The Omnivore's 100: In Which I Am a Killjoy

Bear with me, this one evolved as it was written, and everything I've been thinking scatteredly for months seems to have made it out.

I take issue with this list the way I take issue with most food writing in general: in its pronouncement that "the list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food – but a good omnivore should really try it all," it glides over the fact that "omnivore" apparently means someone who eats at all price points as much as someone who eats at all food pyramid points.

For example, number 84: "Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant."

Food writing, in general, tends to be pretty glib about the socioeconomic impossibility of pleasures such as the above for 99% of the world's population. In taking up Pleasure as the banner of foodie-ism, we are able to overlook everything from cultural theft to local poverty as unfortunate, but ultimately not our problem.

Leave it to the people who write food politics blogs or race blogs or humanitarian blogs, the thought goes, so we can get back to the business of analyzing whether something tastes good. Let hedonistic enjoyment prevail, all else is irrelevant. The world is our banquet.

But I am bothered by taste that exists in a vacuum, sucked from its context. I am not saying we shouldn't eat, and eat everything, it's just that should we not also recognize the privileges of being so entitled? Food is an excellent entry point to examination of ourselves and the world around us, but an element of self-critique has been missing from the current trend.

What is the current trend? The current trend is that frat boy down the hall who went to India and came back with Buddhism and rope sandals. We go out of our way to eat (and write) the most exciting things sourced from both Third World backyards and our own, and we congratulate ourselves on being open-minded.

I hate that kid down the hall, and I find myself turning into him.

But once in a while, something like The Omnivore's 100 comes along, and I end up checking myself even though I was only intending to check off numbers. I find myself looking at the "whole insects" entry and wondering about the people who eat them because they are the cheapest protein available or the only protein available, as my Dad once did. I look at something like "sweetbreads" and wonder when it became so hip, and why only European cuisines can seem to make offal hip. I see McDonald's on there and recognize its place on the list as an ironic cultural marker, not the way of life for people living in urban deserts.

I look at "pho," "aloo gobi," and "chicken tikka masala," and wonder when did other peoples' histories of immigration and adaptation - people who face oppression in America even as their foods are celebrated - become something for me to check off a list and pat myself on the back over.

As foodies and as writers, I think we've done a good job of giving serious thought to important issues like animal rights and America's broken agricultural systems. What I don't see is the same incorporation of critical analysis toward people.

When Yelpers or Chowhounders complain about the lack of great Mexican food in NYC, I want to ask whether they've thought about why that is. Are the people qualified to make great Mexican food priced out by the high overhead costs of opening a restaurant here? What about the great "secret" taco shops hidden in the back of unassuming grocery stores? Can we look at their locations not as a charming quirk - or worse, a badge of authenticity - but as the manifestation of people trying to do business with very few resources?

Foodies often take food a little too seriously. I want foodies to take food even more seriously, but in a different way. Our prevailing attitude toward ethnic food and ethnic communities cannot be like Columbus discovering America. How many times have you heard someone say, "I found the best Indian/Vietnamese/Thai place the other day, I was the only white person there," or, "The only GREAT Chinese restaurants are in Flushing"? If we think something exists solely for our foodie creds, our little pilgrimages, it's inevitable that we develop a hurtfully cavalier attitude toward other people's cultures.

You see, for people of color, food is more than just food. It is often the only representation our histories and cultures have in America; it is our face. So with feelings of pride at seeing our cuisines be accepted come feelings of protectiveness as well. It is hard to abide casual users and casual judgments of our food when our food is known as our identity, whether we like it or not. You may not feel like Chinese tonight, but we can never escape questions like, "so is it true y'all eat dog?" Thus, it is even harder to see casual users enjoy our foods with no strings attached, when we ourselves have been ostracized many a time for our curries and kimchis, which were "weird" and "disgusting" long before wealthy white foodies made them cool.

I guess I am uncomfortable with food writing and going about it as a woman of color. There are plenty of people of color who write food blogs, but I can't help but feel the conversation is still very white. I'd like to hear thoughts on this. Does anyone else have opinions about these things?

Does Anybody In Finance Do Work?*

List of company IPs I've noticed visiting my site during work hours in the past week:

Deutsche Bank
Goldman Sachs
Merrill Lynch
Credit Suisse
Societe Generale
Morgan Stanley
Lehman Brothers**
And a handful of hedge funds that shall remain nameless because I'm not trying to get anyone fired.

But come on, people, you broke the economy already! Get back to work!


*Alternatively, is anyone in finance NOT a foodie?
**You should be ashamed of yourself

Get the Eaters Fresh Food!...My Account of Nathan's Famous July 4th Hot Dog Eating Contest 2009

Saturday was fantastic.

