The ‘art’ of food writing is a complete sham

The weekend rant

As I was sitting in La Café Asafoetida in Acapulco, slowly munching on my honey-flavoured tartines listening to Ray Charles, it dawned on me. The tartines here have the soul of the prosciutto tartine that you get at La Madeleine, that lovely eatery on the rooftop of The Ritz Interconstitutional in Manhattan.

Undoubtedly, it is the Chef Superioré of La Café Asafoetida, Mr Amerigo Vespucci, who is the man behind the resurgence of this outstanding restaurant. Its backyard is now a separate dining area with blue Latvian chandeliers that give it a flowing Eastern European flavour, which offer a stunning contrast to the staccato Spanish rhythm of their West European cuisine.

All the tables have candles made of wax, which are mounted on candlesticks that look like naked virgins who are yearning to be ravished by the guests of La Café Asafoetida — preferably as part of a meal of tartines embroiled with avocado, crenellated radish, and debauched ricotta cheese with octopus oil on exfoliated sourdough bread.

The inside of La Café Asafoetida has an Egyptian bakery, with long communal tables on which you can make love as soon as you’re done eating. If having sex next to unknown people sounds unappetising, there are also table tennis tables meant for just two players, with romantic lighting and dandelion flowers interspersed with hibiscus rhubarbs. So if you want to impress your partner, La Café Asafoetida is the place to go.

Okay, thank you for reading through my first ever food piece. Let me explain. Last week, in a fit of unprovoked masochism, I began reading a food column.

The very first sentence was: “Food-writing is a tough job, but someone’s go to do it." After this, there was no way  I was going to sit back and let this breed of pretentious hacks get away with two humongous lies packed into one little sentence.

Let me settle it once and for all: food-writing is NOT tough; NO ONE has got to do it; and ANY ONE can do it. If all the food columnists of the world were to miraculously dissolve into one big soup of their own gastronomical jargon and someone were to boil the mixture for 20 minutes, cool it to room temperature, and then flush it down the toilet, the kitchens of the world will not come to a standstill. People will continue to eat. And to cook. If anybody wants to read a food column, they can write it themselves. I just did, didn’t I?

sampath@dnaindia.net