Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
To John's question "Do you think we lose something when a formerly
exotic cuisine or style becomes a mainstream category?"

Of course, something is lost any time a little upstart movement goes
mainstream. That's why there are certain indie rock fans who say that
R.E.M. was never the same once it jumped from the IRS label to Warner
Brothers, or Nirvana was never the same once it jumped from Sub Pop to
Geffen.

Those Rock Snobs were being pedantic (and I have a humor paperback
devoted to this breed of person, "The Rock Snob*s Dictionary"), but in
the food world there is a more legitimate complaint that some
innovations and ethnic specialties get compromised by popularity. I
daresay that the Starbucks coffee I fell in love with in Seattle in the
early 90s (see an earlier post of mine, about being wowed by Starbucks
when I visited my sister, a Seattle resident) is not the same
Starbucks coffee you now get at the kiosk in the airport. Oftentimes,
quality control suffers as volume expands.

Giorgio DeLuca told me that much the same happened with balsamic
vinegar. The most traditional form of aceto balsamico, from Modena,
Italy, is aged, thick and almost syrupy, and was traditionally used
sparingly, and kept in tiny, ornamental bottles. People would anoint
their summer strawberries with a tiny drop, for example. Then Giorgio
started selling a lower-grade but still legitimately flavorful and
authentic version of aceto balsamico at Dean & DeLuca in the 1970s,
marketing it as a salad dressing, more or less. It caught on big-time,
and now we hear "balsamic this" and "balsamic that" everywhere we go.

Giorgio is the first to tell you that his brainstorm led to some
hideous corruptions of what people think balsamic vinegar is. Lots of
it that's now sold in America, if not most, is not real balsamic
vinegar but simple white vinegar that's been flavored and dyed.

That said, these are sometimes the sacrifices that have to be made in
the name of innovation. The U.S.A. is a big capitalist
country--inevitably, someone's going to seize on a small craze and try
to make a buck by going wide with it. Pizza is a great example, and you
can get truly awful chain pizza in every state in the union.

But at the same time, especially in this new era of artisanal
this-and-that, there's a backlash against the grim, institutional
"chain" mentality. Beyond the old-line places that still make good
pizza (like Pepe's and Sally's in New Haven, CT), there are new-wave
places using the best dough and house-made cheese. And not necessarily
going all designer-kooky with the toppings.

I'm thinking, for example, of Chris Bianco's Pizzeria Bianco in
Phoenix, AZ, and Nancy Silverton's Mozza in L.A. Their pizzas would not
necessarily be recognizable to an Italian-American living in any
city's Little Italy in 1931, but, in their fealty to good, yeasty dough
and with their chops as real bakers, Bianco and Silverton have more in
common with the old-timers than your typical corner place does.

In any event, I'm not bothered by the way traditional/ethnic foods
mutate and change via assimilation and experimentation, as long as the
end product is good. A "traditional" New Haven pizza is itself an
Americanized mutation of a Neopolitan pie.
  

    
As are most American pizzas. One of the biggest shocks of moving to
Europe was discovering that I did *not* grow up on Italian food; I grew
up on Italian-American food, a separate but related cuisine. Just
regarding pizza, the earliest American pizza makers didn't have quite
the right kind of flour, yeast, tomatoes, or cheese to make it with.
Mozzarella you can grate, for instance, is unknown in Italy, from what
I can tell. 
  

    
I meant to say "Neapolitan," not "Neo-"

Though I suppose sloppy spelling is part of the fun of the Inkwell.
Or, rather, teh Iknwll.
  

    
>>Oftentimes, quality control suffers as volume expands.<<<

Sometimes, and those companies suffering quality control don't last
long. More often, quality control actually improves as quality expands
-- if, by "quality control," you mean the same thing the food industry
means when it uses the phrase, which is consistently meeting a
standard. To consistently meet a standard, though, oftentimes the
standard must be lowered as distribution widens. 
  

    
I actually look forward to the day when miso, pomegranate molasses,
tamarind, rose water, and chipotle in adobo all go through
craptasticization, watered down for mass appeal, as balsamico has.

David, was there anything you wanted to include in the book but
couldn't for whatever reason? How about a little "director's cut"
commentary on what didn't go in? 
  

    
Pizza is something that people always seem to have strong opinions on, 
and it always seems to hinge on where you grew up.

I'm from Providence, and my pizza is Caserta's.  WE used to have it 
every sunday.  Now, my cousin who lives in New Hope PA, buys 6 or 7 pies 
whenever he's in town and freezes it.  That's how much he loves it.  The 
pies are square and thick (Sicilian) , and they have limited choices 
(pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, anchovies, cheese.  That's it.)

