gastropoda

Two words you don’t ever want to see in the same graf of an e-tout: “upscale” and “Haiti.” Even to me, picking on flacks always feels kinda cruel, especially in an economy when any job is a job. But. Really. Did it occur to no one that nattering about lavish food and stylish guests might seem a bit, how you say, tone-deaf? And then to gold-plate the evening with lines like “the inherent challenge for us was creating a menu of Haitian-centric fare for a very discerning cosmopolitan audience”? Did no one think to divide the buffet between Port-au-Prince and Casa de Campo lines? Make the dire situation real? Of course I have a sick mind, but reading the edible lineup from grilled island shrimp to chocolate praline dacquoise made me wonder what the poor people were eating that night. Not, for sure, the “vegetarian option.”

The saddest thing I’ve read lately, at least in fud, was a Tweet praising Ireland for jumping on the burger train. I only spent a lunchtime in that benighted country, long enough to see how quickly the roads deteriorated once you crossed over from the British side, but I still think it’s profoundly sad that any passport-requiring destination would sell its soul for high-end McDonald’s. Did they learn nothing from dependence on one food (and can you say mad cow)? Why not at least reinvent the bangers with the champ?

And I know I’ve been overquoting the robber baron who boasted he could hire half the working class to kill the other half. But it really applies to the lowest rung on the Murdoch media ladder, where the serfs in the 99 percent are throwing rotten heirloom tomatoes at Occupy Wall Street, using every food angle to try to discredit a movement that could only improve their lot in miserable life. First there was the dissing of hippies for eating (donated) high-quality food rather than the typical fare of the poors. Then there was a bogus report of cooks going on strike because they had to feed regular homeless sorts rather than true believers. The newsroom sounds like a sweatshop where they themselves can barely stop to eat. And yet they beaver away, never seeing the real enemy. Clearly the pay and benefits are better at the broadsheet because the coverage is much more empathetic (read: rational). So here’s a thought: Someone set up a PayPal account to send pizzas to all those working for the Australian Pharaoh. Empathy through pepperoni.

Considering my lame track record with old-style publishers, I’m half-happy to see Amazon undercutting the system that made it so nearly impossible to sell something different without having its sharp corners dulled to fit into the corn hole. Especially this time of year, when every day I open the front door to find another pathetic recipe collection lying on the doormat. Either I’m on the worst mailing list in the business, or old-line publishers really have no idea what appeals. No names, to spare the guilty, but I can still recall the sludge on the plate of the latest restaurant to get a glossy homage. Anyone who pays $30 for this overproduced mess should get a coupon for free double orders from D’Artagnan.

Also, too, I was not surprised that the grim report from Texas on last meals went bouncing around the internets and email so fast. It had equal appeal to the hang-’em-high wingnuts, who think Scrooge was a wimp, and to us bleeding-heart libs, who both spurn the death penalty and empathize with the doomed. I’ve written before that I think the super saddest true food story ever told was of the condemned mental defective who said he wanted to save his dessert for later. And of course it figures it was a wingnut who had to go and spoil the so-called gravy train by ordering more food than any human could eat and then — wonder why? — not even being able to touch it. Their side keeps clinging to the old saying, but greed is not good.

Finally, where do I even begin with the Egopedist’s latest half-him/half-think-tank tirade? Are we talking junk food? Or fast food? Do we really need to trash organics and farmers’ markets and farmers who care enough to grass-feed cattle the way nature intended? Do we, with our uncredited help, really need to shame the couple in “Food, Inc.” even more for working two jobs and doing the drive-through to feed themselves and their kids? Do we — really? — ever fucking eat bland beans with plain rice with a glass of milk that, at that price, has to be produced with hormones and antibiotics?

No link because I hate to encourage. But mostly what I took away is that readers of a newspaper advertising $900 shoes and touting $245 prix fixes are supposed to reform their slovenly ways and suffer cheap, dirty birds after an hour in the kitchen. I don’t even eat chicken, but there’s no way in hell I would let my consort ingest one that can only be sold for that little because of all the corners cut in its rush to the supermarket. I haven’t fully worked my mind around this, but it just seems like one more disconnect between “journalists” and “real America.”  Do they not know from Taco Bell?

Left out of this whole debate is the minefield the supermarket has become. You go in to buy that cheap dirty bird and you’re going to pass the most amazing cornucopia in the history of mankind in the freezer aisle. Are you really going to bring home poulet perdu rather than nuke a few Hungry Mans? J’doubt it. So, yes, please, keep working the talking points and making it a choice between fatty/sugary/filling McMeals and dreary, bland, time-consuming fodder. That will get the asses onto the kitchen stools for sure.

Oh, and did anyone think to price out the kohrabi slaw? Or the Brussels sprouts slaw with all the exotica? I wonder what the poor folks are making of saffron aioli. . .

I take maybe too much pride in being a college dropout who somehow managed to get jobs on five newspapers across America and even wind up as a reporter-reshaping editor for most of them. I also remember two stints of long and miserable days crafting crap into readable stories for the hometown paper. So it kills my soul to see a brilliant idea squandered as fucking mush. Even on my high school paper, for Zenger’s sake, Rule No. 1 was: Nut graf before the jump! Beyond that, I just read the stupidity to take it apart the way some overpaid/overcompensated editor did not. Can a scale really replace a set of measuring spoons, as the photo-illustration implies? Are there not rules for measuring? My mom always said “a pint’s a pound the world round.” And one cup of whole nuts yields one cup chopped. Plus there are dozens of scales on the market, and I use one probably 15 years old. Does digital matter? Ounces equal ounces. But five ounces is five ounces. Not “are.” No wonder the scale “has failed to become a must-have tool.” Even its advocates cannot communicate why it matters.

