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:

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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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Happy Thanksgiving – What a Year It Has Bean

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ELV note: Anyone who knows us, knows that Thanksgiving is our favorite day of the year.  It is a distinctly American holiday that, despite every retail and marketing effort to the contrary, has yet to be  co-opted by capitalism and bad taste. Thanksgiving is all about food, family and friends and that’s it. As much as we love the holiday, though, this year has been a tough one. Illness, death(s) in the family, a busted toe(!), and lots of angst over everything from politics to getting old — a year of false starts.

Still, there is much to be thankful for:

  •  I still have my eyesight.
  • I didn’t get any fatter in the last year, and may actually dropped a few pounds.
  • I’m more regular than a Swiss train.

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  • I took up golf again…and may be progressing past the “old man hacker” level.
  • I walk more in a day than most people do in a week.
  • Those funerals meant spending more time with my family — one of the ironies of growing old.
  • My kids and grand-kids are doing splendidly.
  • Making some new friends and continuing to enjoy many old ones.
  • I’m now drinking even more expensive wine — thanks to Mom and Dad.
  • My wife continues to grow more beautiful.
  • We’re cooking more and restauranting less. (It was time.)
  • Neither The Food Gal® nor I have lost our sense of adventure. We will not go gentle into that good night, and neither should you.
  • And finally, I’m thankful that, for the tenth year in a row, we will NOT be making a turkey. This year’s theme is Britsgiving: featuring a feast inspired by the countries from which the Pilgrims escaped and the foods they were fleeing. Pheasant and beef Wellington will be on the menu, plus Spotted Dick and a Stilton Cheese the size of my head. Turkey is for the birds.

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Regardless of the asperity sprinkled throughout the past months, Thanksgiving is a time to feast and remember all the good things, like “The World’s Greatest String Bean Recipe” — which we now publish for the 19th year in a row.  As usual, we do this by including not one, not two, but THREE recipes (from its origins in the 50s to an updated, more gastronomic version. Make them once, your Thanksgiving table will never again be without these sweet and sour luscious legumes.

And remember: satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!

Before we get to cookin’, you might like to tune in here, where, in 2010, we explore the origins of this essential T-Day feast.

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT Bookmark and Share

GRANDMA SCHROADER’S SOUR BEANS (KNPR Version)

1. Fry and crumble a pound of bacon….which is really more than you’ll need, but half of it will miraculously disappear as you complete the recipe.

2. Take one 10 oz. package of frozen, French cut green beans. Microwave them for a few minutes (drain) and put ‘em in a nice serving bowl.

3. Bring to a boil:
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. of salt
1 chopped up onion

4. Now this is the hard part so pay attention…Pour everything over the beans and garnish with whatever bacon hasn’t miraculously disappeared from your kitchen counter.

5. Serve hot, cold or any temperature in-between.

GRANDMA SCHROADER’S SOUR BEANS  (Authentic, Straight from the 50s Recipe):

2 cans green beans
1/4 lb. Bacon

Fry and crumble bacon

Bring to a boil:
1/4 cup vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. Salt
chopped onion

pour over green beans
garnish with bacon

 My Slightly More Gastronomic(?) Recipe

Fry and crumble a pound of good pepper-crusted bacon – which is more than you’ll need, but half of it will have miraculously disappeared before you use it as a garnish.

Trim and french-cut 12 oz. of fresh green beans. Cook (steam or par boil without salt) until tender. Drain and  put them in a nice serving bowl.

While the beans are steaming or simmering or microwaving, bring to a boil 1/2 cup red wine vinegar, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt and one medium chopped onion (chopped not too fine).

Now here’s the hard part so pay attention: after the sugar/vinegar/onion mixture has come to a full boil, pour the entire mixture over the cooked green beans and garnish with as much crumbled bacon as your cardiologist allows.

Serve hot, cold or any temperature in between. These beans co-exist wonderfully with any Thanksgiving dinner, and if you serve them once, you’ll serve them every year.

No matter which version you make, it is virtually idiot-proof, and won’t take you more than fifteen minutes. (Frying the bacon takes the longest and you can do that hours, or even days ahead. But good bacon is a must.)

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By now, you are probably besotted and bored by legumes. So we’ll beat it from beauteous beans soon enough pilgrim, but not before we refer you to one last homage to Phaseolus vulgaris– and reveal one final surprise.

