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and now...

(Grumpy Old Diner)

!e amiable young woman who’d been our server at a hip new Hous restaurant was "ummoxed. I had thrown her for a loop by asking for … co#ee.

You know, that brown beverage tra-ditionally partaken at the conclusion of a meal. Cough-eee? In case an excess of Death Cab for Cutie music had a#ected her hearing, I mimicked sipping from a cup.

“We don’t have co#ee,” the server announced.

O brave new restaurant! !e critic in me was intrigued. Perhaps the chef decided the strong taste would compro-mise the delicate "avor of his signature dish, heirloom toast. Or perhaps it was for health reasons – it had been discov-ered co#ee makes your tattoos fade? Maybe this was the latest trend in social justice, where even Fair Trade co#ee beans had been determined to be in-herently unequal – some being rounder than others, you know?

“I suppose,” said the young woman with a hint of exasperation, “I could take an espresso and make you an Americano.”

Oh. You have espresso … but you don’t have co!ee. Ah, I see. How gauche and de-trendi$ed and totally hip-less did I feel, not appreciating that crucial distinction.

Actually, that’s a feeling that’s been sneaking up on me more and more these days. For four decades, I’ve been paid to be judgmental and, during this time, I’ve always assumed I occupied cultural ground zero. Now, however, the writing on the wall seems clear: Dough-nuts Vindaloo & Free-Range Pickles.

Sorry, wrong wall. !at’s apparently

the blackboard with Today’s Special here at Central Pork & Recreation, one of Houston’s newer hipster cafes.

No, the wall I’m talking about says, Hey, You Just Don’t Get It Anymore, Pops.

And, believe me, there’s nothing spe-cial about that, today or anytime.

My response? As Dylan !omas al-most said, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light – because, damn, that small print on the menu is already too hard to read!”

As the hipster/millennial trends in dining continue moving from quirky fads to established conventions, I’m not sure what role I’m playing. !e culinary equivalent of Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man (warning: $rst of several out-dated pop culture references) grousing about radish foam posing as food? Or maybe I’m the sage, seasoned Obi Wan passing along wisdom and advising gullible diners that “!ese are not the droids (read: tapas) you’re looking for.”

To be fair, some of what we see in our hipper restaurants does re"ect a legitimate evolution within the customs and conventions of the dining scene. But some of this is pretentious twaddle, misguided marketing and money-see, money-do commercialism.

Who’s to say which is which? Well … me. So, here’s a shoot-from-the-hipster guide.

AUTHENTICITYStudies of hipster/millennial dining attitudes cite “authenticity” as the Holy Grail. It has replaced “made with love” as the most important ingredient in any dish. But what does it mean? Well, if you are talking about ethnic food, it might be how genuine it is. For in-

stance, there is a restaurant in Houston that is much admired for its “authen-tic” Korean goat dumplings. But if we served these dumplings to a Korean goat, would the goat really eat them!?

Authenticity? I am reminded of the old joke about acting:

!e key to great acting, the thespian grandly declares, is … sincerity!

If you can fake that, he adds, you’ve got it made.

So, is out$tting your servers in hand-crafted leather aprons really authentic or just faking it? Frank Zappa once asked, “Is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?” I think we’re seeing a lot of Sears ponchos these days.

RESTAURANT NAMES I’ve created an app with a complex al-gorithm that randomly produces names for hipster restaurants. Okay, here goes …

City Kitchen & Local Food + Kale And again… Radical True Creek & Gastro Eats +Local KaleAnd again … American & Local True/Real Bistro +Kale KaleAnd again … Local Local & Local/Local + LocalOops. Still needs a little $ne-tuning,

but you get the idea.

KALE !ree myths about kale: 1) !at it is edible. (Just because you can put something in your mouth, chew and swallow it does NOT make it edi-ble. See: "ree-year-old v. Crayons.)2) !at it is even food. (Google “kale” and you will $nd no reference to it be-

A Message From GOD

Text by Eric Gerber • Illustration by Alabaster Pizzo

ton

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fore 1962 – other than planted Wikipe-dia entries – which is the year DuPont secretly patented a synthetic material fabricated from polyester residue and lake scum, then began wholesaling it as a foodstu! to "ird World countries. "ink it’s coincidence that “kale” is an anagram of … lake?3) "ere is a proper way to prepare it. (All recipes should read like this: Begin by boiling for six hours, drain, mince, broil for two hours, drain, run through processor at pulverize setting, drain, dust ever so slightly with just a soupçon of pink sea salt … discard.)

CHARCUTERIE"is is French for “charging more for cuteness,” yes?

And don’t think you’re making things any better by calling them “cured meats” instead. I hear that and I just gotta ask, “Cured of what?”

Here’s a suggestion: "ey’re cold cuts; why not call them … cold cuts?

TAPAS/SMALL PLATESWelcome to Platto Petitto! Are you fa-miliar with our restaurant? Everything is meant to be shared! So, here is one glass of

water. Please pass it around the table so each of you can take a sip. Now then … who wants to use the fork !rst?

To be fair, this “small plate” approach has advantages, allowing you to sample a wider variety of dishes. But I must confess to a lingering suspicion that – no matter how much actual food I actually consume at these establishments – that I haven’t eaten A Real Meal. I am a victim, no doubt, of far too many years of Meat & Two Veg conditioning. Lately, though, I have been making remarkable progress with a therapist who has me close my eyes and repeat, “Pureed squid, smoked celery leaves, deviled quail eggs and deep-fried kim-chee pellets do make a meal, they really, really do!”

