I’ve noticed that home cooking sometimes falls short by mere inches. Sometimes dishes that I’ve tried in places other than restaurants (and actually inside of some restaurants) are so, so close to delicious except for one fundamental thing. So, here I am to fix you up and set you straight. Pay attention, I may learn something. There will be more of these.

“Gentlemen, THIS is a football!”

Vince Lombardi used to start every season with these words. It’s about fundamentals and foundational elements. It’s why Thomas Keller says that his last meal would be a roast chicken. In the kitchen, you can’t disguise fundamentals. It won’t matter how exotic your idea for the “Chocolate, Kalamata, Orange Marmalade Reduction Glaze” on chicken breast may be if you can’t or don’t cook the chicken breast properly. The good news is that this cuts the other way, as well. You don’t NEED to have anything ridiculous happening if you cook that chicken breast perfectly.

Relax. You’re Probably not going to make anyone sick…

The thing that I see most often is food way, way over cooked. I know, I know.. You do it because the worst outcome you can possibly imagine is that someone actually gets ill as a result of eating something you’ve made. You do it because even overcooked; usually stuff is edible. You do it because you want to make sure it’s done. Most of all, you do it because you’ve been indoctrinated with the fear of god to treat all your food as if it is most likely crawling with maggots and covered in a fine mist of Anthrax. I was once talking to a friend of mine who went on for about 10 minutes about how she loved eating chicken but hated the whole process of scrubbing down her counters, cutting boards and knives with bleach afterwards. WHAT!?!?!? I know you want to be safe. But guess what? You’re fucking destroying your food. So. Here’s your homework. Next time you’re at the grocery store, find the “gadgets” aisle and spend $3 of your Doritos budget on one of these:

That’s an instant read thermometer. You should probably get 2 but I know you REALLY like Doritos so I’m not trying to hit you with too much too quick.

Now that you’ve got your thermometer, learn where the 160 degree mark is. You know how you’re afraid to make people sick? Ground meat is filthy. You don’t want to know what you’re putting in your mouth that ISN’T making you violently ill in most pre-packaged ground beef. Just about any “standards chart” you’re ever going to read says that ground beef is safe to eat once you’ve gotten it to 160. Let me explain why, as succinctly as possible.

The Reason: If you cook cow shit to an internal temperature of 160 degrees, it becomes safe to eat.

Ground meat is literally loaded (LOADED) with actual cow shit and the types of bacteria that we would use as the justifiable grounds for an invasion if Iran was working on weaponizing it as the basis for their biological warfare program. 160 degrees kills all that stuff (well actually not the REALLY bad stuff but we’re technically not allowed to talk about that without the threat of potential legal action until our lobby becomes more powerful.) That means that 160 degrees is really, really damn hot and you’ve been serving me food that’s bumping up against 170-180.

Beef, Pork and anything else that doesn’t have wings….

So let’s talk about the range between 140 to 150. In most instances, this is the sweet spot. From now on, if you’re unsure whether something is done, you’re going to poke it with the thermometer and if the needle thingy swings around to about 145ish to 150ish and stays there, chances are, you’re pretty much done cooking. This isn’t going to give you “perfect” meat. It will, however, get you a helluva lot closer than you’ve been getting up to now. Got that? 145 degrees. 145 degrees and it’s done. In all actuality, it’s probably MORE than done. You are to take that meat out, let it sit on your counter for 5 minutes, plate it and serve it.

Still iffy about it? I take my pork out of the oven at about 127 degrees and let it float up to 132 degrees. I’m not dead. I’m not sick. Everything is just fine. 

Yard birds like it hot…

Ok. So back to the 160 degree point. If you’re cooking chicken (or any bird) you’re gonna want to get that sucker up to about 160 or so. But here’s what to look for with your chicken. When you poke it with the thermometer the juices should run clear. You should not see any white foam or red blood coming from the hole. Clear juices and a buck sixty and your chicken is going to be done. Keller says his roast chicken is done at 160. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.

The Moral of The Story…

This is a vast, vast oversimplification of a serious issue. Getting temperature “correct” and the guidelines for those temperatures is a food safety issue. Food safety is a major deal because the things that can make you sick from bad food can potentially kill you. Well, maybe not you but your little kids and your sickly grandma.

So none of this can or should be taken as gospel. However, if you take something away from this it should be this: cooking is (usually) about the application of heat to product. Don’t guess. Don’t bungle your way through it. Think about what you are doing. That chart in the back of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that you got as a wedding gift is there for a reason. Use it. There are 4 tablespoons in a quarter cup. A pint is 2 cups. Half a tablespoon is one and a half teaspoons. Your steak is medium rare when it hits 138. Until next time, my fellow cooks….

Unless you’re gonna die on me, here……simmer down

You know what really annoys the absolute, living dog-shit out of me? Fake food allergies and all the aversion hysteria that goes along with them. I said it. Your food allergy is most likely fake and I’m not interested in hearing about it. Matter of fact, that comment that you were going to leave? The one that you came here to leave based on the title of this post alone? The one that you were going to leave after having gotten this far and only this far? The one about how I’m a jerk and actually you DO have a crazy food allergy and how I’m insensitive about it? Don’t bother. I don’t care. Also, by the way, your food allergy is fake.

