By Larry Sheingold -

With apologies to the musical, Hair. This is the dawning of the Age of Commentaryus.

We’ve always had opinions. Always shared them. But thanks to the internet, never has so much commentary been offered for public consumption about public consumption.

By any analysis, most volunteer restaurant critiques are not inspired by the gospel of Hair’s Age of Aquarius – which promised harmony and understanding with sympathy and trust abounding. No. In the Age of Commentaryus, peace does not necessarily guide the planets, nor does love steer the stars.

Take, for instance, this review: “If the aliens come, I hope they beam this restaurant’s 10 block radius up into their spaceship and leave in disgust.”

Puts me in mind of Art Linkletter, whose “Kids Say The Darnedest Things” featured unintentionally amusing youngsters saying darned things like, “I want to be a scientist so I can win the Pulit Surprise.”

Today’s on-line dining reviewers are the new Linkletter kids. An ever-growing source of you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up moments. Here are a few of the latest eye-catchers – reflections of the Age of Commentaryus.

Dining in my own image
“Most disturbingly, there is a mirror that runs around the section of the restaurant that I was sitting in – right at face level.  I essentially sat next to myself during dinner, a choice I would not have made.  And, everywhere I turned, there I was, eating.  It was like being in a horror movie.”

Dining with my peeps
“Dunking Donut shop is better. They may be not as clean or tidy but they give you the respect and the manager does not falsely accuse you of voyeurism.”

Fragrant fowls
“The squab didn’t taste so bad after I stopped thinking of flying rats in NYC and started thinking of, well, pigeon.”

Fragrant fouls
“When we called over our waiter, he took the oyster shell, smelled it, and proclaimed AND YOU ATE IT?!?! Definitely not the first words you want your waiter to say.

Communal dining
“But seriously, this place is like communist or something.  If you can’t afford it you gotta limit yourself to specific dishes at a specific time. There’s no freedom in this menu.”

Regular customer
“Another reason I like eating here is that it goes right through me. Right through. Sometimes, I have to pedal harder or pass on yard sale gems, just to make it home on time.”

Slow food
“By the time our breakfast came it was lunchtime and I was hardly in the mood for what I ordered.”Fast food
“The ‘person’ who brought me here, and I question his humanity now, was too busy trying to plan his escape route to avoid paying our tab to actually let me enjoy my food.”

Dog food
“The corn beef and hash leaves a lot to be desired and resembles Alpo.”

Artificial ingredients
“Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I dig inauthenticity. Must run in my family. It’s how my nephew seems to choose his partners’ breasts more often than not.”

The Broadway musical Hair was born of the 1960’s hippie counter culture. Today we have our own counter culture – it has just spread from the counter to the entire restaurant and from there to the computer keyboard.

As OpenTable, Livebookings and others fight for the on-line restaurant reservation dollar and Yelp, Urbanspoon and a host of sites compete for voice-of-the-people dining review supremacy, two things are clear: the internet and dining industries are locked together; and it is not always about letting the sunshine in.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The above are real quotes from real people on real food blogs. They also are evidence of the reason why the restaurant recommendation web site atLarrys.com is not open for input by the general public. www.atlarrys.com does recommendations, not reviews. The co-hosts at atLarrys.com are committed to telling you of places where they think you will enjoy eating, not places you won’t enjoy.)

By Larry Sheingold -

I was a fusion food pioneer. Didn’t intend to be. But surviving the 1960’s on dollars a day meant recipes-of-necessity. And that often called for blending culinary cultures.

So blend I did. Spaghetti topped with canned chili. Tortillas and peanut butter. Or my staple: “idiot’s delight,” an inspired sauté of cabbage, ground beef and teriyaki sauce.

If only I’d been a marketer. Maybe I’d have been the first Wolfgang Puck – the generally accepted (and richly compensated) guru of the postmodern food fusion movement. What’s a Puck caviar and smoked salmon pizza compared to my east-meets-west-meets-south creations?

Not that either Wolfgang or I invented food fusion. Immigrants worldwide have always combined their old homeland cooking traditions with whatever was available in their adopted countries, though most probably stopped short of peanut buttered tortillas.

