I can't STAND Jonathan Gold: Playa Edition

OK so I'm driving home, listening to KCRW, catching up on all the mindblowingly depressing news going on these days. I'm impressed by how forthright and crystal clear the communique is from Ben Rhodes (Deputy NSA for Strategic Communications) on our participation in Libya (he should be the White House Press Secretary). I'm inspired by their story on Buzz Williams, the coach of dark horse NCAA men's bball team the Marquette Gold Eagles (eh?). And then I hear Evan Kleiman come on, and she introduces Jonathan Gold. Great.

You know how they say that when you shake a full bottle of water, it makes no noise, but that the half empty bottle's the loudest? Jonathan Gold is a half empty gallon jug of water. Which is to say, sure, he's bigger than a pint-sized container, and indeed he does hold more than a quart's worth of content, but somehow to those in the know he still comes off as more ignorant and clueless than he ought to be. Yeah he knows a bit about food, and has eaten his way around this city, but somehow he just... really doesn't know his shit. Which would be fine, honestly. I have no problem with a lack of knowledge; babies are dumb as bricks but I love them anyway because they aren't self-promoting, pretentious hacks. It's the way he's never just "Jonathan Gold"--he's always "Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold"--the way his fat face bloviates as the source of all gastronomic enlightenment; the way he and his enablers create this cult of personality around him, this thick mist of SoCal trendfucker pheromones that unfailingly attracts flocks of mindless groveling Angeleno "foodies"... it's disgusting.

OK so I'm being a bit harsh. And, to be sure, I'd rather go to a restaurant he recommends than one he dislikes. Maybe I'm seizing on this a little because... well because bitching about TEPCO or Gaddafi isn't likely to change anything one bit. But come ON, Gold!

On Good Food today, he discusses the newest, hippest, trendiest $$$$ Latin restaurant to open up in LA called Playa. I always find these discussions fascinating to picture in my head because Gold looks to me something like a long-haired, balding mix between Dwight Schrute and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and were he not "Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold," I'm not sure he could even get seated at half of these types of restaurants. Anyway, he's talking talking talking about this place when he starts to discuss Chef Sedlar's brilliant "new kind of entree" called "Maize Cakes". He says they're not quite like a tortilla and not quite like a huarache, and they're made daily from freshly ground corn which is something he's not sure anybody else does in this country does. Really? Really?

OK, first of all, they sound just like glorified open-faced arepas to me. Bitch I know you know what they are. These delicious Argentinian sandwich-like pockets of pleasure aren't that hard to find in LA (I can think of Bolivar Cafe in Santa Monica and Coupa Cafe in Beverly Hills), and you're fucking Jonathan Gold. Tortillas and huaraches? That's it? That's all the context you can muster?

arepas

Ok fine so arepas aren't always made from fresh corn daily, but guess what is? The chorreadas at Las Delicias in Van Nuys. Nobody else grinds corn daily in this country my ass... nobody else grinds corn daily and has the gall to sell tiny bit-sized entrees for $11 is more like it. The chorreadas at Las Delicias are delicious, crispy-on-the-outside, fragrant-and-moist-on-the-inside, fresh ground corn pancakes that you get at a fraction of the Maize Cakes' price and are twice as big. It's also true that these chorreadas don't come with pork belly confit or burrata cheese, but they do come with a cultured clotted cream called natilla that tastes almost like tangy yogurty cheesecake which complements rather than overwhelms the corn. And it's not like this is some obscure joint I discovered while chilling with my immigrant Costa Rican friends. This restaurant was highlighted by your colleagues at the LA Times and has been featured on the front page of yelp in a review written by yours truly. It's not that hard to get your head out of your own ass, Gold, you should try it some time.

See my number one consistent gripe with Gold is that he is just completely out of touch. I appreciate that he thinks of himself as a critic of the culinary arts, which is to say, he thinks of himself as some kind of art critic, valuing creativity and putting a quantifiable monetary premium on food that has it. But 1) he's totally out of touch with the relative costs of food since he doesn't pay for the shit he reviews and 2) the similarities between food and art are so superficial you have to be intentionally thick to functionally ignore the differences. Yes, he professes to enjoy the cheap and ethnic eats too, but you always get the sense that he does so only to accrue street cred like some Thierry Guetta of the food trucks. It's also clear as day that he judges foods that are exotic to him from a totally different platform than that which he judges things he feels he can claim to be his own. For example, traditional Ethiopian or Sichuan cuisine is great as is, but traditional French? Duck a l'orange? He'd speet in the kitchen's generál directión! Somehow, exotic foods must be exalted and protected as such, but simultaneously could never qualify as an "artistic" endeavor (I'd like to see him pay $350 for Chinese food). He's kind of a... neo-Romantic, Savanna-conquering noble-savage-loving food Rudyard Kipling.

Anyway, back to art vs food. Art can sometimes shock, terrify, sadden, disgust. Who the hell wants to eat disgusting or shocking food? Art is not utilitarian like food; food should be physically and spiritually filling, it should occupy a defined economic niche in the marketplace, and it MUST always be very tasty. Gold has stated himself that he loves restaurants that might hit or miss with their food, but are always trying to create something new. I dunno bout you, but I'd rather eat old-fashioned food that tastes good and is priced fairly than eat new food that is neither.

And since pictures are good and I can't find any of Las Delicias's chorreadas, enjoy a picture of a delicious cemita from nearby Cemitas Poblanas in Van Nuys.

you could buy 2 of these for 1 Maize Cake

OK so this has nothing to do with food but

I just wanted to put this here. It's edited from a bunch of comments I wrote on a friend's blog. In short, he was wondering if Asians hate Asian Americans, based on his own experiences in Japan as a Japanese American (they consider his lack of perfect fluency in Japanese a source of shame) and the skepticism and occasional hostility apparently some Chinese feel towards Gary Locke (he's apparently been called a "traitor", a "guy who has forgotten his ancestors", and my favorite, "a fake foreign devil who cannot even speak Chinese"). I ended up spewing a bunch of crap that I shall now try to present as a standalone essay. Wish me luck.