I’ve talked before about how we’re scared to death to be ordinary. What I’ve realized is that in instances where we are afraid that we might be ordinary, we need to be diagnosed. We have a collective mental illness as a society about having some imperfection and needing it to be treated. So much so that if we don’t have an actual one, we’ll make one up.

In this light, fake food allergies are awesome for a couple of reasons. First of all, they allow us to talk about ourselves which is great because while everyone else is talking about THEMselves, we need to be able to point the conversation towards us, somehow. Second, because they allow us to impose our will on other people. Moreover, we get to inconvenience them in an indisputable way. Which, again, is more attention pointed at us.

Somehow, it’s become trendy to have something that either an actual doctor or Dr. Google has diagnosed us with. There are multiple studies out there where people who claim to be “allergic” to some food or another turn out not to be. 30% of people claim to have a food allergy. THIRTY FRIGGIN’ PERCENT!!!! How did we become such a delicate population?

According to the University of California, when these people are actually tested, it turns out that the vast majority of them aren’t allergic to whatever it is they insist they’re allergic to, after all. Also, the people who ARE actually allergic to the things that they say they are, are in a potentially life threatening situation if they eat shellfish or peanuts or something like that. POTENTIALLY LIFE THREATENING!!! Not, “Oh, I can tell there was shrimp in that because now I have a tummy ache” but “HOLY SHIT, WE NEED TO GET HER TO THE HOSPITAL BEFORE HER WINDPIPE SWELLS SHUT AND SHE DROWNS IN HER OWN FLUIDS!!!!!!”

I’m not being offensive. You’ll know when I’m intent on offending you….

Which leads me to my next kvetch: people being “offended” when it comes to their fake food allergies. If you’re offended because I’ve said that your food allergy is fake….it’s because your food allergy is fake. Period. Don’t believe me? Here is the blog of a woman whose kid is ACTUALLY allergic to stuff. How does she know this? See her post about taking her kid to the emergency room. One of her recent posts is about whether or not it’s OK to use food allergies as fodder for giggles. It’s not because she’s offended. It’s because she’s worried that “a portrayal of a buffoon with a fake food allergy might fuel doubts about whether other people’s properly diagnosed food allergies are real.” Because the little voice in the back of her head is thinking, “Jeez. I hope that all these morons aren’t creating an environment wherein everyone just eventually assumes that any food allergy is pure fiction and endangers my child.” Somehow, food allergies have become main-stream enough that there have been SEVERAL sit-com episodes wherein food “allergies” inspire all kinds of wacky hi-jinks.

You know how else I know that your food allergy is fake? Because YOU know that your food allergy is fake. In doing my requisite, half-assed google research for this entry the articles that I most frequently stumbled over were things along the lines of, “Is it OK to fake a food allergy?” or “Why I fake a food allergy.” Don’t bother looking for those articles because here are your answers. First; No, it’s not OK but apparently it’s not illegal to be a moron so do what you want. Second; It’s because you’re a moron and being a moron isn’t illegal so you do what you want.

Natalie Portman: Girl-Pirate

Make-believe dietary restrictions and their ilk make me absolutely insane. I remember once watching some episode of Top Chef or something on Food Network (No, seriously, click that link back there. Do it….) and they had a big to-do about how they were going to throw a curve ball to the contestants and, “OMG WHAT WOULD IT BE OMG SO EXCITING!??!!?!?!?” Well, it turns out that they got them all set up running the kitchen of a high-end steak house. So, here are all these people who are legit cooks trying to cash in on the whole celebrity chef angle before everyone becomes collectively interested in something else. These guys are sweating their asses off, slingin’ tenderloin. Then, all of a sudden……wait for it…… Celebrity Diner, Natalie Portman shows up!!! How exciting!!!!!

I mean everyone cares about her, right? She was the god-damned girl-pirate in Pirates of the Carribean AND Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies AND the 13 year old prostitute in Taxi Driver!!! So…..the twist is………SHE’S A VEGETARIAN?!?!?!?!?!?! BUT SHE’S IN YOUR STEAK RESTAURANT. AND SHE WANTS TO EAT!!!!!!!!!!!! NOW WHAT?!?!?!?!!??!?!!!

Now what? What do you do when Natalie Portman walks into a steak restaurant and starts demanding the opposite of your menu? I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d send her a plate of mirepoix that I fished out of the veal stock and a bottle of ketchup.

No. I’m kidding. I wouldn’t actually do that. In reality, I’d go up to her and tell her, “What are you, out of your mind? I’m supposed to re-jigger my entire kitchen to placate you? You, who came into a restaurant that has a giant branding iron in the parking lot, a 30’ long papier-mache steer on the roof and the door that has a 90 decibel ‘moo’ sound effect that plays every time someone comes in or out?  Get the fuck out of here.” Come on? Really? People have the balls to do stuff like this?? This is the exact same thing as ME going into Moosewood and telling them, “Oh, I was hoping that I could get some beef ribs and calves liver. I don’t really like vegetables. You know what they’d say to me? They’d say, “Like Natalie Portman, I don’t recall seeing you in Playboy. So, the answer is…no.”

