Resolutions?

 

Resolutions have never been something I looked at seriously. Seeing other people make their own leaves many bereft of resolve, and dooms them to failure more often than not. 

I see things like "An apology to myself and others for having fallen apart, and a commitment to restoke my fire.", and... no, I don't believe that for a second. Most people fall apart because you let yourselves crumble. You do not sacrifice what is necessary, nor do you spend your resources in a way that would help. I should know- in times long past some have asked, and I told them. If they decided to do something else? My wisdom is no shackle- even though for many it certainly should be.

Given all that mess, plus the worldly horrors of the last decade or so- plagues, fascists, brain drain, climate change, overpopulation, and many other awful things... one resolution worth considering has come to mind.

I should stop being the one who reaches out first.

The lion's share of the work in many of my interpersonal relationships has always been done by me. I know one person my age aside from myself that has a christmas card list- while written correspondence itself is vanishingly rare in this day and age, some things remain worth doing for an intimate, personal touch. Even digitally though, if it's been a while since we've talked? I'll likely drop a line every month or three to try and see what's what. All too often though, those messages simply vanish into the aether, either unread and unnoticed, or simply dismissed. My message archives are awash in open-ended queries, salutations, and attempts to reconnect.

Between the literal and figurative plagues, the chaos of the world gives more reason to be fostering relationships than any time most people alive today can remember. And yet I only grow more weary of spending my time on those who can't bothered to remember just how valuable it is. It brings to mind something of an exhausting question quite firmly cemented in my mind and worldview a couple of years ago: "How many times do I have to save someone's life before they owe me the rest?". I know the answer to that. But none of those so indebted will ever so much as admit to it, much less pay up.

What will taking the passive role and waiting for outreach do? Hard to say. It's not like I have more than a handful of people who ever bother to talk to me in the first place, and it often feels as though I'm the last option even for them.

If all it does is turn those numbers from nonzero to zero, then... it was always zero to begin with.

Probably won't change much at all, really.

Someone once said this always made them think of me.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Better food media journalism at the macro level, please.

This is 'Hall'. An exceedingly intricate NYC establishment that seems formed around a concept reliably associated with the Japan bar scene- a half-hidden gem where a person in the know can stop in and hide out for a while, discreetly and unobtrusively relishing the environment and ambiance with a fantastic cocktail and something to eat. It's an experience I often create for my clients, and one I wish I could afford to experience myself.

It's run by Hiroki Odo, whose flagship restaurant has two Michelin Stars. I'd expect a deliberate, measured style, with appropriate subtlety. Though looking at the 'menu' of the restaurant 'odo' I admit to finding it uninspiring. For someone like me, whose expertise in the relevant niches is comparable to the chef's, it reads as exhaustingly vague, and much more a listing of how many courses there are than anything meant to pique the interest or tempt the appetite. A terrible habit of many modern Very Expensive Establishments, and one I'd like to see Michelin criticize more aggressively.

'Hall' on the other hand looks lovely. It's got style and poise. The menu is small. The food, wine, and liquor lists are short but nicely and precisely chosen. The cocktails aren't numerous, but as the focus they look beautifully balanced and well structured, with something that will catch the eye and interest of almost any cocktail afficionado irrespective of their personal taste in drinks. It might well work. 

Except then he went and did an interview with Eater and they tipped his hand like a bunch of chumps. 

Successful high-end operations tend to need subsidies. Investors no longer understand the concepts and goals of community or social capital- they just want cash. (This isn't news, even if it bears repeating: Everything about modern investment is both wrong and backwards.)

So every fancy restaurant benefits from having a reliable money maker to help hold it up. This one is well disguised in a lot of ways unless you know what to look for, but they went ahead and blurted it out so I'll give some more detail.

Behold the most lucrative con in modern restaurants: the Wagyu burger.

What makes Wagyu so expensive? Treatment of the beef that results in incredibly dense and flavorful marbling. The texture and flavor are everything, and that comes from the meat's natural state.

What does making beef into a burger do? It grinds the meat, mixing the protein and fat into an emulsified patty. What happens when you cook it? You get a pockmarked texture that's harder to sear, and fat leaks out- a lot faster than if you'd left the meat whole. 

Both of those do serious damage to expensive beef, and Wagyu is no exception. But... Wagyu has a certain cachet. People associate it with quality and a premium price. Here's the tricky bit though- as long as the fat percentage is the same, there's no appreciable difference between A5 and, say, USDA Select in texture once ground. Not in texture, not in flavor, not in anything noteworthy at all.

So how much of a burger needs to be Wagyu to be labeled as such? Well... there's no fixed required minimum to meet truth-in-advertising laws, so it could be a drop in the bucket. Easy as can be to make $25 burgers when you're paying for a dollar worth of Wagyu fat and trim mixed with a pile of more standard beef.

A little extrapolation later... this blundering interview by Eater might have accidentally torpedoed a couple promising restaurants and potentially a chef's career.

Greeeeat work, guys. Keep it up. Sigh.

The Rich People's Christmas Lists

Eater did the thing again, poking fun at gratuitous potential holiday spends while discreetly providing affiliate links. 

Clever, yes. Mildly to moderately underhanded? Also yes.

But I had to look, just to see for myself what they were talking about. Their tagline was:

"The Fanciest Food, Kitchen, and Cookware Gifts Imaginable

Is it even a kitchen without a $200 pepper grinder and a $400 pineapple? (I’ll sip from my $1,200 bedazzled travel mug while you answer.)"

As soon as I read that I went AHA, because there's only one $200 pepper grinder on the market that I know about and I already own it! 

They took what's essentially a legacy item on par with your grandmother's Kitchenaid (the one from the era of machined internal parts rather than plastic ones) and used that to frame the notion of other things on their list being halfway reasonable.

Utter rubbish.

A 400 dollar pineapple.

A 230 dollar, fifty gram chocolate bar. 

A 140 dollar 'Gucci' pannetone?!

And that's just some of the edible stuff.

There's a candle that smells of cucumber for ~250. Why? You can probably get that at Yankee Candle for a tenth of that. 

Or the thousand dollar ice press, for when you absolutely have to have those perfect 2" spheres of crystal clear ice for your drink. 

Who on earth is reading this and thinking "Huh. I could use one of those!"?

Eater's audience is not the people who buy stuff like this. Never was, never will be. I honestly don't know why they bothered beyond curiosity clicks. It's a SkyMall Christmas list. A pile of gratuitously expensive mostly-junk masquerading as haute couture journalism.

Bah, humbug.