Friday, July 08, 2005
Great food, even great Japanese food, is still not sex
Food is not sex. It can be pretty good, but it is still not sex.
So let's avoid the cliches.
This article demonstrates everything that is wrong with American cuisine...well, not actually everything, there's a lot more, but this is a good place to start. Having read a bit more of the author's stuff, I can see he knows his food, which makes it all worse. What is with this self-abasement every time Westerners come up against Japanese food?
"Sometimes the simple things, a 50-cent bowl of pho in Saigon or a properly made bagel in New York, can be more satisfying than the ultraexpensive stuff,..."
This is the height of pretense. Pho in Saigon is a simple dish if you are a Saigon cyclo driver. If you are the reader of this sneakily pretentious prose in New York or Cleveland, a dish of pho in Saigon is an extravagance. Start with the airfare, at around a grand, and go from there. How may readers have sampled pho in Saigon? Few, I would guess. Maybe he is thinking that this is an easy way to play the working man and the international foody in the same phrase .
"Masa is The Deal of the Century. It's a completely over-the-top fantasy in pure self-indulgence—like having sex with a pair of $5,000-a-night escorts while driving an Aston Martin."
Self-indulgence? What?? Good food is good. Where does indulgence come in to the picture? He is picking up on the guilt associated with enjoying anything, much less anything with empty calories - which there is very little of in sushi. So far as having sex with 2 people (he doesn't specify) while driving a moving vehicle...well, that is one of the more obscure fetishes out there, and after 15 years in Japan, I know my fetishes. Maybe the fatality rate keeps it from spreading.
He goes on to describe his sexual desire towards the wood counter and the various dead fish. I know, I know, he is trying to bring in the reader. We all like to fuck. But there is a time and a place, and a partner, and it is not during dinner on a wood counter with a slab of tuna. Food is not sex, except in freshman cliché-land.
“…and in the hushed, reverential silence, it began.”.
From sex to religion. Food is not something deserving of reverence. It is to be appreciated and enjoyed. Silence is what happens when you have nothing to talk about. The best sushi bars I have been in have never been silent, only the worst
"flown in this morning from Tokyo"...yeah, what did they do, yank it out of Shibuya Club at 5am? There are no fresh fish in Tokyo, Fresh fish are in the sea.
“Finally, there was Kobe beef that, with each bite, squirted its pampered, oft-massaged fat between the teeth.”
I wonder if that was the same cow that stuck his tongue in my business partner’s ass while he was selling his Vitamin E to a cattle farmer? Pamper the cows, and they think they have conjugal rights.
“Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It's about giving up all vestiges of control and entrusting your fate entirely to someone else.”
Well, a bit over the top and well into S&M territory (or SM, as it is know in Japan). I would say it’s simply about trust, and not all that much of that either. After all, worst case is an unsatisfactory meal, hardly a great leap of faith. What is good about Japan is that in most any restaurant that is not a chain, the omakase course is no big deal. It saves the customer the trouble of trying to appear clever in ordering, and one would presume that the owner knows what is best that day anyway.
What is a shame is that the concept is so alien to America. American restaurants go for volume, and they make heaps of money. What is lost though is intimacy, and the personal care of the chef. The restaurant described here gets around that by charging a fortune per diner. Sorry, but this sort of experience should not be confined to those willing to drop $300 a head on dinner. It is done all over Japan for much, much less. The only thing that stops Americans from doing the same is….I don’t know.
So let's avoid the cliches.
This article demonstrates everything that is wrong with American cuisine...well, not actually everything, there's a lot more, but this is a good place to start. Having read a bit more of the author's stuff, I can see he knows his food, which makes it all worse. What is with this self-abasement every time Westerners come up against Japanese food?
"Sometimes the simple things, a 50-cent bowl of pho in Saigon or a properly made bagel in New York, can be more satisfying than the ultraexpensive stuff,..."
This is the height of pretense. Pho in Saigon is a simple dish if you are a Saigon cyclo driver. If you are the reader of this sneakily pretentious prose in New York or Cleveland, a dish of pho in Saigon is an extravagance. Start with the airfare, at around a grand, and go from there. How may readers have sampled pho in Saigon? Few, I would guess. Maybe he is thinking that this is an easy way to play the working man and the international foody in the same phrase .
"Masa is The Deal of the Century. It's a completely over-the-top fantasy in pure self-indulgence—like having sex with a pair of $5,000-a-night escorts while driving an Aston Martin."
Self-indulgence? What?? Good food is good. Where does indulgence come in to the picture? He is picking up on the guilt associated with enjoying anything, much less anything with empty calories - which there is very little of in sushi. So far as having sex with 2 people (he doesn't specify) while driving a moving vehicle...well, that is one of the more obscure fetishes out there, and after 15 years in Japan, I know my fetishes. Maybe the fatality rate keeps it from spreading.
He goes on to describe his sexual desire towards the wood counter and the various dead fish. I know, I know, he is trying to bring in the reader. We all like to fuck. But there is a time and a place, and a partner, and it is not during dinner on a wood counter with a slab of tuna. Food is not sex, except in freshman cliché-land.
“…and in the hushed, reverential silence, it began.”.
From sex to religion. Food is not something deserving of reverence. It is to be appreciated and enjoyed. Silence is what happens when you have nothing to talk about. The best sushi bars I have been in have never been silent, only the worst
"flown in this morning from Tokyo"...yeah, what did they do, yank it out of Shibuya Club at 5am? There are no fresh fish in Tokyo, Fresh fish are in the sea.
“Finally, there was Kobe beef that, with each bite, squirted its pampered, oft-massaged fat between the teeth.”
I wonder if that was the same cow that stuck his tongue in my business partner’s ass while he was selling his Vitamin E to a cattle farmer? Pamper the cows, and they think they have conjugal rights.
“Eating well, on the other hand, is about submission. It's about giving up all vestiges of control and entrusting your fate entirely to someone else.”
Well, a bit over the top and well into S&M territory (or SM, as it is know in Japan). I would say it’s simply about trust, and not all that much of that either. After all, worst case is an unsatisfactory meal, hardly a great leap of faith. What is good about Japan is that in most any restaurant that is not a chain, the omakase course is no big deal. It saves the customer the trouble of trying to appear clever in ordering, and one would presume that the owner knows what is best that day anyway.
What is a shame is that the concept is so alien to America. American restaurants go for volume, and they make heaps of money. What is lost though is intimacy, and the personal care of the chef. The restaurant described here gets around that by charging a fortune per diner. Sorry, but this sort of experience should not be confined to those willing to drop $300 a head on dinner. It is done all over Japan for much, much less. The only thing that stops Americans from doing the same is….I don’t know.
