I'm a huge Sean Connery fan. Robin Hood, The Avengers, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, I grew up on his superhero movies. But that's not what impacted me the most, then and now it was his roles as James Bond and as Finding Forrester. When I was younger I watched the way James Bond and the Bond girls would look glamorous eating and drinking Martinis while saving the world and when I was in college that's what I decided I wanted to do. I was either going to look good eating and drinking or I was going to act like it. When I didn't get cast in those kinds of roles early on, I decided I was going to have to do it for real and that's what led to me becoming "Girl, Restaurant Girl." Still something still didn't taste right about what I was doing. And it wasn't until last week I figured out what that was. They were virgin Martinis. So I needed gin but not just any gin but Bombay Sapphire gin so I learned. It has more botanicals than my shampoo and it evokes India and England and all those thirsty spies sailing all those blue oceans in between. I know this now because late last week I had the opportunity to experience a "gin Martini" for myself at a flavor party between Bombay Sapphire and Artisanal.
I got to make my own Martinis and Savoys and such and as the night and me unwound and I made small talk with all the other Bond girls in around me and by my second Tom Collins we were all feeling like supermodel physicists. I went home intent on having another but I turned on the TV and Finding Forrester was on TV. If you never saw it, it's about a man who lets a boy use his words to find his own. Suddenly I was suddenly shaken and stirred by a fateful morning in my own life when a Tom Collins with cream never tasted so good and I was ready to think. So I picked up my copy of Insatiable and I started to rewrite my mentor's words so I could find my own.
Frank Bruni, the restaurant critic for The New York Times for these past five years is leaving his job to go on a book tour and I think now is the time to wish him good luck but also warn him it never had to be like this! Unlike critics like me and John Mariani, Frank Bruni kept his identity closeted. If he had come out as a critic from the start he wouldn't have had to have resigned his position to go on a book tour. He could not only do both jobs at once, he might have been so famous he wouldn't even have to go on a publicity blitz. I just found out from my publisher that I won't have to leave the News to promote my book because they said it's not going to make any difference. And that's because when people see my name they know who I am and they already have their mind made up.
And maybe that's something the Times wants to think about in replacing Frank Bruni. My first review for the News was up on 8/21 two years ago and Bruni's book comes out on 8/20 which timing wise would make the perfect replacement because I could start that week without resting a meal beat and I don't think anyone else could say those words. Also, it's the Times that stood up for my Twittering and blogging while the News never said a peep which may be why it's time for this chick to go free range to use a figurative metaphor. When I joined the News I realized I would help be responsible for the paper going from a print edition to not one anymore with my previous experience and and I've never once been recognized by them for that but if that's the future of the Times - with no disrespect to Frank - I don't think anyone could get them there faster then me.
(I bet these guys were never shy about getting what they want at a restaurant.)
The food world is incestuous and subjective and sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad and sometimes that all depends on who you ask.
Here's a for example: There's this guy named Dave Beran who is the chef da' cuisine at a restaurant called Alina in Chicago. It just so happens he's friends with my friend Alina. Coincidence? I've never said anything about it before because that's just how the restaurant world works. But I guess not in the dining room because do you know what happened the other day? He attacked a peer of mine, John Mariani, the resident restaurant expert at Esquire where he judges the country's best new restaurants.
Earlier today my foodie godmother Gael Greene - that's her above eating her breasts - wrote twelve reasons why you should eat out beyond your means (It's romantic and good for your sex life. You don't want to be too tight, a crane could fall on you tomorrow.) But her sense of humor is too dry and she couldn't think about 12 reasons why you should drink beyond your means as well. I guess she doesn't know, this week is World Cocktail Day, the 203rd anniversary of the world "cock-tail" appearing in some upstate newspaper and I'm going to be celebrating it with cocktail themed posts and interviews all week long. But I'm going to take a sip out of my afternoon and pour Gran Greene's post the perfect pairing first!
One of the reasons I was so mad last week wasn't that Neel Shah made fun of me on Page Six, my disappointment was swimming in the deep end because Ben Silverman picked up Neel's show, Parks & Wrecks, but canceled The Chopping Block before the episode with me as a guest judge ever got to air on NBC. You see, I love food. I love it and I think it's terrible that NBC has diet programming like The Biggest Loser that gives girls bodily issues, but puts down shows like The Chopping Block that encourage your basic people to cook and eat whatever they want. I mean, I know my hair was a mess that day, I know my dress was too tight, but did the producers say anything? No. Did Marco Pierre White say anything? No. They let me be me and that's what TV is missing more of and it makes just want to regress to childhood.
