Author Archives → regina

Spanish for over the top

Remind me never to play matchmaker with anything more volatile than avocado and cilantro. The disengaged sideline is the best place to enjoy a party like Zarela’s 20th — I only had to concentrate on keeping my consort upright despite the high-octane margaritas. She does know how to marinate the guests. The bar was like a boozy A train, but we wisely listened when she insisted we move upstairs and then had to take all the crazy sightings secondhand — as someone said, “Where else can you see Gael Greene and Dr. Ruth at the same table?” A rhinestone cowgirl was also there but not throwing her usual “I’m a movie star” pissy fit, at least as much as I heard. My most in-focus memory is of Zarela’s consort helping to ferry the star of the show, a sacahuil, like a washtub-sized tamal made with fresh masa steamed in banana leaves. To this Arizona refugee it was like time travel into the landscape of memory over reality, but it probably went over or under most of the guests who still believe Mexican means fajitas. I skipped the chicken and pork in solidarity with the First World arrogants and had to wonder why the creamy rice with poblanos and corn is always better at the restaurant than when I make it from the cookbook. What was most fascinating was realizing that I remembered being in that space’s previous incarnation, back in another cycle when wine bars were the great white-and-red hope. It’s just too bad the inimitable Seymour Britchky’s last book was in 1991, when there was no Mexican category, only “Latin American.” It would be fascinating to see what has lasted two decades. Will the annoying newish wine bars on Columbus one day revert to real restaurants reflecting the real city?

Red alert

Not coincidentally, after our brush with the movie star, we watched “Midnight Cowboy” again, and I could only think of the Michelin when we saw Ratso doing his “I’m walkin’ here” routine. The poor guide is about that unmoored, judging by the panel it has set up to discuss restaurant reviewing in New York to try to shine some attention on the new edition. One speaker is Rogetgirl, the other a reviewer best described as “former.” And what either Daily denizen has to do with the Restaurant Witness Protection Program is a mystery. Or, come to think of it, maybe it’s not.

And it could be worse. They could be featuring the Mammamia who is filling out the Skinnygirl caricature on an unnecessary new restaurant/service web site. I have to confess I dissed yelp.com early on. But I now think the future may lie more with the youthful rabble than with the endless repackaging now going on. The internets is starting to feel like a supermarket putting clean Saran and fresh sell-by dates on old chicken. Somehow I don’t think deadlydull.com has a bright future, even if they do “Scanner Darkly” it.

Sleeping dogs

Bullshit detectors out in the newly ordained Eden on the Willamette are emitting some curious signals. Five years out of close proximity to the making of sausage, I don’t quite know what to think. But there certainly is a lot of A & P overlap when you google blogs.

All hands on book

For all my disdain for Enron on 12th Street, I have to say I am impressed that reviewers for the cookbook competition are held to a higher standard than those at a couple of food portals I could name: You wanna say a recipe collection is good or bad, you gotta try at least two recipes. These two have already decided they like the look of the new Citizen Cake cookbook, without ever dusting up the kitchen with flour and cocoa powder, and happily recommend that readers run out and plunk down $35 (oh, wait, that detail is not disclosed). Right now I’m reveling in Kingsley Amis’ “On Drink,” and his take on wine writing applies just as acerbically to cookbook “reviewing:” “You can commit to memory everything Lichine has to say about Gevrey-Chambertin and still have no idea whether you would like the wine. Reading must be combined with as much drinking experience as pocket and liver will allow.” So is it worth trying those chocolate chip cookies I was going to start with before considering the weird shit?

Your currency on crack

Once again, I have to thank Islamochrist that crooks and liars installed the first CEO president (or was he supposed to be the first MBA?) I went to buy another nearly quart-size jar of Maille’s Dijon mustard and it cost $1.50 more than the last one, just a few months ago. Talk about feeling like an American in Paris. Now we can’t even get a taste of Eutopia without paying a premium, and it’s only gonna get worse. We’ll be priced out of extraordinary olive oil, Parmigiano, balsamic vinegar, great olives, Maldon salt, Calvados — everything, come to think of it, that King George has never experienced for all his money and opportunity. Merde, as they say — even the stoned wheat crackers from Canada are going to cost like Carr’s. I’m all for eating locally, but I never thought it would be rammed down my throat by a government that couldn’t shoot straight.