I know that <realfun> has been trying to duplicate their dough and has 
been unable.  He finally decided that buying the dough was much easier. 
Me, I feel like buying the pizza is easier.

My girlfriend's dad was one of the first importers/manufacturers of pizza 
stones and clay bread cloches in the 70's, (they still make and sell them, 
along with a whole bunch of kid's baking and cooking accessories) 
<http://www.kidsbaking.com>

David, most of your book is about trend-setters-- guys who followed their 
foodie passion and made it big.  Were there people who didn't make it big?  
Who were some of the guys who were the grand losers of the food biz, and 
how did they gamble (and lose) ?
  

    
slipped by eric
  

    
I love pizza. Any pizza that is NOT made at a chain. I particularly like the
pizza I am currently making for my kids and their babysitter this evening.
But I must say, as a purist, I prefer to have pizza that doesn't have
anything sun-dried on it (or designer-kooky toppings, either).
  

    
I love all kinds of things called pizza.   Crispy tomato and cheese, deep
dish, and even some of those "california pizzas" that my Jersey girl wife
used to diaparage but finally came around to.   She's even quit saying, "It
ain't pizza, but it's pretty good".

A couple of years ago, we went to New York to visit relatives and went out
to see what her family called good pizza.   After all the crap they used to
give us about pizza in SF, I have to say I was less than impressed.   It was
good, but nothing to get religious about.   Actually, it wasn't all good.
We tried three places that week, and one was pretty mediocre.

It's like music.  You bond with the stuff you were exposed to as a kid.
  

    
Another pizza slut here.  I love good pizza, bad pizza, though I
prefer good pizza.

But I echo Eric's question.  What were you forced to leave out, David?
(Forced meaning you realized it was tangential, or your editor
suggested it was, or you got a little squirmish, or whatever.)
  

    
Eric Gower and Adam Gertsacov both had questions in a similar vein,
Eric asking about "director's cut" stuff that didn't make the final
version of the book, Adam about the "grand losers of the food biz,"
gamblers whose gambles didn't pay off, and whose stories were therefore
not in the book.

Because I focused on the "winners," the people who ended up making a
difference, I didn't come across many "grand losers" with romantic
tales of what might have been. There's a character in my book named
Michael Field who sort of qualifies. For a time in the late 60s, he was
considered to be on a par with James Beard, Julia Child, and Craig
Claiborne in the food firmament. He was a former concert pianist turned
cooking-school instructor and cookbook author, and he wrote really
rigorous, exacting, occasionally nasty cookbook reviews for NY Review
of Books.

In the then much-smaller food world, Field was feared and respected
but unpopular. He was also tightly wound and twitchy. Nora Ephron's
famous New York mag piece "The Food Establishment" captures him
mid-meltdown. And he died young of a heart attack, probably too tightly
wound for his own good. That said, his three cookbooks, now out of
print, are all quite good.

But Field wasn't really a "grand loser" in the romantic sense. I know
what kind of character you mean, Adam, because I was looking for him
(or her) myself. I kept asking the various chefs and food folk I met if
there was a Syd Barrett or Brian Wilson of the food world, someone of
incandescently brilliant vision but tragic fragility or illness or
foodhardiness. No one had a good answer, or a good story in this
regard. I'm sure such a person exists, or several do, and I vow to
write about such a person when he or she is found. If anyone has any
leads...

As for cutting-room floor stuff, Eric...

I guess the one thing I wish I could have used more in the book is
what was going on more at the supermarket level. I focused heavily on
tastemakers and fancy-food innovators in the final version, but I was
intrigued by the families that ran supermarket fiefdoms in their
regions, and how they flourished or floundered as they adjusted or
failed to adjust to changing consumer tastes. There were also more
ambitious grocers who transcended being mere grocers to become
"gourmet" impresarios, people like Russ Vernon at the West Point Market
in Akron, Ohio.

In the later parts of the book I focus more on the elevation of chef
at the expense of looking at what consumers were buying at markets.
This was a deliberate choice, because I wanted to examine how America's
food curiosity got perverted into the "celebrity chef" phenomenon. But
I still think the groceries and supermarkets are a great subject for a
book in and of itself.
  

    
I cut teeth on Field's books. LOVED them. You can feel the crankiness
in his prose; someone *utterly* sure of himself, so it's easy to see
why he created so many enemies.

Supermarkets are indeed a great subject. What are you waiting for!
  

    
Eric.  I just heard on KWMR that you'll be at the Point Reyes Farmers Market
this morning.
  

    
Thanks.  So here's another kind of question.

An essay came my way a few weeks ago suggesting that, what with global
warming, the great global population growth, and the cost of fuel
(which not only makes running farm equipment and supplies costlier, but
also makes it more attractive to grow plants to be turned into biofuel
instead of food) we have probably reached the end of the era of cheap
food.

