Major Awards – 2022

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2022 was the year that wasn’t.

Everything was supposed to come together this year, remember? The Covid insanity had passed, the economy was starting to boom again, demand was pent up and the party-as-a-verb crowd was raring to go.

Instead we had inflation, supply chain teeth-gnashing, water woes and travel nightmares.

We started the year in Paris and ended it in London. In between two tasty bookends there was grief aplenty, health issues and the gnawing sense that the town and body we live in both have their best days behind them. A dear friend (original Proper Lunch Buncher Bruce Bloch), and local food writer (Greg Thilmont) — both left us far too soon — leaving us reeling from too much sadness compressed into one twelve month period. It is one thing when folks older than you kick the bucket, quite another when your juniors start checking out without warning. If 2022 will be remembered for anything, it will be recalled as the year of serious reassessment — the time when the preciousness of time and life was brought to the fore.

On the bright side, deaths tend to bring people closer together (“Even if we’re just whistling past the graveyard,” as my mom put it), so we saw more of our relatives (and children) than we have in any year in recent memory; we lost a little weight (TRUE!); regained our golf swing, and kept our hearing and our hair, so there’s that.

Another year-end bonus was a very successful Desert Companion Restaurant Awards fête, which had me tearing up with pride at how far these awards have come.

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From very modest beginnings, these magazine awards have endured and flourished over 25 years. In the early days (1997-2005) I was a committee of one, and for years, I paid for the tiny plaques and awards myself, and drove all over town delivering them to a recipients. (You can still see one near the front door at Sen of Japan.) Now, under the stewardship on Nevada Public Radio, there’s a yearly banquet, with all the trimmings, and they’ve grown into something meaningful to our culinary community, instead of a solo poofter bestowing them like some imperious potentate bellowing into the wind.

Which means there’s a fair amount of pomp and circumstances accompanying them…not to mention a tremendous lunch. The banquet was a big success; glasses were raised and speeches given, but not before the crowd was acknowledged as we usually do to begin the proceedings:

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2022 will also go down as the year where your majesty truly lost a bit of his appetite…but not so much that he cannot bestow credit where credit is due, one last time, for the myriad of marvelous meals he enjoyed.

So here goes….first with the actual, important awards (decided by a committee of Desert Companion food writers), then the Major Awards you’ve been waiting for….with commentary, of course.

Desert Companion

 

Neighborhood Restaurant(s) of the Year (tie):

Khoury’s Mediterranean Restaurant:

Khoury Mediterranean Restaurant - Las Vegas Sun News

Rosa Ristorante:

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Asian Restaurant of the Year: Trattoria Nakamura-Ya:

Trattoria NAKAMURA-YA | Tokyo Style Italian Restaurant Las Vegas

Restaurateur of the Year: John Arena

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– the godfather of the Las Vegas food scene, and a force of nature in the world of pizza, Arena should’ve gotten this award years ago. (My bad.)

Hall of Fame (tie):

Piero’s Italian Cuisine – which didn’t care enough to show up for the awards (or even acknowledge them), so we won’t do more than give them a mere mention here (even though it was some of my best prose in the ‘zine).

Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge – which was my father’s favorite restaurant, right down to the indelible fruit platter brimming with melon (at varying degrees of ripeness) and cottage cheese. No matter what you think of the Miami Vice lighting or gargantuan portions, there’s no denying its place in the firmament of iconic Vegas eats.

Rising Star of the Year: Eric Prato, Garagiste Wine Bar:

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 – to quote the deathless prose of the wordsmith-in-residence:

Prato’s mission is educating customers to try something new, and if the steady stream of younger, adventuresome wine lovers at the bar is any indication (along with his burgeoning online sales), he is succeeding by tapping into (or helping create) a market no one in Las Vegas knew existed.

Chef of the Year: Nicole Brisson:

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 – Never was there a more deserving recipient. Can I pick ’em or can I pick ’em?

Strip Restaurant of the Year: Brezza – A hit right out of the gate, Brezza scored the daily double with this award and the kudos to its chef. As Heidi Knapp Rinella put it in DC:

Brezza is the Italian word for “breeze” — an apt name, as executive chef Nicole Brisson and business partner Jason Rocheleau have imbued their Resorts World restaurant with a freshness that seems to drift from the Amalfi Coast.

