gastropoda

This is insult to injury: The space on Columbus long occupied by @SQC now has a big sign announcing what is going in there and in what once was the Silver Palate next door, too. And it’s a Crocs store. A whole huge store selling those hideous shoes. Of course the day after we spotted it, and after my consort wondered how there could be more profit in footwear than food, the papers were full of the news that sales are down, inventories are up and the stock is heading for the toilet. With luck, the stoves are only in storage; maybe they could be back in action soon on a street that could use a few good restaurants far more than an invasion of the Molto clodhoppers.

Clearly I’m spending way too much time online if I spotted a request from a mother for advice on how to dress her 3-year-old daughter, by request, as Molto for Halloween. That kid doesn’t need a costume. She needs a therapist. But I shouldn’t be mean to the orangeman — he’s putting candy in the right aspirant’s bag, unlike another annoyance who is backing that 365-day-a-year Halloween character who is known as Ghouliani in blogville. No wonder people shun his restaurant. Who wants to eat with a tiara shining in their eyes?

Molto Ego makes it sound as if prosciutto producers go all medieval on hogs’ asses. According to a post in that medium he once condemned, the hams are “hanged.” I hope they at least get a fair trial first.

I don’t know why I never noticed this, after 24 years in the business, but something about the idiocy piling up on the series of tubes flashed it into my brain in neon. Food spelled backward is the best reversal since god and dog. And jeebus, does it fit some of the overextended pap producers I read these days (one thanks to this BS detector). Too bad Andy Warhol is not around to reassure us everyone will be blogging for only 15 minutes.

Maybe if Panchito had not been so distracted by towel snaps on the butt we would not have had to wait all these years for Vicente Fox to reveal that the Chimp is afraid of horsies, and the world might have been spared a fraudulent Cowboy in Chief. The detail is not surprising, but just imagine how far Molto Ego would have gotten if anyone thought he was scared of pigs.

The most amusing development since the orgy at Bistro du Vent has to be the news that Molto, after famously dissing bloggers, has become one. Guess it’s true, what he says: Bloggers live by different rules.

The biggest laugh lately was the chef suing Gordon Ramsay because what was shown on his reality show wasn’t real. The second-biggest was the lede W buried in its feature on Gwyneth Paltrow: She’s going to be Molto’s co-host for a series on cooking in Spain. The proud spurner of jamon did name her daughter Apple, so she must have some food cred. But this is PBS, not the Food Network. Julia must be spinning. . . .

Every time I start to go all wobbly and think a ridiculously outsized ego should not be any reason to mock a guy, I read something like the item now up on the LATimes’ superb new food blog (yes, I will pimp my editors). Apparently this fall you will now be able to buy a Molto watch, for a price clearly targeted at Food Network groupies — to paraphrase the old New Yorker crack about the Michael Graves teapot: It costs $2,500 to $4,500, and it tells time. But I give the big guy points. He’s come a long way from licensing himself as a cheesy action figure. And I assume the limited-edition wristwear is guaranteed to hold up if you need to go rooting through wet garbage to make sure not an inch of carrot has been squandered by your wastrel cooks (my favorite detail from Bill Buford). Or maybe the carotene just won’t show.