Funny Foodiot Repartee of the Week: Eddie Huang vs. Gawker vs. NYT Dining
Yesterday, Gawker “columnist” Hamilton Nolan >went full regard in a . From the short, inflammatorym Gawker entry, there were some ornery gems:
You know who likes food? Everybody.
Fuck you, fresh-out-of-college food hunters. If you think The Meatball Shop is akin to Run DMC then I just don’t even know what to do with you, except to gaze at you in disgus
As a person who loves seeing foodtardism being cursed out, Nolan’s proclamation that everyone likes food is just golden, except for the fact that he forgot to use the F word in front of “Everybody”.
Without touching his campaign against “child foodies”, Nolan representation of those who like to eat (again, who doesn’t), but not too much, is funny, if admirable. All is well, except he oafishly included Eddie Huang’s mug in his rage. Immediately Huang comes back swinging. He can claim not to wear “hooker boots” all he wants, but the first EP of his show is coming up in 3 days, and so the retort against Nolan naturally contained even more quotables.
Huang denies fooddouches have penetrated all of Manhattan (clearly false, as shown by NY Mag’s piece on Diane Chang earlier this year), and goes on to blame Yelpers. Really? Blaming Yelpers? Are we still in the last decade? Didn’t Nolan just deposit the fact that everyone likes food? Not just the yelpers? He exonerates Roy Choi from this food party gone awry and declares Andrew Zimmern respectable.
Andrew Zimmernman, respectable? The man who goes around the globe literally mocking every fucking culture’s culinary treasures as disgusting and bizarre?
Roy Choi? The dude who’s going veg before his manuscript is submitted to Bourdain publishing? Is this some kind of massive insight joke?
You know who’s Korean and vegetarian? Poor ass ajumas in Northwest Korea, close to the Chinese border, who are too godamn poor to eat anything except kimchi and rice for lunch every day. How is that kind of PR shtick even remotely fucking funny? You know what is funny? By Wednesday, everyone has forgotten the utterly nonsensical NY Times pieces.
And why is Bourdain still going on and on about Baja? I ask this: are there mass executions in Tuscany? Used to instill absolute horror in the general populace so a rogue conglomerate can continue influence an entire economy? No. Until then, shut the hell up about Baja as the next foodiot tourism destination. No one believes it, except Drew Berrymore.
Nonetheless, good luck on the show Mr. Huang! I hope it helps Baohaus stay open long enough so we Californians all eventually get to try this celebrity guabao!
NB: There is Shunji food pron in the waiting. Sorry for this ridiculousness… Everyone is trying to get some PR driven traffic. In the meantime, please continue to Instagram all the pointless dinner photos, and the mommy bloggers will continue to feed their toddlers nothing but hormone-free organic grass-fed beef (shipped in from Uruguay) seasoned with smoked Himalayan sea salt.
Spring For Coffee at MF Gourmet: Handsomer than Handsome
The title is truly annoying, isn’t it? It’s all The Atlantic like. First, there’s the corroboration between Spring for Coffee and MF Gourmet; Spring for Coffee seems to be popping up everywhere these days. I found Spring for Coffee at Umamicatessen super annoying. You can’t just go in to order a cup of joe. You gotta wait for someone to take your order, and then you gotta drink it on the premise, and then tip. The set up seems totally against the principles of SFC, itself a 400 square feet coffee cubby hole on Spring Street.
Yet at MF Gourmet, the SFC just works. In fact, it works really well. The barista has access to the POS, and there are no complex layers of business interplay ala SFC at U-catessen. Since MF Gourmet is in the Grand Central Market, the server/tipping service is removed, but there’s still plenty of seating. Just like on Spring Street, ceramics and demitasse are offered, and excitingly, Handsome coffee can now be had with cream and sugar. Perhaps the Yirgacheffe is just too wild, and demands a bit of creamy calmness? That cream, at SFC @ MFG, comes in the form of Straus barista milk. The combination of Handsome coffee beans, Straus milk, and La Marzocco replicates the Handsome HQ experience, but there’s a catch: Spring for Coffee’s lattes are CHEAPER than Handsome’s, and you get bespoken espressos (think: cortados are available. HUZZAH.)
To make this coffee experience even more convincing, MF Gourmet has delectable morning pastries, all baked fresh, on the premise. MF Gourmet has turned 1, and was founded by Chef Tyler Cyre, who previously held posts at Patina Group, L’ermitage Beverly Hills and Neiman Marcus. What SFC @ MFG provides is the Proof / Cognoscenti experience inside the Grand Central Market. For Eastside dwellers, (and by Eastside, I don’t mean Atwater Village, I mean east of 110), this may be the perfect morning pastry experience, until The Parish opens.