New Restaurant of the Year: Scotch 80 Prime – the name might not be new (this is its second incarnation), but the steakhouse that now occupies a corner of the Palms is a whole different beast that the previous tenant. Chef Marty Red DeLeon Lopez has this joint firing on all cylinders with an arresting menu of seared cow classics mixed with creative apps and killer sides. A unique addition to our thundering herd of steer emporiums. Jim Begley:

…it can be difficult to differentiate one [steakhouse] from another. But Lopez manages do so in the details. He highlights his heritage in his tiradito with the inclusion of traditional Filipino ingredients such as jackfruit, pickled papaya, and taro chips. His kitchen takes risks with burrata topped with uni and Osetra caviar, pairing seafood with cheese, and the sweet sea urchin assuming a role normally reserved for fruit. 

Restaurant of the Year: Anima by EDO – When it came time to debate ROTY the discussion was short, obvious and unanimous. No other restaurant in Las Vegas made the splash that Anima did this year.

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With the prestigious awards out of the way, let us further flounce some flummery, and focus on the fatuous. Here they are food fans, our favorites follies of feast and misfortune in 2022:

THE PANS

Worst Meal of the Year – Lago

Runner-Up – whatever this was (at The Pepper Club):

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So Not Worth It Meal of the Year – Wakuda:

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Cry Me a River Award – every chef or owner who bent my ear in the last year over staffing woes, supply-chain issues, and money problems, and then was spotted cavorting through Tokyo, slurping up Tuscany, or making whoopee at a Mallorcan fish market.

Saddest Closing – Saga Pastry + Sandwich

You Tell Me and We’ll Both Know Award – the inexplicable appeal of Asian hotpot…….the only meal on earth where no matter what you order, everything always ends up tasting the same:

Image(…and we’ll have the A-5 wagyu that tastes just like the U/15 shrimp…)

Schadenfreude AwardDavid Chang’s overblown, overrated, overpriced Majordomo fiasco at The Palazzo. It takes real talent to screw up a steakhouse in Vegas, but Mr. Bao Bun figured out how.

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We’re So Over It

caviar

QR codes

orange wine

natural wine

any beer it takes more than two words to describe

celebrity chefs

cronuts

food competitions

pizza fetishization

gooey food videos

impossible to get into restaurants

smoked cocktails

smoked everything

smoked anything but smoked meat

communal seating

micro-greens

tweezer food

“vegan” butchers

“vegan” cheese

let’s face it: vegan anything

Japanese beef

tequila bars

Martha F**cking Stewart

Tits on a Bull Award – I’m rooting hard for you, Eater Vegas, because you could be such a force for good on the Vegas food scene. But the reliance on p.r. fluff and listicle after listicle needs some seasoning with actual opinion. On the plus side, at least Bradley Martin is nowhere to be found. ;-)

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THE PICKS

Best Restaurant That’s Closest to My House (toss-up) – Main Street Provisions and Esther’s Kitchen

Favorite Watering HoleGaragiste

Steak of the YearSparrow + Wolf:

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Runner-UpCUT:

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Sushi of the YearSushi Hiro:

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Runner-UpYUI Edomae Sushi

Most Anticipated Opening of the YearLotus of Siam at Red Rock

Italians of the Year – these guys:

Image(Vetri & Trees sounds like a haberdashery)

Lunch(s) of the YearCipriani

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Lunch of the Year (European Division)La Tour D’Argent Paris (France, not Kentucky)

Brunch of the YearAl Solito Posto

French Meal of the YearGuy Savoy (Paris)

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Runner-UpGuy Savoy (Las Vegas)

Japanese Meal of the YearRaku:

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Runner(s)-UpSanga, Kaiseki Yuzu

Chinese Meal of the YearGenting Palace (Resorts World)

Runner-UpRainbow Kitchen

Korean Meal of the YearSoyo Barstaurant

Tacos of the Year (toss-up)Sin Fronteras Tacos and Letty’s

Image(Quesotacos FTW)

Favorite Meat-festRincon de Buenos Aires

Runner-Up8oz Korean Steakhouse

Burger of the YearMain Street Provisions

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Runner-Up BOTYNusr-Et:

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Slider of the Year – this mini-filet on a hot-buttered bun at Jamon Jamon Tapas:

