I love Ohio.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
At the corner of Three and Ferris
There is this old house in Columbus. It seats on a busy corner by two highways in a not-so-good area of town. A beautiful, decaying 19th century Italianate house built atop an ancient Native American earthwork.
Two of my favorite things in Ohio- earthworks and Italianate houses, in my favorite Ohio city. I would so happily move there and ponder the origin and use of my own prehistoric monument from the porch.
Two of my favorite things in Ohio- earthworks and Italianate houses, in my favorite Ohio city. I would so happily move there and ponder the origin and use of my own prehistoric monument from the porch.
Of global malls and segregation
Cruising through Columbus on our way to the Cultural Hub of the Midwest we drove by a place called "Global Mall". She was intrigued enough that we took a detour and stopped to check it out.
The mall turned out to be a giant flea market of sorts where merchants peddle their wares in smallish booths/stores. But this is no ordinary market- all of the vendors are Somalis. Stumbling upon this place took me back to the medinas of Morocco and the street shops of Sri Lanka. Suddenly the Midwest sprawl outside disappeared and I was transported to faraway places both familiar and unknown. It made me long, if only briefly, for the uncomfortable joys of traveling outside my comfort zone of America and Europe.
There are no white people here. Muslim women, covered head-to-toe, congregate and run the booths; they speak very little English but their friendliness and big smiles suffice as means of communication.
I knew Columbus had a big Somali population, but I had never "seen" them. They are the invisible major minority. Inside the "Global Mall", they have everything... stores, a barber shop, a butcher, coffee place.
Right across the street is "La Michoacana", a Mexican/South American market. White folks don't seem to frequent this area of Columbus.
Polls in local magazines routinely position Olive Garden and Chipotle as the best Italian and Mexican in Columbus, respectively. Somali/African food is not even an option.
Again, another fine American city segregated, separated. Divided.
The mall turned out to be a giant flea market of sorts where merchants peddle their wares in smallish booths/stores. But this is no ordinary market- all of the vendors are Somalis. Stumbling upon this place took me back to the medinas of Morocco and the street shops of Sri Lanka. Suddenly the Midwest sprawl outside disappeared and I was transported to faraway places both familiar and unknown. It made me long, if only briefly, for the uncomfortable joys of traveling outside my comfort zone of America and Europe.
There are no white people here. Muslim women, covered head-to-toe, congregate and run the booths; they speak very little English but their friendliness and big smiles suffice as means of communication.
I knew Columbus had a big Somali population, but I had never "seen" them. They are the invisible major minority. Inside the "Global Mall", they have everything... stores, a barber shop, a butcher, coffee place.
Right across the street is "La Michoacana", a Mexican/South American market. White folks don't seem to frequent this area of Columbus.
Polls in local magazines routinely position Olive Garden and Chipotle as the best Italian and Mexican in Columbus, respectively. Somali/African food is not even an option.
Again, another fine American city segregated, separated. Divided.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
America! The Art of Complaining (Re: Ref #: 003950881A)
See for example the story Pepperidge Farm tells us about the origins of the company:
Henry Rudkin began carrying Margaret’s bread with him on the train to Grand Central Terminal to be sold at specialty shops in New York City. And as word about the extraordinary product got around, the tiny company grew. It had no business model, no strategic plan. Margaret just baked the bread by hand in her kitchen, making sure that every loaf was as good as it could be.
Bullshit. Beautiful bullshit! But who doesn’t love a good old American bullshit story of overnight rags-to-riches success? I do! Fuck Yeah. I love
Hello,
My wife and I usually enjoy Pepperidge Farm's cookies. They look good and taste great! But I wanted to tell you about the Milano cookie.
Do you think a real natural baker would use a list of ingredients longer than the Bill of Rights to produce one single type of cookies? And using such "natural" (note the irony) ingredients as "palm and/or interesterified and hydrogenated soybean and/or hydrogenated cottonseed? "
Nice and convincing or what… The concerned customer service agents at Pepperidge Farm in Norwalk, Connecticut (now wholly owned and operated by Campbell Soup in Camden, New Jersey!) promptly got back to me. And they said:
Mr Bruno Lemieux-Ruibal, we received your message and appreciate your taking the time to contact Pepperidge Farm about the oils in our products.
We value the product comments and suggestions our consumers provide to us. These very comments led us to reformulate many of our products to reduce the level of trans fat. Due to oil availability constraints, we originally labeled our products to preserve the option of using any combination of oils, one of which was palm. However, our accessibility to our preferred oil has increased, and we now use it in the majority of our cookies. The ingredient statements on each package will be updated on an ongoing basis as new packaging is re-ordered.
