Prick With A Fork

Back in the old hometown, the New York Times’ Pete Wells fires off what may be the best bad review of a restaurant the Prick has seen in a long time. In Wells’ sights, American celebrity TV presenter/restaurateur Guy Fieri – I’d never heard of him either, having read this profile I’m now kinda sorry I did – and his execrable-sounding Times Square establishment. It takes a special combination of righteous anger leavened with skill to pull a piece like this off: in less-capable hands, his questioning conceit might have wound up reading like something off the McSweeney’s reject pile. But Wells does it, and does it well. There are a number of reasons for it, including the ever-present threat of litigation, but with the possible exception of Jonathan Lethlean at the Weekend Australian, Australian critics are too timid about calling crap crap, and we diners suffer for it.

While we’re on the subject of local food writers, Sydney Morning Herald critic – and as an aside, if triskaidekaphobia is the preferred term for thirteen-o-phobes, what does one call someone who’s afraid of the number fourteen? – Terry Durack is trawling the inner-west again, giving a ludicrously precise 13.5 to the latest Newtown hipster dive, The Animal. Unlike Wells, instead of asking questions, this week Durack answers them. Readers can decide whose is the better, more entertaining review. Glancing at the Herald’s 20-point scale, one must marvel at Durack’s fine-grained palate and aesthetic sensibilities which allowed him to come to a landing precisely equidistant between 13’s “Good but not great” and the “Solid and enjoyable” that adheres to a 14.

Sydney’s cold snap (relatively speaking) this Saturday meant one last chance to put the oven on and roast something before summer really kicks in. And what that something was turned out to be five points worth of gorgeous Berkshire Black pork rack picked up over at the Surry Hills branch of Hudson Meats:

Feeling salty!

What happened next was largely improvised, but a few observations:

1. Crisping the skin of the pork in the roasting pan is far more effective, and controlled, way of doing things than using the oven, where things can get overdone quickly. After getting a nice “crackle”, the whole thing was put on a rack at around 140C (around 280-290F), and I threw a good slug of white wine in the bottom of the tray for moisture. When the internal temperature hit 58C (136F) I took the pork out to rest and let it ride to about 62C (143F), leaving a little bit of pink and a whole lot of tenderness.
2. It may be a bit naff to throw some truffle oil in the pommes pureee, but it’s bloody delicious and the Prick makes no apologies.
3. A quick apple gelee made with some local organo-hippy apple juice, some sugar, a squeeze of lime, and a couple of gelatin sheets added a nice extra element which was especially popular with the Three Little Pricks.  They also liked the apple, fennel, and rocket salad.

All in all, the dish was well received:

Your “Clean Plate Club” membership is in the mail!

First they came for the smokers, then they came for the fast food junkies, but this time, it’s personal. While the Prick doesn’t eat Big Macs or smoke anything more than the odd Montecristo, he does buy wine. A lot of it. And this time, Big Nanny has gone too far. Reports the Sun-Herald:

PUBLIC health experts have called for a crackdown on websites that promote ”ridiculously cheap” alcohol, claiming they fuel Australia’s drinking problem and appeal to under-age drinkers…

Catch of the Day’s Vinomofo discounted wine site has been criticised for using a trade name that directly appeals to young people and for an ”irresponsible” competition in which entrants could win a Mini full of wine.

While Coles and Woolworths have come under fire for heavily discounting alcohol, health experts say online traders are selling it even more cheaply but are flying under the radar. ”The big retailers have to pay distribution costs, marketing costs and retail staff costs and that’s the thing that protects us from these ridiculously low prices on alcohol, but these costs don’t exist for online providers,” Sandra Jones, the director of the Centre for Health Initiatives at the University of Wollongong, said.

”If we had a minimum price for alcohol, it would address this problem because they wouldn’t be able to sell below a set cost.”

What a dreary bunch of Stalinist hacks. Professor Jones sounds about as much fun as our old friend anti-“drink walking” campaigner Mike Cockburn. Seriously, this is Soviet-level humourlessness: to object to Vinomofo simply on the basis of their slightly cheeky name is reminiscent of Orwell’s observation that the keepers of the old communist dictatorships didn’t like jokes because “every joke is a tiny revolution.” How could they make the name appeal only to old people? Rebrand as “Vinogetoffamylawn!”?

Likewise, a “Mini full of wine” is only irresponsible if they don’t get the booze out of the vehicle quick-smart, or at least park it under cover or someplace shady to keep the contents from cooking.

And discounted alcohol? Please. Maybe to Vinomofo’s target audience, which the site’s co-founder tells Fairfax is ‘more targeted towards the ”wine nerd” and its core demographic … the 35 to 55 age group’ (ahem!).

