Sqirl is dear to my heart because it's the place that really ignited my "let the hate flow through you" level of loathing for LA hipster cuisine. Friends tried to take me there the first weekend I was back in LA for the season; being told that I had to wait in line in order to see a menu in order to get in line to sit down in order to get food but not there, prole, two sidewalk squares over earned "nope, outtie" from me and I walked away from my two friends in the general direction of where I was staying. I'd made it six miles by the time they got menus, were seated, ordered and ate their precious fucking ricotta toast. Meanwhile I dived into a Ralph's for some toothpaste and maybe a sandwich because of course Sqirl is in a neighborhood without so much as a goddamn Wendy's for miles. They got ahold of me in the parking lot and sheepishly took me to Astro, which is only hip in an Ironic Trucker Hat kind of way as it's pretty much been preserved in cosmoline since LBJ was president. So yes by "dear to my heart" I mean "place that drives more rage in me than anywhere else in Los Angeles including fucking Intelligentsia and that bullshit place that serves french bread pizza by the fucking inch". LA Hipster food is basically "If I had my shit together I might have these ingredients in my fridge but even if I did I have nowhere to cook and absolutely no fucking idea how to boil an egg so I'm going to pay one of my cohort $18 to deconstruct that thing my grandmother used to make back before the whole family forgot how to cook because that way I'll convince myself that this is progress rather than capitulation especially if I post it to Instagram to prove to everyone that I sat in the goddamn line for 90 minutes to eat fucking ricotta on toast NO I DO NOT WANT TO MOVE BACK TO IDAHO FALLS" The British think Welsh rarebit is a delicacy, Scotch eggs are breakfast and an Aga is a stove so pretty much anything they think about food is entirely fucking wrong, as any viewing of the Great British Baking Show will prove, considering it consists invariably of Rule Britannia former colonists and their hazardous ideas about "spice" and "flavor" are subtly pooh-poohed by the ruling class so that Cassie the Toothless from Colchester can win with her fuckin' milk-flavored crumpets in the end.
british food culture is basically if you took all the interesting things out of french food culture and replaced them with the medieval version of depression-era "nana's famous potatoes" recipes it's a combination of masochism, indifference to flavors other than "buttery" and "meaty", and. and it's just twisted. honestly i think i hate food culture in general? it feels like offensive, almost, to take something that everybody does and turn it into some kind of pissing contest. it's weirdly macho and pathetic at the same time but yeah i espouse anglophobia
Every goddamn season. Has a statement like that ever improved any dialog you've participated in? More than that? I've mixed 20-something fucking seasons of reality TV, of which seven or eight are network fucking reality TV cooking shows and have heard producers tell judges who is going to win this that or the other "competition" countless times. Shit, dude, one of my technical screw-ups ended up being a Vine that got played fifty thousand times as proof of the conspiracy that producers were favoring one person over another (am not a producer). I'm going to let you in on another secret: the British invented trash TV. And they're better at it than we are. And they have lower standards, and they have no pretenses of fairness, and they, as producers, are the shittiest to work with by far because they absolutely drag their caste system to whatever continent they happen to be on and there is no creature on earth less interested in the appearance of fairness than a British Competition Reality Television Producer. Which is why no one in the US would dare of trying to pull off this shit after the fact.Have you... actually watched the show?
Or are you just repeating what you've heard?
I haven't watched the British bakeoff, but I've watched the Canadian version recently because i was in need of trash background video. It's insane how hard they lean into the stereotypes. The Quebecois person is usually some incompetent idiot that gets eliminated straight away. There is some genious young lady and a very talented ethnic person. A creative "crazy" old lady. 2 gay dudes (young and old). But at least i like that they don't play up the competitiveness too much, and it has an overall friendly vibe. I don't need to see people hating each other over cake.
i give you a dot for shokugeki no souma only - I've been watching that pizza for the last week or so and it's been sustaining my desire for trash the karaage competition episode was what inspired me to make them i enjoy the absurdity of how they portray cooking, something pretty down to earth, as a set of godlike naruto-esque powers and special techniques although i wouldn't like it without the apron jiggy ass guy who almost makes up for the gratuitous sexualization of every female character
Because much the same way you will dig into something until you can dismiss it on a technicality, you refuse to acknowledge something said to you eight times over if it might force you to change your mind. Great British Baking Show is an exercise in "here's this obscure method of mixing milk and flour from somewhere approved like Provence, hold it next to an English tea rose at dawn but be sure to toss it in at gas mark 4 before noon lest it taste like something". Is there a hot white girl? She'll stick around to the final four at least. Is there Granny Mugglesworth? She'll be around until the final three. The last two seasons? Paid for by Netflix so fucking of course they'll favor the minorities but they'll still greatly emphasize the importance of fine british flavors cooked in a fine british way, which is what every comment on this page is about, which you've already agreed to, but which you're constitutionally bound to ignore in italics 'cuz that's how you roll. And I'm not in the fucking mood today. Top Chef is fucking Magical Elves for fucking Bravo. Life is too goddamn short to work for either. Nobody works Magical Elves shows any more than they have to and I've never had to. And I hope to god I never will.But all that said, I still have no clue where the "they always favor the white housewife" discourse comes from
Idk man say what you will about minorities but don’t hate on their cooking. British food tastes like wet cardboard when compared to what’s available in India, China and the Middle East where spices of all sort are readily used and available. If you want bold new flavors that’s the people who have them. Hell the history of America food is all minorities, what did the pilgrims bring over? Fuck all that’s what, dumbasses mostly starved and practiced cannibalism anyway.