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Brisket of the Year – this beauty from Tamez BBQ (a speck of a roadside stand) in Athens, Georgia:
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Hot Dog of the YearWindy City Beef N Dogs:
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Salad of the Year (because The Food Gal® insists we have some green on this page) – the Caesar at Esther’s Kitchen:

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Pleasant Surprise of the YearBalla

Runner-Up PSOTY: Amalfi by Bobby Flay

Most Expensive Meal of the Year – a $400 fagri (red porgy) at Milos:

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Image(It says right here: I owe $14.72 because you had the salad with the dressing on the side)

Most Fun Food Event Not Connected with Any Awards or Eating: Las Vegas Book Festival:

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Butcher of the YearFeatherblade English Craft Butchery

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Podcast of the YearEat.Talk.Repeat. – Have you been living under a rock or something?

Hole-in-the-Wall of the YearThe Daily Bread

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Most Visited Hotel Because It Has the Most Good Restaurants in the Most Accessible SpaceResorts World

Restaurant We’re Rooting Hardest ForMariscos El Frescos:

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Cappucino AwardMothership Coffee Roasters

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Runner-UpPublicUs

Crabcake of the Year – this concupiscent crabby concoction at Vic & Anthony’s:

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We Wish We Had Eaten Here More AwardKaiseki Yuzu:

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Food Writer to Watch of the Year Brent Holmes

Vlogger of the YearSo-Chan! (Even if you don’t speak Japanese, his videos are informative, well-produced, and ton of fun….and mercifully short.)

Lifesaver Awards – to those places we repaired again and again when our favorites were busier than a whisky concession at an Irish wedding:

Noodlehead – Szechuan noodles in a pinch

Izakaya Go – all-purpose Japanese fills the bill:

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Mt. Everest – friendly and fast Indian

Matteo’s – always underrated; always excellent

Delmonico – great steaks; fabulous Friday lunch

Yu-Or-Mi Sushi – so much better than The Pepper Club

Carversteak – just edged out for steak of the year by two heavyweights

Wally’s – best wine selection and prices on the Strip

Ed. note: In case you’re wondering, we didn’t include any meals/restaurants from our recent London trip to any of these categories, it’s because we are just days back from the trip and want to share our British musings with you in a separate post early next year.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

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Letter of the Month – So You Want to be a Food Writer…

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Ed. note: Every week we get e-mails, DMs, texts, etc. asking for our favorite (fill in the blank) __________, steakhouse, sushi, dim sum parlor, high falutin’ French, you name it. We’re always happy to send advice along, but none of those make us think the way Jessica recently did:

