Eater National had a pretty good take on the Schnorrer’s new gig as etiquette expert: Essentially, he’s a capitalist tool, his advice spread over multiple clicks to generate page views for advertisers. My question is why these old curs are doing new tricks as 21st-century Miss Mannerses to begin with. Especially when they don’t even know the polite way to ask for a check.
Midway through listening to ceaseless remembrances of Daniel Schorr on NPR, I Tweeted that it was almost like hearing obituaries for journalism itself. No one seemed to see him as inspiration to fight back against stenography and the wingnut noise machine, only as “we’ll never see his like again.” And so the world is left with nonsense like the NYDaily News piece on a few old fat white people in Flushing who are bitching because their Key Food shut down for lack of business in an increasingly Asian neighborhood that is thriving with markets selling anything a real American would need if he/she weren’t too “Gran Torino”-threatened to go shopping.
Their gripe is that “other grocery stores that carry mostly American products” will be too far away. Hate to tell the overfed, but sriracha is now as American as soy sauce. The reporter, whose name sounds like someone who would have been brutally discriminated against in an earlier era, dutifully regurgitates the silly fear that Asian markets do not sell pet food (cue the “cats are for stir-frying” meme).
The sickest part of the whole tempest in a handbasket is that, despite the “food fight rages” headline, the last graf quotes the manager of the store that will replace the one they’re bitching about. Who says they will get everything they are whining for. So the News, once a paper that championed immigrants to build a circulation base, is just pandering to Teabagger jingoism. The tape wasn’t even edited and the reporter fell for it. She should be banished to Arizona to explore the state cuisine: Mexican.
Had a great discussion about the Mr. Cutlets ethics kerfuffle the other night. Over a free dinner. None of us were surprised by his accepting big-name chefs’ “gifts” of expensive food. Or, really, by his not disclosing to either his editors or his readers that he didn’t pay and his judgment might be skewed in covering friends. Neither is without precedent in this funny little world we professionals eat in. (Rated D.D.) But did he have to smugly crap all over the little people whom regular brides and grooms hire? Luckily, a few of them chimed in to comment that even bigger names than he snared do . . . catering. My favorite response, though, was a question about the column that did not even need to be asked: Did you pull this out of your butt?
I wanted to rant about Salon’s “too many farmers’ markets!” story, but the more I reread it the less I understood what the point was. Farmers have always wanted the best price for what they grow, and if their neighbors won’t or can’t pay of course they will truck it to the happy suckers on Union Square. Lancaster County could try luring in rich fucks who want weekend getaways and good food, but then the farmland would be converted to housing and what good would that do anybody? And given that this city of 8 million mouths has a mere 49 Greenmarkets, I’d say we’re a long way from oversaturation. Let’s go back to bashing farmers’ markets as elitist.
Also, too, let’s trash reusable grocery bags. A new study found they’re about as clean as money (well, it didn’t put it exactly like that). As if Americans needed an excuse to give up and go back to wasting thousands of plastic bags on a single shopping trip. Right now every conservation effort with the slimmest possibility of helping should be cheered, not mocked. The earth has a big hurting hole in it, and it’s spewing what we’re so dependent on for a plastic-based lifestyle. As our beef addiction makes clear, bacteria are not that scary at all. You can wash a shopping bag easier than a beach. (Yes, I’m getting sappy. It’s just that my big fear is reincarnation.)
Which makes it all the more obvious that the internets are going to be the death of old media, but not for the reason anyone expected. The more I see the establishment outlets dumbing down, the more I wonder why anyone would pay for the paper products. The NYT now prints online comments that even a small-town paper would properly copy-edit, if not reject outright. And the New Yorker, of all magazines, is running cookbook reviews online that make the Drivelist read like Elizabeth David. (Almost.) I only slogged through a couple, but seriously: 5,000 words on almond paste in a world where you could, you know, look it up? Drone, blather, repeat.
The most disturbing story I read all week was about the Subway franchise going up with every floor of the new building at the World Trade Center. We’re looking at an extinction-level disaster in the Gulf thanks to human hubris, and someone decided a deli in an elevator was a good idea? Yes, I’m an absurd eco-snob and would have less of a problem if the sandwiches being dispensed from this insanity were made with real ingredients; if something awful happened and a hero happened to be the last meal of a construction worker it might seem less grim on environmental and spiritual levels. But what the hell ever happened to packing a lunch? My dad worked construction on Arizona highways and always took soup in a Thermos. No composting was needed. Tesellating cheese 50 stories off terra firma can’t be what nature intended. Besides, without rats, can it really be fast food?
So are PopTarts, but that hasn’t stopped some foolish chef from not only reinventing them but also hiring a flack to tout his/her idiocy. I mean, really: These crimes against patisserie originated in a good bakery somewhere; Big Food just ran with the idea of pie for breakfast and the toaster as an oven. Way, way back when I was in high school in I got an A on an assignment in General Business analyzing advertisements when I noted that everything essential was omitted from PopTarts’. Today it’s just profoundly sad that neither a baker nor his/her promoter would know there’s such a thing as an empanada. Or strudel. Not for the first time, I realize American cuisine should be renamed Bastardized.
