Bacon and pork belly…”Uh, Pav…Bacon and Pork Belly were also in your piece, “What’s Good In Food!”” Yes, yes they were, and if you give me half a second I’ll tell you why. Fatty pork (which could also be my middle name) in my never humble opinion is one of the tastiest foods on the planet. It’s right up there with duck fat and foie gras. (Collective moans/ gasps and the clickity clack of keypads sending hate messages) I know, I know… now get over it. But with bacon and pork belly so omnipresent in restaurants these days, there are cooks, chefs and food companies putting these two ingredients in, either places they don’t belong, or cooking/ producing them in a manner which make them…terrible….stop the madness. If you can’t cook it properly, don’t. If it seems like it doesn’t belong in a recipe, it doesn’t and Whichever manufacturers are making the pre-cooked wafer thin stuff that won’t even leave the smell or taste of bacon on your breath and tastes of burnt tobacco leaves and salt…..STOP IT!… now let’s move on.
Foie Gras…Holy Toledo Pav, you said it again! I know, and it’s not in this article for the reasons you would think. So smite me almighty smiter! It’s not in here because I think foie gras is bad. As I pointed out in the previous article, I think it’s quite good, tasty even. I’m not going to use words like humane, or ethical. Foie has been produced and eaten for thousands of years, and it’ll continue to be eaten for…well as long as my apartment isn’t covered with three hundred feet of Atlantic Ocean. Foie is bad if it is raised improperly, and by improperly I mean abusively. I have seen firsthand, farms that do a good job raising foie. Check out hudsonvalleyfoiegras.com Not eating foie because you want to stop producers from making it, is like not eating corn because you think they’ll stop planting it… it doesn’t make sense to me. Neither does poor animal husbandry of any kind. But feel free to not eat foie, or other meats, just leave me off your “pester Pav because he’s an evil omnivore” list…and we’ll get along famously.
Processed Organic Foods and the people buying them make me laugh. Processed is processed people, and I’m not making the judgment that it’s no good. On the contrary, I have had some of these “organic, all natural processed meals”, and they can be quite tasty, in the same way a Swanson’s Hungry Man frozen dinner can be tasty…the exact same way. But then again I’m cibo, and not a food snob foodie. So if you are really all about eating organic, all natural, etc… Stick to the outside of the store where you find produce, meats, fish, dairy, whole grain breads and the like. But stop kidding yourself or trying to kid others that these meals and you, are somehow better than the meals and the man standing right next to you looking into the frozen food case. You know, the guy with the “FBI”, Female Body Inspector hat on…yep, you’re eating habits are almost identical even if your wardrobe isn’t.
Social Media…Yes, I know kind and polite friends. This was also in the “what’s good” article. But trying my best to juggle the ying and yang of foods while at the same time trying to figure out what the voices in my head are saying, left just enough brain matter to tell you the downside of social media. Let’s look at applications like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Facebook and the like. First off, there are the people with an ax to grind, former employees, awful writer’s saying things like “I wish I could give this place a zero…”, obsessive writers, “I asked for a clean fork and they gave me another and I can’t believe the first fork was dirty I mean who would have dirty forks?!”, Chefs firing back at the offended/slighted reviewers posting pictures of the reviewer complete with names numbers and addresses if available and then telling them to sod off! Let’s address some of these…
Dear Chefs, if someone is putting down your food, you, your restaurant, your service, etc… Just say “I’m sorry you had a bad experience; please allow us to make it up to you with…” That’s it, berating them because “Well they ate damned near the whole prime rib, and they also had a dessert, and besides they didn’t leave a tip either!” Only serves to make you look like an ass.
Yelp-folk, Please don’t say “I wish I could give them a zero, but I can’t.” or the like… Say, “I’ve been here several times and on every occasion, managed to take home a doggie bag with a piece of meat so dry I found it to be more effective than kitty litter, thus the grade of one.” “But I would like to know if they plan on producing a line for Tidy Cat in the near future.” Be interesting or be fun, being a bore only makes you…boring.
Oh, and Twitter, for you Chefs/Restaurant Managers/Restaurant Staff… is for tweeting fun, or, did you know type things….as well as a nonstop barrage of plugs…. Mix it up a little. Tweet this for instance; Guess the color of my sous chefs thong/thigh highs, win free entrée, ask for sous chef to take a guess…his name is Frank #sexy #buttfloss.
Specials…Today’s specials include, A roast farm raised rabbit crepinettes by Smith and son’s three valley farm with Bob’s Red Mill bulgar wheat which has been ground to a double 00 consistency, a vanilla jus reduction that has been kissed with a ninety percent cocoa powder that was custom ground for us in Kona Hawaii, next to a salad of micro greens consisting of baby arugula, baby frissee otherwise known as curly endive, finely diced daikon radish, lardon of double cherry wood smoked bacon from crazy pig farm in Essex, and the owners name is Raymond, chopped fresh duck egg from Huey, Dewey, and Louie Farm in Albany, the dressing with that is a red cabernet vinaigrette reduction with a twenty grain bread crouton baked yesterday morning about five a.m. in house by Chef Margaret Busybody and dusted with fennel pollen and marjoram….now, our second daily special is… SERIOUSLY!?
I mean holy grasshoppers people this could have been summed up thusly: Rabbit, Bulgar wheat with jus, salad with bacon and wine vinaigrette. I don’t want to feel like I’m getting lectured on this stuff, just give me a general idea, if I’m interested, I’ll ask the questions. Otherwise, it just sounds like you’re quoting the digits after 3.14 in Pi….and the only upside to this is my mind drifts from those voices I hear, to “Chocolate Town” where people are juggling raspberry filled jelly doughnuts and riding a giraffe made of cotton candy.
The Bistro, what does that mean to you? Well unfortunately some of you thought about the “Pizza Hut Bistro” or something of the same ilk that have just about ZERO, to do with what a bistro actually is. A bistro is a small restaurant, which actually prepares home cooked, robust earthy dishes and slow-cooked foods, like cassoulet for instance. By slow cooked, I’m not referring to a crappy pizza that took an hour to arrive at my table. But again, bastardizing food and food terms is what we like to do in America…have a cream cheese “Sushi” roll lately?!
I could go on for hours about water waiters, restaurants with numbers in the name, crappy cheese platters, and paying for a sauce to put on the piece of meat you just paid fifty bucks for. But I have to stop someplace; otherwise this would be called a book and not an article… I would then be an author, not an underpaid food blogger. If I were an Author I’d be busy doing Author things, like eating at 11 on Main, while listening to the daily caviar specials in detail, drinking an imported Icelandic Spring water that was recommended by my water waiter Angelique...... then phoning The Cat, to figure out which Island he has run off to with my three hundred foot yacht!
Once again, you make me laugh out loud!
ReplyDeleteIt's what I live for Tupper....well that, and winning the lottery. Thanks for reading!
DeleteBwhahahahaha! Now that's funny! How come you weren't this funny when you were a kid, I wouldn't have hit you so much damn it!? ;o)
ReplyDeleteI like pain?!
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