Anthony Bourdain (another guy I love to hate) has a thing about how when someone feeds you food, you don’t bitch about what they’re serving you. Assuming that it’s not going to actually kill you, you put it in your mouth, you eat it and then you appreciatively smile and say how good it was.

So…stop with the food allergies. Please. There’s nothing wrong with you. Just because there’s nothing right with you is no reason to start creating things. Everyone wants to be larger than life. They all want to participate in something greater than themselves. Take up sky diving. Go feed hungry Somalis. Just please, for the love of Christ, stop with the food allergy nonsense.

The earliest “cooking memory” I have isn’t tough for me to remember. And in truth, there are 3 of them.

Grampa DiBicarri: The Hard Work

The earliest thing I remember was food stuff going on with my grampa. Pasquale DiBicarri was a real deal Italian guy. Actually Italian. Not “pretending to be from New Jersey via a Scorcese movie” Italian. Grampa was “self-skinned rabbit on a stick” Italian. Whatever restaurant you go to when you’re in the mood for Italian food? He wouldn’t be caught dead in. Family was important to grampa. Making sure you knew he had a giant heart full of love for you was important to grampa. Not letting his kids learn or speak Italian was important to him. 

Grampa Dibicarri lived in Harrison, NY on Bradford Street. Just down the corner from Crotona Avenue. I haven’t been by his house in probably 25 years. If I got in the car right now, I could go directly to his house in Westchester. No stopping. No GPS. No direction requests. He had willow trees in his backyard that could always be counted on for swishy shade. He also had a little brook that ran between his house and his neighbor’s house. Looking back, the brook was probably nowhere near as exotic as it seemed at the time. But, when I was little, that brook made me feel like Tom Sawyer. I remember throwing leaves into the brook on the up-river side of the little bridge and running (all 5 steps) to the down-river side to see them reappear from under the bridge. Just like Tom Sawyer without the hassle of the race-relations morality questions. To term it “idyllic” would be selling it short. Grampa’s garden was friggin’ ridiculous. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a garden this size. Before or since. Grampa didn’t garden because he thought it was cute or a hobby. Grampa gardened to feed his family. He had peppers drying from the rafters in his basement. I’m not sure my grampa even knew that there was such a thing as “canned beans” or “jarred sauce.” I really don’t.

I don’t remember cooking much with grampa. But I remember that there was always something on the stove. Yes, it was usually “gravy” but not always. I do have one very specific memory or cooking with grampa. We were making a pizza. I remember him ladling wide ribbons of cabernet-red sauce onto the dough that seemed the diameter of a dump-truck tire. I remember him letting me sniff the onions and making me sniff them again when I made a face that clearly meant I thought they were stinky. “It’s sweet…” he said, “you smell it?” I didn’t smell “sweet.” What strikes me most about this memory is that I remember the process. I remember chasing that damn, noisy Siamese cat off the stove. I remember the sounds of the kitchen. I remember making the pizza if not actually eating the pizza. I’m sure that we ate the pizza. Grampa wouldn’t have had me help him with the pizza for me to leave and for him to serve the pizza to someone else. I knew, though, that for US; for the pizza MAKERS, the important job, the big stuff was the making of the pizza. Grampa didn’t know it but he taught me that when you make food, it’s not really yours. It’s for your family. It’s their food. That’s why the making it was so important. People were relying on us to serve them a tasty pizza. We couldn’t let them down. He had no idea he was teaching me this. I had no idea until I started writing this and remembered specifically that I have a very specific memory of making the pizza but no memory of eating it. I was on the other side. I was in the secret club. We weren’t just making pizza. We were doing service work. The real stuff. No foolin.

This is my pumpkin patch

Oh, Michael Ruhlman. How I hate you.

And by that, I mean that I essentially have the world’s biggest “man-crush” on Ruhlman and am fundamentally jealous of the life that he has built for himself. I mean, here’s a guy who glides easily between the worlds of writing and actual, real, serious food; he’s fairly opinionated and can come off as a little bit of a prick sometimes and I’m pretty sure that he’s able to pay his mortgage engaging in all of this. Oh, also, he has the writing cred on some cookbook from some little joint in California that nobody has ever heard of. Laundromat something or other… So, basically since he has stolen my childhood dreams of doing exactly the same thing in precisely the same way, I have every reason to find him contemptible in the highest. Disregard the fact that he did it first, as well. Details. Insignificant details.

