Poor Andrew Knowlton wrote a sincere plea on behalf of diners everywhere imploring restaurant chefs to locate the fine line between indulgence and using fat as a crutch to make everything tasty, asking them to stick to the gastro-intestinally friendly side of that line.
In a rant on Bon Appetit entitled “Dear Chefs, Are You Trying To Kill Me?”, Andrew goes after the bacon/marrow/duck fat/lard/foie gras/stuffed pig trotter/fried egg-topped/pork belly craze, wondering whether anyone is considering about how he, or any other diner, might feel the morning after eating any of these oh-so trendy menu items.
Knowlton also called in Gabrielle Hamilton, Danny Bowien, and Michael Moss (author of Salt Sugar Fat) for a podcast on the matter, in which we heard Gabrielle Hamilton slam the Epic Meal Time-esque approach to food altogether, in her characteristically satisfying quiet-but-scathing tones. Said Gabrielle:
“It’s actually become a sign of the restaurants I don’t eat in anymore. That they are in fact disguising their poor cooking skills with, ‘Hey, let’s just put pork on it!’ That’s sort of become the big macho joke in that kind of — who’s that guy? — Josh Ozersky style. It’s like, ‘Oh, and then I’m going to add bacon on top of the bacon. And then we’re gonna FRY the bacon.’ And I’m often thinking, ‘What’s the manhood you’re defending here?’ It’s juvenile. It’s boyish and juvenile.”
Preach it, girl. You can listen to the podcast in its entirety here.
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