Did I really hear a reporter on NPR say he could detect “the smell of pralines baking” in New Orleans? Is a Scotch maker really trying to market a $350 bottle in this economic climate? Is a famous and presumably wealthy chef really reduced to making desk calls to promote his new line of cookware, going office to office like an Avon lady? Jeebus. I guess there are worse fates than a Meatpacking gig.
Probably the most abused word in the English language, after gourmet, is chef. Whatever Rachael Ray is, she is not a chef. Stuntwoman, maybe. But she has never really run a kitchen. In some ways, she’s her generation’s Martha, but it’s funny how no one ever called Ms. Perfect a chef, and she had somewhat more claim to the title. And all this is by way of saying we live in one fucked-up society when the donut terrorist is the top earner in the “chef” category, ahead even of good old Wolfgang, who once ruled the branding game. (Guess that wingnut boycott worked out well, huh?) It used to be you got rich and famous by doing. Now it’s by being. What’s more chilling is that the butter swiller is so close behind her, No. 4 on the bucks list, after Gordon Ramsay. John Prine should reissue his great old song about blowing up your teevee — that one invention has clearly made the whole country cretinous. Another news report claimed 25 percent of calories are used by your brain. Obviously, those are empty calories. The kind you’d take on with a nutritious egg white sandwich and oversweetened coffee down at Dunkin’ Kefiyahs.
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?
I don’t think it was intended as a spoof, but the half-page ad an Italian-American group took out in the hometown paper was pretty amusing. Protesting some sportscaster’s dissing of a golfer with a name perceived to be one step up from Guido, it listed Graziano and Marciano and Colavito. I read the thing twice looking for the D chef. Either I’m blind or they are embarrassed.
Then again, how desperate would you have to be to take a flack up on an offer to live-blog a press stunt? People are really going to clog the series of tubes with twits on tea in return for the chance to be a star handing out business cards in the age of Facebook? Sounds like the cyber casting couch. Then again, that kind of comfort work is working out okay on the Bam front. Ad Age “caught up to the celebrity chef on the set of a Crest commercial shoot” and asked, “How do you stay authentic?” Not coincidentally, the accompanying photo showed him in an organic tomato field. Presumably up to his knees in manure.
I only watched “Top Chef” a couple of times, and only because I had to, for a story. But I think that was often enough to know these showmen are not exactly selected for their mastery of the art of cooking — Julia must spin every night the inanity is on. Whatever that circus is about, it is not about learning technique, purchasing, thinking on any level. But now I see a couple of the contestants are going to be “teaching” in New York. As I’m typing, I am being aurally pummeled by the 65th rendition of one of the only two Santana songs an over-amped band can play at a street festival three avenues away. Anyone who signs up for this “instruction” should be sentenced to fry mozzarepas in hell.
Smarter commentators than I have had their say on the live-blogging that went on at the Enron on 12th Street awards. We can only hope the perpetrators are not credentialed for either presidential convention this summer. But right now I’m wondering how pathetic you would have to be to be sitting home at your computer waiting for the latest Kim Cattrall utterance to be transcribed. No one is a bigger defender than I am of food as the third most important thing in life (after air and water). But this is only rock and roll. And it’s silly.
I also wasn’t so convinced we should think like a chef after reading 30 lessons from them. I was most surprised Lord Thomas recommends bacon made from any old hogs when you can really taste the difference with the heritage kind. And any chef who cares more about carrots than the environment probably should keep it to himself. One thing that does not belong in the kitchen is a disposable razor. Buy that guy a scrub brush if he’s so anal he thinks babies need skinning.
One of my Paris correspondents offered excellent condolences on my passing up a night at Benoit: It’s the Mickey D of bistros, coming soon to Vegas and Dubai. But then the Eiffel Tower has been co-opted around the world. Why not a one-of-a-kind restaurant? The good news is that high-flying chefs may actually be solving a bigger problem. If they build replicas in every city, we will never have to strip down in the security line to jet off to the real deal ever again. A Bulli at every intersection? Bring ’em on!
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?
Second prize would go to the business improvement district that’s staging a chefs-on-parade event to raise money to pretty up the streetscape while so many people are taking it in the gut thanks to cyclones, earthquakes, drought and greed (you know evildoers are making money off rice big-time right now). I’m all for nicer trash cans on every corner, and I’m as happy as the next Isabellaed-out denizen to have better eating options within walking distance, but $100 to $1,000 for tidbits under a tent seems a little excessive when Haitians are down to dirt for dinner. I’m not surprised to see Mr. Maroon billed as “special honoree.” But how in restaurant hell did someone who wants her legacy to be mobile meals get roped into this parochial exercise in onanism?
I hope whoever used my name to reserve at Benoit got more out of it than I would have. I almost always hide behind whomever I’m eating with, but when I called to reserve for my consort’s birthday I figured Alain Ducasse would have no idea who the hell I am (if he did, his minions would have responded to my pissed-off letter many years ago after we had a disastrous dinner and breakfast at his then-new auberge in Provence). Turned out this one-of-a-kind name was in the system with an 873 prefix. Stupidly, I did not let the reservationist rattle off the other digits so that I could play Nancy Drew. Now that I hear our onetime Paris lunch companion Jean-Jacques should be cooking the chicken as well as the quenelles and cassoulet, I’m half-relieved we will be eating somewhere else. Which we will be doing because no one bothered to answer my request to change the reservation to the early bird special. But in reading the initial reports on Barca BBQ, I’ve been reminded why it really is so important to eat anonymously. Freebies do skew your judgment. . . .
This year Enron on 12th Street should dole out a special award, for most shameless self-promotion in catering to the papal piehole. The spirit-moved one might win for sheer volume; every day the self-congratulation masked as “Benny loves me, this I know” was ramped up worse. But the “devoted” guy down in DC may have beat her by placing his own piece in the Post recounting all the ways he had brought Prada-red coals to Newcastle — plates specially made in Italy, food just the way the Vatican chef does it. Not only was it silly, it was unseemly. The Pope is not exactly Britney (although, as Bill Maher pointed out, they both have underwear issues). I just wonder which restaurateur got the autographed head shot to hang in the window.
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.
Did you hear the one about the pretentious chef downtown who set out to “revolutionize the burger”? His innovation does sound offaly good, with heart, liver, marrow and tongue all blended in with beefier parts of the cow. But I think he just re-invented the hot dog.