Only a very limited number of our cookie products continue to use palm oil due to manufacturing and ingredient supply constraints. We continue to look at alternatives to eliminate this oil in as many products as possible.
Cottonseed oil, a vegetable oil, is an ingredient in a number of our products. This wholesome and edible oil is used interchangeably with corn, palm, soybean and canola oils
Hydrogenation, which changes a liquid oil to a semi-solid, is necessary to maintain the texture of our products. Such is the reason, for example, why consumers use solid shortening rather than liquid oils in making pie crusts from scratch.
Our ultimate commitment is to always provide consumers with the delicious, premium quality products they love and expect from Pepperidge Farm. By bringing your comments to our attention, you have helped support our high quality standards and we appreciate your input.
I am sending you coupons via the mail that are redeemable for any Pepperidge Farm item. You will receive them within 7-10 days. I hope you will give us another opportunity to delight you and make sure that with Pepperidge Farm products, you “Never Have an Ordinary Day”.
Thank you for visiting the Pepperidge Farm website.
Pepperidge Farm Web Team jxb
003950881A
Yeah, whatever. You will keep on making crappy artificial industrial cookies that taste like Ikea cardboard and marketed as if they had just come out of Margaret's oven. But I got some free coupons!!! We’ll buy
Fuck Yeah!
Monday, September 01, 2008
Bacon and Hirst (in Hell)
The Art Newspaper carries a lengthy and interesting special on Francis Bacon and the crazy market for his works (he is the world's top-selling artist right now). Not that it reveals anything substantially new, but it is a good read. For this matter they quote some art experts, who offer their insight on the artist.
Says curator Matthew Gale, organizer of the upcoming Bacon retrospective that will visit the Tate in London, the Prado in Madrid and the Metropolitan in New York in this 2008 and next 2009:
"His unflinching awareness of transience, his stance of being outside the mainstream..."
Says artist Damien Hirst, richest and loudest-mouthed contemporary artist ever:
"Francis Bacon is the best. He has the guts to fuck in hell."
Fuck Fucking Yeah.
Says curator Matthew Gale, organizer of the upcoming Bacon retrospective that will visit the Tate in London, the Prado in Madrid and the Metropolitan in New York in this 2008 and next 2009:
"His unflinching awareness of transience, his stance of being outside the mainstream..."
Says artist Damien Hirst, richest and loudest-mouthed contemporary artist ever:
"Francis Bacon is the best. He has the guts to fuck in hell."
Fuck Fucking Yeah.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Looking at Times Square
Times Square, that place where Broadway and Seventh Avenue are one surrounded by neons, bland attractions and too many tourists, looks mighty interesting from 43rd towards Eighth Avenue.
There, by the old New York Times building, you're walking on a pretty empty street from which you see that endless stream of tourists walking to-and-fro, going around in circles, never straying from their path. Must stay in Times Square.
If you manage to go pass them, leaving the circulating masses, you'll soon reach another fairly unpopulated street (43rd between Sixth and Fifth) and wonder, what the hell was that!
Times Square is a fish bowl: people move around it forever but never get out.
There, by the old New York Times building, you're walking on a pretty empty street from which you see that endless stream of tourists walking to-and-fro, going around in circles, never straying from their path. Must stay in Times Square.
If you manage to go pass them, leaving the circulating masses, you'll soon reach another fairly unpopulated street (43rd between Sixth and Fifth) and wonder, what the hell was that!
Times Square is a fish bowl: people move around it forever but never get out.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
My Own American English
Your Linguistic Profile: |
55% General American English |
30% Yankee |
10% Upper Midwestern |
5% Dixie |
0% Midwestern |
Anyone interested in words, languages, writing and communicating will be attracted to this who-knows-how-unscientific test that supposedly determines your own particular variety of American English. In my case, the 30% Yankee should come from my being a New Yorker, the 10% Upper Midwestern from being married to a Minnesotan-Iowan. But the 5% Dixie? I've never been down in the South beyond Alexandria, Virginia, and despite a certain tendency to catch local accents and phrases, I doubt I have anything whatsoever in my English from the KKK states (other than a preference for "y'all" over "you guys")
When I took the test again after almost three years, it came like this:
70% General American English
15% Yankee
5% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern
I love to see how I've become just a plain general American. Wait 'til you hear my accent!
