Eat My Florida

I’ve been pounding on this muscle-bound mook ever since he announced the name of his “future” restaurant in St. Petersburg. Something about his unrelenting tight-assed demeanor, pseudo-military appearance, pointy head, bad teeth and, well, let’s face it, the fact that he works for the Food Network really rubs me the wrong way. Or it might be the name of the restaurants. Ooze and Schmooze? For fuck’s sake.

I blasted the name (here and here), I questioned whether the restaurant would ever be built, I did everything but launch a full-fledged investigation into Robert Irvine’s character as a businessman. That’s why we have the St. Pete Times.

According to an article in the Times on Sunday, Irvine owes a bunch of people money, lied or exaggerated repeatedly in person, on his Food Network resume and in his book Mission: Cook!, and is sort of little and sad when cornered. And he impersonated a knight, which means the queen will be sending some beefeaters after Irvine’s hide when she gets around to it.

Maybe I should feel bad for him, but why waste the glorious schadenfreude! And with Ooze and Schmooze still in the works, we might have Robert Irvine to kick around for months or years to come.

This week, Men’s Health released their annual list of the worst foods in America. For them, “worst” is more a calculation of fat and calories than overall taste, but several items could qualify in both respects. Their targets are big national chains, with McDonalds, Chilis, Chipotle and Macaroni Grill making the list for egregious concoctions designed more for small villages or Dom Deluise look-a-like conventions than the single servings they purport to be.

Topping the list is the Bay area’s own Outback Steakhouse, with their “Aussie cheese fries with ranch dressing.” 2900 calories. 182 grams of fat. It’s nice to know that, yet again, Tampa is leading the way when it comes to dining.

“Is your girlfriend one of them salad eatin’ bitches” and you need just the right recipe to get her to “drop them panties?” Coolio’s got your back.

Cooking with Coolio debuted this week on My Damn Channel (a new video aggregator starring long-lost and b-list celebs), where he demonstrates his culinary chops with the Coolio Caprese Salad. Don’t let his maple cabinetry and stainless steel appliances fool you, Coolio is still from the streets. When he needs salt, one of his buxom female assistants pulls a little baggy from her cleavage. His sous chef is also his hype-man. Coolio can slice and dice, although a chef’s knife may not be his favorite tool: “I’m pretty good with this knife, and I’m pretty good with a sword, nunchucks and a pistol.”

With lines like “an oily salad ain’t shit” and ” that looks better than you momma’s titties,” Coolio could even start competing for my job.

The recipe itself is nothing to get excited about, although he does toss on some diced onion and sprinkles a mystery ingredient at the end. Raw onion will get her to drop them panties? Maybe Coolio and I hand out with different hoes.

Coolio’s cooking sessions will be a weekly offering on My Damn Channel, at least until Weird Al starts mocking one of his recipes and Coolio disappears into another decade-long funk.

“Shaka Zulu, motherfucker!”

Looks like all the local school districts have complied with a USDA halt on the use of beef from the Westland Meat Products packing company. If you missed the scandal that broke last week, here’s the sum up:

The Humane Society videotaped workers at the Westland packing plant resorting to extraordinary means to get some obviously damaged and sick cows to get to their feet and walk into the plant. You see, cows that can’t move of their own volition are not allowed for human consumption. How do you convince a sick cow to walk to it’s own slaughter? Shoot water up it’s nose, roll it around on the ground with a forklift, jam it with cattle prods; you know, a typical Saturday night.

You should watch the video. It’s enlightening.

Westland is the second largest supplier of meat to the USDA’s National School Lunch Program. Sorry, was the second largest. Tough luck, Westland.

If that video wasn’t enough to put you off your lunch for the next couple of weeks, here are a few of the best cruelty videos of the past few years:

Foie Gras

Meat Your Meat

Tyson Slaughterhouse

Butterball

I usually avoid these list-of-links entries, but dammit, a lot’s happened in the world of food this week. Here’re some of the highlights:

• NYC Board of Health finally votes to include calorie counts on all chain restaurant menus.
• Top Chef has just announced the line-up for Season 4 in Chicago. One contestant is listed as being from Clearwater Beach, but his bio doesn’t back that up.
• Ratatouille gets five Oscar nods. Am I the only person who thought that this film was merely OK?
• Gourmet has a new website.
• Girls Scouts break the rules and start selling 100-calorie cookie packs.

The NYT had one of their seemingly annual food analysis projects hit the paper today. This time they tested sushi-grade tuna from NY-area restaurants and markets for mercury levels. Turns out even raw fish’ll kill you.

Tuna at five of the twenty places they tested had mercury levels so high the FDA could actually pull the fish from the shelves, or, well, your plate. This time the wealthy gets hit the hardest — the most expensive tuna comes from prized giant bluefin and, since they’re bigger, they have time to absorb more mercury.

