THE GURGLING COD

The Owl Gets It

Once again, the Owl is on the side of the good guys: 

The Owl, an avant-garde restaurant specializing in molecular gastronomy, is organizing a "peaceful protest" against Greenville's proposed food truck regulations.

The proposed regulations announced this week will require that food trucks be parked only on private property at least 250 feet away from any existing restaurant, which essentially eliminates food trucks from downtown Greenville's Central Business District.

The Owl's Facebook page says: "Food Truck Revolution in our parking lot next Wednesday, March 13! We've invited our friends, Neue and Asada, to come park in our lot and serve (while we're open) as a sign of peaceful protest against the new food truck regulations. We feel they are too restrictive and no one currently involved with the trucks was consulted or asked a single question on the matter."

Given that downtown restaurants tend toward pro-Romney baroque trainwrecks like Soby's, or earnest but dreary farm-to-table bandwagoneers like American Grocery, it's no wonder there's a move to keep interesting food purveyors like Neue Southern far away. 

Southern Strokes?

Another moment in the history of pop epidemiology, from the folks who tell you that moviegoers are 2x more likely to die of a heart attack b/c of buttery topping: 

Traditional Southern diets may be linked to a higher risk of stroke, a researcher said at a conference on Thursday.

The lead researcher, Suzanne Judd, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Alabama, said her study is the first large-scale effort to look at stroke and a diet of such foods as fried chicken and fish, bacon, ham and sweet teas.

 “Fatty foods are high in cholesterol, sugary drinks are linked to diabetes and salty foods lead to high blood pressure,” Judd said in a statement. Those are all factors in the risk ofcardiovascular disease.

So, news flash, fatty foods are bad for you. But the definition of "Southern" and the definition of "traditional" seems a little bit, erm unscientific: 

Her study involved more than 20,000 whites and African Americans age 45 and older who underwent medical assessments and answered questions about their eating habits and health in 2003 to 2007. People who ate traditional Southern diets lived in various places, but about two-thirds of them lived in the southeastern United States, Judd said.

Previous research has shown that Southerners are about 20% more likely to have a stroke than people who live in the rest of the country. Judd’s work found that stroke frequency was proportional to consumption of Southern food.

Granted, it's a newspaper article about a scientific study, not an article in a medical journal, but the science seems kind of wack, in that "Southern food," for the purposes of the study, appear to be "food we already knew is bad for you. But, you know, just to be on the safe side, lay off the okra, collards and benne wafers.

It's worth noting that the lead author of this study is at the University of Alabama, which suggests that the clumsy deployment of the notion of "Southern food" may be a function of a reluctance to consult the experts on traditional food, who are of course at Ole Miss. 

Nashville Husk, or 550 miles is a long way from farm to fork?

Was initially surprised to hear of plans for a Husk outpost in Nashville. The Cod is on the record as a fan of H. Sean Brock's work, but given that his thing is an intense focus on the local, it's odd to see him open a place that is 550 miles from his two Charleston places that are within a stone's throw of one another. I could imagine a similarly-conceived restaurant engaging w/ the foodshed of western TN as opposed to coastal SC, but it seems bad for the brand to slap the same name on it. 

On the other hand, it might not be Brock's call. Husk and McReady's are owned by the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, which also owns two non-Brock properties, and the owners may well have a different vision of Husk than the chef does. More than one chef-owner has reminded me that Brock is not a chef-owner, and the existence of Husk Nashville may be evidence of that heirloom chicken coming home to roost. 

Better Cambridge grits news, or, wait a second, Quentin Compson

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that some of the grits news coming out of the 02139 is not terrible.* Right catty corner from the grits pizza nightmare is Christina's Spices & SpecialtyFoods, an offshoot of Christina's Ice Cream, (aka the East Cambridge ice cream store owned by a taxpayer). When the Cod is lucky enough to shop here, he feels like Pee Wee in the magic shop. Hand to God, I had an inkling this would happen before I saw the sign, but Cantabridgians can now purchase Anson Mills grits over the counter. Prep instructions are a little finnicky, but Anson Mills is the Real Deal. One of the mantras at the day job is "retention," for much the same reason that casinos promote retention of their patrons by injecting oxygen into gaming areas and by removing clocks. As such, one cannot but wonder if access to non Quaker Instant grits might have been enough to keep Quentin Compson out of the Charles River, thus improving Harvard's retention numbers for the Class of 1910. 

The Coco Chanel Syndrome, or, you can't spell "Dayenu" without "u"

 Coco Chanel is famous for saying something like “Before you leave for the day…take one thing off…” or, "take off the last thing you put on." In any case, it's a dictum that comes to mind for a certain kind of restaurant that's a little bit ambitious and is likely in a town with an Airport with more gates for Southwest than for legacy carriers. They want to please, but they want that Beard nom, etc, so they keep on adding stuff, a la Todd English on an Adderall bender. Soby's, the restaurant where the Cod and cinetrix hit on this Coco-restaurant connection, (and the host for a recent Romney fundraiser), has an unusually compelling example this evening. Skirt steak w/ mashed potatoes? So far, so good, though the mashed potatoes seem out of keeping with the Gaucho vibe skirt steak wants. But then, grilled asparagus (in September? where does it come from, besides off the Sysco truck?), and a dressing that screams "scared money don't make none" - toasted garlic and chives? For a salad dressing? 