I friggin’ LOVE this video. Recently, I was accused of being obnoxious for my refrain of, “Nobody is busier than me.” I’m guilty of this. I say it. It’s meant to be obnoxious. It’s also true. Nobody is busier than me. But, there’s a deeper point that I’m trying to make. The point is this: if there’s something that I want to do, I make time for it. Period. I have a theory about people blaming their inability to be held any type of standard on being “too busy.” When someone tells you that they are “too busy” they do it to put you in a conversationally unchallengable spot. If you infer that really, that aren’t “too busy,” you are either suggesting to them that what it is that they fill their time with is menial and of no importance OR that their capacity is limited such that they actually are “too busy” from a relative standpoint and now, you’re just insulting them directly. Nobody would ever do this.

To be clear, it’s not because we’re that civilized. It’s because EVERYONE claims to be “too busy.” To challenge this claim would be to violate a serious, deep rooted, unspoken social contract thus opening yourself up to similar accountability. So, out of self-preservation, we let each other get away with “I’m too busy.” We live in a culture that has a serious and supreme distaste for “ordinary.” Everything has to be a competition. “Busy” is an invisible competition that you can win by simply not showing up.

THE JEDI MIND TRICK: “YOU’RE TOO BUSY TO COOK”

If you really look at all the marketing that we’re surrounded by, it’s easy to see that it’s all oriented around reinforcing how busy we are. You could not sell a product today with a promise of, “you’ll spend all day using it!!!!!” “Short and quick” suits the attention spans we’ve convinced ourselves that we have. You know why? Because important people are busy and busy people are important. The only thing we like more than telling other people “how busy” we are is to be reminded by something or someone how important we are.

Nowhere is this marketing model more prevalent than in the food we eat. Prepackaged? YES! Precooked? EVEN BETTER! Edible while driving? Now it’s as if you’re flirting with me!!!!!!! We’re just too busy to cook food for our families. We can’t be bothered. After all, cooking is arduous and hard and mysterious. So says Tyson, ConAgra and McDonald’s. Plus, how terrible could that chicken nugget or fish stick be? The fact is that we’ve let ourselves be deluded into a devil’s bargain. We actually know that all this food is shit but we also know that it’s convenient and we’re more interested in not being inconvenienced than we are in not feeding our families shit. I’m pretty sure that’s a clinical diagnosis for some type of mental disorder. 

Being a freshly minted parent also means that I get to see other parents jump through arbitrary hoops to feed their children yellow-food. (Don’t even get me started on the socially obligatory trend of the make-believe food sensitivity/allergy roulette.) We do it so that our children, too, are inducted into the secret club of “busy.” There have been countless times that I have to bite my tongue when I hear about how, “Oh, Digger only likes chicken nuggets and (boxed) macaroni and cheese..” Really? You don’t say. Your child, Digger, was born with an instinctual pre-disposition for processed chicken nuggets and fake cheese powder? I’m no anthropologist but I’m going to call “horse-shit” on this one.

Jump to Ruhlman’s point. Speaking for him, the crux of his forcefulness on this issue is that it’s NOT that we’re too busy to cook for ourselves and our families. It’s that we are, instead, filling the time that we need to be using to sit at a table, talk to each other, and care about what the fuck goes in our mouths to instead do the things that we do rather than paying attention to what we feed ourselves and our families. See, it’s not that you’re too busy to cook. You have all the time in the world to cook. It’s that actually, you’re too busy to watch TV. It’s that actually, you’re too busy to dick around with your Blackberry. It’s that actually, you’re too busy to check your multiple facebook and email accounts 39 times a day. See how that works? If I’m cooking and someone invites me to a captivating “TV party” I can legitimately say, “Nope.. Too busy.” Instead, everyone does it the other way around. Or, as Ruhlman says, (although, nowhere near as concisely or impactfully as I would say it) “It may be FUNDAMENTAL to our humanity to take an hour and spend it, with our family, cooking a meal.”

Think about that. He’s not talking about shouting “BAM!” at your food. He’s not talking about buying chinese made kitchen gadgetry hawked to us by the clowns on the Food Network who (I have reason to know) have, on occaison, referred to themselves in the third person when discussing “Their Brand ©” He’s talking about what ties us to generations before us. He’s talking about the reason the idea of “bread and wine” is so poignant. He’s talking, if you follow it back far enough, about the very thing that allows us to be the only living beings on this planet who have the ability to say, “I’m so busy.” He’s talking about the fact that there’s really only one other occasion that you’re responsible for putting something into somebody else’s body.

THE NEXT JEDI MIND TRICK: “YOU’RE NOT TOO BUSY TO COOK”

So… On to the second part. I also partially disagree with Ruhlman to some extent. He makes mention of the wrongness of the idea around “speed, ease and quickness.” I get what he’s saying. Immediately after we allow ourselves to be convinced that we’re “too busy to cook AND it’s too mysterious” we immediately start dipping our toe in the river of, “what you really need are 3 ingredient recipes that are ready in 30 minutes!!!!” He’s right. That’s wrong.