The study concluded that, on average, people who eat more than six pieces of tuna sushi a week will be exceeding the FDA’s recommended blood mercury limit. That’s assuming, of course, that the rest of the week you refrain from eating anything else that might contain the pesky mineral.

According to the fine folks at Where The Locals Eat, Tampa/St. Petersburg qualifies as one of the Top 50 cities in the US!

WTLE’s new book tries to nail the best 100 restaurants in each of their top 50 cities and, as vague survey lists go, it does a fairly good job. The big guys are on there — like Bern’s, The Columbia and Ceviche — but there are also some actual local joints like Mel’s Hot Dogs, El Cap, Skyway Jack’s, Thai Sweet Basil and Atwaters. And, perhaps as a nod to our love of the prefabricated dinner experience, there are a half dozen chains included in the list.

If you’re traveling to the Bay area and don’t want to bother doing a little web research, this book might be for you. But anyone who actually uses the web won’t need to pick up the print version of Where The Locals Eat; you can find all the Tampa/St. Petersburg listings for free on the WTLE website.

Yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle had a fantastic story about the economics of paying restaurant personnel. That Bay area’s independent restaurateurs have it really tough, with server wages tagged to the city’s minimum of $9.14/hour and extensive benefits mandated by the city. Good for servers, but not so good for cooks, according to the article. Line jockeys end up with very low pay in one of the most expensive cities in the US.

Part of the problem has to do with the expectations of culinary school graduates, which I wrote about a few months ago. Even without massive school loans, though, making it in the shadow of the Golden Gate on $15 an hour is almost impossible. Around these parts, the pay is about the same, but benefits are meager at best. Working in a kitchen is a tough life all over.

Michael Pollan — author of the Omnivore’s Dilemna, the best food book of the past decade — had a brilliant op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday about this year’s Farm Bill. I could talk about the piece here on the blog, but you should just read it for yourself. Bottom line — the Farm Bill will affect more people in this country more profoundly than almost any other piece of legislation passed by Congress. Pay attention.

I don’t actually know what the news is, but it’s big! OSI — the Outback folks — are trying to drum up interest in a Lee Roy Selmon’s press conference this afternoon. Lee Roy will be there, as will OSI CEO and all-around big-shot Bill Allen. But really, what kind of big news would necessitate an honest-to-goodness White House-style press conference?

Here are some headlines you might be seeing tomorrow morning:

1. LEE ROY SELMON’S UNVEILS NEW USF BULLS BANDWAGON BURGER! (For a limited time only.)
2. MAMA SELMON UNVEILS NEW RECIPE: — The deep fried onion is a classic Southern staple enjoyed by Lee Roy in his youth, and served with a spicy dipping sauce.
3. LEE ROY SELMON APPOINTED VICE-CHAIRMAN OF TAMPA BAY AREA REGIONAL TRAFFIC AUTHORITY –Chairman Shelton Quarles: “The best offense is a good defense.”
4. FREE RIBS DISTRIBUTED AT TOLL BOOTHS FOR ALL CROSSTOWN EXPRESSWAY SUNPASS USERS — Bill Allen: “We just want to maximize the cross-genre marketing potential of Lee Roy’s name.”
5. UNRESTRICTED FREE-AGENT LEE ROY SELMON’S TRADED TO PIZZA HUT – Bill Allen: “No one wants to see him go, but we couldn’t come to terms on a new contract.”

I guess we’ll see soon enough.

UPDATE:  Turns out that the press conference was just about Selmon and Selmon’s president — Peter Barli — buying the chain back from OSI. Big whoopty-do.

The Dutch, in partnership with catering giant Sodexho, have built an entire restaurant as an ongoing behavioral experiment. I am curious and horrified at the same time.

Forget the side issue of audio and visual recording throughout the place — most people will know all about it before walking through the doors. Do we really want Sodexha to know the visual, auditory and olfactory triggers that make us pick where, when, what and how much we eat – the culinary equivalent of poker tells?

Imagine the subliminal cafeterias that will comes, where every aspect is contrived to force us into spending as much as possible on the highest profit margin items. What a a way for shepherd’s pie to make a comeback.

I win again! The past few months — ever since Laura Reiley took over for Sherman — the Times and CL have reviewed the same restaurants on the very same week on several occasions. I’m sure that she follows similar rules about waiting long enough to let the restaurant find it’s footing, but not so long that the place is old news, whenever possible, so the coincidence is understandable. I’m just glad CL comes out on Wednesday, so my reviews get a 24 hour head start.

More interesting than that, however, is when our opinions differ. With Cheap, we differed a lot. Chalk it up to a difference in palate, the usual night-to-night variances in a restaurant’s performance, or even a fundamental disagreement in what food should be like. In any case, restaurant reviews are like any other type of criticism: you need to figure out how well the reviewer matches your own preferences before you can determine how to use the review.

