I Hate Cilantro

Cilantro Takes Front Page, Shares With Giant Pastrami

2010-04-14T12:46:00.007-04:00

Illustration by Stephen Webster

New York Times

Today's New York Times Dining section has a striking front page. What is most striking to most I imagine is not the small cilantro article on the lower right, but the hyperbole of a pastrami sandwich that overwhelms the page.

I've been thinking a lot about juxtaposition recently (always) and while Harold McGee's excellent article provides so much fodder to dive into here in this blog, fodder that I'm excited to dive into in the near future, while I have the eyes and possibly attention of more than I'm used to, it's the pastrami sandiwch that juxtaposes cilantro hate neuroscience/anthropology that I'm concerned with today.

Beginning January of this year, I've adopted a vegan diet that I keep at a strictness of oh, say 98%--due dilligence applied, the occasional doubt of trace amounts of dairy infrequently ignored. I'm not here or anywhere else to try to convince anyone they should do the same, but I think I have an interesting and less-obnoxious-than-most take on it.

The Times asks "Can This Sandwich Be Saved?" in its headline (Julia Moskin asks in her headline). A better question, I argue, is "Should This Sandwich Be saved?"

The article is about the slow but consistent decline of the Jewish deli (the number of them, the success of them, the perceived quality and authenticity of them) and the corresponding ascension of the not-Jewish deli (which is not to say gentile deli--some not-Jewish delis are Jewish delis, just not Jewish delis of yore). It profiles several mostly younger chefs and restaurant owners who are bringing things like "sustainability," creativity, and vegetables (that aren't coated in mayonnaise) to delis.

On the one hand, while I value tradition, knowing what you're going to get when you go into a place, a kind of place, on the other hand I believe in progress, that what worked yesterday at least might not work so well today. As Jonathan Safran Foer points out in his excellent book Eating Animals--which I read to rev myself up for veganism 3.0 (I've dabbled before for years at a time)--no one, and I can't speak to this personally not being Jewish and all, but especially no one from such a strong cutltural and culinary tradition as the Jewish one, wants to see tradition die, even if there are not so great maybe ethical or other considerations that might not make them the best practices to uphold.

My argument here isn't whether or not certain traditions should be upheld. Certainly you can uphold their spirit and modify their specifics--this has always been so. But it gets complicated when one tries to determine what is the vital essence of this tradtion--what part of it needs to be preserved. Which is why religion is so flawed--who gets to decide that essence?; but that's another post.

My argument here is that making things better or more progressive, here through sustainable butchering practices (in house, local, grass-fed), and flavor and creativity and all these ostensibly wonderful things, can sometimes obscure that they are really much farther from that than being good enough. That is, sure grass-fed pastrami is better than its factory farmed equivalent, but is it good enough. Maybe it is good enough for you and maybe it is good enough for a lot of people (everyone knows the whole slaughter process and everything is still really awful, right?) and that it should or shouldn't be still isn't my argument (exactly).

My argument is that these progressive means of producing meat and dairy and eggs and other foods while obviously good in some ways may be detrimental in that 1) they make well-meaning liberals and people who otherwise give a damn feel like they're doing enough, that things are moving forward enough to 2) eat these things (maybe not so bad) and 3) (the real problem) eat the old-guard counterparts of these foods more often than the sustainable version because 99% of meat and eggs are still facotry farmed. Basically, the very margainal market (supply, not demand) that exists for organic, local, sustainable, not factory farmed animal products seems larger than it is and because many seek out the good versions when they can, are used to eating these things at all, they will inevitably eat these things in their factory-farmed-mixed-pig-part-ball-park-frank-at-the-Yankees-game variety too, right? In fact, many if not most end up eating this kind of food (think cubed chicken in that make your own salad New Yorkers) more often than the good kind, because the good kind is out there.

And I'm not here to judge that. Food writing for years I ate my share of all these things--foie gras, Yankees hot dogs, Shake Shack burgers, Heritage Pork chops, etc--and I'm not on a mission to change anyone's mind about anything. But I'm interested in spotting flawed logic and unwarranted self-congratulation and while I really hope that Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt of Saul's Restaurant and Deli in Berkeley and chefs like them continue to create a better product, maybe at least some of us should also be thinking of creative ways of not eating this stuff at all.

Despite all this, you can say one good thing about delis categorically--I've never seen cilantro in a single one.

Also, I think the New York Times should give me a vegan and/or cilantro hate food column. Just a thought.

Most Emailed, Most Read

2010-04-14T10:51:00.004-04:00

NY Times today.

Real analysis to come circa lunchtime.

Rupert Murdoch Eat Your Heart Out... I'm Finally in The Times

2010-04-14T00:59:00.005-04:00

More later, but for now a link to The New York Times article and this juicy bit from Harold McGee, paraphrasing Northwestern (GO CATS!) neuroscientist Jay Gottfried:

"the great cilantro split probably reflects the primal importance of smell and taste to survival, and the brain’s constant updating of its database of experiences."

Indeed, to hate is to survive.

The Hate Stands Alone

2010-01-07T14:59:00.019-05:00

The queue of compelling cilantro hate topics to entertain grows as my time/commitment wanes and while the list is long and I do hope to cover some ground in the weeks and months ahead, one topic stands apart from the others and deserves immediate attention.

The apparent hiatus/tech failure/abandonment of the I Hate Cilantro site by my cilantro-hating brethren at ihatecilantro.com has got me thinking: who, what, why? But, given that I prefer speculation and creative thinking to good old-fashioned investigative journalism (contextually), let's go Fox News on the situation, let's go rogue!

Possible explanations:

1. I Hate Cilantro quit hating cilantro.

2. I Hate Cilantro is having a very serious tech problem (the site has been down for at least a month if not longer) manifest in a lone sad face surrounded by gratuitous negative space.

3. I Hate Cilantro just quit. Enough. The burden is too great to alone shepherd the growing and growingly vocal numbers of professed cilantro haters.

4. I Hate Cilantro is making an implicit statement about internet media: the masses seek a return to critical experts telling them what to think without the interruption of clunky forums and various interactive templates that would seek to make their voices heard in ways more cumbersome and complicated than the immensely efficient "comment" option provided by nearly all blogs.

Whatever has happened, the implications are clear. I must carry the cilantro hate torch alone. I accept this responsibility and will do my best to not let you down cilantro haters everywhere.

The Need to Write, The Need to Hate

2009-09-13T14:54:00.006-04:00

I've been getting annoyed a lot recently, not that me getting annoyed is in anyway anomalous. I am someone who gets annoyed: whether a person (or group) is being a jerk or too nice (in a an ostensibly genuine but upon closer inspection not altogether genuine way), too loud or too soft spoken, too dumb or too erudite, admittedly there's a thin tipping point in my book where something goes from just right, to just not. But I'm not a hypocrite--(or at least not an unknowing hypocrite, we're all hypocrites after all) I'm annoying too.

But getting annoyed is not, you know, a trait I'm interested in nurturing. I'm self-aware enough to know that an over abundance of getting-annoyed-ness has more to do with me than with the world around me, that I have some power in getting annoyed less and that getting annoyed less would probably have the effect of, rather intuitively, me being less annoyed, which seems pretty good.

So I've done a bit of science on this situation. Having a predisposition to getting annoyed, I'm going to need somewhere to channel this propensity. And that's where you, neglected cilantro hate blog, come in: nothing is more reliably, even comfortingly, annoying than cilantro, and unlike say republicans hellbent on stopping health care reform, cilantro being you know an herb, as opposed to near-half the American population, seems like a healthier, easier and altogether more fun place to direct my annoyance.

There are other reasons, too, why I've come to think revisiting this blog might mitigate this annoyance phase (don't we all live in phases? I know I do.). Principally, I very much miss writing and not just writing, but writing about something that is so uniquely mine, not the hate of cilantro--we're a large, vocal group--but the whatever unique blend of memoir, personal philosophy and of course cilantro hate encounters this blog evolved into. In no uncertain terms: my blog is way better than ThisIsWhyYou'reFat, however fun it is (I guess), but rather than be annoyed with how much better my blog is, it seems a better use of time to write my blog than be annoyed that other people are writing (popular) stupid ones. With that I bring you....

The Week in Cilantro Hate:

1.) Thank you Vanessa for your tip on McDonald's' new salad, the Southwest Chicken Salad, which features cilantro lime chicken and some sort of Ranch dressing with cilantro in it. Now, call me a snob if you will but Ranch dressing isn't my first choice, and McDonald's chicken belongs in a group (with say haggis) of "meats I don't want to eat" (As a side note, I'm dabbling in veganism at the moment), but McDonald's: consider yourselves removed from my cilantro safe-restaurant list, a blow certainly as detrimental as Fast Food Nation, Super Size Me and Food Inc. combined (oh wait, McDonald's is doing better than ever?)

2.) This morning I had a falafel platter at Miriam in Brooklyn that came with a green tahini sauce. I of course asked if it was green from the addition of parsley or cilantro. "Both," said the waitress, "but you really can't taste the cilantro."

"But, I really hate it."
"So do I, you can't taste it."
"Is it on the side?"
"Yes."
"Cool, I'll try it."

Guess what? I couldn't taste it. I didn't eat much of it, but I really didn't taste it. This leaves me wondering if there was actually cilantro in it or if the amount was so small that even I couldn't taste it (this doesn't seem likely, haters know even the slightest amount is totally egregious). In any case, the waitress was surprisingly right, and it was great to not be annoyed.

These Bitches is This Bitch

2009-04-14T15:41:00.004-04:00

In all things cilantro love and cilantro hate, seriousness can be difficult to gauge. I hope I haven't left anyone confused about my true feelings re: cilantro, nor on this hate's seriousness in my life--to clarify, let's say the hate is more ever-present and real than serious.

But seriously, it's fun to do the occasional site meter read-up, the twitter @reply rundown, the google alerts perusal in the inbox and notice something is abuzz in the esoteric realm of cilantro feelings good and bad.

An enthusiastic "writer" has recently found page view success through a front page Reddit appearance this weekend past. In between "posts" the author of "Fuck Yeah Cilantro" has found time to attack this "blog". Anchor text: IN OTHER NEWS, THE WORLD IS FULL OF SHITHEADS brings you here. It is followed by the elaborating: "i would throw smallpox blankets on these bitches."

Well, sorry to disappoint, but these bitches is this bitch.

Being in the magnanimous mood that I am, I'd like to take this opportunity to reach out to Fuck Yeah Cilantro and say "Love is not the opposite of hate," as a friend once said, "Indifference is the opposite of love." And so, while we ostensibly stand at irreconcilable ends, we're united in a similarly strong, however opposite, relationship with cilantro, which while I hate and you love, we clearly both notice, and in this noticing we both win.

As cilantro becomes more and more popular, so does the hater's ability to ask for its omission in dishes increase. That is, even English speakers of the not proficient sort tend to know what I'm asking for when I say no cilantro these days. That's because it is increasingly, for better but more for worse, part of the American cultural landscape. So cilantro enthusiasts, enjoy your passion, but seriously--lox and cilantro on bagels?

Top Chef's Fabio Viviani Hates Cilantro, Exclusive Interview

2009-02-25T17:12:00.005-05:00

Fabio Viviani, incontrovertibly the most charming of Top Chef contestants, ever, hates cilantro.

He doesn't just casually hate it--as if that were possible--he really loathes the stuff: His secret dream is to "be filthy rich, grow 20 acre of cilantro, and drop a bomb on it." He kids. I asked Fabio how hating cilantro has affected his life, he laughs in characteristic Fabio manner and says it hasn't affected his life of course but then admits "People are having fun with me when I say I hate cilantro… [It's] something fun."

Hating cilantro is so fun that he has banned the herb in his restaurant Cafe Firenze (though he is sure the Latino cooks (cilantro is popular in Mexican, Central and South American cuisine) prepare family meal with it in his absence as he finds it in the walk-in when he returns from a short vacation). Hating cilantro is so fun that he refused to help co-competitor and European compatriot Stefan Richter prepare his (losing) dish of salads and meat for the "Super Bowl Chef Showdown" episode. Come to think of it, not helping Stefan cook does sound sort of fun.

Fabio feels like he's the only member of a club. "No way" I assured him. Please read the Wall Street Journal or check out IHateCilantro.com or Facebook or anything--you aren't alone! He feels the herb tastes like soap, and there is a lot of support out there for that opinion.

I'm not the only one who has noticed that cilantro is everywhere. Fabio agrees and is not happy about its growing prevalence. While would-be fancy chefs find cilantro sophisticated, new and exciting--Fabio says it just wouldn't happen in Italy: "It's outlawed in Italy," he jokes.

Once he and his (Italian) mother prepared meatballs and accidentally purchased cilantro (in the U.S.) instead of parsley--they look similar. Neither noticed the mistake until they tried them--they were both repulsed.

Erin: Does your mother not like cilantro either?
Fabio: No, she's Italian.

While I have often argued that cilantro has no place anywhere, it certainly has no place in Italian cuisine: cilantro in pasta sauce? Please. I can imagine those meatballs must have been very terrible indeed.

Some people think we cilantro haters are just a winy group of crazies, or that we must just hate everything. Fabio admits he isn't crazy about artificial cherry flavor, (clearly a man of good taste) but quickly goes for typically less-desired foods like rooster neck or bull's testicles. Not a finicky eater, just a man who knows what he likes, and what he really fucking hates. (Fabio likes to use the word "fuck" by the way--this cilantro hater approves--am I gushing, how embarrassing. I'll admit the company is nice).

So, what's next for Fabio (he was robbed and told to "pack his knives and go" last week)? He's cooking me an 8 course cilantro tasting menu at his restaurant Cafe Firenze, of course.

10 Reasons To Love Hating Cilantro, Number 7: The Lying

2009-02-18T18:14:00.009-05:00

I'm not much of a liar.

There's an obvious potential paradox here that I won't even insult you explaining, but choose to believe me or not, I'm actually a pretty honest person. This is for a variety of reasons most notably: I'm bad at lying, My long-term memory is better than my short term memory and I would have a hard time keeping my facts straight (in other words, I'm bad at lying) and I, to be honest, have this strange sense of what one might call integrity wrapped around this virtue, if you will, of telling the truth. Telling the truth is better than not, most of the time, and I leave it to men smarter and men dumber than me to decide when those times might be.

Except with this whole "I'm allergic to cilantro" businesss, which WSJ quoted me on and has been the source of much discussion since. Commenters have written that they are worried I've exposed the lie as such and restaurateurs and cocktail hour hosts across the world will no longer take the allergy proclamation seriously. Another commenter worries that the "crying wolf" waters down the very serious allergies of people like her daughter--restaurants no longer take allergies seriously, everyone's got an "allergy," these days.

To be fair, I've always had a somewhat unfounded attitude towards allergies, with the exception of peanuts (though I resent people with peanut allergies because it means I can't eat them on planes anymore), thinking they're largely the result of 1) too worrisome parents who don't feed their kids anything potentially allergy-causing and hence end up with kids "allergic" to everything 2) nature telling us we shouldn't be eating these things we're "allergic" too (lactose intolerant, please, eating milk from another species (and after early childhood) is unprecedented in the animal kingdom and just straight weird--yes I eat milk products) 3) a general hypochondria that has swept the nation. But, while these opinions aren't going anywhere soon, in all seriousness, of course if a child, especially, has a physical reaction when eating a food, I don't want to stand in the way, in any way, of them not eating that food.

But, I don't see that happening. I worked in a bunch of restaurants and I can tell you chefs take allergies seriously, especially real ones like peanut allergies, and while they find it HOPELESSLY ANNOYING, they don't want to get sued or lose business, so they comply. They've gotten so used to allergies, that they are actually more prepared and skilled at dealing with them. Separate areas for peanuts, separate pans for garlic or meat or vegetables. Do they sneak a little butter into risotto they call vegan? I've seen it done. And why? Because they find vegans annoying and their cause not sympathetic whereas they find people with allergies equally annoying, but a potential lawsuit--they would also have proof of the infraction in theory where the vegan wouldn't. (I'm speaking in general from my experience here, but I think I'm right). So there you go, the person with the allergy gets what they want and the person with a distaste doesn't, at least not relaibly.

So then the question becomes, do I, a paying customer deserve to get what I want? Yes. I think so. I treat "the help" politely and when I've explained I don't like, even hate cilantro, it finds a way onto the plate. Those of you who have watched a certain amount of Sex and the City know that the Carrie Bradshaw character does not like parsley and uses the same lying technique to avoid getting parsley in her food. This of course annoys Berger to no end and is probably the beginning of the end of their relationship, but I digress. I get what I want when I lie. It carries that I could do this in other arenas of my life, (get what I want by lying) but one must sacrifice one's integrity with calculation and consideration for mankind.

