RIP David Brooks

but like also all those things are just fucking ham

David Brooks has no friends, which is why his last column was about bailing, and this one is about taking his gardener out for lunch.

Tooth bomb.

'instinctively, i led her into a gourmet sandwich shop / i don't know why but I had to start it somewhere'

Haha

lost Morrissey lyric

I want to eat with the common people

Trump: This Russia thing is busting wide open. What can possibly distract from it?
Bannon: (Pause) I have an idea. Get me David Brooks....

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 11, 2017

If I did a Patreon campaign to raise money for David Brooks fan fiction, would you support?

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 11, 2017

loathe to credit matty glesias but this does look like the place brooks was talking about

I think the infamous sandwich summit took place at Radici on Capitol Hill. pic.twitter.com/fhlYs1YGaV

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 11, 2017

it's also a really bad menu and having to untangle what different sandwiches are, when the descriptions are _bad_, when you're already having to deal with eating lunch with david brooks is a bit much. don't think that has anything to do with education level

It’s not really the prices that ensure 80 percent of your co-shoppers at Whole Foods are, comfortingly, also college grads; it’s the cultural codes.

For real tho, it's the prices.

prices + locations imo

No kidding. My sister-in-law recommended some random bullshit chicken salad at Whole Foods to us because she was trying to seduce us into the paleo lifestyle; it was bland as fuck and cost $18/lb. I have refused to set foot in one in the intervening 2.5 years.

(Here you can glimpse the Brooks imagination at work, visualizing people without college degrees wandering scared and confused through the aisles of Whole Foods, gaping at exotic items like peanut butter and apple butter and butter.)

I'm sure I'm biased because I'm Italian, but that Yglesias post is exactly what I was talking about. That menu just reads like a bunch standard Italian sandwich stuff and it describes the sandwiches fairly clearly, but I guess people freeze in terror when confronted with scary Italian words? Did the Mexican restaurant they went to use words like tacos, tortillas, queso, etc.? Is there a difference I'm missing? Both cuisines have been a part of US culture for a long time.

parentheticals on menus should be a strict no-no, that's practically the blink tag of menu UX

My own personal bias is that you should shop at Whole Foods because my sis works at an SF location, so please give her money, even if indirectly. (That said, I don't shop at one myself; I am a horrible person.)

I'm sure I'm biased because I'm Italian, but that Yglesias post is exactly what I was talking about. That menu just reads like a bunch standard Italian sandwich stuff and it describes the sandwiches fairly clearly, but I guess people freeze in terror when confronted with scary Italian words? Did the Mexican restaurant they went to use words like tacos, tortillas, queso, etc.? Is there a difference I'm missing? Both cuisines have been a part of US culture for a long time.

I think the difference is that the proliferation of different Italian coldcuts wasn't really a thing until about 5 years ago, and even then it started mostly in gourmet delis. I have incredibly bourgie, clued-in friends and I didn't start hearing about "soppressata" as a specific type of coldcut until mmmmmaybe 2010?

(Meanwhile, when I was in college in the early 90s, queso dip was becoming A Thing, so that's now been in the public consciousness as a default consumption choice for 25+ years.)

imo it's a difference in menu appearance and presentation, it reminds me of of a few french-style bakeries I've been to.

the format of having a menu item name in bold (or just numbered) followed by the prime ingredients, maybe not all ingredients, is the standard in every chain and a lot of smaller shops that are seen as class-neutral or lower middle class, whatever

the ingredient laundry list thing is the format a bakery here uses for their sandwiches/salads and I've been tripped up because I default to "I'll have the roast beef sandwich" could mean two different things because the one I didn't notice had roast beef listed third

tbh I've had sandwiches with all those italian meats at less classy joints and you just say "I'll take a number five" or whatever because the ordering system is made for convenience and not presentation

it's not the meat and cheese names tripping up people, or if it is, it's not the stumbling block

sometimes you just want a hot meal on a plate and not an overpriced sandwich, too

is that a metaphor for Bannon

I'm sure I'm biased because I'm Italian, but that Yglesias post is exactly what I was talking about. That menu just reads like a bunch standard Italian sandwich stuff

Yesssssssss if u are ITALIAN or are accustomed to an area with Italian immigrant influence over the historical cuisine. Particularly outside of cities/the East Coast, that leaves out a lot of places, a whole bunch of which were like reverse-introduced to perfectly normal sandwich meats as gourmet items that are expensive and not locally available.

Exactly what Dan said, basically.