I ran this past a farmer friend who agreed.  Well, maybe, maybe not. 
Questions are: do you think it's true, and if so, what effects will
that kind of scarcity start to have?
  

    
I heard Marion Nestle speak a couple of months back, and oh, boy, would I
love to ask her that question as well as David.
  

    
I've already seen chicken double in price here.
  

    
Pamela, I'm simply not qualified to answer that question. But I will
say that the essay's Malthusian premise sounds dubious. Bear in mind
that I haven't read the essay and don't even know which essay you're
referring to, so it's ultimately kind of fruitless for me to pass
judgment on it.

What I've usually heard from food scientist types is that distribution
is a far bigger issue than scarcity. But again, I'm no expert. I know
Marion Nestle--shall I call her?

As for the end of cheap food, there's an argument made by some food
folk that we Americans have been spoiled for too long by artificially
low food prices (and gasoline prices, for that matter). With subsidized
agribusiness, the market is flooded with cheap but not necessarily
healthful or desirable food product. Yikes, we're veering into Michael
Pollan territory here. Just what I didn't want to happen. No
disrespect, Mike.

I can say that both Judith Jones (the great cookbook editor) and Alice
Waters remarked to me that they admired how Europeans spent more of
their family budgets on food than we Americans do. You get what you pay
for, they seemed to be saying, and we should be paying more for
high-quality food.

I know the populist counterargument to this is that it's easy for some
elitist Berkeley or New York freaks to demand that average Americans
spend more for food, but there is something to be said for spending
that much more on what goes into your mouth and that much less on, oh,
a plasma-screen TV. Americans love to snidely call Whole Foods "Whole
Paycheck." Why doesn't anyone call Best Buy "Best Part of Your
Paycheck"?
  

    
That paragraph you're saying is Michael Pollan territory is also Marion
Nestle territory.
  

    
Luvvv Marion, and like what I know of Michael. But my book is not a
"food issues" book--it's about the pleasure of discovery, it's about
the characters who shaped a cultural sea change, it's about looking at
food people as innovators and three-dimensional figures, not as
culturally marginal figures to be condescended to, or, alternately, as
faultless saints.

I know that some "food issues" stuff necessarily has to figure into
all this, especially in the later parts of the narrative. But Marion
Nestle, who kindly blurbed my book and is a joy to know, was one of the
first people to tell me that she liked my book as a *read*, for the
stories it tells. Even Marion Nestle needs a break from Marion Nestle
territory sometimes.
  

    
Hah, yes; well put.

I was thinking along these lines, David.  That food prices go up for
the reasons I've mentioned (the essayist I referred to is a British
commentator on world affairs generally, not food necessarily) and
people who have only known food that cost a small fraction of their
budget are suddenly faced with it costing a larger and larger fraction.
 

Do they resent what might be called fancy food?  (For that matter, how
does anybody feel about fruit being flown from the southern hemisphere
to the northern hemisphere in the middle of winter, given what airline
fuel costs?)  Does it suddenly become fashionable to eat only the
simplest, most local foods, with nearly no value added by a chef?  If
you live in a place where lettuce is hopeless in winter, do you give up
salads for a few months?

We won't hold you to any forecasts; this is just an invitation to
speculate.
  

    
David remarked further up there about fancy foods going mainstream.
Well, I just learned of the existence of wasabi Funyuns, so I think
that point's just been sledgehammered home. Fortunately, I'm about 6000
miles from a bag of them. 
  

    
Pamela, them's a lot of questions. Don't know if I can answer them all
in a concise, Inkwell-friendly format, so I'll just sort of offer a
broad take:

I think the notion of people resenting "fancy food" is growing
increasingly outdated, because A) there are fewer and fewer
distinctions between "gourmet" and regular foods; for example, as I say
early in the book, the millions of people who now get their coffee
from Starbucks each morning are technically purchasing, to use the
trade term, "specialty" coffee, but at this saturation point, is going
to Starbucks really a "specialty" experience anymore?; and B) Americans
are less and less hung up on fears of "other" or "fancy" foods, as
we've all observed in this conference.

As a matter of fact, last autumn, on the eve of the midterm elections,
I did a humorous audio essay for NPR on the tiredness of the
culinary-slander trope in political campaigns: the portrayal by
conservative strategists of left-leaning candidates as out-of-touch
"latte-sipping, sushi-eating, Chardonnay-swilling" twits. It's really
ridiculous to try to demonize a candidate this way--and about as dated
a strategy as accusing someone of being a "pinko."

As I said in an earlier post, there might have been a time when such
food and drink was the province of an elite, which I have no problem
with--lots of good ideas and movements start with a small elite. But
we're so far past that point. And you wouldn't have supermarket sushi
and a struggling Kraft if America's taste for
new/different/foreign/fancy/organic foods didn't cut across party,
cultural, state, and economic lines.