I showed up at the W Hotel in Midtown at 8am and found the lobby filled with the greatest competitive eaters in the world. As I stood there clutching my newly-issued jailbait uniform, slightly starstruck by the scene, Juliet Lee came over and asked for a picture! We posed, I stammered something about being a big fan, her husband took a snap, and told me he'd "send a copy to the blog."

Huh? How did he know??

Then, Rick the Manager came over and introduced himself. He is the gentleman behind the previously posted email, and he turned out to be neither sketchy nor interested in my boobs. We chatted, and he explained that an alert had gone off at MLE when I'd started writing about the contest, and that my blog link had gotten emailed around. (Huh. CIA, are you watching?)

Not competing, but still rocking a killer stage look. Oh yeah, Rick's beard is cool too.

Then I spotted Kobayashi and pretty much died. He was sitting in the middle of the room with his entourage, discussing matters of great digestive urgency. Eventually, I summoned up the courage to ask for a picture.

See that smile? That is the smile of a polite man with more important things to do.

I tried to tell him how big a fan I was. He did not speak much English. And then Sonia "The Black Widow" Thomas showed up, completing the Badass Asian Triumvirate of Eating and making me feel like a total fanslut for going up to her and telling her how big of a fan I was.

8am and stunnin'

So then the Eaters and Bunnettes were divided up and loaded onto two separate party buses for the trip to Coney. When I got on the bus, the only seats available were across from Joey Chestnut, who did not look, at that moment, like a man who wanted to talk to a girl in a cheerleader outfit.

But, being the opportunistic blogger that I am, I asked for a picture.

I made the trip from Midtown to Coney Island with Juliet Lee on my left, Joey across the aisle, and Courtney, another Bunnette, to my right. It was entirely surreal.

Juliet was a complete sweetheart. She wanted to know where I was from, how many siblings I have, where I went to school, my major, what my parents do for a living, etc, etc. We discovered that we emigrated from the same city in China (Nanjing) around the same time (early ‘90s). She, a mother of two, even asked if I was friends with my mother when I was a teen, to which I can only hope I replied with a “no” that was emphatic enough to be reassuring.

I, in turn, asked her about the cranberry sauce.

“How did you do it?”

“I am good at the things nobody else prepares for, because I never prepare.” Not that I understand how anyone can ingest 13.23lbs of cranberry sauce with or without preparing.

“That was hard,” she continued, “because it was all liquid. Many times, I thought I was going to throw up. I found a bathroom in the casino afterward and tried to throw up but I couldn’t. You know, I had to go back because they hadn’t announced the winner yet, so I didn’t throw up. It was so sweet, all I want to eat afterward was a pickle. I just wanted something sour in my mouth.”

“It must be easier to do the things like hot dogs or pizza,” I mused, “I can’t even imagine doing something like raw oysters.”

“I did clams! I won clams.”

“How many did you eat?”

“Twenty-three dozen. Plus one more.” Holy crap.

“That must have been so tough. Raw seafood is so hard to digest.” (Holy crap indeed)

“Yeah, the clams were really hard. My stomach didn’t feel so good. I was going to the bathroom every ten minutes for two days. Every ten minutes! The clams weren't very fresh. That's the problem - they have to make so much food, it's just sitting out there.”

TIME OUT. Are you people getting this? This tiny woman is saying, in an impossibly sweet, adorable way, that she had to slay an angry dragon every ten minutes for two days due to eating shellfish that had been festering in pools of melting ice. This sport is DEDICATION.

“Where does it all go?” Courtney chimed in.

“If you can fit the baby, you can fit the food!” What a woman.

Courtney said it best - "She is FIERCE!"

Meanwhile, Joey had been sitting across from us, simmering in nerves. Once in while, he'd bubble over and thrash for a few seconds to some inner music. When I watched the competition later, I realized this dance move had a purpose - it's his own variation on the wiggle penguins use to get a big fish down.

Courtney’s curiosity took her there first: “Joey, how do you prepare?”

“I don’t eat for a couple of days.”

“But do you keep your stomach stretched out?”

“I keep it stretched out; I drink a lot of water and milk and stuff.”

“Are you nervous?”

“I am nervous. Last year was close. A lot closer than I was comfortable with.”

“What was the last thing you ate?” I had to know.

“A hot dog. On…Thursday.”

“Are you hungry?”

“I don’t really get hungry.” Whoa.

Another bout of head-banging-rocking-out.

"Do you listen to music when you compete?"

"Yes. I always annoy the other contestants because I put a speaker under the table so I can hear my music."

"What kind of music do you listen to?"

"Rock. A lot of Rob Zombie and stuff."

"Do you have a go-to song?"

"Feel So Numb's a good one. 'I feel so good I feel so numb, yeah...'" Appropriate.

At this point I feel I should describe the other occupants on this bus, which included more sedentery-looking competitors by the names of Franco Camerini, Micah Collins, Humble Bob, Gravy Brown, and some others I don't remember. Everyone seemed to know each other.