We can thank chefs seeking celebrity for running with the idea, sometimes concocting fusion Frankensteins like wasabi fajitas, Kimchee custard, Mango burgers, Miso cilantro vinaigrette, Chicken Caesar sushi, Tongues in rhubarb hollandaise …

And a nod to the fast food industry for globalizing sugar and fat fusion. Where would we be without fried chicken nuggets with high fructose corn syrup dipping sauce? Or the fusion of fat and more fat – like fried wings and blue cheese dressing? Not to mention Fiery Fusion Sizzlin’ Cayenne and Cheese Cheetos.

Makes you almost envy old times, when the word fusion was reserved for comparatively innocent concepts like detonating hydrogen bombs.

A lot of folks have opinions about fusion cooking. No wonder. For every abomination, there is an adobo – the delicious marinade from Spanish, Chinese and Filipino ancestry. And while I will never (promise) be tempted by fermented tofu pizza, I celebrate the introduction of ingredients like panko, chilies, pancetta, coriander and ginger into more and more dishes.

But if you want to go where few would deny that fusion works – because of inventive new chefs and 150 years of history – try Hawaii. Sugar, pineapples, bananas and a war lured and shanghaied Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Portuguese, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Americans and English. Native and plantation-era eating habits mingled with preferences of newcomers. Fusion became instinct and pre-occupation.

Having just returned from Maui, I can suggest three very different but equally satisfying examples. None served spam sushi – a more popular fusion item than you might imagine.

Aloha Mixed Plate – Lahaina
http://www.alohamixedplate.com/
Mixed Plate is a simple, outdoor dining area with inexpensive traditional food. Definitely worth a try for lunch.

From the Mixed Plate website: “In the early days of the sugar plantations … Japanese laborers would bring teriyaki beef with rice and pickled vegetables … Filipino neighbors (had) the traditional dish adobo, or perhaps a pork, or chicken stew… Koreans had their kalbi, or marinated ribs and the Chinese had a rice noodle and vegetable dish called chow fun. Hawaiians were known for their Kailua pig… It wasn’t long before they began to share their foods with one another and the ‘mixed plate’ was born …’Two scoops rice’ and ‘one scoop macaroni salad’ always accompany the traditional plate lunch.”

Roy’s Kahana Bar and Grill – Lahaina
http://www.roysrestaurant.com/locations/
Roy Yamaguchi is the father of Hawaiian fusion. He has restaurants throughout the Islands and mainland. He says,” Since opening the original Roy’s in Honolulu in 1988, we have set out to explore new directions freely blending the European techniques in which I was trained with familiar ingredients of Asia and the Pacific.”

We’ve been to Roy’s half a dozen times over the years. It’s always great. Most recently I had panko crisped spicy ahi sushi rolls with kabayaki glaze and wasabi aioli, and rare seared blackened ahi with spicy Chinese hot mustard butter sauce. Both were excellent examples of fusion as it ought to be.

Mala Ocean Tavern – Lahaina
http://www.malaoceantavern.com/
We started with edamame puree with tomatillo dipping sauce and fresh corn chips. I followed that with a whole, wok fried, caught-that-day opakapaka (snapper) with ginger garlic black bean sauce, shiitakes, tomatoes and snap peas. One of the best dishes I’ve ever had – fusion or otherwise.

Hawaiian fusion dining is a long way from my crude experiments born of empty wallets and cupboards. But like a stranger in a strange land (me and Los Angeles), I combined what I knew with what I could get. That’s what Roy Yamaguchi is doing; what immigrants reinventing themselves in new countries have done for centuries; now diners are discovering new favorites with new ingredient combinations.

By Larry Sheingold -

Unless your tastes run to watching rows of drooling contestants go totally Donner Party on heaps of hotdogs, matzo balls, tamales or sticks of butter, you’re probably as fed up with competitive eating exhibitions as I am.

A couple minutes of champ Joey Chestnut penguining soggy hot dogs and buns this Fourth of July was all I could stomach.

But nearly 2 million of us actually watched at least part of the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hotdog Eating Contest, so who am I to make light of coming attractions like the World Poutine* Eating Championship on the calendar for the end of September?

