All I have to say about the new clogger on the block is that he will be cranking it out on a site that actually thought “grandma hides cocaine in bra” was one of the top four news stories one hour. The one that used to give a flying fig about copy under a byline, about making sure it was generated by said byline. And while I could never top Stephen King’s observation in Time that “60 is the new 50 — and dead is the new alive,” I must note that the baseball cap is the new toupee. Eat your roots out, sorry old waiters.
Post Category → birdcage liners
The truth can be adjusted
Random phrases stuck in my cranial sieve: Ghostwriters in the meat. If you feed them, they will blog. The Freaking section. Shafer for sheriff. And, in honor of the report finding the underfinanced, overextended FDA could not find shit in spinach if you handed it to it in a bag: Take the sushi. Leave the Chinese dumplings.
You say it’s spinach
Ray Sokolov in the WSJ had an admirably clear-headed take on the fight over which devious cook invented the concept of vegetables as WMDeception for kids. He actually tried the obviously crappy recipes, looked at the ridiculous proportion of desserts in the grifter’s book and came away speaking truth to sour grapes: They both suck. Now can they please just go away?
Time has come today
With no help needed, I can find infinite reasons to cringe at what has appeared under my byline in the last 24 years in this peculiar business. But I always rather like the lede I came up with for a little feature for Metropolitan Home eons ago: “Fondue is like Danish furniture — always on the verge of a comeback when it really never goes out of style.” But you know how kids are today. They think everything was consigned to the junk heap of food fads just so they could rediscover it. And so I was almost pleased to see great minds at both a sophisticated food section and a dumber-by-the-issue food magazine both running in the same gutter. At least the latter was aware that teak rules.
And, much as it pains me to admit this, the home of the Human Scratch N Match clearly knew that queso fondue is not “fundido” but “chile con.” The operative verb is dip, and the melted cheese should be a coating, not a filling. Somehow I suspect Velveeta would push a lot more buttons than a $20,000 coffee machine at the same time Starbucks has decided things are so dire in Chimpville that its surname is the way to go. But no, let ’em drink flowers in their Champagne.
Stick to your attars
I can’t say where I heard this, but the world’s most extreme example of Journalism Lite is apparently battening down the hatches against incoming assaults on his credibility from the restaurant world. I shouldn’t be mean, considering food was considered a totally trivial pursuit when I left the NYTimes the first time, in 1983, but you have to admit there is a difference between sustenance and Youth Dew — one keeps you alive, the other is only essential as a tomb deodorizer. The guy is pretty clearly guilty on all charges, but I got my laugh while Googling one, that “George” is not the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. The first non-sponsored hits all led not to Paris but Las Vegas. I also happened upon an interview with the new Jules Verne proprietor in which he joked that his next restaurant would open on Mars. Just as I suspected, the Mojave Desert is overpopulated.
Paving the road to Wellville
I can’t imagine surimi is any better for you than the steak of the sea even with mercury in it. But I’m no expert, and the one Time magazine found said it best: Readers are done no favors by single-food scare stories. On a petty level, I did wonder why the store next door was, yet again, given a pass in the testing; it only is about the biggest seafood retailer in town. And it should not have taken a listen to Brian Lehrer to hear from a real authority how the dangerous stuff actually gets into the tuna to begin with. Phyllis Richman predicted many years ago that sushi would become the new hamburger. If we can swallow the reality of mad cow and E. coli, what’s a little industrial spillover? We do like to leave the lights on and the microwaves humming in this country. . . .
In other nutrition nuttiness, let the “consumer advocates” rail against NYC’s new rule requiring certain restaurants to post calorie counts. As I must have said a thousand times, I have not eaten a Mrs. Fields cookie since learning back in the last century that each one contains about 260 calories. And I was, back then, a scholar when it came to the back of Fritos bags. So all those defenders of the public’s right to be stupid, the ones who say anyone can easily discern the difference between a bucket of chicken wings and a salad, should be sentenced to Southwest-salad-with-crispy-chicken hell. With Big Gulp cholesterol drugs for the ride.