Humble Bob gets up to pee.

"You all seem to be pretty friendly," I said to Joey.

"Oh yeah, we're all friends. We see each other all the time." Rick The Manager had said earlier that these guys were competitive eaters by day, competitive drinkers by night. Makes sense. "But we all have regular jobs," he continues, "eating's my weekend hobby."

"REALLY?" This was like being told superheroes have regular jobs. "So what's your weekday job?"

"I'm a construction manager." Amazing. He's really a Regular Joe.

"So do you still like eating?"

"Oh yeah, I love food. Know of any good places?" In my excitement upon learning that Joey Chestnut is 1) a foodie, and 2) open to hearing restaurant recommendations, I totally blanked. I may have directed him to the slew of East Village sushi places that do $25 all-you-can-eat, and if that's the case, I'm sincerely sorry to the proprietors of those establishments: I never meant to put you out of business.

"Do you ever do those restaurant eating challenges? You know, if you eat it all, you get it for free?"

"Oh, all the time! I hold records at a lot of those places." He seemed more relaxed now, smiling. I didn't realize until I watched ESPN afterward that he's only 25. A kid, who would otherwise have been just another Joe from California, with an amazing talent. Of course he's proud of having his face up on restaurant walls across America.

And of course he's nervous. This is his third year starring as the unlikely hero in a Red, White, and Blue-spun tale of America vs. Japan, good vs. evil. The only thing more absurd than the storyline would be failing it.

We arrive at Surf and Stillwell and wait in the bus for our next orders. Joey asks someone what the temperature is outside. Eighties and sunny.

"Perfect competition weather," he decrees.

"It must be harder to eat when it's hot and humid out."

"It is. And sometimes, if it's too hot, the dogs sit out there and get leathery." Gross. If anyone out there was wondering whether the taste of hot dog number 59 or 68 is still important, the answer is yes, yes it is, and texture too. Get the Eaters fresh food!

"How many do you think you can eat today?"

"Probably high sixties. I've been doing 60's in practice. My goal is seventy. You'll see the record broken today, absolutely."

There remained only one more question:

"So do you give Kobayashi the stink-eye when you see him?"

"Ha, just a little bit."

"He's been good lately."

"Yeah, he beat me in the Pizza Hut contest last month. He was fast. I never got into my rhythm. But this is my game. This is my game."

It's already gone down in the annals of Youtube and blogs alike, how Joey Chestnut thrashed his way to victory, annihilating 68 dogs and his own previous world record. Less well recorded is how I got splattered with hot dog debris as I stood behind Sonia Thomas, flipping numbers and being the happiest girl on earth. Sonia went on to break the women's record at 41 dogs! You can catch glimpses of my midsection on the ESPN coverage.

It was a hot, dehydrating, exhausting, and often foolish day (just ask anyone who was there and saw us "dance"), but it was worth it so many times over to be there, in the thick of the carnage. And I am so eternally grateful that Juliet and Joey put up with my nosyness and were so nice to me - that bus ride was the best part of the day. And if this post pings any alarms over at MLE: thanks for letting me be there, I had a great time.

And so dies my budding career as the Brooke Hogan of MLE, as doomed and valiant as a match's flame.

Email I got last night:

Hello,

My stage name is [redacted]. I am looking for Zoe Yang who recently "won" a spot to be a Bunnette at Coney Island this weekend. I am a competitive eater out of Philadelphia who will be in New York City this 4th of July for the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Championship.

If this is you, I was hoping you and I could get together either at the contest or even afterwards at some of the after parties (I'll be at ALL of the hot spots Friday and Saturday nights with the eaters) and I would be able to tell you a few of my ideas that could involve you in the competitive eating world!

Check out my website [redacted]. There's several pictures of Juliet Lee and I and Kobayashi and I hanging out together. I am also on Facebook as [redacted] along with a [redacted] on Facebook.

If you could, can you get back to me soon, because I am leaving for New York on Thursday.

If this is not Zoe Yang, sorry. Maybe you could put me in touch with her!

Thank you,

[Signature redacted]

My response:

Hi [redacted],

You have found the right person, I am Zoe Yang. Did you find me through my blog?

I am looking forward to Nathan's, but I wasn't even aware there were afterparties (and apparently pre-parties?)! I wouldn't mind getting together briefly sometime on Saturday, but I don't really understand what you mean by involving me in the competitive eating world. I didn't really see the Bunnette thing as a crack in the door to a future career with MLE. Also, if your ideas involve big boobs, you don't want me.

See you at the Contest!

Zoe

No response. He probably heeded my boob disclaimer.

One Side of a Text Exchange, Which I am Posting Here With No Name, No Comment, No Edits, and Months After The Fact

In answer to people who ask if I've ever had awkward situations come out of eating with strangers.

