Comments

Marilyn Hagerty, the Olive Garden, and me — 49 Comments

1. Hey…there’s gotta be a reason why some of the chains are so successful.

   Here’s one I like…Panda Express for Chinese. You get two main dishes on either fried or steamed rice or chow mein (mostly noodles). It’s fast, nutritious, generous servings, served fresh and hot in spite of the fact that it’s served cafeteria style, place where I go is always spotlessly clean. All for about 7 bucks.

   And here’s another one that you will REALLY think is a weird recomendation: Sonic in Marble Falls, Texas. I like their burgers and at this Sonic, they are always served fresh and hot…fries are too. I have to admit that a large part of the fun for me when going to this particular Sonic is the ride there…in my ’83 Mercedes Benz 380SL roadster convertible through the beautiful Texas Hill Country. It’s especially nice now…the bluebonnets are starting to bloom.

   Don’t have to get dressed up (we stay in the car) and our dog gets to ride with us…he loves it and is happy to stay in his crate while we eat.

2. “inexpensive, and you can get as much as you want.”

   Ah…HA!

3. I am with Marilyn. For me, it’s the endless salad bowl and breadsticks. Yum! I don’t care if it’s cool or not to say so.

   I don’t go to the Olive Garden that much (mainly because the wait to get in on a weekend evening is always horrendous) but on the rare occasions I do, I always enjoy the meal.

   Certainly you can find managers and cooks and other staffers at these chain places that take pride in their work and aim for quality, just as in any other field, right? It may not be typical but it’s not unheard of.

   I recently stayed overnight at a Sleep Inn that was convenient to my destination (and more importantly, only 65 bucks a night). It was off the beaten track and stuck behind a shopping mall..a bland box of a motel. Not new construction. However, the place was absolutely spotless. Linens were fresh and the bathroom was super clean. The simple breakfast was tasty and there were fresh flowers on the small tables. I got an email survey after my stay and decided to compliment the staff. I promptly got a handwritten thank-you note from the general manager! Anyway, had a better overall experience there than at some other higher end places.

4. Good cheap consistent food…
   its a great formula for a commodity restaurant

   the problem with the commenters of the elite set is that they dont believe that such should be so popular…

   ie, they have a completely out of wack value system that is more about fronts, image projection cargo cultism, etc…

   and so the simple goodness of a decent meal, a good price, nice place, and no muss no fuss..

   if your not going to try to use famious friends, and such, and make 300 dollar plates of food… your probably not going to succeed… as they come and go.

   but if you try to keep the menu simple, the foo fare general, the service consistent, and so on… you may last a long long time…

   Carnegie deli… while prices are a bit up for the celebrity side of it.. the success is not that, the success was keeping to “Tradition”, and simple fare, traditionally made so it doesn’t change, service, and so on.

   Rays pizza is still there.. care to read its history? its formula was so good, you would think that they are nothing special. but Rays was the first to sell pizza by the slice! 🙂

   and you havent lived till you have eaten at Katz Deli…

   been doing that same fare since 1888…

   🙂

5. It would not have been possible for Katz’s Delicatessen to survive three depressions, numerous recessions and two World Wars if Katz’s wasn’t the best deli in NYC. Opened in 1888, Katz’s Deli has maintained the tradition of quality that made us a beloved deli among the immigrants who crowded into the Lower East Side one hundred years ago. Since then, generations have stood before the carver as he skillfully carves a pile of pastrami, turkey or corned beef. It’s the exceptional taste that has carried Katz’s name far beyond NYC. Over the last century, a lot has come and gone, but Katz’s Delicatessen is still where it was in 1888.