By contrast, I was happily surprised by the junk brochure from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia that my consort dropped off on my desk the other day. A promotion for a health web site, it included not just a notice of a “dark chocolate and red wine reception” but a photo of and recipe for a salad made with warm goat cheese in a panko crust. We’ve come a long way from the “pasta makes you fat” attitude toward healthful eating. I’m not sure, though, I would want a tour of the Mutter Museum after that reception. Elephantiasis is a terrible petit four.
You say saucier
Just bitching as the BS backs up: Is there anything duller than someone else’s struggle to knock off the LBs? Am I cynical in thinking Southern is seductive but necrophilia is creepy? Could anyone really be shocked, shocked that ol’ Rach’ might not actually consume the crap she endorses? (I was happily surprised, however, to see some smart editors jumping off the SS Cretinous.) And if you’re not even a real critic, what is the point in writing about a neighborhood restaurant for millions of readers merely to trash it? If it sucked, why would you even go back? I can’t wait for the flat-out rave for the one-step-up-from-Olive-Garden headed for the mothership. . . .
Let it blow
Anyone else notice the insidious trend on a couple of the “serious” food blogs? It’s creeping Rachaelism. Throw out an EVO here, and a yum there, and pretty soon you’re talking real drivel.
And speaking of dreck, and not feeling bad about it, the NYT’s sin was not only hiring a wrong-about-absolutely-everything wingnut but allowing a “contributing columnist” to phone in a few centimeter-deep thoughts to be awarded prime display. Chicken soup gives you colds. Breast-feeding gives kids allergies. This tossed-off crazy salad made Andy Rooney look like Socrates crossed with George Carlin.
But then these are high times for misdemeanors down by the Taj Sulzberger. What was that Chipotle Grill Bizday/Metro/Styles mishmash all about, anyway, besides filling up column inches amid the house ads? And the Indian restaurants viewed through the cloudy eyes of an academic? The hell he says. Holy Mother of Teresa: I’m an alien but eat with my hands at Saravanaas, and so do half the regulars there on a given day (fingers make amazing pincers for rice and sauce). The only good part was that it made me even more appreciative of how vibrant and rapidly evolving the real India is. What would a sociologist long out of Bologna possibly make of Molto?
Choking on chicken
A more clever writer than I had the perfect take on DI/DO’s bizarre take on food allergies in children: Someone looks to have been poached in the crazy sauce. And if Mr. Sneaky Food gets away with saying worse than that on national teevee, why are we all so hesitant to call a pignoli a nut?
I had actually dropped $6.95 on a copy of Harper’s in December after spotting a cover line on how hyped that “trend” is, and I had actually thought the debate was closed after reading that taut takedown. Fear is America’s most lucrative industry anymore, though, so it’s no wonder the next allergy item I read was on Slashfood: Some delis in Wegmans supermarkets will no longer allow unaccompanied minors to order food for fear of the big A. As if it wasn’t bad enough that you can no longer get a peanut on a plane and have to suffer pretzels that would choke a Chimp. Forget the nanny state. The crazy mommy state is going to be the death of all of us.
Cleaving the polpette
If you read only the Human Scratch N Match in the Daily News, you might think her employer has no copy editors. Having done that work for so many years, I suspect they’re just the all-too-common passive-aggressive kind. If she wants to say ricotta is exhilarated, they are going to give her that and all those extra commas she likes so much. If she wants to drop a little fancy French and confuse a mouth with a log, the idiocy is all hers. Grapes permeate, dessert proffers, a journey is storied — they’ll slap a headline on it and move on to something more important, maybe the toilet habits of ready-for-rehab celebrities. But I hope whoever handled this latest assault on the language at least had a pang at letting porchetta into print with the description “light on its feet.” Sounds like the walking dead in Babeland.
When Fresh Direct goes stale
Sometimes the horseshit you read actually makes perfect sense. For a developer contemplating a Ferry Plaza-esque market in a city that has Greenmarkets, Grand Central, Chelsea Market, Fairway, Zabar’s, even Dean & Deluca, not to mention Chinatown and Curry Hill and E.B. White’s reality of myriad small towns all connected on one island, of course the right consultant would be a guy who thinks that what this city needs is a biscuit purveyor in the most remote location imaginable. Batali on a tripe truck has a certain appeal, but really. The whole project reeks of Bridgemarket. Which means it will end up as a Food Emporium at best. And next they’ll be telling us little plates have supplanted big-ass steaks. . . .