Monday, August 11, 2008
"Alexia, The Movie" (Believe it or not)
I have a cousin. I mean, I had a cousin. She’s no longer. In fact, she hasn’t been for over twenty years. Twenty-three to be precise.
My cousin Alexia died of a devastating cancer in December 1985 at age 14, having been diagnosed with a malignant tumor at 13 and suffered through ten months of pain and surgeries. Through all of it, she remained an optimist child, always smiling, resilient.
Young cancer victims are, sadly, not a rarity. Entire hospital wards are filled with them. So what was with Alexia? How can a teenager be accepting of a brutal disease that ruthlessly kills you before you’ve set out to discover the world? Alexia had strong religious beliefs, firm and highly uncommon for a kid her age. This supposedly made her ordeal sweeter and is certainly facilitating her beatification by the Pope, a move long pushed by her immediate family.
I say supposedly because I don’t have religious beliefs and find it hard to believe that a 14-year-old can be comforted by Jesus or whoever during a painful and fatal disease instead of crying and going crazy. But Alexia did. She died a happy kid because she was going to meet Jesus. Go figure.
Her endurance and mature acceptance of illness and death put my cousin on her way to sainthood. Her beatification cause is under way, and so one day she’ll be the first ever Saint Alexia and I’ll be proud. Or something.
(My aunt married her first cousin and had seven kids. Two of them died before Alexia, and then it was her turn. Love is the most powerful feeling a human can gather and cannot be stopped, but marrying your cousin means that genetic problems will most likely ensue.)
My relationship with Alexia has seen its ups and downs. I’ve been proud, indifferent, critical, skeptical, even mocking (for this I feel mighty bad)… I’ve felt close to her and far apart because of the peculiarities of my family, including my own father who –as a long-time priest- baptized Alexia but is routinely left out of biographies and stories on her because he left the Catholic Church, married my mother and had me.
I visited Alexia, along with my parents and siblings, at the hospital where she was dying. I was five or six years old. I remember her vividly, and that memory still surprises me and kind of haunts me today, for I am a guy with no memory and no childhood yet I can recall being there, in that room, looking at my cousin Alexia sitting in bed, her body adorned with a strange metal piece on top of her shaved and bald head, her arm in a sling. What a mess, but she was smiling. That’s what has always stuck with me, her smile. I mean, my mind has consciously or unconsciously let most of my life slip away with no recollections, yet there it is that image recorded in my brain, never to leave me.
Despite my lack of faith, I was always close to my aunt, Alexia’s mother. I’d have good conversations with her and my uncle about the existence of god, no less. I never saw her as an extremist. She knew of my interest in Alexia’s cause so she would periodically send me the newsletters, and I was the only one in my immediate family to be invited to the latest chapter of Alexia’s cause for sainthood. My aunt would tell me, and I never forgot, that Alexia prayed for me and my siblings to be baptized and converted to Catholicism.
She failed.
When I married and moved to America I lost touch with everyone but my close friends and family. I barely heard about Alexia. My aunt died not too long ago after a long, painful death and was buried in the family mausoleum in Northern Spain, in the same little town where I had conversed so much with her about religion, god and Alexia. I was living in New York, far from everything. Here, Opus Dei and Alexia meant almost nothing.
About my only contact with Spain is the occasional newspaper clips my father sends me. They’re usually about contemporary art or Spanish visions of New York, but the latest batch was different. It had a color spread on a movie about to open in Spain- a movie about my cousin Alexia. When I saw it and read it, I was floored. But calm. I guess being far away from everything brings a different perspective. Yet I couldn’t hide my amazement.
My cousin, my aunt, my family in the movies.
I read the article. The director says everything in the movie is “respectful and objective”. Yet the journalist calls my aunt a “religious fanatic” and my uncle a lost man grappling with the devastating loss of a child. Then I saw the trailer and my aunt was there, saying “I am thankful every day for our daughter’s illness”. I couldn’t help shedding a tear. Is that respectful and objective? Did they know my aunt? Did they talk to my family before making the movie? When I read about my aunt in one of the most important newspapers in the world, Spain’s El País, described as a “religious fanatic”, is that respectful and objective?
Sure, Alexia was not an easy kid. Her catchphrase before dying was “Jesus, may I always do what you want me to do”, and she celebrated her first communion in Rome with Paul John Paul II, to whom he gave a letter in which she addressed her desire to be a saint. My aunt devoted her life after her daughter’s passing to remembering her and, in a way, making her a sort of household name for Spanish Catholics. Both actions are difficult for me to deal with.