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Dear Koji,

We are, ultimately, Americans. That's all there really is to it. On a questionnaire, if we could only tick one of two boxes, "Asian" or "American"... we'd be delusional to pick "Asian". It's confusing and difficult enough for us, living here, dealing with all that perpetual foreigner or model minority shit, to establish a strong sense of identity. And certainly, there are nuances and such that could/should be fleshed out at some point. But, for the sake of this argument, the bottom line is... we're Americans, plain and simple.


So it follows that anybody who thinks of us as being traitors to anything that's not America or American is just ignorant/misinformed. We literally cannot be traitors to Taiwan or Japan or whatever because we cannot betray that to which we are not of a party. Our first obligation is to our own country, our own civics, politics, language/culture/current events, etc. They forget that they have no right to criticize our Japanese/Chinese just as we have no right to criticize their English. Try that next time: if they make fun of your Japanese, just rag on their Engrish.


If they're confused because we look like them, they're as stupid as, say, a tea-partier thinking Obama is actually a secret Kenyan Muslim OR a Kenyan Muslim thinking Obama's a traitor. It's just plain dumb, and we should either rectify their attitude or just pay no attention to them.


On another note, I find that the more nationalistic a country or a person is, the more likely s/he'd be antagonistic towards ASAM's. Obviously they don't understand us and what we are, but more importantly, they don't understand America, they have kind of a culturally solipsistic view of the world, and on some level I think some of them even want to "repossess" us in the name of their native country. Mainland Chinese are uber-nationalistic these days, so to hear them talk about Locke this way is no surprise. Shit, I've been dealing with their "repossessive" attitudes towards  Taiwan and all Taiwanese for years. There are also plenty of laid-back, globe-trotter-type Chinese/Japanese/Asians who are open to other cultures and perspectives and such. They tend to be far less nationalistic, and, no surprise, much more accepting and willing to understand ASAMs.

[another commenter points out that she legitimately feels 50/50 and that self-identification depends on the individual]

You're right, it does ultimately depend on how we as individuals define ourselves. Being a Third Culture Kid and having myself morphed from self-identifying as Taiwanese, to being on the fence, to being American first and foremost today, I respect and totally understand how there are folks like you who still need to flesh things out for themselves. But ultimately, I think that these folks are just in limbo: one cannot live ambivalently for one's entire life. I also think that the definition of self cannot be a purely conscious endeavor: the suburban white teenager may *think* he's black, but everybody knows (including himself, deep down inside) that he's really white. Similarly, the Taiwanese that lives in the US, marries in the US, raises kids, retires, and dies in the US while only ever "visiting" Taiwan *may* choose to think that he lives in limbo, but in reality, he has long since become American... he just doesn't want to admit it to himself, for one reason or another. Actions, after all, speak much louder than words.

So yeah, given that people in the middle 1) live in a relatively temporary state of being, and 2) compose only a very small portion of the population at large, I'd say that for the sake of argument... all people belong to one country or another.

There is another factor at play which I barely touched upon earlier that I think doesn't get nearly enough consideration, and that is the understanding of America itself, the very concept of America. It's so vague, it's taken for granted by Americans, and it's completely misunderstood by non-Americans. It is as distinct as it is in flux. And even as we have become a country that takes less and less of the world's tired and poor, without a doubt we have been and still continue to be the number one melting pot. Few countries in the world are as multi-cultural as ours; no country is to the same degree. You can be as culturally Japanese as you want here and *still* be American. It's amazing. This is part of what makes it hard for everybody to define what we immigrants to this country are: the cab driver with broken English that prays to Mecca five times a day and eats more chickpeas than beef... is he or isn't he American? I say, as long as he lives here, wants to be here, and truly loves this country, who can deny him his American-ness? On the other hand, if he lived in Japan or Taiwan or China, neither him nor his children would ever be accepted as one of theirs.

So yeah, basically... it's confusing for us because our "motherland" cultures are very exclusive while the American "culture" is extraordinarily inclusive. You can be anything and still be American... you can't be anything and still be Japanese/Chinese. Does it make it harder for us to be Asian, and MUCH easier for us to be American? Yes. It's the one country in the world where, as long as you have a passport, anyone can claim to belong here and no one can legitimately dispute that fact.

I know that my example of the Muslim American represents an idealistic vision of what it means to be American. But that is in itself so significant! How crazy is it, that that is our idealistic view of what it means to be American? I remember in college (I minored in Japanese Studies) once, a TA hosted a discussion on what it means to be Japanese. I advocated that self-identification is key. He, some hippy-long-haired white dude*, then asked the class how people in Japan would react if he walked around asserting himself as Japanese on the streets of Tokyo, speaking Japanese, understanding Japan, being white. The class laughed at the image and dismissed me and my idea. All of this is not to say that Japan is particularly racist or xenophobic, because the same situation would probably be the case in Taiwan or India or Germany or whatever, but rather that America is truly extraordinary, and that our ideals can even be considered unnatural, running contrary to the grain of human sociological tendencies.

Anyway, so yeah. Mandarin is my mother tongue. I prefer chopsticks when I eat salads. I grew up in Taiwan, and shit, my skin is yellow. But noone here would ever question my American-ness. And so after almost three decades of searching and hand-wringing and ridiculously self-absorbed angst, there is no doubt in my mind; since I live here now and plan to keep living here and I've got a blue passport, I am American.

*I loved that TA. Best TA ever.