Summer’s other sad news reminded me of a coworker at a certain big media outlet who mocked a certain food&word genius for “showing up at the White House looking like an unmade bed.” In retrospect, maybe DC needed more like him and fewer of the polished but incurious.
Author Archives → regina
One bottle of Barbaresco for the price of three
So one night we all really don’t want to go out for dinner but I feel too guilty about ramming pasta down our throats, so we three go out for dinner thinking at least it’ll be at a sidewalk cafe and at least it’ll be a chance to check out a place we’ve never been. An hour and $$$ later, we’re trudging back home wondering if a flashy restaurant that is mostly empty is actually a front for the types of people who laundered money from Russian catering halls. And why are three profoundly mediocre “Italian” restaurants each only one avenue apart?
Food truck giving away cooked asparagus
I had a book client sorta recently who never mentioned his mother without noting that she was looking up at us at that very moment. I always laughed, cuz I definitely know the feeling. Which makes me almost more amused than pissed that strangers would find a dusty ol’ website and choose the famously departed as excuses to fire off hate email to someone who has always been 50,000 leagues from stardom. The first decided she knows exactly why my biggest fan called me a bitch, and she is damned if she’s gonna waste any time on me. Hitting send musta been like an orgasm (and waiting for a response must be like blue balls). And the second was such a devoted, dedicated fan of Julia he had no idea she was singular. I look forward to looking up at ‘em both one day.
“Get the cat out of the shot”
Otherwise I really do not know what to say. Working on it, tho. No. One. Like. Him.
Vienna, 79
Nothing makes me feel older than watching the savagery directed at the Forelock a full 14 years after I was making my slow way on broken-femur crutches down Columbus Avenue when a then-very-influential flack crossed my path and yukked: “Oh, they got you, did they?” I was once a queen bee of bitchery. Today I’m a ladybug.
Suited orange
Relatedly, it seems like only yesterday the hometown paper was assuring us the Molto Ego I was always accused of maligning was busily and blithely plotting his comeback. Now it looks as if he could be heading Weinstein’s way. How did they get so suckered? Musta been flack magic.
Everything, Katie
Also will always be mystified by cookbook reviews that buy into the illusion that the name on the cover did anything more than lend their name and throw a few coins to a plethora of collaborators. Especially those by reviewers who really know how the andouille is made. #howdidwewindupwithaconmaninchiefanyway
Sumo. Oranges. Bulletproof vest.
Things I coulda gone to my urn without hearing: “How do you know a restaurant is safe to eat it in? By the smell. It’s just like a nursing home.” Oh. Kay.
Burp that frozen Adam’s apple
Pretty rich to see Panchito denigrating an actress for having the audacity to run for governor without working her way up from UWS coop board. Wasn’t his experience at being the new Mimi mostly having eaten at the McD’s at the Spanish Steps?
Serrano, saluting
Also pretty rich to see the high holies all up in arms over a mere ice cream. We were just in Buffalo, at the Broadway Market, where we bought a Last Supper rendered in chocolate. At some point we will bite the head offa Chocolate Jesus and be able to thank the Catholic parishioners who molded it. Right now, though, I’m imagining someone Instagraming Sweet Jesus in an egg spoon. And blowing the world up.
Once was a food editor who insisted recipes specify “hot red pepper sauce”
Way back in the last century my consort and I took the Tabasco tour on an awesome trip through Cajun Country, and I still remember we were only allowed to see the factory through a window because of “liability.” I was pissed at the time but now see it was simply another reflection of how far ahead they are on issues. Now it’s global warming. Denial is a pretty crappy defense, even as sriracha eats their lunch.
Showers the color of Champagne
This is how pathetic we the sane were: We were merely looking forward to taco trucks on every corner. Turns out the traitors were strategizing to guarantee caviar carts at every desk. Joke’s on them, though: We may have to walk a little farther for our Tuesday indulgence, but the 1 percent are hogging all the Beluga. Deplorables will have to continue continue scrabbling for off-brand Wonder Bread crumbs. Using the bags for shoes.
A Coke and a syringe
I always wonder whether diabetes would be epidemic today if Americans had been sold mayonnaise instead of ketchup with their fries. Fat and fat have to be better than fat and sugar. Not to mention the satiety factor: You don’t need many duck-fat-roasted fingerlings dunked in chipotle mayonnaise to feel very happy very fast. They’re like a potato Spritz.
Sheet pans, blindingly white
I keep thinking of how the Butter Guzzler was too far ahead of her time. She let her true colors show and was ostracized. Today she’d be a wingnut heroine, waving her doffed hood like a proudly bloody apron.
Also, too, as it becomes increasingly clear what a reality shitshow fraud America was sold (as this great piece on the reverse-engineering demonstrates), it’s also worth considering how the star-making machinery made so many sleazy characters in the fud world household names with ridiculously lucrative empires built on the backs of the gullible. You’d think we’da learned from the Frugal Gourmet, but no. It was all a Croc of orange mierda.
Billy Beer, now kosher
Jimmy Carter was not far ahead of his time, although he did install solar panels on the White House roof 40+ years ago. All the news out of Mar-a-Lago, staffed by foreign workers, makes you realize how mean-spirited it was for Republicans to force him to give up his peanut farm. He coulda opened an agriturismo to sell access to his presidency. Not enough $lust in his heart, though.