The Saveur 100 Is Out
I love leafing through The Saveur 100. I can spend many fun-filled hours mulling over the magazine's choices. It just made it to my mailbox, and as usual, is filled with mostly thoughtful, surprising choices, with a few puzzlements thrown in for good measure.
My Favorite Thoughtful, Surprising Choices
Number 8: Les Blank, the Bay Area filmmaker who loves food and music in equal measure. Rent or buy Spend It All, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, or A Well-Spent Life. Last year, after a 20-year absence from the scene, he released All in This Tea, in which he follows a tea enthusiast through China.
Number 30: I appreciate the shout out to wonton soup. But it has to be good wonton soup, which is in perilously short supply in America. And bad wonton, unlike bad pizza, is not still pretty good. In fact it's dishwater bad.
Number 42: Writer and cookbook author Sheila Hibben, who initially championed local food and regional specialties with the 1932 publication of The National Cookbook: A National Americana. 1932! That's cool.
Number 45: Honeybees. And I am quoting verbatim here: "In a mystery that carries more than a whiff of the apocalyptic, billions of honeybees all over the world have gone missing. Colony Collapse Disorder, as scientists have dubbed it, has affected the livelihood of not just makers of honey but also the farmers who depend on bees to pollinate their crops. The bees' plight has made us newly respectful of the subtle but substantial role these creatures play in our daily lives."
Number 85: Marks & Spencer. I like any department store that sells Honey Roast Wiltshire Ham-flavored potato chips (or crisps, as the Brits call them). Then when I went online to see what over flavors they had, I discovered roquefort and bacon, Stilton and pork, and cheddar and caramelized shallot-flavored chips. C'mon, Frito-Lay, get with the pork chip program.
Number 100: I loved this one: The Year the Farm Bill Became Sexy. 'Nuff said.
The Puzzlements
Number 13: Tomato aspic? This is Saveur at its romanticized wayback-machine worst. Do we really need to celebrate tomato aspic?
Number 36: Hand-washing dishes. Hand-washing a few dishes is satisfying in an elemental sort of way. It might be a noble chore. Hand-washing a dinner party's worth of dishes, when you're really tired and want to go to bed, is no fun.
Number 49: Asian fruits, including durians. Durians smell like, in the immortal words of one famous New York chef, a gas leak. Plus, the carbon footprint of a durian, shipped from Southeast Asia, would make Al Gore gasp.
Number 60: Independent butchers, whose cause I have lionized for years. But Napa-based Fatted Calf, one of four places mentioned, is, as far as I know, a charcuterie maker and not a butcher. And if Saveur were going to focus on charcuterie, New York's Salumeria Biellese should certainly have been mentioned (maybe they have already been on the list). (I did love reading about a real independent butcher, Fleischer's in upstate New York, which I have heard wonderful things about.) Plus, in New York at least, there are many independent butchers worth mentioning, including the Florence Meat Market in Greenwich Village, Schatzie's on the Upper East Side, and Oppenheimer's on the Upper West Side, Staubitz's in Brooklyn, to name but a few.
Number 80: Cincinnati chili. Have they run out of truly delicious regional foods to celebrate? Cincinnati chili is perfectly OK, but I'm not sure it's worthy of inclusion in the Saveur 100. Maybe I'm wrong, but have you ever had a transcendent bowl of Cincinnati chili?
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18 Comments:
Ed, re #60; get in your car and drive up to Fleisher's in Rhinebeck. I purchased a 4 rib roast for my Christmas dinner and it was the best hunk of meat I've ever cooked. Jessica and Josh are a pleasure to deal with. Go to Fleisher's, it is all that you have heard.
ride&cook at 9:56AM on 01/08/08
Cincinnati ribs perhaps...a la Montgomery Inn, but not the chili. I lived there for several years and really tried to make myself like Skyline...but I just can't get past the cinnamon.
jcrisco at 10:22AM on 01/08/08
HAND-WASHING DISHES?!?!? Egads! This was written by someone who clearly has a dishwasher and the luxury of choice in the matter. The Saveur editor who likes washing dishes by hand so much is invited to visit my kitchen sink anytime.
Adam Kuban at 10:45AM on 01/08/08
Tomato aspic brings back happy childhood Christmas memories for me. My mother, who lived to almost 92, always made tomato aspic in individual aluminum star-shaped molds for Christmas dinner; each was carefully unmolded and served on a bit of lettuce. Hers was pretty good (canned tomato juice must have been better 50+ years ago) but I think what makes one remember it is the unusual texture which is very different from Jello.
peggysu at 12:18PM on 01/08/08
I lived in Cincinnati for 20 years and nothing beats Skyline.
FreeTransfer at 12:39PM on 01/08/08
That's my point. You have to have lived in Cincinnati for 20 years to love Skyline chili. I feel the same way about Gabila's Potato Knishes in New York. You have to have lived here to love them. As far as tomato aspic is concerned, I think I've had credible versions of it. I just don't understand how someone can love, love, love it.