Dear Mr. Curtas,

For the last 10 years I have followed your works. Dreaming of the indulgent, and exquisite food you have been blessed to eat. Now, at just shy of 30 years old; I have finally decided on a career change. From being the youngest person in the state of Indiana to get my cosmetology license. To then being a stay at home mother. I have finally decided,  after decades of loving food, cooking and eating. I want to write about, and share my food experiences, like yourself.
 After doing research on how to start, it seems quite daunting.
At this point you must be wondering why I am even bothering you. I would like to ask your advice. What is a good way to start out in the field? Should I go straight to social media? Should I be blogging? Should I make Tic Tok and YouTube videos? Do I need a shtick  (like I only eat at certain types of places)? Any advice you are willing to bestow upon me, would be more then welcomed!
Sincerely,
Jessica
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Dear Jessica,
I’m going to give you two answers – one short (sort of) and probably along the lines you are looking for, and the other, another in a long line of my logorrheic lamentations on my alimentary ascriptions.
Answer #1:
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The first thing I would coach you to do is look around and then look inward. What are you really passionate about? Is it cooking? Eating out? Do you love something about your family’s food history that you’ve always wanted to share with others? Do you have family recipes you are proud of? Are you an avid baker? Does the thought of hunting down a great food truck quicken your pulse? Or do you dream of gourmet meals in dressed up settings?
This is a long way of saying yes, to get followers and be successful at this (however you define success) you will need a point of view and a shtick….but that shtick should always be an extension of who you are.
Then, I would look around where I live and check out who is covering the food scene. Check local magazines. Google local food bloggers. Check out TikTok and Instagram and see who is posting a lot in your area. And podcasting. Hell, even check out “elite Yelpers” and find out what they’re talking about.
Like any worthwhile endeavor, you have to start small. The greatest chef began making bread at his grandmother’s knee. The Hall of Fame ballplayer was once in Little League. Search for a niche in an area you love and see what unique voice you could bring to the subject.
Define what is special about your love of food and approach it from that angle. Use others for inspiration but try to find what makes your love of food unique to you and then figure out the best way to share it with others.
As for social media, I’m all for it, even if, for writers like me, its explosion has been more akin to what that asteroid did to the dinosaurs. TikTok is for youngsters (sort of) and those with the time (and skill) to produce short videos. Nothing against gloppy cheese pulls and humongous tacos, but there’s a gazillion TikTokkers and YouTubers out with whom you will be competing. Distinguishing yourself is going to be mighty hard. But if videos are your thing (and for those under 40, they seem to be), have at it. The learning curve isn’t that steep, but you have to do whatever you do consistently. The food landscape is littered with people who wanted to blog, or podcast, or post about food on some site, and then flamed out after a few months. The only way to build a following is to be a constant presence on whatever venue you choose, and hope that word of mouth increases your visibility.
Instagram is simpler, and becoming easier (either for still photos or videos), with the added bonus of now being more realistic and less concerned with professionally-polished content. As a recent article in Eater put it:
“The things that I see in photos now are really more of that photo dump style,” says Maggie. “It’s less of the perfectly curated marble studio and more interest in my actual kitchen that I actually cooked in.”
All of which bodes well for klutzy amateur food photogs like us, who simply want to get people excited about the foods we love.
To summarize: Find a shtick you love and shtick with it. Pick your platform and go nuts. But always be yourself.
If you truly want to write about food, the climb is much steeper and the audience much smaller, as you can read below…
Answer #2:
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(Let’s discuss our days as a galloping gourmet)
Before I begin doling out the infallible, inspiring, and unerringly erudite advice for which I am known, let me begin by noting that the landscape has changed dramatically since I began my career in food, no more so than in the past decade. The following is a much longer overview of my food writing trajectory (over ground which has been plowed before), to give you a little history on the subject of food writing, and perhaps some guidance.
I do not know how well you write or how much you intend to do it. I used to say that to be a good food writer you had to cook a lot, eat a lot, travel a lot and read a lot. The past ten years have relentlessly, systematically dismantled each of those (supposed) pillars of knowledge. Now, all you have to do now is know how to manage a social media account, none of which have anything to do with the written word. Cooking knowledge, eating adventures, and traveling experiences have also taken a hit, since with the swipe of a finger, a person can sound like they know all about Hong Kong dim sum parlors, or the best pastrami in New York.
Back in the Late Cretaceous period, you had to put in the work. Now, all you have to do is…
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(No passport? No problem.)
….which seems to be the motto of your generation (sorry).
Writing is rapidly becoming a lost art, right down there with toad doctors and drysalters, Though it may be an endangered species, for forty years of my life, the written word was the only way to communicate about food. In cooking, home cooks used to have to decipher impenetrable prose to learn a recipe from a printed page. This was how people were taught for over a century. Now, you can learn everything from mille feuille (puff pastry) to how to butcher a whole pig from a YouTube video.
Writing is hard. A real pain in the ass. (The classic saying is: writers hate writing but love having written.) Writing is its own reward, but you have to be driven to do it, and do it all the time. You can no more be an occasional writer (about food or anything else) anymore than you can be a good part-time violinist.
If you want to write about food, it helps immensely to be a good writer first. One can learn to write well, but as with music and sports, it helps to have a facility for it, and to start young. I knew I could write about food before I ever started doing it. I knew it in the way a good athlete knows from the beginning that they can play their sport. But as with golf (my favorite sport), even if you’re good, you have to keep at it, and even with constant practice, it can be frustrating.
Reading and writing are exponentially harder than talking and listening, which is why there are 2.4 million podcasts out there, and also why so much food media has taken to visual and spoken word platforms. Posting videos beats the pants off of slaving away for hours at a keyboard trying to think of entertaining ways to describe a dish or a meal. This is not to say producing YouTube content or podcasting is easy, but it ain’t as hard as churning out a thousand entertaining words about a restaurant.
Precious few people now want to read about food anymore than people want to write about it. The internet has created a race to the bottom, with both media and customers feeding off each other (PUN. INTENDED!) by demanding less and less in the form of thoughtful content — the triumph of unbridled narcissism over gastronomic rumination.