I would argue that the rampant allergic-ness of America has in fact made it easier to have an allergy in America (described above) and that while this makes things more difficult and annoying for chefs, it makes things better for diners, in other words for the demand to the restaurant's supply, and those with allergies have nothing to fear from liars like me, and cilantro haters calling themselves allergic similarly have nothing to fear because the chef is obliged to take the allergy seriously. But cilantro haters out there, if your hate is as real, as tangible, as undeniable as mine, it is as serious an unpleasantry as most not-serious allergies (which is to say most allergies) and if lying means I can enjoy a meal, one man's hives is another man's ruined palate and dining experience, let's leave it at that.

And lying's kind of fun too.

10 Reasons to Love Hating Cilantro, Number 8: The Fame

2009-02-13T11:14:00.004-05:00

While I've often entertained the idea of a small, esoteric, and elite fanbase, (for cilantro hate propaganda and other literary works) I haven't known how it would feel to taste a glimpse of recognition for the first time on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Of course, that is until now.

If you're reading this you either hate cilantro and found me on google search, are one of my 25 or so loyal reading friends, or more likely read the piece in the Wall Street Journal today, which so generously did not contain a link to my blog. Thanks guys. Well, can't complain too much. So nice it is to be recognized and pencil-fied!

I'll keep this post short, but if you haven't read the WSJ article do--it's an interesting look at the amazing and surprisingly diverse community that has developed on the web around hating cilantro. As always, I'm honored and compelled to be a part of this community, indeed to be the self-proclaimed expert on cilantro hate and more importantly, cilantro hate introspection and sociology, if you will. If this is your first time here, I would suggest using this blog as an apt diversion from anything you'd like to be diverted form, mainly work I imagine.

As for the 15 minutes, it's as awesome as cilantro is not...

10 Reasons to Love Hating Cilantro, Number 9: The Absolute Shock it Sparks in Cilantro Fans

2009-02-04T22:42:00.006-05:00

To mention you hate cilantro in mixed company, which is to say any company really, is to immediately incur the fierce judgment and opposition of many.

When you say you hate cilantro--you might as well say you hate the Virgin Mary herself--it is that offensive to those that love, or even those that kind of like.

I recently had this experience on an conference call:

Me: "Oh, you have a window box garden. That's tremendous. Tell me, what in it grows sir?"
Sir: "Cilantro"
Me: "Gross. Nothing else?"
Sir: "No, just cilantro, it's a limited garden as yet."
Me: "Indeed"
Conference Call Chorus: "I love cilantro." "Me too. Who hates cilantro?" "It's so refreshing." "Yeah. It's one of my favorite herbs." "Exactly. It's really good." "Who doesn't like cilantro."
Me: "I HATE CILANTRO is who... I have a whole blog about."
CCC: laughs
Me: "No, for real...."

I would never begrudge the masses their relishing in something (they find to be) delicious of course. What's funny, amazing, something to love as it were, is how impassioned the cilantro lovers are. I hear what you're saying--I too, my lot, are similarly impassioned. Perhaps. But not without irony dammit. Have you seen the I Hate Cilantro site? It is irony incarnate. Those that like are so, well, genuine! But no need to judge, I've said my peace about cilantro lovers in the past...we all have our crosses to bear.

What's fun is in an otherwise ordinary meeting, or say it's a nice brunch looking for a little culinary discourse, or say it's a conversation with a stranger in the checkout aisle you wish you could connect with (if only to argue)--hating cilantro is immediate grounds for a kind of good-hearted outrage-turned-understanding: We feel the same way, just but it's the opposite, or something. Anyway, it's fun to see people get so riled up about something they probably hadn't given a ton of (any) thought to until it was suggested someone might hate it. Many times I feel I'm the first cilantro hater people have met. Cross to bear? No, it's my privilege and honor.

10 Reasons To Love Hating Cilantro, Number 10: The Esoteric Company

2008-12-09T20:46:00.009-05:00

As 2008 nears end, I've set up an ambitious plan to conclude the year with my top 10 reasons to love hating cilantro. Today: The Esoteric Company

With my favorite shows now off the air on HBO (Sopranos, Six Feet Under) or in off-season (Big Love), I've found the need to dig deep into the realm of shows I didn't watch when they originally aired but can easily score for free online, on-demand.

The Grey's Anatomy period was a sad, but short, experiment in this genre: Emergency, patient has an explosive lodged in his arm and Dr. Meredith Grey must hold it place or everyone will die!--but there have been more rewarding examples. Friday Night Lights was pure joy and Arrested Development requires no further lauding than it's already received--that show's hilarious. But the O.C., co-starring Peter Gallager and his eyebrows (to off-quote Sarah Vowell) is a current guilty favorite. Like any self-respecting O.C. viewer, I watch not for Ryan and Marisa, but for Seth Cohen and his delicious adolescent, but preternatural brand of sarcasm.

No matter how stupid any episode's given plot, no matter how much the writers insist on giving pretty but retarded at acting Mischa Barton lines, Seth Cohen gets you through and keeps you coming back.

But of course there are other characters on The O.C., like the requisite parents in any high school primetime soap, and less requisite ones like the parents of the requisite parents--enter Caleb Nichol, father to Seth Cohen's mother, WASPY but witty Kirsten.

A mere 24 episodes into the first season--dammit I just learned Caleb dies in the second season, beware, the internet will tell you everything!--I can tell you that Caleb's deep distaste for cilantro has come up in not one but two episodes. In both cases, this hate arises as Kirsten scrambles to prepare one kind of high-society party or other for her difficult tycoon of a dad. "No no, dad can't take cilantro" she warns the cooks and caterers as if this pickiness were the very proof anyone watching needed that Caleb really is a powerful, particular man. "He'll notice even the slightest amount," she continues.

In 2003 when the show first aired, the season in question, season 1, stretched to May of '04, cilantro had considerably less notoriety. The two leading blogs in cilantro hate, this one and that other one didn't even exist! People weren't as into food yet, though they were getting there, and I think this choice of herb (also suprisingly referenced in My So-Called Life) was meant to show just how classy yet have-it-his-way Caleb was, may he rest in peace (Though I really suspect one of the writers hates cilantro, but that's neither here nor there).

Well, if Newport Beach's richest, most powerful man is in my club of hate, I can't quite say why, but I tell you I'm thrilled to have him, may he rest in peace. There's a kind of existential allegiance in those moments, when you realize that fictional or not, there are people you have deep, deep connections to (in this case hating cilantro but it could be something less meaningful I suppose) that you never would have known about, had it not randomly come up.

I like to think there will be a time in my life when someone, perhaps a real life Orange County real estate mogul, perhaps a holy rollin' Republican evangalist, and I will share a special bond when we realize, over passed canapes, that we share at least one thing, and because of that one thing, even if we don't see eye-to-eye on everything, a spoken or unspoken understanding and connection otherwise lost will have been shared.

But until this person rears his hummer-driving head, it's me, Caleb Nichol and the countless unknown of you out there...

The Hate Lives On and Paris Too!

2008-11-20T22:07:00.005-05:00

It appears I have "fans," and these fans, if you will, have grown agree with me, disappointed, nonplussed.

Well, we can't have that, can we?

I remember the feeling, when a certain friend of mine named James had quit writing in his always entertaining blog, I went through all, not some, of the 5 stages of grief. To review, they are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. I have accepted that my friend James's "career" has replaced his "blog" (indeed he did just help to elect our new president--an achievement that's sheer awesomeness is ironic retort-proof, an achievement in its own right), but I cannot accept that mine (career) has replaced mine (blog). (It's funny, I was complaining to my boyfriend how much David Foster Wallace's () annoyed me, and yet...) Please loyal fans, go through but 4 stages of grief, rest on your depressive laurels and be ready for what I have to say next--I'm back and so too is my deep, serious hate of cilantro.

Perhaps an anecdote is in order.

Recently, in the blogless month of October, I took my first excursion abroad. I went to Paris, which is apparently the most touristed place in the world. Who knew? Apparently my friend's father who was nice enough to share his apartment with us for a week, apparently he knew, pretty awesome.

What would stand out to many in Paris is how awesome the food is, and certainly this was not lost on me. Practically the entire purpose of my trip was to go to Paris, eat croissant and not check my email for 9 days. On all accounts, the trip was a success. But there is more to Paris than croissant of course--there are also macaroons (the best are at Pierre Herme), pan au chocolat, steak frites, everything in the world you could ever want with ham and cheese (omelet, croque monsieur, sandwich mixed, quiche, dear god it's so good), and the list goes on. Of course there's the cafe and the champagne and the wine and the wonderful fact that to imbibe is to live, to not hold your liquor a little is ok, and to not hold it a lot is just, well, it's gauche, ok.

But it's what Paris is not, of course, that makes it awesome. Paris is not a place one goes to feast on cilantro, though it disappointingly if not completely predictably is now present in the newer, nicer restaurants, the kind that are just like the newer nicer restaurants in New York except the menus are in French and the people are too. Since all the fancy New York places are run by chefs from France, well, it's like buying Chanel shoes in Paris--sure you can, but what's the fucking point? Which is to take nothing away from probably the best meal I've ever had and certainly the most expensive, the 12+ course affair at Pierre Gagnaire--Yummo! It was a pleasure to explain in broken French, oh who am I kidding, it was in English, when the waiter asked:

"Do you have any dietary restrictions, things you won't eat, etc.?"
"Just hold the cilantro, please."
"But you don't have a problem with say foie gras, or frog legs or lightly poached oysters?"
"God know, what do I look like a freak?"
"Thank you madam, Chef will be most happy to prepare your meal sans cilantro"
"Merci monsieur."

And so the meal was divine and, my friend Margaret did have a course featuring cilantro, while mine sported sorrel--cilantro haters really do win sometimes.

But it isn't just the Michelin 3-stars that know how to cater to cilantro hate, it's more importantly the bistros, the cafes, the brasseries (the real French food if you ask me) where you don't even have to ask Chef to prepare you a special course, there simply isn't any of the stuff in the house to begin with. So thank you Pierre, thank you nameless cafe and thank you Paris for nine days without an email, without a worry and without a trace of cilantro.

Verdict: Cilantro Guilty

2008-09-09T20:03:00.008-04:00

I hate cilantro is not a performative statement. Saying it doesn't make it true. Wittgenstein would disagree with me here, but I hated it before I had words for it--the hate is stronger than even the words to describe it.

But there are other phrases that are performative: I do and I bet you come to mind, but so does another--Guilty.

My stint, which started today and will end I don't know when, as a duteous Brooklyn potential juror has got me thinking about all kinds of words: objectivity, (don't believe in it) judgment, (don't like it) guilty, (gross--do you know anything about the prison system? did you watch the OJ trial?) innocent (we're all guilty, did you read the Brother's K?)--words I have problems with, but it's not the words, it's what they represent. These are judicial words. Words meant to mean something concrete, serious and true. Words that weigh. Words that enable judgment. But, you know, that's just not how I feel about things.

When I say I love you, I know I'm saying the truth, not because it applies to certain feelings but precisely for the opposite reason, it just feels true. Maybe expressing that I would need to feel someone was guilty would get me out of jury duty. They like to tell you to pay attention to the facts of the case, to the evidence and then ask asinine questions like:

"Are you capable, Miss [I scream not married] Hollingsworth, of paying attention to the facts?"
"Sure," I respond.

"Have you prejudged this case Miss Hollingsworth?"
"No, but, I have, you know, opinions..."
"Oh, yes of course and I'd urge you to hold out on sharing those... but of course you have opinions as you say.."
"Yup"
"But you haven't judged"
"No, I don't know how I'd rule at this point" (laughs)

and I'm wondering if I have a shot in hell of getting on this jury (I find out tomorrow). What's weird is that I'm kinda into it. It's such a specific experience. They didn't say we couldn't talk about it. They probably should have? Anyway, it's a small case and the defendant is that city of New York. God damn it all to hell. I love New York--the city of taxes, taxes that pay me to do jury duty, taxes that pay the plaintiff for whatever the fuck happened to her and is New York's fault (or is it?!) Taxes! Love them. Suck it Sara Palin. I made $40 today serving my country! (though I guess you have to be tortured as a POW to get the full, authentic serving your country experience).

Well, anyway, whatever happens, probably won't end with me Law & Ordering someone into a guilty verdict (I'd hang that jury so fast if prison were involved). I don't make a lot of performative statements. Guess I prefer to take it in, observe stuff, then write stuff. I hate cilantro: it's easy to say, to write because it's specific, it's true (if we agree hate is a strongly negative feeling toward a thing) and I don't have those kinds of dogmatic, strong, true feelings about things like, oh, whether someone is guilty or not, but believe me it's very hard to explain to an ambulance-chasing attorney and his apathetic defense counterpart that all these feelings of ambivalence somehow tie into my hate of cilantro. It just doesn't roll off the tongue.

Anchovies, Beef Heart and Cilantro

2008-07-29T19:37:00.007-04:00

You'll please pardon my linguistic atrophy--it's been awhile.

They say memory isn't (please, someone, explain to me why "isn't" isn't in my firefox dictionary--y'all download 3.0?--readers, so much has happened) so reliable, so it's going to require a leap of faith for you to believe my account of a dinner a fortnight past, but, suffice it to say, I have a preternatural memory, especially for all-things involving cilantro.

One of my good friends is leaving New York to work for the Obama campaign. This is a trend a lot of my friends are partaking in--not the work for Obama thing, the leave New York (me) thing. First there was good friend who moved to Cairo, then there was other good friend moving to Argentina in two months (I won't mention her name in the event her employers are reading--surprise!!) and then this guy, my best guy friend that isn't my boyfriend in the whole state of New York--moving.

Well, that's neither here nor there except that we had a sort-of goodbye dinner together. As I said, it's been a couple of weeks (I have, a few weeks ago, taken a real grownup job that has been a bit needy time-wise). We went to Marlow & Sons. This is a restaurant I can't help but love despite the fact that hipsters love it too--this is true of a lot of things in Williamsburg. Great oysters. The same menu of 10 things everyday, except the way each is prepared changes with what's in season and presumably the chef's whim. I've never had anything I didn't really like there.

That was, at least, until a couple weeks ago (God, I should write murder mysteries--you didn't know where this was going, did you?) when we ordered the beef heart. I'm basically of one mind when it comes to offal: I'll try it. I don't always like it, but I often do, and, you know, I'm out to eat, so, let's, like, try something new. Especially when I'm with a group of experimenters, as I often am--I like to just order weird shit, especially when I'm in good hands like at M & S.

I asked the waiter how the heart on anchovy crostini was and he responded with something like: "Oh my hold fucking christ it is so good you won't believe it." While bordering on the too-much enthusiasm in a response category, it seemed clear his answer was an endorsement, and so we ordered it. I said something snarky like "Wow, your chef really went for it with the anchovy AND the heart, huh?" He knew what I was saying. Bold. Real bold.

My review of the heart is this: it was fine. I wouldn't eat it every day. I wouldn't spit it out. It was just fine. I'd never had heart before and have no source of comparison. It seemed like it was probably cooked properly, it was just sort of OK. The anchovies were a bit much (I find they almost always are unless they're used where they belong--in caesar salad dressing or as a flavoring in some sauce or dip or other kind of condiment situation) and didn't help things out--they took things from fine, to less-than-fine. What changed things dramatically was the accoutrement. I've never seen such an egregious affront to my cilantro hate, maybe ever.

With the thinly sliced heart and anchovy crostini was a green salad of what looked to be parsley tossed in a very light vinaigrette. Of course, as any good cilantro hater would, I asked (aloud) if it could be, was it possible, could it be cilantro? I didn't really think it was--who would do such a thing? But wouldn't you know it? An absolutely mammoth pile of cilantro was just lying there nearly naked, adorned by nothing more than some fresh lemon, a little olive oil, some salt, some pepper and my rage, contempt and nonplus.

This was no normal cilantro. No, this was local, organic, seasonal, probably god-damn heirloom cilantro. In other words, it tasted like the Platonic ideal of cilantro, which is to say the Platonic ideal of gross. I promptly told my waiter, relating the same lesson I will take with me from the experience: When a chef is bold enough to pair beef heart with anchovy, he's not going to think twice about serving it with a heaping pile of cilantro--and you're a fool to think otherwise.

