Post Category → tin chefs

Spotted: Dick

As I know I’ve blathered, one of the many lessons from my exciting 15 days lying in a Turin hospital five years ago is that travel is the ultimate 401K, one that never goes down in value. You can almost thrive on almost palpable memories. Which is why I felt not a twinge on missing out on Fergus frenzy. My consort and I once ate nose to tail and I can still feel how queasy we were the next morning. It wasn’t food poisoning, but it was far from pleasant, even with a super-sleek London hotel bathroom at our disposal. And it took me back to my first trip to Europe, to Cornwall in 1986, when the great writer working with Bob advised us that you can eat well in England if you eat breakfast three times a day. It wasn’t true even then. So if Rick Stein came to town . . .  Oh. Right. None of the kool kidz would even know who he is.

Real fakes use onions, not Vick’s

I guess I should be worried: The older I get, the less set in my beliefs I am. I used to think “reality” cooking shows on the teevee were just jackassery of the lowest order. Now I’m coming around to acknowledging they are seducing whole new generations into the endless wonders of food. And, unlike sports, cooking is competition open to all. But the best perspective came in a piece reporting Gordon Ramsay’s ratings — 8 million viewers — that also noted Glenn Beckkk’s — 3 million. If the revolution is coming, let it be a food fight, not an exercise in “Freaks” feces-flinging.

Then there’s the section that mistook a headnote for a lead

The Food Section chose exactly the right verb in announcing what bloggers are doing for Kraft: pimping Velveeta. I know “real writers” have done stunts just as unsavory, but it still seems like a pretty elaborate system for fooling people into thinking oil in loaf form is edible. By contrast, the WSJournal chose exactly the wrong word to describe the likes of Paula Deen and Guy Fieri out on tour. They are Becks, not chefs. It’s all about the show, not about supervising a kitchen where actual cooking is going on. The only good thing about the silly story was its implication that it must be morning in America if people have hundreds of dollars to squander on carney acts. (I assume they’re the same people too stretched and stressed to sit down to family dinner.) But the oddest detail in the piece was its handling of the infamous pants drop by the Butter Drinker — she described it as embarrassing when I remember how onlookers found it horrifying because it appeared to be more stunt than mishap. Where do you draw the line with exhibitionism? Hair pie?

Worms, turning slowly

The only good thing about being wiped out for days by all the symptoms of cookie dough poisoning with none of the cookie dough: Nonsense about “dangerous” lead contamination of the White House garden had time to be debunked. Even I was almost suckered in, although I turned up very little in recent news about the findings two seemingly respectable sites had used to build their sludge case. I did detect a whiff of organic character assassination when the Clintons were blamed for the “clean poo” spread by the Reagan EPA. And I should have been convinced when the onetime advocate of all things natural got caught carrying dirty water for Monsanto. Pretty scary when the most powerful couple in the country are undermined at every turn in trying to do the right thing with food. I take it all back about Bobby Flay. Bring him on.

Guess the 5-year-old was busy

Maybe it was not intentional, but the CIA sent a pretty clear message of what its graduates are expected to aspire to by choosing as commencement speaker a chef known primarily for appearing on the teevee. Apparently there are more jobs to be had on “Top Chef” than in hot, crazy kitchens where you get your hands dirty and your bones achy. At least Molto Croced the walk rather than just talking the talk.

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.  

Well, if the CIA doesn’t work out, there’s always celebrity

Oddly enough, a nasty crack at the dinner about a chef shilling for an absurdly overpriced wine led me to a video of him railing that the big problem for restaurants in America was finding enough chefs, now that even Cleveland has respectable kitchens. The segment was undated, but I didn’t need it to make me wonder WTF on opening my hometown paper and seeing a piece on the allegedly horrific crisis confronting NYC chefs. If things are that effen dire, you don’t illustrate with a photo of Colicchio wannabes auditioning for a teevee show. To believe, I needed to see a line of real applicants around the block, like the one I still remember that stretched from Third to Lex when the Village Voice ran an ad for waiters at Between the Bread in 1983 when I left the NYT the first time, to go to restaurant school, and was looking to make some fast cash. But having put pork parts through the grinder and into the casings myself, I can see how this silliness happened. Some editor who commutes by DeCamp decides it’s time for a recession check and says jump and the underlings just ask: How low? This was as idiotic as presuming the fashion industry is going to hell because a few hundred aspiring Padmas trampled each other. When your lede is a restaurant that’s opening, show me the countless closed ones. Or at least hold off on the caviar lounge “news.”

