IN RESTAURANT REVIEWS, WINE IS CHOPPED LIVER
Because Food People Know Less About Wine
Than Wine People Know About Food
By Alan Goldfarb
Jan. 26, 2024
I’m sick of it, I tell ya! After having scrolled through 2½ months of the L.A. Times’ food section, I didn’t see one mention, not one article, not one picture, not one tasting note. Nothing about wine.
Damn it! I’m tired writing about why it is that in almost every restaurant review in every newspaper and magazine, there is hardly any mention of wine? Is wine chopped liver?
Whatever the hell happened to the notion and the practice of pairing wine with food? To my mind, wine & food are inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other. I don’t hardly eat a meal without wine. I don’t like to stand up and sip wine at a cocktail party. I want my wine with food.
NUTS (and BOLTS) TO THE METALLICA SOMM
By Alan Goldfarb
Jan. 18, 2024
Waiter, taste the soup.
“Is there something wrong with the soup, monsieur?”
Taste the soup
“But sir, what tis wrong with the soup?”
Taste the soup.
“OK sir, but there’s no spoon.”
Ah haa!
That’s the sort of scenario I envision if and when (I hope it’s when), the robotic somm that was introduced recently meets its (her/him/they?). What will happen if there’s no spoon, I mean, what if the monsieur or madam believe there’s something wrong with the wine? Will Robinovino (that’s the name our tricked-out wine server has been given) take the wine back, no questions asked? (Come to think of it, that might not be a bad thing. How many times has some full-of-themselves somm come back and rejoindered snidely, “I find there’s nothing wrong with that wine, madam.”) If that would happen to a man, shrinking under the table is likely to ensue.
IT’S NOT A GOOD YEAR FOR C(K)LAY
By Alan Goldfarb
Jan. 17, 2024
The following has a lot of porosity (see amphorae below) but when I saw that a San Francisco Tunisian restaurant isn’t being allowed to serve food in its culturally appropriate vessels, I threw my pots. It almost made me throw up, too.
The reasons for my dyspepsia?
THE GREAT CALIFORNIA BAGEL MARKETING MACHER
Noah Alper: The Man Who’s Not-So-Great Unboiled Bagels Started Bagel Mania
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
Oct. 19, 2023
Note: This was written before the war between Israel and Hamas began – in a more “frivolous” moment. In thinking about whether or not I should publish this piece, I concluded that by explaining the context in which it was first written; and also to allow us all to have a few moments of lightness, I’ve concluded that I’d – and hopefully you -- prefer the following:
Noah Alper didn’t make good bagels. But man, that self-named “business mensch” was a helluva marketer. The “serial entrepreneur” (also by his own sobriquet) knew what he was doing when he started Noah’s Bagels in 1989 – thus opening California bagel culture. By doing so, he ruined real bagel ethos. But it was nearly a generation later when the Bay Area started to become really hip to bagels. It has resulted in Bagel Mania, and Bagel Wars and we’re all the better for it. Thanks to Noah.
WINE WRITER FREDRIC KOEPPEL GOING BIGGER
Heads to Substack
By Alan Goldfarb
Sept. 11, 2023
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: the question as to why Fredric Koeppel named his wine blog, starting in 2006, Bigger Than Your Head? If you’re someone who knows the origin of that sobriquet, you’re a big Kliban fan.
For it was a cartoon by the iconoclastic social critic, who gave the Memphis wine writer his purpose. As he tells it, Koeppel saw one of Kliban’s cartoons, which had a guy sitting at a restaurant. “The server comes with this huge pile of food. And the caption read: ‘Never eat anything bigger than your head.’ For some reason, that phrase resonated and it’s different enough that people notice it. And it doesn’t even have an illusion to wine.”