THE GURGLING COD

Add New Orleans

The keen-eyed Gastropoda sent along a link to Whenthesaints.org, an outfit focusing on the aforementioned fuckeduppedly slow pace of recovery. Read up, sign the petition supporting Chris Dodd's Gulf Coast Recovery Act, check out their running podnuhs. If you have ever enjoyed a trip to New Orleans, listened to a record by Louis Armstrong, the Meters, James Booker, etc. etc. etc, or even enjoyed a freaking bag of Zapp's, it is quite literally the least you can do.

We interrupt

The regularly scheduled cooking, cheffelation investigations, Bruniology, & c. for a Public Service Announcement. Katrina hit two years ago today. Shit is still real fucked up.

"9th Ward, where y'at?" is not a rhetorical question. I seriously would like to know.

Last days indeed

Evidently, Hooters waitresses get tipped an average of 45%. I hope this is some sort of hype, but if not, I'll definitely be re-thinking my policy of wanting to defend our way of life against the terrorists. On a brighter note, you will not be losing any more sleep wondering about what kinds of food Neal Pollack's son likes and dislikes. Three words and three letters for the Alternadad -- less is more; S/FJ.
(The gent to the left is Nero. I chose him instead of more germane images, like, say, the former Mrs. Darren Daulton, in an effort to deter losing bandwidth to the one-handed Googlers.)

Lord, got tomatoes.

In an effort to get away from blogging about a blog about a TV show about cooking, a retardedly simple actual cooking post:
Tomatoes are, like, so good right now. If you are fancy, like Max, you go to an artisan bakery run by one of the lesser Coppolas, and make a tomato sandwich like he does. Many of the rest of us do not even live within a convenient drive of a Baldwin bakery, and have to make do with what's at the supermarket. But there are large parts of the country where tomatoes will grow like the Dickens,* far from any fancy bakery. You can save for that move to esseff, or you can improvise. I purchased a package of the widely-available Thomas's English Muffins. I toasted one. I sliced a tomato that was still warm from the garden. I spread a bit of mayo on the toasted muffin. I enjoyed my sandwich. Not as much as I would have enjoyed having Ludivine Sagnier pop bits of pan bagnat into my mouth, but it was better than 83% of the lunches I've had in 07.

*I saw an unusually robust Beefsteak shoot violating a blueberry bush just this morning.

Scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Bourdain?

Actually, not so much. Having checked back in with the aforementioned Bourdain Bravo Blog, I've put my finger on the trouble -- it looks like ass. I was surprised to see that the current entry ran to six pages, thinking that it would be unlikely that Bourdain would go Gibbon on a single episode of a TV show, even if you paid him. Then I noticed how small the pages are. As the screenshot below indicates, if the page for Bourdain's blog were a map of the USA, the actual content could fit in an Arizona-sized hole. The rest, is promotion for Bravo. Better yet, chopping up the post generates more clicks, and theoretically, more ad revenue, though the vast majority of the promotion on the site was in-house. I understand that Bravo is a for-profit endeavor, but this layout asks a lot from the reader.

When we go home, we play some didge

The internets are falling all over themselves bestow a new Nobel Prize for outstanding achievement in grime on M.I.A., but this time, the internets are correct. In a better world, "Mango Pickle Down River" would have dropped in May, because it has summer anthem all over it, and food it is themed, keeping it out of the Silica Gel category. I know not of this Wilcannia Mob, but they sound sort of like the Pack and Musical Youth were on a Gulfstream IV that ran out of gas somewhere in the Outback. In an even better world, M.I.A., and not some moody bitch, would be getting the mad steakhouse chain money.

M.I.A.-Mango _Pickle_Down_River_(with_the_Wilcannia_Mob).mp3

Wild Horses

For the best in NY dining, follow the clavicle.* Being able to read a menu with your breasts while you gaze winsomely at the camera must be a real plus for a restaurant critic. If Grimes had learned this trick, he might not be stuck reviewing books now. Gawker has been all over this, with comments hitting the predictable chords. I don't have much to add, other than a respectful golf clap for elevating the ethical shortcut of being willfully (I count four pix of her in today's NYDN) non-anonymous to a philosophy:

They go together like surf and turf - food criticism and anonymity.

But Danyelle Freeman is a new breed of restaurant critic, a maverick whose face accompanies her weekly reviews, launching today (see today's review).

"We are obviously trying to do something different here," says Freeman, the brains and taste buds behind restaurantgirl.com, the popular dining blog of reviews, chef profiles and news that she launched in January 2006. She'll continue to write the blog as she files weekly reviews for The News.

