Prohibition ends again in Chicago

No longer limited to speakeasies in Chicago

Chicago has lifted its two-year old ban on fois gras, and the decision is a triumph of good sense. Bravo, Chicago, and bravo, Mayor Daley for seeing this as the ‘silliest ordinance we ever passed’.

It’s fitting, though, that this enlightened decision comes just a few months shy of the 75^th anniversary of America’s disastrous prohibition lesson, when we deemed the Volstead Act unconstitutional and brought the booze back. I thought we’d sorted this kind of legislation out already. California, are you listening? In 2012, we Californians are scheduled to have our right to support producers of this traditional and storied delicacy stripped away in the name of animal welfare, while the Smithfields of the world are allowed to continue torturing and overmedicating pork in far more obscene conditions.

In this country, it’s a tough task to gather support for a ban on CAFOs when the food in question is cheap KFC buckets, supermarket ham and eerily cheap beef. But fois gras? Expensive and ‘elitist’ food, made by small producers without any powerful corporate interests to pay lobbyists? PETA salivates at such an easy target. Ban away!

If we’re going to go around banning things in the name of public health and animal cruelty, we would gain more fitting historical inspiration by revisiting the original intentions of the Pure Food and Drug and the Meat Inspection Acts of 1906. This Act introduced regulation of meat processing and food production processes and ended horrendous sanitation transgressions made without conscience and thrust upon ignorant consumers. Are you enjoying your rot-free hotdogs, completely devoid of sawdust or chloroform? Thank the Meat Inspection Act!

Upton Sinclair would find Smithfield’s processing plants in North Carolina and elsewhere disturbingly familiar today. A word of warning – if you’d prefer to steer away from mental imagery invoked by phrases like “rivers of pig shit”, then wait until later to read this Rolling Stone article about Smithfield, which produces the majority of industrial-raised pork in the United States. But find some time, and read it. It’s important to understand what we’re up against, and how much more effective than legislated bans our consumer choices can be.

Your dollar is much better than a ‘silly ordinance’ for punishing bad practices while rewarding conscientious natural producers.

Fantasy airline food

Not long ago, food served at ballparks was limited to boiled hot dogs, stale popcorn, and watery beer served in little waxy paper cups. Inside the sealed-off environment of the stadium, there were no culinary alternatives. No barbecue, no roast chicken, no garlic fries, and not even the little ice cream sundaes in the pygmy plastic helmets.

But sports fans didn't seem to mind, because they hadn’t driven out to the ballpark for the slimey hot dogs-- the game itself was obviously the draw, and they'd be there notwithstanding the Cracker Jacks. The vendors hawking their nachos and corn dogs were simply opportunists, taking advantage of a pre-assembled crowd of customers to sell them some basic, mostly mediocre food while they enjoyed some baseball.

Suffering the same plight as other hostage eaters in cinemas, theatres, and prisons, these early sports fans weren't accustomed to better choices, and never had their expectations of grotty food challenged. And so the squeeze cheese flowed on.

Looking up into the skies above those stadiums those many years ago, there were other people, as there are now, in a state of genuine captivity, who were locked into pressurized cabins, strapped into their chairs, and forced to breathe hours of recycled air while being hurtled over oceans. But strangely, these airborne cousins of the baseball fan did not eat hot dogs. They ate roast beef, shrimp cocktails, and lobster tails. They ate from real china with silverware and knives and with fresh flowers in vases on their tables. They drank coffee and cocktails, and had cloth napkins. Air travel was a classy affair, and food was designed to reflect the brass-button blazer occasion upon which so few passengers were lucky enough to embark. It was a rare and treasured privilege, and the food served onboard was prepared appropriately.

And somehow, it seemed appropriate, this dichotomy between the mass class and the airborne elite; it made sense that everyday events deserved less gastronomic attention than 30,000-foot flights of technological wonder.

Something changed.

Air travel hasn’t been glamorous for ages -- the days of dressing up for the stroll down the jetway are probably gone forever. This has increasingly been the case, and airline quality continues to ooze into a miserable cattle-class torment as airlines eliminate in-flight meals and start charging fifteen bucks for luxuries like being able to take luggage. Food has long since been a casualty.