Spring for Coffee at MF Gourmet
317 South Broadway Los Angeles, CA
Churros Man, East Los Angeles
There are quite a few churro fryers in the (323). While every on the Eastside is keenly aware of Salina’s Churro Truck in Echo Park, there is zero mentioning of this particular churros setup. It’s a well known fact Salina’s Churro operates a “cart” on Whittier Blvd just off of 60, Churros Man (this is actually the DBA, I’m not making it up) operates a complete trailer, oft parked on Whittier Blvd, East of Atlantic, right in front of Target.
$3 for 10, $5 for 20 — hose may be gringo prices, don’t quote me. It used to be 3 for $1, but recently, the skinnier churros option has been deleted off the menu. The trailer has been there on/off for nearly a year and a half, but recently, they pumped up their menu. Now, they have toppings: $1 for lechera and Nutella, $1 for bananas. Instead of dipping the churros in hot chocolate all Spanish style, let the fry mamma drench the piping hot doughnuts sticks in condensed milk AND Nutella. The dessert concoction resulted in a $5 horror of cholesterol and calories. I ate that shit up while cruising Tarjay for $1 toys. Is it as glamorous as touring Baja wine country with Drew Barrymore? Who knows, but you won’t really give a shit after consuming the first 1/4 pound of fried dough.
Why only cover this nearly 2 years after the churro birth? It looks like these folks, with a bona fide custom fry trailer, replete with law-abiding handwash station and soap, are now fully licensed, and they haul their ass all the way from a commissary in the (818). So now you can all go take photos with impunity and they won’t flinch at the sight of a giant DSLR. (Well, they flinched a little, but not as much as before).
Happy Cinco de Mayo — no one cares it’s not the Mexican independence day — now gimme some churros (which goes inordinately well with $5 tempranillos after $2 fish tacos from Tacos Baja Ensenada)!
PS: why the constant obsession over churros? Well… cuz they’re really invented by the Chinese.
Churros Man
C/O Tarjay
5600 Whittier Boulevard
East Los Angeles, CA 90022
Hours: late afternoon til ~9:30pm, or til they run out.
Taste of The Eastside, Alma Food and Wine’s Last Weekend
Taste of Eastside is coming back on May 6, 2012. Barnsdall Park isn’t THAT Eastside, so Guisado’s is showing up to give it some true Eastern grit (and some kickass tinga tacos — my goodness that habanero salsa gives the intestines a good plumb through.):
(Collage borrowed from Flickr)
While Taste of the Nation & Alex’s Lemonade both contribute to non-profits, TOTE is actually run by a non-profit. Since the organizer is a nursery co-op, of course there are activities for kids while the hipster daddios pounce on grilled oyster. To top it off, the event is at a park, so even pets are welcome! (Unverified — just judging by last year’s Flickr photos.)
At $35 for general admission, the tasting event isn’t too outrageous, unlike that pork event running on the same day. You’ll get to leisurely nibble, stroll about the park, get them TOMS stained by grass, and imbibe some daytime booze, without a nanny, without the need to repeatedly declare: “I love bacon so much”, “I love pork belly”, “I’m a bad Jew”.
Taste of The Eastside
Tickets here
May 6, 2012
Early Afternoon.
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Alma writes in to let us know this weekend will be their last weekend of pop-up service.
They will be moving underground a bit while they look for restaurant space, obtain capital, etc. Will report back as news arrive. In the meantime, you have 3 more days to sample many courses packed full of duck breasts, alliums, lamb, and maybe some cilantro flowers from CasaSoul.
Alma Food and Wine
c/o Millie’s Cafe
3524 West Sunset, Silver Lake
Rez on Urbanspoon
Vertical Wine Bistro Brings May Flowers
It is really Spring? Few weeks back, LA was bitten by frost. Last week the car thermometer showed 82, this week, 89. It could be Winter, it could be Summer, but let’s call it Spring because the peas are here. Befittingly, Vertical Wine Bistro hosted a Spring tasting recently, and it looked something like this:
(CW: Watercress/endive/hazelnut/Valdeon cheese salad, Diver scallops/English peas/lardon, sea bass/citrus oil/rapini/yellow beets, lamb “2 ways” — braised shank & chop)
Setting all doubts of “credibility” aside, this is some of Chef Laurent Quenioux’s tastiest cooking. Bistro LQ was fun, whimsical, misunderstood, perplexing, blah blah, blah blah blah; LQ at SK was all kinds of CRAY — the sweetbread corn dog is still lost on me. But Chef LQ’s menu at Vertical Wine Bistro? Total comprehension. Even one obtuse enough to not understand the Sologne/Louis Vuitton connection can mentally grasp the dishes currently on the Spring menu.
Endives have been “in” since late Fall. The first dish, a twist on the classically French endive/Roquefort/walnuts, actually speaks winter to me. But it’s still aromatic and yet simultaneous bitter. The more Spring”y” salad on the current menu would definitely be the butter lettuce/avocada/pink grapefruit salad with citrus oil vinaigrette. The previous diver scallops found at Vertical has been spruced up with spring English peas, and the winter’s dark baramundi has been replaced by a much lighter sea bass drizzled with citrus oil, paired with citrusy yellow beets. The grapefruit garnish along the beets bass made this dish absolutely appropriate for April, but the the lamb 2 way? Definitely the top crowd pleaser of the night. The Frenchman and his lamb seemed infallible that evening — there was rich shank that stuck to one’s ribs, there was a lean, but extremely tender chop, and there were Spring beans. Beans break the ennui of Winter and the citrus season. Californians adore citrus, but by end of March, everyone’s secretly begging for any kind of fresh green beans.
