Those of you intrepid to follow the Cod on Twitter may notice a robust subsidiary interest in college football. (And griefing the MLA convention, but I digress.) I blame it on the day job, and a bunch of smart folks who would be fun to read if they wrote about youth golf. Longtime readers may have noticed an ambivalence about the Bay Area in general, and Alice Waters in particular. These various strands come to a rare intersection tomorrow as the Eagles of Boston College and the Wolfpack of Nevada meet in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. Traditionalists will remember that, until last year, the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl was the Emerald Bowl, sponsored by Diamond Foods. Diamond Foods is a West Coast nut concern, so the sponsoring a West Coast bowl made a bit of sense.
However, we now have a new sponsor -- Kraft Foods, the folks who make the orange mac and cheese, the folks who peddled the crappy fake parm with disposable grater, the folks who lobbied to make it easier for them to call the stuff in green cans "parmesan," the architects of Cheez Wiz, etcetera, etcetera, are the title sponsor for a bowl game in a city that is the home of sustainable and organic, and according to Michael Bauer at least, the citadel of all that is good in American foodways. It's embarrassing, to say the least.
Like so many problems, it's an easy one to solve with money. A sponsor that fits better with the city's brand, and this momentary hiccup is forgotten. What SF needs is some sort of iconic figure that typifies the city's commitment to culinary righteousness. Through the good offices of the Peerless Photoshopping of Ms. Penny Pascal, we have a rendition of the trophy for the 2012 Chez Panisse Sustain-a-Bowl!
This spoiled my digestion of pizza a al casa Romano. But plenty of Nero d'Avola will stem that tide.
Posted by: Marco | Saturday, 08 January 2011 at 09:31 PM