I don’t disagree with him for the reasons that Karen Page cites. However, look how fast she jumps on the train… “Do you think that’s a matter of choice?!? Look at our economy. We still work for a living. You have to draw the line somewhere.” Indeed, we do, Karen. She then progresses into a tangent about sauce prep and wine that, ironically, seems like it would involve more work than 10 minutes. But, no matter. Ruhlman’s response is:

Note Page’s admonition that, “…(Y)ou’re not from Detriot!” I assume that this is an allusion to how little money there is in Detroit. She’s a smart lady but she’s reinforcing the whole idea of feeding poor people subsidized garbage with a comment like this. Michael couldn’t possibly understand because he’s a smarty-pants guy from somewhere in Ohio (or something…fact checking is for people who are getting paid to do this) who bellows laughter while lighting his cigars with hundred dollar bills and main-lining pureed foie gras like the god-damned Monopoly man in between trips to the custom monocle shop. Thus, she “wins” AND gets the champion the cause of the “so busy” brigade. I should take a slight departure, here, and say that I have a tremendous amount of respect for Page (and her husband.) Culinary Artistry is an absurdly important book and is up there with McGee’s On Food and Cooking and Ruhlman’s Ratio. In fairness to her, Ruhlman did sum up her 4 minute monologue by calling “bullshit!” on her. This is the difference between me and Ruhlman. Responding like this was awesome uncalled for and something that I, personally would take every opportunity to never do. Nevertheless, she’s still doing her part to beat the “everyone is so busy” drum.

I admire Ruhlman’s seeming curmudgeon-like inflexibility on this. But, I also think it’s a learning process. It’s why I had a Pampered Chef party at my house a few months ago. I think that exactly what Ruhlman is talking about is spot-on but you also have to be a champion of this idea. You have to be an evangelist.

I toast and grind all my own cumin. I insist on it. Pre-ground cumin tastes like shit, has been sitting around for too long and is a vastly over priced. People think that it’s overkill to do this but it’s what I do. But, if you don’t give them a chance to see what could be, they don’t see a reason to try. Sure. Pampered chef pre-packaged spice mixes are nothing so adventurous but they get people thinking about what could be. How could I use this? What would taste good with this? What would my vegetable be? They start thinking about food. They start going down Ruhlman’s road (actually MY road that Ruhlman stole from me.) People intuitively KNOW how important it is to do this stuff. It’s actually why mommy makes nuggets for Digger at all. It’s because she instinctively KNOWS that it’s her job to feed her family and in doing so, teach them to feed their families.

So, I guess the point to all of this is that I think it’s important to tell people that their instinct is right. It’s important to tell people that this stuff isn’t hard. It’s important to challenge them to be pro-active. Certainly, Ruhlman isn’t not doing this. What I think he doesn’t say (and who knows, maybe he’s said it elsewhere) is that more people need to have this attitude and once they do, see it as a duty (perhaps to humanity????) to get other people on the train. We have no problem silently helping people to stay ON the “so busy” train. We should have as deep a commitment to helping them get off. 

My wife and I went to dinner once at a spot we’ll call, Le Shmirnedin. When dinner came, she got A scallop. One. Single. Solitary. Scallop. Apres “Le Shmirnedin” my wife asked me, “Why did they only give me one scallop?” “Because they don’t know how you like to eat, dear,” came my answer.

It’s true. They didn’t know. Cooking primarily for my wife, I know how she likes to eat. I know what she likes flavor-wise. I know that she likes things less salty and more spicy than she used to. I know that she likes “real” sized portions. I know that she’s merely humouring me when I present her with some absurd, bite-sized Keller thing. I know that she knows that the jig is up because really, I’m not Thomas Keller. (Surprise, guys.)

This said, there are times when I step out of line. I convince myself that I’m going to try something ambitious. I convince myself that I have a “new next thing.” Sometimes, I ruin stuff. (So it was with my third to last pot of red beans. I know, how can you fuck up red beans?) Sometimes, I’m incredulous that I can think that something is ridiculously tasty.

So every once in awhile, I have to “reclaim kitchen dominance.” I reclaim kitchen dominance not by making something that is “absolutely correct” but something that is “absolutely perfect” by my wife’s standard. This concept fascinates me because it requires me to taste things with my wife’s tongue. It requires me to cook to her palate. She’s largely not interested in whether or not it’s “right.” She’s interested in whether or not it tastes good.

Recently, on our last trip to New Orleans, we went to Besh’s Restaurant August. I can say that without a doubt, everything was exactly fucking perfect. We got the degustation with the pairings. The relationship that I had with the dishes that were put before me was purely visceral. There is literally nothing that I can compare it with to make someone understand how it tasted, was prepared and most importantly how it made me feel. It would be as if I were asked to describe the smell of Diane Ackerman’s orange. Except, less familiar but more universal.

My wife? Her greatest enjoyment was watching me enjoy the food. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not like she can’t tell the difference. It’s not as if she doesn’t understand how perfect the foie was. It’s not as if she didn’t think it was good. She just wasn’t that impressed. I think that to her, food that good SHOULD be that good and I kinda agree with her. I remember reading something that Anthony Bourdain wrote about eating the second time at the French Laundry. About how the novelty of having challenging yet absolutely perfect food the second time wasn’t as exciting as finding the $1.50 taco truck that made the best damn tacos and had the coldest friggin’ beer you’ve ever had on the way home from some beach adventure or something. I think that what it is, is that my wife prefers to be surprised by something that’s every bit as well executed but with fewer reasons to be thought of as a candidate for, “WOW! That’s good.”