   (and they survived the SBA games too where they favor women and minorities so much that there are almost no jewish delies.. there are no more jewish groceries… and so on.. so yes, they DID do the same thing as in germany, but slower… so no one could tell)

6. by the way, you can tell i miss these places greatly… pickles and pickled tomatoes on the table. the cutter handing a small slice of meat to the children… sandwiches that require a unhinged jaw of a snake to bite… a nosh… s smear… oy!!! how i miss em and i am not even jewish… ha ha!!

   to a great extent my wife and i are foodies…
   (And both not overweight at all)

   next month i will be having a dish before they make it illegal (San Nachi – Korean live baby octopus. we know a few placevs that serve it.. cant wait.. another dish i will eat is more dangerous, as the octopus is alive while you eat it, and it can kill you if it gets a tentical in your lung… whee!)… heck, kimchi is about to be illegal (you leave it out unrefrigerated)…

   i am very glad that i enjoyed a whole lot of beluga as a child, and had it as an adult before you cant have it any more… (also Ossetra and Severuga)

   nothing like a nice cracker, creme fresh, some piper heidsick, or perhaps vauve cliquote pink… ah.. thank you widow!!

   my wifes taste are more pedestrian, but just as good.. hmmmmmm…

   nothing like good bulgogi

   and am upset that i missed my chance to eat fugu… if you are squamous DO NOT watch them prepare that one…

   but i am a member of the OTHER PETA
   People Eating Tasty Animals 🙂

   my chinese/indonesian family tried in the early days to have fun with me by ordering dishes to put in front of me. but unlike normal people i am incredibly adaptable and coming from a impoverished refugee background, its not so different actually

   they first tried 10,000 year old eggs
   salted duck eggs
   then tripe… which i like.. 🙂

   then they ordered chicken feet..
   yay… different than slovak versions..

   my coworkers who think i must be racist dont understand why i sometimes go to the jamacan joint near by and get oxtails and goat… with collard greens.. (and yes i have had chitlins and grits)

   have had hagis, and blood pudding and steak and kidney pie…

   have eaten eels prepared in so many ways, from smoked eels from latvia, to eel in sushi..

   oh… i could take someone on a weeklong culinary excursion that would amaze them..
   and never leave ny…

   my neighborhood, according to my employer, is the most multicultural diverse place on the planet…

   800 different nationalities in one place..

   and since its a low middle class place near section 8.. (i grew up in that kind of war zone, so i am more comfortable in an odd way)

   the restaurants cater to the subgroups of nationals… we are loved by many of them, as we get to get the real deal..

   super hot illegal peppers from pakistan..
   fish paste at the thai restaurant..

   that one alone is one that will make westerners leave… but they even put it in our deliveries as they know we eat terasi (indonesian version)….

   if you dont like smelly fish, dont eat that…

   oh.. and the oyster bar in grand central is not to be missed IF you like raw oysters…

   there is a huge board on the wall… and they put up signs of what oysters they have.. blue points, and japanese ones.. and all over the world.. and its first come first served till they are gone, and it starts all over the next day.

   and then there is the czechoslovakian based bohemian garden beer hall with home make keilbasa and saurkraught..

   ok.. now i am hungry

7. Love the Garden! I get the soup and breadsticks and a pizza.

   Great simple meal: A couple small baked potatos. Keep em in their foil and cut and insert butter. Go for a walk in the cold. When eating hot potato apply a little salt.

   Another good use for a baked potato. Go to a fine dining place, throw it on the floor, stomp on it, eat it.

   Of course, I’ve never done that, but I did use to “pretend” eat from the same dish as my beloved German Shephard. She didn’t mind and I enjoyed our head butting game. This does not work with cats who will crouch back and look at you like you’re crazy.

8. Much too much snobbery here. If the masses like it, the self-anointed superiors must sneer at it.
   What they don’t know is how utterly stupid they look.
   Nobody tell them. I’d hate for them to stop. Way too much fun watching them.

9. Oh, yeah. Years ago, when my dtr was on college, going to DC to work at a soup kitchen on spring break, one of the self-anointed superior types offered her a couple of addresses for terrific Ethiopian restaurants.
   These people, you can’t parody them.