Teenagers are not likely to be looking for a “95 point single-vineyard Adelaide Hills chardonnay” or a 1999 boutique Clarendon Hills shiraz marked down to $45. (If they are looking for that sort of high, all credit to their parents for a job well done.) Even if the per-bottle price is cheap, you’re still generally buying by the case, and the Prick’s credit card has never sustained less than three figures worth of damage on a visit to the site: not exactly pocket money. This is wine that is laid down as often as it is drunk, to which the closet full of wine under the stairs at Stately Prick Manor stands in mute testimony.

(As an aside, one also has to wonder what role Coles and Woolworth’s play in funding this sort of thing: Both have huge liquor businesses, and it would not surprise a Prick to find out that, in the name of “corporate social responsibility” or some other faddish fraud, they have been funding research whose regulatory implications would make it easier to keep newcomers out of the market. It’s an untested assumption, but one which bears looking into.)

More broadly, the whole notion that mayhem increases in inverse proportion to the price of booze is simplistic and reductive. It  is the sort of claim regularly made by bought and paid for social researchers whose livelihoods depend on churning out studies which in turn feed news reports by sympathetic journalists which in turn feed outraged tub-thumping by politicians who then hand out more money to keep the whole sorry thing going. Beer, wine, gin, what have you, are all about half the price and twice as accessible in New York City (when I was a youth a 6-pack of beer could be yours at any corner Korean deli for under a tenner). To whatever extent the city looks like something out of Hieronymous Bosch, this is the work of nature, not Natty Lite.

So to Big Nanny, the “Preventative Health Task Force”, Professor Sandra Jones, and the rest of you lot, piss off. Everybody else, go visit Vinomofo. Or any other such site. Because every time you buy cheap wine, God kills a kitten.

Turning Japanese…

Having just devoured Stasiland, Anna Funder’s compulsively readable (knocked it over in four hours) investigation into life behind the Berlin Wall, the Prick is hoping the cult film Sushi in Suhl makes it to a local arthouse cinema somewhere nearby:

Having spent a lifetime slaving over meals of sausage, potato dumplings and beef roulade, Rolf Anschütz itched to turn his hand to something more exotic.

But living in 1960s communist East Germany, with the many restrictions imposed by its centrally planned economy, when the chef decided to try Japanese cuisine he found his options were limited. So he experimented with the few ingredients available to him.

Tinned rice pudding was transformed into sushi rice, local carp was dyed to resemble salmon, a local variant of Worcestershire sauce was used instead of soy sauce, and Hungarian tokaj wine was mixed with German corn schnapps and heated, to fool diners into thinking they were drinking sake. Even may bugs fried in batter were brought into play as Anschütz started conjuring Japanese fare in the heart of East Germany.

Before long his East German-style Japanese menu had gained cult status, and his restaurant in Suhl, Thuringia, began attracting diners from not only across the communist state, but also from West Germany and even Japan.

His story has now been turned into a film, which has been attracting large audiences across the country. Sushi in Suhl charts the rise of Anschütz’s success, his battles with the authorities, who accused him of “culinary capitalism”, the friendships he made with Japanese admirers who supplied him with foodstuffs, and his eventual invitation to visit Japan, where he was decorated by the royal family.

Sounds like an excellent tribute to the power of the human spirit – and palate – to conquer the drab evils of communism. Anschütz’s attempts to recreate Japanese food are also reminiscent of the futuristic “Friends of Plonk” invented by Kingsley Amis, noted elsewhere in these pages.

This site is pretty libertarian when it comes to vice and doesn’t care much what other people get up to behind closed doors. Want to go on a three-day ice bender? Be my guest (though if you turn up the bass on the hi-fi at 4am and live within five houses of Stately Prick Manor, you just might get a visit from the constabulary). Likewise, I’ll do my best not to bother you when I knock over a 1kg t-bone and a bottle of cab-sav. Sure, we might each have to pay a couple of extra bucks for each others’ health care over the years, but as with occasionally getting pissed off by someone else’s free speech, it’s a small price to pay for liberty.

One activity I have never understood, however, is gambling. Even if you feel like hell in the morning, there is at least a more-or-less guaranteed initial pay-off with that pitcher of martinis or bowl of coke or whatever your poison of choice might be. Gambling, essentially a tax on people who are bad at maths, is rigged, and everyone knows it. Yet some people still fall for it: years ago, early in my time in Australia, I lived next door to an unhappy family whose patriarch (the word implies far more respect than he was due) managed to put every spare cent (and a lot of cents that weren’t spare as well) through the pokies at the Nelson Hotel.

