THE GURGLING COD

A Cheerwine-filled donut? Kreme Rules Everything Around Me.

As it happens, there is a fancy food show going on right now in New York. But there is a big problem with the fancy food show. The most fancy food of all is not there. Fortunately, it is available in grocery stores in the Carolinas for the month of July:

Your argument? It is not valid.

Hold the strippers, hold the lettuce...

The trend piece in yesterday's DI/DO on bachelor parties focused on nice meals, rather than lap dances is kind of a headscratcher. I have actually been to a bachelor party where there was fancy food and no stripper, but as a piece of reporting, the piece is conceptually and epistemically flawed. The idea that some subset of bachelor parties end without any spray tan rubbing off on anyone's collar is pleasant to comprehend, but does not seem to represent a giant leap forward for our civilization. Also, the epistemology here is sketch, because do you know what? Bros lie about strippers. For instance:

Andrew Loewenstern, 37, a software developer and a dedicated gourmand, flies around the world with his friends, descending on destination restaurants. Last year they went to Spain for a meal at El Bulli. Mr. Loewenstern celebrated his bachelor party two weeks ago at Alinea in Chicago. His friends converged on the city, flying from San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

That's fantastic. But unless Achatz locked them all in the restaurant for the night, I'd bet that five minutes after they settled the check, these bros were on their way to the raunchiest strip club in Gary, with twenties tucked under their eyelids, Phish concert or no Phish concert.

Worse still, even in the context of the meal part, the bros manage to sound creepier than your average guy who stops by Legs & Eggs on his way to work:

“For the groom, carnal pleasure involved eating,” said Archie McAlister, 43, explaining why he reserved the chef’s table at the Breslin in Manhattan for a bachelor party he held earlier this month for Theo Peck, 38, a cook. “They brought the pig, then this slender girl came over and butchered it down for us and chopped it into little pieces. I don’t mean this in a leering way, but that was the female entertainment for the evening.”

Jesus.

Sifton Soundtracks: Anisa b/w, um, Suzane Vega, I guess.

It may be because for the first time in the storied history of Sifton Soundtracks that The Cod has a song ready to go for a review that has not yet appeared that this week's review is so uninspiring. One imagines that Sifton will opine on Ma Peche soon, but until then, Annisa keeps its two stars. The review itself is fairly straightforward, save for a couple of spots that read like nonqualifiers in a Sifton parody contest:

The ambitions of the kitchen are as quiet as they were a decade ago, but no smaller for the time elapsed since Ms. Lo first introduced us to them. There are the requisite Asian influences, as well as African ones, none of them overwhelming in taste or technique. Ms. Lo is not by any means a flashy chef. She does not stalk the dining room in gleaming whites, glad-handing patrons and accepting praise. She simply stays in the kitchen and works, cooking as the Puget Sound novelist David Guterson writes: precisely, with earth in closest proximity to sea. 

and

And fluke with caviar and beets brought the same happy laughter you hear drifting out of car windows at beach-town sunsets: the salty pop of the fish eggs set softly against the sweet, fresh flesh of the fish, with a snap of beet sugar to tie it all together.

David Guterson? Beats me. 

In all, it sounds like a nice place to have a meal someone else is paying for. Adult, sincere, with vestigial bohemian influences, or at least a GV address. Call it Suzanne Vega, readers' choice. Perhaps we can all be more inspired next week.

Tony Maws vs. Pac-Man

The topic of kids in restaurants has come up at the Cod now and again, and the question of camera phones in restaurant got batted around here a while back. At the same time, questions of teenagers in restaurants, and cellphone video games had not come up. Until now. On the Craigie on Main's Facebook page, the following item:

"What can you say? 5-top at Table 23 last nite, Three grownups enjoying their Tasting Menus and 2 teens playing games on their phones in a daze. Don't get us started. Sad."

The tasting menu at Craigie requires focus under the best of circumstances -- towards the end of both times I've done the full tasting menu at Craigie, I've felt overwhelmed, not in a Mr. Creosote way, but verging on being intellectually overloaded and aesthetically overstimulated. There is a lot going on in one of these meals.  Were I COM chef Tony Maws, I would be frustrated to serve these meals to people who are not paying attention to them.

But if we presume there was some sort of family relationship between the grownups and the teens, how do the grownups allow this to happen? Craigie on Main is a serious, expensive restaurant. Why would parents a) waste money like this b) tolerate this kind of incivility?

