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.
Post Category → anti-egotist
Message in a mixer
Am I the only $15-a-year sucker wondering why a magazine would run a cover line touting a pull-out guide on “what’s in season now” right alongside a photo of pancakes topped with wild blueberries? It is the February issue, after all, and said fruit is a long time gone. Then again, the contents page features a frittata filled with asparagus. And don’t even get me going on the hypocrisy of a big name nattering on about eating less meat in the same week he’s insisting millions of readers run out and buy honkin’ slabs of pork. Having grown up in Arizona before the Colorado started running dry, I also have to say that any “green” issue that includes a fat advertorial promoting Las Vegas pretty much undermines itself. Even if the city could turn wine into water, it’s an eco-disaster no amount of local cauliflower could ever carbon-offset.
Acidic reflux
Back in those halcyon days when I was writing food columns for a protectively brilliant editor at the NYT magazine, a literary agent made an overture and I reluctantly agreed to go meet her in her office/apartment. It was like the worst kind of bad date: I thought she was interested in my unique voice; she thought I was in it for the Lotto. And I will never forget the rumpled legal pad she produced with all her brilliant ideas for books — she actually wanted me to write something off tired lists she had been flogging for years. I thought of her every time the Egotist came to town with his tattered yellow pages and pitched, yet again, a column on “shrimp shell stock.” We always said yeah, sure, and somehow it never materialized. Well, now that’s out of the way. And at least it seems a little fresher than the Juiceator. You know, that bullshit gadget Sunday Business hyped a year and a half ago?
In the middle of contemplating this, I went out to do errands and an elegant old woman stopped me on Columbus to ask timidly: “Is today Saturday, or Sunday?” I told her, then walked off thinking: Don’t feel bad, lady — you could be moving copy. (Ratafias, though? Convulsively better than shrubs.)