THE GURGLING COD

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.

Lethal Chef

News from the UK,  that the popularity of TV chef programs seems to be leading to an upswing in kitchen-related injuries, prompts two reactions.
1) Nice to see the USA has not cornered the market on stupid. Yet.
2) Is the correlation between TV chefs and kitchen accidents even more concrete than the article suggests?
Insurance daily claims

Since celebrity chefs tried to educate the nation and the blow torch moved in alongside the potato masher, amateur chefs have been getting into trouble.
According to the research, 14% of those questioned had experienced an accident or damaged their kitchen in some way, while trying out new recipes.
Seventy-three per cent of respondents had little faith in their ability as a chef; however 75% were keen to attempt a complex technique.

Is there that much creme getting bruleed at home? I have to wonder if the issue is not the chefs themselves -- hard to see how, generally speaking, making cassoulet would be more dangerous than making bangers and mash, or whatever these folks were eating in the dark days before the birth of the Naked Chef. Rather, if folks have TVs in their kitchen, and are cooking along to live, DVRed, or DVDed cooking programs, could the distraction of the flickering image itself be generating the accident? If you are making a brunoise while watching someone make a brunoise, it's not hard to see how you might wind up shy a finger or two.

The simple answer might be not to have a TV in the kitchen, a thought that might be unAmerican, and economically unstimulating.* While I wonder at the premise of the article, in re the danger of new and specialized kitchen equipment, I can say that it is a bad idea to listen to Grandmixer DST, or any other scratch-heavy music, while trying out your new mandolin. Trust me. But get out a sharp knife, and enjoy:

Grandmixer DST "Crazy_Cuts"_Original_12" Long_version.mp3

*I am not, like, a global economic expert, but in the long run, how does giving every American a check about the size of an inexpensive piece of consumer electronics help our economy? Couldn't we save the gas from all those trips to Best Buy and just send a jillion dollars to China?

Crunk in the Cask

Lil Jon is opening the Little Jonathan Winery. It seems as if the ATL hip-hop rapper plans to bring a refreshing lack of pretense to the world of vinters:

"I'm not no 'drink wine every day' kind of dude," Jon said. "I'm not like an expert, so don't ask me no questions…I just like the taste."

Best wishes to the man behind "Crunk Juice," and sincere hopes that it goes better than the last ATL-based wine venture on the Cod's radar.

The restaurant that tells you it wishes it was adopted.

From the other L.A., (and not the 02134, or Mobile, but the non-boot-shaped one out West), comes news of Bacaro, a  new place that comes with the olives and the polenta, and the whimsical grapes. Better still, the Knife opines

Bacaro is on a funny little slice of Union, between 23rd and 24th streets. More importantly, it's worth seeking out. Bacaro is like the emo, low-budget little brother of Lou.

I, for one, welcome our new emo restaurateurs. In fact, let's hope this emo restaurant thing is just getting started. As a potential concept, it has legs: a restaurant with eyeliner-glazed filets of dayboat amberjack,  a restaurant that often shutters on Saturday nights to  post on its LJ, a restaurant where rather than telling you about the specials, the servers push up one sleeve to show you where they carved them into their arm, a restaurant where the cocktails are named after Anne Sexton poems, a restaurant that confirms reservations through long rambling posts on your Facebook wall,  well, that  restaurant might be just the all-too-human antidote we need to the restaurant the cool kids eat at, while a computer tells you that  you can't.

For details on the other other L.A., Brother James:
James Brown,_Make_It_Funky.m4a
This is about as intense as casual stage banrer gets, and offers new insight onto why Fred Wesley's autobiography reads like the Chitlin Circuit's answer to Mommy Dearest.

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.

 

How nice it seems/howmuch it means

Off to New Orleans to investigate reports of some sort of jazz festival. Details tk.

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.

For we, like sheep, have gone astray

Via the Grinder, some Brits getting all Cain and Abel over shepherd's* pie:

A row over the correct way to make shepherd’s pie ended up in court after a disagreement between two brothers turned violent.
After a day spent drinking, Michael Garvin cooked his brother John the traditional English dish for dinner, expecting a grateful response.
John, however, voiced his disquiet that the pie was not topped with a layer of sliced tomatoes.
His brother, a chef, claimed a layer of tomatoes was not the appropriate way to finish off a shepherd’s pie, and responded by hitting him over the head with a shovel.As the argument got out of control, John threatened to petrol bomb his brother’s flat and was arrested.

One can shake one's head, and say that it's wrong to hit one's brother in the head with a shovel, and that's usually the case. But that's a very glass-half-empty way to look at this story. Wouldn't a better lede be "In Lancastershire, two brothers are still passionate about traditional English food"? In an era when so few seem concerned with what a dish is, and what it ain't, I call this the feel-good story of the week.

*They have shepherd's, rather than shepherds', which would make for some pretty chubby dudes with pastoral employments.

The Pope's Risotto

OK, so Benedict's people emphasized that the food Bastianich et al fix for him be cognizant of "the digestive needs of a man who had just turned 81 and was at the end of an intense road trip." Fair enough. Thus, no cinnamon in the strudel, and no pepper in the ravioli cacio pepe e pere. But then they feed him ramps? How do you say "pull my finger" in Latin?

The Levee was dry

If he had digits, the Cod would have been scratching his head all day about the most recent DJ, wherein Frank relays the exciting news that there are bars in NYC that make their Manhattans with rye.* As Frank even points out, this is, in fact, the original spirit used for Manhattans. So, it's as if Frank singled out places that make gimlets with gin, or Reubens with corned beef, or, I suppose, BLTs with bacon. Considering the skepticism other Timesmen have for the Internets, I suppose the DI/DO commitment to an online presence is heartening. Still, my best guess is that a Sulzberger minon stood at the door of Frank's office and refused to let him leave until he posted up a DJ.
*To paraphrase the Wedding Singer, Alex Balk gets it.