And dessert. Bread pudding? Dayenu - in the right hands, bread pudding can be a ridiculously compelling dessert. But, this one, propped up w/ blueberries, and, uh, lemon curd, and an utterly confounding garnish of "fruit and nut white chocolate bark"? Is there any reason to imagine that the chef at Soby's has thought much about a) skirt steak or b) bread pudding? De La Soul has the answer:

It's hard to be hungry when you're from Alabama...

So, the G&G tells me that some folks made a movie about eating only food from their home state. Good for them:

Nice idea, but the title "Eating Alabama" might work better with a state with a name that would work less well as a porn star's name.* Also! Not the first time such a thing has been done. And! 

Mittens in the 864

So, Romney took some time away from stonewalling on his taxes to hit the Cod's backyard. Beyond his documented cruelty to animals, lack of vision, lack of discernable values, etc., it's also clear that anyone hosting a political fundraiser in 2012 in Greenville SC, who would choose to have that event at Soby's is unfit to lead. Instead of American Grocery, or the Owl, or the Walhalla Steak House, it's a long-in-the-tooth proto New South place that desperately needs to hear what Coco Chanel has to say about accessories. 

Owl>Chicken, or: The Owl - where activists eat for free!

So this whole Chick-fil-A/Gay thing is really starting to eat my brain, a la Gatesgate '09. On the one hand, folks who don't get that free speech is pointless if that speech does not have consequences, on the other folks whose commitment to civil rights begins and ends w/ not eating chicken sandwiches. But, there is a man in Greenville, SC who is living Biblically, specifically Ezekiel 22:30, And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it..."

In this case, the gap was a Chick-fil-A drivethrough, and the man was Jeffrey Martell: 

One man was arrested at a Greenville Chick-fil-A Wednesday after police say he blocked both drive through lanes with his vehicle as part of a protest. Officers arrested Jeffrey P. Martell, 30, after they say he tried to disrupt the business on Laurens Road.Martell is charged with trespassing and nuisance conduct.  His car was towed from the restaurant. He is due in court at 9:00 a.m. Thursday.

Martell was released, and ordered not to trespass on CFA property until the trial. But! The good news is that he won't have to be visiting any fast food chains for his meals: 

We've never been shy of our support of gay marriage. In the wake of the recent chick-fil-a controversy a friend of the Owl peacefully protested by blocking the drive-through of the Laurens rd store earlier today. 

While we aren't hugely concerned with where our customers get their chicken fix, we are passionate about activism - be it through protest, education, or example. 

Our friend decided to take action in this specific way to show his support for the cause. He's currently in jail waiting for bail which we find sad and exceptionally funny in equal measure. 

Just to say it publicly: Jeffrey Martell eats free at The Owl for life.

Free eats at one of the Southeast's most exciting new restaurants instead of soggy chicken sandwiches? Sounds like a good trade to me. 

 

Roe v. Roe

Anchower, I know. But! The Cod saw where there was a thing in the NYT about bowfin caviar from Louisiana. The keeneyed Cinetrix pointed out that there is a little bit of a fishegg beef up in: 

“The F.D.A. looks at the word ‘caviar’ as synonymous with roe, but that is not true,” said Douglas Peterson, associate professor of fisheries and aquaculture research at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. “Caviar only comes from sturgeon,” he said. “Everything else is fish eggs.”

Certainly, the good people at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University warm the Cod's heart with their linguistic precision (no "vodka gimlets" for them, one imagines), but they do have a dog, er, sturgeon in this fight, in that UGA produces its own sturgeon caviar. Considering that it says right on the can "They have Gatorade... we have caviar," in a not very subtle dig against the University of Florida, it's clear that Dr. Peterson, distinguished ichthyologist though he may be, is engaged in some good old fashioned SEC trolling of Louisana's caviar pretensions. 

 

When the (Mayo) spell is broken? Also, where is local?

Evidently, the geographical confusion that has gripped college football has extended into the realm of condiments. Duke's Mayonaise, the beloved cultish secret of Southern cooks, is now available in parts of the South that are north of Canada! They are selling it -- openly -- in Pennsylvania! The new slogan is "the secret of great cooks." As a reasonably serious question, what happens when/if Duke's is available at supermarkets nationwide? What portion of the Duke's mystique lies where you cannot get it? The only intentionally regional brand that went national that comes to mind is Coors,  and that's complicated b/c of Nazis and stuff. 

In other regional news, regional supermarket chain Bi-Lo defines local like so. The Bi-Lo HQ is in Florida, and the chain's reach extends well beyond these states, but there is something reminiscent of the idea of the home counties in this notion. It's not as good as, you know, locally grown food, but better than trucking everything in from California.