Busboy

That's a pretty bizarre hypothetical. Your point is true regarding our yuppie friends Tom and Jane. However, many, or even most people can't afford to shop wherever they want. Or if they do, it means giving up something else important - a nice pair of sneakers, a night out at the movies, an extra few bucks for the church, whatever. They have to strike a compromise, shopping at Costco so they can do something else with the money they save. Sure, you can argue that they're "buying groceries at Costco and Walmart...by choice, not as a necessity," and are therefore "lazy," and by your tone, morally suspect. But that's a cheap generalization, and ignores the economic reality most people face.

(Emphasis mine) Why is that lazy? What if the packaged mozzerella and premade sausages are adequate for their purposes, and the savings offered at Costco is significant enough to make a difference in their monthly budget? For instance, I can no longer afford to be spending $1000 a month on groceries for a family of four. Significant cuts need to be made, and one of them is likely to be shopping at the farmer's market. We simply cannot afford to spend twice as much on our lettuce and apples, regardless of their organic fabulousness. Do I feel bad to be taking business away from the producers? Sure. But I have other things to spend my money on, like bills and shoes for the kids. That's fair but let's exclude the true economic hardship cases from the argument. There is no doubt that the majority of people buying groceries at Costco and Walmart are doing so by choice, not as a necessity. Clearly, the big chains are not generating billions of revenues from people in economic hardship. I think you have an unrealistic view of the cost of raising and feeding a family. An Median U.S. family income is about $43K/year. Deduct taxes, housing, transportation, utilities and other off-the-top expenses and the cost of feeding a family of four becomes a pretty significant budget item for an average family. I hit the farmers markets in season and easily drop $60-80 for premium produce, artisonal bread and the like, and then the run to Whole Foods for fresh fish, cheese, meat and whatever else hits $100 pretty quick. If my wife or I lost our jobs, this level of consumption would become untenable. It's easy to take shots at Wal-Mart shoppers, but it can start to look pretty shallow when phrases like "And yes, I consider them to be lazy if they make the decision to buy everything at Costco recognizing that they are not buying as high a quality product as they could because they don't want to make an extra trip to a store," start getting tossed around.

All true. It appeared to me, however, that cause and effect were becoming confused. I disagree with the idea that the decline in family dining is the direct result of the rise in Wal-Mart selling, or vice versa. I'd argue that both phenomena are the result of the post-war eveolution of the American economy, with its emphasis on efficiency and wealth at the expense of the non-monetary rewards of affluence. On the plus side, genetics, technology and advanced distribution strategies mean mean that more people have greater access to a large variety of inexpensive, hygenic, nutritious and even tasty (if you look for it) food than ever before. On the down side, that same economy demands an increasing amount of time and energy from the people who drive it forward, so people have less ability and inclination to take advantage of this bounty. An interesting paradox is that, in many cases, it appears to be the most productive (by pure economic measure, we can argue how much attorneys and consultants "produce" on a more wholistic scale at another time) who have the least time for dinner.

I am sorry for those of you that seem to equate food at home with tasteless glop. It was not the case in my hme when I was a kid or very many of the kids I knew. I am pretty sure that we all ate fairly weel, some better than others, but no tv dinners (I never ate one until I was 20 and in college). The point I was trying to make, was that food quality is a separate issue from the quality of the family dining experience. That observations about Wal-Mart should be separate from observations on the breakdown of the American Dining Tradition. Home cooking wasn't tasteless glop, but it was, often, the kind of convenience foods identified in this thread with coporate food production -- frozen vegetables and Chun King Chinese food when we were feeling exotic. Nonetheless, the family dinners were a great part of my childhood. And mom, being southern, could fry a chicken up and put out a mean batch of corn bread when she was in the mood, too.

i missed the part about the full-time job in there. That's there, too. Got home about 6:30 and got dinner on the table about 8. My wife also works full-time. I enjoy the cooking, but I can see how someone else might rather just make a martini and pick up the phone.

