A comment at this NYT article:
"Creepy food" is so apt.
Lots of photos at the link, but I'm low on free links at this point in the month, and we've still got 11 days to go. So you'll just have to take my word for it. I don't think all the food is "creepy," but it is all striving to look expensive to everyone who's hot to enjoy the life by spending large wads of money. I think the subtle subtext is: Don't go to these places.
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63 comments:
This says so much about the IQ of New York Times' audience. Mexican taco trucks have been the cause of more dead piglets than all of the pigs killed in the Gilded Age.
In the Philippines this (called lechon ) is feast food, but its hardly limited to the wealthy. Its typical of, say, a town fiesta. You will also find it in Spain, notably in Segovia. Which is another reason, among many others, to visit Segovia.
Pig cheek is the tastiest cut on the entire animal. Lifted at a luau from a whole suckling pig after removal of the banana leaves is truly a culinary and cultural delight. Delicious. Deli sandwich is to laugh.
When you’ve got a fat hog - or suckling pig - cut it.
Lab grown meat seems to be falling out of fashion. But what about lab grown human flesh? Since no one died to make it (assuming you cultured it from willing donors' cells), it's not really cannibalism. Could become the next high-priced delicacy.
Which side would RFKJr come out on the great cannibalism debate? CC, JSM
This post is true to the new motto of the Althouse blog: encompasses the entire universe of human amusement.
So predictable: Reagan years - the Decade of Greed. Trump years - the New Gilded Age. They never stop.
Supposedly part of the taboo against pork in Judaism is because swineflesh tastes too much like human flesh. The early YHWH devotees wanted to differentiate themselves from cults that sacrificed people. CC, JSM
Just like the Christmas Duck in "A Christmas Story".
So the NYT commenter would prefer to be unaware of where the food came from. Noted.
Supposedly part of the taboo against pork in Judaism is because swineflesh tastes too much like human flesh.
And they know this how??? 😯 I thought the taboo had to do with parasites/trichinosis in pork. Unclean. That was why my Catholic Mother cooked pork chops to resemble hockey pucks.
It comes from trsder joes come on, like the ropa vieja (shredded beef) empanadas but $600.00
Oh, lord. There's no way I could enjoy a meal with that poor piglet staring at me from across the table.
When I read that, my first thought was to ask: "someone unearthed video of Katie Porter appearing as a contestant on the Dating Game?"
Standing just to the left of the great burrito from a taco truck and the perfect deli sandwich is the thirsty Turkish bath towel.
When mayor bane 2 takes off he will declare it haram
DBQ: "And they know this how??? "
I know, right? Someone must have eaten both at some point. Or at least hung out with worshipers of the other gods and picked up on their conversation. And of course there's the smell if you walk past a row of temples cooking up their offerings. CC, JSM
https://archive.ph/VzIvA
Gets you past the paywall.
Ref trichinosis: maybe. People didn't have germ theory until relatively recently, but folkways come from trial/error, noticing correlations, etc. And I remember from AP Bio that meat inspectors can see infestations in pork with the naked eye. So the Israelites might have figured it out. CC, JSM
If you were serving on a crew in the age of sail, well, just google “long pork.”
Common serving style for BBQ piglet in just about any middle class home in Cebu. Many have a small concrete block pigsty in the back yard, and raise and slaughter their own.
Honestly, the head is the best part.
$600!?!? You can get one for less than half that price at several Chinese barbecue joints in the North Atlanta exurbs. My wife and I enjoyed a Thanksgiving duck for about $35.
I thought the favorite festival meal in the Philippines was long pig?
Face your choices like a man.
I'm a carnivore, but I can't stand to see any animal die if they have the time to realize it's happening. I hate those videos of lions killing some poor animal in slow motion, but a surprise bolt to the head makes it OK for me to eat. The other exception is any animal trying to kill me, I'll strangle that mountain lion and eat his liver on the spot with the fava beans and fine Chianti I always carry in the woods just in case. The exception to this exception is mosquitoes, which I doubt can be prepared in away appropriate to my status, but I keep an open mind.
