craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

they run out of hamburger by the end of the night. stop & shop never runs out of anything. they just thaw more of it.

Ugh exactly.

It's really kind of quaint and wonderful to me but normal to, say, my mom: the knowledge that if you need a rack of lamb or 48 Frenched lamp chops or a boned and tied pork roast for 24 ppl or whatever special occasion thing, you can call up the meat counter or just stop by while you're doing your shopping and leave a message for the guy and he'll order it/cut it and have it ready for you.

Were butchers ever really "low-status" jobs? Not counting Jurgis on the slaughterhouse assembly line, wasn't it always kind of a skilled and, comparatively, well-compensated occupation? Barbers, too, for that matter - not like they rolled in dough and ran the town but it's kind of a solid sole-proprietor mom-and-pop gig, secure a decent little livelihood, people did not cross to the other side of the street and hide their children's eyes when they saw a barber coming. Feel like there's a sloppy flattening-out of any social classes below those occupied by lawyers and tech entrepreneurs.

― ✓ (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, May 3, 2017 2:47 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's really messy isn't it? it reminds me more of fetishisation of a Deadwood vibe. I am kind of interested in the 'how they learn their chosen trades' bit, because presumably somewhere in that chain is someone who has actually practiced whatever it is as part of a continuous tradition.

As always i find myself falling down this rabbit hole of revival and tradition and what distinguishes it. For instance, there's comparatively recently opened rather bougie butchers and deli near me (they all seem like very solid people and it's attractively called Dugard & Daughters, rather than sons), and at the other end of the area is a traditional butchers who've been around for ages, who supply restaurants etc. i know it will be impossible to get scrag end of neck for a hotpot from the newer butchers. this isn't to do with craftsmanship etc, but it is to do with expense. It's not worth selling and there's no one to buy it anyway. It falls beneath the worth of 'crafting'. and it seems generally the case (as i think has been discussed multiple times on this thread) that the new artisan tends to be selling at a premium, to a premium-buying crowd, who at least in part are buying the 'craftsmanship' aspect of the thing as much as the thing itself.

While I can see it is skilled, I don't really buy butchery as a craft tho tbh.

picked up from an unenviable situation, for whom its a central interest. i'm not sure i entirely *get* what An Unenviable Situation is saying either, and so i circle warily around what they mean. certainly they're extending the notion of craft well beyond its commonly understood regions, in order to support a wider philosophy of engagement with the world to do with physicality, what they've called elsewhere the 'initimate empiricism' of art, art as craft, *everything* as craft, against commodification and fungibility. if i've got it right.

the whole instant expert thing is always gonna bug me. i don't know if that's an inherently american trait. brew beer for a couple of years and all of a sudden start talking like you're a 500 year old monk. even people who homebrew for a couple of years end up doing this. i don't doubt that people can learn stuff and get good at something and i also get that the language and appearance of expertness/attention to detail is a part of the marketing/experience but it gets to be a bit much. but that's what the thread is about. calling something a "craft butchery" is definitely a thing. i guess you are crafting cuts of meat? eh, whatever. good luck to them!

people these days acting like they invented coffee or something is all i'm saying....

black and white photo of a guy with his arms folded, sleeves rolled up, tattoos, maybe a beard, possibly an apron or a smock -- and he installs blinds

haha, yeah. a heavy leather apron of course.

btw the bad south park joke about des moines being several years behind is right again
https://www.facebook.com/pg/fontenellesupplyco/photos/

also saw a restaurant reopening as new american modern food and it has all the white subway tile decor

heavy leather shoeshine boy pretty badass.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bb/dc/e8/bbdce8c2923f81dd9f15d746f949c83f--man-magazine-dress-shoes.jpg

i don't even own a pickaxe :(

there must be an artisanal type volunteer firefighting crew out there with a biodiesel truck and handmade axes.

Unlike a traditional firehouse, where the firemen might spend most of their time playing video games, talking sports, and eating frozen pizzas, here you're more likely to find some of the men sitting in a circle discussing politics or playing a board game (Carcassonne is the current popular favorite), while others are busy in the kitchen making adobo bowls laced with kimchi, seaweed, fish sauce, and soft-boiled eggs. A vinyl record player sits in the corner, playing the first album by Fleet Foxes while an ELO album sits in the queue. And here there are no fire poles, but slides reclaimed from an abandoned playground.

This preempts my idea for an artisanal software shop. Old mail carts full of hand-carved wood-block ones and zeroes. Citizen-coders tenderly arranging them on racks. In the back, a side business doing punch-cards for elite customers (using reclaimed crochet hooks). In the corner, a lovingly restored PC Junior - backed up using magnetic cassette tape - for client demos.

Magnetic tape backups still as good as it gets tbh

It's so much warmer than digital.

artisanally handled by robots

Nomar please tell me you made up that firemen story because it made me immediately want to punch someone.