Which is one of the reasons I’m against Jamie Packer’s proposal to build a second casino in Sydney, the better, we are told, to lure Asian tourists to our shores: Gambling is, more than anything else, a stupid hobby. We don’t need to import any more rubes; Australia has enough home-grown morons per capita already. Don’t believe me? This week Kyle Sandilands’ biography debuted at the top of the best-seller lists. I rest my case.

On many levels, the Prick should be all in favour of Packer’s plan. If people want to throw their money away on baccarat or black jack, who’s to judge? More selfishly, Robbie Burns wrote two hundred years ago that freedom an’ whisky gang together; these days the same thing can be said for fine dining and casinos. Las Vegas is a culinary destination in and of itself, and Sydney’s re-vamped Star plays host to the likes of Teague Ezard’s Black (good, but not as good as his eponymous Melbourne diner) and David Chang’s local Momofuku Seibo (which the Pricks would like to try sometime, if only we could be bothered with their damn 10-days-and-10-days-in-advance-only reservation system). Presumably Packer’s plan would include any number of fine diners as well.

But I don’t care. The logic of the project is all wrong. Jamie Packer has taken to the Sydney Morning Herald to press his case this weekend; read his (presumably ghosted) words and judge for yourself.

Packer says his aim is to attract Asian tourists to Sydney; what he fails to mention is that the whole point of casinos is that guests never leave the compound except to go home again. The notion that, save for perhaps a few busses and hire cars of wives getting out to hit the Gucci, Prada, and Miu Miu outlets in the CBD, these tourists will provide a massive cash injection to the Sydney economy is laughable.

There is a soft reverse-racist undercurrent to the proposal as well: not so much in how it targets Asia (it’s a market, we’re told this is the Asian century, get over it) but how it demeans Australians. Go to the worker’s paradise of Cuba, check into the grand old hotels like the Nacional, and you’ll quickly find that the only locals allowed in are those who work there. Ordinary Cubans, even if they’ve got the money, aren’t allowed in for so much as a mojito at the bar. The emphasis on high-rolling “whales” from Asia feels similarly two-caste, with locals on the bottom, there to serve drinks but not to have a punt.

Paul Hogan – who did more for the Australian “brand” than the decades of failed advertising and other efforts that came after his era of “Come and Say G’day” – put it right a few years ago when he said, “If I go to your house for a visit and I want to come back, it’s because I enjoyed your company, not your furniture.” Jamie Packer’s project is all furniture, and vulgar furniture at that.

Reunited, and it feels so good: After a separation of what by now must be a good eight weeks or so, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Terry Durack and his favourite restaurant rating, 14/20, finally got back together this week over a nice romantic dinner at – I can’t believe I’m typing these words – Sydney’s new-old revolving restaurant, O Bar and Dining. But while hearts may have been aflutter, conversation lagged: after cracking a few lame jokes about the view, poor Terry was overtaken by nerves and  found himself unable to do anything but talk about the menu.

Which to read it sounds fine – fairly pedestrian, but fine – though I doubt Mr and Mrs Prick will be paying a visit anytime soon. I mean really, a revolving restaurant? In 2012? I know the fit-out is legacy thing, but all I can think about when I hear the concept is Hank’s Lookaround Café. If a restaurant’s views often exist in competition with – if not downright opposition to – the quality of the food coming out of the kitchen, a joint that promises a constantly-changing outlook is to be avoided. More to the point, a revolving restaurant is just plain naff. It screams tourist trap: bring in groups from Peoria and serve them up whatever, knowing they’ll likely never be back. Only cities that still have operational monorails, are not ashamed to have jumped on that other unfortunate 1970s trend in touristic architecture, the pointy observation tower,  and think nothing says “city on the move” like a new casino go for revolving restaurants … oh yeah, that’s right. It’s Sydneytown, baby!

This is probably being (slightly) unfair to chef-owner Michael Moore. His food may not be particularly progressive or win any awards for creativity – appearances on Mornings with Kerrie-Anne, Junior MasterChef, and Biggest Loser suggest that not frightening the special-occasion suburbanite crowd is his top priority – but he still remains several steps above tourist-trap steam-tray fare.  Though as the Prick has noted in the past, the man makes a Reuben sandwich kind of like how Norman Mailer spelled “fuck” in The Naked and the Dead: close, but not quite there.

Messing around on a Tuesday night: barramundi, clams, mushrooms, corn, and just for the hell of it, a bit of shellfish sea foam…

So Jones the Extortionist Grocer is setting up in the old Quarter Twenty One space in the Westfield. I look forward to the price wars with the David Jones Food Hall downstairs!

