Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Let the Foraging Begin!

This will be a place for me to jot down some ideas about food and food culture in general. I'm very fond of food, and consider a good meal better than sex. There's a lot of nonsense and tomfoolery out there about food, and hopefully this place will be a blast of commonsense and clarity in a field strewn with quackery, crap, and double talk.

Guaranteed: No trans fats, no hydrolized proteins, no fake sugar. And no diets. By the way, I don't consider myself a "foodie." I'm a guy who likes to eat. Foodies often act like the guardians of a secret knowledge, ferreting out hidden eateries, weird delicacies, and obscure dishes. That's not my scene. I love food in the classic sense, not as post modern lab experiments, a la Willy Dufresne, but as cavemen around the fire, hunk o' meat basic eats sense. I'm as fond of Reese's peanut butter cups as I am of creme brulee, and I'm not snobbish about it. If I say the best gelato I've ever had was in Italy, that's not a hoity-toity assesment, but a simple statement of fact, and unfortunately true. I like food writing because it was one of the last bastions of a Manichean world view: the food is either worth it, or not. The dish is good, or not. But even now, this black & white clarity is fudged by post modern dithering: years ago, the food reviewer for the Voice would go to a restaurant, get bad service, and muse, "What does it mean to get good service, anyway?" And I thought, "Oh no! Not these crap here too!" You won't get any of that doubletalk from me.

Anyway, Bon appetit everybody! It