It's driving me to desperation; I'm an inch away from pulling an Alice Waters and packing my own gourmet food whenever I travel, to prevent myself the indignity of succumbing to another fourteen-dollar musty sandwich crammed with overcooked battery chicken and wilted shreds of dry iceberg lettuce that haunted my recent trip through San Diego.

Meanwhile, though, ballpark food has undergone a renaissance - the sporting pauper has swapped places with the flying prince, and now stadiums are good places to find decent barbecue, legit bratwurst with good brown mustard, New England clam chowder, Cuban roast pork sandwiches, Texas chili, Quebecois poutine, Philly cheesesteaks and countless other real, properly-made, albeit deliciously unhealthy, ballpark foods.

Why can't airlines find a way to serve real food again? Fuel costs are strangling carriers large and small and competition is tighter than ever, of course, but there are some airlines managing to squeeze quality service into their business model. If your experience has been limited to US-based carriers and budget European ones, you might find that claim hard to believe.

But a quick browse through airlinemeals.net shows that glamor isn't dead. British Midland, Air France, Singapore Airlines - they all perform an ancient and long-forgotten practice.

They still serve food.

In coach.

On short-haul domestic flights.

Even more amazingly, these airlines are also paying through the nose for fuel like everyone else. But they've managed not to allow themselves to forget that passengers are living, breathing adults who require food, not the option to buy bags of juvenile snack food. What's to credit this? Some Eurocentric cultural superiority pitch? Governments willing to bail out their national airlines for the sake of their culinary reputation? I don't buy it.

British Midland served me real ice cream last year, and after growing accustomed to the tortuous heartless feed that American Airlines had served me on my eastward flight, I thought I was hallucinating.

I would gladly pay for basic, real, hot food if it were available, but even the option of genuine food has been budgeted away by American carriers. Am I alone?

Rock and rock oatmeal

I'll bet Keith Richards eats a lot of oatmeal. There has to be a balance in his life hiding somewhere, counteracting the hard-riding lifestyle, right?

I'd had five solid days and nights of corporate 'hospitality', rife with open bars staffed by polyester tuxedos, with boxed conference lunches designed to offend the fewest possible palates, and with an endless stream of fried this-and-thats served on paper napkins under the glow of projected corporate logos. The ubiquitous steamship round roast, more appropriate in the Flintstone's drive-in than under a heat lamp, the sterno-fueled quesadilla reheating stations, the pallid fry-tinted mountains of sliders, eggrolls, pasta salads and little thumb-sized pastry tarts filled with various salty meats or glazed fruit -- it was an overload. I'd steered well clear of the syrupy Crayola-hued cocktails served via ice-sculpture luge to the brays of delight by the herd of onlookers, but despite my attempts to derive a sane diet from the onslaught of decadence, my week had left me listless and fatigued.

On my last day in town, with the few hours left before I'd be boarding my flight home, I waddled across the street from my hotel in San Diego's squeaky-clean Gaslamp district to Mary Jane's Coffee Shop. Only after a few sips of my coffee did I make the connection between the Jim Morrison playing overhead, the edgy decor and the kitschy flatscreens playing episodes of The Brady Bunch in the cafe booths; I realized that this diner is actually attached to the Hard Rock Hotel. And as it turns out, this temple to debaucherous loud living gave me just what I needed - a simple bowl of oatmeal.

Sometimes a little bland nutritive comfort is exactly what an hors-d'oeuvre-addled body needs. Porridge is as simple as it gets, and is too humble to be reformulated, infused, or otherwise glamorized. It's plain and simple horsefeed, and even to call it 'vanilla' would be a moniker too ambitious. Oatmeal doesn't want to be craved. It just wants to provide nourishment. Quietly.

And so it did, with just a couple of raisins and some Paint It, Black to give me a wholesome start to my day, and to give me a culinary breath of fresh air. Keith would be proud.