Independence (from Cilantro) Day

2008-07-03T11:55:00.007-04:00

As a precocious, egomaniacal kid, the fireworks meant a lot to me growing up. See, they would happen on the 4th of July, while my birthday is on the 12th of July, (and I always used that syntax to describe my birthday, being in addition to precocious and egomaniacal, patriotic in the precise way of a nuance-free 5-year-old) and my recollection is that my father would tell me every year the grand fireworks were part of my birthday celebration, not so much that they were for me but that they were somehow part of the Erin Hollingsworth birthday gestalt, if you will.

So it's in this context that I came to know fireworks, Independence Day, the whole thing; America's birthday and mine are, in my mind, intrinsically linked. Of course, as I've grown older I've realized this isn't strictly true, but one doesn't easily shake-off childhood associations. This association has also become more disturbing as each year of age brings another year of Bush--another year of mitigated freedom. The fireworks, invented by the Chinese, are less magical and more ironic--China kicking our economic asses and everything. But as we grow older, we find new ways to enjoy things we used to, or we probably should try.

And so it is that I greatly look forward to this weekend's festivities, which awesomely will be full of friends old and new, and I'm thinking cilantro-free! You don't get more Americana than 4th of July food: potato salad, BBQ, hot dogs, baked beans, watermelon, (with salt if you have any reverence to either the fruit or your Midwestern roots) and domestic macrobrews. And when and if Americana is overtaken by cilantro, well, the war against gross is lost. Not on my watch America!

Channeling My Inner-Punk

2008-06-20T14:25:00.009-04:00

Sometimes things like our jobs, personal relationships, and constant inner-monologues get in the way of what really matters: blogging. Dear readers, I apologize and will not soon let you down again.

The other night I had dinner, a subtle euphemism for blog fodder, with a good friend, her visiting-New York Latin lover (who loves being called that) and my, what I think it is now officially safe to call him, boyfriend. We went to a place called Graffiti, a joy of a dining experience if you're in the area and are open to not-so-much weird food, as much as weird food combinations, most of which work. From the moment the sweet watermelon balanced perfectly with the salty feta, and cool mint hit my impatient mouth...just kidding--I hate that kind of food writing: the watermelon with feta and mint sorbet tasted awesome. So did a lot of other things.

The chef, Jehangir Mehta, earned accolades as a pastry chef at Jean Georges and some other places that also matter, as it were. We met him quickly (the restaurant is very small) and not sure of what to choose, asked him if he would just send out some stuff. "Allergies, restrictions?," he appropriately and kindly inquired. "I hate cilantro," I said, but added: "But I know you're rocking the Asian thing and I wouldn't want to destroy the integrity of your cuisine; let's keep dishes that feature cilantro to a minimum, but do what you must do." And so he sent lots of stuff out (Graffiti is a small plates concept) and I was impressed that foie gras made the cut; there are people who wouldn't have been pleased with the assumption involved. I was very pleased.

A pleasant chickpea flour-crusted skate arrived somewhere in the middle of our degustation. What it was served with I don't really remember except that it tasted good. And also Mehta, bless his heart, brought the cilantro-cumin yogurt on the side. "Mostly it's cumin," he suggested, and rightly so. Some waiters will tell you that you won't really notice the cilantro. This really pisses me off. I will notice the cilantro, while you will not. See, we're different people with different tongues and everything. (It's like telling a die-hard right-to-lifer not to sweat the 'morning after pill': it's just a hypothetical, mini abortion, you see) But Mehta was right. Notice the cilantro? Yeah, cuz there was cilantro in it. But, and I'm getting more and more freaked out by this, I didn't hate it.

I attribute this largely to context. Mehta was explaining the restaurant concept to my ever-inquisitive, ever-gregarious boyfriend using words like "our living room," "inviting," "eclectic," and phrases like "graffiti is an international art and our cuisine is international" to explain the restaurant's name. But when you name a thing a thing, (a restaurant, a movie, a book, what have you) while your intention and inspiration is valid and, perhaps, interesting or amusing, the audience--diners in this case--gets to interpret the name how they want. I think graffiti and I think punk, as in the punk "Fuck you" or rather "Fuck the man" or rather "Fuck everyone" attitude. Mehta certainly doesn't have that attitude but his cuisine's irreverence toward the status quo, toward tired flavors, toward the stuffiness often associated with food as good (if not as inventive) is very punk indeed (by the way, Mehta has a fun quirk of saying "Thank you very much indeed," whenever you complement his food, or restaurant, which comes across as super genuine and hence super charming).

Anyway, I think because we had all signed up, so-to-speak, for this punk experience (I'm not sure pork-abstaining Latin Lover was ever informed he was eating pork), my palate was more willing to be assaulted than normal. I was so happy Mehta had taken the trouble to put it on the side, I figured I'd give it a taste. Cumin's a flavor I've come to really like, although I associate it with Rachel Ray, so I was cool with that, and because it's such a warm, if you will, flavor, the very little bit of (soapy) cilantro did cool it down. Now, I wouldn't say I liked it, because I didn't, but I appreciated it and said, for a moment "Fuck you" to my cilantro hate. But mostly I appreciated Mehta's relentless sweetness and attention to detail.

The skate with cumin-cilantro yogurt certainly didn't come anywhere close to converting me, but it was a nice reminder that cilantro lovers, while morons, can be very nice folks indeed.

Things That Suck More than Cilantro

2008-06-09T13:33:00.003-04:00

1. 103 degree days in June (or any month)
2. culantro (more on this later)
3. Nazis

Colorado Doesn't Suck

2008-05-28T17:02:00.010-04:00

Sometimes, I don't know why but I don't think it makes me weird (other things make me weird--sure--but not this one), I look around for what's wrong or incongruous in a situation before pinching myself to confirm that I'm not dreaming and in fact there is nothing "wrong," and that everything is as great as it seems.

No, I have not just found Jesus but props to the many who have. Instead I've come back from a "nothing wrong" weekend with 8 of my closest friends from college and hence, because I enjoyed college and was lucky enough to go with a whole bunch of awesome people, favorite people in the world. I hope some of them will read this so I don't have to actually tell them how I feel about them in person--God that would be embarrassing.

Anyway, we got a cabin and spent our Memorial Day Weekend in the mountains of Colorado on a Lake named Dillon that I can only describe as big, blue and wet. I was told we were 10,000 feet up, and I'll take it on faith that my graduating from Harvard law school friend who, while she doesn't know everything, probably didn't makeup the elevation of a location in a state she grew up in. We had a cabin, a hot tub and lots of provisions which thankfully included gin but did not include cilantro. Actually that isn't entirely true.

With the $300-something grocery tab (9 people, 3 1/2 days, pretty good if you ask me--no this did not include beer) we purchased lots of things that generally fell under these categories: meat, carbs, (both refined (hot dog buns) and unrefined (7-grain hot dog buns)) cheese (including my new once-a-year favorite--Salsa con Queso), condiments, (I correctly insisted on full-fat mayonnaise) bagged and pre-washed salad mix, and Oreos, which were consumed with such abandon as to require a group of their own. A category we did not entertain the use of was herbs, which if that means no cilantro is just fine with me.

Of course, when it came time to make extemporaneous use of the (somewhat) well-stocked pantry of the cabin we stayed in, anise seed made no appearance--a slight disappointment to my doctored-up leftover hamburger baked ziti. What they did have was two containers of dried cilantro. You know who else has two jars of dried cilantro? My folks. You know who else? I'm guessing a lot of people. But here's the thing: neither container had been used much, especially when compared to the others, especially when considering there was only one jar of most of those.

What I'm thinking is, as cilantro is now everywhere, people buy it, forget they bought it because they never use it, then buy it again because they think this would either make them fancier human beings or be something they might like to use. In either case they are wrong because those who like cilantro know it tastes better fresh and those who hate cilantro know that it always tastes terrible.

In any case, I'm very proud to report that we put a dent in neither dried cilantro jar--the gin's another story.

Epicurean Existentialism

2008-05-14T13:52:00.012-04:00

It's just like me to make a flowchart on how to eat out, how to survive really, and go out of my way to ignore it.

Like the Christian Existentialists who explain life's troubling, irreconcilable paradoxes through the existence (and source) of the greatest irreconcilable paradox--Jesus (God/man? mortal/immortal?--anyone else confused? No? Congratulations--you're smarter than me.)--sometimes we do things not because they make or don't make sense, but because we just do them. Some things just are. Their absurdity is in line with the inherent absurdity of the universe and hence, given a certain liberal mindset, we are comforted.

And so was my absurdly comforting dinner at Chavella's last night.

I ordered the chicken enchiladas. Here's the thing about chicken: I was a vegetarian for 11 years, vegan for two of them and I certainly didn't start eating meat again to eat factory farmed chicken. But, and I'm not making excuses here as I think factory farm chicken is morally and ecologically reprehensible, in the moral/flavor cost-benefit analysis often at work in my food choices, there's something about that ambiguously but inarguably delicious American Mexican chicken that I'm a total sucker for. So, as I said, I ordered the chicken enchiladas.

At Chavella's, a pretty good little Mexican joint a few blocks from my Brooklyn digs, one orders his/her enchiladas with a choice of salsa verde or mole. You don't need a PhD in Cilantro Hate to know salsa verde is quintessentially dangerous to the cilantro averse. For those of you living in the far reaches of xenophobic denial, speaking so little Spanish that you don't know verde means green--verde means green. It gets its green moniker from a variety of ingredients, most notably tomatillo, lime, green chili and, yes, cilantro.

But the thing is the gentleman next to me had ordered the chicken enchiladas with salsa verde and he was enjoying them with gusto in a not-subtly audible fashion. I asked, "Sir, excuse me, I can't help but notice that you're enjoying those enchiladas."

"Oh, God yes. They're so delicious," he replied.

"Sir, do you have a palate for cilantro? What I mean to say is, would you notice if there was cilantro in your salsa verde there?," I continued.

A good sport, he confirmed what I already knew: "Well, yes, it's noticeable but certainly not overwhelming and did I mention how truly delicious they are?"

So then the waitress did what I didn't even consider asking her to do, which was to bring me the mole and verde to try. The cilantro-hating friend who was with me tried them both too. Strangest thing: I could kind of tell there was cilantro in the verde, but I liked it anyway, not because of the cilantro mind you, but despite it. Now, it's common knowledge that the cilantro taste is mitigated in the cooking process and in this case it was cooked. There was no extra fresh cilantro chiffonade or fresh cilantro finishing touch of any kind. As such it just sort of became one with the sauce. I don't know what I'm saying here. This doesn't make sense! This is so, so, absurd.

So I ordered the enchiladas with the very bright, pleasant, garlicky, limy, spicy sauce. It was perfect with the queso fresco and crema and yummy chicken and delicious house-made tortillas. The mole would have overwhelmed everything as (if you want my opinion) it does most everything it touches. In short, the chicken enchiladas verdes were good.

Now, this is not the post you've all been waiting for where I change my ways, start liking cilantro and ruin my blog. No. This is the post where I admit there was once a time in my life when I ate something that had cilantro in it and enjoyed it and much to the chagrin of you polarizing cilantro lovers out there--I'm OK with that. Existence precedes essence, if you know what I'm saying.

Eating Out, and How

2008-05-05T16:09:00.006-04:00

As promised, I give you the Eating Out and Hating Cilantro (at the same time) Flowchart:

Evergreen Indeed (Rolls Eyes)

2008-05-02T15:06:00.007-04:00

The great thing about the regular place concept--whether a bar, cafe, AA venue or restaurant--is the familiarity, the safety, the knowing what you're going to get and, unless you're an idiot or a masochist, probably like it. For my friend and I, Evergreen serves as a near weekly regular lunch place. A reliable, noteworthy for its lack of things that suck and prevalence of things that are fast, midtown diner spot, Evergreen is perfect for a quick, decent, cheap lunch. That is, it was.

Knowing I'm in for a delicious BBQ dinner at Brooklyn's Fette Sau this evening, I opted for a lighter midday fare: Manhattan clam chowder and tossed salad (a stupid term really, as it is so rarely actually tossed). I considered the New England chowder which they were also offering today, but 1) back to light fare thing 2) the waiter said he preferred New England clam chowder, but that the Manhattan was good. When waiters tell me what they like, it's not so much that I don't care for that as much as that I find it totally irrelevant. What I was asking was which was better, not whether the (very nice) waiter preferred cream or tomato-based soups. 3) My mom will no be surprised by this as she knows whichever outfit she likes better will be the one I do not wear; sorry mom, but you're right in observing that -- no contradiction there. 4) I do quite enjoy a good Manhattan clam chowder and I find they vary so much from place to place, it's worth seeing where what you end up with ranks.

This one did not rank so well. The soup itself is what I would call diner-style vegetable soup with clams, which is probably what most diner Manhattan clam chowders taste like, come to think of it. I was actually ok with that. It sort of invoked the (not good) vegetable soup at Big Boy's I loved growing up; an excellent pairing with the (maybe good?) fish sandwich. The clams added a nice chewiness. It was good enough and more or less what I expected. The thing is, though, that a few bites in I thought to myself: "No, it couldn't be. Really. Is this a joke? Who puts cilantro in Manhattan clam chowder?" Plus Friend and I were having a nice conversation and I didn't want to interrupt with my food neuroses. But then, several bites later, that same, familiar ineffably bad flavor attacked my palate and this time it wouldn't let go.

"OK. Enough about your life, you must try this soup. I swear. I think there's cilantro in it. Try it. No not that bite, there's nothing green. This bite. Try this bite." Dutifully, she did: "Probably. I guess. Uh, maybe that's cilantro."

As a point of fact there wasn't much cilantro in the soup or I would have smelled it before it hit my mouth, in all likelihood. So my friend's lukewarm confirmation was as good as gospel to me. Of course I had to keep sampling it to be absolutely sure and each infinitesimal spoonful reinforced what I already knew: this was a Manhattan clam chowder unlike any other I'd ever had, and unlike any anyone else should ever have to have.

But to be fair, this was all my mistake. I should be more pointed in my waiter Q&A sessions. Instead of "Which is better?" I should say "Which do you recommend and by recommend I mean which is either objectively better, preferred by more customers or the chef or all three. Whether you prefer pasta carbonara or alfredo (gross) is of no interest to me. And if there is cilantro in anything, any amount at all, I don't want it. No, I don't mind if you check with the kitchen." But then I'd be kind of a bitch and I used to be a waiter so I don't like to give them too hard of a time. Perhaps I could prepare a cute flowchart to hand to waiters upon entering a restaurant that begins with: 1) Does this item feature cilantro? 2) if not, do more than 75% of customers like it and do those customers appear to have discriminating palates and/or college degrees? 3) If yes will the item arrive properly cooked and in a timely fashion? And so on and so on. This approach is perhaps no less bitchy, but, you have to admit, it's pretty hilarious. Flowchart forthcoming.

Foreign Types with the Hookah Pipes

2008-04-23T18:39:00.007-04:00

One of the great things about vocally, perhaps pathologically hating cilantro is people are constantly offering cilantro anecdotes, testimonies, periodical features of interest. Many of these tidbits aren't SO interesting after all, but some of them are.

My dear friend (I was going to call her "best friend" but didn't want to step on any toes cuz for real I have several "best" friends. Then I thought "BFF" because it's amusing as hell to me but I thought something in the intended tone might be lost on my audience: many of you I know like cilantro, and we all know what that means about your IQ.) and roommate has just moved to Rome/Cairo. She's been in Cairo a few weeks now and one of the first things she tells me is she is surrounded by Cilantro. No, not the herb, the fucking cafe.

I know. As if. Well, apparently this chain of cafes is as ubiquitous in Cairo as suicidal cab drivers. The cafes, Dear Friend tells me, have internet connections, nice amenities, a quiet, relaxed ambiance and, you know, allow women. In other words, this is a Western-style chain standing in direct opposition to the segregated, loud, cheap and dirty ahwas, traditional Egyptian coffee shops.

It goes without saying that this is an outrage, but alas, Cilantro Cafe is but one of many businesses masquerading as restaurants with the audacity (or I'm sure what they all think of as hip, or edgy or just plain clever idea) to bear the name "Cilantro." It's not surprising with all the restaurants in the world some are bound to be named Cilantro; naming restaurants after food is pretty common (and stupid, if you ask me -- thanks for asking) and cilantro, as we've established many times over, is everywhere.