Liz Day over at Discovery asks, “Do intelligent people drink more?”:

Childhood intelligence, measured before the age of 16, was categorized in five cognitive classes, ranging from “very dull,” “dull,” “normal,” “bright” and “very bright.”

The Americans were revisited seven years later. The British youths, on the other hand, were followed in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Researchers measured their drinking habits as the participants became older.

More intelligent children in both studies grew up to drink alcohol more frequently and in greater quantities than less intelligent children. In the Brits’ case, “very bright” children grew up to consume nearly eight-tenths of a standard deviation more alcohol than their “very dull” cohorts.

Researchers controlled for demographic variables — such as marital status, parents’ education, earnings, childhood social class and more — that may have also affected adult drinking. Still, the findings held true: Smarter kids were drinking more as adults.

Intelligent readers are invited to leave their own hypotheses as to why this may be so in comments, if they’re able to type coherently.

“Next, add a heaping tablespoon of self-interest and stir…”

So Maggie Beer thinks we benighted Australian consumers don’t pay enough for our food, complaining that  “so many Australians seek the cheapest alternative in food, and perhaps this is exacerbated by the big two [retailers], our duopoly, that pits one against the other in price wars, that see the farmer suffer. We have to do something about that.” Speaking at the very Soviet-sounding International Year of the Co-Operatives Conference this week, Beer continued, “It’s interesting Australians say they will support Australian-made and Australian-grown, but will we? We support what’s marketed most, and we so often support what’s cheapest, especially with food.”

Pesky kulaks: When they’re not withholding their grain from the co-operative, they’re withholding their income from those who speak to conferences about co-operatives.

But really, now. Beer, a highly successful businesswoman who has created an iconic brand around herself by bringing middle-brow “gourmet” food to the masses, is suddenly complaining that rational individual consumers act like, well, rational individual consumers and respond to marketing and pricing signals? In a country where 17 per cent of the average wage already goes to pay for food and non-alcoholic drink – far, far more than in most other developed countries – Beer’s is a pretty, ahem, rich complaint. While the Prick is fortunate enough to enjoy a reasonable degree of petit-bourgeoisie prosperity these days, it was not so very long ago that a $50 note errantly left in a pair of jeans sent through the front-loader was a near starvation-‘til-payday disaster. (Say what you will about Securency, but their robust plastic notes saved the day – and very possibly the Prick from a life of crime.) That memory, and others like it, make one exceedingly allergic to claims that we should all dig a little deeper to keep body and soul together.

Nor can Beer reasonably portray herself as a victim of big business. She is big business. Of course she wants Australians to spend more on Australian produce: Australian produce is what she sells. That plastic container of Maggie Beer pâté you cracked open with a split of cheap domestic white as consolation for being trapped in the middle seat of row 36 out of Melbourne last week? It wasn’t packed lovingly by hand in a Barossa farmhouse full of laughing middle-aged women just waiting for Rick Stein to motor up and flirt with them between takes of his latest series of “Food Heroes”. Anyone who thinks differently probably also believes Ben & Jerry’s really is hand-churned by a couple of weird-beards who let the occasional bud drop into a batch of Cherry Garcia. The rest of us who have ever opened a plastic packet of her mass-produced goop at 36,000 feet would likely agree with Beer’s words at the Co-Operative collective: “’I have to say flavour, seasonality, ripeness, cannot travel a long way.” Indeed.

Beer’s message is little more than “let them eat cake”, but with a twist: In Beer’s case, it is more like, “let them eat my particular mass-produced cake, and pay me extra for the privilege.” The Prick does not begrudge Beer her commercial success; more power to her. She is, by all accounts, a lovely person. The woman has, over the course of her lifetime, done some great things for Australian food, and no one can complain about that. But let us also not forget that she serves up her complaints with an extra helping of self-interest. Same as Dick Smith and the milk industry and so many other quasi-rent seekers before her. Meanwhile, if the Prick wants some damn duck pâté, he’ll make it himself.

UPDATE: A friend of the site makes a good point: “Since she’s so very concerned about pricing and the farmers not being paid enough I think Maggie should step up and tell us all her exact lineitem input costs on each tub of quince flavoured dust she produces (I don’t like the stuff even tho’ plenty of folks do, sorry) and her profits on each wholesale and retail dealio too. If she’s making less than 30 points per item I’d be surprised. Don’t get me wrong, she can cook and she’s a great ambassador for Oz food but she can shove her collective slowfood type politics, she really can. I am sick of being lectured by cooks.”