Nose to tail

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.

Long knives

In other candidate charades with food world analogies, I cannot understand why old media lets Herr Giuliani get away with euphemizing his current wife’s former career. Everybody knows she sold medical equipment demonstrated on dogs that were then offed. In other words, she was a nurse like Sweeney Todd was a sushi chef.

What would Elton say?

I guess I have to weigh in on the Saint marching into Union Square, since even my friends outside this incestuous little world reacted to it. One, a cynic in Philadelphia, noted that the shilling for the book “served as one of the more prominent personals ads I’ve seen in a long time (Currently, Ms. Waters is not in love, though she longs for ‘a good pal to be in the world with’).” My by-multimedia-possessed consort got me to watch the lurching video, and I greatly enjoyed the interaction with my favorite go-Cheney-yourself vendor. Talk about a reality check against a table covered in countless small piles of produce in separate bowls waiting for the muse to alight. Of course the market, when I got there midmorning, was swarming with video crews and other digital aggressors; I watched one Hispanic witness with child being led into saying the prices are higher than in supermarkets. Oddly enough, it was also overrun (well, overwaddled) with the most seriously obese women I have ever seen in one place in Manhattan. (I hope they weren’t looking for love.) Her place in history is assured; there’s no reason to come down off the pedestal and get everyone stewing about what she’s done for us lately besides put out a book to buy. That aioli was pretty damn good the first time she had it written up.

When the levees choke

You know it’s predawn in America when food manufacturers start begging for more regulation. In a week when E. coli was detected in lettuce yet again, even after all the blustering from the same Pinocchio who also promised to rebuild Katrina, the WSJournal reported that private companies have come to realize they need public help policing what they sell. To quote the president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, “A strong FDA is in our interest.” And when big business gets hungry, government has to feed it. Grover Norquist, the phone in the bathroom is ringing. Your salmonella tub is about to run out of water.

Little oysters on the prairie

I can’t reveal the identities or the publications, but I had an exchange recently that keeps making me laugh. I had said a poor editor was “saddled with some pretty lame old mares,” and the person I was talking to responded, “Oh, he could get rid of [insert big male name here] if he really wanted to.” Funny. I thought my consort was the only one who took that guy for a gelding.

We’re out of BlackBerries?

A new candidate for most idiotic invention ever has to be the $149.95 machine advertised over on allhatnocattle for some reason. You stick it on the refrigerator and talk to it whenever you run out of eggs or flour, then it prints out a shopping list. Apparently no task is so elementary that a gadget can’t be designed to simplify it. The insane thing is that while the shopper who would really need that silliness would be of the age when CRS has set in (Can’t Remember Shit), the list it generates looks too tiny for fading eyes to decipher. Maybe someone can invent a magnifying glass, four AA batteries not included.

A million little pies

The most basic rule of reviewing cookbooks has to be that you can’t judge them by their text. A recipe collection is only as good as its recipes, and the only honest way to determine that is to take the book into the kitchen and beat it up. Otherwise, you’re like a restaurant critic who only reports that the striped bass looked delicious, not whether it was done right or had any flavor. They’re how-to books, for Child’s sake, not vicarious eating opportunities. I know the goal is to be skinny, but this is typing clearly stretched too thin.

Or are you just happy to see him?

Speaking of one of the first clogs, as thegurglingcod dubbed them, the faux innocence is so pervasive that a plastic case meant to keep a banana from getting squished is featured without even the faintest nod to its obvious resemblance to something a lot less family-oriented. But I guess no one would ever ask an 8-year-old if that was a dildo in his lunchbox. And of course the silly thing is that no banana sold in this country is ever soft enough to need a Bunker.