All things exquisite* are disgusting when you first try them. – ELV
We’ve all been there. You’re at lunch with a group of colleagues, or invite someone into your home for a bite. Everyone’s salivating over the menu or parsing the finer points of your ouefs Escoffier fourée a la Parmigiana when someone (usually a guy) says something like “I don’t eat seafood,” or starts sniffing some unfamiliar dish as if it was designed to kill him. When this happens ladies and gentlemen, you have run smack dab into the “Yummy Phase,” and the socially stunted palate pygmies who are consumed by their childish food fears and infantile eating obsessions.
Adam Carrolla — a comedian possessing a keen eye for social absurdities and truckloads of common sense — rightly explains this retarded reversion (to insisting upon foods that appealed to you when you were ten years old) to a sense of entitlement on par with sitting in a high chair and wailing about wanting more ice cream.
ELV also considers America’s obsession with the simplistic and over-sweet to be the (partial) explanation for the popularity of the almost candified tomato sauces that grace(?) the pathetic pies sold (by the billions) by Domino’s, Pizza Hut, et al.
Women are certainly not exempt from the Yummy Phase, and can be even bigger pains in the ass than men (“I’m sorry, my wife doesn’t eat bacon unless it’s very crisp.”), but when the ladies revert to spoiled children at dinner, they usually use (invented, Oprah-endorsed, non-existent) food allergies as the excuse. Because “I have a glandular condition” sounds more scientific than “I only eat french fries with ketchup on them.”
For the record, Eating Las Vegas — the man and the Web site — doesn’t believe in food allergies. Food allergies are just a pseudo-scientific way to justify whatever Yummy Phase (or cockamamie diet) you’re trying to rationalize.
You know who doesn’t have food allergies? Africans.
Or Third World citizens.
Or those living in the deepest, darkest recesses of Appalachia.
So shut up, grow up, and open up. And go try some Roquefort cheese (or a woman’s crotch) sometime. You might actually enjoy it.
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* Bourbon, bleu cheese, oysters, oral sex, cigars, country ham, etc..
ELV. I must say that this post is the most insightful one you have shared with the “eating” public. You have preformed a mitzvah and a public service announcement explaining why there are those whose palette fail to appreciate good food from a variety of cultures and cooking styles. These individuals have never left their juvenile taste buds behind their adolescent years. As such they fail to understand or explore the wonderful world of food tastes and textures. Carrola explaining the need for trying various tastes is important in a males development as a lover of all things culinary including a women’s crotch. The same is true for a women to become fully developed to a variety of tastes and get beyond their juvenile Ymmmy Phase. Knowing this I have always found it prudent to have a can of Reddi Whip handy when I found a partner unwilling or unable to preform as desired. The sweet taste of whip cream has always overcome their aversions and helped cultivate a taste of the finer things in life.
ELV responds: Whipped cream is always appropriate – whether gracing a banana cream pie, or your banana.
Every time someone says “I don’t eat seafood” I shudder. “Seafood”? Like it’s all one thing? So now we’re painting nori, escargot, lobster and tuna with the same brush…. Isn’t that like saying “I don’t eat anything from a farm”? I want to meet that asshole. No beef, no eggs, no lettuce…
I have had this conversation several times lately…as a chef, it usually occurs with waiters.
Waiter; “This lady is pregnant, she cant have blue cheese.”
Me; “Says who? And that is not blue cheese, it is Humboldt Fog, that is ash not mold.”
Waiter (returning); “She says she cannot have unpasteurized cheese, doctor’s orders”
Me; “Blue cheese is pasteurized, but like I said, that is not blue cheese. Also, we are in the United States, I am not allowed to sell, buy, serve, or make any dairy products that are unpasteurized. Nor is anyone else, it is illegal, but very exciting to think about. ”
What is it with all these doctors warning pregnant women about a danger that simply does not exist? Total hassle for us in the restaurants.
Docs, please, help me here.
The overly sweet pizza sauce drives me to drink (more).
John,
While your fans probably regard your general churlishness as a necessary evil of your position as a food critic, you have obviously forgotten the truism that while “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, they are not entitled to their own facts.”
You can, and often do, spew your opinion with certainty, because your opinion is your own and as such, it can’t be refuted. However, in the case of your unfortunate post above, you have flown a little too close to the sun of logic and fact and your usual mixture of bluster and bravado hold no currency when you are just plain wrong. Hundreds of people have lost loved ones, mostly children, to food allergies. I should post your web site and opinion on the various food allergy web sites and let those grieving people descend on your rotting carcass of stupidity, but I don’t feel the need to publicize your idiocy any more than you already have on your own.
I have no problem with your general opinion that too many people have palate’s that are too simple to enjoy a wide range of flavors. Where you and…well every adult who is not an asshole…differ is that the rest of us understand that people can no more change their sense of taste than they can change their height. Your sense of taste is obviously refined and diverse. It is a gift not unlike that of an accomplished musician or athlete. But instead of celebrating that gift with an acknowledgement of wonder and gratitude, you instead decide to attack those not as lucky as you. How dare they live on this earth fouling the world with their desire for candied Italian sauces! The nerve of those people to enjoy what tastes good to them!
Your post was particularly illustrative on one point, albeit probably not the one that you intended. At no time has it been so easy to scrape away the veneer of John Curtas the food critic and see the unhappy, pompous bully underneath.