I don’t want to drive any traffic to the atrocity, but a particular WSJ blog post pulled off a pretty impressive hat trick: whoring (blatantly touting a press lunch with sponsor, venue, product); pimping (writers on parade), and boring (despite warnings that the video was horrific, I still couldn’t click on it). The frozen image from the video, though, was rather revealing — it looked like the beginning of a really bad porn film, one involving pulled corks. And the hed only added to that queasy feeling: “A sparkler with that sausage?” Maybe they should start rating wines with winks?
Ripping off Wynton Marsalis, I always say the best way to make a million in food is to start with 10 million. I tried catering on my own after leaving restaurant school, and it’s damn difficult doing it all by yourself, and help costs more than ingredients. So I found the huge takeout on all the new wannabe Rick’s Picks with their cute concoctions to be naive to the point of sad. And I see I was not the only one. The same day as starbursts were all over Dining, the op-ed page made my point: “Entrepreneur? Or unemployed?” Call it the sound of two sections failing to communicate.
After the WSJ’s fascinating but depressing piece on hyped-up flavors in processed crap, I griped over at the Epi-Log that fresh fruit doesn’t get enough marketing muscle behind it. And then what should appear in the pile of mail on our doormat but a CD from the watermelon promotion people. As my consort wondered: Watermelon needs promotion? It is, to quote the packet, an American icon. Unfortunately, we both know from traveling to 12 states in 1992 for our ill-fated harvest book that farmers are almost always shaken down for marketing money that mostly goes into lobbyist pockets. But it’s still sad to see a product that retails for literally pennies a pound had potential profits siphoned off to pay some chef somewhere to come up with watermelon . . . caprese. Much as I love mozzarella, bacon would almost have been a better partner. And, to quote Ogden Nash, liquor is quicker. A bendy straw and some vodka and watermelons would sell themselves.
Okay, I guess I have to address the fact that this has been “if you don’t have anything nice to say about Dining, come sit next to me” week. Holy weed-wacked, did e-correspondents get riled! I had a hard time forging on past the jump myself, but I can tell link bait when I smell it. At the very least the megaturd should have included a recipe or two, given how much money smart entrepreneurs around the country are raking in selling medical marijuana in edible form. Or maybe a tasting box.
All mockery aside, the piece was surprisingly irresponsible. Mexico is awash in blood thanks to Americans’ appetite for drugs, our puritanical attitudes and our absurd gun laxity (not to mention the corporate control of our overlords). This ain’t tacos, Mexican style. Tons of dope are involved, and really ugly shit is happening as a result; Tarantino at his most lurid could not dream up some of the stuff I’ve read. But Señor Slim can’t possibly want that reality check. And surely the very proper NYTimes ran stories on bathtub gin when Prohibition was at its bloodiest?
Coming soon: Cooking pre-oiled seafood.
And reTweeting myself, I also have to say: Christ on a tortilla, Dining! You’d think Rick Bayless had never cooked rubber chicken before. How can you suck your way to the top of Enron on 12th Street if you can’t crank out dinner for 200? It was really the kind of piece you’d expect to see about a hometown chef in the Podunk Crier. And the hed should have been Someone’s in the Kitchen with Access, because the story went nowhere. Unfortunately, of course, that hed was taken.
Call me cynical, but I also wonder about the slipping standards at The Daily Goliath. I tasted some sparkling tea at the Chelsea Market that was endorsed by the powerful one, and trust me: You would be laughed out of your own cocktail party if you poured it. Most recently the wielder of the unicorn horn touted the food shops at the old Limelight as a “temple for food.” I accidentally wound up on the street where they fester and stopped in, after spotting the “peak season” produce market outside that looked like the Food Shitty compared with the Greenmarket just a few blocks away. (Variety is never a good sign with fruits and vegetables, especially in a region still waking up to asparagus only.) It was a depressing warning of how cynical whoever the rental agent was. I walked in and right back out — the place had a Rouse-to-the-max feel, like one of the many incarnations of the South Street Seaport, and seemed about as removed from the New Amsterdam Market as Smithfield is from Flying Pigs. Someone needs to put down that pinkie. And all the press releases.
I squander a few minutes every morning railing at my poor consort about the ads on the first few pages of the hometown paper: “Who buys $2,000 shoes/$4,200 bags/$20,000 necklaces? No wonder reporters can’t cover this city. Who are these people?” Well, now I have my answer. Contributors. How else to explain the most tone-deaf thing since Marie Antoinette yammered about brioche? In the same section with a story on homeless guys getting haircuts for free, readers are treated to a straight-faced service piece on where to take a toddler for fine fucking dining. Most people struggle to afford a babysitter. They’re going to drag the Baby Jesus along for $32 spaghetti with butter at Robuchon? At least the offense also addressed the elephant in the dining room: The misery inflicted on people who paid to get the hell away from kids throwing spoons on the floor and demanding special orders from the kitchen. I think I’ve railed before about our all-time worst high-end eating experience, the dinner we suffered through eons ago at Jean-Louis at the Watergate where a couple of universe masters had brought an up-too-late kid and refused to let the shrieking interrupt their evening — screw everyone else. I brought the receipt home and kept it on my bulletin board for years. We could have bought round-trip airfare to Paris for what we wasted on a ruined evening. At least now I know I should have found the accommodating coat check, retrieved a stroller and beaten the narcissism out of the offending breeders with it.