Foie Gras and expensive wine is supposed to be good. You want to impress my wife, you better bring your “A-Game” to an open faced chicken parm. Make sure that chicken is well trimmed, exactly the right thickness and not over-brined. She’ll notice. Make sure you use the right bread. The wrong bread toasts all wrong and doesn’t stand up to the sauce. Speaking of the sauce, be sure to take it off the heat early. She’ll not be fooled by fixing an overly acidic sauce with a little sugar. You want to impress my wife? You better come correct with your secret chili recipe for Sunday football. Don’t think that you can dump in whatever cold coffee you have laying around. She know’s it’s one of the “secret ingredients” and she knows that if you don’t use a syrupy Sumatra coffee, you’re trying to cheat.

My wife expects Keller and Besh to make her awesome, perfect food “by the book.” But she’s more appreciative when she gets something that’s “just for her.”

And that, my friends….. Is how to re-claim your dominance.

Have you bought coffee lately? I mean, real, actual, whole bean coffee in a little bag that you take home and grind up in the morning? It’s expensive, isn’t it? Like, absurdly expensive. Have you wondered why? It’s where the rubber hits the road, folks. It’s how we fixed our economy. It’s the new normal. You wanted quick and easy and mostly temporary? Well, you got it.

Let’s take a look at the numbers first and let’s go back 2 years. Let’s say that you went to go buy a cup of coffee 2 years ago and for the sake of argument, it cost you a buck. Not bad, right? Everyone is happy. A dollar isn’t much money and you’re pretty slick and know that at some point, you’re going to want to retire and buy coffee everyday so you also put another dollar away in your little 401k.

So there you are… You’ve got your Starbucks cup fashionably in-hand and you feel pretty clever because you can talk about your “401k.” Shit, maybe you even have a leased European luxury car. Look at you. ‘Top o’the world, Ma!! Cut to today.

You go look at your 401k and your original dollar is now worth $1.52. Wow, man! That’s awesome. You’re the stockmaster and it’s a good thing, too, because golf season is just around the corner and who doesn’t like to talk about how they’re “killing it in the markets” with their “investments” and mysterious “trading?” You know what? You should celebrate. Go buy yourself a cup of coffee.

But you know what? The coffee is now $2.01. The price has more than doubled. You start to get worried because although you’re no mathematician you start to think, “Wow, the price of coffee really jumped up. Matter of fact, it jumped up more than the money that I put aside to buy ‘future coffee.’ At this rate, there’s no way I can keep up. There will actually be a point at some future date where I won’t be able to afford coffee, anymore.” This, by the way, assumes that you’re only ever interested in buying coffee in the U.S. Forget about getting involved with other country’s monies. These are the ACTUAL numbers, by the way. This isn’t a academic example.

So, why is this? How can it be? Probably about a year ago, we were told that the price of coffee was climbing in anticipation of the negative effects of flooding in Columbia. But as it turned out, Brazilian production was more than they expected. So, so much for that… Then it was, “we’re not going to let producers ship out old coffee that’s not feasibly usable, anymore.” (My quotes.) This supposedly cut the supply for future delivery by 44%. We should take a sidebar, here, to talk about the sheer antithetical nature of having an environment of increasing prices with such an over abundance of supply that it eventually goes bad and is no longer usable. Think about that. It assumes that there’s a market and a use for bad, unusable coffee. We’re talking stuff with mold on it and in sacks filled with spiders. 

Regardless, it’s none of that. It’s two things. Inflation and speculation. Let’s talk about the inflation part first. You know why cheap stuff is cheap? Two reasons: there’s a lot of it and nobody cares. If there’s enough of something, its value is virtually nothing. Now, substitute “stuff” with “dollars.” The other people who live on this planet with us are caring less and less about American dollars. Mostly because there are so damn many of them.

Wait, what?! The American dollar is the best! Isn’t it? Isn’t that what people want? US Dollars and Levi’s Jeans and Corvettes? Well, not exactly. We all like to talk about how “the government is just printing money.” But we don’t often stop to think about what this means. The irony is that it means exactly what it sounds like. When money isn’t moving around “enough” they just make more of it. So, that dollar that you have to go and spend time away from your family, probably working for someone who probably don’t like a whole lot to make? It has the same value as the dollar that was just conjured up out of nothing, yesterday. Kinda devalues the time you spend away from your family, doesn’t it? Kinda sucks, huh? Kinda makes you think, maybe that dollar ain’t worth so much after all? Guess who else thinks this? The rest of the god-damned world.

