Food News and Notes

A few victual related items for your Friday afternoon:

1. The fad of celebrity chefs making “runway food” to promote the conspicuous consumption of rich people that then gets celebrated like the 80s is stupid. Is Anthony Bourdain turning into a sort of modern version of Robin Leach, at least for one form of consumption?

2. The rise of tequila (and

increasingly mezcal). This is a bit more of a celebratory post than I’d like because there are some real legitimate questions about the sustainability of the agave-based booze industry. As my wife is a scholar of Mexico specializing in Oaxaca, I spend a decent amount of time there when she is researching. So I’ve been lucky enough to explore mezcal a bit and the quality can be really outstanding. At this point I generally prefer it to tequila while drinking straight, although I tend to think the smokiness of it overwhelms cocktails. The cost however isn’t really all that cheap, even in Mexico, especially if we compare it to bourbon. The bottle I brought

back last summer of a weird forest-based mezcal runs about $70 here and I got it for around $45 at a mezcal fair (at which you pay a $4 admission fee and then can taste all the mezcal you want). I assume the real difference is that it’s just much more expensive to produce because of the size of the plant, as opposed to the corn that makes up bourbon.

3. Agribusiness is now funding feature documentaries on the greatness and responsibility of the current agricultural system. Very convincing, I’m sure.

4. The bacon of Israel.