As it turns out, neither Grandma Hazel Schroader, nor our mother, nor anyone related to the Schroader or Curtas clans had anything to do with Grandma Schroader’s Sour Beans. Turns out they came from a neighbor lady (Fran Kesler) who clipped out the recipe and gave it to our mother (Ruth Curtas) sometime in the late 50s while we were living on Via Venetia Avenue in Winter Park (Florida, not Colorado).

Ah the 50s….when cryptic recipes were clipped and shared across the back fence, to the sounds of kids getting dirty outdoors and moms mixing the martinis.

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No matter who invented them, Grandma Schroader’s Sour Beans is a recipe destined for your Thanksgiving table. They won’t taste the same this year without my mother telling me how I’ve done them wrong, but I’ll be serving them in her honor, nonetheless.

Happy Thanksgiving….and remember:

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments. – Samuel Johnson
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Pizza My Mind

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Ed. note: We got thrown out of the Las Vegas Pizza Festival last Saturday. Here is the story:

Human beings are funny creatures, by turns fiercely independent and slavish devotees to never thinking for themselves. No other creature goes to such lengths to assert its individuality (e.g. tattoos) while mindlessly going along with the herd (cf. tattoos).

Crowds, events, concerts, rallies, have never been my thing. My idea of hell is being corralled into any space along with thousands (or hundreds) of others in order to witness something. This is not claustrophobia (although I am mildly claustrophobic) as much as it is a visceral reaction to being treated as something lesser than myself.

Even as a teenager, the idea of going to Woodstock was less about my revulsion at the idea of (literally) shitting in the woods than it was about the thought of sitting on a hillside with 200,000 smelly hippies, all grooving to the same tunes in unison. Even then, I preferred listening and enjoying the music my way:

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If getting me into a crowd is harder than enticing me to an Asian buffet, asking me to stand in line (to eat anything) is an insult to my intelligence.

If I’ve learned one lesson in fifty years of rabid restaurant hopping it is that no food in the world is worth standing in line for. America is the land of plenty. Lining up like starving cattle for a taste of something (and wasting valuable time doing so) is a soul-deadening experience where the payoff is rarely worth it. (“Look at me! I stood in line for an hour for a cronut!”)

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You are basically sacrificing your time while beseeching someone to take your money, when it ought to be the other way around.

(Exception: Snow’s Barbecue in Lexington Texas, which is only open one day/week. But that’s it.)

With all of this in mind, there I was last Saturday, against my better judgment, waiting in some stupid, roped off VIP line, being marshaled by more security than a presidential debate, to eat a few slices of pizza at the Las Vegas Pizza Festival. But we never got there, no pizza tasting. No kibbitzing with pizzaiolos, no whooping it up with friends over some tasty pies.

Nope, we were kicked out and here is the tale, told as it happened, along with some perspective about why the foodie events like this might not be worth it.

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A certain queasiness grips me as we approach. What’s with all the brawn? Did they give a pizza fest and a hip hop concert broke out? Are they expecting a riot over insufficient pepperoni?

At least a hundred poor sheep…er…uh…I mean souls are queued up in the non-VIP line, waiting for the velvet ropes to open up. Inside, there are giant men in matching golf shirts treating the situation with all the solemnity of a state funeral. Not wishing to waste time, I stride past these behemoths and get our press passes without a problem. (My father’s advice: “Just act like you own the place, works every time.” And it does!)

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Then, just beyond the press table, there they are, the dreaded switchback queues — the bane of airport travelers and amusement park goers everywhere — but before we even get to them we have to confront our first security check. (Yes, there are multiple security checks…for….let’s not forget…eating a few slices of f**king pizza.)

Musclebound baldy guard in too-tight T: “I need to see your ID.”

Me: “But we already have our press passes.”

Him: “I need to see proof that you are over 21.”

(Fun factoid(s): The Food Gal® may not look 50, but she’s way past 21. I may be young at heart, but no one has mistaken me for a college kid since Jimmy Carter was President.)

Me:

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Food Gal (pleading sweetly): “I left everything at home; can’t you see I’m over 21?”

Him: “I’ll have to check with my supervisor.”

Supervisor gets checked with, within a minute or so we are waved in. To the second security/wristband table. Then a third. To get a slice of pizza. A sense of dread fills me. Little did I know what I was in for.

By this time, I have TWO wristbands on (Fun Factoid #3: I consider wristbands one step below cattle prods on the dehumanizing accoutrement scale). and my eyes have been rolling back in my head so much they’re practically glued to the ceiling, but we press on, patiently, with a forced smile on my face.

