Manolo’s Food Blog

Vegetarianism doesn’t seem to have penetrated snow country. Here in the mountain aerie of The Canyons at Park City, shining ersatz village on a hill, meat is what’s for dinner, in particular exotic meats like elk and bison. Salads are topped with bacon bits, duck confit, and other meaty delicacies. Although they won’t become local in Utah until global warming advances a bit farther, sea scallops, perhaps the richest food of the sea, routinely pop up on menus of fine restaurants.

If you want to live on vegetables in Utah ski country, you’re stuck with chili or bean burritos.

Since this town is younger than Mr. Henry’s Timberland boots, it might seem churlish to expect it to be steeped in authentic tradition. But why must every entrée arrive with a glaze, reduction, or coulis invariably too sweet?

Mr. Henry blames Top Chef. The world has fallen under the svengali sway of Padma Lakshmi, television’s dark-eyed temptress and siren of oral pleasure. Today across the nation young men sharpen knives, grow a soul patch, and dream of seducing Padma with something on a plate. Young women, too, have joined the kitchen crusade.

The upshot of this competitive hedonism is that new chefs are using too many ingredients at once. Last night at The Westgate Grill, Mr. Henry ordered elk tenderloin (raised in New Zealand… no wasting disease there). In itself the elk was delicious, but it could not win a valiant fight with a syrupy blueberry sauce. Passed out beside the elk lay “drunken mushrooms” over-marinated in red wine. Steamed and broiled Brussels sprouts, the evening’s highlight, however, were perfectly prepared.

The question remains: why must chefs insist on overpowering the palate with contrasting and, too often, conflicting flavors? Why can’t they let ingredients speak for themselves? Elk filet is sumptuously elegant and requires little in the way of adornment.

Typical of the Top Chef generation, the Westgate Grill’s salad chef got the look but not the taste. Spinach salad piled in a stack with blue cheese and walnuts looked beautiful and had the right combination of flavors, but it was drowning in dressing.

Padma, hear us! The nation cries to you for balance, for restraint… for bridle, halter, crop and lump of sugar…yes, yes, yes.

All week Londoners have been enjoying an unusual spell of sunny weather. Could this be the explanation why low-cut blouses and scanty dresses dominate feminine fashion? Not since he walked the beach of Nice at age 17, a peak experience of his late boyhood, has Mr. Henry seen so very much of so very many bosoms.

Like great white naval vessels riding the high seas, bouncing breasts command the London concourse. Rule Britannia!

In every cafe, pub, and restaurant he visited this week, the waitress chose her outfit for a stage audition. Mistress Quickly, a tavern wench, or the village strumpet are juicy parts, to be sure, confident to bring advancement. These actresses really can fill the role.

Lately when Mr. Henry thinks of scones with clotted cream, visions of Devonshire dairy maids pop up. The word “pudding” now animates Mr. Henry’s imagination towards sweets not available on the menu.

Bottoms are nearly as uncovered as tops. Rare English sunshine illuminates scanty pants beneath gauzy skirts. It’s a little bit much, really. Or rather, it’s a little bit too little.

Mr. Henry likes the female form. He adores the female form. The unengaged parts of his brain think of little else but the female form. In his considered opinion, there is nothing like a dame. But he finds himself distracted by seeing so much female nakedness in this traditionally prudish country. Bombarded by pale-skinned and dark-skinned beauties, how can he be expected to absorb the subtleties of English Gothic architecture? Concentration flags. Mental acuity goes mushy. His train of thought follows the wrong signal switch and then he wonders why he bothered to trudge all this way just to abuse his feet on medieval paving stones.

When a man is tired of London breasts, is he tired of life?

Seeking revival in traditional pub foods – bangers and mash, fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, ploughman’s lunch – time and again Mr. Henry found the menu listing duck breast salad or felafel instead. The English pub has gone gastro.

On nearly every menu now there is a vegetarian selection indicated by (v). This represents a genuine revolution in English cooking. Results are mixed, but in two cases so far the felafel has been first-rate – freshly prepared, brightly seasoned, and crisply fried. Salads have been excellent.

The steak and ale pie Mr. Henry snagged at the Wellington on The Strand lived up to tradition. Judging by the crust’s sturdy exterior and soggy interior, it could have been made in the 18th century. It was timelessness itself.

The week’s most exciting taste without doubt were the Alphonso mangoes from India, pale orange with the creamiest, most aromatic flesh, available for only a few weeks each year. Mr. Henry bought them at the Saturday farmer’s market on Portobello Road. They are the food of Shangri-La.

At age 35 the male metabolism changes. Between 35 and 40 Mr. Henry gained two pounds per year. At his annual check-up he asked his physician what to do. Dr. K’s immortal reply was “Quit eating!”

Clearly this is sound medical advice, but as in financial, political, and sexual matters, sound advice is difficult to follow.

Today Mr. Henry faces another problem of 35. Blue jeans are manufactured in graduated sizes of 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34-inch waist. After 34 comes 36.

The problem of 35 is that it isn’t there.

