Kenny Shopsin gone, Gilson responds, Reichl hindsight, Brewdog's shame, and more...
Family Meal - Tuesday, September 4th, 2018
Hello Tuesday,
Food media took the weekend off, so this should be quick.
Let’s get to it…
Some sad news – Per Kottke.org, “Word is filtering through the NYC food community that Kenny Shopsin has passed away. Together with his wife and children, Shopsin was the proprietor of Shopsin’s General Store, an iconic NYC restaurant, an establishment.” There will be several full obits to come, but Calvin Trillin’s excellent 2002 tribute in the New Yorker covers a ton of ground on both Kenny and the restaurant. For design fans: “One wall has, in addition to a three-dimensional advertisement for Oscar Mayer beef franks, some paintings of the place and its denizens. The portrait of Kenny shows him as a bushy-haired man with a baby face that makes him look younger than he is, which is nearly sixty, and a girth that may reflect years of tasting his more remarkable creations; he's wearing a Shopsin's General Store T-shirt, folded over in the way the cognoscenti know how to fold it in order to form the words ‘Eat Me.; A large sign behind the tiny kitchen that Kenny shares with his longtime assistant, José, says ‘All Our Cooks Wear Condoms.’”
There is also, of course, the I Like Killing Flies documentary (IMDb), and its iconic “You’re a Piece of Shit” clip on radical self-acceptance (as a piece of shit). RIP.
The Impresario – Forgot to include on Friday, but ICYMI, Pete Wells had this in the NYT last week: “Why David Chang Matters: Diners who look for his stamp in every Momofuku restaurant may be missing his rare achievement as an impresario who lets his chefs innovate.” Wells notes that, “It is possible to read thousands of words of critical appraisals of Majordomo without learning that the executive chef there is named Jude Parra-Sickels.” It is, of course, also possible to listen to an entire, hour-long episode of The Dave Chang Show on the topic of “crafting a unique menu” at Majordomo, and only hear “Jude”, no last name given, mentioned once in passing…
The Reply – Chef Will Gilson (Puritan & Co.) has a rebuttal of sorts to Boston Globe critic Devra First’s August 18th column, “Why don’t Boston restaurants win national awards?” It’s only a rebuttal “of sorts” because he agrees with First’s main point: The kinds of innovation and risk taking necessary to win national awards can’t happen when opening costs are as high as they are in Boston. But he does have a bone to pick with food media in general: “The press wants us to win awards, but they also want to know about our mental health, our fostering of environments laden with sexual misconduct, and our weight-loss journeys. They want to lay our problems bare for the public, not acknowledging how many of those problems stem from the very system of awards, reviews, and press. After we have been picked apart in each review — and compared to restaurants that no longer exist — I am left asking the question, ‘Who are these awards even for?’”
On the podcasts – Matt Rodbard interviewed Ruth Reichl for the Taste podcast out yesterday. Among the nuggets: She would’ve tried to talk Pete Wells out of his Locol review. If she were the LA Times, she “would be very very worried” about Tejal Rao heading west to cover California. And: “I don’t think it’s your job as a restaurant critic to go in and say ‘has this guy ever abused you?’ That’s not your job… [But as an editor] now that we know what’s going on behind the kitchen door… if I were going to put [Mario Batali] on the cover today, I would investigate.” NYPD: “Get in line.”
The (District) Opportunity –D.C. organizers are hosting a Black Restaurant Week this November, with the usual dining discounts, plus bartender competitions, mixology classes, a conference “about entrepreneurship, financing, and other topics; and an awards brunch honoring local hospitality professionals on Nov. 11…. The organizers are seeking the public's help in identifying participants in D.C. and the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Allied restaurants, or those who want to show their support for the black community, are also invited to participate.” Details in WCP.
The Suits – “A farm in upstate New York is suing [Ken Friedman and White Gold Butchers] for nearly $40,000 in unpaid invoices — cash owed for animals that ended up at the shop.” Details from Serena Dai in Eater NY.
For design fans – “Chef Renee Erickson’s new bar, Deep Dive, is Seattle’s most dramatic.” And if you like design by curio, you’ll love this drama in Eater (pictures zoomable). But if I were looking to add some intimacy to a space set inside the cold, corporate bubbles that are Amazon’s Seattle Spheres, I’d try to find something a little warmer than “draping” strips of metal across the ceiling.
And last and least: For the bar – Brewery / brewpub chain (and hotelier?) Brewdog has a long history of questionable marketing stunts, even managing to muck things up when they were ostensibly trying to do good (See: “a beer called No Label… [brewed to] celebrate an area known for its sexual diversity” that managed to insult the LGBTQ community, and “Beer for Girls”, which “was designed to raise awareness of the gender pay gap and inequality within the beer industry,” but wound up “making the beneficiary of the campaign the butt of the joke”). Their latest: beer.porn, a website “parody” of porn site pornhub(.)com that lasted all of 24 hours before being taken down Wednesday. Screenshots - here. Analysis - via Good Beer Hunting. Shame - [link not found].
And that’s it for today. I’m off to practice some radical self-acceptance, but I’ll see you here Friday for next Family Meal.
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