"I have consciously made the choice to be accessible to readers as well as chefs and restaurateurs," she explains, "in order to communicate my experience of whether or not a chef has successfully achieved his or her goals."

Call me cranky, but ignoring the precepts your peers abide by is Bonds/Enron style maverickness, as real wild horses on the open range do not get comped appetizers and free drinks, usually. The straphanging NYDN readers may prefer the vicarious thrill of the ridealong with their new glamorous friend to actual, you know, evaluations of the quality of a restaurant, so the decision may make sense. But in terms of what blogging might be able to add to the conversation about food, I'm not sure if having a cheffelator turn pro is something for the food blogosphere to celebrate.

*Tip of the fin to cinetrix for the heads up on the clavicle.

5:30 or 10:30, Mr. Rodriguez

A droll prank foisted by those wacky Brits, calling to see which soccer player can get a table at Nobu, or not. A stateside version of this seems like it would be just the thing for the torpor of late August. Can Eli Manning get a table at the Port Authority TGI Fridays? Does Joe Torre make Graydon Carter's cut? Could Michael Strahan even fit through the door at Prune? There must be someone locked down on Denton's farm with a working telephone and a need to know.

Bad news Cows go to Japan

With Nolan Ryan! If he can beat up an irate, half-his-age Robin Ventura, who's to say he cannot persuade the Japanese to stop being whiny bitches about mad cow?

You came into a soul food restaurant and ordered a Reuben?

A possibly apocryphal story boosted from the estimable Tofu Hut about New Orleans, Reuben sandwiches, Betty Davis, and a rock critic. Three out of four ain't bad. Go to the original post for the musics:

Miles Davis divorced Betty because she was too wild. She's known for that and less for her music, which is a shame, and even less for her cooking, which is another. Between living in New York and living in Pittsburgh she used to have this restaurant in New Orleans, a hole-in-the-wall, dive-looking place that paid okay but cooked even better. It specialized in soul food: hush puppies, collard greens, fried chicken so greasy you couldn't lift the napkins off the table without help, you know the scene. That was where she worked after her first couple of records: they were some real hot stuff, sassy and in your face, hot like I said, hot like you'd expect today from Macy Gray or somebody but funky too like P-Funk and Sly Stone. Those were good albums but didn't get much attention, and Betty, she just figured hell with it and set up her restaurant. She did what she wanted to do and then she wanted to do something else. If you haven't heard 'em, well, I'll tell you something more about her cooking and that'll tell you about the music.

This restaurant started to get a reputation for itself, till one day this music critic from New York came in after one of the concerts--Irma Thomas and Allen Touissaint and Eddie Bo, that crew. Betty'd gone down and performed a couple of songs with them even though she didn't fit in too well, and then she came back to take the meatloaf and cornbread out of the oven even though I could have managed it just as well like on any other day. She seemed peevish about something, on edge, so I just ducked my head and tended to my tables. And the place was starting to fill up when this dandified critic walked in, cutting early from the concert, and ordered a reuben. Betty told me later he'd been standing there near the front row with his notebook out, and I guess that's what got under her skin. He didn't help things coming in later asking for a reuben.

"A reuben," she said.
"Yes, I think I'd like a reuben."
"You came into a soul food restaurant and ordered a reuben."
"Do you know how to make a reuben?"
By now Betty had her head back and one hand on her hip. "Do I know how to make a reuben? Hmph. Oh, you'll have your reuben." Then to me: "Jimmy, go get some some Swiss cheese and some rye bread." And back to the critic: "you want something to eat until then?"

So I went off to the grocery down the street and came back, and Betty buttered a plate and sliced the bread and took some corned beef she'd intended for a hot hash and she put it on one slice on some Swiss cheese, and put some Thousand Island on the other. And she put the two sides together and brought it out to the critic like that and set it across the table from him and he just looked at it.

"Not yet," she said. She was wearing this short tight skirt and a form-fitting blouse--she liked to advertise herself a bit, you know--and she had an afro in those days with some hoop earrings, and she sat at the counter catty-cornered from the critic and his sandwich, her elbows back on the counter with her legs crossed, one foot bobbing absently like she was still listening to Eddie Bo play an encore. She had her chin back a bit, her dander up, you know, and she turned her head slowly, giving that critic and his sandwich a look like you wouldn't believe. And the butter began to sizzle and the cheese began to melt and that poor fella had to loosen his tie. And shortly she took a spatula off the hanger and got up and flipped that sandwich, and when it was over she took the sandwich off one plate and put it on another and pushed it over to him and said, very sweetly, "careful, honey, this sandwich is still hot."

And he just said "yes'm" and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. When the sandwich was gone he had another glass of tea in a hurry, and left a good tip.