Zealousness or pure devotion and faith? Perhaps both?
And yet, despite my not being religious, I loved my aunt and remember and respect my cousin. I am already not feeling comfortable about this movie, billed as “inspired in a real story” but having obviously more than just plain “inspiration”. The actress portraying my aunt looks so very much like her, and so does the rest of the cast. The movie, titled not “Alexia” but “Camino”, which is a fairly common female name in Spain but also means “path”, seems to focus on Alexia’s love story with an unnamed young boy, something that’s only mentioned in passing in the books written about Alexia. Many other aspects are literally copied. I know. Why didn’t they consult the family? There is this scene, shown in the movie trailer, where my cousin approaches a handyman working on a broken washing machine at the house and asks him whether he thinks that by fixing machines you can get to be a saint (!). According to my aunt, this occurred for real, only the handyman was working on a broken TV.
Don’t they have to ask for permission to reproduce this?
The problem with the movie and the sour disagreements it will generate is not strictly due to my late cousin but to Opus Dei, the religious organization she belonged to, and that –upfront- it looks like the director has constructed a quite critical view of the group, despite his claims of objectivity. Opus Dei is indeed a highly controversial entity. Officially sanctioned by the Pope and the Catholic Church, which recently canonized its founder, Spanish priest José María Escrivá de Balaguer, Opus Dei is viewed by many as a sect or cult- not unlike the Mormons in the United States.
Although a minor, almost unknown group in America, Opus Dei is a big deal in Spain, for obvious reasons. It was founded there and there it grew into a complex behemoth with political, economical and social ramifications. Many of dictator Francisco Franco –ruthless military ruler of Spain for almost forty years-‘s ministers belonged to Opus Dei, and the wealth –both financial and political- of the organization has long been a subject of discussion in Spain. Recently, writer Dan Brown turned Opus Dei into one of the key players of his bestseller “The Da Vinci Code”, reviving the controversy and throwing some light on it for unbeknownst Americans.
The movie is already –before it even opens- creating a stir in Spain, where no discussion about the issue is civilized. The mere announcement of the production has had Spanish newspapers and blogs flooded with readers’ comments pro- and anti- Opus Dei. Because Alexia died comforted by religion, people are calling her a brainwashed mess of a manipulated kid. Believers strike back, calling atheists and agnostics all sorts of non-pretty things.
All because of my cousin, who died twenty-three years ago.
3600 miles away, in a place where virtually no one knows about Alexia, Opus Dei or will ever see this movie that’s already dividing Spain, I am –ever agnostic and respectful- feeling sad, perplexed and quite nostalgic.
(I knew Alexia)
My cousin Alexia died of a devastating cancer in December 1985 at age 14, having been diagnosed with a malignant tumor at 13 and suffered through ten months of pain and surgeries. Through all of it, she remained an optimist child, always smiling, resilient.
Young cancer victims are, sadly, not a rarity. Entire hospital wards are filled with them. So what was with Alexia? How can a teenager be accepting of a brutal disease that ruthlessly kills you before you’ve set out to discover the world? Alexia had strong religious beliefs, firm and highly uncommon for a kid her age. This supposedly made her ordeal sweeter and is certainly facilitating her beatification by the Pope, a move long pushed by her immediate family.
I say supposedly because I don’t have religious beliefs and find it hard to believe that a 14-year-old can be comforted by Jesus or whoever during a painful and fatal disease instead of crying and going crazy. But Alexia did. She died a happy kid because she was going to meet Jesus. Go figure.
Her endurance and mature acceptance of illness and death put my cousin on her way to sainthood. Her beatification cause is under way, and so one day she’ll be the first ever Saint Alexia and I’ll be proud. Or something.
(My aunt married her first cousin and had seven kids. Two of them died before Alexia, and then it was her turn. Love is the most powerful feeling a human can gather and cannot be stopped, but marrying your cousin means that genetic problems will most likely ensue.)
My relationship with Alexia has seen its ups and downs. I’ve been proud, indifferent, critical, skeptical, even mocking (for this I feel mighty bad)… I’ve felt close to her and far apart because of the peculiarities of my family, including my own father who –as a long-time priest- baptized Alexia but is routinely left out of biographies and stories on her because he left the Catholic Church, married my mother and had me.
