...more recent posts
Typical year-end list from the Post, but I was struck by this item:
GOOFIEST ITEM IN A DISH: Popcorn - actual popcorn - in $14.50 corn-and-lobster soup at the Carlyle Hotel restaurant. It's even less successful than it sounds.AKA used popcorn (successfully, I thought) in a corn soup earlier this year. I thought it was novel, but I guess it was a trend. Or was it a ripoff? Or is there any difference in the food world? Inquiring minds want gossip, not gastronomy.
Celebrity Chefs Dish Up Dinner Party Neurosis
The Daily Telegraph London
Richard Alleyne
December 14, 2001
THE great British tradition of the dinner party is coming under threat from an unlikely source: unrealistic cooking standards set by celebrity chefs, a survey shows.
Culinary experts such as Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Ainsley Harriot are undermining the public's confidence and giving rise to a phenomenon known as Kitchen Performance Anxiety.
The survey carried out by Prof David Warburton, of the University of Reading, showed that more than two thirds of the public had stopped giving dinner parties because of the pressures.
Most people still holding them said they were often more stressful than a first date or an interview. One in eight people felt such anxiety when entertaining friends that it made them physically ill.
Prof Warburton said: "Cooking for guests has always caused slight worry and some `butterflies' because it is natural to want to give guests the best one can.
"Unfortunately, my research shows that for many people it had moved beyond this and they had become tremendously stressed because they burdened themselves with irrational and unrealistic expectations of their cooking skills.
"For these people `butterflies' can become physical sickness and nervousness can become extreme irritation and impatience. They may even avoid giving dinners altogether."
More than a thousand people were interviewed in the survey, which was commissioned by Piat d'Or, the winemaker.
Prof Warburton defined Kitchen Performance Anxiety as the fear of one's cooking and entertainment being judged and evaluated negatively by other people, which would lead to feelings of embarrassment, inadequacy, humiliation and the avoidance of entertaining.
But there was some relief for the party-giver. Ninety per cent of those interviewed said good company and good wine were more important than good food.
all i will post from dinner tonight [and we would have joined you yatters at aka but we were only available late tonight] is that, aside from yet another extremely yummy meal at locanda vini et olli, en route home, wheel and the cabbie were ROCKING out to a highly caffeinated merengue band, which i am listenting to as i write b/c we somehow got the cd from rubin the driver in exchange for a slight increase in fare, sounding like a cross between salsa and polka, BLASTING from the car driving down atlantic avenue, from which there was quite a lot of hooping and hollering from rubin and wheel. needless to say we will only be taking rubin's car from now on and he has an even better cd for us next time.
i think Captain Wylie will be cooking for only 8 more nights at 71CFF, than its nothing public till summer 2002 i hear, time for seats at the bar next week, we did this week--YUMMY STUFF!!!
jim whats the possibility of a bloody dead bird on the top of this page?? another yum yum in brooklyn we ate at last week is...Al Di La Trattoria 248 5th Ave, 7187834565...need to try more but we eat every bite and had to get one dish repeet on the spot...nice wine list...."baby Lupa"....i hope to go back Tues 12/11....