When I grew up, I had two kinds of dolls, Barbie dolls and Mrs. Butterworth bottles and they "shaped" the rest of my life. See, Barbie dolls had perfectly arched feet and long fingers sealed together and perfect form and what made me such a good swimmer is I wanted to be just like Barbie. She had perfect form and I'd always take them into the tub with me when I was little and later when my mom showed me how to swim, she stood Barbie on the edge of the pool, showed me her poise and I'd jump in with her. Whenever dad was home and came to my meets - he was in the Navy - he'd call me Skipper which was both a Navy term and Barbie's best friend. It's why there are so many dashes and dots in my reviews, they're my own personal messages to him even though he's back home on the mainland now and I'm the one at sea on this crazy island!
After some image problems over the past couple weeks I needed to take a new approach to making journalism happen. I needed to get my name out of the newspapers and my mind back on my book. So I cleaned up, looked up into the mirror and what was the first definition to pop in my mouth? My reflection said, "Freeman..." and then it happened to me: Free... man... charity! I needed to help mankind with free publicity for a good cause to remember what I'm all about, giving and receiving food and words. So I made myself recognizable to restaurateur Jimmy Carbone, co-chair of the 15th annual Taste of Tribeca until he fed me some answers about this year's festivities.
As you know before I became a highly regarded restaurant critic I was a fashion writer for the Daily News so I know a thing or two about dressing for black tie galas. But this year a crisis arose because how do you accessorize amidst and epidemic that's reached epidemic proportions? I'll be at Lincoln Center tonight claiming a "Beard" of my own in this five star flu mask by Irina Blak because what's more gala than being in Black on Black just like that classic album by the original man in black, Waylon Jennings.
(Left center and right, Page Sixes' Richard Johnson, Neil Shah, Paula Forelich.) So I'm a little upset today. Neil Shah above center, is someone who I thought was above all this pretty stuff because he had ass crazy a path as I did in the Hollywood and in New York media. Whereas I began my career on The Sopranos then started a blog then started a newspaper column, Neil started out at a blog site called Gawker where at least he was never unkind to me, then he joined a non-profit called Radar, entered the New York improv circuit where he turned his blog posts and stories into sketches as part of the collective Human Giants (which I loved!) then he landed a role on Parks & Recreation, the new The Office spin-off on NBC. Of course with celebrity comes "perks and recreation" and I guess one of them is Neil can also guest write humor for the New York Post, my biggest competition.
I don't know if you know about Rachel Zoe, but I just met her on a recent trip to see my lawyer in LA and I love her. Like her we're both from New Jersey and like her we both break the rules. I always thought of her as the kind of girl the Bruce would sing about if he was still around, and now Rachel is the first stylist who refused to be a wallflower and who sought out the same spotlight she shined on her clients. Her audaciousness inspired me to be the first restaurant critic to be more than "black and white and red all over" and now I eat in the spotlight so the dishes I review can shine bright like they're my accessories. You could say we're not "dancing in the dark" anymore but while she isn't robing clothes in the dark, she's robing ganaches with dark chocolate!
As I can't let you forget, I have a book coming out and that book is going to be available on Amazon.com. But what my editor and I are worried about is not whether you'll buy it but whether or not it is going to have a "sales rank." A sales rank is like a Technorati score for heterosexuals. If you're gay your number does not improve and this started a big fight at my publisher today. My agent said I should talk about some of the other incidents that occurred on the swim team in high school while doing press for the book so I wouldn't get ranked because, well, girls... Basically everyone agreed everyone would get jealous if my book was ranked so much higher than everyone else's glossaries so this was the courteous thing to do. But I said that's crazy because I got into writing about gourmet food because it's accessible to everyone everywherealways. I explained to everyone today that in my research I learned the origin of getting your food "to go" is an abbreviation of "to have it gourmet" and that most Americans are eating gourmet food all the time yet have no idea and that's part of what Americans need to be educated about.