Month: February 2012

February 29, 2012

Foie Gras Reduction

Course One

House made Scrapple with Fennel Kimchi & Creamy Shallot Confit Barley

Course Two

Barley & Quinoa “Risotto” with Winter Vegetables, Crispy Poached Egg, and Basil & Preserved Orange Pistou

Above are dining options from a restaurant I’ll be visiting later this week. It’s been my experience over the course of my life that restaurants generally serve food, but after reading this I’m not so sure. I mean, I assume it’s food – I do notice certain familiar words like “egg” and “vegetables” in there – but with so many colorfully misleading and probably made-up words in the description, I certainly don’t want to bank on that. For instance, I thought barley is what they fed the horses on my uncle’s farm. Perhaps this restaurant is for livestock. Others such as “scrapple” and “quinoa” confuse me to no end; the former sounds like a genre of steel guitar music from the 1950s. And I find it particularly worrisome how there are quotes around the word “risotto.” That is one word I was beginning to feel comfortable with, but now my guard is back up. Why the quotes? It’s as if they’re saying it with a wink and nod, and we’re expected to be in on the joke. Well I am certainly not in on the joke, for I have no idea what the hell they mean, and I’d appreciate a more straightforward, quote-free description in the future.

Slightly dramatic embellishments aside, this is clearly not a menu from Outback Steakhouse. It’s restaurant week in Denver; that time of year when even the outlandishly expensive restaurants are reasonably priced and diners are encouraged to get out and eat. Actually spanning two weeks, restaurant “week” is a great time to be human, as the low prices and abundant options make a great opportunity to try something new. And to that end, the Denver/Boulder area is a blessed place for food-lovers to be in general, with a wide variety of top notch eateries mostly focused on quality and freshness of ingredients and healthy experimentation. And who among us doesn’t love food?

But there comes a time and place when the love for food is taken too far and the experimentation gets unhealthy. The white plates get bigger, and the food in the middle gets smaller. The menu at the top is an example of this – it’s obvious at first glance it’s among the snootier places one could find (hell, menu items also include bone marrow and lamb neck), so is certainly not the norm. But it seems this is becoming more and more mainstream. Now, I promise you, I’m not completely uncultured swine – I do enjoy a good gourmet meal. I can appreciate new foods and culinary creativity, and I don’t need every main course to be a steak. I’ve had my share of large plate/small food meals, and have enjoyed most every one of them. However, sometimes it seems that we get a little caught up in using colorful and “foodie” academic words – “confit,” “foie gras,” and “reduction” come to mind – in some attempt at an air of class and exclusivity. I think the food snobs are becoming more numerous, and they care more about being able to name outlandish ingredients than having a truly pleasing meal. And maybe, just maybe, some chefs are more concerned with impressing other chefs, and with how a dish looks (and sounds on the menu), than how a dish tastes. It’s as if the more times you can work “crusted” and “gnocchi” and “butternut” and “crème fraiche” on a menu, the more status you have among foodies.

Personally, I just want to have a tasty meal, and I don’t want to have to learn another fucking language to order it. Seriously, if I have to try to decipher what “aioli” is one more time, I may just stab the pompous ass waiting on me with a fork. It’s not his fault, of course, but his thick-framed glasses and neck beard just fit him right into this food snob stereotype.

Seriously, what if we treated other areas of life the same way we treat food? For example:

 

Al Michaels calling a football game

The call: “Peterson takes the handoff, runs right and picks up six yards.”

The foodie version: “The distinguished man of Texan descent is delivered the dried cow membrane, harnesses its energy and grasps its succulence. The run is the antithesis of to the left, with plastic cleat spears juxtaposed against Floridian sod and topsoil, moving the main course from its origin to six yards beyond. Yardage reduction.”

Christmas Store Ad

The ad: “Christmas time is coming! You’d better get your shopping done.”

The foodie version: “The sparkling anniversary of the first Noel, when Jesus “Yahweh” Christ descended upon the Israeli region, has again been assumed to happen this 25th of Diciembre as previously scheduled. Imperative, it is, that the customers finishes his or her retail extravaganza in a timely fashion, before the inevitable human flooding of cement and granite structures makes such an endeavor burdensome, and the sterling prospect of yuletide cheer transforms into a substandard procession.”

Clothing tag

The tag: “100% cotton”

The foodie version: “Pure, unadulterated, locally farm-raised algadon. Never synthetic, never poly, a classic “hand-weave” with light ulterior stitching and authentic Mandarin craftsmanship.”

 

See? It’s ridiculous. If we were all as pretentious as the food snobs, our lives would be a constant exercise in trying to decipher even the simplest of labels. I’m sure I’ll enjoy my parsnip meringue – or whatever they decide to serve this week – but that doesn’t mean I won’t make an effort to fart each time I walk near the kitchen, just to bring the uppity vibe in there a notch closer to reality. I wonder how they’d describe that?

