Remember last week (I barely do) when I told you about the NYT breaking the news It-chefs Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinell would be opening a venture in Portland?
Well, the indomitable Sam Sifton, restaurant critic for the Times (and a hero of mine), reviews the two Franks latest venture Prime Meats in tomorrow’s dining section. But because he’s such a nice guy, he dropped the link on Twitter today. I’m hoping the review is indicative of what Portland might be seeing from the restaurateurs in the future:
And a meal in the restaurant proceeds with all the jollity and good manners of something scripted by Laura Ingalls Wilder and scored by the Grateful Dead. It is an extremely pleasant place.
Read the entire thing here. (And you thought my writing was wacky?)
Thank you, Patrick, for reminding me why I *never* go to the New York Times when I want to read about food… Your writing, if a bit wacky, is nothing short of poetry by comparison to this nonsense. Especially appalling was this jewel from the second paragraph: “They look slightly pained, these visitors from afar wondering about the life choices they made that put them in Chelsea or Park Slope or Montclair, and not down here in Carroll Gardens, this little Italian village off New York Harbor where life is obviously perfect.”
These New Yorkers sure do have a rough go of things nowadays, their mis-guided life choices (buying condos in Park Slope, when they should have been buying condos in Carroll Gardens… the horror!) grinding them inexorably deeper into a Kafka-esque nightmare world, forever doomed to fog up plate glass windows watching people slightly hipper than themselves eat bone marrow… If these poor bastards need someone to commiserate with, I’d suggest they call up some homeless children in Port au Prince, or perhaps the mothers of those three detained hikers in Iran… I’m sure they’ve got some pity to spare!
And if that doesn’t make them feel better, maybe they could take out their misery on Sam Sifton himself and beat him to death with his own arms, thereby saving the rest of us from ever again having to read such lines as “The man on the door smiles down from his perch,” or “…some mustachioed chemist with tattoos and an understanding of bitters that rivals a rabbi’s knowledge of the Talmud.” I’ll take your wacky writing over horrendously self-important drivel that doesn’t even work as irony any day of the week!
As for Stoner Frank and Pothead Frank heading to our town, the more the merrier, I say. Just as long as they promise not to bring anybody from the New York Times with them. Oh, and they have to ditch their no credit card policy before crossing the Multnomah County line (that one’s pretty ridiculous, I’ll give Sifton that much).