While the exact “tasting” — by tasting, think PR, comped, gratis — menu above isn’t readily at Vertical Wine (yes, we asked), it’s very duplicable. The kitchen, upon sincere request, can split plate; the result would be 2 $47 per person meals, which, oddly, cost almost the same as LQ/SK pop-up dinners. Now that everyone’s no longer stoned from the 420 pop-ups, perhaps it’s time to visit Chef Quenioux at Vertical?
Vertical Wine Bistro
70 N Raymond Ave
Pasadena, CA 91103
Tumblr Meta Funnay — Asian Foodtard Mockery
In case you’re on tumblr, and enjoy self-denigration: Pics of Azns Taking Pics of Food.
Also, in case you missed this gem: Dianne Chang (@DJPANKO), an archetypal GEN Y gastronome in NYC, gets torn up after her profile on NY MAG — hey don’t laugh, when was your last interview with NY Mag:
Immediately issues her public retort/outcry/denial. (Dudette, to EATER? Didn’t you use to work for Bon App?!?)
Finally, Open Rice, Hong Kong’s Yelp, lists its best restaurants of 2012. Can you imagine Yelp listing “best” restaurants in NYC? They don’t have the balls, especially after their sinking IPO.
I can’t quite tell if it’s Spring, or Fall, or Summer in LA, so that Vertical Wine Bar Spring Menu post is still on holding pattern.
Every Pastry is a Sexual Innuendo.
< Lazy Post > The thought came to mind after a ridiculous 6 course pastry / dessert blow out at Craft LA (post to come later this month, perhaps). It might’ve started with American Pie:
But more recently, there’s the doughnut getting it on with a cream puff in Ladies vs. Butlers:
And so this was tweeted:
The below responses came:
Now, can I put my finger in your grapefruit-rosemary sorbetti?
Hot: Spirit House, Monterey Park; Jidaiya, Gardena
Now that Baja-Cali border has been established as NOT hot, here’s some hot stuff:
— Spirit House, Monterey Park.
This is a grassroot effort in putting the cock back into San Gabriel Valley cocktails. There is nowhere in West San Gabriel Valley (South of Pas, which doesn’t really count anyways) where one can get any type of drinks that doesn’t involve shit well liquor and grumpy bar smiths. Yes, 38 Degrees hosts monster beer jams every night, but they also took some seedy Alhambra Redevelopment Agency money. Drinking is already a sin, and one shouldn’t be comfortable with her local watering hole taking almost half a million dollars in pork-barreled funds. Instead, go visit Spirit House — located in the FOBbiest hotel in all of San Gabriel Valley — because it’s a neighborly “organic” group effort.
This is Spirit House’s second soft opening weekend. David Tewasart doesn’t know exactly when they’ll grand-open, but they’ll grand open when the bar(wo)men and the brigade is ready. There will be no sweet potato fries here, but there will be crisped lotus root. John Lee, previous at Flying Pig and Rivera, isn’t trying to do Bryant Ng. He’s simply slinging hash to the locals desperately looking for some nom above and beyond xiao long bao. For that, we commend him:
The lamb kofta kebab in Chinese green onion pancake (seen above left) is highly evocative of kebab and sangak found at Persian “fast food” joints like Kabab Mahaleh. The chicken salad flat bread… well, let’s just say the secret “bread” is one of the most Chinese provincial foods. With those 2 Chinese ingredient usage alone, John Lee was able to capture the stomachs of imbibers during soft opening. Now, someone please bring some condensed milk.
Sybil Chen has been working the Shaker at Far Bar (Little Tokyo) for nearly 5 years. She wanted more foot massages in her life, met Tewasart through a friend of the Spirit Bar’s DJ of a friend (or something — see, it’s all very organic here), so she signed on to design the menu here at Spirit House. Aviation, Old Fashioned, and Sidecar are all on the menu, but Sazeracs, Manhattan, Tom Collins, etc., can all be requested after grand opening, ie. when they get all their bitters in.
If you live in the (626) and East of Downtown, please support this joint. Parking is FREE. The door policy is chill. There is plenty of smoking area on the patio. Happy hour starts at 5:00pm and features $3 drafts. No one cares if you haven’t eaten at Soi7 or Green Papaya, just come get libated (is that a word?), but please do not take my parking spot next to the stairwell.
Spirit House
123 S. Lincoln Ave 2nd Fl
Monterey Park, CA 91755
(626) 872-0353
Spirit House Facebook
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– Jidaiya, Gardena
