In one of/Capital/’s more homiletic passages, Marx writes that “the
taste of porridge does not tell us who grew the oats.” Of course, this
is something that a lot of restaurants will gladly tell you now, from
farm to table to/Portlandia/
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErRHJlE4PGI>joke
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErRHJlE4PGI>. But no one can tell us
what restaurants will be here when this is over. I don’t know if Ben
Katchor’s favorite restaurant is closed right now, but his new graphic
history/The Dairy Restaurant/makes me think that many of the eating
places he treasures most have been gone for years and even centuries.
His new book is, above all else, a dauntingly complete history of
restaurants that served various kinds of Eastern
European/milchig/cuisine to generations of mostly Ashkenazi Jews — who,
keeping kosher, observed strict dietary laws designed to separate the
consumption of all dairy products from any sort of/fleishig/food
containing meat. Blintzes,/matzo brei/,/kreplach/, kasha varnishkes, and
knishes, along with “pareve” dishes like gefilte fish, lox, and pickled
herring that are permissible with milk or meat, as well as “mock” liver
salads, mushroom “cutlets,” and other delicious simulacra: a world of
Jewish food that still appears on deli menus, especially on the East
Coast, but has not achieved the ubiquity of bagels, nor the resurgence
of pastrami or Montreal smoked meat, and definitely not the glossy
acclaim of contemporary Israeli cuisine as it’s been popularized by such
chefs as Yotam Ottolenghi, Einat Admony, Alon Shaya, Michael Solomonov,
or Adeena Sussman. Notwithstanding the gaudy fuchsia spectacle of a good
borscht, these are foods that are far richer in calories than colors.
This isn’t to say that a plate of fried matzo — a beige-on-beige
masterpiece consisting of little more than water, fat, and carbohydrates
— is anything but indulgent.
full: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/land-of-milk-and-money/
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