For the record these unappetizing omnivores are not gluttons. They’re gurgitators: modern day descendants perhaps of collegiate goldfish swallowers of 70 years past.

Legend has it that Harvard freshman Lathrop Withington inadvertently pioneered the sport of goldfish chugging in 1939 on a $10 bet. Today’s pro eaters are in it for substantially more.

There’s real prize money for these so-called “weapons of mass digestion.” Hotdogs and poutine not your cup of tea? You could win up to $5,000 for performing one of the seven deadly sins on gyoza, gyros, Buffalo wings, soft tacos, pepperoni rolls, jalapeno peppers, cupcakes, corn, asparagus, crawfish, corned beef, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, meatballs, moon pies, cannoli, Mars bars, oysters, grits, beef tongue and so much more.

A moment of silence for Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti who won $1,500 for sucking down almost four pounds of rocky mountain oysters** in 10 minutes.

Come to think of it, if tractor pulls can be a sport, why can’t eats of strength? There are just a few questions I’d like answered before I buy into it.

Are extreme eating athletes like Jammin Joe Larue, Chowhound Chapman, Clamface Cremen and Munchin Mike Longo role models or roll models?

Can we assume that “Roman incidents,” also known as “reversal” and “urges contrary to swallowing,” are bad things in eating competitions? How about chipmunking?

Considering likely post-contest output, who would want to dethrone a champion?

How literally should we take the concept of sudden death overtime?

If someone eats 12,000 calories of hotdogs, who wins – the contestant or the wieners?

In the World Turkey Championship, was cranberry sauce on the undercard?

Would politicians and Fox News anchors have unfair advantages because of their unnatural jaw strength?

Truth is I just don’t have the intestinal fortitude for another helping of eat-til-you-drop. But more is on the way. Big-time sponsors are betting big-time money on people’s interest. So are TV networks.

Get ready for chew-view cams. Instant replays. DPM (dogs per minute) stat crawls on the lower third of the screen. And celebrity revival tent barkers whipping up the eating frenzy.

What’s next? Competition-eating camp for youth craving a starring role in their own gurgitation action video game? Clever community relations consultants donating part of the contest gate to food banks and obesity-prevention research?

In 1939, as the goldfish swallowing record exceeded 40, a Massachusetts legislator carried a bill to “preserve the fish from cruel and wanton consumption.” In today’s world, the Mayor of New York, presumably an opponent of other aspects of pornography, enthusiastically supports the deep-throating of 68 nitrite-laden hotdogs.

Thanks to prize money, media exposure and the dream of notoriety no matter how meaningless, more and more people are looking for venues to beat the clock as they consume a big percentage of their bodyweight.

One of the sponsors is Pepto-Bismol. Now there’s a company that knows its market. I could use some just thinking about it.

EDITOR’S NOTES:
1) * Poutine is a plate of French fries topped with cheese curds and covered with brown gravy or sauce. The fries are of medium thickness and fried so the inside stays soft, while the outside is crunchy. The gravy generally is a light chicken, veal or turkey gravy, mildly spiced with a hint of pepper, or a sauce brune which is a combination of beef and chicken stock, originating in Quebec.
2) Damon Runyon’s character of Nicely-Nicely Jones, a successful competitive eater, appeared in his short story “A Piece of the Pie”. Nicely-Nicely later appeared in the musical “Guys and Dolls” but without the eating competition.
3) ** See a reference to mountain oysters and other epicurean euphemisms in FUN WITH EPICUREAN EUPHEMISMS elsewhere at this food magazine.

By Larry Sheingold -

Falling off a log is easy. Falling off the roof is bad. So is falling off the face of the earth, though it’s a longer fall. You can fall off the wagon and the turnip truck, perhaps both in the same day.

But falling off the bone BBQ? To quote philosopher Joan Rivers: can we talk?

Why are so many rib-eaters attached to detachable meat? Is it a true palate preference or marketing-induced hypnosis? Either way, attached they are.

Check out this exchange from a Q and A blog:

Q – “Can I sue a barbeque joint for saying they offer fall off the bone back ribs for false advertisement? I picked up a rib from my plate and the meat stayed on the bone. I even held the rib over my mouth and it didn’t fall off. I even shook the rib and still nothing.”

