The Days of our (Food) Lives

Such food-related delights on the interwebs today. Yummy enough to get me through the Monday morning blues, even. Or over the fact that I'm not in New York to attend the Piglet party, for instance. Sigh...

First up, I offer some letterpress goodness from David Kamp, whose The United States of Arugula I already told all of you to go read. In conjunction with another of his books, The Food Snob's Dictionary, Kamp worked with Greenwich Letterpress to develop these Food Snob Placecards.They're pretty amazing, if you ask me. After all, nothing is funnier than the fun you can poke at yourself. Take a look and buy some for your next food snob gathering:

 

And on that note, there are several recent online tidbits 'round the Web that perfectly embody the hilarity that is the fusion of the food and blogging worlds:

Take celebrated chef David Chang*, for instance, who only recently survived pissing off the entire city of San Francisco. GQ asked Chang to blog for them for three days alongside his cookbook co-author. What's revealed is not so much the seedy underbelly of cookbook promotion as the impressive amount of booze fueling the Chang tour. For instance: "Warm-rail gin and rum mixed into a big shot. Tastes and smells like rubbing alcohol, always a good thing when you need to remind yourself to stop drinking, and a bad sign when you find yourself drinking 10 gin rummies." Chang's missives are outright hilarious, due nearly entirely to his use of profanity and unapologetic rock star-dom (highs and lows, mind you). My favorite sentence, as he's en route to the SFA Conference to meet up with John Edge and company: "Southern hospitality makes me feel terrible as it makes me realize what a massive asshole I am." Read: David Chang for GQ.  (And by the way, I agree with Anthony Bourdain that SanFran needs to get over it.)

Next up... you know those moments of generational confusion that happen with, say, your grandmother from time to time? Well, last week the grandfather of French cooking, Jaques Pépin, found himself lost in translation. The kindly god of soufflés estimated to the Miami New Times that he'd hooked up with "more than 10,000" cooks/servers/bartenders during the course of his formidable career. Obviously, shock and awe spread throughout the foodosphere with the news that Pépin was handling more than pastries around his legendary kitchen, and 10,000 of them at that. The next day, however, Pépin rushed to press with a rebuttal. In what I'd venture to say is a mistake as endearing as it is embarrasing, Pépin exclaimed: "...I must be too old and not 'hip' enough to understand that the TRUE meaning of 'hooked up with' now means 'slept with.' My interpretation of your question was that you were asking how many people I have encountered, cooked with, worked with, etc. in the food world. SHAME ON YOU!!"


Rounding out this trifecta of foodie soap opera episodes, I present Todd English, owner of nine restaurants, many of which have several outposts. If you pay attention to the sordid world of chef gossip, you know that English is now known as the "Runaway Groom." That's right, folks, English left his bride Erica Wang at the altar last month. The first reports had the heroic bride attending her own reception anyway, bravely enjoying time with friends and family in the face of her embarrassment while the would-be groom partied in South Beach. But wait... there's more! In classic soap opera fashion, English rebounded with a tale fit for a PR wet dream, claiming that he wasn't the bad guy, but instead a victim of physical and verbal abuse! And we hear that they actually broke up a week earlier, but Wang had the "reception" anyway. But wait... there's more! The jilted fiancee retaliated with a tell-all interview in the Post, and then English decided to have Wang arrested for assault! I don't think we've heard the end of English & Wang, do you?


Moral of today's post: Why waste time with lame reality tv when you can just read foodie press instead?

*The Momofuku cookbook is on my Christmas list, in case anyone out there is wondering...