THE GURGLING COD

An uneasy time/all is not well.

Wire, "Reuters":

Our own correspondent is sorry to tell
Of an uneasy time, that all is not well
On the borders, there's movement
In the hills there, is trouble
Food is short, crime is double
Prices have risen since the government fell
Casualties increase as the enemy shell
The climate's unhealthy, flies and rats thrive
And sooner or later, the end will arrive
This is your correspondent, running out of tape
Gunfire's increasing, looting, burning, rape

Oh, and favela tours complete with photo ops with drug dealers. I am with Travis Bickle on this one. Seriously, Dante needs to come back and write a new canto for these guys, and the motherfuckers doing the "9th Ward Hurricane Tours" in New Orleans.

Wire_"Reuters" from Pink Flag,  which you already own, right?

Where have you gone, Gerrard Winstanley?

Generally speaking, there has been less fuss about the appropriation of public space for private profit in Union Square than one might expect. But Rev. Billy, of the Church of Stop Shopping is on the case, at least. It is possible to imagine a more robust constituency of protestors, but it's a start. If this business makes you uneasy, consider asking for a City of Quartz Burger when you finally get to the front of the line at Shake Shack.

Yelp can haz compd cheezburger?

ZOMG1!1!! tEH futur ov food ritin on tha internets iz print. Oh, and extortion:

Yelp starts accepting gift certificates from restaurants wanting reviews, and then send daring review squads in anonymously for reality review. Some restaurants up the ante and go for a higher level of promotion with reality reviews being filmed and podcast.

I'm not holding my breath. And, I can imagine a world where even "citizen journalists" are familiar with the distinction between "your" and "you're." This, and l'affaire Bissinger, and my man Walter have got me thinking, and I hope to say something coherent about it someday. But for now:

Grading.

Add Pizza beef

For those Clevelanders planning their 23-cent pizza orgies, this location comes with a glowing endorsement from a Yelper. You're welcome.

Lucky Peach Skill Crane

The WSJ  follows Platt's suit with the 1-and-done approach to reviewing Ko. Metadiscursive grumbling about how reading about eating in NY means being tits-deep in Ko hype at all times only adds to the level of buzz, I suppose, but a few observations:
-The reservation system continues to dominate the conversation about the restaurant in a variety of ways:
1) Most obviously, it is forcing critics into reviews based on a single visit. Ironically, when the restaurateurs/fishwrap types Bissinger food bloggers, this is a common complaint. So, to  Platt, Tan, I say "gabba-gabba."
2) In this and other ways, the reservation system seems to be the tail that is wagging the dog. I love Chang's food,, but as it stands, Chang practically could have Escoffier, Careme, and Raekwon in the kitchen, or all the meals could be coming out the back end of a Dachshund, for as much as we've heard about the food, as opposed to the reservation system.
3) Tan observes:

The restaurant offers a prix fixe menu with no choices, other than an inquiry at the beginning about food allergies. Further, just over a month after its opening, the roster of its few regular dishes has largely remained the same -- and has been breathlessly documented by amateur bloggers and Gourmet magazine's Ruth Reichl alike. Getting through the meal can feel a little like dating the guy who's already gone out with the entire cheerleading squad.

I have no idea what the thing about the cheerleaders means (college or pro?), but its hard not to wonder if the pressure to change the menu is less, when Chang can count on fewer repeat customers than would be customary with a regular restaurant. Conversely, it would be a challenge for Chang to face diners who do not want to eat what they read about, but to eat something they can write about, and thus the level of hype, for Tan, produces an inevitable letdown:

"....it can be hard to shake off the feeling of, "Oh yes, there are those lychees in Riesling gelee, topped with frozen foie gras shavings that all these others have had."

Welcome to the desert of the real, girlfriend.
Finally,

That (being called by table number) gets to the root of what's lacking in the Ko dining experience: By making the reservation such a prize to get, you want to feel, at the end of the evening, that you've truly won something, that you've sprinted across a finish line far ahead of anyone else. Don't get me wrong -- the food's well-worth the trek. But, having endured failure morning after morning, you arrive wanting a bear hug, a sympathetic squeeze of the hand -- a Momofuku tchotchke, perhaps -- just some acknowledgement of the hardships you've endured to get there.