I visited Alexia, along with my parents and siblings, at the hospital where she was dying. I was five or six years old. I remember her vividly, and that memory still surprises me and kind of haunts me today, for I am a guy with no memory and no childhood yet I can recall being there, in that room, looking at my cousin Alexia sitting in bed, her body adorned with a strange metal piece on top of her shaved and bald head, her arm in a sling. What a mess, but she was smiling. That’s what has always stuck with me, her smile. I mean, my mind has consciously or unconsciously let most of my life slip away with no recollections, yet there it is that image recorded in my brain, never to leave me.
Despite my lack of faith, I was always close to my aunt, Alexia’s mother. I’d have good conversations with her and my uncle about the existence of god, no less. I never saw her as an extremist. She knew of my interest in Alexia’s cause so she would periodically send me the newsletters, and I was the only one in my immediate family to be invited to the latest chapter of Alexia’s cause for sainthood. My aunt would tell me, and I never forgot, that Alexia prayed for me and my siblings to be baptized and converted to Catholicism.
She failed.
When I married and moved to America I lost touch with everyone but my close friends and family. I barely heard about Alexia. My aunt died not too long ago after a long, painful death and was buried in the family mausoleum in Northern Spain, in the same little town where I had conversed so much with her about religion, god and Alexia. I was living in New York, far from everything. Here, Opus Dei and Alexia meant almost nothing.
About my only contact with Spain is the occasional newspaper clips my father sends me. They’re usually about contemporary art or Spanish visions of New York, but the latest batch was different. It had a color spread on a movie about to open in Spain- a movie about my cousin Alexia. When I saw it and read it, I was floored. But calm. I guess being far away from everything brings a different perspective. Yet I couldn’t hide my amazement.
My cousin, my aunt, my family in the movies.
I read the article. The director says everything in the movie is “respectful and objective”. Yet the journalist calls my aunt a “religious fanatic” and my uncle a lost man grappling with the devastating loss of a child. Then I saw the trailer and my aunt was there, saying “I am thankful every day for our daughter’s illness”. I couldn’t help shedding a tear. Is that respectful and objective? Did they know my aunt? Did they talk to my family before making the movie? When I read about my aunt in one of the most important newspapers in the world, Spain’s El País, described as a “religious fanatic”, is that respectful and objective?
Sure, Alexia was not an easy kid. Her catchphrase before dying was “Jesus, may I always do what you want me to do”, and she celebrated her first communion in Rome with Paul John Paul II, to whom he gave a letter in which she addressed her desire to be a saint. My aunt devoted her life after her daughter’s passing to remembering her and, in a way, making her a sort of household name for Spanish Catholics. Both actions are difficult for me to deal with.
Zealousness or pure devotion and faith? Perhaps both?
And yet, despite my not being religious, I loved my aunt and remember and respect my cousin. I am already not feeling comfortable about this movie, billed as “inspired in a real story” but having obviously more than just plain “inspiration”. The actress portraying my aunt looks so very much like her, and so does the rest of the cast. The movie, titled not “Alexia” but “Camino”, which is a fairly common female name in Spain but also means “path”, seems to focus on Alexia’s love story with an unnamed young boy, something that’s only mentioned in passing in the books written about Alexia. Many other aspects are literally copied. I know. Why didn’t they consult the family? There is this scene, shown in the movie trailer, where my cousin approaches a handyman working on a broken washing machine at the house and asks him whether he thinks that by fixing machines you can get to be a saint (!). According to my aunt, this occurred for real, only the handyman was working on a broken TV.
Don’t they have to ask for permission to reproduce this?
The problem with the movie and the sour disagreements it will generate is not strictly due to my late cousin but to Opus Dei, the religious organization she belonged to, and that –upfront- it looks like the director has constructed a quite critical view of the group, despite his claims of objectivity. Opus Dei is indeed a highly controversial entity. Officially sanctioned by the Pope and the Catholic Church, which recently canonized its founder, Spanish priest José María Escrivá de Balaguer, Opus Dei is viewed by many as a sect or cult- not unlike the Mormons in the United States.
Although a minor, almost unknown group in America, Opus Dei is a big deal in Spain, for obvious reasons. It was founded there and there it grew into a complex behemoth with political, economical and social ramifications. Many of dictator Francisco Franco –ruthless military ruler of Spain for almost forty years-‘s ministers belonged to Opus Dei, and the wealth –both financial and political- of the organization has long been a subject of discussion in Spain. Recently, writer Dan Brown turned Opus Dei into one of the key players of his bestseller “The Da Vinci Code”, reviving the controversy and throwing some light on it for unbeknownst Americans.