And a merciful end to Bloomingdale Road

Sometimes you read about a restaurant closing and just wonder what the hell took so long. Dennis Foy’s was Exhibit A, but the Roy’s near the big bad hole in the ground was always even more baffling. One of Panchito’s Predecessor’s finest lines came in his review of the overwrought joint: “If clowns had a cuisine, this would be it.” And for 10 more years, people ate it up. Docks was almost as mystifying, given how pricey it was for the neighborhood even today. The last time we ate there, at lunch, I walked out annoyed that we had not gone to Midtown and indulged in Mondrian for the same money. And that was so long ago Tom Colicchio was a working chef. 

Kernels, verdad — what’s the diff?

Sometimes a corncob is not just a corncob. A new Mexican cookbook has crossed my desk, by someone whose name I had never heard and with a rather ridiculous premise. Diana Kennedy worked very hard to make it so, but the cuisine on the southern side of the border really does not involve brain surgery. Now here’s a half-nekkid kid out to turn quesadillas into bouillabaisse when it comes to complexity. I guess if a publisher wants to convey a message of “uno, dos, tres” recipes, bare boozums struggling to burst out of a party dress on a cover are the best offense. And certainly her pulchritude is a far sight more alluring than Paula Deen’s exhibitionist ass (I would call it a lardass, but that would be a diss on a very honorable fat). The very vision of that must have had people dreaming of pouring hot butter into their eye sockets.

For Technicolor yawn, just add chutney

Times must not be as tight as all the headlines are hollering. First we’re treated to a celebration of a canteen for the obscenely rich; for some reason it has not failed to thrive, and I only hope all the lucky duckies who are struggling felt much better after inferring all you need to succeed: location, location, Italian arrogance. Worse, apparently there was some kind of circle jerk going on down in Miami, where all manner of reincarnations of Marie Antoinette were running around as the Ponzi State collapses. It says it all that a post about being too strapped to tip the coat check “girl” in Manhattan was followed by one from Miami essentially sniffing, Let ’em eat 13 burgers. What would a WPA writer make of it all?

Smoked

Now that the greatest cat ever has joined the choir invisible, I can’t decide who deserves more blame for jinxing him, the crazy-optimistic vet or my biggest fan. Whatever. It kicked the snark out of me. I could barely rouse myself to wonder what the hell an achiote pepper might be. (Can you say annato makes the cheese go orange?) Or why someone for whom English is obviously a second language is allowed to digest DI/DO with no intervention by a copy desk. (Can you say kill the fucking index and give A-section stories room to run?) And did an albino really take a dump all over the magazine? Talk about acid redux. . . .

Barely. Legal.

Count me among the many who question Andrew Cuomo’s judgment given his choice in food people. Consider her $55 budget pantry, as dictated to the Daily News on the occasion of the launch of “her” very own magazine (I guess if Rick Warren can get a publication, so can any faith-based fraud): Five pounds of sugar is No. 1; dried parsley is No. 10. In between are four sweet things, three potentially savory and one honking bottle of margarita mix (accounting for nearly half the budget). I assume you mix the soup with the ranch dressing and follow up with cookie dough and cocktail. Not to put too crude a point on it, but that sounds like a recipe for bulimia. What’s that old saying? Lie down with processed crap and wake up with Technicolor yawn? 

Apologists accepted

For the first time I almost felt sorry for Molto Ego, after Jay Rayner flew in to have his gimlet-eyed way with him. You could almost understand why the guy is challenging a certain debunker to a virtual Diamond Jim duel. If he keeps eating and drinking, he won’t have to face the reality sketched by the out-of-towner in the tersest of phrases: More is not always better when it comes to restaurants. It figures, though, that just hours after I found the Guardian piece at my usual fourth stop of the day I spotted the Maroon leaping up to say Molto’s parish hall is just the pope’s pajamas. You can fool some of the fools some of the time. . . My favorite detail was that the orangeman had to do the Brit-and-pony show with a flack in tow. Number one, if he’s so big, why does he need one? And number two, if it’s for damage control, someone might want to invest in a drool bucket. The whole world is reading.

Bring their own pork

One of my sources passed along some related good gossip from the soon-to-be center of the universe: Carpetbagger chefs are taking over the town for all the poshest parties, with local heroes mostly shunned. I thought the pettiness in the foodosphere was out of control before. I can’t wait for four more years of this. It’s always Alice’s world; suck up or you don’t even get to fart in it.