The Tablegrumper
Even the most upbeat people have an inner grump. Take Marcia Gagliardi, aka, The Tablehopper.
I don’t know Marcia – never met her – but know of her through her weekly Tablehopper newsletter. If you don’t already subscribe, do it here and do it now. That’s an order. You will thank me.
Anyway, Marcia is such an eager reviewer that she pointedly calls herself a “food writer,” not a “critic.” She says, “I want to share…what I think is the best an establishment has to offer.”
But even an enthusiast such as Marcia has an inner grump. In her first newsletter of each year, she includes a list of ten things she doesn’t want to see in restaurants and bars anymore. Here’s her complete list for 2008.
I’ve blogged her 2008 list in this post. I’ll go back to her 2007 list and offer my own 2008 list in future entries.
No More in 2008 from The Tablehopper – a Grumpy reaction.
1. Pork belly. No props from Grumpy on this one. My only beef with pork belly is that the serving is sometimes all fat and no meat. We need better quality control, people. However, as long as there are some solid strips of flesh buried in that there belly on my plate, I’m all in.
2. Panna cotta. I am so with you. Panna cotta is nothing more than bad, really bad, flan.
3. Wines by the glass that average $12 each. Averaging $12 a glass doesn’t offend me, if there are some good sub-$10 selections available. But, when the cheapest glass is $12 – and I’ve see it a lot lately – I stick to iced tea.
4. Wine bar proliferation. Marcia, this won’t be on your 2009 list. Trust me. Half of them will be out of business by Labor Day.
5. "You still working on that?" This one didn’t bother me until The Tablehopper mentioned it. Then it dawned on me, if it’s work to eat a restaurant’s food, they shouldn’t be in business. Unless they serve crab.
6. Four kinds of salt to sprinkle on your bread. I haven’t experienced this one so let me make sure I get this straight. A restaurant actually puts four different kinds of salt on the table??? For what purpose??? I mean there’s normal table salt, there’s sea salt and there’s kosher salt but it’s all sodium chloride. Yes, sometimes it’s nice to have salt coarsely ground and other times finely ground is better but really! This is pretention to the point of foolishness.
7. Open kitchens. Granted, they can be noisy and should not be used in a place that aspires to the ambiance of, say, Gary Danko. But Grumpy gives open kitchens two thumbs way up. When I’m dining alone, I prefer to sit at the counter. An open kitchen is good counter entertainment, second only to a great bartender. And, besides, sometimes I like to actually talk to the person who cooks my food.
8. Flat screen TVs. When dining solo, I appreciate a good TV, and this next point is really important, IN THE BAR!!! A TV should no more be in a restaurant’s dining room than in your dining room at home.
9. Saketinis and soju cocktails. Again, haven’t experienced these but my reaction is, “Yuck!” I’m with Marcia – if you don’t have a liquor license and feel compelled to mix, stick to Champagne. I’ll order a Kir Royale. I promise.
10. Salumi. When I was a kid, my parents rarely let me eat cold cuts. I wanted them to buy, say, pimento loaf at the deli counter but they insisted on ham. They even had the audacity to believe that turkey left over from the Thanksgiving Day bird made better sandwiches that the pressed stuff that came in a long, rectangular block. The salumi craze released within me long repressed desires. All of a sudden, cold cuts were not only legit, they were gourmet! After years of being denied, I simply can’t get enough mortadella. But The Tablehopper has a point about the price – $14 for a few thin slices is high. On a per ounce basis, salumi may be the most expensive animal product on your plate this side of Beluga caviar! But my pet peeve with salumi is the thin slicing pretention. La Strada in Palo Alto brags about "cranking out thinly sliced" salumi on the chef's "hand cranked 1963 Berkel slicer." Folks, when you slice the salumi so thin that you can’t taste it, it defeats the purpose now, doesn’t it???!!!
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