10. Re gustatory snobbery, you’ve got to watch Penn and Teller’s takedown of designer waters. Several chi-chi diners carefully sip their selection (offered by the water sommelier), and then gush about how the crisp “melted glacier” quality of their choice.

    Cut to a guy in back of the restaurant filing up various chi-chi containers from a garden hose. Hilarious!

11. Did those chi-chi diners think that the water came from a naive little iceberg without any breeding, but they were amused by its presumption?

12. Very much so! It was an impertinent but somehow worthy contender. Apparently that was a good year for that glacier.

13. Found it! Here it is.

    The bottled water bit starts at about 17:40.

14. My wife and I eat out once a week. Her favorite is Olive Garden. I also like both the minestrone and the salad. The entrees – I try to avoid the pasta so usually go for the chicken cacciatore. dish and leave the pasta on the plate. I know, I’m missing the core of Italian food. Well, I’m Scotch and I need my meat.

    My favorite of the places we go is Max Dales. This is an old fashioned steak place. They have a couple of chicken dishes and one pasta dish. Otherwise it is beef steaks. They serve a relish plate, (pickles, carrots, and celery) a big tossed salad, and a juicy, delicious steak of any kind and size you can want. You can have a baked potato, french fries, or a big serving of hot vegies as sides. A 10 oz. rare prime rib with a portion of hot vegies is my choice every time. Like artfldgr, with all this talk of food, I’m getting hungry.

15. Another vote for great bread sticks at OG.. Places like Olive Garden, Chili’s, O’Charlie’s, and Applebee’s provide a good meal at a reasonable price.

16. I say eat wherever makes you happy 🙂

    That’s why I don’t trust what quite a few people on Yelp have to say. They seem more interested in their status than anything else.

    Hell, I’ve seen someone on Yelp complain about the level of noise at Buffalo Wild Wings. Really? Complaining about noise at a sports bar? That’s almost like complaining about the noise at a rock concert.

17. All of the other trappings of the good life have been taken over by the middle class, thus forcing the elite and pseudo elites to seek out new havens for their self-conceit. Now it’s food. And it’s not just enough that they enjoy it, organic, transfatless free range fair trade fare, they have to foist portions of their diet on the rest of us regardless of the cost.

18. Yes!!! To all of the above!!!

    I’ve come around to realize that I am happily “middlebrow.” I like going to Olive Garden, and love their salad and breadsticks. I like walking around shopping malls and getting an Orange Julius at the food court. I like catching the latest installment of Pirates of the Carribean at the movies with a big Coke and a Popcorn. I like listening to Mannheim Steamroller at Christmastime (ie. the symphonic band whose founder was previously known for writing the ’70s CB hit “Convoy”). And a few nights ago, my wife and I enjoyed watching a John Tesh concert on TV (and enjoyed it… lots of ’40s standards).

    Of course, my wife and I aren’t beyond going to art museums or listening to classical music either .

    And we (my wife and I) like these things… because they’re pleasant and enjoyable and isn’t that what food and art is supposed to be about. And if you don’t like any of the above on my list, that’s fine, we all have our own tastes… our own things that make us happy.

    Regarding the detractors: I remember people like this back in college…a very rigid sense of what is “acceptable” . . . a lot of snarky comments about mainstream tastes. These are the type of people who put down the fun, unconstrained rock n’ roll of my youth (because it was too appealing to the masses), and instead offered up the dour, dirgelike, humorless “alternative” music that came out in the ’90s (which you will never find being played at any working class bars). Somebody should slap these people.

19. There’s not an Olive Garden handy to where I live, but I Do enjoy Applebee’s quite a bit. Good, hearty, comfort food, at a price that won’t make your eyes water.

    I’ve been reading about the history of restaurants, inns, and diners, as it happens, and this cornucopia of cheap, fresh, well-prepared food in clean and attractive settings is unheard-of before the 20th century. We’re living in very flush times, foodwise. Our ordinary meals would have made a monarch of old groan with pleasure.

