The Goat Pen

First 9 days of this month are all numerical palindromes (and the 11th and 22nd)...

What happened with the trucker feud? Don't drop that shit and not revisit it.

Saw this a few days ago and forgot to post it

----------------

Geraldine DeRuiter, her husband and their friends arrived at the restaurant Bros’ with high hopes, given that it had been awarded a Michelin star, one of the industry’s most respected honors.

The 27 courses that followed over the next four and a half hours dashed those hopes, she told The Washington Post in a Monday morning phone interview. The meal was the subject of a review DeRuiter posted last week on her blog the Everywhereist that has since gone viral.

One course at the restaurant in Lecce, Italy, was slivers of edible paper. Some were shots of vinegar. Another was fried cheese balls filled with what the servers repeatedly described as “rancid” ricotta.

Waiters served one course using eyedroppers to squirt liquid onto the diners’ plates. They then announced, “This has been infused with meat molecules,” and walked away, DeRuiter said.

But perhaps the most bizarre moment of the “4-hour hunger induced fever dream” came when servers brought out a course called “chef’s kiss” — citrus foam, served in a plaster cast that had been molded in the shape of the chefs’ mouths. On DeRuiter’s cast, some of the foam had escaped the parted lips and dribbled down.

She thought the waitstaff would bring them spoons they could use to scoop out the foam.

None came.

“We were told that we needed to kiss the mouth of the ramekin in order to slurp out the foam,” she told The Post. She added: “At that point, I was like, ‘Okay … this is a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode. I feel like I’m in a parody of what modernist cuisine is.”

“It was such a symphony of bizarreness on so many levels that endured and just kept going. It was an Energizer bunny of disaster,” she told CBC’s “As It Happens” radio program.

DeRuiter said she and her husband paid for everyone’s meal. The check for the party of eight, which included alcohol, came to about 1,350 euros, or roughly $1,522.

Bros’ responded to an inquiry from the “Today” show with a “Declaration by Chef Floriano Pellegrino,” a three-page document featuring a series of pictures of a rider on horseback. The first is a fairly simplistic drawing, the second is Jacques-Louis David’s painting “Napoleon Crossing the Alps,” and the third is an abstract painting that’s almost unrecognizable.

Many can produce the first drawing, and similarly, a lot of people can whip up the culinary equivalent, Pellegrino wrote in the response. “It is not that hard, but most people will admire you.”

Only great cooks who’ve studied and trained for years can make “spectacular food,” just as David depicted Napoleon.

“The problem with this artist is that many artists have made paintings like him. I admire the quality. It’s well done. But I am bored with spectacular paintings like that,” Pellegrino wrote. “The Louvre and the Prado and the Hermitage are full with such stuff. It’s impressive but it’s shallow.”

Pellegrino and Bros’ are interested in making the kind of food that’s equivalent to the third abstract painting, he said. This kind of food forces those who make it to “doubt everything including themselves.”

In doing so, they ask big questions: “What is art What [is] food? What is a chef? What is a client? What is good taste? What looks beautiful?

“What is a man on a horse?”

A seven course meal at Per Se (with wine parings for every course) will run you about $800. This place sounds like a parody of that. Per Se doesn't bring out the droppers and I'm sure they'd never do the slurpy mouth thing, but the portions are tiny and I'm sure many people would view a meal at Per Se in the same way this person felt about their meal at this Greek restaurant. Another difference is that Per Se has 3 Michelin stars and you have to make a reservation months in advance...

Yeah, I'm not gonna want to go eat food made by the Mark Rothko of chefs.

He shoulda stuck with El Greco...

img2, please...

Apparently we need to get this thing cooking again

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

51,700,000+ cases nationwide
827,000+ dead nationwide

line is going up fast, mortality rate for those infected is still just about 2%

Today is 12-22-21, last numerical palindrome of the year. Last one for a long time. I'm not sure 2-22-22 counts...

This is IB's dream, sadly for him (as we all know) the reality if far different for guys like him, but that's what makes this funny..

you gotta believe they knew that was a possibility.

Anybody ever jacked off with Super Poligrip? Seems like you could get some significant purchase...

first , let me just say

ewww

IB and his kid:

How's that ice storm down there boys? Is it over yet?

Not much where I am. Supposed to snow later this week though...