gastropoda

I’ll leave it to the heavyweights to decide whether a chef has to be Italian to cook Italian in Italy (we already know the answer in America: Molto No). The bigger question in that thin-as-blogging-kills story is whether Parma is, even arguably, the best food city in Italy. I have never heard that, even in two eating expeditions to the very town, and would lay my own euros on Torino, which, as a friend always says, makes the Tuscans look like peasants. But then the annoyances just keep coming in the big birdcage liner in town. Was that a food story or a yogurt advertorial? And when you run a piece on the travails of fast food pizza chains, you might want to illustrate it with something out of Domino’s rather than with a shot of glorious pizzas at an independent joint in Chicago. It’s as bad as a photo of people in shorts under a “December sales are down at Coach” headline. Nickel stock might be good for the bottom line. For credibility, not so much.

My friend the aristocrat who has traded homelands after 20-some years says she feels “like I left a banana republic for a Feydeau play.” Even the cheese eaters, though, would never be so silly as to think food stamps should be left out of a “stimulus package” for an economy devastated by greed. After all, what is the one thing you can do with government coupons? Spend them. At the very least our own surrender monkeys could have added wine stamps for the middle class.

One more reason to regret letting a dry drunk rule: He mucks up the money and now, as the Italian Wine Guy notes, we soon won’t be able to afford booze from Eutopia — the Calvados will cost more than the heritage turkey. As he’s proving with vetoes, the Chimp knows the price of everything domestic and the value of nothing international.

Once again, I have to thank Islamochrist that crooks and liars installed the first CEO president (or was he supposed to be the first MBA?) I went to buy another nearly quart-size jar of Maille’s Dijon mustard and it cost $1.50 more than the last one, just a few months ago. Talk about feeling like an American in Paris. Now we can’t even get a taste of Eutopia without paying a premium, and it’s only gonna get worse. We’ll be priced out of extraordinary olive oil, Parmigiano, balsamic vinegar, great olives, Maldon salt, Calvados — everything, come to think of it, that King George has never experienced for all his money and opportunity. Merde, as they say — even the stoned wheat crackers from Canada are going to cost like Carr’s. I’m all for eating locally, but I never thought it would be rammed down my throat by a government that couldn’t shoot straight.