I would love to see whom Chang would hire as the designated Ko bear hugger (Authentic vintage LES junkie? Tranny sumo wrestler? George Atterbury?), but the desire for the "hardship" of getting there led me to a radical remimagination of the Ko concept. Instead of the online system, have a skill crane in Momofuku or Ssam, with the usual random assortment of fuzzy dice and lopsided dolphins, but include the requisite number of plush lucky peaches, each with a reservation date and time embroidered on the side. There's the tchotchke, and a new way to fill the seats with the people willing to sacrifice the most to eat there.

Yelper Skelper

I don't have much time for Yelp, but a couple of interesting Yelp-related items crossed the screen recently.

1) Yelp is now  making it possible for businesses to monitor and respond to comments on their establishments, I guess so they can send messages to Yelpers saying "Sorry about the pubic hair in your salad! Here's a coupon to enjoy dessert on us next time!"

2) Evidently, some businesses are putting up "No Yelpers" stickers.

The first makes me a little bit nervous. Whatever value Yelp and sites like it, or Zagat, for that matter, comes from it being of the barometer of the opinions of the hoi polloi. It looks like you have to register to see if you have to pay for this service, but in either event, it does not seem as if it would be too far-fetched to imagine Yelp for Business Owners Platinum Reserve, where messages could be screened, or zapped, Chowhound steez. That would be unfortunate, in that it would erode the credibility of the information Yelp is able to provide. As it stands, it is a way for Yelp to turn its users, which already providing its content, into a commodity in the form of a rather focused mailing list.

The second, in its own way, is almost as retarded as the Leitch/Bissinger contretemps Bissinger Dino Media Wigout.* I do not own a restaurant, but I, too, work in an industry where anonymous, and sometimes unfathomable, critiques come with the territory, but I hope to do a good enough job not to piss off most folks most of the time, and a)  hope that the general thrust of the comments reflect that, and b) the folks who read these things will take them for what they are worth. But other than as a general expression of antipathy, it's hard to see how this "No Yelpers" would work -- would Yelpers a) see the sign, and be expected to honor it with a vow of omerta vis a vis that particular experience? Or would it be more like a NINA thing, where they see the sign and go somewhere where their kind is welcome? I could conceivably imagine a cafe owner being annoyed if a patron were using his or her free wireless to denigrate the experience they were currently having in that cafe, but hard to imagine blocking Yelp from the network, even if it were technically possible.

The absurdity of the No Yelpers policy (matched only by the huffiness of the Yelpers) does raise one interesting point.  A  Yelper who asked about the sign reports: 

What I was told, in a nutshell, is that the café staff has encountered a stream of would-be critics “with attitude,” predisposed to take issue with or be critical of the business.... The staff said to me rhetorically, “If you’ve got a problem with something, you should tell us first rather than going online and posting.”

Yes, maybe. This is a gripe that has been griped before about the amateur restaurant blogger in general. In some cases it makes sense. If there is a fuckup that it is within the restaurant's means and inclination to fix, then sure. To get a corked bottle of wine, or the wrong entree, and to go home and post on it, rather than mention it to the server, is retarded. If, however, the problem is a place that say, charges too much for shitty food, there's not much point. It's like when Homer Simpson heckles Garrison Kellior, demanding that he be funnier. Is it worth it to say to a server, for instance, "the conceit  of your nine-dollar 'boudin blanc hot dog' is undermined by your use of a sausage that appears to have escaped from a fried breakfast at a B&B somewhere in the north of England"? Not really.

But if nothing else, the entire dustup is worth it for the Yelper from Houston using census data to discredit the disgruntled cafe owner's assertion that he was a hick:

DCO: who gives a F%%K what some red neck from Texas thinks about this shop in Oakland!
Everyone in oakland probably comes across as a goth to someone from Texas…
Lame ass hick…..

Yelper: Hmm, I’m a hick? You have 457,000 people in Oakland. My metroplex in Houston has 5 million +. You exude class, it simply drips from you. I like your flippant use of the word F**K in your emails to customers. Class..you got it in spades.

 

Hard to choose between pottymouthed Raiderfan cafe owner, and Houston Yelper with shaky command of the word "flippant."Thankfully we do not have to. God bless the Internet.

*Orson, no surprise, has a very thoughtful response.