The blog’s answer: “You can’t sue for breach of non-quantitative puffery.”

My answer: You want to sue for failure to imitate pot roast on a stick?

Braises are good. Crock-pots have uses. So do tagines and romertopfs. Boiling is excellent for separating meat from bone – for soup.

But for my taste, when BBQ ribs and chicken fall off the bone, they are over-cooked or have lingered too long in a foil-covered pan after cooking.

One restaurant bragged that their fall-off-the-bone ribs are so tender “you can eat them with your fingers and still drive.” There’s an appetizing visual – and a reason for pruning back expectations I hadn’t considered.

But most loose-meat devotees aren’t considering their sauce to steering ratio. I think they’re simply responding to constant repetition of the fall off the bone BBQ refrain. The first verse of the low-and-slow anthem.  Repeated constantly on TV food shows. Blogs. BBQ restaurants ads and websites.

So, if you are going to fall off your diet, here’s my foolproof recipes for BBQ ribs:

Baby backs, St. Louis or full slab, start with good meat. Whether you use rub, sauce or both, the meat quality makes a difference.

If you want to torture the meat collagen till it dissolves into molten gelatin, producing what one blogger called “sensuous unctuousness” (her definition of fall off the bone), go for it.

Or you can do what I do. Use indirect heat on the barbecue. Pour yourself a Scotch. Odds are when you’re done, so are the ribs. If not, pour a second Scotch.

Sauce at the end. Let them rest a bit. You should have resilient ribs that are tasty, not tough.

I have found that the Scotch test is way more reliable than the time test, bend test, twist test, popup test or toothpick test.

Clearly, when it’s up to me, I am going for fall off the wagon before fall off the bone.

Food tourism probably dates back centuries to the invention of pocket-sized currency, a giant step that first allowed early travelers to pay for meals with coins instead of chickens or spare relatives.

The evolution of dining excursionism traces to the appearance of wandering hunters and gatherers, followed by road creation, the advent of disposable wealth and the launch of Food TV and online restaurant reviews. (Boat-making, horse domestication and empire building were likely on the same chronology chart, as was transformation of Holy Days into holidays, but you get the idea).

A few things have changed since ancient times. I don’t suppose even the most adventurous Iron Age Italians were apt to say, “I hear they’re serving something called pasta in China. Let’s go try it.” But sometime between their time and ours, tourists discovered a taste for regional preparations unavailable at home. More importantly, they learned how to find them.

And, as they did, the desire to see art galleries and national monuments started playing lesser roles in itineraries featuring food destinations.

It’s all there in my abridged version of how culinary tales from the earliest old world Silk Road merchants evolved into a cable channel and food blog industry uncovering home-schooled menus from every corner of the globe.

Accept my version of history or not, but my personal travels tell me television and blogs have stimulated a new kind of tourism – the hunger for regional comfort food prepared by new cooks and old souls who can ignite the imagination, arouse our admiration and fill our bellies with authentic local dishes.

It’s down home. Just someone else’s home.

Thanks to the media these joints have a new stature. They know who they are. They know how to provide a great meal and a sense of well-being. They know how to feed and entertain with their own kind of dignity and uniqueness.

And best of all, they are proud to offer a signature taste of their community culture, using recipes that have been keeping people happy for generations.

Here is a salute to a few of them.

Dooky Chase: New Orleans. Featured on the Travel Channel. http://www.dookychaserestaurant.com
You can eat fried chicken or fried oysters in California. But they’re not Dooky Chase’s. Dating back to 1941 in what is now the 5th Ward, it was one of the original civil rights gathering places before racial integration was legal.

Ray Charles sang about it and Louis Armstrong and Thurgood Marshall had favorite dishes there. Thanks to local residents it bloomed back to life after
Katrina. With its rebirth, comes the astonishing collection of African American art and authentic southern and Creole cooking. And sweet potato pie.

DiPasquale’s Marketplace: Baltimore. Featured on the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins and Drives. http://www.dipasquales.com
If you are looking for food-as-culture, try DiPasquale’s. It’s a family-run Italian market, take-out deli and restaurant featuring sausage, cheese and pasta made in their kitchen.

