Category: Events

Slow Food Savors San Francisco, the world sleeps

This Labor Day weekend, the Slow Food Movement, that began in Bra, Italy in 1986, will invade San Francisco for three days of ponderous preaching, locavore lectures, esoteric eating, and sustainable agriculture.

It couldn’t have picked a better place than that bastion of food snobbery and imperious attitudes about all things culinary. While the Slow Food Movement pretends to be about getting back to the land and savoring life, it’s pretty much been adopted by elite restaurateurs and purveyors of expensive vittles as a way to strut their stuff.

Our buddy, Steven “The Fat Guy” Shaw. founder of www.egullet.org, perfectly encapsulates the criticisms of this “movement” when he equates people who attend Slow Food events with “…the guys in college who go to protests just to meet girls. They couldn’t care less about the ideology.”

Guilty as charged.* What’s your point Steven? I mean if you get that many food snobs in one place, something tasty is bound to happen, right?

Read more about this future weekend of dilettante delights in this New York Times article.

As for me, I subscribed to the Slow Food Journal a few years ago, and decided the whole concept was just about trying to make rich white people feel good about themselves (sorta like Whole Foods, only with denser prose.)

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

* On both counts. Attending anti-war protests in the early ’70’s was my standard MO to meet hot, hippie chicks…although my chinos, Topsiders, and polo shirts (not to mention the Nixon/Agnew button I proudly sported) usually made them less than enthusiastic about having casual sex with me.

Eating Las Vegas takes a (brief) sabbatical; the food world mourns.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: three whole months is an awfully long time to keep up a blog; poor John must just be exhausted; and how am I to get through the week without his witty, insightful and erudite commentaries on the Las Vegas restaurant scene? Well I really don’t know what to say other than seek professional help, take up a non-food related hobby, and holster those credit and debit cards until I get back.

The good news is that, while I’m away, I’ll be bestowing the munificence of mind and spirit that you have come to take for granted on the rest of the world, as I assume my rightful throne (for one episode at least), on the judges stand of Iron Chef America-beginning its seventh season this fall (air dates TBA).

As popular as ICA is, I must confess I remain true to the Japanese original-a show that reveled in badly- dubbed wackiness and its breathless emulsification of haute cusine into high camp.

For a blast from the past, click here to listen to my original “review” of the original Japanese Iron Chef for Nevada Public Radio.* Number Two Son of Food Man (Hugh Alexander Curtas D.O.B. 10-15-84) and the culturally babe-i-licious Ginger Bruner (D.O.B. unknown) supplied the other voices.

*Important historical footnote: Our spoof of the show aired on January 4, 2001, nine days before Saturday Night Live ran a similar (and far inferior) skit….although the mini shark’s head pizzas whipped up by Charlie Sheen looked mighty tasty.