The movie is already –before it even opens- creating a stir in Spain, where no discussion about the issue is civilized. The mere announcement of the production has had Spanish newspapers and blogs flooded with readers’ comments pro- and anti- Opus Dei. Because Alexia died comforted by religion, people are calling her a brainwashed mess of a manipulated kid. Believers strike back, calling atheists and agnostics all sorts of non-pretty things.
All because of my cousin, who died twenty-three years ago.
3600 miles away, in a place where virtually no one knows about Alexia, Opus Dei or will ever see this movie that’s already dividing Spain, I am –ever agnostic and respectful- feeling sad, perplexed and quite nostalgic.
(I knew Alexia)
Thursday, August 07, 2008
From Baghdad... to The French Laundry (Three Days of Everything)
My wife Mary (celticat1.multiply.com) and I have this weird hobby of flying and driving around trying the greatest and best restaurants in the world, mostly following the 50 Best List (www.theworlds50best.com). I took on that liking long ago while living in Spain, home of probably the best food created anywhere these days, but never had the money to support it, so it was a heavenly match to find a life partner who shared the love for crazy tasting menus by famous chefs (a passion new to her) and made the money to enable such an expensive pastime. Thank you, Capitalism!
It was only natural that, in a recent visit to the Bay Area, we included a critical stop at The French Laundry in our route. The Laundry is, for now, considered the best restaurant in The Americas (North, Central and South- from Alaska to Patagonia) and Thomas Keller the most important chef in our country. He was the master chef who almost single-handedly created a new generation of fine dining in the United States by skillfully blending the classicism of refined French cooking with the tradition of America’s comfort food and our plentiful table and agricultural bounty. That and a painstaking, almost maniacal attention to detail and service made for a unique style that ushered diners into a new experience of amazement, awe and sheer delight. Forget the old, buttery French-dining thing with snotty waiters and heavy sauces that dominated America's restaurant scene for so many decades. This was something else. A new world.
Keller is still there, at the top. Not only in California, where he created his empire, but in New York as well, where he grew as a chef and failed as an entrepreneur. His famed restaurant Rakel bombed at the end of the crazy 80’s, when hungry Wall Streeters chose to go to their local diner instead of choosing second helpings of Keller’s luxurious French cooking . He is now back with a vengeance at Per Se, the ultimate Keller experience where everything is so fastidiously flawless you’ll either leave the place (if you ever get there) crying or wondering how such ideal perfection is possible in this deeply flawed world. Or perhaps both. We are now in an economic crisis so bad that will soon make the Late Eighties look like a bad-hair day, and yet diners are still flocking and anxiously hammering their piggies to have their own slice of the Per Se and French Laundry experiences. Keller is not at risk of going down like Rakel did- this time, in this crisis, it is the chain eateries such as Bennigan’s that are filing for bankruptcy. Fine dining is alive and well, thank you very much.
Wife and I are fans of Chef Keller, and I would rate Per Se as my favorite restaurant in the world. (Oops, did I say that? Yeah. I think I know what I’m talking about.) So we had to try the original, the Yountville outpost that started it all. I was afraid that I wouldn’t find the Laundry too special, that I would feel like dining at the Western version of Per Se. Unfortunately, I was right. The Laundry is like Per Se, only in a small town in sunny Napa Valley, California surrounded by a garden where you might run into Thomas Keller picking a fresh pear from a tree instead of an enclosed mall where the chances of sighting a famous chef (or sighting anything at all) are extremely slim. Other than the setting, the food and experience are a precise clone, minus the perfection I found at Per Se and thought somewhat missing at the Laundry. That venerable old building is just too small for so many waiters and diners roaming around clad in fancy jackets and dresses.
Also, I am finding myself jaded, almost cynically insensitive to the fine-dining world I love. No, perhaps I do not care anymore about that beef that came from a farm in Pennsylvania located 3,000 miles away from California, or the Australian black truffle (in season now!) presented in a black jewel case or the Montana cave salt that may be 40 million years old. You hear! 40 million. Enough of that. I care for good, imaginative, mold-breaking and mind-blowing food. I can do without the rituals and trappings.
Yes, the food was generally excellent and the service magnificent and warm, if flawed. But the whole thing lacks excitement and surprise. So I found the Laundry formulaic, a bit tired- a place and an experience in need of a good kick in the ass. You don't want your creation to get old and worn-out like the old French cooking you toppled and replaced, right, Keller? I know you don't.