When it comes to Cheap, who do you guys agree with?

Considering today’s MSG In A Bottle, some people asked me about other ingredients — other than hydrolized protein — that may (or do) contain monosodium glutamate (or at least commercially produced glutamic acid). Here’s a short list — but beware that this is from a strict anti-MSG website.

For more info on umami, here’s a site that is devoted to the sensation, with recipes to boot.

And for anyone who wants a direct line to the Lords Of Chinatown, the original Chinatown Bad Boys, just check out The Notorious MSG!

Is it telling that after watching this SNL parody of taco metastasizing, I sort of wanted to eat one?

For the record, this Taco Town sketch is vastly better than the repetitive one-joke wonder Dick In A Box, Emmy’s be damned.

Let’s recap the events leading up to the exciting conclusion of America’s Next Food Network Hack next Sunday! Who will be tapped to “host whatever Sunday morning ghetto slot they have in store for the winner”(Bourdain’s gone soft on the show over at Ruhlman)?

I haven’t updated you on the status of this titannic competition since the beginning because, well, nothing’s really happened. People stammered and stuttered on camera, mediocre food was made to look edible and people were dropped. No big whoop.

Let me help out the judges. If you were still, this late in the game, looking for that indefinable “star quality” out of the final contestants, you may as well give it up. All this show has proved is that almost any schmo with a little training and minimal stage presence can host a show on the Food Network. Is that the message you want to portray, Tuschman and friends? Mission accomplished.

This week, though, things have changed — there’s some drama! The judges slotted JAG into the final two, then managed to pick busty Rory over the milder, but vastly more competent Amy. But wait! Don’t vote yet!

It turns out that JAG likes to pad his resume. Maybe it was a typo – “I meant to say that I had never been to Iraq and I did not graduate from cooking school.” In a tearful confrontation, he comes clean with the judges, who pat him on his back and send him on his way with no hard feelings. Sad, ’cause he was the best cook of the bunch.

That does bring Amy back into the fold, which makes me happy. Her “gourmet next door” or whatever she names her “style” is always just an excuse to bring some serious French cooking into the kitchen. Me likee.

The final battle is up to you. Do you want Busty Horseteeth? Or Frenchy McNoLips? Go vote already.

Are you kidding? Anyone who’s ever had a hot Krispy Kreme, or the aji sauce at Maria’s Chicken, or Alessi’s pizza knows that food addiction is real!

Seriously, though, I can easily see where training the body to expect certain chemical triggers — sugar and salt and fat and the like — could turn into addiction. I just need a little something to keep me going, maybe a small fries, or even just a half a Snicker’s. C’mon, help a brother out. Ooops, I forgot I said “seriously”.

Wow. She says everything that servers think and still comes off sounding like a petulant fool who shouldn’t be in the service industry. Really, this thing reads like an Onion Op-ed piece.

“If you are the only table or customer in a restaurant you should consider leaving because the servers do not want you there, which will result in you not having a pleasurable experience.” Well, yeah, with that attitude I’m sure you’re correct.

St. Pete Times has an article today detailing a case where the vegan upbringing of children is being used as one (of many) reason to challenge custody.

The dad — who is seeking to gain custody of 10 year-old quintuplets — is not claiming that the children are unhealthy. Still, the Times decides to make the case for him by irrevocably linking this custody battle with two very different cases involving child deaths by neglectful raw or vegan parents, then tries to mediate that by providing evidence that vegan child-rearing can be safe when done properly.

Way to randomly create a news story from one line of a custody brief, Times.

Two pieces from the Times of London over the past week are worth reading, even over here — AA Gill’s bullseye review of the new London Whole Foods and Giles Corran’s explanation of the advent of tapas.

Quote of the week, from Gill — “Altogether, the experience here is of eating in a railway concourse in the company of bored, neurotic, overweight people who’ve just had babies they don’t like. Nothing is any better than what you might expect to find in the chilled cabinet of a Tesco petrol station.”

That’s about right.

I haven’t really commented yet on Top Chef, mainly because I wanted to give it a little time. In the past, it has run second place in my summer reality show hit list, behind Hell’s Kitchen. Needless to say, considering the neanderthals Fox has recruited for the past two season’s of HK, Top Chef has easily managed to take center stage. Here’s a few reasons why:

1. Pretty much all of the Top Chef contestants can cook, some of them extremely well. That has become surprisingly rare in TV food shows.
2. The weekly competitions have morphed from the goofy scenarios of season 1 into interesting culinary challenges, where the framework is just a reason for some fine genre cooking.
3. The judges are a heck of a lot better. Colicchio and Simmons are almost likable.
4. Padme Lakshmi.