Letter of the Week – Hardly Charmed by MR. CHOW

http://www.personalchefapproach.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Peking-Duck-1.jpg(Many remain skeptical of the price-to-value benefit of this bird)

ELV note: When he isn’t saving children’s lives, Dr. Mark is a frequent visitor to Vegas and one of our “regs.” He’s also one of those food lovers who eats to live and lives to eat, so his thoughtful opinions are always welcome, even if they happen to disagree with our own, infallible, unimpeachable, invariable finicality. To say he was less than impressed with Mr. Chow is an understatement. To say  that the Mr. Chow Peking Duck Experience might be a tad heavy on the wallet, the waistline and the pretension is something he and I might be able to agree upon. Next time he’s in town, we will have to get a group and go peek in on this Peking duck together. In the meantime, read and decide for yourself.

Dear ELV,

Sometimes, things turn out just as you expect. Sometimes, they can even be far, far worse. I met up with an old friend in town on a recent Friday night. Of course, we were pondering that most important question: Where should we have dinner?

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Enough Already….

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2014-06/2/16/enhanced/webdr02/enhanced-7635-1401741255-18.jpg

>Sous vide (Face it: everything has the same texture. I don’t give a shit what Thomas Keller says.)

>Salmon anywhere but the Pacific Northwest

>Boneless breast of chicken

>Kale (Admit it: it sucks.)

>Foam anywhere but a Spanish restaurant

>Scallops (They’re everywhere and no matter what a chef does to them, they always taste the same and they’re only on the menu because little old ladies who are afraid of seafood like them. Of course, if they ever saw a fresh one, they’d run away faster than a politician from an ethics board.)

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A Tale of Two Steakhouses

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. – A Tale of Two Cities

In short, late 18th Century France wasn’t that different from today. Superlatives are everywhere, no matter how good or evil something is, be it a Reign of Terror, a beheading here or a Donald Trump there,  Whatever “comparisons” are being made — by “noisy authorities these days” — are made not to educate, but to sell.

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