Is that memoir done yet?
For 27 years I’ve driven my consort crazy by distilling the semantics class I took in high school with a “textbook” by S.I. Hayakawa. Anyone today who even remembers him probably recalls only the senator* who seemed to suffer from narcolepsy, but he deserves to be quoted into infinity for one observation: The word is not the thing. Or, to put it another way: Words have no power until your brain charges them. (You disagree? Try saying “asshole” to Ferran Adria and see what reaction you get.) All of which is a roundabout way of marveling, yet again, at how a restaurant critic for a once-respected newspaper could confuse a television persona with the food on his plate. I don’t remember who said this, but one of my favorite quotes ever is: Sometimes the news is in the noise. And sometimes it’s in the silence. Bluster makes good teevee. What the fuck does it have to do with cooking?
Oh. Right. This is the guy who informed us the Chimp would be the best candidate with whom to sit down and sock back a few brewskis. Foreign correspondence school should include a class in how “the image is not the person.” And how it’s a slippery slope from Panchito to Kristol-Cloudy.
At the expense of a feeble laugh, I also have to add that I remain amazed at how many people these days will pile on and criticize without reading anything more than a headline. I hate to point out the obvious, but that’s the first warning sign of cretinism. Then again, I force myself to slog through the shallow Bruni waters before dissing, and you can see where that gets me. . .
*Oops — I said he was from Hawaii, but an alert reader notes that the sleepy one was actually from the great state of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan.
No wonder pizza is BFD
Before Pakistan, my consort had been starting every day for the last two weeks railing that there was no news on the front page of the NYTimes — it was all puff pieces and thumbsuckers; one morning the “lead” was actually a picture story that could have run in July, or next February. Given how craven the paper has gotten in pandering to advertisers, maybe it was all a ploy to get readers to turn to the back page of every section. That’s where I learned about a “100 percent juice blend” being marketed to “help nourish your brain.” And if you think flavored sugar water is going to keep Alzheimer’s at bay, you might enjoy Sunday Styles. Whose back page carried a full-page ad informing the gullible that Diet Crap has been pumped up with vitamins and minerals. To paraphrase a British tab’s headline after the Chimp was selected a second time: How can 300 million Americans be so stupid?
No 17-year-olds were harmed
If someone gave me a choice between 101 Dalmatians and one smart Siamese, I’m afraid I would have to grab the latter. Even if it didn’t mean being spared having to slog through acres of minuscule type to find the couple of grains of spelt in a mountain of chaff (unfortunately, I lack that Reaganesque ability to look at a barnful of manure and think there must be a pony in there somewhere). It all did make me wonder when a byline stopped meaning anything, though — or when exactly the elves were allowed to take over for Mr. Claus. You also gotta wonder about the systemic breakdown when obvious free rides on the truffle train are written up in advertising brochures by columnists at the most holier-than-thou publication on the planet. But the funniest find lately was the comment in the FT by Gordon Ramsay, confirming he had once tricked an American “journalist” shaking him down for a free meal by sending her to his restaurant for lunch on a day when it was closed. To quote a master of the fine phrase: “The amount of bullshit in this industry really is extraordinary.”
Kirby’s looking cool
Literary agents always natter on about wannabe authors needing a “platform” to sell a book proposal. And the shakiest one I’ve come across in a long while is a husband who reviews cookbooks for one of the last newspaper sections standing. The premise is ridiculous, that “home cooks dismiss (steak) as ‘eating out’ food” — someone has to be buying all those scary-cheap slabs of beef in the Food Shitty near me. But the more revealing evidence of how bogus this project looks is the photo in the catalog of what appears to be flank steak (because brisket isn’t a steak, no?) cut straight down like a loaf of bread. My teeth got tired just thinking of chewing a slice. And those exotic lotus roots in another photo definitely send the message that steak, as an entree, is the other cheap meat. I’ve never heard of an author being asked, “Who’s your hubby?” but maybe he actually has the power to make other editors fall in line online. Didn’t it work for Shirley Lord?