Paper tape backups. With handmade paper, of course.

this has probably been said upthread but this urge to feel connected to objects by understanding/feeling close to their production makes perfect sense for a post-industrial/digital/hyper-real society in which it's easy to feel alienated from labour, your environment and the economy. localism ties into the same thing, as does minecraft

https://www.eater.com/2017/8/17/16146164/the-whiteness-of-artisanal-food-craft-culture

"Lauren Michele Jackson is a writer and PhD candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago."

you don't say

https://scontent.fbed1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/22365287_10212021943118593_4178892090444639246_n.jpg?oh=db49ebbc0c033f92510dfe9ac50e0420&oe=5A3F8AB7

so breezy, these tomatoes

who bakes cherries with honey

is there in fact any such thing as a honey baked cherry

There's at least one recipe, but it's more roasting.

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/254592/honey-roasted-cherry-ricotta-tartine/

Garnet color and soft, crisp saline body makes it sound like a Neti pot after a bloody nose.

now why didn't i think of that!?

http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2017/10/17/california-restaurant-proudly-serves-popeyes-chicken-as-their-own-charges-13.html

don't know if this was noted on another thread. didn't really know where to put it either. the appropriation thread?

the reallocation of chicken thread? the outside chicken thread?

I feel like the whole artisanal craftsmanship blah thing might finally be on the wane as a marketing device, but maybe it's just that I live in a really boring neighborhood in Queens

I've always thought if I had a venue that needed to serve food as a condition of getting a beer/wine or full liquor license, I would do something like this rather than try to cook food. It would be curated (the best things from Trader Joe's, etc) at reasonable prices, and their source not hidden.

People have a gut reaction against that kind of markup situation, even though all food served in restaurants is marked up.

Usually, yes, but this would be a performance venue or even neighborhood bar situation where the attraction is definitely not the food. I'm thinking the $3.99 TJ's frozen ham and mushroom tart (which I love) being offered at say $7-8.

They'd get away with it if they announced it instead of hid it.

For a while, my local beer place included the take-out menus of several nearby restaurants in its drink menu, and encouraged people to have their food delivered to them at the bar.

there is a beer bar down the street (that doesn't serve food) and they encourage people to bring takeout to the bar or even get food delivered there! which i thought was nice of them.

x-post!

People kind of have a reaction against that sort of overt markup though, even though it's really no different than any other markup you pay in a restaurant. Paying $8 for a tart that cost the restaurant $3.99 to make = ok; paying $8 for a tart that cost TJ's $2 to make and was sold to the restaurant for $3.99 = not ok.

all the local brewery tap rooms have a rotation of food trucks that are there for the latter half of the week!

better than a jar of moldy eggs and a basket of soggy pretzels.

Was sort of surprised to see this company is still in business
https://floyddetroit.com/

OTOH they have branched out from just making "table legs" into making actual tables as well.

Like many Aviary drinks, the one called Science A.F. (ostensibly a reference to the microbiologist Alexander Fleming) is made at the table. A small blue flame compels Scotch and other ingredients in the lower chamber of a vacuum coffee maker to ascend to an upper chamber filled with fruit tea, as dry-ice fog carpets the table. This took about five minutes and produced something that tasted like the fruit punch that might be served at a convention for designated drivers.

On the other hand, I admired the balance and complexity of the Wake and Bake, a mutant rye manhattan made with coffee- and orange-flavored vermouth. What I can’t imagine ever loving is being asked by a server to stick my head inside the inflated plastic bag in which it is served, to see that it really did smell like an everything bagel. It did, but it was one of several moments when I felt like a parent helping the Aviary staff to complete a project for the science fair.

After a round or two, the alert drinker may become gun-shy. A friend I’d invited for lunch gamely sipped a Boom Goes the Dynamite, which had never cooled below tepid despite having fumed vigorously from the dry ice inside its laboratory flask. Leaving a third undrunk, she asked for a Bloody Mary.

“Our Bloody Mary is very unique,” our server said brightly. “It takes about 15, 20 minutes to make.”

“Is it served ... cold?” my friend asked, hope flickering weakly in her voice.

It was. A few minutes later, a relatively traditional Bloody was poured over many tiny ice marbles inside the bowl of what looked like a small spittoon. Around the spittoon’s broad brim were arranged five garnishes, or side dishes, or condiments, including chopped razor clam with celery sorbet and a little pillbox of horseradish jelly.

When we were alone again, she sighed and said, “I was hoping for a glass.” The Aviary’s Bloody Mary, by the way, costs $38.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/dining/grant-achatz-office-aviary-review.html?hpw&rref=food&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

things that could be a Portlandia sketch...

i went to the Aviary in Chicago and it was ridiculous in a good way! my wife had this:

https://assets.worldsbestbars.com/bar_425_320/Aviary%20small%202_54b4f577c5d8c.jpg

i'm onboard with elevated weirdness in food (if it's good.)

(*food and drink)

i doubt i will be going to any place that serves 40 dollar bloody marys but they are a hoot to read about!

actually, the lunch menu described in the review is not out of my price range.

"... and served in a man's hat."

"hand-made, small batch" plaid shirts

https://www.jc-rt.com

please kill me

those are ugly

they don't look ugly to me.

The restaurant thing reminds me of the Vespertine review in the LA Times.

http://www.latimes.com/food/jonathan-gold/la-fo-gold-vespertine-review-20170902-story.html