Interspersed with chasing the kids about their homework, doing a little housecleaning, taking the occasional phone call and other evening domestic tasks, I'd say it's pretty easy to spend an hour and a half cooking a good meal from scratch. Maybe an hour if you power through the whole thing, maybe more, non-consecutively, if you add in a half-hour earlier in the day to spatchcock and marinate a chicken or do some other long-term prep. This is not insignificant, but we usually enjoy it. For what it's worth, we watch the news during dinner prep and a common ultimate goal is to get the dinner on the table just as Seinfeld ends. No TV during dinner (except the weekly "anarchy dinner").

My personal experience is quite the opposite: I went to high school with numerous Asian immigrants who were in that economic bracket -- by every definition, they were the urban poor -- and in many cases I dined in their homes. And they cared mightily about food; they had very strong family dining traditions. They were some of the proudest people I ever met, with well kept (albeit modest) homes and beautiful (to me at least) dinner tables. Meanwhile, my rich Upper East Sider friends mostly ate pizza and burgers and never saw their families. My mother's family was "poor" -- grandpa was a cotton mill worker, a day laborer and liquor store clerk over the years -- but family dinner was very serious. They didn't have much, but they had Japanese china and silver plate that came out evey Sunday, for chicken, biscuits and gravy. Today, I'm in a Central American neighborhood and the families seem to take it very seriously, as well. My son, who goes to a private school with children of families much wealthier than ours, confirms your burger/pizza/absent parents observation. Though love of family didn't keep the punk from whining about having to eat fresh cod and garlic polenta tonight. Not to get too deep into politics ans sociology, but there's a huge gap between new immigrants (or other poor) with intact families who feel that they're on the way up, and poor or lower-middle class families which are frankly hopeless and/or dysfunctional. There's a level of discipline, support and cooperation in the former that isn't present in the latter, and the effects are obvious at a number of levels, dining habits among them.

I think the food quality decline and the ritual importance of dining are two different, if related, issues. I grew up in a traditional family in the 60s and 70s with a family dining ritual that I have done my best to pass along to my own children. That being said, family dinners often (I didn't say "always," mom) consisted of tasteless, over-processed convenience food. I never at a fresh green bean before I left home, fish sticks were an important part of my diet. Public dining was for years a function of cost, not quality -- the only places I could afford to gather with my friends being cheap dives. But again, being among friends, in an atmosphere condusive to lingering and impassioned discussion was the more important part of the dinner. If Industrial Food, Inc. can be blamed for dumbing down the quality of our food in an endless search for visual perfection and a storage life bordering on immortality, we, ourselves, share the blame for the destruction of the dining experience.

Can't see how that works. Sextant and other navigation instruments maybe. Clocks may have told them when it was time for a G&T. I'm pretty sure those navigation instruments don't work particularly well if you don't know what time it is. But I'm no navigation expert. I'm happy to let the wristwatch tangent die without another round of debate. I've made my point as well as I can make it. In addition let me remind everybody that we're trying very hard not to have a referendum on all things American and capitalistic here. Let's try to use each post on this thread to talk about food. Thanks. Naval clocks were necessary for measuring longitude. Latitude (north-south location) had been measured for hundreds of years by measuring the distance of the north star above the horizon with a sextant, but longitude was harder. The basic idea, as I get it, is that if you know the day of the year, and the exact time the sun was supposed to rise in Greenwich, England, where the observatory was, and the exact time it rose wherever you were you could tell where you were. In other words, if sunrise were known to be 7AM in Greenwich on December 8, but sunrise caught your ship at 10:43, you could calculate how far west of Greenwich you were. This also speaks to why degrees of latitude and longitude are broken into minutes and seconds. [Apologies -- back to food next post]

Both the Georgetown and the 14th and P Street locations have beaucoup mushrooms and peppers, at all times. This weekend they had cepes, shiitakis, oysters, wood ears and a couple others. Their herb selection is a little overpriced, but generally well-stocked. I've never known them not to have fennel or flatleaf parsley. Not to shill for WF, but they have always delivered for me on the fungus front.