Slightly disappointed (although excited to see Keller himself), I looked at the customers- those searchers of the Keller experience. We talked to a rich-looking couple from Cleveland who- along with their absurdly polite and mature but adorable young children- were having their first serious culinary experience. Unaware they were of the almost-mythical status of Keller's Laundry until we popped that cherry for them. The son, seven or eight years old, provided some clever and resourceful insight into life when we asked him what did he want to do when he grew up... and he immediately and surely said, "I want three days of everything".
Including The French Laundry, I assume.
I looked over at a table where five redneck ladies, all bad hair, clunky manners and bright Sunday dresses were having their first and last gastronomic journey aided by a solicitous sommelier who, no doubt, promptly coaxed them all into buying the most expensive wine flight ever conceived in Napa Valley.
And yet these colorful types all pale if compared to the one sight I cherish the most of my Laundry experience: the Iraq veteran. I said it right, an Iraq veteran at The French Laundry. He entered the dining room in full military fatigues, making his way to his assigned table with the help of a cane and flanked by his beautiful, overdressed and visibly nervous (probably overwhelmed) girlfriend. This Asian-American California guy was barely in his 30's and yet had seen the worst of (in)humanity and was about to see some of the best. He had been in Baghdad, enjoyed it and survived to tell his story, back in America.
Wounded but happy. He was no charlatan. We talked to him in the garden, during one of our breaks from the 4-hour food trip. He spoke of Iraq as we would of going grocery-shopping, unaffectedly and down-to-earth. He believed in it, he went there, did his thing and came back. His dream was to dine at The French Laundry, and there he was, with his cane and his uniform; his limp and vivid memories.
He chose not Bud Light and his neighborhood sports bar with his buddies and the local cheerleaders but Napa Valley and one of the best restaurants in the world, surrounded by people who might look at him as an outsider (Why are you not wearing a jacket? What are you doing here?) and frown. He was a hero, in many ways.
You may not agree with our current government, with the Military of the United States, with the wasteful and useless invasion and war on Iraq. I don't either. But I hope that you, like me, respect and admire these men and women who chose to fight a war (wrong or not, and for whatever reason) in trenches and faraway hellholes instead of sitting comfortably at home.
They have the guts we lack. They deserve to be remembered, respected and admired when they come back, whether they choose to celebrate at their local dive with the frat boys -as we saw in Hartford, Connecticut, in another moving sight of a young veteran coming home from Iraq- or at a sushi bar in Manhattan. But when you take your wounded veteran guts from Baghdad to The French Laundry to celebrate your return, You -the Iraq gourmet soldier whose name I'll never know... You will forever be etched in my mind.
And that is indeed what I remember the most about my French Laundry experience, well worth paying over 700 dollars for. Come to think of it, and predictable as the Laundry may have become, only Thomas Keller could be behind such an unforgettable feat.
(A different kind of perfection)
It was only natural that, in a recent visit to the Bay Area, we included a critical stop at The French Laundry in our route. The Laundry is, for now, considered the best restaurant in The Americas (North, Central and South- from Alaska to Patagonia) and Thomas Keller the most important chef in our country. He was the master chef who almost single-handedly created a new generation of fine dining in the United States by skillfully blending the classicism of refined French cooking with the tradition of America’s comfort food and our plentiful table and agricultural bounty. That and a painstaking, almost maniacal attention to detail and service made for a unique style that ushered diners into a new experience of amazement, awe and sheer delight. Forget the old, buttery French-dining thing with snotty waiters and heavy sauces that dominated America's restaurant scene for so many decades. This was something else. A new world.
Keller is still there, at the top. Not only in California, where he created his empire, but in New York as well, where he grew as a chef and failed as an entrepreneur. His famed restaurant Rakel bombed at the end of the crazy 80’s, when hungry Wall Streeters chose to go to their local diner instead of choosing second helpings of Keller’s luxurious French cooking . He is now back with a vengeance at Per Se, the ultimate Keller experience where everything is so fastidiously flawless you’ll either leave the place (if you ever get there) crying or wondering how such ideal perfection is possible in this deeply flawed world. Or perhaps both. We are now in an economic crisis so bad that will soon make the Late Eighties look like a bad-hair day, and yet diners are still flocking and anxiously hammering their piggies to have their own slice of the Per Se and French Laundry experiences. Keller is not at risk of going down like Rakel did- this time, in this crisis, it is the chain eateries such as Bennigan’s that are filing for bankruptcy. Fine dining is alive and well, thank you very much.
