What do you get when you combine the volatile tempers of professional chefs, the developing fine motor skills of children, and knives, knives, dozens of knives whirling through the air?
Hey you! Ever wondered what food writers REALLY think of Thanksgiving? No? Food writers are assholes and you don't give a shit? Well, tough turkey for you, gravyballs.
"Look. 'Foodie' is not a word," says America's former Foodie in Chief.
"Let's start the foodie backlash," cries Steven Poole in The Guardian. Way ahead of you, son.
For some reason, I decided to torture myself the other day by reading Pete Wells' four-star review of Le Bernardin in the New York Times. The Times sent Wells there to reaffirm that Le Bernardin is a really good place to eat and — SURPRISE! — it still is. Not that you'll ever be able to afford to eat there. There are only three people who can afford to eat at a place like Le Bernardin: Rich assholes, food critics, and other chefs who run other restaurants that only serve rich assholes, food critics, and other chefs. Here is a glimpse of Wells eating like a goddamn king:
EXT. NETHERMEAD MEADOW AT PROSPECT PARK, INSIDE THE GREAT GOOGAMOOGA FESTIVAL — 3:00 p.m.
Are you super excited for the Great GoogaMooga festival in Brooklyn this weekend, where the chefs are the real rock stars? Fuck you.
You'd think a professional chef who is also a cannibal would be into some ambitious human meat food, right? Nope! A 21-year-old Russian cook and (now-jailed) cannibal settled for some boring old meatballs and sausages.
Welcome to the terrible nexus of Foodie and Earth Mama culture: In "The Placenta Cookbook," New York Magazine reports that the placentas of Brooklyn are no longer content to be buried in gardens, or ground into powder and consumed as nutrient-rich dietary supplements. (That is so 2009.) Every placenta who is any placenta gets blended into a coconut juice smoothie, or Bloody Mary, or placenta jerky strip:
You know when a little kid sees a pregnant lady drinking a glass of OJ, and he's like "No! The baby will drown!" Turns out he's kind of right. The mother-to-be is drowning her baby in flavor, and it will impact the baby's palate forever, a new study finds. NPR reports:
Food snobs themselves may ultimately provide some trickle-down benefits to the public at large—for example, you can buy "chipotle" flavored Tostitos now. But child foodies provide nothing of benefit to anyone. Just heartache and misery, to all of us. So restaurants: please do not encourage them.
Federal agents are once again busy cleaning up the streets of Venice, California. No, they're not taking out sophisticated cocaine smuggling operations or prostitution rings. They're dismantling an underground syndicate of raw milk pushers and connoisseurs that operate under a front called Rawesome Foods.
Though bears "look disturbingly like people when skinned," their meat resembles "the darkest part of a high-quality pork shoulder," reports Hank Shaw. He made Siberian bear dumplings and found them pleasingly juicy, much like a Tibetan yak meat momo. [Atlantic]
A California farmers market vendor has been busted for selling Mexican vegetables as his own, "locally grown" produce and L.A. locavores are pissed off at these "dishonest farmers." Do you know where your certified organic produce actually comes from? [LAT]
Someone took the final episode of MasterChef — in which the chefs prepare desserts — and spliced in TV dinners in place of their dishes. The commentary remains the same so you have the judges applauding microwave ramen.
An upstate New York cat named Navarro was rescued Sunday night from the trunk of a car at a traffic stop, where he was marinating in oil and spices and on his way to becoming his owner's next meal.
Healthy eater Rush Limbaugh yesterday attacked the "leftist kooks" at the Center for Science in the Public Interest for their intent to sue McDonald's over its Happy Meal toy promotions, and said they "want to ban Chinese food."
Calling all New York foodies: if restaurants, chefs and all related goings-on gets you excited, you should be watching AlwaysHungry.com's web series. In this short clip, we become acquainted with legendary NYC butcher and meat purveyor Pat LaFrieda.
Meet Stumptown Coffee, bastion of the "third wave" of American caffeine, wherein we chuck our totally corporate Starbucks cups and switch to independent cafes and underground dripperies that all buy their beans from the same snobby supplier.
A new USDA survey finds that less than 1% of US farms are organic—meaning that the carnivore locavore yuppie fantasy that it's okay to eat meat as long as it comes from one of the few "good" farms is an unsustainable argument, in the Kantian sense. There will never be enough "good" farms to fulfill the demand for meat, so only forsaking meat altogether is a viable, ethical, environmental stance, in accord with the categorical imperative (universalization formulation). Which, not for nothing, is exactly what Jonathan Safran Foer says in his new book, so, we know he's a precious twee Brooklyn writer and all, but give up some props, along with that ham sandwich. Everyone knows you got to stay off that pork.