That said, Pamela, there are still some dubious notions put forth by
otherwise smart people in the food world. While I really do think it's
wrong to fly up produce from the southern hemisphere so we can eat
asparagus out of season, and while I do believe in local foods and
seasonality, I still want to eat salad greens in the winter. And I
don't think it's a sin for California lettuces to be trucked to the
East Coast in winter.

Perhaps there are better, more energy-efficient ways for this
distribution to be handled, and there's certainly room for farming
techniques to be improved. But I can't see a time when we cold-weather
people will fully rely in wintertime, as Alice Waters advises, on
"lettuces grown in hoop houses on the East Coast and the Midwest."

Hey gang, I'm headed to London for a work trip, so I might be a little
slow in posting the next couple of days. I will have my laptop,
though, and will check in at odd, Ed Ward-like hours.
  

    
Thanks, David, and have a splendid (if ruinously expensive for your
employer) trip to London!
  

    
Heh heh.

David's in London and, as he noted, even more out of synch with West Coast
time than when he's in NYC.

David, could you say something about food writing in the US before Beard and
Claiborne, especially, came on the scene?
  

    
Well, first, let me clarify that Beard was never really much of a food
writer, except for his decent if slightly twee memoirette from the
early 1960s, "Delights and Prejudices." He was more of a food authority
and teacher.

But anyway, most of my favorite food writing is old food writing. My
favorite food book remains A.J. Liebling's "Between Meals," which I
think I've already mentioned, and I also have lots of respect for MFK
Fisher. The New Yorker also had some good people like Joseph Wechsberg
and Sheila Hibben doing surprisingly modern-seeming food writing in thr
1940s and 50s.

But popular food writing--meaning for a large audience, meaning for
newspapers--was very different from what we're accustomed to now. It
existed at two extremes, one represented by Clementine Paddleford, one
by Lucius Beebe, who happened to write for the same paper but in very
different capacities.

Clementine Paddleford was a fantastic character in the American food
world when that world was still very small. She was the food editor of
the New York Herald Tribune in the 1930s and 40s and kept on writing
until her death in the 1960s. It would be easy to turn her into a jokey
artifact of a less food-enlightened time--and indeed, Craig Claiborne
was patronizing towards her--but I went back and read her stuff and
found her to be a smart, industrious, insatiably curious journalist.

Yes, she was housewifey in her language, using expressions like
"That'll do the job up brown!" and referring to the women she wrote
about as Mrs. Horace or Mrs. Herbert So-and-So. And yes, she was
possessed of demented cat-lady lunacy, with a kitty forever sleeping in
her "IN" basket at work.

But she was also capable of pulling off some beautiful writing ("The
sun grew pale as a frosted penny," she once wrote of an Ohio sunset),
and she was hip to turning Americans on to eccentric regional dishes
decades before Jane and Michael Stern. She was an aviatrix, flying a
single-engine Piper Cub plane low over small country roads to see where
they led--to which little family restaurants, church suppers, and
such. Her 1960 compendium of all the regional dishes she'd tasted and
gotten the recipes for, "How America Eats," is a favorite of mine and
well worth getting your hands on. And James Beard loved her.

Lucius Beebe was another sort of character altogether, representative
of how segregated food experiences were before the 1960s. He wrote for
the Herald-Tribube in the same period as Paddleford, but as a society
columnist with a sideline in fine dining. He was an unrepentant snob,
Francophile, and nostalgist for the Gilded Age era when obese robber
barons ate sixteen-course banquets at ornate dining palaces like
Delmonico's.

He was also a sharp dresser and train enthusiast, marvelously queeny
in manner--today, he'd have a reality/makeoever show on TLC or Bravo.
(James Villas, the veteran food writer for Town & Country, now in his
seventies, knew Beebe and told me he was the campest person he'd ever
met--but wonderful company.)

In any event, what's instructive about Beebe's columns is their
revelation that dining out was strictly a pastime of the rich in
the old days. Regular folk didn't go out to eat, except to humble
taverns and lunch counters and such. It really wasn't until Craig
Claiborne came along in the late 1950s that going out to a nice
restaurant became a middle-class thing, a widespread phenomenon.

Also, Beebe's reverence was for the male, usually French chefs in the
kitchens of the restaurants where he dined. Paddleford wrote about the
women who cooked at home. It never seemed to occur to anyone that the
roles could be switched, that husbands could cook at home and that
women could cook in professional kitchens. And I love the twist of fate
that one of America's foremost woman chefs, Lydia Shire, now runs what
was one of Beebe's favorite restaurants, Locke-Ober in Boston.