I would almost bet David Brooks has no friend and he's extrapolating his own confusion into a fictional colleague so as to not admit he has no idea what those meats are

Perhaps he was writing a column about his impending vegetarianism and was confused.

xxp: Yeah, growing up in MN we had "bologna" and "salami" and "pepperoni" and that was it. Even living in the Boston area after college, I mostly remember seeing all of these things loosely billed as "salami" unless I was in an Italian restaurant trying to flex on its antipasti plates until someone decided that money was to be made introducing the nouveau riche to the names of different varieties of cured meat.

Burrata in Paradise

hey I only learned about capicola after working at Miami Subs in the early '90s.

tbh I grew up in an area with a large italian immigrant base, have a family tradition where we get a bunch of meats/cheese from this local italian grocery around the holidays for a lunch, and even then we seldom branched out further from coppicola and basic salami

ha Alfred, I was just about to reminisce about my life-changing introduction to burrata, which was... 4 years ago?

actually I think we did get soppressata on occasion but never called it anything other than "dry salami"

Not to mention my mom thinks all foods w too much flavor are morally suspect, and cured meats like ham contain sodium nitrate and might give u cancer, so we were down to roast beef, sliced turkey, or PB&J for sandwiches p much. Peppercorn salami? As if.

actually I think we did get soppressata on occasion but never called it anything other than "dry salami"

^^^^^ this rings very true; my take was that there were many different types of salami but they were all called "salami" and it was kind of mindblowing to realize that they all had names I'd never learned

hey I only learned about capicola after working at Miami Subs in the early '90s.

yeah this stuff was on chain deli menus in the early 90s

and we NEVER sold it. One time the manager put in an order for 14 capicola subs to fuck with us.

yeah this stuff was on chain deli menus in the early 90s

... where you grew up. They were hardly any chain delis where I grew up, let alone any with this stuff on the menu.

AND in the early 90s I was a broke college student who ate a good 99% of his meals on campus, so there was little-to-no opportunity for me to find a deli with this stuff on the menu.

There was a local sandwich place I used to go to in Back Bay that had an Italian sub with bunch of this stuff on it but I never knew what any of it was and, when I looked at the sandwich, it all looked like salami so I categorized it all as "salami" and stopped trying to sub-categorize.

there was a chain deli on my campus and I worked there but yes I did not live everywhere in the US

I mean, the mexican place thing is a red herring for classist shit, too, because there are fancy places in that realm but they're still few and far between

Nobody is going to pass a quiz on the differences between Oaxaca cheese and asadero before they get their tacos

So would our terrified friend have been soothed by a simple explanation like "it's salami with tomato on bread"?

didn't mean to imply I was addressing yr personal experience anyway, just noting that my introduction to these items corresponded to Alfred's in timing/venue

xp

because there are fancy places in that realm but they're still few and far between

in New York

(which, last time I checked, generally has total garbage Mexican food - so maybe Brooks got what he deserved: a shitty lunch)

in most places!

lol "most" you wanna poll some states

So would our terrified friend have been soothed by a simple explanation like "it's salami with tomato on bread"?

― Moodles, Tuesday, July 11, 2017 2:19 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think Brooks' description of his friend's demeanor was horrible but that is maybe the implication here, that he was too lazy to say this, or he had no idea himself

there's great Mexican food in West St Paul now thanks to immigration

CA, WA, OR, NM, AZ, NV, CO, TX, FL, IL = p big swathe of the country imo (and I'm probably leaving out some states just cuz I've never actually visited + eaten fancy mexican food in them)

xp

there are a few threads where we've gotten into it, but the places able to charge higher rates for authentic mexican cuisine run into the same cost/authenticity/lineage questions that lead us to bringing up Rick Bayless and it's a related but different issue

eh I'm not touching the "authenticity" debate aspect

Haaaaa

http://www.avclub.com/article/explaining-david-brooks-column-stupid-coworker-who-257938

As I explained to my grateful, greasy compatriot then—and as David Brooks so finely elucidated for us now—it was not their fault that the nation’s deeply entrenched class divisions fostered by systems built on institutionalized racism and economic disparity have left them so feeling marginalized. They just need to pull themselves by their Wonder Bread bags, stop eating gas station nachos, and get hip to David Foster Wallace, because that’s what’s really standing in their way

the plot thickens pic.twitter.com/dHEDsPXPIG

— KRANG T. NELSON (@KrangTNelson) July 11, 2017

which one of you is krang t nelson