    By the way, I’ve been enjoying a chef named Dan Eaton (“Cooking at Home with Dan Eaton”) on the NY1 news channel: he has enticing recipes that are both creative and simple to prepare: perfect.

20. Here’s a link to some of Dan’s ideas and recipes:
    http://capitalregion.ynn.com/content/cooking_at_home/

    Ok, now I’M hungry! chow, y’all.

21. Sample “receipt”:

    Get a large pot of water going for a 1-pound, or slightly larger, package of cheese tortellini and use another large, heavy bottomed pan to saute about 1 cup of diced onion in a couple Tbs of butter to soften.

    At that point, add 1 large minced clove of garlic and about 1 Tbs chopped fresh thyme. Cook that along for a minute, and then add 2 cups light cream and bring that up to a simmer.

    Adjust the heat on that so that it is simmering along at a good rate. You want it to reduce by about one third. Once the water comes to a boil, add the package of tortellini and get those going.

    When you’re happy with the cream, add 1 Tbs Dijon mustard and stir that in. Then add 8-ounces chopped smoked ham and as many frozen peas as you like and let all of those things warm through.

    You can season that with a little bit of black pepper to that if you like and, after the cheese tortellini have been simmering along for 4 – 5 minutes, use a slotted utensil to scoop those right into the pot with the ham and peas.

22. I’ve never eaten at the Olive Garden. There is a Mexican bakery nearby that has great empanadas and also good hot[& picante] dog kolaches, which I hit several times a week.

23. I like Olive Garden just fine, and this is after having eaten Italian food–lots of it–in several cities in Italy, so I know what it’s “supposed” to taste like. But my tastes tend towards the minestrone, spaghetti, and margherita pizza rather than the chi-chi dishes anyway, so it’s pretty easy to get those right. Which OG does.

    Chain restaurants when properly run tend to offer consistent quality and prices, even if the elitists may sneer at them. I lived in Australia for a number of years, and the Aussies generally don’t have chain restaurants, except for fast food. They like their little, one-off mom & pop operations, which are often quite good, but pricey, and if you’re in the mood for something semi-ethnic, like Italian or Chinese, you might be out of luck altogether. And Mexican, fuggeddaboudit. The “best” Mexican restaurant I went to down under (in Melbourne) didn’t come close to a Chipotle or Qdoba. So I count my blessings every time I go back to the States and can eat at an OG or Bennigan’s.

24. waltj
    And Mexican[in Australia], fuggeddaboudit

    Which is my opinion of Mexican/TexMex in Massachusetts. My sister has finally learned, when I visit Massachusetts, to not suggest eating out at a “Mexican” /a.k.a. flood of melted cheese restaurant. There may be some good TexMex or Interior Mexican restaurants in NE, but as I have yet to find one, I am not looking.

25. “the problem with the commenters of the elite set”

    the problem with the “elite set” is that the proles keep copying them, and making their sense of taste look common. So they have to keep moving to the next thing so they can maintain their self delusion of having superior taste.

    Being elite must be tiresome.

26. Oh, I gave up on Olive Garden when they dropped the sausage and peppers.

    Guess I can go back now.

27. Which is my opinion of Mexican/TexMex in Massachusetts.

    When I lived there one of my colleagues used to order dishes extra hot at a local Mexican restaurant. I told that while that was fine in MA, he should never even think about doing that in the Southwest if he wanted to continue being able to make babies. (Pace Cheech and Chong.)

28. Sausage and Peppers:

    Sausage any kind – kielbasa. smoked, Italian, etc., sliced.
    Red & green bell peppers in big chunks.
    Onion in big chunks.
    Pineapple chunks.
    Butter.

    Saute in pan until done – that’s up to you.

    Paprika just before done.
    —
    I lived in AZ for many years. Now central FL. The one and only thing I don’t like about here is that Taco Bell is the best Mexican food in the state.

