THE GURGLING COD

Bauer: Mooning over Marin

Late to the party on this, but when the Cod finds something special, it's special to share it, right? So the aforementioned Michael Bauer, food critic cum cheerleader for the SF Chronic, went to NYC. And got homesick. It's a jawdropping exercise in provincialism, and as a native Bostonian, the Cod knows provincial. The lede:

I returned from New York craving really good fava beans, asparagus and carrots. I had great food there, but the one area where just about every place fell short was the produce. All three of these spring items paled in comparison to what’s available here.

Astute listeners will note that Ray Charles does not enumerate fresh fava beans among the virtues of New ork. It's as if Bauer was concerned that some of his readers might wonder if there were chefs in NYC who worked a little harder or thought a little harder than the chefs in SF, and wanted to reassure them that NYC chefs struggle with such challenges in their produce that there is no threat there to the utopia that is the Bay Area: 

Chefs on the East Coast need to manipulate the food to bring out maximum flavors, whereas many chefs on the West Coast are able to leave it pretty much alone.

A less SFcentric reader might consider this the difference between "cooking" and "shopping," but for Bauer, it's all the sneaky manipulating you have to do to make East Coast food even palatable. 

Like I said, late to the party on this. The Bauer jawn dropped in early May. Presumably, Bauer's NYC trip was sometime shortly before, which is to say April/late winter in NYC, aka, the nadir of local produce. If you are visiting NYC with an eye towards seeing how chefs use local produce compared to SF, you are really stacking the deck if you make that trip in April: 

I had even worse tomatoes on the burgers at the Dutch, which is Andrew Carmellini’s newest venture. They were merely wet foils to the cheese and thick beef patty. However, the little oyster sandwiches were superb, and those who got the fried chicken are still talking about how good it was.

Who goes to the Dutch to review the tomato on the burger? (Perhaps, Maws's famous hardline on out of season tomatoes makes sense in the event of visits from the likes of Bauer.) You want to try a good East Coast tomato? Come at me bro. In August. If, instead, the point of the article is to argue that SF has better produce for more of the year than does NYC, Bauer could have saved the jet fuel and spent the time doing sun salutations in front of the Ferry Terminal Market.  

Have I used "Yelper Please" as a post title yet?

So there is Yelp, which the Cod is not a fan of. But then there are Yelpers who write to restaurant critics to complain about being charged for no-shows, and then there Yelpers who insinuate in said letters to restaurant critics that being on Yelp  makes them Don Fucking Corleone:

I was with a group of 5 other people and we were expecting a 6th person, who wasn’t able to make it. Nojo only accepts reservations for parties of 6 or more. When our server presented us with our check she explained that they would have to charge us for the person who didn’t show. They charged $25 for this. We ordered lots of food and alcohol and the people I was with had been there at least three other times. One person who served us a round of food even made mention that he recognized some familiar faces and welcomed us back.

<snip>

The food was great and I’d gladly go back had I not seen this side of the restaurant. As a party of 5 we were all left with a (pardon the pun) bad taste in our mouth. We amount to 5 Yelp reviews that could have negative consequences for them in some way and I’d think they’d value the business a bit more since they’re the new kid on the block.

I imagine the same naivete and entitlement that makes it hard to understand that showing up unannounced with fewer than your party than your reservation costs the restaruant money fosters the attitude where you think that your five Yelp reviews could make or break a restaurant, especially one that is evidently well-reviewed and popular. To his credit, Bauer sides with the restaurant. Not surprisingly, the good people of the Bay Area commenting on this piece are generally inclined to the opinion that the customer is always special. 

Add Guiteau Monday

A "breastaurant-themed reality show"? On Long Island?  It's DEFINITELY a Guiteau Monday. 

Guiteau Milk Monday: Got a fucking clue?

Thanks to the inimitable Princess Jinx, just about the worst thing ever. It's a PMS management center, designed to help MEN manage PMS symptoms in their partners, as a way of touting the alleged benefits of calcium as a PMS reducer. 

In terms of the history of women's health reads like a retreat to the world of Mad Men Season 2, when Don calls to check in w/ Betty's therapist. The Cod is not viviparous, and thus does not confront the symptoms of PMS directly, but understands that while it is a real thing, it does not do for men to presume that any disagreeable thing a woman says is the product of a demonic possession by crazy bloodsoaked hormones. In any case, as far as the Got Milk folks go, it's not just the subaltern who cannot speak. For the Cod, that's sure nuff Guiteau Monday material. 