Having spent endless hours chasing fine food in DC, I'll throw in my 2 cents... Bagels: The Bagels at Georgetown Bagel Bakery -- across the street from Georgetown Park -- are as good as 95% of the bagels you will find in New York, and unquestionably the best in the city. Dense, yeasty and fresh. GBB just began offering some excellent bialys, as well. Fish: The Cannons in Georgetown seems to have gone downhill in the last few years. Dean&DeLuca, in addition to offering a half-dozen kinds of cured salmon to top the bagels you bought across the street at GBB, usually has a limited selection of extraordinarily fresh (and high-priced) fish. This weekend they had the most beautiful rockfish I have ever seen, as well as sashimi-grade tuna. The Georgetown Fresh Fields seems to have better fish than the other locations of the store, for reasons not clear to me, a much larger selection than D&D and a large portion of it just as fresh. Having passed on the rockfish (dammit) I ended up picking up some wonderful cod from them last night. Meet: I like the Union Meets in Eastern Market, a real old-time-y butcher where the guys behind the counter have opinions on, say, the best pork for homemade sausage -- and have the casings for sale as well. A good place to pick up stock bones at a reasonable price, onglets, large and odd cuts. The Georgetown Whole Foods has dry-aged beef, which I find dissapointing, but better than most available. Wagshalls' has been a little disappointing, too. Cheese & Charcouterie: Dean and DeLuca, hands down. Asian: Da Hua, on H st in Chinatown. My favorite source for dried jelleyfish, frozen dumplings and soy sauce by the liter. Good vegetables, interesting meet, scary fish. Not as good for non-Chinese Asian ingredients. Produce: The farmers markets can't be beat. Too bad it will be months before we move out of the root vegetable phase. I second all positive comments on Vace and Litteri's, too, with Litteri's being a great Saturday morning errand. The other vendors in the farmers' market there range from exotic to scary, well worth exploring. Good luck, good eating.

Isn't that the classic "Cincinatti Chili?" I usually just go through the cabinets and see what's lying around and what kind of mood I'm in... I always start with cubed steak, usually a chuck or something with a little fat to it. We live in a Latin neighborhood, so there's and endless variety of fresh and dried peppers, and we always pour in lots of beer and tomatoe paste and red beans. Once we get it fire-y hot, sometimes I put in something aromatic, just to add a little depth: cinnamon or cardamum, a little sugar, cilantro (leaves), maybe a little garam masala. Cornbread on the side, grated chees and crema centroamericano for toppings. And when we get to the end of the batch, it's time for the world's best chili dogs, buns roasted on the side, thank you. Edited to add Cincinnati Chili recipe. Note the tip at the bottom.

Hardcover, because they stay open better and you can set the hot saucepan down on one page while you study the other page to find out what to do next. Also, hardbound books tend to spend less time wandering outside the kitchen.

Gravlax is simple, impressive and can be done days ahead of time. And tastes great.

When "mom" has stubble and a tattoo When even the plastic flowers are dead When the server is wearing 15 promtional buttons When the entire staff is assembled around a table singing "happy birthday."

According to CNN, there were 45,000 attendees at the GOP Convention in Philadelphia, 15,000 media types and 20,000 protesters. On another note, I can't imagine that if you did an in-depth survey you wouldn't find statistically significant differences between diners of different political persuasions -- especially if you went beyond R&D and defined people on, say, a 5-point scale. On the other hand, once you cross-tabbed for ethnic, regional and income differences you might find that politics is not actually the underlying factor.

Fighting for Truth, Justice, and a good meal. Washington needs us... It's worth noting, as we discuss the dining habits of politicians and activists, that of all the neighborhoods offering a variety of restaurants, Capitol Hill is undoubtedly the worst in the city.

Speaking as one of this group (consultants, certainly not money guys) - I will guarantee you that I will be on eGulllet next summer soliciting opinions for good restaurants in Boston and not going to Friday's or some big tourist trap. Maybe I'll have a chance to join you...

I just call mom.

One thing to keep in mind when making gross generalizations about either party is that delegate selections are usually weighted by geography and past voting records. The Republican Convention will draw more heavily from southern, rural and midewstern states than the Democratic Convention. In addition, various mechanisms of the selection process will weight the delegate selection towards "Republican" regions of an individual state. Relatively few members of the California Republican delegation, for example, are likely to be from Downtown LA, or the Bay Area. Likewise, when the Democrats go to Boston, there will be proportionately (compared to their share of the state population) fewer delegates from the Central Valley. Regarding the fact that delegates (speaking bipartisanly, here) have relatively high incomes, my experience with activists and elected officials almost anywhere is that they tend to be almost aggressively insular, because of the demands of their constituencies. Not to pick on the President but he's a perfect example. Money guys and consultants --ie, non-delegate attendees -- are much more likely worry about fine or ethnic dining. Also, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of these guys don't really care where they are. This is like Super Bowl tickets: getting to the Game and hanging out with your buddies is the main thing, everything else is just gravy.