What's upsetting is that the biggest chain of coffee shops in all of Cairo is named after my nemesis. Or is it? I mean, is it really a term of distinction to be a coffee shop chain? Is it really so awesome to be the very Egyptian icon of Westernization and cultural atrophy? Dear Friend tells me she'd never spend any time there, that she'd really prefer to hang at the ahwas, but damnit, honky needs her wireless connection and the ice cubes next door might make her sick. Then there's also the issue that she isn't really allowed in those "realer" places, having tits and all. So, on that front Cilantro represents progress, of the good sort that creates the eponymous noun liberals prefer to call themselves; they allow women.

I have a tremendous amount of patience for other cultures, mostly because I recognize after 25 years in the US of America one I don't know that culture is the kind of thing one can ever understand, but more to the point, I don't like to be too judgmental -- do whatever you want, please don't kill my dog (I don't have a dog). I have serious problems with religion, but, that's with all of them, not a particular one. Most of my problems are rooted in the fact that people do irrational things that are objectively bad for themselves and everyone around them in the name of a god or spirit or faith that they don't know exists. Yeah. That sounds a lot like a judgment to me too. Anyway, some of the worst forms of what I don't like about religion involve violences and injustices against women, a group I'm (on the whole) pretty fond of. Genital mutilation (ha, you thought you were reading a cilantro blog), anti-birth control policies and a general limitation of that great word W loves to throw around -- freedom -- are but a few nuisances women have had to endure at the hands of "their" religions. Exclusion from public cafes would be another.

So, while I'm down with dirt and noise and all those authentic things Western travelers like to tell themselves they like so they can have authentic experiences, in the end I value the kind of progress that allows a woman to order a fucking cup of coffee. And if that kind of place goes by the name Cilantro.... Point for cilantro.

WWJD

2008-04-12T13:38:00.007-04:00

How's this for a mantra: What would Julia do?

If you're a fan of Julia Child, you probably don't need me to explain to you why you are. You probably like her easy camera presence, her unpretentious instruction of classic French technique, her contagious lust for life, her general bad-assness, and, if your like me, her unapologetic liberal politics and unique brand of feminism. Truly, she was a magical woman so nearly unanimously revered in the culinary and general American communities, I'd have to wonder if you were a heartless freak not liking her.

What you might not know is that Julia Child hated cilantro; an excerpt from a Larry King interview transcript:

KING: A little bit. Any food you hate?
CHILD: Well, badly cooked food...
KING: I know that. But any - for example, George Bush and yours truly, I don't want to couple it together, hate broccoli, hate it, wouldn't go near it, wouldn't touch it, what do you hate?
CHILD: I don't like cilantro.
KING: What is that?
CHILD: It's an herb that it has a kind of a taste that I don't like.
KING: Is there an everyday food you hate, like broccoli?
CHILD: No, I don't think so. I mean, if it's properly cooked and properly served, I can't think of anything I hate.
KING: So you'll eat...
CHILD: Except cilantro and arugula I don't like at all.
KING: Arugula?
CHILD: They're both green herbs, they have kind of a dead taste to me.
KING: So you would never order it.
CHILD: Never, I would pick it out if I saw it and throw it on the floor.

Arugula, I like, but someone running the I Hate Arugula blog (doesn't exist) can use that piece of trivia. It's the cilantro I'm concerned with. I like how she describes the taste of cilantro as "dead." That's a much stronger descriptor than say, soapy. "Well, why don't you like it?" "It tastes dead." That's a pretty good reason not to like something in my book. Hilarious. Another reason to love Julia: girlfriend was funny.

I think Julia Child hating cilantro sort of speaks for itself, so I'll be brief today. But I can tell you this, in the spirit of doing as Julia would do, the next time I encounter unexpected cilantro, I will pick it out, throw it on the floor and smile, thinking of Julia doing the same.

Cilantro, The Anti-Death

2008-04-03T11:49:00.005-04:00

There's so much fodder in any given issue of the New York Times, it's a wonder I ever get around to reading anything else. It's not that it's the best publication out there for news or anything else, far from it, but they've mastered the ability to hook me with one story or another before the break and it remains my homepage of years despite consistent urges to change it (I'm reading Into the Wild -- it's bound to have some effect).

I think of the New York Times as a website first and newspaper second, not that these are mutually exclusive things, certainly not in this milieu. I think of the [New York Times] magazine as a magazine because I generally read it in print. Anyway, I love the New York Times as website. I look at the slide shows, watch Mark Bittman's videos and enjoy the "Most Popular" emailed, blogged and searched articles for quick ideas of where to head next. These are all features made possible by the Times as website phenomenon, features I like.

It is through this interface that I read today's "A House Not for Mere Mortals." Awkward headline aside, I've been transfixed by the text-based article and audio slide show all morning. To sort of summarize, this apparently important couple has built this house in East Hampton. It's hyper-colorful, very "open," and, probably most notably, has a strange undulating, bumpy, moon-like floor throughout. The basic idea of the place, as I read and hear it, is to make dwellers uncomfortable. That through discomfort, trying to find our balance, etc., we remain young and vital. Ms. Gins, the woman in the couple, says, "It's immoral that people have to die." I think that's absurd, it's neither moral nor immoral that people have to die, it is a fact of nature completely detached from any reasonable sense of morality, but I digress. The point is these folks seems to think it is through challenge, discomfort, whatever you want to call it, that we remain young and stay alive.

While I don't find death immoral I do have a vested interest in staying alive (never argue with Darwin -- you will lose). I prefer to be comfortable than uncomfortable, (I like Pumas more than stilettos) but I get what they're saying, I think, at least in a way that someone who more-or-less accepts that she will die one day can "get" what they're saying. One of my favorite things -- learning stuff -- is an inherently uncomfortable process. Few things are more uncomfortable than tackling the unknown, whether that be organic chemistry, Excel spreadsheets, German philosophy or, in the case of Into the Wild's Chris McCandless, the Alaskan wilderness. (It is worth noting that he died in his pursuit of the uncomfortable.) But many of these uncomfortable things, challenging things, yield the most intellectually, spiritually or otherwise insightful results. Yes, I suppose many of us thrive on adversity, on difficulty, on trying to find our balance.

This of course got me to thinking about my ever-growing relationship with cilantro. Now I'm not one to draw metaphors, (I have a penchant for the literal) but I've never shied away from drawing parallels. As I've written through other lenses before, this cilantro hate thing isn't always bad. Maybe my deep passion for hating cilantro keeps me young and virile -- alive even. It's all-too easy in our culture of convenience, materialism and excess to become, well, comfortable. We ignore the world's injustices and straight-up outrages, many at the hands of W, but more at the hands of our own unforgivable (yes immoral) selfishness, isolation and indifference. And in doing so we destroy ourselves, slowly but surely. The environment's shit. Iraq is a quagmire of the finest order. And don't get me started on our prison system.

I think we have a tendency, as Americans and maybe as people, to avoid conflict (except war, we like that) and to shun criticism. To complain is bad, negative. I agree in a sense. I actually quite hate complaining (of the my life is so hard variety; no, your life is probably not so hard) but a healthy dose of criticism, of questioning as I think of it, maybe I'm alone here, but I think it's healthy, it's good and it might just save all our lives in the long-run.

While I don't pretend that my cilantro hate is going to save anyone's life or even really perpetuate my own, for me, this passionate hate stirs a spirit of criticism that I like and find good, however ostensibly negative or contrary. Cilantro makes me uncomfortable. It makes me frown. It throws off my balance. Eating it makes me immediately seek homeostasis of some order (water, wine, other food, anything, please, now). In other words, eating it, musing on it, writing about it shakes things up. And shaking things up, to quote Martha Stewart, is a good thing.

I LOVE CILANTRO

2008-04-01T15:50:00.006-04:00

Er, uh, April Fools?

Ok. Back with a real post tomorrow.(+)*

*New thing I'm trying out whereby periods and exclamation points can be nuanced with the addition of (+) or (-) ("+" making it more exclamatory and "-" making it less exclamatory, more period-y) because I really think we need a punctuation between "." and "!," even if I'm the only one out there. Maybe eventually the MLA or QWERTY people or whoever decides these things can make a new symbol for me? I'd be ever so grateful.

I Hate Cilantro ".com"

2008-03-27T14:26:00.007-04:00

I hear there are bloggers out there who post, I dunno, a few times a week, every day, several times a day, but let's be honest -- as much as I may try, I'm no Perez Hilton. (It's taken some time and support of friends to come to terms with this undeniable fact.) I've made the reasonable deal with myself to post once a week, you know, -ish. But sometimes, cilantro news comes to light and you (I) realize it is only really you (me) who can properly address the issue. And so it is that I have to act now; I wouldn't be doing my cilantro-hating duty otherwise.

I Hate Cilantro.com, my friend and nemesis (these things are never simple) seems to be out of order, or under construction, or - I dont' know - folding. This is what it looks like as of 2:49pm EST, 3/27/2008:

And it's looked this way since at least early yesterday. I don't know what's going on, but I can tell you I don't like it one bit. I cannot bare the literary/web burden of cilantro hate alone; I need ihatecilantro.com back. What I'm hoping is they're going for a site redesign/revamp -- they hadn't updated their "news" since September -- and will be back bigger and better than ever. While I'm not a member of their clan, I do love what they do, the multiplicity of voices they add to the truly infinite diversity that is cilantro hate.

And so, in this uncharacteristic spirit of pseudo news, frequent Perez-style posting, I'll keep this post short and I'll leave you with this amazing image.

Sí, Por Favor

2008-03-24T14:33:00.015-04:00

~

Totally Generic Grocery Store Checkout Girl: This is flat leaf parsley, right?

Cilantro-Loving Birthday Friend: Uh (rolls eyes), no; this is cilantro.

TGGSCG: Right.

~

This is the scene that had taken place in a local grocery store mere hours before my friend's annual birthday brunch this Saturday past.

We had chilaquiles. We had fresh fruit with chili/cinnamon whipped cream. We had rugelach. We had lots of Champagne. We had, you know, a good time.

Chilaquiles (is/are?) a new dish for me. But like so many things, the moment you become familiar with the thing, the thing is everywhere -- how did I not encounter these marvelous, mysterious chilaquiles before? I had my first set last weekend during a lazy, rainy Saturday brunch with a couple of friends. I had my second set at my friend's birthday brunch on Saturday. Both were very different, both were very delicious and both, surprisingly enough, were cilantro-free.

Chilaquiles, if you aren't familiar, involve stale corn tortillas, fried and simmered in a somewhat spicy green or red sauce then topped with things. Those things generally include queso fresca, crema, chicken and/or eggs and herbs (read cilantro). The whole dish is often served with refried beans. Variations are obviously limitless; what's essential is the fried tortilla simmered in sauce part.

My first set of chilaquiles came from an (at least somewhat) authentic Mexican joint, so I'll attribute the cilantro-free status of their chilaquile salsa verde to divine providence -- there is simply no other way to explain such a thing. My second set of chilaquiles -- the birthday brunch chilaquiles -- now that's a different story. Or is it...

As I was helping in the final stages of prepping the birthday brunch to end all birthday brunches -- I'm telling you: it was great -- I noticed a big bag full of green shit. And what I mean is I saw a big bag of cilantro.

~

Erin: Uh, Cilantro-Loving Birthday Friend?

CLBF: Yes, Erin

Erin: What's the meaning of this? (points to big bag full of green shit).

CLBF: Oh, funniest thing. So (recounts grocery store interaction with TGGSCG) but, get this; it's flat leaf parsley. Can't even use it.

Erin: Are you out of your mind? You can put parsley on anything.

~

And so it was that we enjoyed cilantro-free chilaquiles, con parsley. And here's what I'm thinking. While it's obvious that Chilaquiles Set 1 was a product of divine providence I'm going to go ahead and argue that Chilaquiles Set 2 was also a product of such divine providence. To clarify, Cilantro-Loving Birthday Friend is a pretty decent cook, knows her way around the kitchen and the produce section if you know what I'm saying. For her to mix-up the two admittedly similar-looking herbs is just too unbelievable.

I'm left with only one possible conclusion to draw: God wants me to enjoy chilaquiles (which are super delicious) and God hates cilantro! More on this later.

Bittman Go Braugh!

2008-03-14T15:06:00.023-04:00

I love Mark Bittman (of the New York Times Dining Section) for insisting, relentlessly, to be such an elitist foodie prick; he embodies the effete New Yorker cliche so well, it's uncanny. If you aren't familiar with his work (he's written lots of cookbooks) or have only read his column (The Minimalist) I suggest you check him out in video form because only through this medium does his sincere I can't help but make it clear I know I'm smarter than you-ness come through. I'm not being ironic or sarcastic, these are actually the reasons I can't help but like the guy (he does seem to know what the hell he's talking about and he makes quick meals -- the obvious smart guy's alternative to Rachael Ray -- poor thing).

So I used to read his column every week and once in while I read his blog "Bitten," (hey, even Shakespeare couldn't resist a pun) but recently I've been watching his 3-5 minute videos instead, much to his indifferent chagrin no doubt. This week's video is for St. Patrick's Day (aka Monday for all you out there who seem to find it impossible to remember what is the same every year -- March 17th guys -- Erin go Braugh!). As Bittman introduces the segment, "In honor of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, I've decided to cook a Mexican dish, because it's green." Just about everything I love about the DB (and I don't mean Daniel Boulud) is evident from that very first sentence. You kind of have to listen to it, but, trust me, it's all in the delivery. The pregnant (I once posited that only men used pregnant as a non-literal adjective, so I guess I'm trying to prove myself wrong) pause between "Mexican dish" and "because it's green," is done with ironic perfection -- that kind of perfect Monty Python beautiful clash between the low-brow ridiculously absurd and the higher-brow intellectually germane -- right, ok Mark, sure, and you know what else is green? Marijuana. I'm just saying.

Since the whole dish is about being green and apparently Mexico's cuisine is also about being green, it shouldn't come as any kind of surprise that cilantro is but one of many green ingredients. There's the tomatillos and pepitas, the marjoram (love marjoram, love it) and poblanos, the lime and serrano. So of course, being Mexican and all, and green and all, there's the cilantro too. Once the chicken has finished cooking in the sauce of tomatillo and garlic and peppers and pepitas and so on (Mark calls them pumpkin seeds, "well actually squash seeds" dismissively. If you watch the video you'll note the characteristic crotchetiness in the delivery) he questions "That green enough for you? Wait! Some ciiiilantro..." and proceeds to top the dish with various other herbs and green things. He says cilantro with the affect of an American ex pat living in a Spanish speaking country (and maybe he lived in Mexico for 15 years, I really don't know) -- he really gets cilantro, cilantro is Mark Bittman's homeboy.

My gripe du jour is two-fold. 1) I understand the desire to play off the green rather than decidedly Irish cultural aspects of St. Patrick's Day, I really do, but for God's sake my fucking name is Erin, I got Irish heritage, leave cilantro out of a holiday we all really know is not about food but too-much drinking. 2) It seems to me cilantro is becoming an almost de facto green addition to things. Now, I'm not saying it isn't at home in Bittman's dish, (although I don't think even he would argue it'd be fine without it, just add a little more parsley) but in his delivery he makes an I'm sure accidental point, a point only a cilantro hater might notice: not green enough? add some cilantro! For Christ's sake, if it's green you're looking for add some parsley or chives, inoffensive flavors that, sure, have flavor, but it's, you know, neutral-ish. When you add cilantro you're not just adding green, you're adding gross.

Threat Level: Orange (Read Cilantro Green)

2008-03-09T14:46:00.005-04:00

I have dinner plans with some former food people (as in people who "work in food" as opposed to people who are yuppie, amateur food enthusiasts or "foodies" as they're so often called/call themselves -- I'm not disparaging these people (I love yuppies as much as the next guy) just making a distinction) coworkers tonight at a French Moroccan place, and as much as I'm looking forward to the housemade merguez (love merguez, love it) I'm in a high state of cilantro alert as I anticipate the meal.

I've already had some too close for comfort encounters this week. Wednesday I went to an Italian steakhouse and while the steaks were safely cilantro free, they could have used some salt. Then we went to our favorite bistro on Thursday and the French onion soup/frisee salad with poached egg and lardon/profiterole trinity is failsafe -- cilantro there would be French blasphemy of the highest order. But then Friday I went with a friend to a Cuban restaurant (thank you restaurant for seating us right next to the live entertainment, thank you) and when the empanadas arrived with a vinegary green dipping sauce I knew, didn't think but knew, I was in trouble. I took a quick empanada dip in the sauce to make sure and even my not-as-into-food-but-starting-to-be-into-food friend confirmed (what I of course did not need confirmed) that the sauce was absolutely cilantro to the core.

