Speaking of which, for once Molto Ego has my support. Sometimes assholes acting like total assholes need to be called assholes. Royalty or no royalty in the audience. I would ask where the organizers were who could have forestalled the whole incident, but I’m not stupid. It was all about getting the asses into the seats, not about wrangling them. But can’t anyone here read a news story? The ringtone was not for the orange iPhart.
For the first time I almost felt sorry for Molto Ego, after Jay Rayner flew in to have his gimlet-eyed way with him. You could almost understand why the guy is challenging a certain debunker to a virtual Diamond Jim duel. If he keeps eating and drinking, he won’t have to face the reality sketched by the out-of-towner in the tersest of phrases: More is not always better when it comes to restaurants. It figures, though, that just hours after I found the Guardian piece at my usual fourth stop of the day I spotted the Maroon leaping up to say Molto’s parish hall is just the pope’s pajamas. You can fool some of the fools some of the time. . . My favorite detail was that the orangeman had to do the Brit-and-pony show with a flack in tow. Number one, if he’s so big, why does he need one? And number two, if it’s for damage control, someone might want to invest in a drool bucket. The whole world is reading.
As if I can’t get riled up enough on my own, my favorite curmudgeon alerts me to the craven new line of Molto sauces enriched with Ego. Next at the supermarket: Orange Charmin. But even those were not as risible as the “Mexican” pizzas coming from the guy some fools think could actually be in line to be White House pretzel baker. I don’t care if you can find pizza everywhere in Mexico, fat and stupid Americans do not need pizzas with “cilantro and Mexican herbs” in the freezer case. No wonder illegal immigration is down. Imagine struggling across the Rio Grande only to find Chevy’s looking authentic.
As my most verbally agile young friend puts it, I have a date shortly at a clean, well-lit table where I’ll be the center of attention, so I’m rationing my bile for now. But I have to say the latest cash-in from Molto Ego, overpriced watches, should be sold as orange badges of cretinism. And I have to wonder if the Egotist really ate chestnuts off the soles of his shoes, as his lede implied. And does no one at the Taj Sulzberger understand that with food sections, once you’ve had color you’ll never go back? And things must be flusher there than I realized if a two-course dinner for $42 is considered a deal. Well, I guess that is only 12 shares of stock.
And then there’s the sad reality that the genius of Monte Carlo has hooked up with the Rachael Ray of France, to neither’s credit. The book party was the most dispiriting in ages, with a strange (and small) crowd in a tired-looking room (upstairs); the great man was there but his collaborator had moved on to bigger things already, leaving her scary agent to do the hustle. Someone must really have something on “the Escoffier of our time” to get him to promote food that has been so bastardized; the photography is almost stomach-turning. How do you say nuked the fridge en francaise?
Did you hear the one about the restaurant critic who used chefs as caterers at her wedding? Oh. Right. Now how about an exposé of one who doesn’t lie down with freebies? Some days I truly wonder if Turd Blossom did not train with food people who blithely market cow-plop blooms as cardoons. The ones that were reportedly in the Greenmarket in July and are suddenly the fave thing for November. Yeow, indeed.
Scoop of the week has to be that Molto is a bit closer to Minimo. Having seen the sidewalk surveillance video, though, I doubted it, of course. Then I spotted the promos for the road show and reconsidered. He is smaller. Or is he just using one of the oldest tricks in the before-and-after diet-photography book? Stand next to a twig and even a pine tree looks like a sequoia.
My pal whom I’m now going to call Formaggio Arrabbiato had great descriptions of both Molto Ego’s recent supermarket ad and the latest product bearing his name: He’s finally “nuked the fridge” in promoting something “as ordinary as factory cheese can be.” The former phrase certainly applies to Google now that it is reduced to drumming up press for a Krispy Kreme burger served in its cafeteria. What’s dispiriting about that is not the diabetes-inducing idiocy of it but the limits of the imagination involved. Eclair hot dog would have been a slightly better representation of the core business. Whatever happened to metatags?
Some days it’s hard to slog through the series of tubes without hip waders. The amount of horseshit piled up in one tiny brief about Molto’s vacation valise was enough to choke the hungriest herd of dung beetles. Eight to 10 kinds of cheese? Dehydrated corn in summertime? Crespone salami? Give me the proverbial fucking break. Of course, I don’t blame him or his beleaguered people, though. Idiots ask idiotic questions, and you have to provide pretentious answers.