And speaking of WSJournal disconnects, WTF were the designers and editors thinking producing a full-page spread on pie with photos that looked as if a toddler had done the crusts with two left hands? If I were one of the top 400 who control most of the wealth in this country, I’d fire that pastry chef’s ass. The look of a pie directly affects the experience of a pie. Crappy crusts make for crappy eating, even if you have smoked the chocolate for the filling. Someone on Twitter speculated that they were merely trying to evoke a down-home feeling. If so, they shoulda used Pillsbury. That’s what the poor people are eating tonight.

Which leads me to the most ridiculous brouhaha since, well, the last time food idjits got taken. What fascinated me less than the fact that a bunch of dolts were duped with processed lasagne was how the story progressed, from blogs to the hometown paper and back to blogs again. You’d think no one knew how to get out and report these days. And everyone who jumped up to attack the flacks who did the duping seems to forget that old story, possibly apocryphal, about Winston Churchill asking a woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. When she said yes, he asked about doing so for five. She indignantly responded: “What do you think I am?” And he said: “Ma’am, we’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just negotiating the price.” Cynic that I am, I did a little noodling on the Google and turned up no end of bloghos who happily touted that garbage for nothing more than a free sample. The outraged should be glad they got a couple of drinks and a reason to put on their “rig” and get out and mingle. Besides, didn’t Panchito just say this kind of chemicals-and-additive carping is all about class? I’m sure ConAgra just wants to make sure the poors have fud.

Zabar’s “lobster salad” is becoming the $Palin of food stories. The hometown paper is keeping the fart-reported-as-typhoon alive, but you’d think everyone there would be a bit embarrassed to always be regurgitating others’ reporting. In the old days it would have been the jumping-off point for an investigation into what else might be passed off as luxury fare in tight times. Maybe some enterprising flack should fire off a release — instead of the most expensive omelet, the most un-short-ribbed burger?

I see either readers or editors are agreeing that too many cooks spoil the broth. It’s back to Mom and one solid recipe. Good thing for Obamacare, though: She can keep the nothing-to-add goslings on her insurance plan.

And I guess I have to wade into the melted butter even though my biggest fan (not in the Loudon sense) has defended himself well, and one of the best food bloggers out there crafted a verbal-Astaire response as well. I’ll just say what I did all those years ago when a guy whose strongest credential was having eaten at the McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps was first anointed to pass judgment on an art form that probably means more to the city’s bottom line than even theater: WTF were the bosses thinking? Eric Alterman had a good warning that the worst Chimp enabler ever should “stay the heck away from politics,” but letting him back anywhere near food has just been proven equally embarrassing. What the AA is selling is not cuisine for the noble heartlanders. It’s processed crap, tarted up. (Whored down?) I got an email within hours from a friend in Philadelphia who is not even in the food world saying he spotted at least four egregious overstatements, and of course anyone sentient is still waiting for the correction on whether Les Halles is a very busy bestselling writer/television star’s restaurant 10 years on. Mostly, though, the drivel illustrated how far removed your average op-ed writer is from the red states they all claim to celebrate. The rubes aren’t rubes eating from Applebee’s salad bars. They must understand Liberace is not Fannie Farmer.

But why do all silly roads lead back to Panchito these days, I ask facetiously? How could readers have survived all those years of his droning about the cliché that is tuna tartare only to be informed that you can put pickles up yourself? Jeebus. Maybe out in “flyover country” — or in the birthplace of Ste Alice’s 40-year-old — they don’t know from crudo. But come on. This is New York. We have sushi in Duane Reades. And the cure for it one aisle over.

I didn’t read it, but I did see a widely disseminated link to a piece on “what not to eat at chain restaurants.” And I’ll admit I’m a total food snob, but I just had to wonder how cretinous Americans have become. Or how out of touch journalists are. People don’t go to the Cheesecake Factory because they want to eat well. They’re thoroughly programmed Americans: They wanna shovel. The whole silly story could be summed up with another budget line, cutting expenses for whichever section assigned the piece: Don’t eat at chain restaurants. Just say no to shit.

And in other nonsense, I wonder if the link-baiters who compile lists of kid-friendly restaurants understand the unintended consequences. I see something like that and make a mental note in ALL CAPS to stay the hell away.

I slogged all the way to the last word of Time’s cover story on the end of ocean fish and just Tweeted, then sort of gave up. But my first reaction keeps coming back to me. Why would that huge feature (by weekly magazine standards) miss the whale in the newsroom? It kept hammering away at the idea that fish farming is essential because the global population keeps growing. And it never once paused to say, “Hey, you know what? Fewer mouths to feed would solve this problem before nature has to bring out even bigger guns than earthquakes and tsunamis.” On a planet running out of water, multiplying the loaves and barramundi is not enough. But I’m just being silly. I’m sure it won’t be long till they run a huge cover story on advances in in vitro.