Faced with a sinister plot, Mr. Henry’s mind, unlike the darker minds of political reporters, federal prosecutors, and religious fanatics, does not immediately leap to conspiracy for a solution.

Regarding the problem of 35, however, hearsay evidence points to a world-wide conspiracy of skinny fashionistas – black-clad eaters of take-out salads with creamy dressing, spicy tuna rolls, Thai peanut noodles, and cheese-flavored corn chips, all of which are secretly laced with MSG.

Their collective goal is to prevent gracefully aging men from wearing the one worldwide signature garment of youth – blue jeans that fit.

When walking to the dog run Mr. Henry dons a ancient pair of 34’s unwashed since late 2007. Rips at knees and cuffs are not a deliberate style statement. The fabric is spontaneously shredding and simply will not withstand the rigors of a washing machine.

His replacement 34’s will not yet yield to the fundamental argument, and Mr. Henry refuses on principle to buy a pair of 36’s.

Thus diet dominates life. Like a train wreck, the expanded waistline collides with the blue jeans which in turn degrade personal hygiene and shatter self-respect. Not just the jeans lie in tatters.

The solution? Mr. Henry’s Dietary Dicta prescribe no carbohydrates at dinner. It seems he must cease playing by winter rules and face 35 days of fasting in the desert, or at least 35 days of fasting without dessert.

What accounts for Mr. Henry’s personal sense of style?

Without question, appearances matter. On this he agrees with Oscar Wilde (or was it Racine? or The Manolo??) who said that only shallow people believe fashion to be unimportant.

Those who know him by sight agree he does not conform to the dictates of common custom. More than once while wearing socks with sandals he has been accosted in the streets of New York by Nordic tourists in the mistaken belief that he was one of their own.

On the question of Mr. Henry’s personal style, between Little Henry and Stinky there is a marked difference of opinion. Little Henry maintains that Mr. H. resembles Arwin the janitor from Disney’s The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Stinky strongly disagrees, arguing that Mr. Henry resembles more closely Mr. Bean.

“But you’re not as ugly as Mr. Bean,” Stinky added sympathetically.

When arranging his morning accouterments, however, Mr. Henry’s mental self-image seldom strays toward fresh faces from among the popular pantheon. He imagines instead a revolving array of legendary bad boys – Harry Flashman, James Bond, Rowdy Yates – icons that have stood the test of time.

Like the imaginary antecedent of “it” in phrases such as “it’s a nice day,” Mr. Henry’s looking-glass reflects not only what is there but what is not. It compensates by adding an imaginary compliment. It imagines his hairline to be closer to his eyebrows than true measurement might find, though lately the eyebrows of their own accord have been striving to bridge that sad gap.

Mr. Henry imagines, as well, that he does not live in a grasping military-industrial empire or a burgeoning police state. Thus, he wakes each day to a glorious egalitarian democracy of free expression and social harmony.

And so it is with personal style. Sometimes the referent is imaginary. For clothing he strives to dress in harmony with the seasons and with attention to practicality. He likes a well-fitting suit, preferably one cut from super-100 worsted wool. But normally he finds his closet offers few solutions more comfortable and forgiving, more soothing to the temperament, more freeing to the imagination than a Patagonia shirt and J. Crew chino. In this everyman disguise he glides unnoticed past average citizens who do not suspect his secret life as an arbiter of taste and fine things.

Recently, spying him dressed in small round eyeglasses and wide round sun-hat, his dog-run friend Mary compared him to Mr. McGoo, a mainstay of his youth but a rare figure on today’s dramatic stage. Sometimes the imaginary referent gets a little misplaced.

Since Mr. Henry’s principal concern is in food as an expression of personality, as clan sign and in-group marker, he seeks expressions in food that others seek in fashion. He notes the most common examples of this, notably the great cry of “yeah!” from the studio audience whenever Emeril says, “and now we gonna add some gaaaaahlic.”

Indeed, food has become fashion. Food is to this decade what fashion was to the last – a popular obsession that is at the same time a genuinely exciting genre of high craft. While this obsession may not last, for the moment throughout the U.S. there is a full-blown, accelerating hunger craze for fine cuisine, a gustatory tulip-mania.

Like all popular movements, this one has born lots of nonsense, e.g., Emeril Lagase and Sandra Lee. Nevertheless – and now Mr. Henry betrays delirious optimism – everyone is not a boob. Here and there good recipes get made, new pairings shack up. Life goes on, except, of course, for those life forms we eat.

Manolo says, to inaugurate this new blog, here is the post that marrys the Manolo’s two great passions, the food and the fashion, although what is shown below is not exactly to the taste of the Manolo.

These pictures they are from the Fall 2006 collection of the designer Jeremy Scott. Let us be generous and say that perhaps he is striving to be whimsical, rather than ridiculous.

Perfect for wearing to the Sons of the Italy Columbus Day Ball!

If the soda jerk, he gave the Manolo the huge cone with only the two tiny scoops, the Manolo he would send it back and demand the new one.

Mayor McCheese, The College Years.