Post Category → petrified newsstand

Forty stars for an Asian bistro

Given all the brouhaha over a code of ethics for food bloggers, though, it’s probably worth remembering how the gullible guy with a taste for towel-snapping wound up in such a position of ostensible power: Panic. MSM fill-in had fucked up as restaurant critic while the paper, still in that KK-induced Nigella fog, floundered around trying to replace the author of such unforgettable lines as “give me pesticides and flavor.” And don’t get me started on all the times I tried to point out that the family retainer was stealing the silver. . . The Wild West of cyberspace needs no stinking code. Those who do the dirty are gonna get exposed. While the old world of media continues to deny it has some ’splaining to do.

The dog does not have to speak in perfect sentences

Anyone worried that blogs are hurting the MSM has only to pick up the latest weekly baedeker — chefs who normally don’t take phone calls apparently posed obediently in just-folks mode, doing the jobs Wall Streeters are crawling toward on bended knee (barista, hot dog vendor, etc.) Idea trumped execution, unfortunately. The photos were pretty effen lame. It was like hiring Joel Robuchon to whip up his signature potatoes and giving him Smart Balance to do it.  

Mofongo, indeed

Great to see the original Saucier’s Apprentice has joined our society of heretics. Having not been born yesterday, he notes that Joe Baum was way ahead of Berkeley’s hometown heroine in pushing for seasonal, local cooking, at the Four Seasons half a century ago. He gets in another good whack, too, before losing his way en route to South America on the cheap. What this all indicates is that while the food coven has always had only two techniques — back-stabbing and circle-jerking — bloggers may finally be setting it free. The deep-pocketed observer can dis away and still eat lunch in her town again. 

Loose shoe leather

Only an overcompensated press corps, though, would continue to do Spam’s bidding and flog the ultimate mystery meat as depression salvation when it is far from a bargain in the post-Butz world. I just got some e-release noting that sales of “fresh meat” are up 7-plus percent lately, even as the country is heading down “The Road” if you believe what you read out of Wall Street. Gullible reporters should get in the checkout line behind the people using food stamps. They ain’t buying canned food when pork chops are $2.29 a pound. And why is it only an opinion columnist who is pointing out the awful price the world is paying for the makings of Spam? I guess because, as a friend just noted, the “news” pages are busy doing restaurant roundups devoted to the Mersa white meat. Quote of the week: Jim Cramer was not an aberration. We are informed by fools and knaves. 

Pierced Jelly Bellies

I may be repeating myself, but among the many things that amazed me in my 46 months of watching the sausage get made was how many Peeps landed on the freebie desk and how immune even the most pigeon-like among the staff were to their charms. Not once did anyone take the bait and run any item related to the marshmallow equivalent of toadstools. But now I see National Geographic has succumbed. The misguided there are staging a photo contest for which entrants are supposed to shoot Peeps in some travel destination. I guess they win, because I’m writing about it. But I really hope the payback is huge for their soul. The only thing worse, a friend suggested, would be having contestants photograph a Peep on iconographic images, like the Afghan girl or the pyramids they moved. Next, a “Peep virgin” commercial? If so, I hope it uses the yellow ones, breasts bared. 

Awarded, as an adjective

The same friend and I had a long discussion of which came first, dying newspapers or newspapers committing hara-kiri by canning half the worker bees and churning out pap. I wondered the same thing about food magazines after opening the latest issue of one where the already stretched phyllo-thin staff has apparently just been trimmed. Turning at random to one article, I see the President’s first name misspelled and a statement that a DC soup kitchen was founded “exactly 20 years before to recycle the leftovers of the Clinton Inaugural balls.” I know Bill and Hill killed Vince Foster and stole money in Arkansas, among other nefarious deeds, but did they really crash GW the Elder’s parties? Some days outsourcing copy-editing to India doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. 

Salad bar at Applebee’s

The WSJournal had to reach all the way back to August in San Francisco to make its point that the restaurant business is waist deep in the big doody, but anyone who’s paying attention can see the strains closer to home. Relatively near me, Jonathan Waxman was obviously not enough of a flotation device for Madaleine Mae, which is becoming yet another Mexican. And when I got briefly swept up in Restaurant Week frenzy, I was able to reserve everywhere I chose, then when I called to cancel Bar Boulud for a Monday lunch I snared a Friday dinner slot with no trouble. I think it says it all that there are $4,700-plus bottles of wine on the list upstairs but empty slots in the racks in the eerily deserted downstairs. Maybe I was hallucinating, though. We could swear we saw Bernie Madoff outside, and those old people in furs could not really all have been trannies. Could they?

After that salmon lunch

And just cuz I’m realizing this all makes it look as if I only read my hometown paper and not the other daily and Sunday and many magazines we still spring for, I have to add that David Sedaris deserves a Nobel in political food writing for his take on the media-idolized “undecideds” in this election. No one could have put it better than to say it’s like the flight attendant offering a choice between chicken and shit with broken glass in it. The kicker is worth a closetful of Palinwear.

But at least the turkey doesn’t look like ass

Almost as jarring is the food styling in Taste of Home as it morphs ever more ludicrously into the poor cook’s Bon Appetit. I actually spotted a BLT turkey salad photographed in a Mason jar. Someone has got to stop looking at what the cool pubs are doing, because I don’t think this is quite what they mean by verrine. Better to have done that shot with something that half made sense. Like the “frosted pineapple lemon gelatin” right below it. Yes, frosted. Jell-O. 

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. . . .

If you have to ask . . .

My consort may be too generous for his own good. He came home the other night with a food magazine for me that he had picked up in his new neighborhood, Dumbo. And it’s a nice enough magazine. But it cost $9. Nine. Dollars. For one copy. (If you tried to cook from it, you might have some trouble, too. Ingredients are routinely out of order; the recipe for duck adobo includes no duck in its ingredient list.) My cynical side suspects they con customers into buying it after picking it up thinking it is free, like the Hudson Valley magazine Keith the Garlic Guy gives out. Why else would the price be hidden inside?

Le Bernardin, oui, but not for the fish

Far be it from me to argue with someone who really has been chowing down for 40 years (I guess I was in second grade when she was balling Elvis). So I won’t, because I realize that might have been print’s most brazen attempt to ape blogging, posting for no other reason than to drive up traffic. Funny that two of the exactly seven comments it elicited touted Il Mulino. When Carmine’s might have been more influential.

Or, as they text it, ho

I see Andrew Cuomo’s paramour is getting her own magazine, which means more trees will be squandered for pap, more oil will be wasted getting said pap from printing plant to newsstands. If they want to publish, have her people not thought about matching the content to the carrier with this crazy new thing called Twitter? You don’t even have to make it from scratch.

Birthday cake with a guitar on top

The only good thing about watching the Chimp doing his dog-eating-its-own-vomit act, returning to the scene of the crime in New Orleans, was realizing it was the last time he would be sweating and smirking there. Now we just have to grit our teeth to get past one more jackass opportunity here on 9/11. Given how trendy goat has suddenly gotten, with features in New York and Time, maybe someone could roast a pet one just for him?