It was amusing to see a trend story lead off with “A few years ago I noticed.” If it were an oil, that news would be rancid by now. Particularly now that more and more people are finally grasping the sanity ring on the nutrition carousel and noting that fat is not the killer it was cracked up to be. But even that was not as silly as a front-pager on chefs who insist on having it their way. The one that was so desperate for examples beyond dedicated steak restaurants that it had to dredge up examples both nebulous and imprecise. Not to mention seriously dated. Couldn’t that reporter send out a Yelp SOS?
Post Category → drivelist
Priceless memories, indeed
I do hope there are no razor blades in the afterlife. Poor MFK would be slicing her wrists big-time on reading her mentee’s “savory taste” and “a delicious one at that.” And I could not get through the where-are-the-hosts-of-yesteryear BS and so had to rely on Twitter followers to confirm what I suspected — the likes of Zarela went unacknowledged. But I did read just far enough into the review to wonder where TF the editor was. I guess now that “real America” has decided there’s no money for 9/11 responders it’s okay to fantasize about explosions and fires outside an East Side restaurant. I still remember getting censored in reviewing then-rational James Lileks’ immensely entertaining “Gallery of Regrettable Food” in about 11/11 for mentioning one dish looked like something had blown up in the kitchen. We are all insensitive now.
Translate Brillat-Savarin & we can talk
Would it be too much to ask for a moratorium on cookbook authors claiming MFK Fisher as a mentor even though they never even met her? Somehow I suspect the last place she wanted to spend eternity was on the shoulders of headnote typists.
Not from the Latin for kidnapper
Finally, dragging out the soapbox here: Americans are sitting by quietly while we squander $190 million a day in Afghanistan, the same kind of misadventure that helped bring down the Soviet Union (Atrios has come up with a great unit: an MIA — one month’s spending wasted in that godforsaken country that could pay for tunnels or rail lines or multiple schools here). But let some unknown blogger get ripped off by some obscure “magazine” and the mobs are out with blazing pitchforks. (Is that really worse than writing whole columns about recipe epiphanies without crediting the recipe writer?) I’m all for armchair activism, but use it for stuff that matters. Like net neutrality. Or one day you won’t be able to post your bilious comments fast and free. Let alone your saccharine musings.
Something Cheddar in the air
I didn’t bother with the gray print, but I did stop to wonder: If a cake is so awe-inspiring, why not credit the source? (And will there ever be any escaping that fucking torte? It’s a newspaper. No need to report the swallows are returning.)
Mutton tartare
Thanks, Twitter. I just learned “unassuming writing style” is a great euphemism for “drivel.”
Wheat sandwiches, also
I’m becoming more forgiving of a reporter who always sent her editors into the archives to be sure she had not written the same lame story using the same lame language in the past. Either brains shrink or cranial hard drives get overloaded, I’m slowly acknowledging. Youngsters, though, have no excuse. You want to announce a huge discovery while promoting your next product, at least be sure it wasn’t already done. Confit sans gras, my derriere.
One star for Compass
And I guess I have to do my bashing of the section formerly known as DI/DO, so I’ll start by saying sometimes a cutlet is just a cutlet and a column cannot be inflated without collapsing (but I understand why a more significant topic got tucked inside like a cutlet in a bra — been there, edited that shit). Worse was that the genesis of the eating-kosher-cuz-it’s-better nonsense was plain to see. Fishing for sources to back up your thesis is like hunting for quail Cheney style. (How soon they forget the immensity of the Agriprocessors scandal. But I’ll never forget the friend in Lincoln, Nebraska, who once worked in a slaughterhouse and talked constantly of the rabbi overseeing the kosher beef. You don’t want details, but they involved bathroom, hands, No. 2.) And then there was the JGold Wannabe. Twice in one day the same rating was given, in almost the same words: Reads like writing-class exercises. RIP, Britchky. You are now certifiably inimitable.
If it’s Wednesday, it must be Danny
The JGold Wannabe tried out yet another new voice in mystifying readers like my consort, who braved a few grafs and could not understand why the rave added up to only three stars. Poor Britchky’s fingers must have been twitching in his grave. I’m so naive I believe even a Poor would not have hurt a restaurant that does what it does so well, and has for so long — I will not soon forget walking out of the deserted Four Seasons last summer and seeing the floral Frog jammed; if you’re going somewhere for a scene and not cuisine, flowers are a fixed face’s best friend (I ate there for my long-ago Allure story on how restaurants make women look good or bad). What was most surprising is that no attempt was made to connect the news dots between that review and the profoundly depressing information that the chef on whom Ruth once lyrically bestowed four stars is now slaving at a Midtown East joint one step up from Tout Va Bien. Of course I’m so old I got addicted to quenelles before I ever had to face down gefilte fish. But I do know that there’s a whole food truck devoted to schnitzel and that people make special expeditions to Cafe Sabarsky for the strudel alone. I just can’t tell the Egotist from the Drivelist sometimes. Or understand how “blackened fruitcake” saw print. Sloppy is as sloppy ledes.
