Funny to see news outlets scrambling to be sure Mrs. O’s huge anti-obesity movement is covered by all the wrong people (“eat as I say, not as I do,” in one case). But at least the Time Tool was not unleashed on the anti-Big Food beat. Following in the sordid tradition of the Coulter/Molto blow jobs, he let the fastest food take him for a royal ride. Did you know the Big Mac has a chef behind it? Yeah, and so does all the shitty airline food. He actually swallows the catapulted propaganda and mentally transfers a high-end lunch with celeriac and salmon to the crap wraps the “most influential chef in America” claims to have innovated. And believe me, the reason the flack freaked when the chef mentioned poached pears was not fear of copycat competitors. She had to know the chance of something like that winding up on the diabetes menu was about as likely as a frequent flier ever tasting Todd English’s food in steerage.
Post Category → petrified newsstand
Royal nous
I’m not a bit happy that Hachette is now sending me the bullfighters’ magazine (El Decor!) instead of Metropolitan Home, the publication I subscribed to ever since it was Apartment Life and I first lived in a real one. And not just because I lost a reliable and lucrative outlet when they shut down the better magazine, or because it’s damn near impossible to tell ads from editorial. The food column carries the Big Homme’s byline, but if he typed the text and the recipe I’m Meehan Chang. Worse, the wine recommendations come from his own sommelier, and you would never guess what the first one is. (Starts with D and B on a Champagne label.) Once again, I hear the woman in North Wales railing against the government that assured them Chernobyl was no biggie: “They think we’re stoopid.”
Pig bladders at Daniel? Exempt.
The talk of the series of culi-tubes is all about Robert Sietsema’s take on old-versus-new restaurant “reviewing.” I’m kinda weary of the whole debate (although I can still be challenged to rouse myself to start frothing, and I do wonder how much a legit franchise undermines itself in assigning hits to hired guns). I mostly was mystified by the omission of the one guy who always made NYmag worth reading, the inimitable Seymour Britchky, who was, even as RS arrived in town all those eons ago, brilliantly evaluating restaurants serving 23 cuisines, from American to Thai, with some barely seen these days. (Can you say German? And is there a Swiss or Hungarian kitchen left?) Plus I had other issues that just wear me out to contemplate. So I’m happy to report that the outlier actually did the world a much huger service by stunting something I would never even contemplate: Pop the top on one of the Onion-worthy new flavors of cat food and sticking a forchetta in it. No wonder The Cat WCTLWAFW hoovers nearly everything I cook. The alternative is tasteless. And almost more expensive.
Beggars and choosers and foie gras gluts
We also forget most of us were in bunkers a year ago, counting the canned food and wondering how to set up apple carts. The economy is still a disaster, but after reading about food banks running on empty and firehouses collecting food I gathered all the crap I’d been hoarding in case “The Road” really did run through our front door. Chief among that was a bunch of rice mixes and seasonings from a press event thrown by a little New Orleans company bought by Big Food. I only ever tried one, and we were first stunned by how salty/fake it tasted and then, over the next few days, by how it had stunk up the joint. Seriously. As much as I mock the Forelock, he did have the comment of the week on all this salt insanity going around: “If you eat natural foods, you don’t have to worry.” I would feel a little guilty about handing off all that sodium and MSG to the poor, but after we left the firehouse where they were not collecting food (thanks, Daily News), we passed a family unloading even worse stuff from a car, with not a fresh vegetable to be seen. People in the Depression probably ate better. At least they had apple carts.
“To be immortal you have to be dead”
If I were the despairing kind, I’d be socking back the bourbon these days. The founder of one of the literally shittiest food businesses in the country kicks off, and he’s the taco-talk of Twitter, rates obits in legitimate papers and was probably all over the teevee, too. Then one of the most influential Southern cookbook authors and cooking teachers dies at 100 and gives new meaning to “joining the choir invisible.” Camille Glenn’s hometown papers gave her sendoffs, but farther afield it’s as if she never lived. Once again, I’m very glad I’m old and won’t be around when Rachael and Paula kick the EVO/butter bucket. . .
At least the writer of one of the most compelling food songs ever warranted international attention once she was no longer among the singing, but she was smart enough to leave two super-talented children behind. “Leftovers with mashed potatoes” really is an eloquent expression of what eating involves beyond sustenance. And somehow I suspect she lived a richer life than her ex with his “how many patty melts can one man eat?”
At least the gravy F train was derailed
I know foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but it still seems kind of whiplash-y for the same copy generator to spew 101 make-ahead side dishes for Thanksgiving and then turn around and say “chill the fuck out” about Thanksgiving. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to start stuffing(!) Brussels sprouts or just shoot Martha Stewart.
Sawing through “myths” with an electric knife
It’s also amazing how the holiday seems to bring out so much petty larceny in many souls. I could swear the Bobby Flay game plan for Turkey Day I read in the WSJournal was nearly the same as the one I read a week later in the Daily News. (Double bonus to that flack!) And anyone who believes a poor pumpkin harvest this fall is going to cause an immediate shortage of the canned kind needs a good shot of the bourbon that was supposedly nearly depleted just a few weeks ago and now warrants a full-page ad trumpeting its return. It almost makes you suspect marketers might believe what a woman in North Wales once told us about the politicians who denied Chernobyl had affected sheep there: “They think we’re stoopid.”
Did someone say Pudlo?