The good news: by now the VIP line has dwindled to a dozen or so folks, who themselves are enduring these small humiliations, but regardless, pizza nirvana is only seconds away, and we still will have fifteen minutes or so to load up before the barbarians enter the gates.

Then, the fun begins. As we are standing in line behind a few folks, and maybe in front of a half-dozen others snaking their way through the absurd roped gauntlet, we spot two close friends (prepaid VIPs) who have cleared checkpoints one and two. So we wave to them to get in front of us at the (by now almost nothing) final entry point so we can walk in together.

No different than when you’re standing in line to order tacos at a food truck and your good friends show up to partake with you, right? Or maybe a better example is a bunch of ticket holders filing into a sporting event together. No harm no foul…

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Wrong.

Faster than you can say “overreacting rent-a-cop”, a plus-sized female comes racing through the ropes screaming “No cutting in line!” at my two friends who have just walked around a stanchion to join us. I ignore her; my male friend does not.

Pleasantries are exchanged to the point where I’m fairly certain neither will be sending the other a Christmas card, and before I can chime in with, “Look, Miss, it’s my fault: I invited him to get in front of me.” she shoves him, and is threatening to call the cops.

Things settle down after a minute of jawboning so the wife and I head in thinking it will get sorted out between them as grownups.

Wrong again.

When our friends don’t appear after a few minutes, we return to the scene of the egregious crime, where our male friend is now surrounded by four men in matching rent-a-cop shirts. I approach this scrum, annoyed but civilly, thinking the matter has been resolved, so we can get down to the margherita at hand.

Me:

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New logo’d guy who I’m fairly sure coaches youth football after he leaves the car lot: “Sir, we are way beyond that now, you need to leave.”

Me:

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Him: “The police have been called; you’re being trespassed.”

At first I’m unaware if he’s directing this at me or my buddy, then I blurt out:

“Hold on a second…Youre gal was way out of line.”

Then he repeats the “you’re being trespassed” line several times (painfully, as if he took a great deal of time to memorize the words), and faster than you can say “quatro fromaggi, par favore” the four of us are being led to the door. 86’d, as it were.

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(Several times during these various inane exchanges, I think about videotaping them, but I don’t because I don’t want to be “that guy”. Hindsight: I probably should have.)

Later the same day I hear through event organizers that the security company is thinking of “pressing charges” against us.

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This is the world we live in today.

Since adult perspective was sadly lacking in the whole kerfuffle, allow me to end with some.

These days, even something as innocent as a pizza tasting must be treated with the same heightened level of apprehension as rock concerts and political protests.

We have created a world that is both full of fear and afraid of missing out. Everyone wants to participate and have a good time, but even the most innocent of gatherings is fraught with concern over bad behavior. Because of this, businesses and governments seek to insulate themselves from allegations of failing to “protect us”, by, literally, keeping us in line.

What happens next is a self-fulfilling prophecy: Once the decision is made to ramp up security to absurd levels, what you get is a work staff that is looking for something to do. If all you have is a box of hammers (with IQs to match), everything is going to look like a nail. It is the perfect recipe for overreaction that doesn’t match the infraction.

There is no evidence that heightened security actually works, or that its effectiveness could be proven even if it did. (How do you gauge the level of bad things that don’t happen?) All we know is that loathsome, boorish, even murderous behavior is at an all time high, and all the security theater in the world hasn’t changed that. (I’ll grant you that big, beefy dudes are probably useful when it comes to tossing out obnoxious drunks at bars, concerts, and sports events.)

If you feel safer going through the ridiculous gauntlet in airports these days (even if they are wholly ineffective at their job), then I am happy for you, even if you’re fooling yourself. And if you enjoy walking up to a food festival and seeing a phalanx of puffed up guards scanning the crowd like low-rent watchmen looking for drugs, then enjoy your hall monitors.

As for me, as usual, my instincts were right. I should’ve turned tail as soon as I saw the guards and the queues. Incidents like this give me yet another reason to avoid the sheep-herding, shoulder-rubbing, warmed-over shitshows of food events.

Give me a decent meal at a good restaurant any day.

Postscript:

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After our defenestration, We repaired to Esther’s Kitchen and Garagiste and had a fine time tucking into a fabulous lunch with no lines, no security, easier conversation and better seating. Then, later the same day, we drove to Rosa Ristorante for a bite of one of Rob Moore’s gorgeous pies (below).

Better food. Better wine. Better people.

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Postscript #2: If you want to hear more about this tempest in a teapot, tune into our new food podcast, Eat. Talk. Repeat. this Friday for the full Monty.