For traditional, authentic and delicious, order the arancini. The word means “little oranges” but the dish is actually Sicilian fried rice croquettes stuffed with cheese, vegetables and/or meat served in a shallow pool of marinara sauce. Homemade the way an Italian grandmother would make it – if she were a great cook.

The Nook: St. Paul. Featured on the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins and Drives. http://www.crnook.com
Remember those Iron Age Italians, who probably didn’t set out to try the pasta in China. Well, there is a vague chance they may have asked each other, “Have you had your nookie today?” But I guarantee they weren’t referring to the burger served at the Nook in St. Paul, Minn.

This region invented the Juicy Lucy – a burger with the cheese in the middle of the patty and the Nook serves a version they call the juicy nookie supreme. It may not be the sole embodiment of northeastern culture. But it’s part of it. And a real fine burger not found anywhere else.

It’s all part of food tourism and the growing ease with which we can find and sample regional staples. There’s barbecue, etouffee, scrapple, beignets, Skyline chili on spaghetti, shoofly pie, chili adobado, schnitzelwiches, Ted Drewes’ frozen custard concretes, shrimp poboys, pit beef, crab cakes, hushpuppies, ham and red-eye gravy and Chicago dogs and so much more. Regional specialties worth a try – some more than others.

They are all dishes to seek out. Reasons to be a food tourist.

Can you tell fresh-ground coffee from instant? A supermarket tomato from one perfectly ripened in your garden?

Then you will notice instantly that spices from Whole Spice in Petaluma are unlike anything you are likely to get in a store.

Who knew toasted ground cumin could taste and smell like this. Or the spicy curry powder. Or the Vietnamese Cinnamon chips.

Those are just a few of the delights that arrived in my first internet order. Now that I have sampled these, I am about to dump all my old spices and start over with Whole Spice’s.

If you want to give them a try, here’s what you need to know.

First, they have a huge selection from common household staples to wildly exotic. Go to www.wholespice.com. Many of the items – like pure vanilla bean powder, harissa spice mix, Murray River pink flake sea salt or crushed vadouvan – come with ordering instructions, descriptions, recipes and ingredients in the case of their carefully-crafted blends.

It’s hard to imagine a spice you might want that they don’t have.

They have “ground-to-order” service so you know your spices are as fresh and aromatic as possible. And there is no minimum order so you can experiment with a little of this and that.

Ronit and Shuli Madmone are the owners. Shuli was raised in a family of paprika growers and spice merchants in Israel. He and Ronit, an Israeli of Moroccan heritage, started out in the northern California farmers market scene.  They now have their warehouse and mail order business in Petaluma and a shop in Napa and supply spices to restaurants around the Bay Area.

For anyone doubting a review’s influence on local dining choices – and sometimes the success or failure of a restaurant – I offer you Sacramento’s Bombay Bar and Grill, purveyor of Indian cuisine.

My wife and I go there often. We like the food, the sauces, the garlic basil naan. We like the servers – friendly, expert interpreters of an extensive menu. We also have wished more tables were occupied.

Bombay, the latest in a line of eateries at this address, easily is the most satisfying of the lot. Would Bombay last or leave like the others?

Then the Sacramento Bee’s most hard-to-please critic wrote a valentine to Bombay and, when we went back the following week, life at the Bombay had changed.

Same good food. Same friendly service. But not an empty seat. Laid back was replaced by lively. In a good way. New faces were being turned into regulars.

That must be music for the Bhandal brothers, who also own an Indian restaurant in Davis. They got their start in their family’s restaurant in Jalandhar in Northern Punjab state and the food at the mid-town location reflects their rich restaurant background

Now, to be honest, I am not sure what “real” northern Indian cooking should taste like. The Bombay menu items I like might be received by India natives much like I picture Italians at the Olive Garden or Mexicans eating enchiladas at Denny’s.

But I know what I like. Good sauces. Distinct flavors. Fresh tastes. Offered in an atmosphere that encourages you to come back and repeat the experience.

I have never had anything at Bombay I didn’t enjoy. Favorites include the lal mass (lamb in a red chili sauce), aloo gobi (spiced potatoes and cauliflower), tandoori chicken (marinated and presented on a sizzling platter) and chicken tikka masala (in a creamy sauce.)