One of the silliest notions touted all week was that a 19th-century guidebook to Paris was the Zagat of its time. What, the producer surveyed strangers and stitched together “quotes,” with no personal point of view or shank’s mare research? In reality, what the voracious Grimod produced did not even sound like a Michelin. It was much closer to early Duncan Hines. And that’s the saddest part of what the Maroons have wrought. Everybody knows their name. No one realizes invoking it is like putting Parkay ahead of Plugra.
Headline Ambien: “Reminiscences”
I know a little bit about how political the assignment of reviewers to books can be at a certain publication, so I would really love to know the back story on the choice to assess the latest from one of the most gifted writers at that publication. Maybe his book really is the trudge she evokes in summaries like: “It would be difficult to exaggerate the Edenic profusion.” (WTF is a cheap reaction, I know, but in this case I would add an extra F.) But a writer of that caliber and a book of such interest to his food-obsessed city really deserved a reviewer with, shall we say?, some heft. Maybe a book to her credit at the least? I never thought I would say this, but where the hell was David Kamp?
Chickenhawk steak
I’m no fan of MoDo, who gives unmarried menopausal women a very bad name, but I have to admit she knocked one out of the hot dog park in poking Rush the Malevolent Blowhard. As she recalled, when they shared a meal at ’21,’ the man of the little people ordered the high-priced fish eggs plus Freedom wine (Corton-Charlemagne, to be precise). Those were the good old days, before he sent the maid to buy the oxycontin. It’s just too bad his peasants can’t read. He’s very smart to infect them with fear of poisoning from the wrong end of the alimentary canal.
And the bullfighters’ rag lives on
Not just because it has been a great outlet for me for more years than I can remember, I was pretty sickened by Hachette’s whacking of Metropolitan Home. The editors there were savvy way before “sustainable” gained currency; the food features were never merely about chefs’ narcissism but about cooking with meaning. Twitterers mocking it obviously never read it. I found our Baggus in its pages and over the last two years have passed up thousands of plastic bags that would otherwise be clogging albatross guts (one B saves three to four flimsies at our neighborhood Food Shitty alone). MH had a sensibility like no other “shelter” magazine. Back when it was Apartment Living, I was a ridiculously loyal subscriber even while living in furnished studios. And I certainly never imagined the night would come when the result of my recipe would be projected on a big screen at the Four Seasons for an anniversary party where most people were as down-to-dirt as House & Garden was not. So this is sadder than the demise of Gourmet. Despondently pulling out my very battered copy of “New American Cuisine,” the faultless, still-relevant cookbook MH put out while under Meredith ownership, before Hachette engulfed and devoured, I had to wonder if anyone in publishing ever has second thoughts. Was there ever a man more aptly named than David Pecker?
Cool Whip bad. No, Cool Whip’s pie.
Eat Me Daily’s smart roundup of the Thanksgiving issues of all the food magazines missed the biggest turkey: Taste of Home. The cover has a desiccated bird stuffed under the skin with sage leaves that look disturbingly like either smashed butterflies or bad mold. It’s also accessorized with figs and champagne grapes, both staples of low-rent kitchens. Reader’s Digest deserves to be bankrupt after destroying one of the major charms of this weird little magazine by turning it into just one more magnet for advertising. My in-law equivalent has always subscribed for me for Christmas, and the best part of having her come visit the other week was showing her just how mutated it’s become so she can stop the madness. She got it, since she’s abandoning more and more of what she calls “books” because she can’t tell the stories from the shilling. Hellmann’s ad next to turkey sandwich story? Check. Party story wrapped around Chex ad? Done. Jimmy Dean sausage recipes designed just like readers’ clip-and-save cards? You betcha. Worst, someone really should have to eat leftovers with cranberry sauce every day until November for making readers confront Tyler Florence on every other page with Katie Brown in between. At least Bobby Hellmann was out of the picture.
Model fluffers call them cutlets
I did my turkey cover story seven years ago and pissed off a few editors by noting both the artifice and similarity of all their birds. But even I was not cynical enough to imagine the day would come when the editorial side would admit to doing what’s forbidden in an ad: altering reality. Funny to realize the Butterball breast is the real deal. Also funny that the one magazine omitted from the silly piece was the one named launch of the year. You really have to wonder about the hall of mirrors of television successfully expanding into formerly arboreal media even as people are still weeping over the demise of Gourmet. I haven’t been able to locate a copy, but I see online what the secret is: The turkey issue has three covers. Which means readers can change the channel.
Beyond blad
But the other hometown paper also embarrassed itself big time in announcing the addition of three bloggers to write on food. This is just what the world needs: More saccharine drivel. It’s an especially lame business move because the most devoted readers I know are the guys running our co-op’s elevator, and I kinda doubt they’re yearning for links to execrable writing online. If the editors had been smart, they would have done what even good, legit aggregate blogs are acceding to these days: taking promo posts. The copy would still make you gag, but it would be short and tight and income would be involved. And copy editors, too. My suggestion for the wine guy: Buy a box of apostrophes. ASAP.
S.I. Hayakawa, your car’s here
And a third hometown paper ran a good piece on the motherfucking cookbook but chose to quote two of the old-timers in the business on the realistic language. I have nothing but (unreciprocated) respect for Julia’s editor, but it was odd to see her dissing something she admitted she had not read. And of course hearing that Jane’s ex is appalled by all the F bombs is about as surprising as the fact that fucking seats at the fucking counter are fucking hard to come by. Cooking was never “the province of polite people.” That sort goes to Washington and resists uttering “Go fuck yourself” on the floor of Congress. Besides, haven’t recent studies shown that the best way to relieve pain from a grease burn is to shriek anything but “fudge”? If you can’t take the language, get out of the kitchen.