Another Yelper Makes Me Want To Shove Razors In My Eyes

"My friend ordered three dishes. I don't speak Chinese, so I don't know their exact names, but I have approximated them below:

1. Chicken Buried in a Giant Mountain of Red Peppers that is Really Goddamn Hot
2. Fish Fillet Swimming in a Giant Pool of Spicy Chili Oil that is Really Goddamn Hot
3. Ma Po Tofu (You DO speaka Chinese! -ed.) Swimming in a Giant Pool of Spicy Chili Oil that is Really Goddamn Hot"

You found this review:
Useless
Embarrassing
Makes You Want To Shove Razors In Your Eyes

The $26 Glass of Veuve (or, No One Wants To Read Your Stupid Manifesto)

So I hate lots of things, but especially this:

Don't skip intro! Don't do it!

You didn't skip it, did you? Good, because I HATES IT and it's so much better to HATES THINGS together.

Unless you're a hundred million, the thought of spending $44.95 on a main course of lobster tail at the sort of place that sends shrieks of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" at you from its hopelessly outdated website is about as appealing as a lapdance from Mick Foley. (Who apparently loves him some Tori Amos.)

Speaking of lapdances, if I'm spending $26 on a glass of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label (The King of Beers Champagnes!), I'd better be getting a lapdance. Gratuity included.

According to the Mark's website: "Eating" at Mark’s is truly a memorable dining experience.

I suppose "Eating" is in "quotes" because what you're doing isn't "Eating" so much as it is bleeding money out of your spiny-lobster-perforated innards, resulting in a financial sepsis that leads to projectile vomiting, spouse blaming, and - in many cases - a 22% APR.

And if by "memorable" you mean the opulence and showboatiness couldn't possibly be outdone unless you were dining in Notre Dame at midnight while the Bulgarian Women's Choir hooted out Christmas carols to your foot-high platings (is that a croquant set at an angle at the tippy top of my food pile? Spectacular!), then yeah, it's got to be.

Even if the food at this place is now and then really good, there's just no substitute for sincerity - call it the conceit of my generation, but we found the 80s a superbly entertaining bit of triviality, not to be carried on seriously now that we're grown-ups. I listen to 80s music all the time ("incessantly," says certain persons married to me), but I don't want to eat 80s.

We make fun (I make fun) of the bearded Brooklynite who carves his own utensils from co-op-grown bamboo and takes butchery classes (and yet still not butch!) and throws dinner parties devoted to his own closet-festered cheeses...but more and more, this is how I want our restaurants to look and feel. But not because they cynically put on these airs to be interviewed by the eager beavers at New York magazine (who sometimes remind me of the twentysomething babysitter I once had that let us do anything we wanted because he harbored some uncomfortably tangible need to be liked by children). Because their earnest little hearts want desperately to care about something the way our folks cared about Vietnam and civil rights.

Because we have no modern manifestos, but those regarding how we eat and drink. Economics bores our Ritalin-cured brains; politics are only digestible insomuch as they fit on our iPhone screens. Sex blackens and shrinks in a forgotten broiler - too hopelessly damaged and depressing to touch. We'll have to start over from scratch on that one.

But eating and drinking? The long-accepted pleasures of the mouth and bloodstream? That's worth a revolutionary's attention, isn't it?

Brillat-Savarin knew it, even in 1825:

"In the present state of our knowledge, we work on metals with other metals; we take hold of them with iron tongs, forge them with iron hammers, and cut them with steel files; but I have never yet met anyone who could explain to me how the first tongs were made and the first hammer forged."

