gastropoda

Metro must be already outsourcing its reporting to Bangalore, judging by the story on the shutdown of construction on the restaurant pavilion in Union Square. Could an actual New Yorker (reporter or editor, even one from Montclair) have let into print the understatement “where a popular greenmarket has been situated for several years”? Forget the fact that the G word should be capitalized, and overlook the peculiar need to explain the obvious. But since when does 32 years qualify as “several”? Kumar, get me rewrite.

One of my sources says fixes are being downsized as part of the purge at the Taj Sulzberger, which may explain why half the stories I slog through have at least one glitch (more and more on the front page). First I read about the “complementary” treats for dogs at a cafe in the park, then there was an op-ed reference to the “complementary” potato chips HIllary served supporters. Eons ago I remember filing a freelance story in which I mentioned complimentary appetizers at a restaurant in Virginia. I opened my paper to find it changed to complementary and complained to Big Al. Who wrote back to say the best solution was to use the shorter, less pretentious word: free. He’s gone, everyone’s taking buyouts or being purged and the lesson was clearly never learned. Last copy editor out, please turn on the Spell Check.

(And you would think, with the country overrun with Mexicans no border can keep out, high-paid reporters could learn a little bit about the food. In a piece on calorie counts at Chipotle, a diner is described as “dipping his nacho into his burrito.” Would that be a tortilla chip, by chance?)

A new vendor at our neighborhood Greenmarket had a funny sign: “Kosher honey for Easter.” Next: Chocolate bunnies for Passover. Or maybe what another vendor was selling at Union Square: “Hard cross” buns. Will people millennia from now be buying waterboard flatbreads?

I can halfway understand why publishers would never think to challenge signed writers who set out to produce a memoir and wind up resorting to what seventh-graders and wingnuts so often must: Just making shit up. But can someone please explain to me how a whole cookbook devoted to steak could reach bookstores without anyone noticing “hanger” is misspelled, repeatedly? It’s plane stupid.

One of those Style copy editors must be moonlighting up the avenue at the “gourmet grill” where my consort was reduced to eating while teaching a media workshop. He thoughtfully brought the menu home and it’s a typo collector’s slop dream: Pasta faggioli. Spachetti. Mazzarella. “On a bed spinach from the grill.” (At least it was consistent: Pannini was used throughout.) But the best part was the copy on the cover: “Walk up & enjoy your favorite foods, prepaired as the day arrives . . . yours taste buds will sore & bring you back time after time.” Sounds like the herpes of Italianesque cooking.

Artisanal is a word now so thoroughly debased that an industrial cheesemaker is selling shredded stuff under that label. So you would think a flack would know how to spell it when naming a restaurant she also described as one of Manhattan’s “most coveted.” Once again, I have to wonder if the Human Scratch N Match is moonlighting.

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.

If you should happen to have a heart attack at the always happy-making El Paso Taqueria on 97th Street, that would probably not be the worst of your problems. The sign on the wall says the CPR kit is “located in the cashier.” In other words, you might be able to get it out. But would you want it on your face?

Copy editors’ eyes must be on the stock tables lately, because some pretty amusing oopses have been seeping into print. The NYPost ran recipes side by side calling for egg yokes. The NYObserver identified the photographer who created “My Last Supper” as Meanie (which was especially ironic given what a lovefest with chefs her book party was). The home of the Human Scratch N Match ran a photo of a food book recommended by none of the experts in the accompanying story (one of whom, incidentally, happened to be a restaurateur whose favorites were “written” by celebrities who had had him on their teevee shows). The infallible NYTimes described lattice tops being rolled out for pumpkin pies. The Washpost recipe for Anzac “cookies” (rightfully, biscuits) said they could be stored up to five days — this for a treat designed to be durable enough to be baked and shipped to soldiers and still survive nuclear winter.

