuna Tuscany. No steak, of course, and each includes rice, not pasta. Even dumber, the line is “restaurant inspired.” By the Olive Garden, I guess. (Oh, for the good old days when we had Mamma Leone to kick around.) Shouldn’t the slogan be “under the Tuscan tin”?

Might be time for another story on chefs’ blogs now that I have seen my first shlog. I can’t imagine what reason but huckstering there would be for the “so French” Eric Ripert of Andorra to be devoting “his” first two posts to cooking in a toaster oven. By now I should know you can’t believe everything you see on the internets, though. One of the most persistent search strings for Gastropoda is “Bobby Flay bad-mouthing Hellmann’s.” With Rachaelesque rumors like that going around, he should be very careful about his neckwear.

Who needs terrorists when we have the FDA? Now there’s salmonella in raw tomatoes. In 16 states. I’m notoriously bad at math, but I think that’s close to a third of the country? The NYTimes helpfully points out that the problem is with “raw, uncooked tomatoes.” Whatever that means, it is clear that whoever catapults the propaganda for the fruit eaten as a vegetable has been super-careful to manage the message. Rather than admitting most of the cottonballs being eaten out of season are at risk, every story dutifully reports the types considered safe. I know I’m sounding beyond monotonous, but can someone remind me why we are spending $500,000 a minute in Iraq when the bigger threat is a gutted agency charged with overseeing so much of the “homeland” food supply? And to think idiots worry about eggs anymore. Of course, sentient minds might wonder why the FDA is wrestling with what is clearly a USDA problem, but that might be unpatriotic. Maybe Obama can set up a new agency regulating only arugula.

No wonder schools in America now teach nothing but how to pass a test, though. If kids learned math, they would have to be diapered from cradle to Reaganhood, because the future really is the shitz. Just think about the fact that Burger Death recently settled its dispute with farmworkers in Florida by grudgingly agreeing to an increase of a penny a pound for tomatoes picked. One penny. As in: The coin most elitists think should simply be discontinued. And the other half-cent-a-pound goes to the negotiators. Somehow this makes it less surprising to read that fast food chains are struggling to hold the line on dollar meals when the price of cheese is soaring (and — face it — what lies down with Whoppers is about 6,000 degrees removed from real Cheddar). The one constant is beef, cheap as shit (excuse me: as E. coli). And what’s even more wrong with this picture? Already immigrants have solid reasons to be very, very scared. But if they ever stop and think about why they are being rounded up from slaughterhouses so aggressively lately, they, too, will need to be diapered. Halliburton can get away with building unusable detention camps in Iraq. Here they might actually work.

News that McDonald’s has gotten rid of trans fats (unless you read the fine print) is also pretty laughable. I never thought those were what made the “food” so bad for you. It’s like a heroin addict boasting about giving up coffee (or a Chimp sacrificing golf). On the same page of the WSJ that I read that, though, I also saw that Mr. Flay has finally achieved superstardom, as the instructor at the mayonnaise school. He’s actually pretty good, and not just because Hellmann’s is my own private heroin (something I would have to stop saying if I got paid). At least shilling for a comestible makes more sense than this bizarre new trend of placing chefs and restaurateurs in ads for banks and investment companies. I always think of the food world as being as profitable as Branford Marsalis famously said jazz is: How do you make a million? Start with two. To which I would add: Would you buy a used broker from this realm?

Massimo Bassano, our first guide to the Italian table way back in pre-Columbian Geographic times, taught my consort and me to eat salad last. While he never put it in clinical words, his message was that it’s a scrub brush for your system. Which took the same pleasure out of greens that Planters is determined to extract from nuts, one of my favorite things to eat. Marketing them as a “digestive health mix” is about as alluring as selling ghee as Ex-Lax. The graphic of shelled and unshelled nuts in the shape of biceps and forearm is also symbolic TMI. The only thing worse was the NYObserver’s comparison of “soft brown ricotta gnocchi” to “kids’ Lincoln Logs.” Flush those floaters.

One thing I have abandoned all hope on is a vaccine against the Stupid. And so the future will inevitably bring more people who are paid to write about food not knowing that you don’t spell it “pallet,” that the shoes are not Minolos, that there is no way to carve a steak off a catfish (even one recalled for bacterial contamination). Chefs will always be doing “seasonal” menus with Brussels sprouts in springtime; big food companies will always invent garbage like a dressing called — seriously — Tuscan Romano. (As opposed to Venetian Reggiano?) But the true proof that there is no stopping idiocy was the layout in the magazine of the newspaper that simultaneously ran a big story on Americans wasting food. Showcasing stylish kitchens, the shoot squandered enough fresh vegetables to feed 17 Ethiopian villages. And the irony is that those are the kinds of kitchens that once installed will never make contact with fresh favas and fennel again. I guess it could have been more ridiculous, though: The prop stylists could have used Chicago foie gras.

Orwell should be glad he’s not around to see what buzzwords are doing to human intelligence. I got an e-release last week touting “local” Dover sole.  Sounds good, but those white cliffs are not exactly on Long Island. (Of course, the same menu boasted “farmed” foie gras. As opposed to free-range, you think?) And then there was the poor trendoid I overheard at the meat case  while I was scouting Holy Foods for national sausage indicators. He wanted “organic, grass-fed brisket.” The guy behind the counter said they were out just then, but he could order either organic or grass-fed. He chose the former, I guess because cows raised on unnatural food are fine if the chicken byproducts are pesticide-free. Let’s hear it for fair-trade Doritos.

The NYC study on the incredible shrinking supermarket was disturbing even to someone who gets depressed walking west and looking north at the Holy behemoth about to invade her own neighborhood, which now has almost equal numbers of food shops and drugstores. But it occurred to me that two ailing industries could be healed with one merger. Just turn all the spaces rented by Wachovias, WaMus, Chases, North Forks and First Republics into something useful. Call them food banks.

Maybe I finally have to agree foie gras should be banned. No duck or goose should ever have to give up its bloated liver for a promotional stunt like the one Burger Pretender was briefly reported to be running. Thanks to my new addiction, I heard marketing geniuses had cooked up a fecal patty topped with foie gras plus blue cheese (activists should shut the chain down for that dairy offense against taste alone). The too-perfectly named European blog of People for the Harassment of Carnivores (Fish & Chimps) extracted a strange denial, but not before the Wonker-Outer noted that pricing the thing at 85 pounds was brilliant because it sent a quality message so strong not a single one ever needed to be sold. And now that the behavioral economists’ reasoning has been exposed, can we please declare a total media blackout on $1,000 omelets and other gold-plated bullshit?