RIP David Brooks

(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

that paragraph is pretty stupid but i'm surprised at the huge reaction to this

not I, although he gets much respect for his antics

exactly^^ brooks conflates regional differences w/class distinctions

― busy bee starski (m coleman), Tuesday, July 11, 2017 12:37 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark

i think this is right. fwiw is this the menu of the best hoagie shop in the philly area:

http://i.imgur.com/Wc47x3A.png

http://www.thesiciliandeli.com/id10.html

they have a big NRA sticker on their front door and didn't take cards until like a year ago. i think most of the big hoagie shops in philly specify which cold cuts. i still don't know the difference between soprasetta and gobbagool or w/e fwiw

I can't even begin to explain how much better Mexican food is in the Twin Cities than it was 20 yrs ago.

- full disclosure: mediocre college educated (4 yr degree, state school), have read Infinite Jest, did not know those particular sandwich meats

now that's how you make a menu

xpost -- I gather all you had then were various Taco Johns.

c’mon man, we had Chi-Chis by then

(at first I misread that as Tasty Tacos and was confused since that’s a long-running local chain that you’d have to visit here to know. also, I ate lunch there)

I miss the Mexican food on lake st so bad sometimes.

you can get capicola at frickin jimmy johns

https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/wj8gmx/italian-meats-arent-ruining-american-education

account of friend's horror needs more gabbagool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EHFRYVxhd8

c’mon man, we had Chi-Chis by then

― mh, Tuesday, July 11, 2017 6:07 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jejejeje tu mamá tiene chichis

indeed