Author: Chris Barrus

Eating The Best Of The Rest

Anthony Bourdain on the popularity of offal.

I have become increasingly interested in the pleasures of offal, even evangelical about it. Again and again, in Vietnam, Brazil, Singapore, Mexico, Portugal, France, even England, I have found that a tradition of skillfully prepared hooves, snouts, shanks, innards and “scraps” is a vital part of a nation’s culinary culture; it is essential training for proud cooks. If you have developed, over time, an ability and an inclination to coax flavor and texture out of the nasty bits, chances are you really know how to cook a chicken or a steak.

So often, the dishes created from poverty and necessity – like feijoada in Brazil, haggis in Scotland or menudo in Mexico – become national treasures, points of pride, cornerstones of cultural identity. At the same time, there seems to be an increasing interest in offal among the food cognoscenti; as an example, the restaurant St. John, in London – which serves spleen, trotters, ox hearts and bone marrow – has become a must-go stop on the international travel circuit of the food elites. Onglet, jarret, sweetbreads and, recently, pork belly have all become hot menu items on the East and West Coasts of the United States, and are slowly spreading in popularity.

Second front opens in the coffee war

2nd St. in Belmont Shore is under siege from two Starbucks – one at either end of town. There are some other coffee bars in town – a Coffee Bean And Tea Leaf and a couple of struggling indie shops but Belmont is pretty much under the yoke of the Starbucks tyranny.

Until today when I noticed the following sign going up on the building directly opposite one of the Starbucks. Finally for once, someone is going on the attack and locating their shop across from a Starbucks instead of the other way around.

 

peets-longbeach

I’m unbelievably happy that a Peet’s is going up here.

Puke Floyd

I had mentioned this story in chat with a friend and realized that it’s probably good enough to enter into the Official Record…

One of the few stadium concerts I’ll admit to attending was a huge Pink Floyd show in 1988. The LA Coliseum was filled with 90,000 Pink Floyd fans – each one filled to the gills with their respective drugs of choice.

Midway or so through the first half of the show, an audience member wandering around the seats behind us commented on the proceedings by projectile vomiting into the empty seat next to me. Refreshed by that outburst, Mr. Puke continued on his way down the grandstands by walking on the tops of the seats.

About 10 minutes later some hippie-looking dude plops down into the newly-defiled seat next to me. I’m positive he didn’t see the puke – so helpfully, and in a loud enough voice to be heard over the music, I holler at him “SOME GUY PUKED INTO THAT SEAT!”

Hippie dude said nothing, only putting his finger over his lips and then pointing up to his head – which was outfitted with two rather nice portable microphones connected to an equally spiff tape recorder. After a couple of minutes, the guy got up and continued on his way, but I couldn’t tell how, er, “spotted” he was by the puddle on the seat.

Anyway, so somewhere out there is a Pink Floyd bootleg with yours truly hollering “SOME GUY PUKED INTO THAT SEAT!” in the middle of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”. I’d really like a copy.

Supercar

One of the declarations kicked around in the post Sept. 11 rhetoric went something like this: “if we had a Manhattan Project-sized mandate to make fuel efficient cars and get us off of Middle East oil dependency, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Well, there was such a project in 1993…

Over the next 10 years, the U.S. government and the American auto industry would combine the full weight of their resources – billions of dollars, the best scientific minds and previously secret Cold War technologies – to build an invention simple in concept yet critical in importance: a family car that achieved 80 miles per gallon.

This “Supercar” not only would be a tremendous boon to the environment, reducing pollution and slowing global warming, but it also would cut the nation?s reliance on oil imports from the volatile Middle East and inject new life into a stagnating domestic auto industry.

But nine years after it was born in pomp and splendor, Supercar is dead.

The victim of bureaucratic turf wars, a hostile auto industry and self-serving politicians, the car that was supposed to change everything now stands as a sobering reminder of the forces arrayed against greater fuel efficiency and a cleaner environment.

Lost were years of effort, $1.5 billion in taxpayer money and perhaps the best opportunity the nation has had to address some of its most pressing issues.

The Chicago Tribune has the complete post-mortem.