I think they should have blindfold on that pig.
ChrisC: “ Honestly, the head is the best part”
Think you meant to append this to the Clinton post above. CC, JSM
Resturante Botin in Madrid - reputed to be the oldest restaurant in the world (estab 1725) - serves lechon portions for euro 32. Excellent restaurant and great atmosphere. It was always a must stop for my wife and I when we lived in Spain.
HTTPS: botin.es/en to get the English menu and history.
Ok, that made me laugh out loud. Does that make me a bad person?
You don’t have salad with a sandwich, you have chips.
Say that in sean bean voice
All food prep is creepy at some stage to someone. But serving platters should highlight the beauty of the edible parts and minimize the creep factor, preferably to zero.
I thought the taboo had to do with parasites/trichinosis in pork. Unclean. That was why my Catholic Mother cooked pork chops to resemble hockey pucks.
Same here. My Lutheran Mother cooked the pork chops to the point that the only taste was the salt one put on them.
I was on a consulting gig in Iowa in the early 90's and a waiter convinced me to have an Iowa pork chop. It was five times as thick and cooked Medium. Delicious!
Judaism has all kinds of weird food tabboos and practices. Go look up Kosher slaughter. They also ban shellfish - which doesn't taste like human flesh.
Pork is much less expensive than beef in my area, so we've been eating more of it. Nothing beats a good T-bone, but when its 2x the price of a pork chop, then I'll go with the pork chop.
The rich have so much $$ they don't know what to do with it. IS the NYT's no longer worshipping rich people now that Elon Musk has gotten political?
New Gilded Age indeed. A copy of the NYT Style magazine with an article about Gen X caught my eye at the book swap. The magazine is stuffed with ads for really expensive stuff. The New Gilded Age is the Timespeople's world. Not mine.
Golf clap for JS Mosby.
All these photos have that same orangish cast to them that those horrible 50’s food photos have appearing on James Lileks’ website.
My wife, who is from NC, organized a "pig pickin'" party for my 40th birthday, complete with the barbequed whole piglet as centerpiece. In CT. It was a big hit, and delicious, but some were creeped out. Their loss.
I don't see how it's much different from serving whole fish platters, or, well, turkey.
I had the same thought. The Gallery Of Regrettable Food.
Check out the real estate section of the NYT. Or the travel section. Or the ads in any New Yorker magazine. The consumption has always been conspicuous.
That $600 pig probably serves 20 or so. Cheap in Manhattan. I've paid a lot more for dinner for 4 that left everyone hungry.
The chicken nuggets topped with caviar is the least appetizing of the photos.
A little privacy, please. No pun intended, maybe, baby.
Spanferkel!!! Yum!!! Much cheaper at Germanfest.
My wife, who is from an eastern European village, used buy a roast piglet for her birthday celebrations during the Gilded Age of the 1990s.
In his book about the South Pacific, Theroux relates the theory that the reason Spam is so popular in Polynesia is...you guessed it.
"The Eighty Six, a West Village speakeasy, serves a $110 lobster and a $165 whole roast duck".
Publix has whole frozen duck at $3.99 a pound. cheaper than chicken. Gonna fry one after I fry my turkey for Xmas.
@ Narciso: My favorite Cuban food is Vaca Frita (literally fried cow). It's flank steak slow roated in citrus and herbs then shredded and crisped on a grill. To die for with Moros and Maduros.
Oh yeah thats a great one
Madrid's oldest restaurant--and maybe Spain's oldest restaurant is on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. The restaurant specializes in roast suckling pig (or at least small pigs) and has been serving them up since at least 1725--in the same spot on the square. I made mine in ~1985 and it was tasty.
Oops--that's "had mine". Of course as a young fraternity guy in San Diego in the mid 196 0s I helped do a luau with a whole pig,
> All food prep is creepy at some stage
Surely not termites!
Somebody's Watching Me
’Pig cheek is the tastiest cut on the entire animal.’
That’s a fact.
"Give me a great burrito from a taco truck or the perfect deli sandwich with salad and let the wealthy keep their creepy food."