ON THE MENU NOTE: Water will be served upon request only. Bread will be served upon request only. Silverware will be provid-ed upon request only. Napkins will be provided upon request only. Chairs for this table will be provided upon re-quest only. Menus will be o!ered upon request only … in fact, how the hell did you get this one, you sneaky bastard?

NOTE: For a $7 surcharge, all steaks can be served paleo-style, and your waiter will carry a club and grunt as he serves it. For a $10 surcharge, all meat dishes can be served vegetarian. For a $12 surcharge, all vegetarian dishes can be served vegan. For a $20 surcharge, all vegan dishes can be served as an empty plate, and we’ll all just pretend.

NOTE: Don’t forget to ask your server about our farm-to-table valet parking!

FOOD TRUCKS Meals on wheels? Yeah, kind of kitsch, kind of fun. But can you honestly say that anything you order from a food truck would not be better prepared and eaten in more accommodating circum-stances at a non-vehicular venue (aka “restaurant”). So, what you’re really re-sponding to is the novelty of the experi-ence. Well, guess what? "at makes you the, uh, target audience for Air Fare, a new partnership between Sysco and the CIA that uses military drones to deliver your food. Suggestion: Do not attempt to walk the bill.

I tried to review a food truck once, but spent so much time analyzing the

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merits of a P-30 Chevy Step Van, the advantages of a gas engine over diesel and the bene!ts of a hydro-glide six-speed transmission that I ran out of space before I got to the food.

I will confess that I would like to op-erate my own food truck, just so I could call it "e Flying Fudge at a Rolling Doughnut.

CRAFT COCKTAILS I surrender. "ere are no absurdly lavish cocktails that I could make up that are any more laughable than the real ones now being perpetrated upon a naïve public. "ese overly crafted cocktails have become an end in themselves and every bit as annoying as all those hip musicians with their complicated shoes. "ree words: artisanal ice cubes. No, I’m not making that up. "ere are bars up-charging to add them to your drink. Next? Cocktail napkins made from the Shroud of Turin?

I am reminded of those would-be margarita elitists who make a big show of ordering a top-shelf tequila for their drink. Of course, the lime juice and salt are so raw they obscure whatever subtleties of #avor the “better” tequila

might possess. Wasted money, wasted booze. Let’s not forget that a good deal of exotic cocktail creation was rooted in Prohibition, trying to mask the taste of the god-awful illegal hooch. Well, the li-quor is much nicer now – till somebody adds a crushed moth ball, drizzles in ipecac syrup, drops in a parsnip shaving then tops it o$ with a Vienna sausage garnish.

(I was going to Google the words “kale” and “martini” together, but I lost my nerve.)

LOCALLY SOURCED Is food better because it came from around here? Locavores think so.

So do I to the extent that what’s o$ered is as good (preferably better) than what is generally available. But mealy !eld peas aren’t any less mealy because they were grown just 40 miles away. If you insist that pretending to prefer them serves some sort of greater good, go look up provincialism in your Funk & Wagnall’s.

What if I told you the ink on this page was made from ground-up snails taken from my garden and the pages have been printed on paper made from

local schoolchildren’s belly button lint? "is article read any better?

INTERNET I once served as the editor of an accom-plished food writer – I won’t reveal her name but the initials are A.L.I.S.O.N. C.O.O.K. – who instructed me in dire tones that I must never employ the words “yummy” or “tasty” in headlines accompanying her articles. "ose two words would never appear in what she wrote and, by God, they better not show up in the even more prominent headlines. Why? Because they are singu-larly #abby, vapid words that announce to discerning readers that you have no real grasp on the subject and no vocabu-lary to discuss it.

Which brings us to food blogs, Yelp respondents and Facebook poseurs, I mean, posters.

"ere are a few good ones, written by relatively articulate people. But there are countless others laboring under the delusion that because you can do something (post your inanities online) that you should. "e result has been an avalanche of food sloggers dragging us through a play-by-play of their meals,

Some Say We’re Obsessed With Steaks.

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Make your Mother’s Day Reservation Today

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46A P R I L – M A Y 2 0 1 5

labeling everything either a) Yummy or b) Not Yummy. Fascinating!

!en there are those who have dis-covered a humdrum picture is worth a thousand humdrum words. Flash: No one really wants to see your bleary, poorly composed phone-photo of the yummy/tasty Whatever !at Is you had for Sunday brunch at the Cork & Bull. (One exception: If there was something truly memorable about the dish – like the chef ’s thumb "oating in your soup.)

You know who dislikes your deplor-able manners even more than me? Your servers. !ey’re sick of you yakking on the phone when they’re trying to take your order, weary of your posing your food this way and that so you can photograph it then complaining it got cold and, worst of all, fed up with your leaving your phone on the table so some poor waitress can get yelled out for sloshing cream of thumb soup on it. Don’t you remember your parents telling you not to play with your food? What makes you think it’s okay now?

PICTURE THIS In the spirit of joining what I can’t beat, let me tell you about my favorite new restaurant. It’s called InstaGrub. For a very reasonable cost, they bring out truly amazing looking food the cus-tomer can photograph and send around dazzling pics to their jealous friends. !en the server takes the uneaten food back to the kitchen, and the customer leaves. Everyone’s happy. CONCLUSION I’m not saying I haven’t been guilty of some of the a#ectations mentioned here. And I’m not saying I haven’t indulged in the occasional Mason jar of mac ’n’ cheese with a side order of kombucha-brined bacon and foraged chia seeds. I guess, when all is said and done, what I’m really trying to say is …. YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!! (I’m trying to grow some kale there.)

Eric Gerber regularly reviews restaurants for My Table magazine.

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