-- The Physiology of Taste

So, carve on Bearded Brooklyn Boys, as you meander towards adulthood, balls blue with the hope and audacity you couldn't consummate as quickly and ferociously as you'd desired, and a Kiva loan out there somewhere, whittling its own small path through the darkness. Butcher away, you skinny-jeaned seekers of the primitive self, whose extreme measures are misguided (unless a 29-year lifespan is the goal) but dewy-headed with earnestness. Argue into the night about the difference between "real" and "natural" wines, and eschew marketing firms and Mega-purple. Each guffaw directed at your fixie is also a tiny cheer of the heart. For each cleaver swing, each tamp of the muddling stick, each plate of homegrown, homemade, lowrise of not-glistening or architected food is one step further away from blowhard Wine-Spectator-Award-boasting cruiseship aesthetics like this.


Selah.


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Edie Loves Everything!!!!!!!

So I love going to new restaurants, especially ones that give me free food when I go because they know I'm a blogger and my words can really influence a person's decision to go. Which is a power I will not abuse, by the way, so don't even ask me to! Heeheeheehee.

In fact, I've been invited to a few "Influencer Events" since I started my food blog, Edie Loves Everything!!!!!!, which is totally an unexpected, happy perk. I had started it simply because I love to eat, and I love to talk, and I love....almost everything! Yay!

One time, this chef even came out of the kitchen during one of our blogger events and said he hoped we would all say really nice things about him and his restaurant, and that if we needed any more information to help us write our blog posts, we could contact his PR rep, a pretty lady getting trashed in the corner. She sort of half-waved, half-fell off her chair, and then the chef leaned on the table and started to cry a little bit. He muttered something about a Bernard Loiseau???? (of course I had to Google it—an old mentor, maybe?). Then he rubbed his face with his dirty towel and went back into the kitchen. We were all like, Whatever. My Tweet that night: OMG, chefs are soooo intense. It's because they're also creative. Ask me how I know LOL

So tonight, I went to this little wine bar by my house. I love it because it has hay on the floor and all the servers are dressed in green jumpsuits, like mechanics or something - yet, it's a wine bar! It's not trying to be anything it's not, in other words. It's like they're saying, "Yeah, we serve wine, but we don't care about it and so you don't have to, either!" It's way more fun this way.

We started with a plate of meat and cheese. It was manchego, I think, which is like, really, really hard to get and from somewhere far away, like Morocco. They cut it into these big cubes that reminded me of the cheese plate at all my work events; that's my favorite part of those parties, by the way. I sit there and spear cubes of orange, white—even green cheese, while all my coworkers just laugh 'cause they know I am so food-crazy! I'm just like, "What can I say? I love really good cheese." My favorite is brie. OMG, to die for.
<--- No brie. Sad face!

After finishing off my cheese cubes, I moved on to the meat. It was some sort of dried meat, like prosciutto. It was so yummy nummy nummers with the fig jam!!!!!! This place is really creative.

I drank a glass of something red that was really scrumptious because it tasted like a wine I had before that I really liked and someone told me was expensive. And this one wasn't! I drank two glasses of it. I think it was Spanish.

<--- like this, but Spanish

All in all, a really good wine bar and really good prices. I can't wait to be invited back! (Hint, hint) Thankfully, this time no one came out of the kitchen and cried. Hello - note to restaurants: that's a total buzzkill.


xo,
Edie

This Is Happening

: It's me, bitches. I'm back.

You: Oh, were you gone?

: And I'm here to tell you that although I'm not a waitress anymore, I still have to endure more stupid bullshit on the Internet about food and wine than I can stand. So now you get to hear all about it.

You: You're going to keep making fun of Yelpers, aren't you?

: Yaaaarrrrr. And food bloggerz and Twitter Twats and fucking chefs, and....GRAWRRRR! PR releases!!! I FUCKING HATE PR RELEASES. THEY MAKE ME WANT TO SHAVE MY FACE LIKE BOB GELDOF IN "THE WALL."

You: And, hopefully, you'll keep giving us good recommendations for wines to drink that are crazy-affordable and natural and taste like real actual wine from a place made by people not robots and chemicals.


: Fuck yes. Now I'm about to go down on this 2002 Pierre Peters Cuvée Speciale like Mama Cass on a ham sandwich. Peace out.