Where do they think the carnitas in their burrito or salami in their deli sandwich came from? It's the same damn pig, just further processed earlier in the system that brought it to their plate.
Back when I was still hunting, wild hogs were well establised as a major ecological problem on Texas ranchland. If you saw them, and had a decent shot, you took the shot and let the buzzards and coyotes feed. Most of them are terrible eating anyway, once they get more than about 60 lb or so. And the boars get terribly rank, inedible. But: a small juvenile about 40 lb, you can dress that sucker out, remove the bristles, tie the legs together with some baling wire, and it'll just fit on one of those cheap Old Smokey charcoal grills. A few hours over mesquite, covered up, low and slow, and the meat is delectable. Where I hunted, the wild hogs got fat on acorns and pecans.
To answer a question asked above:
The ancient Greek doctor Galen wrote: “When people unwittingly eat human flesh, served by unscrupulous restaurant owners and other such people, the similarity to pork is often noted.” That “often” is . . . disturbing.
Don’t believe me? See J. C. McKeown, ‘A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities’, p. 161, quoting Galen, ‘On the Power of Foods’ 3.
Don’t believe me? See J. C. McKeown, ‘A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities’, p. 161, quoting Galen, ‘On the Power of Foods’ 3.
Just remembered: McKeown teaches Classics at U.W. Madison - or did: he may have retired. I wonder if Ann knows him.
"Judaism has all kinds of weird food tabboos and practices."
Yeah, those Jews, so weird.
This was noticed in the Middle Ages and Roman period as well.
During the Black Death (1347–1351):
Some Jewish communities had lower early mortality
Likely reasons:
Ritual handwashing
Burial practices
Less participation in large Christian religious gatherings
Community quarantine norms
But instead of concluding “hygiene matters,” many Christians concluded:
Jews were poisoning wells
Jews were protected by the Devil
Jews caused the plague
This led directly to pogroms and massacres.
So yes — differences were noticed, but misinterpreted catastrophically.
Likewise, in ancient Rome and the broader Greco-Roman world, people noticed that different populations sometimes seemed to suffer from different illnesses, but their explanations were entirely moral, cultural, or environmental, obviously not biological in our modern sense.
Roman writers, satirists, and historians occasionally remark that Jews seemed healthier, hardier, or more disciplined, and by implication, less prone to certain illnesses compared with surrounding populations.
Tacitus (Histories, 5.2): Notes Jewish distinctiveness in customs; their restraint and ritual purity are implied to make them resistant to indulgence-related problems. "“They [the Jews] observe strict rules regarding food and cleanliness, and their abstinence from certain meats and practices makes them a people apart… they are obstinate in their customs and remarkably resistant to indulgence and disease.”
Juvenal (Satires 14): Critiques Jews, but indirectly highlights that their dietary restrictions and communal habits set them apart — sometimes implying vitality or robustness.
Pliny the Elder (Natural History): Remarks on differences between peoples in diet and constitution; Jews’ avoidance of pork is singled out as distinctive. “They shun pork, they wash before meals, and their strictures make them peculiar… their bodies are hardy, their lives disciplined, unlike the Roman indulgents who fall ill from their own excesses.”
So weird. How remarkable that laws which were enumerated in the Bible (from the 13th-7th century BCE) would be healthful? And why did so many other peoples notice the effects but reject this information and dismiss the Jewish people as weird?
I really don’t understand why a suckling pig costing $600 is shocking. Assuming this is premium pork, cost to the restaurant is probably about $4/lb, if that’s a 30 lb pig then it’s $120 on arrival. It will feed about 20 guests, generously. Plus, preparation and all the side dishes? $20 a person isn’t exactly Lucullus territory. Let’s hope these people never go to a local Fireman’s picnic and discover whole hog BBQ.
Of course, getting lockjaw from trichinosis in under-cooked pork is not terribly conducive to good health. Also pork is one of those meats that doesn't keep well, spoiling quickly when there's no refrigeration. Lamb and mutton on the other hand.....
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