Ed Levine at 1:17PM on 01/08/08
Skyline is fine, but for Cincinnati chili Camp Washington is the best.
cm82 at 2:17PM on 01/08/08
HAND-WASHING DISHES?!?!? Egads! This was written by someone who clearly has a dishwasher and the luxury of choice in the matter. The Saveur editor who likes washing dishes by hand so much is invited to visit my kitchen sink anytime.
Adam Kuban at 10:45AM on 01/08/08
Funny how these things get nominated as good ideas, isn't it.
I remember one very heartfelt appeal to the handwashing dishes camp, a little while ago.
Here it is.
Hmmm.
Karen Resta at 3:02PM on 01/08/08
wait, i thought chefs have foul mouths. "a gas leak" is the verbatim description? i have heard much worse (read: NSFW) descriptions for durian...
foodinmouth at 3:38PM on 01/08/08
OK, Karen. That was actually a nice paean to doing the dishes by hand. For small loads, hand-washing is fine. I just wish I had the choice of putting large loads in a dishwasher on "dinner party" occasions.
Adam Kuban at 4:09PM on 01/08/08
Adam, I thought it was quite romantic, the paean. Uh . . . it was a bit too romantic for me, as a matter of fact. :)
Great essay though, and I wonder if whomever has to come up with these Top 100 lists came across it at one time or another. Because I sure wouldn't put hand-washing dishes on any Top list. I wouldn't even put loading or unloading the dishwasher on any Top list. As a matter of fact if I could get away with taking the spatula and serving the food directly onto people's hands I would.
That would be great. Just throw the people in the shower afterwards. Ahhh.
A Lazy Libra,
Karen
Karen Resta at 5:01PM on 01/08/08
No to #80. I'm already dreading Super Bowl Sunday, which has turned into an annual unwelcome Cincinnati chili event. Every year an excited friend brings the concoction to my party, but I suspect he's the only one who actually enjoys the mess of spaghetti, meaty sauce, wieners and who knows what else. This has gone on for at least three years now, and I don't know how to nip the abomination in the bud.
Krista at 5:40PM on 01/08/08
Adam, you stole my post. Ed, I thought the same thing when I read about tomato aspic. Bleah!
Hand-washing dishes just isn't all it's cracked up to be. Then again, that's why I invite lots of people to my parties--more hands in/at the sink to wash and dry! ;-)
Curlz at 7:24PM on 01/08/08
this was the most disappointing saveur 100 issue for me.
dmarina at 11:08PM on 01/08/08
I have not made an aspic since 1986. Handwashing dishes is funny to me. A dear friend always wants to handwash my dishes after dinner parties, Christmas day she dropped a crystal wine goblet in my sink and broke it. She felt bad. I said to her this, "This is why I bought a 7 cycle dishwasher with a china crystal setting."
Also you use far more water when handwashing. Water seems to be the topic of the times.
JerzeeTomato at 9:26AM on 01/09/08
I picked up the magazine the other day - usually I don't bother with foodie mags. It is very attractive, visually - the photos really added heft and meaning and interest to the list of 100, overall.
Here's what caught my attention as I leafed through it (though I will go back and read more thoroughly later):
* Oseland has a nice touch, I think - for the magazine overall. It is beginning to interest me again after many years of complete disinterest.
* The calendar ("agenda") with historic happenings listed was good.
* Steven Shaw's "Empire of Egg Rolls" caught my attention.
* The beautiful photo of Madhur Jaffrey and her essay "Maiden Voyage".
* Rancho Gordo of course is the Bean Guy of Choice and the photo of his beans was glorious.
* Euell Gibbons should be featured more often. He had a lot to say.
* Octopus Apotehosis - Yes. Octopus rocks.
* Rachel Lauden on the Diccionario Enciclopedico de Gastronomia Mexicana. Anything Rachel writes is more than okay with me. She is brilliant.
* Nice to see Concord grapes focused on.
* Asian fruits. Next up, Asian desserts made with vegetables I hope.
* Gastronomica. Glad to see it noted.
* The books noted in Auteur! Auteur! are all stunning examples of self-publishing. Commendable. Fantastic, actually.
* Turmeric by Jaffrey. Very cool.
There's a lot enclosed on this little shiny pages. I'm a happy camper.
Karen Resta at 2:03PM on 01/12/08
On any other day, I would agree with the assessment of tomato aspic. But today Michael Ruhlman posted this (yowza!). So at least it's a coincidence worth noting.
But hand washing dishes? Huh? It's definitely _not_ noble since it uses so much more water. In fact, that's what I love most about my dishwasher... it makes something that might have seemed lazy to my puritan ancestors seem downright virtuous. (Take that, puritan ancestors.)
Helen at 1:55PM on 01/14/08
#60 Los Paisanos Butchers on Smith St should be mentioned..great sausages, meats and organic chickens...not to mention wild boar.
From Barolo
barolo at 1:33PM on 01/15/08