Wife and I are fans of Chef Keller, and I would rate Per Se as my favorite restaurant in the world. (Oops, did I say that? Yeah. I think I know what I’m talking about.) So we had to try the original, the Yountville outpost that started it all. I was afraid that I wouldn’t find the Laundry too special, that I would feel like dining at the Western version of Per Se. Unfortunately, I was right. The Laundry is like Per Se, only in a small town in sunny Napa Valley, California surrounded by a garden where you might run into Thomas Keller picking a fresh pear from a tree instead of an enclosed mall where the chances of sighting a famous chef (or sighting anything at all) are extremely slim. Other than the setting, the food and experience are a precise clone, minus the perfection I found at Per Se and thought somewhat missing at the Laundry. That venerable old building is just too small for so many waiters and diners roaming around clad in fancy jackets and dresses.
Also, I am finding myself jaded, almost cynically insensitive to the fine-dining world I love. No, perhaps I do not care anymore about that beef that came from a farm in Pennsylvania located 3,000 miles away from California, or the Australian black truffle (in season now!) presented in a black jewel case or the Montana cave salt that may be 40 million years old. You hear! 40 million. Enough of that. I care for good, imaginative, mold-breaking and mind-blowing food. I can do without the rituals and trappings.
Yes, the food was generally excellent and the service magnificent and warm, if flawed. But the whole thing lacks excitement and surprise. So I found the Laundry formulaic, a bit tired- a place and an experience in need of a good kick in the ass. You don't want your creation to get old and worn-out like the old French cooking you toppled and replaced, right, Keller? I know you don't.
Slightly disappointed (although excited to see Keller himself), I looked at the customers- those searchers of the Keller experience. We talked to a rich-looking couple from Cleveland who- along with their absurdly polite and mature but adorable young children- were having their first serious culinary experience. Unaware they were of the almost-mythical status of Keller's Laundry until we popped that cherry for them. The son, seven or eight years old, provided some clever and resourceful insight into life when we asked him what did he want to do when he grew up... and he immediately and surely said, "I want three days of everything".
Including The French Laundry, I assume.
I looked over at a table where five redneck ladies, all bad hair, clunky manners and bright Sunday dresses were having their first and last gastronomic journey aided by a solicitous sommelier who, no doubt, promptly coaxed them all into buying the most expensive wine flight ever conceived in Napa Valley.
And yet these colorful types all pale if compared to the one sight I cherish the most of my Laundry experience: the Iraq veteran. I said it right, an Iraq veteran at The French Laundry. He entered the dining room in full military fatigues, making his way to his assigned table with the help of a cane and flanked by his beautiful, overdressed and visibly nervous (probably overwhelmed) girlfriend. This Asian-American California guy was barely in his 30's and yet had seen the worst of (in)humanity and was about to see some of the best. He had been in Baghdad, enjoyed it and survived to tell his story, back in America.
Wounded but happy. He was no charlatan. We talked to him in the garden, during one of our breaks from the 4-hour food trip. He spoke of Iraq as we would of going grocery-shopping, unaffectedly and down-to-earth. He believed in it, he went there, did his thing and came back. His dream was to dine at The French Laundry, and there he was, with his cane and his uniform; his limp and vivid memories.
He chose not Bud Light and his neighborhood sports bar with his buddies and the local cheerleaders but Napa Valley and one of the best restaurants in the world, surrounded by people who might look at him as an outsider (Why are you not wearing a jacket? What are you doing here?) and frown. He was a hero, in many ways.
You may not agree with our current government, with the Military of the United States, with the wasteful and useless invasion and war on Iraq. I don't either. But I hope that you, like me, respect and admire these men and women who chose to fight a war (wrong or not, and for whatever reason) in trenches and faraway hellholes instead of sitting comfortably at home.
They have the guts we lack. They deserve to be remembered, respected and admired when they come back, whether they choose to celebrate at their local dive with the frat boys -as we saw in Hartford, Connecticut, in another moving sight of a young veteran coming home from Iraq- or at a sushi bar in Manhattan. But when you take your wounded veteran guts from Baghdad to The French Laundry to celebrate your return, You -the Iraq gourmet soldier whose name I'll never know... You will forever be etched in my mind.
And that is indeed what I remember the most about my French Laundry experience, well worth paying over 700 dollars for. Come to think of it, and predictable as the Laundry may have become, only Thomas Keller could be behind such an unforgettable feat.
(A different kind of perfection)
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