Second part? Speculation! Make-believe money is shitty for you and me because we’re expected to pay our bills with “real, actual money” not “pretend, made-up money.” You know who DOES like free, worthless, easy money? People whose job it is to move that money around. They like to take the free money and invest it in stuff so that they can create more money. This isn’t a secret or a scam. This is exactly WHY the government is creating this money. They know that it will be “pumped into the market…” In fact, that’s the idea! We’ll use the money to make more money, then, money will be worth something again and when it is, we’ll give the money back which will make the other money worth more money!! (Unless, of course, we make so much money that no amount of making money will make the money worth more money, anymore. But, why worry about that? We’ll be retired by then….probably.)

Well, shit… What can we invest in with all this free money? Stocks? Nah! They’re not worth shit and any value they appear to have is really the make-believe result of throwing imaginary money at them. I know! Let’s buy some coffee! Let’s buy LOTS of it. So much that other people notice that we’re buying it and think, “Hey, I want to get in on the action, too. It’s just a matter of time before EVERYONE starts jumping on the “coffee-wagon.” We better get on before it’s too late.” The best part? Everyone who buys giant amounts of coffee AFTER us will make OUR coffee worth more!! We can also use the value of the coffee to borrow other money to buy more coffee which will make it even MORE valuable.

Congratulations. You just started a hedge fund. Now all you have to do is get people or companies or banks to give you money to do this for them. I really wish it were more complex and mysterious than this. It isn’t.

See, there’s the argument out there that as bad as things got, we didn’t let them get “bad enough.” Now, I know what you’re thinking, “No, Things got pretty bad! The news organizations even labeled this whole thing ‘The Great Recession’ and made fancy animated title cards for it. So, you KNOW it was a real thing.” Well, regardless, the argument IS made. So the idea here is that we still owe our pound of flesh. We’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is this true? Who knows but it’s certainly a defensible argument.

So, when you’re drinking your coffee tomorrow, on your way to work. Enjoy it. Because you’re paying for it. Who knows how long it will be before the only people who can afford coffee are the guys who actually, already own it, anyway.

Disclaimer: None of this should be believed or repeated. This is a blog. I researched this poorly, cited NOTHING, didn’t fact-check it and vastly over-simplified the parts that were true. Also, I work in the financial industry and am part of the problem. I mean, Jesus, even the title sucks because I told you NOTHING about what coffee has to do with your underwater mortgage. Really, I only wrote this because it had something to do, partially with “food” and to maintain the discipline of writing at all. I DO wish that most of the articles on the internet had disclaimers like this, though.

Click on that title. Remember how I pissed and moaned about Blackstone? Well, what I didn’t tell you is that later that night, after we hung out with our buddy Tony (you know him as Anthony Bourdain) we went to The Fez in Stamford which was friggin’ RIDICULOUS.

We went for drinks and apps and were blown away by the quality and attention to detail at this place. I want to write a full run down and will when we go back for a full dinner. 

But, the short version is this: Kristen the bartender is at the top of her game and apparently a psychic. She knows you want a drink before you order it. She told us that we were wrong to only order two apps and that we really wanted three. You know what? She was fucking correct! She made the best Manhattan I’ve had in a VERY long time. She hipped my wife to some really unique wines that were priced really well. Then, she told me that I wanted a Lebanese beer. You know what? She was fucking correct!!! Awesome! I love this woman. She was friendly and made us feel more than welcome. Whoever hired her did an awesome job and she’s a great “face of the venue.”

The apps that we got “was off the hook,” as the kids say. 2 words: ‘Tater Confit! Do it. Put it in your mouth. Also, we had hummus which was really good and properly spiced and seasoned (imagine that) and a thing that I think was called “Feta Unbelievableness” or something like that. The food is “Morrocan” but I think they have a pretty fair representation of a bunch of different foods of that style. (I’m not sure what that means but I also didn’t get south of the top 4” of the menu.)

There is NO question that we’re going back. Especially since, in the meantime, The Fez is PRINTING FREE FUCKING MONEY!!!!! Click on that link up there. You give them $25 bucks now, they’ll give you $50 when you go to their restaurant. If you look at the menu on the website, you’ll see that $50 bucks is going to get you pretty close to a dinner for two (not including booze.)

Trust me. Get the coupon thing, go to The Fez I promise you it won’t suck. This is the first area place that has actually impressed my wife and I in a LONG time.

Once upon a time, I led the glamorous life of an editor for an “Alternative Newsweekly” paper. I was snide and hilarious and sharp-tongued. However, I made it a kind of policy to not write negative or bad reviews about things. Far be it for me to crap on someone else’s work, I thought. Also, mother taught me that if I’ve nothing nice to say, I’d best say nothing.

You know what, though? Fuck that. With a rake.

Blackstone Steakhouse was terrible. The food was mediocre, the service was atrocious, the “by the glass” wine was from the Ocean Spray vineyard and if they insist on charging the prices that they charge for all of this, they should be wearing little Lone Ranger masks.

“But James,” you say, “you’re a hyper-critical guy who likes super-expensive food and likes to pretend that you know more about the culinary arts than you actually do and also you’re kind of a prick.. Was it really THAT bad?” 

First of all, thank you. Second of all, yes. It almost pains me to have to recount the whole experience but I really think that the valet parking was the best part. Seriously. 

