Category: Food

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.)

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* 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.

Mexican mediocrity

“The trouble with touring in America is constantly having to eat what everybody thinks is Mexican food.” – Lyle Lovett

Like Lyle, I love it – “it” being real Mexican food. And I love all of you. You know I do. Some of ELV’s loyal readers are good friends. Some of you are restaurant professionals. Others are chefs or winos (in the best sense of the word). All of you are serious foodies and/or lovers of good grub and where to find it. But with all due respect for your impeccable taste in all things culinary, and your prescient recognition of excellence in Las Vegas restaurant blogs/websites, I have a modest, respectful request:

QUIT SENDING ME TO MEXICAN RESTAURANTS BECAUSE NONE OF YOU HAVE A CLUE WHAT MAKES A GOOD ONE!

(Pause here for parenthetical explanation before continuing rant)

At the beginning of the year, Nevada Public Radio asked listeners to e-mail in suggestions for where I should dine and review for the coming twelve months. By a margin of 3 to 1, Mexican restaurants took the cake for places I just had to try “…because it’s new and fresh and the owners are real Mexicans (as opposed to fake Mexicans) and we love it and they make great margaritas and we love everything on the menu and you really need to try it!”

(Return to Rant)

Continue reading “Mexican mediocrity”

“Chinatown” photo essay

Okay, maybe “photo essay” is a bit pretentious, but the staff at ELV has never been known for its humility, and calling them a bunch of digital snaps we were too lazy to upload when we posted The Chinatown that isn’t (below) doesn’t convey that certain je ne sais quoi for which ELV is known.

There are more than 40 restaurants on the three mile stretch of Spring Mountain Road known as Las Vegas’s Chinatown. I’ve eaten in 34 of them multiple times. The following snaps will give you a “taste” of the real thing.