Deviled in the details
I’m happy to admit I Feel Bad About My Dreck thoroughly redeemed herself with her review of the mismatched cookbooks on Food52. The competition really was like pitting an earnest indie film against a Robert Downey Jr. extravaganza. But the writing and the smarts in her takedown were like the great old days of “Crazy Salad” and “Heartburn.” I’m still not sold on the notion of the great unwashed voting for what’s worthiest with food — in the immortal observation of Mimi, if popularity were all, McDonald’s would be serving the best burgers in the world — but the reviews almost validate the silliness. Icing on the cake was seeing the Drivelist tout that review. As if all those warning words for cookbook authors did not apply. . . .
Smoke that paprika
In other insults to intelligence at the pompous powerhouse, the Drivelist had to be trifling with the truth. It’s the whisk that makes the mother sauce tricky, not the labor-saving device. Unless you’re an idiot. And an alert reader tipped me off to the contretemps the Egotist set off with the equivalent of making spaetzle and calling it macaroni. Amusing to see so many bitching he had made something minimal so very complicated. And it’s pretty bad when more than one commenter tells you to go watch Bobby Flay to get something right. . . .
What happened at Cook’s stays at Cook’s
Some were impressed, I was amused at the Egotist’s ranking No. 8 among “columnists” on a new website that understands no one loves reading about the media as much as the media does. Turd Blossom, after all, is No. 12. And he at least writes more than extended headnotes. Meantime, that wannabe the Drivelist is spreading what I’ll politely call her foam even thinner. How can you advise “try smoked paprika” in so many words in so many places? As Appealing as Pap would be a pretty good name for a blog.
Brain outlook: Foggy
All my good thoughts get burned through first over on Twitter, but even my consort can’t keep up with my Tweets and Retweets. In case you missed: Why was a woman last read bragging about her mega-kitchen renovation and 30 boxes of equipment on the radio nattering about cooking in a kitchen so small you can have no food on hand? (Our last one was half the size of our current foyer, and we did not stock up every day.) File that under friends get friends gigs. Then there was the irony of the Greenmarket opening an outpost in the Port Authority, right across the street from the scene of the amity, only a week after it was revealed that editors are too poor to buy from farmers. And my favorite comparison was between the supremely fresh local blackfish Blue Moon was selling at Union Square and the “previously frozen” basa from Mexico at Garden of Eden. Each was $8.95 a pound. Whatever would Dexter’s dad do?
Brazilian mussels
The good news just keeps coming these days. One day I’m informed that baby broccoli (a k a sprouts) will ward off stomach cancer, the next it’s licorice kicking bowel cancer’s ass. Ever since the Franklin Mint famously went to the Pom land, the first question I have is: Who sponsored this miraculous discovery? And of course I sat right up in suspense the other morning, wondering when the writer of a damning op-ed on “free-range” pigs would disclose who exactly underwrote the study finding animals raised in filth on antibiotics are safer. I jokingly Tweeted and soon had an answer. Yep, it was your friendly National Pork Board. Those guys want you to eat pork like chicken; they certainly will not get fat and happier by promoting meat from small farms where pigs get to live as pigs should, the now-unnatural way. I can’t fault the catapulter of the propaganda. But I do wonder where the backstop was on the editorial side. As the Journal has demonstrated, you lie down with Turdblossom and you wake up with no credibility. If I were the cynical sort, I’d propose a piece on how endangered snapper is the answer to pirates in the Indian Ocean. Hungry Somalian researchers say it’s so.
And that, of course, was the other big-laugh bonus of newspapers today. The Pollan Wannabe let his carnival mask drop and smart readers suddenly noticed he’s just talking the talk for maximum gain. And I would be bonding with all the alert readers who wondered where his editors were if I had not slogged through the Drivelist in gap-jawed fascination yet again. While she was dragging mollusks all over the kitchen in search of a nut graf, who could possibly look away long enough to wonder what the Google says? No worries, though. A Colbert shout-out is worth lost credibility any day. Just ask a certain new Dallas resident.
Mad cow and squirrel brains
I will eat a raw egg in ice cream or eggnog or Caesar dressing, but a barely cooked one turns my stomach. Turns out just reading about it will almost bring up my breakfast. Yolks “gushing all over” flounder sounds right out of “Eraserhead.” At least we were spared the Drivelist’s pickles and ice cream combo. But I did enjoy the contradiction of having that upchucker run in the same section with a chestnut lede saying there are no super-fresh ingredients to be had in wintertime. Get your bogus ass out to the Greenmarket, Little Sir Echo Pollan. Sickening ideas obviously await.