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.

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.

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

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

(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.

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.