Well That Didnt Go Well Julia Child GIF - Well That Didnt Go Well Julia Child Julia GIFs(Mr. Curtas’s less-than egg-cellent TV career hit a snag when they discovered he had a face made for radio)

In the beginning, there was nothing insidious about social media platforms. They were convenient and free and immediately brought millions into the world of good food, nutrition, and better eating. In the space of this century they made more knowledgeable consumers out of an entire generation. I called this the Age of the Blogs (2002-2012) and what others have called the “good internet” or the Golden Age of the Internet — when people sought out websites and in-depth information about everything from pizza to politics.

Once Facebook took off though (around 2010), followed in short order by Instagram (in 2014 ) most blogs got plowed under by the sheer mass of two sites where everyone could get their news, info, pictures, and friends without ever having to leave a web page (cf. search engine optimization).

The rise of social media further combined to (almost) obliterate the mainstream food media where I made my reputation. Ten years ago, you could find me all over old school venues and some social media. Now it is just the opposite. I made my name by writing — first with radio commentaries (about food and restaurants), and later in print periodicals, which led to this website, TV appearances and eventually to my book (shameless plug alert!): EATING LAS VEGASThe 52 Essential Restaurants…
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The big national food magazines now exist only as a memory. Most local periodicals have either thrown in the towel, or gone completely to the free internet (with content that appeals to those with the attention span of a housefly). Food TV (what is left of it) has been reduced to ridiculous competition cooking shows. What has been buried under this avalanche of information are pearls of  wisdom. (MIX! THAT! METAPHOR!) Expertise is no longer valued. Now people want short, sweet and sexy — easy-to-digest info better at grabbing attention than making you think.
It is into this world you will step, Jessica:.
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Thus is the food media world now paradoxically saturated with content and starving for substance. Most media is either pay-to-play (advertorials disguised as journalism), or the kind of “influencer” nonsense (pretty pictures and gooey videos) designed to advertise to Yelpers.  Getting paid to write anymore is a pipe dream. The few of us who still get freelance gigs are doing it for peanuts. The number of food writers in America who actually draw a salary they can live on would probably fit around my dining room table. The days of Anton Ego are long gone.
So, whatever you do, dear Jessica, do it for yourself and no one else. The best a young person can hope to do in this climate is to develop an audience through social media, and then cultivate some kind of content-creating gig that will pay enough to subsidize your culinary appetites. But keep in mind, you will never be good at what you do, if you are only doing it for the clicks, or the $$$, or  the free food.
Final Thoughts:
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In his excellent essay on the essence of criticism, H. D. Miller writes:
Anton Ego has a pure soul. He is someone who cares only and exclusively about art (in this case cookery). He knows what is good and suffers enormously from what is bad. This is close to what I mean by “critical sense”, that the critic knows, deeply knows, the difference between what is good and what is not and is emotionally affected by it.
The job of a good critic is to educate, not simply appeal to the lowest common denominator. You must be in love with what you are writing about, and you should want to relentlessly share you passion with others. Without that level of emotional commitment, you will most certainly fail. With it, you will always find the devotion to keep going, no matter how large or small your audience.
I have always written for me, or someone like me. Every word — going back to my first radio scripts of 1994 — has been aimed at an avid home cook with an insatiable love of restaurants, travel, food and drink. I write for someone who gets as excited by a good cheeseburger as they do about a life-changing gourmet meal. Most of all, I have written for that person who wants to eat the best food, in the most authentic places, wherever they find themselves. Who wants to know why this taco is better than that taco, or why some famous chef isn’t worth your time or money, while some unknown cook, slaving to make the rent, is worth a trip — sometimes across town, sometimes across an ocean.
This is the best advice I can give you: think about who you are and what you love. Write, blog, podcast or produce something in whatever format for the person you are, and for an imaginary person just like you, who gets as excited as you do about whatever it is you are talking about. Do that and you will find an audience who appreciates you for all the right reasons, no matter what its size.
Best and bon appétit,
John Curtas
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10 Years Ago

Image(June 27, 2012)

My little toe hurts. Really hurts. As in, when you put any pressure on the top of it (right behind the teensy tiny little toenail) it feels like an electric shock is shooting through my foot.