February 12, 2012

This Year’s Super Bowl Drinking Game

Well, it’s finally here. If you’ve been able to avoid ESPN’s relentless coverage of the Manning family and Rob Gronkowski’s ankle – and thus maintain your sanity – I applaud you. For the rest of us, we’re already sick of the Super Bowl, so the only thing to do on Super Bowl Sunday – other than not watch the game at all, which for some reason isn’t really an option – is drink. So without further yapping, here is the official Top Drawer drinking game of Super Bowl XLVI:

You must take a drink if there is…

– A mention or shot of Archie/Peyton Manning
– An Ochocinco sighting
– An announcer proclaiming “he can make all the throws”
– Unnecessary use of the word “football,” such as “that’s a great FOOTBALL play” or “he’s quite the FOOTBALL player” or “The New York FOOTBALL Giants” (not too likely because Gruden and Jaworski will not be involved)
– A GoDaddy.com commercial
– A promo for The Voice
– An artistic pylon shot
– A personal foul on Tom Brady (i.e. someone touches him)
– Gisele
– A Tim Tebow mention (he’ll find his way in there somehow, I’m sure)
– The Budweiser Clydesdales
– A ginger, any ginger. They’re fun.
– A Nate Solder (upstanding Colorado Buffalo and Patriots rookie lineman) mention
– Tom Coughlin’s face getting red
– Eli Manning’s mouth hanging open when a normal person’s would be closed
– A celebratory dance that makes the dancer look foolish (see: all celebratory dances)
– The announcers gushing over “The Patriot Way”

As you can see, these are mostly fun and unique happenings. There’s no “take a shot for every first down or penalty!” rule. We want to see you make it through the game.

Bottoms up!

Good Fat/Bad Fat

We are a world of good and bad. Black and white. Democrat and Republican. Our team and their team. There’s really no way around it; we deal in absolutes. While this is generally wrong and an unrefined way of thinking, it’s what we do. Indeed, the answer lies somewhere in between has been replaced by the answer lies with my personal set of beliefs. There’s no use in fighting it, the crusaders have won.

So I’m down. Let’s talk about good and evil. And let’s talk about fat. It’s a nutritional buzz at the moment – this “good fat” and “bad fat.” Bad fats, of course, being easier to identify than an orangutan on a cruise ship – anything of the saturated and trans variety, or the collective menu of the fast food industry (OMG. Did you SEEEEE Supersize Me?!?!?!? EEEEKKKK! Life CHANGED!!!!!). And the good fats are coming out of the woodwork – omega 3s, monosaturateds, and avocado.

But I’m not talking about food. I’m talking about people.

As a skinny, I’m generally not supposed to comment on the “other side.” It’s seen as bad taste – kind of a white/black thing going on. But screw it; this honky is voyaging into the unknown. And the unknown is fat people.

Simply put, fat people are just like the rest of us. They have feelings, dreams, ambitions…just slightly more mass. And, like the general population (and given the trend in American lifestyle, they are soon to be the general population), they come in two forms: good and bad.

Yes, when it comes to fat people, there is good fat and bad fat. Or, as I like to refer to it, “happy fat” and “bitter fat.”

Happy fat, of course, refers to the fat people we all love: Chris Farley (God rest his soul), John Goodman, most any black bassist, and the heavy girl from Bridesmaids. While obviously this is not an exhaustive list, it exemplifies the things we love in good fats – lightning wit, unbridled jolliness, and a generally sunny outlook on the world as a whole. Societally, we love happy/funny people, but we love happy/funny fat people even more. There’s just something about an overweight person that amplifies the positive qualities, and I’m not quite sure what it is. Maybe the fact that their smiles look bigger or they always seem comfortable in any easy chair or restaurant booth. Either way, we love the jolly fats for what they are: the roly-poly pandas of the human race. Fat people have a much higher comedic ceiling than equally funny skinny people – think Farley and Horatio Sans vs. Adam Sandler and Jimmy Fallon. See my point? It’s no contest. And consequently, when funny fats lose the weight – and join the mundane ranks of the everyday comedian – it is a heartbreak on par with the day Princess Di died. Jonah Hill was once a solidly funny supporting fat actor – now he is just an awkward, rectangular being with no real value to society. Same with Joe Winch of Chisago Lakes High School – used to be an adorable, round, rosy-cheeked boy, then lost the weight, got a girlfriend, and began looking at the world with cynical eyes. It’s just not the same. I’m glad your blood pressure had dropped and you’re living a healthier lifestyle, but you no longer make me laugh. Can I interest you in some chicken wings?

Bitter fat, on the other hand, is the bane of my existence; it’s almost as if Hitler had gone into the child pornography business. While I personally adore fat people – it is a state I am unable to achieve and am therefore jealous of – the human race as a whole tends to…um…look down upon obesity. So it’s an uphill climb (if they can make it) from day one. And these bitter fats compound the negativity by being all pissed off about everything. I’m not going to name names here, but you know who I’m talking about – that kid in class that refuses to share his gum, that lady who hates Christmas out of spite, and the guy on the bus who intentionally takes up two seats. These people are incapable of humor or irony; they simply want to display their displeasure for the world in hopes that it infects others around them. They’re just the worst. This is the exact opposite of what they should be doing – the best course of action is clearly friendly diplomacy with the rest of the world. I mean…you’re fat. At least be nice. As the great philosopher Chris Rock once laid out, “for every pound you are overweight, you gotta read another book, because you’re gonna need to be way smarter than all those other motherfuckers.” Or something like that – quoting Chris Rock is a slippery endeavor.

Anyway, I’m not going to go as far as Chris and suggest habitual reading. But at least be cool. Be fun. Be with us. Say something moderately humorous, and add a sheepish smile afterwards; I guarantee it will make me – and most every other intelligent skinny person – love you. We want to love you; we want you to join the ranks of the jolly fat. Just give us a reason. Make me want to put my loving arm around you and proudly declare, “This is my fat friend.”

Bitter fat, there is a better way. Consider the works of Farley, Belushi, et al, and be inspired. The grass really is greener on the other side. And don’t worry, it tastes like Twinkies.