Rucker League

Back from the Jazz Festival, which was like the Somme, albeit with better food concessions and more music. Deets tk, but betimes, the inbox managed to deflate expectations in a way that almost, but not quite, shades into Guiteau Monday territory. New York Magazine sends various food bloggers pitches about various food related stories, with the idea that bloggers will link to them, thus allowing NY Mag to harness the awesome power of the Blogosphere™. This week, NY Mag  teased with "NY Mag's Adam Platt Eats the World's Most Dangerous Meal,"which piqued my interest more than usual. Was NY Mag sending its reporter to eat a Thickburger? A Bloomin' Onion? Was Platt risking his cardiovascular health merely to amuse the readers of New York Magazine? Performing a perverse reinterpretation of Kafka's Hunger Artist? Or even just outSpurlocking Spurlock?  No. He's eating  fugu. So disappointing. Granted, the thing about magazines is that they have to come out every week or so, but the dangerous thrill of blowfish seems like something PJ O'Rourke might have pitched Details in one of its hetter iterations back in the days of Black Rain.

Call me a fussbudget, but just now, what with it becoming clearer and clearer that many of us are digging graves with our knives and forks, as Rockpile says, the danger that attends eating incorrectly prepared fugu seems a) remote, and b) easy to avoid. It would be as if Planned Parenthood shifted its efforts from addressing a broad spectrum of reproductive health issues to working to raising awareness about the dangers of getting knocked up by Satan.

Rockpile: A_knife_and_a_fork.mp3

Material:_Reduction.mp3 *

*The dialog at the end is Rosemary's husband explaining how hard it is to outwit the Devil.

 

Recipegate does not bother me

The Trib gets after the post recipegate era with some putatively actual politicians' receipts. Sadly no sign of the Daley family's famous Hippie Fricasee. Especially with the Obama Family Chili, we return to the vexed question of originality.  Here it is, in all its glory:

Obama family chili

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 pound ground turkey or beef
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4  tsp. each: ground cumin, ground turmeric, dried basil leaves, dried oregano leaves
3 Tbsps. red wine vinegar
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 can (15 ounces) red kidney beans

1. Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium-high heat; add onion. Cook, stirring, until softened and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and green pepper; cook, stirring, 1 minute.

2. Add turkey; cook, stirring to break up meat, until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Stir in chili powder, salt, cumin, turmeric, basil and oregano; cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Stir in vinegar. Add tomatoes; cover.

3. Heat to a boil; reduce lower heat to a simmer. Cook 30 minutes. Add kidney beans; cover. Cook 20 minutes.

Obama's receipt is far from original, but it would be preposterous to accuse him of stealing something, as this is one version of a commonplace American vernacular dish. All this is to point out just how stupid and lazy you would have to be to appropriate a receipt in a way that clearly indicated it was cut and pasted.
I mention all of this to express my irritation with the idea of "electability." I'm not any happier than you are that the choices are the soft and inexperienced guy, the tainted and increasingly shrewish lady, and the coelacanth. But not to vote for one of them, cause you are not sure if America is ready for a black president, is bullshit. It is exactly the same bullshit as the "I got nothing against them personally, but if my neighbor sells his house to one, property values in my subdivision will go to hell." In a neighborhood, or a nation, allowing the lowest, most racist denomenator to set the agenda is bad policy.

Seems like we rolled bigger stones back then

Despite its perennial popularity as a pretext for books about popular music, the Cod has very little patience for boomer-driven masturbatory nostalgia* for '68, or '77, or '83, or whatever.  That said, having taken a moment or two to whack Bloglines down to a manageable number of unread items, watching the Bruni vs. Ko reservations system unfold in all its three fold glory made me sad. Frank Bruni vs. Ko Reservations read like a Lester Bangs** vs. Lou Reed*** for the Oughts, and that made me sorry to be living in the Oughts.****

*I stone ganked this phrase from Ms. Kate Ledogar, who is even handier with a brush than a keyboard.
**Yes,  the guy  Philip Seymour Hoffman plays in Almost Famous.
***Yes, the guy from the scooter advertisements.
****If Chang translates Metal Machine Music into an actual restaurant concept, all is forgiven.

Correction

Turns out, there  is nothing wrong with the Cod that a gallon or so of dulce de leche poured over the bedsheets can't fix. Jesus, people. Also, interesting how this food = sex thing is a one way street, analogywise. Try telling your sweetie that making love to them is like, say, a hearth dinner at Savoy,* and watch your next opportunity for sexual intercourse recede into the distant future.
*I know, but everything I consider for the slot seemed off in some way -- your lovemaking is precise and ingredient-driven like a dinner at Per Se? -- your lovemaking is comforting and quintessentially New York, like a pastrami on rye from Katz's? You see the problem.