Sifton Soundtracks: Takaski, b/w Shonen Knife, "Making Plans for Bison"

Sifton goes offbeat, meaty and Asian, laying a one spot on Takashi, a Korean style Japanese BBQ place. It reads like a better review than the star indicates, and Sfton waxes rather lyrical at times:

Cubed raw liver comes to the table as well, a chilled, lumpy stew dressed with salt and sesame oil. It tastes of lightning storms on the high plains, of fear and magnificence combined. It is faintly metallic, rich with blood.

Is it The Cormac McCarthy Steak House? No, it's Takahi. And the graf qoted above is the last of three opening the review that do nothing but list items of food, in what reads like a deliberate reversal of his usual inclination to moonlight as 21st Century Edith Wharton.  (He does end the review with a throwaway George V. Higgins reset, FWIW.) Meaty, offbeat and Asian seemed like a tough combo, until I remembered about Shonen Knife. 

Andre Williams in Ann Arbor!

Very happy to see that Andre Williams, of The Bacon Fat fame, is getting a piece of the baconmania pie. The advert is cut and pasted below, but I did not know that Zingerman's had a whole bacon book,* or that Andre Williams had written a novel. Culturally literate people will recall that The Bacon Fat is that new kind of jump, where you wind up twice and then end with a bump. Also worth noting that The Bacon Fat is sweeping the South, while Ann Arbor is Big 10 territory. Does this performance suggest that the SEC is preparing to annex the Big Ten?  

Andre Williams & his Band on the Roadhouse Patio

Fri June 18, 2010
9:00 pm	to	11:30 pm

(Doors open at 8:30pm)

Tickets $15/person (available online or at the Roadhouse)

The famed R&B musician will join us to play a concert out on the patio at Zingerman’s Roadhouse. Andre topped the charts with his song “Bacon Fat” in 1957 and, at 75, he’s going stronger than ever.  He was profiled in Ari’s bookZingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon and is celebrating a new album onBloodshot Records, That’s All I Need, and he has just authored his first novel, Sweets.  Join us for this rare Ann Arbor performance by an American music original.

Tickets are available for purchase online or at Zingerman’s Roadhouse.

This concert kicks off a weekend of bacon-centric events at Zingerman’s.  For more information, go to www.zingermanscampbacon.com.

BP Cake Wreck

Via Bigg Will, commentary on the BP spill in cake form. Do the Cake Wrecks folks know about this? 

 

Sifton Soundtracks: The Cod gets Iced.

The crescendo of indifference attending the Cod's Sifton Soundtracks project only affirms a sense that Sam Sifton, the subject of Sifton Soundtracks, sees the Cod as an adversary to match wits with, laying clever traps and misleading clues in an effort to distract this blog from the locating the correct song for each review. This week, Sifton's tactics reach a new low. In deucing Torrisi, Sifton constructs the entire review around Billy Joel's image and lyrics, Sifton effectively ices Sifton Soundtracks, compelling the Gurgling Cod to take a knee and chug a bottle full of swill.*

Fine. 

*Billy Joel is terrible. Billy Joel has never not been terrible, and only the happy circumstance of his status as the Lynrd Skynrd of tristate hausfraus has kept him from starvation. 

Hello, dad, hello mom - I'm a bbbbb-bad idea! (W/ apologies to Lita Ford.)

In the process of clicking around from the Grub St. 100 sammiches thing, I took a look at Grub St. Boston, the which, despite being the spawning ground of the Cod, does not get much attention here. It maybe should have stayed that way -- we get a "First Look at Cherry Bomb, Bringing Bacon Cupcakes to Brighton." Several objections:

1) Bacon cupcakes?

2) Bacon cupcakes in 2100, zeitgeist-wise, are a little bit like starting a a club that swing dances on Razor scooters in 2005. Combining two things folks are tired of in one thing is an Ugg boot w/ stripper heel as dining concept.

3) Cherry Bomb? The Cod cannot think of a name that offers a firmer guarantee of a staff w/ crazygirl bangs and Sailor Jerry tattoos who discuss upcoming burlesque performances among themselves while you try to order a cup of coffee.

4) In general,  the whole enterprise is reminiscent of The Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator:

Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Charlie's Angels and Sesame Street. The story should use a haunted house as a plot device!

Generated by the Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator

Walk this way? Or maybe not?

Is it possible that the "Walk This Way"-era Run DMC logo resets* have lost their flavor on the bedpost overnight?

 

 Signs point to yes. On the other hand, it may be that I am mad did not get around to making my MTAOFC/Experimental Jetset tee before J-Pow ate the JC brand and crapped it out in the shape of Meryl Streep. Tip of the fin to Addison, via DFB. 

*If you love logo resets, spend more time hanging around a college campus with a big Greek population. Still trying to process the Chi Omega as Metallica tees of a few years ago, not to mention The Notorious KKG.