Post Category → panchito

Didn’t we just vanquish the water gouge?

Glad to see Panchito is finally exerting some investigative muscle, now that the evil dunce who gave him his nickname has been such a global wrecking ball. Now he wonders if charging for bread might be the Weapon of Mass Profit restaurants need. Leave aside the idiocy of commenters saying Mexican joints give you free chips and salsa (the surest sign of an ambitious kitchen is a charge for cheap fill-ups). I would settle for maybe half of all restaurants actually delivering on the promise of bread plate and butter. I can’t count the number of times our table has been cleared of dirty dishes and silverware along with those untouched accouterments [look it up]. Then again, training staff is probably much more expensive than wasting unserved bread and butter. And a guy who is paid so well a 5 percent salary cut will probably amount to far more than a busboy’s annual wages might not be the best advocate for adding extra charges in a time of belt-tightening. Or as his “The Malls Are Flatlined” compatriot would put it: Chew. On. This.

Tacos? Try Graf No. 3

Then again, work is challenging for editors down at the Fleur de Sel Mines, who seemed to have had a particularly hard time lately informing “superiors” that what they had brought forth was not chocolate but shit. Exhibit A was a stunt review that was as embarrassing as those really lame bums who stagger through the trains wailing “Lean on Me” for spare change. And the magazine piece — yes, Jay has no pizza — demonstrates what happens when you put penis to keyboard. Copy editors used to lose it over “indirection.” Now they allow blind alleys. But at least he didn’t start out with George Lucas and wind up with Saint Alice. Moron Dowd should have availed herself of the good organic wine at the expensive restaurant in Berkeley; then maybe she could have noted that the fairy godmother behind the White House garden was not even mentioned in her own paper’s announcement. Which appeared on the front page. Where She Who Must Be Worshiped says food stories never run. . .

One is busy. The other isn’t. Rinse. Repeat.

I was also happy to see the Economist put the weight on Panchito for the disaster the country has suffered. The bumbling candidate was Sarah Palin without the verbal acuity and moral core, but his star turn as suckered enabler-turned-restaurant-babbler led the press pack straight into the abyss. And the scam lasted right up until his second inauguration. Where were all the chef’s aprons on high horses when the Chimp served asparagus and “Georgia peach crumble” in January 2005? Hawaiian shave ice by another name notwithstanding, I kinda think a new president who takes his wife to a birthday dinner at Equinox does not really need to be told how to eat. Although I did like Wylie calling in to say: “Save the foie gras.” Engorged livers on webs on the White House lawn would be a refreshing change from the lame duck.

Cabrito in honor of Panchito

Looks as if the Chimp is determined to be a petty prick to the bitterest end. Not only did he lock the O family out of the Blair House kitchens, but he had his partner in crimes against taste order up the new china for the big house. So he will have a legacy; it just happens to be the most butt-ugly plates ever designed. And to think all the Lump in the Bed would have had to do to save taxpayers half a million bucks was Google “monkey dinnerware.”

Ambling past the Spanish Steps

In an ideal world, Panchito would be off flagellating himself (and not for fun). Instead we are treated to images of the beer-buddy Chimp sucking back pisco sours. I agree with my consort, that we should be happy the towel-snapper is blowing off the last two months of his gig rather than making things even worse by acting like a preznit. But someone should be held accountable. Maybe the NYT could lay off a few enablers with Technicolor Yawn expense accounts?

Witless critic in topless bar

No wonder Democrats are in major meltdown worrying the Big O will not be able to vanquish the pasty guy and the caribou killer. The NYT keeps trotting out the gullible ghost of elections past, good old Panchito, to let him pontificate between bites. It’s like it’s 2000 all over again. Or, put another way, like Apples and orangutan enablers.

Skim at your own risk

It’s not just because I find them absolutely revolting that I started my Wednesday railing at finding stuffed peppers on the front page of my hometown paper. Bad enough to celebrate the most disgusting creation since potted meat. But to call them out in the prime real estate? WTF? Niman parting from Ranch was news to me, but I didn’t realize that had happened until I saw a blog link later — the nut graf was in goat’s clothing, and I thought we’d been down the cabrito trail. Big type never mentioned it. Little type farther back, though, did put Joe the Plumber in the forest. WTF? Drilling for mushrooms? At least there was the great relief of real writing in the secondary review. My new secondhand sources say the ratio of editors to reporters is now three to one, which explains why so much of the front page is so turgid (too many cursors spoil the flow). And I know from double experience that many writers need that many layers of rewriting. Too bad the paper can never figure out who should be what. But of course I will never learn when to shut up. I just remembered you should never point out spinach in the teeth of anyone who can bite. Hat or not hat. In real media, failure has many mothers. . . .