What came next was a difficult conversation. I speak some Spanish, certainly enough to say "No me gusta cilantro. Otra salsa por favor," or what have you, but see there was this live entertainment directly to our left and if you've ever eaten in a New York restaurant of a popular variety (the line the wall with 2-top banquets and cram them impossibly close together variety) then you can imagine just how this situation is not conducive to communicating with a waiter who, eager as he is to understand is just not hearing let alone understanding what I'm trying to say in English or Spanish. Well, finally somehow I did get the message across, but then I'm left waiting for my new sauce to arrive as my toasty hot empanada becomes less hot and less delicious -- such is the plight of the cilantro hater.

But eventually the new (something roasted tomato based) sauce did arrive and the empanada was good enough and everything was fine. I mean the rest of the meal wasn't great (overcooked lobster tail, not ok) but it was fine and we were drinking sangria heavily so obviously we were happy anyway. But the point is, I can see a similar situation panning out tonight in which a surprise cilantro attack comes to pass and I'm left waiting to enjoy something delicious while something cilantro free gets made. I know what you're thinking, just ask for no cilantro from the beginning. Sure, but that can be difficult in some restaurants, especially when there's a language barrier and you don't want to have a confusing 5-minute conversation if you can just order things that probably won't have cilantro anyway. So for instance I'm probably ok with my merguez, but what of the pastilla or various cous cous dishes I might want? What when the group of 8 or so wants to share appetizers? Will I be the wet blanket of the evening?

Maybe this is why I like going to bistros so much. It's like going to Cheers, except instead of everyone knowing your name you know the menu, er, something like that. But sometimes you want something more interesting than a hanger steak medium rare with frites. Sometimes you want merguez and in that case, the high state of cilantro alert that comes with it is usually worth it; it isn't the cilantro-free status that makes a cuisine good after all (I love myself some green coconut curry sans cilantro), it's the presence of so many other delicious things that makes it stand out. Indeed lots of things don't have cilantro that also don't have flavor -- water comes to mind. So, it is with a high state of alert but an adventurous and hungry palate that I bravely enter my Moroccan dinner.

Wikipedia and Cilantro, a Close Reading (Part I)

2008-02-29T15:21:00.015-05:00

As recent events would have it, namely that I've had the death cough all week (thanks roommate) I've had time to sit back (in truth lie nearly comatose, lest I aggravate the death cough) and contemplate things. Of course that's basically what I do all the time anyway, (contemplate, not lie near comatose (I'm trying to cut back on commas for lent and just removed one I had placed after "Of course," which is making me feel decidedly uncomfortable -- bring on the parentheses)) but I guess when I'm sick and it's late February and it seems winter will never end, these contemplations run deeper, stretch further back. And I think it's in this context that I got to thinking of my high school English teacher from years back who, suffice it to say, was a beyond excellent one.

I learned a whole lotta shit from that one (including the idea that profanity is a form of laziness and that "that" is an overused word -- I agree on the latter but we'll have to agree to disagree on the prior -- a life without "fuck" is not worth living or put another way, I really enjoy using the word "fuck.") including an introductory survey (is that repetitive?) on lit. theory and criticism which would eventually become my collegiate English concentration, because I'm precisely that cool.

One school I remember learning about way back when was New Criticism, a branch of criticism that is absolutely no longer new. What it involves, at least in part, is a close reading of the text. In new criticism, in close reading, the text is supreme (ie it holds supremacy over say the author's biography or other "outside" things). As such we read it closely, extract as much information, as many clues as to what's going on, what's being said, what it all "means" as possible. Because we read so closely lots of stuff matters: sentence length, syntax, chapter length, diction and especially punctuation (including commas). It's a fun way to read things because you can go as deep as you want. Each and every sentence is its own vast universe.

So (just removed a comma -- don't need it if sentence introduction has fewer than three words?) for old time's sake and to connect a few lose wires in my brain, I thought it might be fun to apply a new critical approach to the Wikipedia entry for cilantro. So pop some popcorn, grab a beer, toke a fire and get comfy -- you're in for a treat; hell, you're in for a miniseries.

As a first installment I'd like to address but one piece of wiki-cilantra-minutia. Go to Wikipedia, enter cilantro and see what happens, or simply follow this convenient link where I've already taken these steps for you. Perhaps you'll notice what I have: there is no cilantro page on Wikipedia, per se; there is instead a Coriander page to which you are automatically redirected (now there's a passive sentence -- this makes it seem like the world or some ominous figure has created this coriander reality, as opposed to the more specific and isolated Wikipedia). How about that?

Sure (removed comma) in a certain sense cilantro and coriander are synonymous (which I just learned means have similar meanings, not necessarily exactly the same -- I verified this through three different dictionaries), but the seed is never really called cilantro seed whereas the leaf goes by one or the other. In this way Wikipedia's choice makes sense -- coriander covers more ground. Then again (just removed a comma) the hate of the seed (I call the seed coriander and the leaf cilantro which I believe is fairly common practice, at least in the US) is not something I experience, it's not something I really know about anyone else experiencing. While I do not love coriander seed to the degree I hate the cilantro leaf (removed comma) I do like the seed, I like it just fine.

Is it possible then that Wikiwantsta downplay the herb's nastiness by putting the whole thing under one innocuous umbrella? No I don't really think so. I'm not a crazy paranoid person (read I'm not a pathologically crazy paranoid person). If we look to the right of the page, the plant's genus is coriandrum -- it makes etymological sense to call the whole plant that, if we're going to call it one thing. For Wikipedia's purposes -- a quick, schematic and sometimes in-depth look at a thing -- if they want to combine the whole set of cilantro-y things, and it would make sense to, I guess choosing the one that contains the Latin root makes sense. But it is a certain kind of highbrow throwdown in an otherwise proletariat milieu. Yeah. Suck on that sentence new critics.

I guess in the end I don't have what one might reasonably call an opinion about the coriander redirect situation, which is fairly apropos as that's where I generally found myself in the old literary theory and criticism days: full or thoughts, most of them deconstructing each other. So let me leave my analysis in a place I don't often like to. I think its interesting that Wikipedia redirects the cilantro seeker to the coriander page. I hate that word "interesting." It's usually, I find, an abdication of meaning. It's an excuse to not opine. It's pure theatrics facing nonplus when someone says something decidedly not interesting. But in the rare instance that something is that, just interesting, why force it to be anything else?

White People and Cilantro

2008-02-22T13:44:00.025-05:00

I would like to take this opportunity, that my public forum I Hate Cilantro blog has so provided me, to stand on a soap box of a different sort today. I might make some of you white hipsters out there uncomfortable in doing so, but, alas, this is a price I'm willing to pay -- I like skinny jeans and Vampire Weekend just as much as the next guy (my hip, music-loving coworker has told me Vampire Weekend would be a good choice to illustrate my clear hipness).

In the past week I've received emailed links or Gchat status notifications that would have me reading/viewing/listening to items like Top 10 Raps Songs White People Like and the Stuff White People Like Blog. In the past month I've noticed similar Web 2.0 (if you will) manifestations, such as the hip office worker's favorite SomeEcards' treatment of Black History Month, or Black Heritage Month as I'm told by a New York Teaching Fellow friend it is supposed to be called. SomeEcards has cards with lines like "Let's do the whitest thing possible" where a group of honkies (if you will) ride together in a ski lift. In another, it is suggested that an appropriate way to celebrate Black Heritage Month might be to abstain from shopping at JCrew. There are many more examples of a trend I'm trying to point to -- indeed, a google search of "What White People Like" will also bring you to sites like Black People Love Us, a site I was already aware of because a hip friend had shared it with me several months ago. A good friend and his hip friend constantly refer to each other as honkies, and have for years.

So where does the soap box part come in? I want to put this succinctly, clearly. It seems to me what one couldn't call anything other than a trend, and what I'll call especially a trend specific to hip, (or would-be hip) white, college-educated often urban dwelling folks, has developed: ostensible (and that word is important here) white self-mockery achieved through defining white stereotypes (of a certain class, more on this later) but, perhaps more importantly, also perpetuating black ones across the web (2.0) and in the ever decreasing phenomenon, real life. I have zero respect for or interest in political correctness, so I'm no offended by any of these sites or cards, what have you, as such, especially in isolation. What troubles me is that this trend (these "white people" sites and cards) is perhaps not what it purports to be.

Allow me to explain. Nerds often like to make fun of themselves for being nerds, especially when they've gone to fancy schools (like I did) in similar company. These are not the nerds from the Revenge of the Nerds. These are, generally, economically advantaged nerds who relish in their nerdiness, knowing that they aren't really making fun of themselves at all when they do so, but actually subversively talking about how awesome they are (because it is, afterall, both cool and of socio-economic importance as an adult to be a nerd, so-to-speak). I don't have a huge problem with the phenomenon; I'm guilty of it myself.

What I do have a problem with is when the same idea is turned into a black/white dichotomy, instead of a smart/not smart one. I might have been born smart, but I also read and stuff. One is born black or white. More importantly, I reject the idea that it is better to be black or white (as I think most people would when put in those terms). It would be naive to say they aren't different experiences (being black or white), but it would be undeniably racist to say it is better to be one or the other. If you look at the list of things white people like to do on the Stuff White People Like Blog -- study abroad, eat brunch, recycle, spend money on expensive sandwiches, read The Times -- these are largely things another group of people like to do: educated, and/or rich people. And yes, unless I'm completely out of touch, there are educated and/or rich black people. The thing is, when white people (full disclosure -- I'm white) make fun of themselves in these terms, they're really saying, as nerds do when they make fun of themselves as nerds, that they're better than black people.

People feel good about themselves when they study abroad, recycle, order imported cheeses on their sandwiches and read the Times; they think they are better than people who do not do these things (don't deny this; you're lying to yourself if you do). The implication is that white people do these things and black (I should say other races, but I think this whole phenomenon is setup more as a black and white thing, so maybe I should stick with that) people don't; according to this logic white people are better than black people. I don't think this is what is intended, but I think, if we're honest with ourselves, it is at least part of what is accomplished.

So while everyone is busy these days making observations and drawing conclusions and theories on what white people like to do, I'd like to go on the record, as the self-declared living expert on cilantro hate (ihatecilantro.com still hasn't posted any news since early September), as saying this: There is absolutely no correlation between cilantro love or hate and race (both Oprah magazine and Gourmet feature cilantro recipes prominently). Because it is, however, a known fact that cilantro lovers are morons, there might in fact be a correlation between hipsterdom and cilantro love, and there might be an association between hipness and whiteness, but any conclusions you want to draw out of these correlations, I assure you I don't mean them as false or subversive insults.

Funny Thing: When I Say Cilantro, I Actually Mean Cilantro

2008-02-17T21:07:00.020-05:00

Went to dinner with a few former foodie work colleagues Friday. We went to New York's (consciously) coolest new restaurant, The Smith (owned and operated by the folks at Jane, where I worked for a period of time, and the Neptune Room, where I didn't). First let me be clear about something: the food at The Smith is very very good, at least what we had, which, as is the joy of dining with 3 or more food enthusiasts eager to try and share, was a decent cross-section of the medium-sized menu. Brian Ellis, a chef worthy of serious respect, delivers a casual (casual in a New York way where blue cheese fondue is not taken for mysterious but instead for granted, here smothering house-made potato chips in a decadent dish that is actually better than it sounds (and trashier)). The short ribs are killer, the mac and cheese is real good, the list goes on. It's a good restaurant. But this isn't meant to be a review of the restaurant, but a gripe I have with service in general (and I empathize, I worked as one).

The Smith has an avocado salad with chipotle vinaigrette. I asked the server after my friend ordered the salad (we're sharing everything remember) "Does the avocado salad have any cilantro?" He said, "No, it doesn't." I said, "OK, cool, cuz I really really hate it." He said something like, don't worry about it. Fast forward some mac and cheese and potato chips later, arrives avocado salad with large leafy pieces of herb. I'm in a high state of alert and simultaneous indifference (I'm having so much fun with those goddamn delicious chips) about this leafy herb.

*I'd like to say that the visually suspicious herb dotting the otherwise beautiful, simple salad was actually parsley, but, self-fulfilling prophecy be damned, this was, no-doubt-about-it cilantro. If I wanted to be positive here, and I will again for a moment because I do like the restaurant, at least it was in huge pieces that could be avoided (much how Mario Batali always cuts his garlic in large pieces for those who don't like it (but who doesn't like garlic?)). But in fairness, I did ask in an unmistakable and polite enough way.

See the thing that has me annoyed here is that there's no shame in asking the kitchen a question if you aren't sure about a question a difficult or not difficult diner has asked. If I ask a yes or no question, in life in general, but let's start with food and restaurants, the acceptable answers are "yes" (which means yes), "no" (which means no) or, "I'm actually not sure, I'll find out," (which means I'll come back with an informed yes, no, or actually in this case there is no yes or no answer (although in answering the "Is there cilantro in this?" question there is always a yes or no answer)).

The answer to these questions, see, is sort of irrelevant. It points, I'm sure, to a larger issue I take with the idea of testimony, with truth, with knowledge. We all give inaccurate information to other people, inadvertently, from time to time. But, maybe one of the things that's important to know is what's important to know. So, for instance, when you're a waiter, it's important to know what's in food or to know when you don't. Then again, other people would argue and say what's important is to know how to kiss not just one kind, but all kinds of asses (Guess which kind of waiter I knew how to be). That's why I give this guy and other's like him some slack; everyone wants something different out of you and what you probably want is a part in a play, an audition for anything, a clue as to what it is you want or how to go after it and get it -- that is, not to kiss asses or tell people what's in their food.

But inasmuch as what I think and what I want matters, I want to ask "Is there cilantro in this?" and get an answer that corresponds to, you know, whether or not there's cilantro in it. I can say, with absolute assurance, however, that there is no (at least to date) cilantro in The Smith's very excellent potato chips with blue cheese fondue and that avocado salad, with some careful maneuvering, was actually really good.

* Cilantro left, parsley right: valuable tool for waiters everywhere.

Shiva: More than Sitting

2008-02-12T13:42:00.002-05:00

Jewish Friend whose mother has just died: Erin, don't you run out of ideas for your i hate cilantro blog?

Erin: No, check this out -- shiva: cilantro-free.

JFWMHJD: Got it.

Here's one thing the world's great religions (by great religions I mean the ones I like, not the ones that are big; see, as I carry a minor in religion I'm equipped to have these sorts of opinions) have in common, despite seemingly limitless differences: they realize the importance of food and drink in not only everyday life, but especially in major life events, as part of the mourning process very much included.

Last week I attended my first shiva and before going, everyone that mentioned the event and their experiences with them in the past pointed to exactly one thing and nothing else: food. At shiva there will always and forever be copious amounts of food. Is it, we wondered, somehow irreverent to serve a hoagie on such an occasion, as one friend had seen during his grandfather's shiva? Well, what is it that somehow makes casserole more holy than a hoagie, another friend questioned. Good point. And who doesn't love hoagies?

Upon arrival at my friend's home last week, I did immediately notice a wide and diverse spread of food. I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of the large boxes of coffee sitting next to the handles of single malt Scotch. You gotta figure, everyone wants one or the other (or both). Then, on to the food: mixed green salad with nuts, fruit, cheese and an impressively emulsified balsamic vinaigrette (on the side); lots of bread; grilled vegetables; cold cuts and cheeses; cake; gluten-free cupcakes; cookies (full of gluten); Whole Foods' mezze platter; macaroons; fruit; no hoagies. In this diverse spread, what was, to me (and I'm quite certain no one else), noticeably missing was cilantro, or any food that might reasonably contain it.

According to the McCormick "Enspicelopedia": "Ancient Hebrews added Cilantro to an herb mixture in the ritual of Passover." According to my modern-day Jewish friends whom I've consulted on the issue, what with their constant reading of the Torah, obsession with regular temple attendance and relentless shunning of bacon, experts on and representatives of Jews everywhere, cilantro really has no presence in foods traditionally (read currently) eaten during rituals like Passover, Hanukkah, etc. While a lack of cilantro might not save the Jewish cuisine from crimes like Gefilte fish, I never met a latke I didn't like and even the most ardent cilantro supporter might agree that cilantro's presence would bastardize and ruin the perfect condiment vehicle that is the latke.

See, the thing is, that as unmitigatedly sad/tragic/existentially unnerving as death is, especially to those closest to it (friends are just sort of fumblingly along for the ride) I conjecture, to me it isn't religion's ability to really alleviate any of this through its dogma, theology or words of wisdom. Instead, it's its insistence that one eats, that one's friends bring and prepare the food that one eats. That it is through this bringing and preparing of food that people are able to show, in some small measure, that they care. And that, yes, in the case of my first experience with shiva, this food is not only ample and diverse but provides no unwanted herbal distractions from the matter at hand -- eating, searching for the right words.

