We Won't Overcome

The high-spirited Los Angeles Times reported recently that "fast food is fun again."

In case you don't recall it ever being that way, the Times says the last period of exuberance was when "In-N-Out Burger heated up" and "Krispy Kreme made a splash." (I have to agree, nothing is more entertaining than splashing donuts.)

Why the new sense of exhilaration?

It seems that "a new generation of chains" from Guatemala, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines has arrived in California. You know what that means: These fast-food outlets will soon be spreading everywhere.

I, for one, endorse them. They will lessen cultural disparities in this country, and that can only lead to greater bonds among Americans.

For decades, those of us who trace our roots to Europe and Africa have borne the burden of fast food. Hispanics and Asians have for the most part escaped the curse.

Now they will suffer right alongside us.

I clearly see a nation indivisible, all of us eating badly, united as one.

Dining Despair

Perhaps this has happened to you.

You're in a restaurant. You're having a fine time. And then the occasion is ruined by short-term memory loss.

It happened to me recently. I was embarrassed. Colleagues made fun of me.

Did I forget which vintages of Châteauneuf-du-Pape were best? Never. Remembering that stuff is easy. Did I not recall whether rouget was a fish or a curly purple plant? Of course not. Did I fail to tip the maître d'? Well, I've never done it before, so why start now?

No, I asked for a doggie bag. And then I left it behind. For all I know, it's still sitting on the floor next to my chair.

No statistics are kept on forgotten doggie bags, a culinary tragedy. My guess is one in three. What makes it so heartbreaking is that those of us who request doggie bags really want to finish our meals at a later date.

I left behind two-thirds of a $43 sirloin strip steak. It wasn't just me who felt the loss, although I would have eaten the best parts. I have dogs. They also were deprived.

I still think about that steak. I've left women behind when I've walked out of restaurants, and that hurt less.

The answer to this national quandary—after all, we have an aging population and the problem is bound to worsen—is that the restaurant must take responsibility. In fact, every table in a restaurant should have a waitperson assigned to make certain nothing is left behind when customers depart, be it food, purses, or reading glasses.

Eating in restaurants isn't easy. At the conclusion of a meal we must remember where we put our coat checks (to say nothing of our cars), remember to return our credit cards to our wallets, remember to save receipts, and remember the names of our guests so we can bid them goodnight, all while tired and slightly drunk. Sometimes more than just slightly drunk.

I hope restaurants will accept this new responsibility. I propose a national campaign, for which I have already composed a motto: No Doggie Bag Left Behind.

It Isn't the Corn—It's You

So-called nutrition advocates are trashing high fructose corn syrup these days. I'm not a big fan, either, but that's because I believe soft drinks and ice cream taste better when they're made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup.

These nutrition advocates—"nutrition police" would depict them more accurately—believe that the proliferation of products containing corn syrup is the cause of obesity and type II diabetes.

I always like to stand up for the little guy, and corn syrup is an innocent bystander in our nation's nutritional decline. It's not to blame for America's carbohydrate crisis. Our eating habits are.

As my old pal, the Capitol Gourmet, recently pointed out, "All these folks are looking for simplistic answers to fatness, but they just can't accept the most basic one. People get fat because they eat too much. It's not what they eat; it's the quantity of calories in what they eat."

In the 1970s, I met a Norwegian-born Canadian named Herman "Jackrabbit" Johannsen, generally credited with introducing cross-country skiing to North America. He was 99 at the time, happily living alone in a small house in the Laurentian mountains, cooking for himself, doing well.

Just how old was 99 in the seventies? I saw his college diploma. He had graduated in the 19th century.

He told me that when he was 88 he attended a banquet at which guests, concerned that he looked a little frail, kept asking him if he was doing all right. He got so disgusted he walked across the table on his hands.

Johannsen lived to be 111, and he told me the secret of long life: Eat anything you want. Exercise. That's it. I'm proud to say that I adhere to fully 50 percent of his rules.

Half Caf, No Cash

Now and then, an American entrepreneur comes up with an idea so profitable he never has to worry about money.

Coffee houses are one such windfall—ever stop and think about the cost of the ingredients in one of those java chip frappucinos that sell for about five bucks? Pennies, at most.

Search engines are another—ever stop and think what it costs to publish information without having to pay for paper or printing? Nothing, at most.

That brings us to Ervin Peretz, a Google programmer who has opened a coffee shop just outside Seattle where customers are encouraged to can pay whatever they like, absolutely nothing if they so choose.

