Poking fun at celebrity chefs and foodies
As faithful readers of this blog know, one of its main purposes is to entertain. If you want more informational reading about local restaurants, I recommend my columns in the print edition. Here I poke fun at everything, including myself.
But the following comment made me see that some may have taken what I considered good-natured ribbing by myself and other commenters more personally than I'm comfortable with. I feel bad about that: ...
Well I dont want to beat a dead horse, but in your post you called foam "precious" which is why the direction, I think, quickly turned to "The foam, the liquid nitrogen quick frozen junk, and deconstruction. I'm over it all." And the whole tone is very "oh no, here it comes againnnn", and cleatus posting his "haha, foodies are dumb!" post.
Im thankful that you spelled out your position, it honestly wasnt clear to me before. I guess its mostly the tone of other posters that inspired me to debate.
Posted by: hmm | October 9, 2009 12:49 AM
When I make fun of something, I don't want to hold up any local chefs for derision. That's why I didn't mention where I got the Cocoa Puff dessert, and I certainly didn't want to offend Bettina Clair, the pastry chef, who made the dessert and commented under the post.
I don't know any of the other readers who commented, but they probably don't want to hurt anyone's feelings either. Since they are regular readers of Dining@Large, I imagine they all consider themselves foodies, and are actually pretty sophisticated about restaurant trends. I haven't heard anyone here complain, for instance, about the food at Abacrombie; and Jesse Sandlin was doing beet foam on her amuses two years ago when I reviewed the restaurant.
But nothing is really sacred in the food world, is it? (Other than heirloom tomatoes.) Let me direct you to an earlier entry on Anthony Bourdain's Overrated Menu in case you missed it.
I do believe, unlike many people fascinated by food, that no matter how wonderful the restaurant and world-famous the chef, it's still a service industry. The customer comes first. Hence my post a couple of years ago on one of the few pretentious restaurant experiences I've had in LA.
Some of the most successful restaurants in Baltimore are doing pretty exciting things but not being pretentious about it. Salt, the Wine Market and Woodberry Kitchen come to mind immediately. B & O American Brasserie and Alizee are too new to put in that category, but they have potential.
Charleston is in a category by itself, a much more formal restaurant, but I still don't think you can call it pretentious.
What I like about Baltimore's best chefs is that they don't seem to take themselves too seriously. (OK, Charleston's Cindy Wolf takes herself seriously, but not too seriously.) And their customers don't either.
I think that's a good thing. It doesn't mean that Baltimoreans aren't more than willing to try new things -- and pay well to do it.
(Doug Kapustin/Sun photographer)
Comments
Sometimes, people misread our intentions. It's the high cost of humor.
Posted by: Laura Lee | October 9, 2009 2:24 PM
Comedy is not pretty.
Posted by: Hal Laurent | October 9, 2009 3:02 PM
Dying is easy, comedy is hard!
Posted by: Henny Youngman | October 9, 2009 4:22 PM
...that's not it , that's not what I meant at all...
Posted by: J. Alfred | October 9, 2009 4:41 PM
All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
Posted by: W.C. fields | October 9, 2009 5:43 PM
I'm not at my best when I moralize or philosophize. Logic is elusive, especially to one who so rarely uses it.
Posted by: Tallulah Bankhead | October 9, 2009 8:28 PM
I'm not a foodie. Nor am I sophisticated. But, neither of those are necessary to like talking about food, eating good food and TS Elliot references.
Posted by: Lissa | October 9, 2009 9:58 PM
Well dont get me wrong, I didnt really take it personally, but it just seemed like that conversation was very closed minded. Trust me, I don't like the over the top foodies, either (Some friends of mine made the mistake of going on a chowhound outing, and there was a lot of "well, this doesnt compare to per se, or tallivent, or the time Paul Bocuse and Pierre Gagnaire were scrubbing my floor! Let's do yakitori in Tokyo next week!").
BUT I am glad to see the direction turn towards doing cool stuff in a totally unpretentious enviornment -- that would really be my ideal meal.
I definitely try not to take myself too seriously, either. The "molecular" things we've been doing on our menu, we haven't advertised them at all, and they're used for the most humble of dishes.
Posted by: hmm, et al | October 10, 2009 2:45 AM