Red, White and Green

2008-02-05T16:25:00.001-05:00

As the primaries are in full swing and the fates of many, indeed the whole nation as some of these pundits keep insisting, are on the line, this Super Tuesday's got me thinking: if cilantro were a presidential candidate, which one would it be.

To review, some things I think about cilantro, and why I hate it:

It's the skunk of the earth, it's everywhere, it's completely overwhelming, it makes me uncomfortable in restaurants and people love it but I don't (I feel ostracized).

1) Skunk of the earth: This is a tough one. Distinguishing between many politicians and general skunk of the earthiness is no easy feat, but for me, the skunkiest of them all is Mike Huckabee -- pretty much everything he has to say leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

2) It's everywhere: Easy one. John McCain. Everywhere. The Times reports today that his media coverage is killing the competition (quantity, not necessarily quality (although, as a digression, this whole liberal slant of the media thing is total bullshit)), including the two democratic contenders, Obama and Clinton, or as I would have it Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama and Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton.

3) Completely overwhelming: Another easy one: Alan Keyes. But, if we're limiting the list to candidates who have a shot in hell of their party's nomination, gotta go with Huckabee again on this one. While Obama may overplay the message of hope, or what I like to think of as the audacity of the audacity of hope, Huckabee insists on actually hailing from Hope, Arkansas -- it's just too literal for me. Ease up dude.

4) It makes me uncomfortable in restaurants: Look, my most effective defense in avoiding my discomfort when having to avoid certain kinds of restaurants, dishes or make a special point to have the server check with the kitchen (and very often then back with wrong information) would be to somehow decrease the amount of cilantro that's around. Now this leads me to the immigration issue. We all know cilantro's proliferation is, if nothing else, but one byproduct of unchecked and uncontrolled immigration, it being largely found in Indian, Latin American and various Asian cuisines.* It is therefore Barack Obama who would make me most uncomfortable in restaurants, intentionally or inadvertently further increasing cilantro's presence in restaurants across the country through his lax immigration policies and cosmopolitan upbringing. But, then again, to paraphrase Voltaire, I disagree passionately with your cilantro herb usage and hence assault on my palate, but I'll fight til the death your right to, you know, cook the food you want to eat in a country you want to eat it in.

5) People love it and I don't: McCain. He's gonna win the primary, heard it hear first** Lot's of folks like him because, to quote some lady from a swing state on the times audio commentary today, he's a centrist. A lot of people think cilantro is just sort of a fresh, pleasant, citrusy, summery herb. But these people are wrong. Like cilantro, McCain's danger is in seeming so neutral, so friendly, like such a good guy that's going to unite the country and personify the inner would-be veteran in all of us. Not so. Not so.

In the end, the 1-2 punch of McCain's everywhere-ness and counter intuitive popularity I think make it (excuse me, him) most like cilantro. If cilantro went up in a race against my favorite candidates (I'll call Hillary tarragon [divisive, great in small doses, serious] and Obama Thai basil [worldly in an approachable way, fresh, full of hope***) he'd have a shot in hell of winning (unlike Huckabee, who I might like less but who is less of a threat -- I'd rather eat cilantro than hot cow dung, but hot cow dung doesn't present problems when I go to eat out or to a friend's dinner party since they don't like hot cow dung either) and I really just don't have the time to write another hate blog.

Go vote!

*This is a joke used for purely rhetorical purposes. I support melting pots and salad bowls and immigration and all that.
**Also a joke.
***Also a joke.

The Cilantro Gene Myth (Part I)

2008-01-28T15:13:00.001-05:00

Look, if I could consult Alex Brands, General Biology Post-doc/Fellow at Lehigh University, on everything I would, but I can't. Luckily, however, the man has plainly laid it out on the table when it comes to the cilantro hate gene myth. So, he doesn't call it a myth, as such, but he does say that the gene's existence has NOT been proven:

A google groups search confirms that you are not alone, as there are plenty of
testimonials from people to whom cilantro tastes like soap. There is no mention of
this in the Genetics textbooks I checked, and I did a PubMed search of the primary
research literature, but that came up empty. The short answer is: no one knows (if
they do, they haven’t told anyone)

So, Mr. Brands does go on to say the soap gene thing would be a reasonable hypothesis, but that given the current state of science funding in this country it will probably never be proven. So, while it might seem like the post-doc is favoring the idea that there is such a gene, in the end he's unable to find any conclusive evidence that there actually is one. So, what he calls a reasonable hypothesis, I'll call pure conjecture.

Or worse. It seems to me that people want to think there is such a gene. That they're born with a condition that prohibits them from enjoying something, that being born with such a condition makes it not their fault and ok somehow. But I wonder, what's so wrong about not liking everything? I mean, hating cilantro so much makes everything else taste so much better; it's all about juxtaposition. So, really, not liking just one thing (albeit a thing that is f#$&ing everywhere) is a relatively small price to pay for being able to then like everything else more. I HATE cilantro, but I LOVE oysters.

A Play in One Act

2008-01-24T15:25:00.001-05:00

Someone Who Isn't Erin: Love the blog, but can't get behind hating cilantro.

Erin: Thanks!; I don't care.

SWIE: But, don't you think other people should hate cilantro, want them to hate cilantro?

Erin: No, that's the folks over at ihatecilantro.com (a group I will not be joining in the foreseeable future; although I do find their efforts impressive, their mission is not my own (there's nuance to cilantro hate)).

SWIE: Word. You know, I hear there's a cilantro hate gene...

Erin: Really, I hadn't heard that.

SWIE: Oh yeah, totally. This guy I know was telling me th.. [interrupts]

Erin: I was kidding. I hear that a lot. I'm suspect.

SWIE: Because you're paranoid?

Erin: No, because we've isolated, what, 4 genes? And one of those genes hates cilantro?

SWIE: Huh?.!

In the coming week or so I seek to prove this hypothesis through some research. Stay tuned.

I love Netflix! (and cilantro)

2008-01-17T19:21:00.001-05:00

If you're anything like me (first of all, God bless you -- it's messy up there, huh?) there are few things as amazing as stumbling across a movie, a book, a philosophy, anything that sort of lays it all out there in a way that not only connects seemingly disparate kinds of things and thoughts, but also does all that in a way that seems true (and you don't know how you feel about this idea of "true" to begin with -- that's sort of what makes it special). Oprah would call that a light bulb moment; I'd call it learning something really cool, feeling a little more clued in to what's really up.

So, in the event the foreshadowing has been inadequate, I had one of those experiences or, rather, the catalyst for one of those experiences watching Half Nelson the other day. The movie itself I really liked, but it's this idea of dialectics that it deals with in explicit and more subversive ways that has me thinking about it still. Before the movie I really wasn't familiar with these dialectics, but was very much attracted to how the protagonist (Mr. Dan Dunne) was teaching history -- not how he was teaching high on crack, which admittedly leads to some practical problems, but that he was teaching through this dialectical lens, if you will. The lessons were dynamic and weird -- I question whether the kids were getting it, but I choose to believe kids are as smart as I think they are, so I'll give them and the movie the benefit of the doubt on that one -- and I wanted to learn more about this philosophy that had gotten idealistic Dunne in such a frenzy, to both good and bad effect (to simplify: good = caring and engaging teacher; bad = self-hating drug addict with terrible personal relationships).

So, I did what any self-respecting office job holder would do and googled dialectics at work. Suddenly I was reading Marx and Hegel and Wikipedia! Now I'm not going to try and explain the whole thing to y'all because 1) I only know what I know about it, which is relatively little and 2) I wouldn't want to condescend to anyone who does actually really get it, especially the linguistic conventions of talking about philosophy. But, to the point, it has to do with conflict, paradox, change, progress, movement and uncertainty. In the context of history (of Half Nelson), we can understand events, changes and history itself as reactions to internal and external conflicts, as struggles between opposing forces: it isn't cause and effect (if a then b). Dialectics doesn't really work for science (or rather the scientific method; Darwin was all about this shit), but, if you ask me, science can teach us how to make an iPhone (debatable), but not how to live our lives.

So, opposites and contradictions have at least three properties: 1) they're interdependent, 2) they interpenetrate and 3) they're in union. A lot of Eastern thought, to be totally Orientalist, relies on this -- hence the beautiful green yin-yang you see, which is probably why I dig it and subconsciously why I found myself consulting the I Ching the day after watching Half Nelson. But, if it's valid, to use a word, it ought to hold up to any part of my life, like, and here it is, my hatred of cilantro. How can dialectics inform my understanding of this hate?

Well, as it turns out, it has totally shed some light. First, there's hate in every love and love in every hate (that's the interpenetration part -- the little white and black dots in the yin-yang). What that really means to me is that nothing is pure, nothing is the real ideal of the thing ever, certainly not in reality. So, I can hate cilantro as much as pure hate is possible (and I do; I hate it more than mean people), but it's only so possible. What's more interesting to me is the interdependence of love and hate. For better or worse, I need cilantro lovers both to define myself, as in opposition to something and for tons of fodder -- I love making fun of those morons. Without cilantro love, cilantro hate couldn't exist, cilantro would just be. It couldn't be loved or hated, or it would have gone extinct from lack of consumption or taken over like a weed or who knows but it certainly wouldn't be like this: the silent culture war instigator that it is.

Then, there's the union of opposites, that the closer you get to the extreme of something the more it is it's opposite. It's like my friend Miki's always saying, hate isn't the opposite of love, indifference is; I think she's right. In my case, it's not so much that I hate cilantro so much that I love it; it's that it's become so much fun to hate it I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for it.

I hate cilantro, but I love it too.

Cilantro Kills

2008-01-09T18:04:00.001-05:00

So, cilantro kills bacteria. That's according to scientists at the University of California Berkeley and the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, if you want to trust Cal-Mex science, which has always been my favorite flavor. More specifically, 11 of 13 isolated cilantro compounds that were studied were demonstrated to have some effectiveness against pathogenic bacteria, especially Salmonella choleraesuis (the thing that causes the thing you get when you have unprotected sex with raw poultry) and, more specifically, one of those compounds, dodecenal, was "particularly effective." This is all according to the New York Times, but I'm sure anyone really interested could find the original journals, if one were into that sort of thing; I'm not into that sort of thing.

Interesting news? Sure. I was even on board with the Times' seemingly objective reporting up until the point it declared "Eat Cilantro," which was actually the title of the snippet, so I guess I really wasn't ever really on board. I know what some of you cilantro lover, bacteria hater-types (poor fools) are thinking: I can eat something I love and kill something I hate? Win-win! Easy Killer. Let's backup for a moment.

First, each year only 40,000 cases of Salmonella are reported and only 600 people die from it*. OK. So, that's kind of a lot, as compared to, you know, rabies' 6 annual deaths, which The Office handled with its usual sensitivity and grace. But, let's not go turning into Salmonella alarmists here; if you really want to avoid the disease, you'll do as the CDC recommends and avoid the following: raw meat, at-all pink meat, hollandaise, tiramisu, cookie dough, cross contamination and pet turtles. If you can find a reason to keep living without these things, I suppose cilantro might as well be a part of the miserable life you'll be left with.

Second, as my cousin the doctor, whom I always refer to as my cousin, the doctor, frequently suggests, we've become positively scared shitless of bacteria, and that, perhaps more than anything, is why we're always so sick. I like the idea that she's right -- because who wants to worry about everything all the time? -- but since she has an MD next to her name, she must be. So, you know, the way I see it, cilantro with its whopping 11 compounds of bacteria fighting, is actually slowly killing not only the bacteria you hate, but also the person you try not to -- you.

Third, many studies have basically shown in countless ways that fruits and vegetables tend to be really good for you. The nuances of these studies I tend to find, well, sort of irrelevant. We should do as Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) suggests, which is to eat food (ie carrots and mushrooms as opposed to vitamins that would seem to carry the "compounds" their originals definitely have in combinations that work and our bodies can accept) and as I would add, we should eat what we like and not what we don't. We should also cultivate palates that enjoy broccoli (which scientists in Estonia have proved kills cancer every time it's consumed) at least as much as, say, creme brulee, or our health will be pretty screwed. We should also probably quit telling each other what to do.

So, you know what? Eat Cilantro or Don't eat cilantro, but just remember every time you take a bite, you might be killing someone.

*The CDC suggests that the estimate might be "thity" or more times greater, whatever that means.

My So-Called Good Memory: to balance the acidity of the tomatoes?

2008-01-04T16:40:00.001-05:00

This year I resolve to.... well, all kinds of things; you know, cliche self-improvement-type stuff. But none of these resolutions has anything really to do with cilantro (except the "write in cilantro hate blog more often" one that actually wasn't one until this very moment) so, I won't, you know, write about the New Year, you know, directly. This is, like, a blog I write, not, like, my life, or whatever...

I have a really good memory -- ask anyone, it's true -- which is why I was surprised when I didn't remember a scene from My So-Called Life, a show I have been unabashedly watching the past week, since my friend James (love that guy) got the complete series (ie the first season) boxed set for Christmas. Now (years ago) I've seen every episode of this show at least once, many of them twice (ok, the one with Angela and Jordan making out in the boiler room, Self-Esteem, maybe three times) so, given this excellent (noteworthy for its accuracy but excellent for its serious endurance) memory thing, there shouldn't be, like, entire scenes I don't remember.

Well, in fairness, it's not that I didn't remember the scene, it's that I didn't remember the super explicit cilantro-reference in the scene (recap from mscl.com):

As Patty regales Graham with her encounter with Amber, Graham offers Patty a taste of the food he's cooking, and while she thinks its wonderful, Graham must tell her what she is tasting. Angela enters, Graham offers her a taste and she knows immediately what she is tasting.

"Mmm, cilantro."

Graham then proceeds to explain to Angela why he has added the cilantro. (To balance the acidity of the tomatoes.) Graham's "food" education of Angela is ongoing, as we have seen since the Pilot epidsode:

"Con carne, 'with meat."

The business of tasting Graham's cooking is minor; its foremost purpose is to add verisimilitude and dynamics to an otherwise static scene. But the difference in Patty's and Angela's reactions to Graham's cooking relates to the difference in upbringing they received from their respective fathers. Patty's upbringing has been one of chili fries and diner pie, of enormous turkeys and oregano in the curry sauce. Angela's upbringing has been one of balanced meals, spaghetti reheated by father, cilantro, pasta and lemon hazelnut torts.

I mean, this scene is huge. (that's not me mocking Liberty High-speak). Anyone who ever watched the show, and certainly anyone who watched it not so much through a culinary lens as much as happened to be interested in food or had a father who liked to cook (I did/I do) remembers the frequent kitchen/cooking scenes shared not only between father and daughter, but also, of course, between the food-savvy father and the rest of the family.

What I did not remember (and this is probably because I don't remember the first time I had cilantro or when I knew I hated it -- other than I'm pretty sure it had something to do with Chipotle (the chain restaurant, not the delicious smoked peppers) -- more on this later) was that the very symbol of Angela's dad's foodiness was cilantro. In 1994 if you were cooking with cilantro and could identify its flavor (nice one Angela) you were absolutely in the culinary know.

One piece of evidence is the fact that I remember the scene but don't remember the reference: at 12 I didn't know what cilantro was, at least by name, and certainly didn't hate it, lest I would have, like, you know, commented or something. But then, I wonder if some version of that show (I don't think the ubiquitous plaid, flannel would work today, although Jordan Catalano's work shirts are truly timeless) existed now, would the ingredient be different? Have I just gotten older, food savvier, more full of hate, and that's the difference?; that in fact the ingredient is still slightly esoteric, slightly special, it's very use proof positive of food smarts? I kind of don't think so. I mean, it is everywhere right? Right? Like, by name, it's everywhere. I think the ingredient might have still been cilantro in today's show (The Emperor's Children, the show (GOD HELP ME!)) but it would have a different meaning. Angela's dad wouldn't seem so food savvy to me now; would he to the general population? I wonder. I think, in today's show, the herb would be shiso. Yeah. That's right, I went with shiso. Although he is making some sort of sauce (cilantro to balance the acidity of the tomatoes -- unbelievable), maybe marjoram? I just don't think it would be cilantro, because, most of the population, I would venture to say, has taken it for granted as part of the current food lexicon.