29. Looking back now, it is obvious my family was poor, and when I was growing up we ate things like eggs fried in the bacon fat we saved in an old coffee can, scrapple, corn meal mush, and black coffee for breakfast, and things like cow’s tongue and corned beef and cabbage for dinner.

    Have eaten at the Inn at Little Washington–one of the handful of five star restaurants in America–at the very snooty, expensive restaurant sited above the Casino at Monte Carlo, at L’Auberge Chez Francois in the Washington, D.C. area etc., etc. and I have got to say that I like simple, good, well-prepared, tasty food the best, and forget the exotic ingredients and fancy sauces and other ways to dress up food, which, I suspect, are more like camouflage for food that, on its own merits, just doesn’t taste very good.

    Thus, I like our local Olive Garden, and Cracker Barrel—consistently good, satisfying food at a reasonable price, and almost invariably good service.

30. Wolla Dalbo – “Cracker Barrel” – now that’s a FUN place to go!

31. I have just spent the past half hour reading through various commentaries about Marilyn Hagerty’s review, only to click over here and find this post. I have to say, though, that I was puzzled by the question of what all the fuss is about because her review of the Olive Garden didn’t seem all that different from some of the restaurant reviews I have read in small papers which serve smaller markets. It seemed to me a bland and inoffensive review of a chain restaurant.

    As such, it contrasted greatly with the most ridiculous restaurant reviews I have ever read, when I was in graduate school and a local paper with aspirations to be the hip, alternative paper in town had a French professor reviewing local restaurants. Those reviews were so overwrought and filled with references to Proust (and whatnot), that it was hard to take any of them seriously. Had they been written today, I wonder if any of them would have gone viral, as the only people who liked them seemed to be graduate students in the French department.

    As far as the matter of Olive Garden is concerned, I must confess I’ve never been to one. This is no doubt a bit of snobbery on my part, though I certainly don’t avoid all chain restaurants. I’ve been fortunate enough to live in places with decent enough local Italian restaurants without feeling the need to go to a more generic chain version. In the past year and a half or so, I have become a fairly regular watcher of the Food Network, though, and one of the shows I enjoy there is “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” A few local restaurants have been featured, including one of my new favorites. What always impresses me about that show is simply how involved some of the most unremarkable-seeming dishes sometimes can be at what would seem to be ordinary Mom and Pop restaurants.

32. “That’s why I don’t trust what quite a few people on Yelp have to say.”

    Yelp is fraudulent. If you don’t advertise on them they leave up negative reviews and take down positive ones. I saw this happen to a friend of mine who has a business.

33. Food is to taste. What one person likes is irrelevant to what another person likes.

    Olive Garden is faux Italian, but that does not mean you aren’t allowed to enjoy it, just don’t think you’re eating anything close to actual Italian food, it’s just prepared using similar staring points and techniques. Yes, the snobs tell you otherwise, but you should suggest that they need to osculate your posterior. Not on the left side, not on the right side, but right in the middle.

    I’ve been told that Americans have pretty much never had actual “egg rolls”, as the ones served in the USA invariably include cabbage, and I have been told that in and around the Orient, they don’t use cabbage like that if at all. That’s what I’ve been told, and it’s no surprise.

    If you want some great burritos, and you’re in the Gainesville Florida area (University of Florida is there), try Burrito Brothers. It’s not actually Mexican, but, let’s put it this way — they are good enough that former Gators actually have their food shipped around the country because they want some of it, and BB is a one-off hole in the wall…

    I’ve noticed that, for the most part, the best places to eat in the world are all holes in the wall. Unfortunately, the worst places to eat are also holes in the wall. You have to be a native to learn the good holes from the bad ones.

34. Occam’s Beard on “extra hot” TexMex in Massachusetts:
    I told that while that was fine in MA, he should never even think about doing that in the Southwest if he wanted to continue being able to make babies.