9:33pm: hey zoe, ur nt gonna call me bk? thats messed up...i thought we were kool
9:42pm: i would really like 2 b friends with u...and nt some odd stranger u eat with and then rip apart on ur blog...kind of hard 2 do if u dont call back
9:46pm: u said some not so nice things zoe...and u didnt have 2 mention my age, where i work and my pic...a little discretion would b nice
9:48pm: listen, im just a regular asian just like u trying 2 connect just as u do...i though dinner was nice even though it wasnt what we had planned...
9:49pm: im sorry u thought it sucked...zoe, i just want 2 try new eateries with u...u seem nice and i thought we could b friends...thats all i want...
9:54pm: i tried 2 reach u a couple of times and u cant even have the decency 2 text bk...i read what u wrote...why cant we hang out, try new eateries, and b friends
9:55pm: all im saying is there is a new place i found and i want us 2 try it
9:58pm: understood...it takes but a second 2 text back...i can be a good friend 2 u...if u let it happen...is that so wrong?
10:28pm: goodnight zoe...dont work 2 late

Weeks later...

"upon the glowing review in ur blog, i tried one of the eateries mentioned and it was everything u said it was...ur palette is as refined as ur social skills ;)"

Gravity-Bonging With Shereen, Alex, and Janelle@Desnuda

Back in college, some of my overly intelligent classmates would put their high SAT scores to use toward crafting the most ingenious smoking devices since the dawn of Getting High. One guy even used a magnifying glass to etch an elaborate fresco onto the wood of his home-made vaporizer.

I can only hope a couple of those ambitious peers will grow up to become the next Peter Gevrekis and Christian Zammas, co-owner and executive chef at Desnuda*.

I don't know which of the pair conceived the idea of smoking oysters with Sichuan peppercorns and Lapsang souchong tea leaves via gravity bong, but on the night I was there, I asked Peter with all the wide-eyed earnestness of a school-newspaper reporter,

"So what was your inspiration for this dish?" And he just smirked. Okay then.

He'd already indulged me by whipping out the apparatus in the first place. The oysters were not on the menu that night, but I'd read so much about them that I had to ask. He warned me that he didn't have the right kind of tea that night - his new supply was a mistake: more expensive, not smoky enough - but I didn't care, I just wanted to see how one smokes a bivalve.

So behold, I have the first (really shitty) video clip of the Desnuda smoked oyster!



The finished product:

I think you could read fortunes in those spheres

He was right: the oyster was delicious, and definitely the most interesting I've had, but I could see its potential for improvement. However, the uncommon act of inhaling deeply and then swallowing a slippery body is a novel enough experience that I'd recommend this imperfect oyster to anybody. We get used to certain acts associated with eating - cut, spear, stab, lift, bite, chew. I think it's safe to say the old inhale-n-shoot a la cannonball (uh, definition number 2) is a new verb in fine-dining.

But if you want a real gastronomic reason, Desnuda has that as well. All of the ceviches I tasted were good, but the composition with deep sea scallops was one of the best dishes I've had in recent memory, including Le Bernardin. I'm not going to try to describe all the components of that dish, because I can't remember them all, but I think Desnuda's menu is pretty open to night-by-night improvisation anyway.


As you can see, it includes mandarin oranges and avocado

Full disclosure: I tend to be a sucker for places where I can interact with the person making me food. I'm annoying. I like asking questions and digging for personal opinions. Sitting at a bar and talking to the owner about his inspirations makes me feel hip.

Here's my one complaint. If you're like me, in that you have a bottomless capacity for raw fish, you're just not going to get full here. Even if you bought, like, all six things on the menu. I probably had four of these free cones of truffled popcorn:



But then, Desnuda is mostly a drink and nibble kind of place, and the edibles are lush, the vibe groovy. It'd be a great second date location to bring and impress your cosmopolitan yet slightly anorexic pickup from the previous weekend.


See those straw fans along the ceiling? They are mechanized to sway back and forth. Groovy.

The takeaway: smoke+ gadgets+cannonballing oysters+delicious seafood+acting like you know the chef = panty-dropper.


*Winner of TONY's 2008 Eat Out Award for Most Inventive Use of Drug Paraphernalia.

ME??? REALLY???

I WON!

Guess I'm not going home to Boston this weekend. So excited!! Excited to be in Coney Island, excited to meet the other two lovely ladies, excited for the gross quantities of food, excited for Juliet Lee, and excited for Kobayashi, who's been making a comeback lately!

A million thank yous to the people who voted slash endured my endless FB status updates and Tweets, especially my awesome friends, the Disgrasian girls, and Slant Eye For the Roundeye. And thanks to Josh Ozersky/The Feedbag for setting it all up!

Too bad I can't liveblog it.