There are always going to be a variety of arrangements and venues for a prolonged and widespread event of this nature (hotel banquets, private parties at restaurants, catered events in public spaces, etc.), but the most unique thing they came up with for the 1992 Democratic convention in New York was the "Restaurant Week" concept. At the urging of Tim Zagat and Joe Baum, the NY CVB arranged for 100 of the city's best retaurants to offer three-course lunches for $19.92. From NYCVisit.com: The minor scandal in all this was that New Yorkers, upon getting wind of the Restaurant Week promotion, secured many of the best reservations for themselves within a day or two of the initiative being announced. The delegates never stood a chance competing against the home team for tables. My recollection from attending the 1992 Dem convention convention (and 1988 in Atlanta) is that the major beneficiaries of the convention are the bars closest to or in the delegate hotels. Like conventioneers everywhere, these folks are mostly interested in having a good time and seeing old friends, not in seeking out the finest NYT 4-stars. Also look for a lot of action in obvious tourist places like Little Italy, Chinatown and maybe that deli where Meg Ryan faked the orgasm. On top of that will be layered a bunch of activities geared to targeted subgroups -- big donors, African Americans, labor (or the GOP equivalent thereof) which will likely take place in swanker locations. I remember Tatou and something in the basement of the Whitney from 1992. Expect the Rainbow Room to be booked. Regional theme bars are popular for takeover events -- the Texas folks take over a barbecue place for a night, the West Virginians I was with in 1992 took over a C&W bar. An finally, there is that thin layer of swells, sophistos, media titans and monied gourmands who don't get to The City that often and want to take advantage of it --or who do and want to throw their weight around. They are already calling Daniel for reservations. And book now (I'd expect) if you want to eat at Lugar's, Smith and Wollensky or any other steakhouse that week. For the record, in 1992 I worked until midnight most nights and spent the hours until closing staring at the cat-suited waitresses in the Whiskey Bar, and then cajoled a bunch of friends into a night at Montrachet the day the convention broke up. I think they'll make a difference, even in NYC (they overwhelmed Atlanta).

Timberlake's and Childe Harold? Or am I missing one? Mr. Eagan's, RIP. Fox and Hounds, the LB (Lucky Bar), to name a few. I didn't stop in any of these today, mind you. Ah, yes. I was thinking to linearly along the Connecticut Avenue strip.

Timberlake's and Childe Harold? Or am I missing one? Mr. Eagan's, RIP.

I would expect that the size and location of the jurisdiction enacting the ban has a significant effect. When Montgomery County adopted its ban, patros could easily slip across the line to DC or a neighboring county -- or move to one of the independent jurisdictions within the county itself. If DC enacts a ban, it will reinforce the Montgomery County effort while MC reinforces DC's legislation. If you can't smoke anywhere in California, most people aren't likely to drive to Oregon or Nevada just to light up. I wonder, too, if the effect on DC will be less because it has a greater percentage of "destination" bars, restaurants and neighborhoods. Anecdotal evidence in DC and the NYC thread suggests that neighborhood spots are hardest hit -- if you can't light up in the "common" living room, why not stay at home in your own living room. But very few people, I think, are likely to decide to stay in Gaithersburg, because they can smoke there rather than make a night of it in Adams Morgan or Georgetown. The effect on the local dives is the most profound and, to many, the most unfortunate. That being said, screw the whole idea. Most restaurants already ban smoking; there ought to be a place where non-violent cretins (like myself, after six or eight beers) can have a smoke without having to inhale lectures and condescention along with our nictotine. It's still, they say, a free country.

Lust first. Helps you work up an appetite. NPR's "Talk of the Nation" did a riff on this last week -- interviewing an author of another book on gluttony. Seems to be a trend here...