Will I sound like a frightening conservative when I suggest we should go back to a simpler time, years ago, when, oh wait, Clinton was president and the economy was good and cilantro wasn't everywhere? No, I think that would, like, be ok or whatever.

Midtown Lunch Staple Chain (Così) More Annoying Than Cilantro?

2007-12-28T13:23:00.002-05:00

In the spirit of year-end top 10 lists and holiday giving, here's my Christmas gift to cilantro: the top 7 things at Cosi in 2007 that are (perhaps) more annoying than cilantro.

7. The tagline, "Simply Good Taste"

6. The use of the word traditional in the Traditional Cheese Flatbread. (In case you were wondering -- traditional cheese is mozzarella cheese.)

5. The way the soup guy stares at me when I order a tomato soup, rather than ask what he's really thinking, which is "What size (eye roll) of tomato soup would you like (eye roll) ma'am?," until I say say, "Um, small?"

4. The worst incarnation of lunch salad-ready factory farm chicken ever known to man, and at a premium price.

3. The inconsistency in flatbread salt level. It's immeasurably better when well-salted.

2. The very very small print on everything (especially the overhead salad menu) rendering it impossible to determine what you might want in advance, giving you nothing to do while you wait in line, except strain your eyes in vain.

1. The expression "Nothing Says holiday like eggnog (we don't know why either)." Ick. Is there anything more annoying than cold calculating corporations trying to seem ironic or hip or coolly ignorant? No, there isn't. It's very annoying. Furthermore, the reasons eggnog say holiday are obvious:

i. Eggnog is served always and only during the holidays.

ii. Does nothing, in fact, say holiday like eggnog? What about mistletoe, snowflakes,
Christmas trees, menorahs, turkey, ham, family, red and green together, peppermint sticks, the calendar months November and December, presents, mulled red wine, Santa Claus, reindeer, etc., etc. These take nothing away from the eggnog/holiday association, (in fact my coworkers have confirmed that eggnog is on their top 5 list of holiday word associations) but would question the superlative "Nothing" says holiday like eggnog.

iii. People love eggnog, even if they don't love eggnog. It makes you feel warm and nostalgic. The corporate suits have absolutely, deliberately chosen eggnog as the symbol of the holidays to make you (the consumer) associate warm, nostalgic feelings with them (Cosi) and, you know, buy more stuff, and then backed away from this deliberateness by suggesting the eggnog reference is innocent, accidental, organic. We could all learn a lot from Starbucks.

See you in 2008, earnestly back to the business of hating cilantro.

It's Everywhere

2007-12-22T19:29:00.002-05:00

While 2 of my Brooklyn friends trek to the East Village to enjoy a nice, healthy Saturday night dinner at Caravan of Dreams, a lovely near-vegan restaurant run by spacey for real and would-be rastas, (consider the dialogue "I'm sorry, I forgot what you ordered. Could to tell me again?," followed by an overheard conversation between our waitress and another table "I'm sorry, I forgot what you ordered. Could you tell me again?") I decide to stay home, pack for 'Home for the Holidays, 2.0,' finish some work, and make myself a delicious salad with goat cheese.

Of course, I'd have to go to the store to buy some greens and goat cheese, since I don't have anything but Christmas cookies and pantry goods in the house. So, I go to the store and throw the requisite Earthbound Farm Organic mix in my basket, but, as I'd feared, my just-down-the-street store doesn't have goat cheese, the official cheese of gentrification. They do, however, have that delicious 'no bread needed to fry it' Queso Para Freir cheese. Being flexible about these sorts of things, I'm thinking I'll make a mixed green salad with toasted almonds and some of that fried cheese with a nice super acidic with a little bit of honey vinaigrette.

I heated some canola oil in a pan, or started to, when I lifted the pan to, I don't know what now that I think about it, and promptly burnt my chin on contact. Ouch. I'm already thinking this was a bad idea. I should have just gone to Caravan, but, I'm rolling with the situation. The pan is definitely hot, and that's all I needed to know, so, you know, mission accomplished. I fry the cheese, drain the cheese, bla bla. Then I throw together a quick vinaigrette (dijon, balasamic, olive oil, honey, salt, pepper) and toss it with a large handful of greens and the almonds (bought them toasted; yes I'm alright with that). It's at this point I notice sparse pieces of what would seem to be dill (it was) and think I might be in trouble. Yeah, there are more green things in the salad that aren't lettuce.

I go for the fridge, find the package, "Fresh Herb Salad." Shit. I've bought this before, a long time ago, and seem to remember this is not a cilantro-hater's friend, this "Fresh Herb Salad." Indeed, there is cilantro throughout. It's unavoidable. I can't pick out all the pieces, especially now that it's been tossed together, and it's all variations of the same color -- even if I wanted to extract each piece of cilantro, finding them all would be a huge chore unto itself. And, I've stayed home to save time and get some stuff done, not spend an hour removing cilantro from my salad.

So, I eat the salad, doing my best to avoid the cilantro pieces. I fail. The salad was terrible. I got nice almondy-cheesy bites, but what I wanted was salad with stuff in it, not stuff with salad garnish. I realized I haven't actually eaten cilantro in awhile; I do try to avoid it. I became mesmerized, focusing intently on a single leaf. How far away could I smell it from? (not that far, maybe 6 inches) How large was each piece in the salad? (ranging from 2-square millimeters to 1-square inch) What did it taste like? (terrible, just terrible). Did I still hate it? (yes, as much, if not more, than ever).

What gets me is how ubiquitous it's become, cilantro. There are exactly three herbs in the Earthbound Herb Salad: parsley, dill and cilantro. Parsley seems a given -- most people I know like it or are indifferent to it; you can put it in anything. Dill, I have to say, is an odd choice -- I love dill, but I'm pretty sure not everyone does. This is a salad mix, I would assume, meant to please the general palate (I did purchase it in a store that doesn't sell goat cheese). Cilantro, well, there's just no need. I've come to expect it in my guacamole, salsa, saag panir, etc, but not in my supermarket salad mix. Between the dill and the cilantro, I would guess Earthbound is making some enemies with this salad.

But, the joke's on me. I need to return to checking all labels, being more mindful, asking more questions in restaurants, lest another slip-up like this occur. As cilantro is more and more absolutely everywhere, I need to up my defenses against it, otherwise cilantro will have won.

Cilantro Lovers are Morons (Part II), with an Agenda

2007-12-18T15:01:00.001-05:00

Rick Bayless, admired in the food world for bringing authentic but modern regional Mexican cooking to the palates of the Midwestern dining mainstream and foodie elite at Chicago restaurants Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, respectively, has also withstood (if not instigated) his own share of controversy in the same community.

Trouble came when Bayless was percevied to have 'sold-out' by starring in a Burger King commercial where he would seem to be enjoying a low-fat Santa Fe something or other chicken sandwich 'served' on a baguette. My opinion on the matter is it's basically much ado about nothing -- when it comes to calling people sell-outs, especially in the cheffing community, most people should, you know, move out of their glass houses or quit throwing rocks.

But, Bayless has now put his name on something far worse than a $2.99 tasteless factory farm raised chicken sandwich -- he's put his name on the "Avocado Peeler" in Cilantro. I'll leave the critique of the object's functionality to whomever is running the "things_you_could_do_easier_with_a_spoon_than_a_twelve_dollar_object_you'll_never_
use_you_stupid_moron" blog. What concerns me is something else entirely.

Most obviously and importantly, the scooper color is not cilantro ((when did cilantro become a color -- we're in real trouble?!) unless it were dried-out near dead cilantro, and, while I like the idea that that's what was intended in naming the color cilantro, something tells me it wasn't); the color could go by lime green (although come to think of it, limes really aren't the color lime green -- we have a crisis of color nomenclature on our hands here; when was the last time you saw someone puke in puke green?) or more accurately, Ecto Cooler green.

The color's name is a lie, and so one must ask, "why the lie?" A couple answers come to mind. 1) Cilantro lovers are morons, so they won't notice the color naming is wrong but rather be attracted to the device's name without questioning its veracity (they no doubt will want to get their hands on the peeler as soon as possible in order to make cilantro-laden 'guacamole'); Bayless & Co. are just going after their stupid target audience. Or 2) Bayless has himself become a moron by virtue of his intense cilantro love and has become so clouded he can't even tell the color is not cilantro -- he just sees it everywhere (by Bayless I mean the marketers and product developers who made this whole abomination happen -- in reality he must have had nearly nothing to do with the whole endeavor -- let's hope). 3) This is a subliminal message meant to drive home the cilantro name to any moron willing to buy this product for any reason -- they want more of their kind.

They want it so badly, they've gone so far as to not offer the product, or many of their other products in any color other than cilantro. If you want an avocado peeler, you'll have it in cilantro, dammit. They're forcing cilantro - the idea - on anyone who might be dumb enough to want to buy this gadget. It's not enough that cilantro lovers are all morons, they're trying to turn all morons into cilantro lovers too: "Well, no Suzy, you know, I don't really like cilantro, but I just love the color cilantro, you know, the color of my new favorite avocado peeler by Rick Bayless, that guy from the Food Network." Morons.

However you weigh in on it, you can't argue, the morons have an agenda to attract more morons. And if we've learned anything from this presidency we ought to have learned that the only thing worse than a moron in a place of power is a moron in a place of power with an agenda. Boycott the Avocado Peeler in Cilantro.

Ihatecilantro.com and Me

2007-12-08T16:18:00.001-05:00

You know the old saying, and I'm paraphrasing here, out of lack of absolute knowledge as to whether .com(s) (brainyquotes, wisdom quotes, quoteland or quotationspage) has the most accurate records, equally doubting the veracity of them all in fact, whereby brainyquotes, for instance, accredits the quote to both Woody Allen and Groucho Marx (it's Woody quoting Groucho in Annie Hall that commonly causes the mixup that it's a Woody quote -- it's a Groucho quote) and in any case, it more or less goes like this, I'd never want to join a club that would have me as a member?

Right, so I find it mildly hilarious, even after time. I also think there's some truth to it, probably why it's so funny. Indeed, I've been on a Facebook group founding spree this week (having just joined the social networking situation a few weeks ago), feeling more apt to start a group called "I love mustard" then join one, but alas someone beat me to the punch and their tagline included roasted garlic mustard as one of the many in their fridge and, had I formed the group, that certainly wouldn't have made the list. Loving mustard to me involves loving its purist forms, not buying dozens of artisan varieties, so, for now, I'll love my kind of mustard on my own time, without the support of other mustard lovers.

Joining groups presents all kinds of problems because, inevitably, you won't subscribe to all the group's dogma, a conflict I would hope, but am less than sure, that the world's faithful struggle with from time to time. For me, today, the question is whether to become a member of ihatecilantro.com. On the one hand, I do hatecilantro.com, on the other, their last news update is from early September, so I question their dedication to the cause. Then again, the site is well-executed, its tone just right. Their logo and commitment to cilantro hate publicity and awareness is worthy of my respect, and that of even the greatest lover of cilantro who still believes in the importance of the first amendment, although I'm willing to consider a correlation between not only cilantro love and moronicism, but also freedom of speech hating on-ism.

But back to the original problem, I'm not sure I want to belong to a group of a bunch of people just like me, a group that would have and encourage my membership. We could be, well, so obnoxious put in a room together. It makes me think of when I was vegan, making me a de facto member of the vegan club, a truly sanctimonious and utterly difficult to be around crew. Do I want to join a group of people who will, by virtue of being in the same group, assume they have more in common with me than they might? Do I want to associate with a lot based on hate, when I'm a member of exactly zero other groups (Facebook aside,*sigh*)? These are important questions I'm asking myself as I decide if I'll be joining the 1,731 already existing members. I need to sleep on this for a few days, but I'll be back with a satisfying conclusion.

Cilantro Lovers are Morons

2007-12-03T19:51:00.001-05:00

At the risk of offending, oh, say, 97% of my THOUSANDs of loyal readers, I'll go ahead and say it: there seems to be a strong link between the love of cilantro and the display of moron-like characteristics, where moron will here be defined, as any self-respecting user of the English language would define it, as the American Heritage Dictionary does, as

"NOUN:1. A stupid person; a dolt. 2. Psychology A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive. ETYMOLOGY: From Greek mron, neuter of mros, stupid, foolish."

I prefer the second definition, but far be it from me to use archaic or, even worse, offensive denotations; the first has a nice, curt, to-the-point, so easy even a moron could understand it meaning, and given my audience, well... Yes, I quite like "a dolt."

Right, so, to the point, what makes these herb-lovers morons? Exhibit A (there will only be one exhibit in today's post -- I'll build this case over time), is taken from an I Hate Cilantro.com Discussion Board and goes like this:

"Okay, I heard about this website from a friend and doubted it's existince, but upon visiting the page I not only found out it's real, I realized you "Anti-cilantro" people are insane.

First, off cilantro was not spawed from satan's stomach, and angel's did not trick us into liking it. Come on would angels trick us, that sounds like something the devil would do right so the human race gets brain washed into following the devil.

Second, it's not something to get majorly offended by, like not being friends with someone because the served you cilantro, or being really picky at resturants because god you might eat some in pasta sauce.

Lastly, why pick on cilantro? Why not hate on foods like cod liver oil or limburger cheese? Foods that are actually offensive to the senses. Cilantro is not gross enough to merit an entire website and Haikus about it. It's like orange juice I don't LOVE, but don't hate it. I wouldn't go across the world to bet some, but if I had some I would use it.

Ok. Let's leave spelling and grammatical errors alone. I'll leave that to whomever is running the "I hate the rampant depletion of grammatical, spelling and self-copy editing standards in cyber English publication" blog. The larger issue here is that this cilantro lover is arguing the wrong point with the wrong logic.

1. While I don't see any convincing evidence from Cilantro Lover, heretofore Moron, that cilantro wasn't spawned from Satan's stomach, its origin is hardly the point. I also don't see a lot of cilantro haters citing Satan's patriarchy as the cause for their hate, indeed we tend to be a fairly agnostic bunch, although it wouldn't be a terrible hypothesis, I suppose.

2. I. I'll thank you not to tell me what to get offended by. II. Any friend that would deliberately serve me something I hate, all things being equal, might deserve a reevaluation. That said, I don't think too many friendships are lost on this issue. Cilantro haters, at least, are reasonable people. III. Please see "Basil is NOT Cilantro" Post. Cilantro is not found in pasta sauce. You obviously don't understand this problem properly; you need to work on your empathy skills.

3. Why pick on cilantro? Why not hate other foods? I don't know where to begin. Would anyone choose to hate cilantro. It's not fun, it's not an easy lot in life. It's a burden. It's an annoyance. It's a cross to bare. But, we're a strong people and we survive. We blame no one but cilantro itself. And why not hate others foods? One's enough for me thanks. You don't like orange juice, well, that's just messed up. ihateorangejuice.com doesn't even exist, man -- for a reason -- it rules. But, you don't have to like orange juice. I just find flaw in the the logic that because you don't like orange juice I should like cilantro. But, Moron, you just wouldn't understand.

Finally, when you say "cilantro isn't gross enough" you're missing the idea of subjective palates. It's not gross at all to you, but it is very much gross at all to me, and thousands like me. Mine is not an evangelical mission, as I have made clear in the past, but an effort to explain, to enlighten, to edify. And you represent a growing group of cilantro lovers or, a largely marginalized group of cilantro indifferenters, who seeks not to understand cilantro hate but to condemn and chastise it. You're fighting a losing and worthless battle. Hating Cilantro is a solitary battle, united as we may be, each hater has to ultimately confront his/her hate on his/her own. You don't know what you have, Moron. You just don't see.

Choose Your Team

2007-11-29T23:36:00.001-05:00

In the earnest battle between cilantro love and hate, each side has shown its strength through his own 'website':

I Love Cilantro
I Hate Cilantro

Requisite Post Thanksgiving Post

2007-11-27T20:55:00.001-05:00

When you're 25, more or less making a living as a writer of various merits and degrees of seriousness, residing in New York City and haling from small college town Ohio, returning to New York after Thanksgiving in said college town Ohio (and it's distant cousin, Southwestern farmland Ohio) to begin reading Philip Roth's Ghost Writer with lines like, "Mother, I will not prate in platitudes to please the adults!" (a rare instance of exclamation point in the otherwise understated Roth punctuation situation) you kind of second guess how you're going to write the ostensible would-be write itself "Thanksgiving: A Safe Haven From Cilantro in a World of Fewer and Fewer" that would go something like this:

People talk about all the familiar wonders of Thanksgiving: the turkey, the dressing (stuffing, whatever), candied yams (sweet potatoes, whatever), green bean casserole, mashed potatoes (which apparently are basically full-proof, apparently), the pies, the gravy (you can poor it on everything, it's so good, right?) And the best part of all of it: no where, ever, ever will you find a scant piece, a dash, a chiffonade of cilantro.