    One time I bought some jalapeé±os at a Stop and Shop in MA. The clerk commented on how she liked them. In TX, as jalapeé±os are not a specialty item but a commodity, no grocery store clerk would ever think of commenting about such a purchase. It would be like commenting on purchases of onions or potatoes.

    Regarding killer peppers, I bought some dried habaneros. Dried in powder form, they are $30/lb, but dried whole, only $6/lb. Have to use them VERY carefully.

35. My husband and I like food – a lot. He has ‘elevated’ my tastes in many areas like wine and cheese. We have eaten at many high-rent restaurants. Some of the meals have been lovely but often it’s a laughable experience. Too many serve miniscule portions of weirdly paired ingredients that aren’t even that appetizing – and both of us have extremely catholic tastes when it come to food. (Fennel powder on my dessert? No thanks!)

    What in heaven’s name is wrong with restaurants that serve food that actually tastes good and has widespread appeal? I am 100% Italian and grew up on restaurant quality meals every day of my life made by a mother who could give any chef a run for his/her money in the kitchen. But I love The Olive Garden the same way that I love Cracker Barrel or even a fresh Filet-o-fish sandwich. The stuff just tastes good.

36. “What in heaven’s name is wrong with restaurants that serve food that actually tastes good and has widespread appeal?”

    Precisely because it has widespread appeal. The “intellectuals” must prove their bona fides to each other by scorning anything that ordinary people like…which ought to be a clue that intellectuals should be kept as far away from the reins of power as is possible.

37. All right neo, now I’m going to have to try the sausage and peppers.

    But not today…it’s Friday in Lent 🙂

38. Okay, I’m a snob. Ate at an Olive Garden once, never went back.

    But there are some chains out there with phenomenal food: Bertucci’s, Carabba’s, On The Border, Panera — right now America is in a golden age for cooking. You can find excellent food in pretty much any town anywhere in the country. That wasn’t true thirty years ago.

    So far, the self-described “elites” haven’t been able to do for food what they’ve done for art and fashion. Perhaps because the human body has a gag reflex.

39. “What in heaven’s name is wrong with restaurants that serve food that actually tastes good and has widespread appeal?”

    they think that by doing so… a cargo cult affectation, that they are what they pretend to be…

    or as rocky horrors franken furter (frankfurt school) expressed

    “dont dream it, be it (by dreaming it)”

    there are two scenes from this movie that sum it up:

    Defending Your Life – Big Brain
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF897aNyxSs

    the other scene i cant find which is the scene when they are eating together and he wants to try and risk and taste the black goop on the plate “despite not having a sophisticated pallette”

    funny thing…
    but having no pallete makes it easier to pretend you have a sophisticated one, as then you can eat sh*tz on Ritz, and still say “good cracker” like buddy ebson, himself a good cracker (sorry its Friday)

40. I’ve eaten at my share of high-end restaurants, generally in foreign countries, and generally on the company’s dime (or rupiah, baht, or whatever), and have to say that excessive snobbery in food isn’t a strictly American phenomenon. One particular place in Bangkok seemed especially infected (it’s gone now, can’t remember its name, but it’s clear the diners had their say). Nothing in there tasted especially good, the portions were smaller than my smallest cat eats at a feeding, and the combination of ingredients was just bizarre. But this place was described in one of the Bangkok magazines as “edgy” and “bold”. Spare me. I’d rather have “tasty” and “mouth-watering”. I guess that’s too pedestrian for the elitists.

41. Smock Puppet’s comments remind me of a few things. With regard to American egg rolls not being the same as actual Chinese egg rolls, I have a friend who grew up in Michigan and whose parents are from Taiwan. Although this friend eats lots of fast food of all varieties, one time we were looking at Chinese restaurants, and she refused to go into a particular one because she saw too many “American Chinese” dishes (i.e., sweet and sour chicken, etc.) on the menu. This struck me as rather silly because even if it wasn’t “authentic” Chinese, it still might be good food. After all, most food in American Chinese restaurants is nowhere near authentic, as demonstrated by The Search for General Tso.