I think, therefore I type

And don’t get me started on the front-page resurrection of Panchito as political commentator. Believe me, I knew Johnny Rotten, and this lame joke is no Johnny Rotten. He could chew and think, and he left an awfully big bathtub to fill. Someone should tell the bosses some of us remember the last time America listened to the man who mistook a towel slap on the ass for qualification for the presidency. Go back to your silly paella and underwritten issues. Fool us once, won’t get fooled again. 

Did someone say Cipriani?

Once again, I sorely missed Mamma Leone’s on a Wednesday. If it were still around, Panchito could have ambled over, wasted the beleaguered boss’s credit and trashed the hell out of it, to exactly no one’s surprise. What was he smoking, informing the world that a publishing canteen sucks? I can’t wait for him to discover Elaine’s. And somehow I don’t think we’ll be reading about sagging underpants. Seymour B must be resting in total peace, knowing how good he looks with every new embarrassment.

Flushing

Maybe revenge is tofu best served hot. I liked how the original Saucier’s Apprentice sank his shiv into Panchito so matter-of-factly. Just as I suspected, the great discovery of a great Sichuan restaurant in the garment district was exactly as informed as his assessments of any cuisine beyond steakhouse and Americanized Italian. Can you say “sloppy, indifferent rendition of the great, hearty food of the earthquake-plagued province”? And to think the lemmings still thronged there for ma po dou fu that was “muddy in flavor, beef-starved, with barely a shred of green.” Call it ambling through hysteria.

Y entonces, y entonces, y entonces . . .

Traveling with Panchito must give new meaning to the concept of hardship duty. Why else would the carrot so outweigh the stick? It’s a sad situation, though, when the reader has to pay the price for the splitting of the spaghetti. Take a grocery list, please, and check it twice — Einstein figured out bigger stuff faster. And he never had to conform to journalism standards, of which the what and the why outrank the who and the when. All those questions, along with the fifth commandment, also went into the sausage grinder for the farmer drummed out of the Greenmarket five years after his integrity was challenged. I have to say, the duck the guy sold was so outstanding he had to have bagged it somewhere else; no one can produce that many farm products that well or there would not be a Union Square. But even the poor headline writer could not summarize what the thing was really about. And kudos for the Mandarin transcriptions, but I think hell would be serving as a line cook in a restaurant where all the non-Asians come in and order the one dish they have been assured is safe to eat. No wonder the mall shut down almost as soon as the papers landed.

Scooter and the bear

Speaking of Panchito, maybe I’ve read too much really bad porn in my life, but his Sichuan lede sounded straight out of a trite plot involving Mother Superior rubbing Spanish fly all over a virgin while an abbot and a novice stand ready to put parts into places. And I’m not talking haggis. If there was ever a week when the Bruni Digest needed to be resuscitated . . . 

From toasters to toast

In a week that started with depositors panicking outside a failed bank, you would think the Chimp could show just a hint of sensitivity at the table. But that would be misunderestimating his soullessness. Dinner for 245 after his silly ballgame was a full five courses, including crab salad and rib-eye steak, when for once hot dogs would have been more appropriate. But here’s a “fun fact” from the White House web site: Parties during the Hoover reign were big events, too, with 4,000 invitations routinely delivered around town. And how’d that work out again?

William and David go to Holy Foods

The base camp is getting even harder to maintain now that I have been swept into the E-ZPass of the internets, a blog that needs links more than words. But it can be trouble, too. After skimming part of the Drivelist’s latest “and then I did this and then I did that” when the wheel was already invented, I set off to Youtube in search of a postable “toddler makes first doody.” Yikes. If I had any money to invest, I’d be sinking it into pharmaceuticals big time. A whole generation is going to regret that youthful exuberance in a cellphone/video world. But even so, a close-up of a floating first turd in a toilet bowl cannot be as embarrassing as, “Look, world: I made snail butter.”