Taking back the night... with Applebee's?

Via the formidable Princess Jinx, a brighter note. Some dude ate at PF Chang's and Applebee's then twittered about being raped by these casual dining chains. Evidently Applebee's takes both rape and social media seriously: 

 

Perfect. Eating good in the neighborhood or not, Applebee's does not get many props around here, but good for them.

Choosy moms...

The Cod is not as good at remembering to read Sifton's Hey, Mr. Critic as he should be. But a link to a different question churned up this gem:

A dining dilemma: My parents and my boyfriend’s parents are having dinner together with us — for the first time! First we’re seeing a jazz concert in Midtown, then dinner. We are both chefs living and cooking in Brooklyn so we want something interesting, but one of the moms needs chicken and mashed potatoes. Any ideas?

Sifton parries with a solid suggestion, but glides past the "one of the moms needs chicken and mashed potatoes." This mom, presumably is an adult, if she has a child old enough to be a chef and write letters to the NY Times. How does this conversation go? "Hey Mom, Seth and I were thinking it would be fun to go to a jazz concert with you guys and his parents, and grab a bite after. Sound good?" Mom: "Well, as long as I get my chicken and mashed potatoes." This kind of willful culinary narrowmindedness seems of a piece with the helicopter parent phenomenon in ways the Cod cannot quite explain. In any case, she sounds like a swell future mother-in-law

Good news for Todd English!

And, heaven knows Todd English could use some good news. There are many, many problems that The Cod cannot touch -- the  debt ceiling, J.D. Drew, the ominous trend of tops that look like Jogbras with dust ruffles, but one problem is solved. After a Dalai Lamaesque search, we have located the man born to play young Todd English in the forthcoming Todd English biopic. Treat yourself to former Clemson QB and current "television personality, model, and bardtender extraordinaire," Tribble Reese! 

 

A Stanley Cup of Cheese

One grinding disappointment of this summer for the Cod has been the lack of a constant realtime source of information on the whereabouts of the Stanley Cup. If it's playing Hacky Sack in Burlington with Tim Thomas, I wanna know. If Zdeno Chara is baptising the youth of Slovakia, I want to know. But details leak through from the most curious places, like fancy cheese shop Twitter feeds. Here is Cam Neely with the cup at Formaggio:

 

Mason-Dixon dinner

So the Mason-Dixon dinner was off the chain, as one might expect. Only missing ingredient were Big Green Eggs painted like Civil War ironclads. The menu is here. Sean Brock hit upon the space saving ingredient of bringing the harvest concentrated in the form of pork and moonshine. I will scan the final and slightly different menu and offer some more thoughts, but for now, I will concur with tablemate Jamie (Coppa) Bisonette's summation that ending a tasting menu with a 16oz pork ribeye is "mean." To elaborate, to wrap up an intense and prolonged serious and refined meal with a really really special piece of meat that just happens to be the size and shape of the 3/4" thick car license plate w/ ridiculous cracking is not so much slamming the mic on the ground at the end of the set, as it is slamming the mic through the ground, then going back through time to murder the father of the dude who invented the microphone. Here is a bad picture I took: 

The Old Corner Burrito Store?

Boston is the kind of city where people don't have time for the musty old past.  It was bad enough when they went and turned Maison Robert into a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, but now the Old Corner Bookstore, AKA Anne Hutchinson's* house, aka Ticknor & Fields HQ, etc. is turning into a burrito chain:

Boston’s oldest commercial building is about to become home to one of the nation’s fastest-growing food chains.

Chipotle Mexican Grill has signed a lease to occupy a vacant storefront in the Old Corner Bookstore at School and Washington streets, a 1718 building whose varied uses offer a unique window on the history of Boston’s commerce and culture.

The building was once the home of Puritan dissident Anne Hutchinson, who was expelled from Massachusetts in 1638 for heresy; in the 1830s, it became the headquarters of Ticknor & Fields, the publisher of the first editions of “The Scarlet Letter,’’ “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’’ “Walden,’’ and many other celebrated works.

Just fuck me sideways, you know? 

*That's Anne in the picture being grilled about her monstrous burrito by the synod at Cambridge. Thanks, as always to Penny Pascal for Peerless Photoshopping.