And then there was the story in the WSJournal comparing apples and olives — a recipe from Molto for a sausage-stuffed pork loin and a recipe from Thomas Keller for veal breast with polenta cakes, glazed vegetables and sweet garlic — to see which might be less nutritionally dense than a Big Mac. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of what lurks inside ingredients could tell the caloric deck was pretty much stacked against the fatty cow and assorted accouterments. But the real asleep-at-the-send-button was the description of “the Falstaffian redhead” as “not-quite fat.” Does he have to ride around in a golf cart to qualify? Or is it just that America has defined adiposity downward?

My writeme box is always overflowing with gaffe riots from the flack circus, whether straight from the source or passed along by my e-pals who are equally amazed at what people paid to promote actually churn out. Most recently a new variation on the most abused term in the restaurant business turned up (“pre-fixed” menu), but the funniest had to be the release touting a new place and its chef, who hails from TOWN, Italy. Someone must have been too busy writing an invoice and checking it twice to go back and proofread. Then again, she did promise “a menage a trois never tasted this good.” Is the human Scratch N Match moonlighting?

Cost of a ridiculous and ridiculously flacked sundae? $25,000. Health Department shutdown immediately after the media blitz? Priceless.

In other hype-wire stunts, the silliness of a food blogger hiring help in spreading his “news” was kicked up a notch with the announcement that mentioned “Rum” DMC. Would they be anything like Lillet Kim?

And could they all please give us a break between the unconscionable rush from pagan Halloween straight to unholy Xmas before sending out the Valentine’s releases? My head is about to explode at the thought of six weeks of carols and consumer craziness and misguided advice on how to avoid ballooning on eggnog and gingerbread. I cannot even begin to deal with saccharine VD.

Also, that cooing cuddling between handler and overgrown teddy bear in the Observer’s takeout on Panchito’s nemesis almost made the good old days of Christyne and Rudy seem honestly romantic. You could only think, “Get a room,” and hope it was very, very dark.

In other PR idiocy, everyone is dutifully regurgitating the promoting point that Nizza is Italian for Nice. It’s actually also Italian for the name of the town in Piemonte where I spent a long night in the hospital listening to cats get it on outside. Sorta like saying a new restaurant serving Az-Mex is named Phoenix “after the bird that rose from the ashes” without acknowledging what the state capital goes by.

Another flack crew, the one finally developing a name for itself for food-free food parties, disseminated a few paragraphs the Onion might cringe from: Complement and Caesar were of course misspelled, the menu “amuses” while the room “pops with color” and the whole overwrought project is summed up as a “steer palace.” Is Restaurantgirl moonlighting? Then there’s the e-release I got insisting that “senior snacking can be tasty and healthy.” What kind of Swiftian shit is this? I know “some say” Social Security is in danger, but is eating the aged the answer?

Wired magazine seems quite pleased to have found huitlacoche in a can. To me it seems no odder than tinned escargots, which are also often used unabashedly by good chefs. Now, tortillas in a can — that’s weird.

Then there is the grammar-conscious editor friend who sent me her capital crime recently: Some supermarket promoter disseminated a release that mentioned the canned “isle.” Wait till she reads about “gougers” at Artisanal. Given the bizarre crossover of reporting and hustling going on, you have to wonder: Does that mean they actually charged for them?

More signs the food world is brutal on the English language: Goodburger is describing its lettuce (iceberg lettuce at that) as “hand-leafed.” Agave, I noticed in walking by, serves “hand-hacked” guacamole (except to Van Gogh, who gets the ear-hacked kind). And just consider the slogan of the new brand I spotted in the dairy case at what the Grocer calls the Food Shitty near me: “Milk from real cows.” As opposed to what? Would the response “udder nonsense” be too obvious?

Also, I got this secondhand from a real restaurant reviewer whose name starts with P: Some joint where he recently wasted a meal on a bad tip is serving “crustiness.” Apparently that is Albanian for crostini.

And I can’t be the only New Yorker who got the (hill)willies thinking about eating steaks carved from animals all descended from one bull, as the forthcoming Primehouse is promising. They have a name for that in Appalachia. It’s called Rudy’s first marriage. Then again, a steak sandwich made with what the new Kingswood claims to be serving might be all right: heir tomatoes. That’s the Wasp way of saying depleted gene pool.