Friday Follies II (A Bit Late)
Table of contents for Friday Food Follies
Dateline: London, October 3
Terrorist Attack in Soho Linked to Thai Restaurant
Police cordoned off three streets in the fashionable Soho District, and firefighters in hazardous chemical response suits broke down the door of a Thai restaurant, after reports of a “chemical attack” on a busy shopping street there:
Emergency workers wearing protective breathing masks were called to D’Arblay Street on Monday evening after members of the public detected an acrid cloud of smoke.
A Hazardous Area Response Team was dispatched and specialist crews broke down the door of the Thai Cottage restaurant.
They emerged shortly afterwards with a 9lb pot of chillies.
Thai Cottage chef Chalemchai Tanjariyapoon (Tanj for short) was preparing nam prik pao, a howling-hot dipping sauce that is a specialty of the restaurant. Chef Tanj expressed confusion at the reaction of the emergency response crew. “I can understand why people who weren’t Thai would not know what it was,” the chef told The Times. “But it doesn’t smell like chemicals.”
Of course, after umpteen years as chef at the Thai Cottage, his nose is dead. I’m pretty sure we smelled this noxious mixture here in Singapore the next morning, and that the residual heat caused our rain that day.
Besides, they’ve completely missed the point: This isn’t a chemical attack. It’s clearly nuclear.
Dateline: Pittsburgh, October 4
Significant New Food Dictionary Published
For those of you following along at home, now’s your chance to join the those of us who are true food snobs bigots afficionados. In a clear scoop of the New York Times’ Best-Seller List, I bring to you this notification that “The Food Snob’s Dictionary” is now available! This book is such a landmark publication that the NYT may consider changes to their List just to get it on there! (It could happen. Really.) I’m sure Oprah will use this volume as the last item she ever recommends for her Book Club. In this category, anyway. (As a free bonus: Visit Oprah’s site and join the Love School. Hey, if you’re reading this blog, then you could really use something, anything, to get your life back on track. Just don’t pay attention to her first rule.)
A couple of quibbles here. First off, what’s wrong with the word “snob” ? It’s a perfectly honorable calling, originally meaning cobbler. Not as in pie, as in shoes. And just because those, er, snobs over at Cambridge began to use the word improperly to mean anyone fortunate enough not to be in Cambridge with those snobs… Well, you see the obvious problem here.
More as I know it. In the meantime, Enjoy the Heat!
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