I don’t call it a “pinkie toe” because I’ve always hated the term — too infantile for something on a grown man’s body, no matter how negligible that body part may be.

I probably cracked a bone or pinched a nerve or bruised a muscle in this goddamn tiny appendage when I walked three miles in a new, too-tight pair of shoes six weeks ago. Been f**king me up ever since — forcing me to wear the loosest pair of shoes I own. Every day. Sooner or later I’ll see a doctor and they’ll tell me what’s wrong and I’ll get it fixed and I will no longer spend my waking/walking hours obsessing about my least significant appendage.

Three weeks ago, my mother died. Somewhat unexpectedly, it seems. If the label “dying unexpectedly” can be applied to a woman who was 97 years and 10 months old, you could pin in on the demise of Ruth Schroader Curtas. She was driving herself to her nail appointment and working in her garden the day before she tripped on a rug in her living room (she still lived alone) and fell, causing a hairline crack in her femur which had to be repaired. We all knew the surgery would be rough on her, but she came through it like a champ, and was sitting up in bed talking to my sisters the morning after. But she hated hospitals, and the stress got to her, and after eating lunch in her hospital bed she said she had to go to the bathroom, so as the nurses were helping her out of bed she fainted and that was that. No pain, no suffering, no extended misery for her or her family. At that point in her life she was like a fine antique of the most delicate spun glass — frail, tenuous, but holding fast — even as we knew her structural integrity could be threatened by the slightest breach. I hate thinking about her being in pain from a crack on her hip, but pain management is one thing modern doctors are good at, and she wasn’t in pain when she passed.

No pain, no prolonged hospital stay (she hated them), no death watch — the only better way would’ve been in her sleep at home, or if we had found her slumped in her beloved garden, trowel in hand, on a rainy day.

Six months ago, my mother-in-law died after a long, degenerative illness. Two years prior, my father-in-law passed away after a five year (losing) battle with Alzheimer’s. Neither one lived to see their 73rd birthday. Needless to say, the first six months of 2022 are ones The Food Gal® and I would like to forget.

My wife and I are all for supporting the guilt-assuaging functions on the neuro-muscular charity ball circuit, but from our first-person perch, the American medical establishment can give very little succor (much less answers) once the human body decides to decompose itself from the inside out. “We’re good at trauma,” a neurologist once told me, “after that we’re pretty much flying blind and guessing at what will work.” Yep…and making money off of other’s suffering.

Ten years ago, all of these lovely, caring people were alive and I was on top of the world. For a few years, it was my oyster. Literally. All of Las Vegas (and a good many great restaurants from Los Angeles to Paris) lay before me to be slurped and savored like a boundless orgy of great eating. After fifteen years devoted to writing about the Las Vegas food/restaurant scene, my phone was ringing, producers were calling, gigs were everywhere, and red carpets were being rolled out left and right. A front page article in the food section of the New York Times will do that for you (see above).

Even then though, I knew it wouldn’t last. Even then you could feel the internet tsunami about to dilute genuine human contact by exalting the superficial over the spiritual, Ten years ago we began glamorizing our internet representations of ourselves over the messy, complex reality of what it means to be alive.

But my in-laws, and even my mother, 25 years their senior, didn’t care about such things. They were old school, and even though all of them bought into the computer age (my mom actually used Google and e-mail quite a bit) they never let it define themselves and how they saw the world or the people they loved.

Thinking about them, I realize they may be the last of those who naturally and casually disregarded how this form of digital communication has cheapened our lives. They relied on good old analog phone calls, and person-to-person communication and the human touch to convey feelings. “I love my photo albums,” my mom told me a few weeks before she died. “I can’t imagine anyone getting the same warm feelings from looking a pictures on a computer screen that I get from going through their pages.”

Ten years ago, I remember looking through some of those albums with her. She was holding my hand while we turned the pages together. I’m not sure anyone holds their mother’s hand anymore while they swipe through pictures on a smartphone.

A decade ago, I knew none of this would last forever. But I thought/hoped we would be with each other, happy and healthy in our non-computerized worlds, for a little longer than our time turned out to be.

Ten years ago, a little part of me thought I was invincible and my toe didn’t hurt. I think it’s going to hurt for a long time now, no matter what the doctor does.

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