The menu lists no prices.

The staff demands no money.

What should we make of this? I think Peretz is either too nice or has too much money.

When contacted, he astutely pointed out that he doesn't have to pay a cashier, a significant savings. Nor is his office staff pricey, inasmuch as it consists of him.

Peretz says his coffee shop, the Terra Bite Lounge in Kirkland, will break even when he begins to attract 200 customers a day. It's like the old joke about the discount car dealer who claims he's losing $100 on every automobile he sells. Asked how he plans to make a profit, he replies, "Volume."

I have to admit I've always been curious about the economics of the coffee shop business. I notice how people spend afternoons in Starbucks, pounding away on their laptops, buying almost nothing, taking up tables that could be occupied by paying customers. I wonder how the place stays in business.

Now I know. The answer is simple. These days selling coffee is so profitable you don't have to charge people anything in order to get rich.

Why Stop There?

It seems that a scientist in North Carolina has devised a means of disguising the bitter taste of caffeine.

This is a wonderful scientific breakthrough. I pray that the genius behind the discovery will use it for the good of all mankind.

"I had the idea for caffeinated pastries several years ago," said Dr. Robert Bohannon, who wants to add the equivalent of the caffeine in one or two cups of coffee to pastry products.

Dr. Bohannon, obviously not a health-care provider, has approached several well-known chains, hoping that they will use his invention in donuts and bagels.

The Buzz Donut. The Buzzed Bagel. He's trademarked the names.

Dr. Bohannan, who holds a Ph.D in molecular virology from the Baylor College of Medicine, is now president of a biotechnology company, Environostics, Inc.

What I'd like to see next from this altruistic fellow is Buzz Beaujolais, which will enable drunks to remain alert enough to pass roadside sobriety tests.

The Trans Fat Did It

Headline, front page, this past Monday's New York Daily News: WHAT THEY FOUND IN ANNA NICOLE'S FRIDGE!

(It was methadone and Slim-Fast, by the way.)

These days, when a person dies, we immediately check out his or her eating habits.

Officially, the cause of Anna Nicole's death is still undetermined.

Not to me.

There's a pattern. It's not just Anna Nicole.

Anna Nicole's son is dead.

Anna Nicole's second husband is dead.

Anna Nicole's second husband's son is dead.

Anna Nicole's first husband was a fry cook. Suspicious, wouldn't you say?

McSpin

From reports I've read—most recently from the Associated Press—the struggle for quality at McDonald's never ceases.

In this latest story, we are told of years of research and "extensive testing" as McDonald's selflessly seeks ways to make the cooking oil for its fries healthier.

To be fair, fries are something McDonald's does seem to care about, maybe because it's one of the rare fast-food products that foodies have praised. Of course, that happened years ago, when McDonald's oil included a big dose of beef tallow, which is rendered beef fat, the bovine equivalent of lard. It's pretty clear that fries cooked in melted animal parts, whatever they happen to be, taste better than fries made any other way.

McDonald's got rid of the beef tallow during one of America's well-meaning witch-hunts against saturated fats. More recently, McDonald's was again forced to alter the formula for the oil in which fries are cooked, this time because the city of New York has banned trans-fat.

A spokesman for the company said the new cooking-oil formula had passed the test and the company was "very confident in what we're hearing back from our customers."

This is a farce beyond reason. McDonald's doesn't care what it feeds us. McDonald's customers don't care what they're eating. And McDonald's employees can't cook worth a damn.

Should McDonald's products be regulated? That's like asking if the nuclear industry should be regulated. Without guidelines, the company would happily send out food that would set fire to our insides. The only criteria for its products: Will customers buy them?

Please. No more stories about how McDonald's is saving the world through research.

Another thing: Have you ever taken a close look at Ronald McDonald's body? That's what you're going to look like if you keep eating that crap.

By Me It's Organic

The newest controversy in the ever-entertaining world of organic food is whether or not a cloned cow can be considered organic.

To summarize and simplify, those in favor say it should be permitted as long as the cloned animal is raised organically. Those opposed say a cloned cow is by its very nature artificial, conceived in a laboratory dish.

We should look to the Jews for an uncomplicated resolution.

In many situations that wouldn't be practical, we Jews being an argumentative people. But in this case we need only refer to Jewish law. It states that a person born of a Jewish mother is by definition Jewish, like it or not.

And so I say of cloned cows: If they come from an organic mother, they, too, are organic.