I know I’m on the liste de merde over at a smart food magazine (the Big Homme in Beijing was a good scoop topped off with good writing), so I’m always happy to cross paths with one of the serfs off the masthead who has no grudge on board. Most recently that happened at the Tristar strawberry stand on Union Square, where I got an earful that did leave me thinking poor old Molto might have crossed the line toward irrelevance, now that celebrity chefs are not just overexposed but being churned out like superhero movies. When was the last time he did anything that mattered beyond marketing?
After reading cyber-commentary on the “Fancy” Food Show, I’m going to revise my notion that anyone trying to cover it is like a blind person describing an elephant. This year it seems the blind took the elephant on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls. Dicks are the New! Big! Thing! Really, you could substitute anything for herbs there and build a report around it (especially with Bangin’ Blueberry “pesto”). What I noticed was that the last day is the best day; the usually hyper pushers in the booths are too fried and stupefied to harass the hell out of you when they see a press badge. Ask what a coolly packaged drink called Twelve is and the beaten woman pouring it will just say: “Twelve.”
Aside from grits in a tube, the things that jumped out at me were seasoned skewers (much easier than buying grillable chicken with flavor) and energy bars for pregnant women (Baby Needs Chocolate? Right. Baby Probably Also Could Use a Stiff Drink Now and Then). The first booth I stopped at was showcasing GOP and Democratic cookies, and when I asked what the difference was, the sheepish vendor could have been describing the general election: Nothing but the package. I decided not to taste until I saw either something new or something weird and went through two whole long aisles before succumbing to Smoky Mango Barbecue Sauce (which was just as awful as it sounds; all it needed was white chocolate).
Other random thoughts: Crab can be really scary (especially when a bite of dip will send you straight to Paula Deen chemical dressing to erase the taste). Cheese will absorb anything: pickles, olives, Thai curry. But the three scariest words on a cheese label are “no refrigeration needed.” Then again, someone thinks the world needs pasta in the shape of the Star of David. And pumpkin pie fudge, too. Bad riesling makes worse ice cream. (Champagne, however, was made to be sorbet.) “Quality is not an option” is a very strange slogan. And could chocolate possibly benefit from being stone-ground? Stone-washed I could see. . .
Given that it was the last day, the celebrities on so many labels were mostly not to be seen, aside from the suspiciously thin orange-freckled arms on a bag of mixed grated cheeses coming soon to supermarkets everywhere. But one ubiquitous big name I did spot signing autographs made me realize a plastic surgeon is not the best friend a famous face can have. Photoshop is much, much kinder.
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.
Speaking of the guy in the dress, this recovering Catholic noticed Molto’s partners certainly did a tap dance in basking in publicity while “protecting papal privacy,” with stories published on both the menus and the family wines. Only hints were given of the former, but they did include a mention of the Istrian chef using “local, seasonal vegetables.” I went to Union Square the day of one dinner and came home thrilled to have bought ramps and spinach. If she found asparagus, favas and baby string beans, that’s a miracle bigger than loaves and fishes.
Now that Molto Ego is history at the Food Network, maybe Comedy Central could take him on. Judging by my email inbox, chortling was heard far and wide and hearty after his crack in a very well-done NYT piece that he was off the air because “they don’t need someone who uses polysyllabic words from other languages.” Hmm. I thought crudo was two syllables. Lardo, ditto. And I kinda doubt the problem was using “panino” for “sammy.” Then again, dissing former employers for “going after the Wal-Mart crowd” sounds like the pot calling the Dutch oven orange for a guy whose Nascar cookbook is currently sold out at the big box online. To keep his dignity, he should have just offered to drink a glass of olive oil while showing some cleavage — the promotional airsickness bags that would then be needed could be dispensed instead of three-syllable lasagne at 35,000 feet.
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?
Everyone seems to be mocking Molto for donning silly Santa headgear on the cover of a magazine dubbed Brain Dead by one of our friends who used to work there. I just want to report that I actually saw a woman reading the sucker on the subway, probably the first time that rag has ever been spotted off a newsstand on this island. Obviously it got its money’s worth, but as I pushed out through the turnstile, Roxanne and the red light were echoing in my head. Or was that the red hat?