    Regarding the comment that the “best places to eat are generally holes in the wall,” that certainly seems to be the case with what an NPR story I heard this morning called “the world’s greatest sushi restaurant.” It’s a ten-seat Sushi bar in a Tokyo subway station.

42. Janet and pst314: of course nothing’s wrong with restaurants that serve food that tastes good and has widespread appeal—except…

    (1) when the food actually doesn’t taste very good, which is true (IMHO) for quite a few fast-food and/or chain restaurants; and

    (2) when the food is really really really fatty and/or way too salty and or portions so huge that they foster extreme overweight.

    Even then, as a mild libertarian (is that an oxymoron?) I have no problem with such places existing and people choosing to go to them. But I have a problem with the food there when I go there, and I don’t go there if I can help it, and if I find myself there I usually do not like whatever it is that I order.

    I like food that has good taste. That’s why, despite my liking for some things at the Olive Garden, when I go there I tend to stick to those couple of things I know I like because every single time I’ve branched out (which is actually many times) and ordered something else I have regretted it because it’s just not tasty to me.

    That said, my favorite restaurants tend to not be chains, but they also tend not to be expensive gourmet places (although take me to one of those and believe me, I’ll find plenty to like!). My favorites are almost always ethnic places that are very reasonable but very tasty. Especially favored by me are many different kinds of Asian food, and almost any Middle Eastern food.

43. “pst314: of course nothing’s wrong with restaurants that serve food that tastes good and has widespread appeal–except…(1) when the food actually doesn’t taste very good… (2) or portions so huge that they foster extreme overweight.”

    You’ll get no argument from me. My objections are to the snobs. There’s a lot of that going around.

44. Ditto.

45. The snobs just never learn they’re being rolled. The whole phenomenon is nicely covered in “Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture” by Joseph Heath.

    Olive Garden I’ve never liked, but Appleby’s suits me just fine.

46. holmes

    Read some time ago-can’t recall author–a history of the middle class chasing the upper class and the upper class trying to stay ahead in all matters; fashion, education, accent, hobbies.
    I believe the nouveau rich at the end of the nineteenth century in the US, the women anyway, changed clothes five times a day. It was because the upper-mids could afford to do it three times a day.
    Let’em play pin the tail, or whatever. Not my problem.

47. There is a fine and often crossed line between appreciating good food and being a food obsessed snob. Living here in the good grey city of Portland, OR, I have a chance to observe this on a regular basis.

    Some of you may have seen the famous episode of the tv show “Portlandia” where the hip young couple starts cross examining their waitress about the heritage and provenance of the chicken they are about to order for dinner. The waitress trumps them by producing a sheaf of documents and announcing: “His name was Colin. Here are his papers.”

    This was funny not because it was over the top ridiculous but because it was a delicately ironic exaggeration of what actually goes on in restaraunts around here.

    If they had a scene where famous local chefs got into a street brawl with each other because of a squabble over whether the heritage pig they had just cooked for a charity event was authentically local (and wound up being Tasered by police), most would think that was an unbelievable satire. But it actually happened here about a year ago.

    Me, I try to enjoy my meals while keeping in mind that good food is a blessing, not an idol.

48. “Middle Class” is now an epithet for some folks. Ranks with “plebeian”, and “popular”–just not up to the speakers’ refined tastes. See the same thing in jazz; popular artists are looked down upon. (I hear they cry all the way to the bank.) Some folks just have to be special–better than the rest of us.

49. Great blog! Sorry to change the subject, but, since Nashville is getting a lot of press lately, I’m looking for a great Nashville sushi restaurant or Japanese restaurant. Have you heard of any good ones? There’s a new one called Nomzilla Sushi Et Cetera, but very few reviews. Here’s the address of this new Nashville Sushi Restaurant, 1201 Villa Place #101 Nashville, TN 37212 – (615) 268-1424. Let me know your thoughts! Thanks!

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