By the way, this doesn't answer the question of whether meat from a cloned cow can be considered kosher. I'm not getting myself involved in that one.

Price Check in Produce for the Guy in Funny Shorts

I don't know which of us started complaining first.

It must have been me. I tend to grumble a lot. Mario Batali does not.

I was interviewing him about pasta when he suddenly said to me, "I went to the store. Onions were $1.50 a pound. I'm thinking, 'What's going on?' I was mortified."

The store he was talking about was Whole Foods Market. Now, everybody knows Whole Foods isn't cheap. And even when you find something there that doesn't cost more than it does anywhere else, which can happen, there's always something to tempt you that's a little fancier and more expensive than what you went into the store to buy. In onions, for example, you might be able to find Maui, Vidalia, and Walla Walla, to name only the ones you know.

Batali says it was none of those. Nor was he shopping for lampascione, a wild onion from Italy you often see on the menu at Del Posto, the most elegant of his restaurants.

"I'm talking red onions. Not organic onions. Plain red onions," he said.

That got my attention. Cheap non-organic onions, regardless of color, are the kind I buy. (Actually, I prefer those small yellow onions that aren't particularly sweet, the kind my mother used in her recipes.)

"Two onions. Three bucks," he added.

I guess it's nice to know onion growers are doing well. It's also a pleasure to know that fabulous folks like Batali suffer at the grocery store, just like us.

Waiter, There's a Fly…

The wine was magnificent. I suppose that's why the fly dove right in.

The wine was a half-bottle of 2001 Domaine Cheze Cuvée de Breze Condrieu. The young fellow dining with me had never tasted a wine from the French appellation Condrieu, where you can find the ultimate expression of the viognier grape.

You might have tried viognier. Many vintners in America are producing it, for two reasons. It's potentially great. It's difficult to grow. After all, a man can't spend his life cultivating Cabernet Sauvignon, a vine that grows like a weed.

Drinking viogner from Condrieu is like tasting Swiss cheese from Switzerland or Kobe beef from Japan. There's nothing like the real thing.

The Domaine Cheze, by the way, was magnificent, as good a Condrieu as I've ever tasted. It was almost too thick, and I never expect that level of intensity from viognier. It had aged wonderfully, and I never expect that from a viognier, either. It tasted like peaches and pears that had acquired nobility with age.

But there was a problem. That fly. It had found the best wine in the house, which was a stunning accomplishment for a fly. It had committed suicide, which was less impressive. Finally, it had ruined about a quarter of a $65 half-bottle of wine.

What to do?

The sommelier did better than I would have expected. He removed the glass, dumped the contents, and returned with a clean glass. He poured more from the old bottle. Then he did something astonishingly generous. He brought us a second half-bottle, on the house.

I'd never been in quite this situation before, so I called an old friend, Daniel Johnnes, the wine director for the restaurants of chef Daniel Boulud. I asked him what a diner can expect if for some reason a glass of wine is ruined through no fault of his own. (On one occasion a waiter dropped a green bean in my wine, but the wine was rather vegetal anyway, so I merely scooped it out and drank on.)

First, he made fun of the situation.

He said, "It depends on whether you were sitting indoors or outdoors. If outdoors, there's the question of who the fly belongs to and who is responsible for it. If you're indoors, the restaurant has to concede that it's their fly."

Then he admitted that the gesture had to be made, whatever the circumstances. What makes this a thorny problem rather than a simple one is the enormous cost of wine these days. "It's not like replacing a chicken if a fly has landed on it," he said. "The chicken cost $5. The wine might cost $1,000."

He says he would first ask the customer what he wanted done. The customer might tell him to remove the fly—or whatever the object happened to be—with a spoon and bring back the glass. In such a case, no decisions need be made.

He says if a fly found its way into wine that was served by the glass, he would automatically bring a new glass of wine to the customer.

He says he would even replace a partially drunk bottle with a whole new one if it were reasonably priced. Whatever wine remained in the old bottle could be taken to the bar and served by the glass. Or if the diner graciously said not to bother, he would make some other gesture, perhaps bring all at the table a glass of dessert wine.

"But it's impossible to replace a wine like a 1985 LaTache," he says.

He says if that happened, the proper thing to do would be to deduct a percentage of the cost of the bottle from the bill, roughly in proportion to what was lost. Then he would make another gesture. Once again, it might be complimentary dessert wine.

He wanted to make one more point.

"There are no flies in Daniel's restaurants," he said.