Add some rice and a basket of naan and you have the recipe for fine dining, a successful restaurant and what I would expect will be more good reviews from the food critics.

Bombay Bar and Grill is located at 1315 21^st Street in Sacramento. Phone number is (916) 441-7100. Web site is http://www.BombayBarandGrillSac.com

Hidden behind the kitchen doors of some upscale restaurant near you, a culinary maestro is composing a masterpiece. What sweet harmonies he coaxes from his ingredients. What exquisite presentations.

Too bad our chef’s elegant eatery isn’t equally adept at setting his performances to words.

I’m talking about the menus. Scan many of today’s fine dining bills of fare. You’ll soon see the symptoms. Those trendy marketing flourishes supposedly denoting contemporary cuisine sophistication.

Soup composed daily? A duet of lamb loin and shoulder? A trio of sorbets? A medley of lobster, crab and pawns? All real life examples of Mad Menu Disease culled from the Internet. 

Once you start looking, the mad menu flags pop up like Where’s Waldos.

Take the subheads. First course, appetizers, main course, sides, dessert. Good, solid menu writing in my estimation.

Spring Degustation, Chef McClelland’s Tasting Journey, Grand Fromage. Quarantine those  – and the marketing guru who thought them up. Do we need these superfluisms? Are our meals really enhanced by being told our food is infused, tossed, lemon-scented, dolloped or has complimentary accents or velvety smooth hints of something?   

Does it help you to know your mushrooms were foraged, your dessert hand-sculpted or your cheeses assorted? Just how old do my greens have to be before they no longer qualify as baby or young? And when is a radish mature enough to get shaved? Is sinful a good thing? Is house-made the same as homemade? And if so, whose home or house is it?

I even ran across an on-line menu with a bad case of quote marks. “Grass-fed” short ribs, it said. A kind of full disclosure admission, I guess, that short ribs don’t eat grass. Another dish had “stinging” nettles in it. The quotes were apparently to reassure the diner that stinging is a concept, not a threat.

Yes, it’s the food, service and attention to detail that make a fine meal, not the pre-packaging.

But now, when you read a fine dining menu, I challenge you not to notice the swarms of Mad Menu Disease buzz words. Anyone for premium, fresh market, artisan, crusty, organic-when-possible or farmer’s eggs to go along with your assorted medley, trio and duet?

By Larry Sheingold -

Most people can remember special meals, those inedible little life moments, as vividly now as the moment they put down the fork and looked up with that is-there-any-more expression on their faces.

It’s about aromas. Preparations. Childhood memories. Celebrations.

But for me it’s about the company. I can name 100 perfect restaurant meals my wife and I have shared. Few involved cooking that would stand up to a critic’s scrutiny. It was about us.

Same for a birthday lunch with my father months before he died at age 90. He had his trademark grilled salmon and glass of white zinfandel. Good food, but it makes my best-of list because of the way the occasion touched him.

So for my most special meal, I have selected a hot dog lunch. With a side of explanation.

It’s 1999. My wife Judy, Jim Hayes, Cathy Keig and I are at SuperDawg in Chicago. We are eating an excellent version of the Chicago hot dog with sport peppers, celery salt and tomatoes served in a box stuffed with pretty good fries.

This is our first sports trip together, with stops at Detroit’s old Tiger Stadium just weeks before it closed for good, Wisconsin for a Badgers football game and Lambeau Field, fabled home of the Green Bay Packers.

I can still picture us at the walk up window on that November afternoon, under the shadow of the huge plaster hot dogs on the roof of this iconic mom and pop stand.

That day gave birth to a food tourism hobby the four of us have shared ever since. Now, two or three times a year, we travel to other destinations around the country to sample the culinary culture – from the creations of James Beard Award winning chefs to new adventures in frying.

The companionship, memories and sense of discovery are a special part of my life. Kicked off with a meal at SuperDawg.

I’ve had better food. But as favorite meals go, nothing compares to the gateway lunch from Maurie and Flaurie’s hot dog stand – SuperDawg in Chicago.

( Read Larry Sheingold’s biography and see his restaurant recommendtions at http://www.atLarrys.com.