We had a 5:30 reservation and were essentially the only ones in the restaurant when we showed up, aside from one other couple. We were directed to a table right in the middle of the dining room. Now I know my wife. I know where she likes to sit. She doesn’t like aisles, she doesn’t like to be where people are going to be constantly breezing behind her, etc. etc. etc. I can’t blame her. So, I asked if it wouldn’t be too much trouble if we might, perhaps, sit at one of the tables against the far wall. Rather away from the center of the room. With a giant sigh, the waiter huffed, “I guess so…. This table is smaller but if that’s what you want….”

Excuse me? Are you FUCKING ARGUING with me? I just asked you if we might, possibly have a different table in a restaurant so god-damned empty that my question echoed and you’re going to argue with me? Well, no matter, maybe this guy was just having a bad night. Let’s sit down and start fresh, eh?

We’ve barely gotten our jackets off and are rushed into a drink order with, “Whatta you want to drink?” Ummm. Ok, I’ll have a Campari and soda, she’ll have some Pellegrino. Great. Thanks.

The drinks come and menus are thrust into our hands. All too quickly, Mr. Sunshine reappears and asks us what we want. 

Us: “Can you tell us about the specials?”

Him: “We have Surf and Turf with filet and a lobster tail. Soup is french onion.”

Sounds special, doesn’t it? I order the strip steak with blue cheese gratine, medium rare. She orders the Surf and Turf, medium rare. We also order garlic mashed and asparagus with hollandaise. Also, oysters to start.

Sunshine disappears. The dining room is empty except for the other couple. Crickets. Now is a good time to remark that they hold cigar dinners at this place and do not have the proper air filtration systems to get the stink out of everything when the cigars are gone. Ask me how I know.

Hey, you know what might be nice? Friggin’ wine list! Where is this clown? Mr. Sunshine reappears with our oysters and tries to escape before we can ask him for anything else. But, I’m quicker and louder than he is sullen and sneaky. “Hey, can we check out a wine list?” Soon, it appears.

So, we eat our oysters while looking at the wine list. Expectedly, it’s unremarkable. It’s your usual $18 Sterling selections marked at $60. Which is fine but there was nothing on it that I had to have. Not a whole bottle of, anyway. So, when the guy re-appears to bus our oyster plate, he asks if we want any wine. My wife tells him that we’re not going to get a bottle of wine but asks what, if anything, they have “by the glass.” Turns out they have, “Cab, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot Grigio and Chianti.” She orders a Chianti. A different guy brought her the wine. He was actually pretty pleasant and even made eye contact with us.

The food took too long to come out. I’m not a clock watcher in a restaurant. I’m not interested in getting it “quick.” I want it done right. Don’t bring me a steak that is firstly, slightly overcooked and secondly, cold. That means you fucked it up at every step in the process. First, you cooked the damn thing too long then, not happy with that, you rested it too damn long. Who cares, though, right? What the hell do these people know? Throw the steak in front of them and scurry away. Which is exactly what happened. (And judging by their opentable reviews, they’re right to assume that their usual clientele either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.)

Both of our steaks were just, “eh…” Certainly not Prime graded and DEFINITELY not aged in any fashion. My wife’s lobster tail was of the frozen variety and just so-so. The sides were weak. The garlic mashed was actually not the worst I’ve ever had. They were reasonably warm and I will give bonus points for them being Yukons. The asparagus was grey and over-steamed there was very little tooth to it and it was just this side of slimy, actually. The hollandaise for the asparagus was fake.

The food was edible and we ate it. We weren’t checked on once. The whole time. This wasn’t a case of the servers being unobtrusively just out of your line of sight but ready to attend to you if the case need be. These guys were simply ignoring everyone. 

I had to flag the guy down and just about beg for the check. And what was the damage? How much did we get charged for this? $165 with the tip (which was a purposeful 15%)

Here’s the thing. “Classic Steakhouse” ain’t tough. Matter of fact, it’s probably one of the easiest restaurants to do. You don’t have to come up with a unique or challenging menu. Everyone likes bloody filet mignon with a bearnaise. Throw in a jocular waiter with a god-damned bowtie who makes you feel like you might be a mob boss during prohibition and you can basically charge whatever you like. It’s pretty hard to fuck up a steak if you have any idea what you’re doing in the kitchen, at all. And you know what? If it’s your first go-round with steaks, here’s a hint… Better to undercook it and have to whack it in the oven again real quick than to overcook it. Amateur bullshit.

But don’t whack me $165 for a dinner of steaks that I promise you, were $5.00 a pound USDA Choice from Costco, frozen lobster tails and half-assed sides. Not when I can go down the street to Outback in Wilton and have basically the same thing for half the price. We went expecting a local Capital Grille quality restaurant and were insulted with a mediocre meal and terrible service. Each element built to make the one before it even worse. It was a comedy of errors. We won’t be back.

As I said to my wife on the way out, “That wasn’t the worst steak I’ve ever had, it was just the worst $40 steak I’ve ever had.”