food snobbery

[phygelus]

One, someone really needs to send out a memo that it's time to change the currently fashionable easy-to-drink red wine. I have been sick of merlot for about three or four years now and it hasn't happened yet. Maybe you genuinely like merlot. I do, well enough, and I will like it better someday when I'm sick of something else. In the meantime,

Comments

[salimondo]

"tapenade" = olive spread
"crudite" = vegetables

The various artisanal hams and sausages drive me into an impatient rage but I concede the point there. And a merlot with pizza sounds nasty -- I like merlot because it's so saturnine whereas pizza wants a lift, spaghetti even moreso. Chianti is the way.

[phygelus]

"tapas": appetizers

The problem with most "artisanal" sausages is they taste like ass. It's hard enough to find sausage that tastes the way it's supposed to.

Artisanal ham, I could live with that as a marketing term for prosciutto and Virginia country ham, if it means I get to eat those more often.

[salimondo]

I thought I was alone for hating artisanal sausage! Even health sausages taste better because they don't aspire to anything but tasting like ground pork plus (no fennel, even). Although that sounds dangerously close to a moral.

"creme brulee" = toasted pudding

[phygelus]

"Creatively" flavored creme brulee should be outlawed.

In a related vein, tiramisu has been devolving into pudding-with-cookies, but that's leading in to my next post already.

[phygelus]

On "artisanal sausage": I'd make the distinction between traditional sausages and the sort of thing that lists its seasonings in its name ("Orange peel and apple duck sausage from Snotbrook Farms"). It's the latter sort of thing that is virtually guaranteed to be awful. The former are often regional brands being upmarketed, at least around here.

This being the bay area, some of the local sausage companies manage to have products in both categories.