Is this a coincidence I ask you? Well, of course it is, strictly speaking, but it is interesting that America's favorite meal of the year, the one we all can get totally behind is the cilantro hater's favorite meal too. There are some places, some meals, some traditions just too sacred, just too refined to be bastardized by the presence of that nasty, can't even compete with sage, rosemary and thyme herb...

when what you're really thinking about is, as Roth and many great "meta," if you will, or don't, that's an obnoxious ivory tower term, or write about writing writers will tend to make you do, the place of the writer, the vanity of the question itself, the inherent narcissism of it all, the writing's relationship to other people in the writer's life, the question of its meaning other than to perk readers to say "that's good," "I get it," "that's funny" or be entertained. These are questions others have mused on, successfully - notably, Joyce, Hollingshurst and Roth himself. I'll leave that discourse where it lies, dynamic and totally unanswerable.

What strikes me is something I would imagine affects everyone who writes, produces art, performs any job, really: that sometimes there are more important things going on than what you're doing. (Sure, sure, this is a young liberal idea, I get that, but we don't want to stop wanting to be important, or rather, to do important things, right?) Food writers, when they talk about their form, tend to take one of two positions: they write entertainment (maybe infotainment) or the work is very important because everyone eats and food matters to our cultures and our histories and connects people and so on (Ms. MFK Fisher is the incontrovertible paradigm here). I agree with both positions, and I really honestly sometimes totally agree with the second one, it's just that damn sanctimonious tone always used to defend it.

Nate Zucherman, the great protagonist of many of Roth's novels, including The Ghost Writer, talks with his mentor, the secluded (I'm thinking Pynchon-esque) EI Lonoff, who describes his own long days of writing as essentially creating a sentence, rearranging it, eating lunch, writing another sentence, moving it around, going for a walk, throwing away all the sentences, then starting over. Bumped into my lit.-loving friend Wells in Ohio who talked about David Foster Wallace's description of writing as setting up a 9-hour day, 1 hour of writing, 8 hours of hating himself for not being able to write anything: indeed, poor bastards.

It's a funny occupation and people who do it love to complain about it. But they all seem drawn to it as if to some kind of duty, but a duty to self, which gets complicated. Kind of reminds me of other professions, notably chefs, who are only allowed to complain on their own time, lest they get fired, stabbed, hated or, worse, never promoted. Complain they will, but love it, need it -- absolutely.

It seems to me, at the end of the day, it's all about pleasure. People write because they're gifted and very often privileged enough to do so and they love the sweet agony of producing something good. People read for the same reasons (yes to learn, but people that really like to learn do it for pleasure, right?) Chefs cook for their own pleasure and for that of their diners. David Kamp talks about this in his United States of Arugula, that dining, above all else, should be pleasurable.

And back to Thanksgiving, which is one of the more pleasurable meals most of us will eat in a given year. Those crazy folks we call our families we often haven't seen in awhile, the food that never wavers, and if it does can and should be a source of hot contention, the cheesy but awesome spirit of thankfulness, or, as I like to thank of it, luckiness. The pleasure the day's chef gets from cooking the meal: basting the turkey, sweating the onions, seeing the smiling faces of everyone eating it, not doing the dishes. Then everyone sits back and does exactly as they would like to do: take a nap, watch the game, drink a little too much and zing your family, what have you. It's all permissible. Anything goes.

Thanksgiving is a great day and a great meal because people find pleasure in doing what they want to do and feel basically thankful for the whole situation. The same pleasure can come from writing. When you get to write about food, you get to double up on your own pleasure, and, if you can share that somehow (like my Grandpa's tried and true every year corn pudding), well, maybe that is something important enough, at least for a day's work.

Also, I hate cilantro.

Cilantro Free Does Not a Good Meal Make

2007-11-18T15:23:00.001-05:00

It's said that bad service makes good food taste bad and bad food taste worse. It's also said that a restaurant review that dedicates any of its precious few words to notes on service is an implicit indictment of the restaurant's food: bad service makes bad food more conspicuous, less than sublime food calls attention to other arena's of dining, service being the most obvious of these arenas and handicap bathroom accessibility now too entering the mix.

While one could have held a wheelchair orgy in either of my brunch venue du jour's restrooms (if one were into that sort of thing) one would have had to lose his/her sensory skills altogether to miss the terrible service and uncharacteristically bad food featured, today. It is not lightly that I report this experience (blogging about hating cilantro is serious work) as I eat at this Underhill Ave. Prospect Heights Restaurant nearly every Saturday or Sunday, but the service has always been atrocious and today it has come to a head -- it has made the food bad, and that takes the bad service from the realm of idiosyncratic to inexcusable.

When our obviously new, but not necessarily in a bad way, server spilled a decent portion of my orange juice on the table, then took an extra napkin (we were 3 at a 4 top) to clean it up saying "Didn't ever happen," I found it cute, sort of like something I might say if I were him*, except, and this is a big difference, I would have actually gotten rid of the evidence of the thing that didn't ever happen -- he did not. Cheeky/feisty became sloppy/bad. But that's ok. Service is quirky here. I took my own napkin (knowing I'd have to ask for one right away if I wanted one for my meal by the time it got there) and finished the job, laughing and sharing my thoughts with my poor roommates/friends who constantly put up with not only my service and food criticism, but also my deep and relentless loathing of cilantro, something that inevitably comes up at every meal.

My toast was burnt. That's an interesting bad service/bad food overlap, because 1) it's entirely possible the server did the toasting of the toast and either way 2) the server should do some quality control and not bring obviously, objectively, deeply burnt toast to any table ever. I come in every week, I wear the same hat, almost every week, I chat with the managers and chef. Everyone deserves unburnt toast, but you treat your regulars the best, that's just how it's done. He quickly threw some not burnt wheat toast on my table without a word or skipping a beat, also fine, the guy was obviously busy, no doubt in the weeds of his own making.

Then there's the main dish. I had a Nova Salmon soft scramble, a special of the day. The eggs were neither soft nor really scrambled, and there were globules of uncooked uncombined white throughout. The salmon was overcooked -- I was hoping for a lox situation, but I didn't ask, so that's my fault. Then there was green stuff mixed in, looked like scallions and chives, but didn't do much to enhance the dish, other than add some color and scare me for a moment that the dish might get worse once I got a big bite of unexpected cilantro. I didn't, but I don't think that it would have even mattered: I know, that's how bad the whole experience was becoming.

The usually great salad wasn't any good (too much frisee and it was that really thick too green stuff) and I'd probably only convinced myself that the coffee wasn't as delicious as normal. When the usually affable manager lady came over and said nonchalantly, more by us than to us, more at us than with us, "We really need that table ladies," I was nonplussed . I urged my fellow diners not to hurry, that we could finish our coffees and cocktails, even though we really wanted to leave immediately after her order, even though we'd waited twenty minutes for our table, even though we'd only been sitting for 35 minutes. "There's a nice way to do that," I said, "and that wasn't it." I thought about saying something to the manager lady, a move I would have made in a more confrontational mood, but something about November rain says to me "blog it, don't say it."

Brunch is all about turnover, turn and burn, in and out, make your money then get them out. Restaurants are also about pleasing customers. Sometimes you have to balance the two, sacrifice a bit of one for the benefit of the other. But don't sacrifice both, for the benefit of nothing. When we were so rudely asked to leave it was after 2 o'clock. The brunch rush, everywhere in New York, has passed by this time, it might stay steady until 3 or 4, but the peak has passed. We would have stayed another minute or two, left happy and been on with our days. The folks waiting for our table would have had it in just a couple more minutes. Everyone would have been happy, except for the bad food, worse service and new 35-minute meal policy, of course.

Indeed, they often say bad service makes bad food worse. (Which came first, the bad food or the bad service, I do not know, but they certainly have an aggrandizing effect on one another.) What they don't often say is that bad service can be so bad as to make you wish, if given the choice, one of those green specs in the soft scrambled eggs HAD been cilantro, had the service been a little more gracious, the eggs a little more scrambled, a little softer, a little more mixed. A good meal to me might be one where cilantro is the worst thing about it. I'm comfortable in that environment. I know myself there. When I'm asked to abruptly leave a meal I wasn't enjoying anyway, it leaves a worse taste in my mouth than stupid skunk of the earth herb I'm sure I will encounter soon.

*I worked as a server for years, part-time in college and then full-time after, so, like many servers I suspect, I feel a paradoxical sympathy for people in the position and an expectation of what I consider reasonable standards, ie the ones I cared about when I did the job.

Basil is NOT Cilantro

2007-11-15T13:07:00.001-05:00

One of the nice things about hating cilantro so much is that it serves as a convenient benchmark for dubious or relative hatred of other things. Do I hate midtown? Yes. Do I hate it as much as cilantro? No, not even close. But, when the two come together, a funny things happens: somehow, neither seems as bad. You can feel the universe working in some sort of sick harmony, if only for a frenzied 20-minute at my desk lunch.

When my new (and dear, vegan) coworker suggests taco salad as a reasonable midtown lunch choice, I don't have to think twice. Hale and hardy as early winter midtown soups may be, they get a little old. The taco salad offers a cornucopia of foodie wonderland ingredients: farm-to-table (farm's in California, but I hear sustainability is going out of style) iceberg lettuce, canned supermarket black beans, anemic diced tomatoes, hormone and/or antibiotic treated sour cream, flavorless but high-fat pre-shredded "cheddar" and "jack" cheeses, overly acidiulated "guacamole," and then there's that beautiful brown slice of Tex-mexamericana, the fried taco salad shell. Well, obviously I couldn't say no. Hell, it's Thursday.

What's more, as new coworker described said taco salad and it's "delicious" "tomato and basil" component, I was intrigued. This is where I made my fatal error, which I only realized too late. No self-respecting vendor of authentic Tex-Mex midtown cuisine would bastardize the genre's standards so much as to put basil in a taco salad -- this isn't Little Italy and it's not Thai either (a cuisine that interestingly holds my greatest friend and greatest foe herbs in equal esteem). But, I didn't second guess.

I walked into the "Bagel" shop on 48th street with authority, heading straight to the Tex-Mex section (south of salad bar/bagel/panini/, east of sushi and make your own udon) like I'd been doing it for years. "Taco Salad, black beans" was all I had to say. The guy knew what to do, like he'd been doing it for years. It's when he started spooning on the tomato/basil concoction that it occurred to me, "You know Erin, that probably isn't basil in there. Your sweet but innocent coworker meant miscellaneous herb when she said basil, not basil as you understand it." But, I figured, any opportunity to keep trying the stuff -- who knows when the magic day I quit hating it will be. Plus, this didn't exactly promise to be the best meal I'd ever had in my life, although it would, of course, come close.

Well, as I eat my taco salad, yes, right now, the cilantro really isn't too noticeable. It's more a sporadic annoyance between inoffensive if underwhelming bites. I can see a tiny piece sitting on a tomato dice right now. Ok, that tomato piece has been discarded, that's one that won't sneaking onto my palate of hate.

The total effect of the dish is actually to fit perfectly in its time and place, which is all you can really ever ask for any dish, ever. In that sense, it's the perfect midtown lunch. A basically neutral, but protein rich, combination of textures and flavors that don't distract or get in the way of the busy workday. The slight annoyance and, in this case, depth of flavor the cilantro provides, reminds me of where I am, the most annoying and crowded area of Manhattan. It's only fitting that my lunches here should contain errant or apropos cilantro (cilantro is never apropos to me, but it is to various cuisines, like Tex-Mex, maybe my new favorite) in sparse but consistent quantities and manifestations.

Today's lesson: Cilantro isn't basil. Basil does not go in taco salad. When you hear "basil" and "taco" in the same sentence -- buyer beware.

Ask the Experts

2007-11-07T17:43:00.001-05:00

I posted an "Ask the Editors" question on a popular industry food magazine this morning. The question went as follows: "What makes cilantro so special?" The editors responded with:

Thank you for your inquiry. I am special for many reasons. I feel inventive. I’ve got motion, restrained emotion. I use my arms, I use my leaves, I use my seeds, I use my side-step, I use my fingers, I even, on occasion, have been known to use my imagination. I’d like to make you see that there's no herb here. No herb like me. I'm special, so special. I’ve simply got to have some of your attention, give it to me.
Love,
Cilantro

At least cilantro loves itself (and I'm sure his mom thinks he's special -- bitch).

In the spirit of full disclosure, this is in reference to another question that came in, when I worked at the same popular industry food magazine, that went "What makes cinnamon so special?" Sure, what makes all foods so special?

But the question at hand is, what makes cilantro so special in the skunk of the earth way, not in the mull me some red wine, garnish my cappuccino, serve as the je ne sais quoi (I'm learning French, more on what makes French special later) for any number of, largely, Midwestern-Mex-inspired chili recipes way.

For me it's a different kind of je ne sais quoi, the Platonic ideal of awful, manifest in that stupid little herb. At a certain point, things must be described in relation to other things, right?, so, for instance, one way I could describe other foods is by how far away they are from the flavor of cilantro (the flavor of awful); a simple vanilla panna cotta would score very well here, having nothing whatsoever to do with the flavors of cilantro. Can't quite explain why, just know vanilla panna cotta doesn't taste like cilantro.

For a lot of people the stuff tastes like soap. I myself haven't eaten a lot of soap, and my folks, moderate-conservatives as they might be, never insisted I try it, even when using phrases like "I f##$&ing hate cilantro." But, I have a vague sense of what soaps generally taste like: it's slipped into my mouth while showering or washing my face, or whatever it might be, plus they (they) say that some high percentage of taste is smell, and I definitely know what aggregate soap smells like, so that adds to the idea that I know what soap tastes like as well. Despite a general idea of this, I only vaguely taste it when eating cilantro.

Again, what I really taste is awfulness. From it's texture, (cilantro-y awful), to it odor (pungently offensive) to it's flavor (Platonic idea of terrible) it's just sort of vaguely herbaceous and, here's one of the main problems, completely overwhelming.

I hate cilantro with a consuming passion. I think it's important to determine why we (the royal we) hate things, you know, in the spirit of fairness. Why we love things can (and maybe should) remain a mystery, lest we deconstruct the epistemological foundation on which that love might not have known it stood. But hate, that's a "bad thing" or, certainly a lot of hate is really bad. Perhaps if we figure out why we hate a thing we can 1) quit hating it 2) come to terms with that hate or 3) if the hate is valid, spread that hate with the utmost determination.

Jury's still out for me on where this hate will go, but, I think I've figured out the nature of my hate:

1) Platonic ideal of "tastes bad"
2) Overwhelms every dish it's in with its badness
3) Increased popularity in kitchens (both home and professional) across the country, counter-intuitively paralleling the rise in educated food consumers with discriminating palates
4) Frequently served with what would otherwise be some of my favorite dishes/cuisines: salsa -- LOVE tomatoes; everything Indian, everything Thai, everything "South of the border"
5) Makes me an outcast, constantly chastised by my bigoted friends

and I would urge any of you cilantro haters out there to do the same.

How To Cope, an Introduction

2007-10-28T19:11:00.001-04:00

First thing's first. If we're going to hate something, we'll need some strategies to cope with this hate. As with anything, we have nearly limitless psychological, physical and spiritual tools or paths at our disposal to help us in this effort. First, we'll need to answer two questions: 1) why this deep hate of something so ostensibly innocuous, if not beautiful and delicious to much of the world and 2) once 1 is settled we can ask what a good solution to this predicament would be, especially if you, like me, otherwise enjoy food of all kinds. Whether to take pride in this hate, the sort-of punk hero solution, mitigate this hate, tricky work indeed, or accept the hate, the would-be Zen approach. Each has its own merits, and it is for each cilantro hater to decide for him/herself which is most apropos for his/her singular cilantro hating reality.

In the coming weeks and months I'll walk you through some strategies I'm exploring and, of course, some anecdotal and photographic evidence of these journeys. Following this introductory course in me and you vs. cilantro and its kin and how to cope, this blog shall take on other subjects such as loving heirloom tomatoes and feeling solidly indifferent towards fiddlehead ferns (with cilantro, of course, remaining the thematic thread); afterall, how could I or you or anyone so passionately hate something as much as cilantro without loving so much else, in fact most else, of nature's bounty, as foodies insist on calling it, or food, as I like to think of it.