Best of RG IV: The Man in the Bow Tie

The thrilling retrospective continues…and the voices are back.

“Gosh, Joanie, I’m feeling parched. I sure could use a milkshake,” goes Chachi. And just then, with the flawless timing accorded everyone in thirty-minute sitcoms, up walks Al. He’s wearing a bow tie and looking paternal. He’s holding a milkshake that looks like the milkshake to end all milkshakes, the milkshake you dream about at night: thick but not unsuckable through a straw, a pink imbued naturally with real strawberries, a mini-ziggurat of whipped cream, and a jaunty maraschino cherry on top.

“Al, that’s the coolest milkshake ever! How’d you learn to make it like that?” Joanie breathes with adoration.

“Well, Joanie, it took lots and lots of practice and experimentation. And it especially took determination, which I learned from a great man I once saw, a great man I emulate to this day…

Ack, there goes the screen, we’re feeling woozy, and then we straighten up and find ourselves in a Midtown Barnes & Noble:

April 5, 2004
Cook’s, Really Illustrated
Christopher Kimball is the editor of the most humorless, most anal, most absorbingly useful magazine ever, Cook’s Illustrated. In the long list of my random food influences–from the late, great Barton Rouse to the dire necessity of Cairo, where I was forced to pick basil out of parking lots–Cook’s Illustrated has probably taught me the most.

Not that I liked it. The magazine–ad-free, dense with text interspersed with faint little line drawings and often murky black-and-white photos–is distinctly unpalatable. Headlines are less than compelling: “Turkey Tetrazzini: Worth Saving?”

And maybe it’s a New England thing (HQ is in Boston), but they have zero sense of humor and are completely unwilling to admit that they take themselves too seriously. I recall exactly one wry turn of phrase, by Kay Rentschler. She proferred a shortcut that would “get you back to the cocktail cart in a jiffy.” She hasn’t written for the magazine since.

But after eight years of subscribing, I now sigh fondly when I read: “[DISH X] has a reputation for being heavy/greasy/bland/cafeteria-like. We tested 20/58/871 recipes to revive this obscure American staple/nostalgic standard/overwrought French classic…. I shake my head with wonder when the test kitchen cracks the case in the “What the Hell Is It?” (I’m paraphrasing) column about some now-extinct kitchen gadget discovered in a dusty cabinet. I duly wrap yet another item in plastic wrap, as recommended in the Reader’s Tips pages.

There is, however, one item that I still cannot bear: the editor’s letter, Mr. Kimball’s bimonthly words of wisdom. And boy, does he ladle on the wisdom. Every essay mentions his Vermont farm, crusty natives, joyful children bounding up the driveway, and some treacly lesson about humanity. I once got suckered into reading one that started with mention of his hippie galavanting in a VW bus. But after two columns of low-grade bohemian reverie, the story of course returned to present-day, with those beastly children bounding up the drive of the ol’ farmstead. I felt conned, and I haven’t read an editor’s letter since.

So, part of the reason I went to see this guy speak at Barnes & Noble last week was to see if he was as intensely annoying, smarmy and righteous as his editorial persona suggested.

After warming up the crowd by citing some statistics that made the crowd feel smug (number of minutes Americans want to spend cooking dinner: 15) and sharing some behind-the-scenes anecdotes (wacky salt-for-sugar-in-the-cheesecake pranks!), he showed this video that depicted the Cook’s staff discussing very seriously its mission, along with images of armies of blind taste-testers, clad in white and studiously nibbling things out of plastic cups. It all looked kind of like a “science” fair project I might’ve rigged up in fifth grade because I couldn’t be bothered with breeding fruit flies: One test component was always included twice, to check for tasters’ consistency, Kimball was quick to assure us. Also a little like those photos in science journals of work at the Kinsey Institute, of people in lab coats looking very, very objective about sex.

All the results that appeared so certain on the page–this balsamic vinegar, that butter, that supermarket cheddar–are now exposed as just the product of a bunch of people locked in a room. What about chacun a  son gout? What if it turned out I liked the third-rated cheese? I’d never know, because I always just bought the top-rated brand.

Then Mr. Kimball passed around little baggies of chocolate–three different kinds, in individual numbered plastic cups–and instructed us to taste them. He asked us all to vote on which we liked best, then praised us for getting it right.

Now, I know I spent too much time hemming and hawing in grad school with other cultural relativists (back in the day–the intellectual tide seems to have shifted in the last few years), but the word right gets my back up. Especially because the third chocolate, dismissed by Mr. Kimball as a pointlessly chi-chi boutique variety, was interesting, all winy and rich, and totally different from the other two more standard chocolates. I wouldn’t have baked brownies with it, but it wasn’t wrong, just like my interpretation of a text can’t ever be wrong–stupid, maybe, and betraying inexperience (Kimball also chortled over someone who actually preferred Aunt Jemima to real maple syrup), but not wrong.

The Man in the Bow Tie went on in this vein a little while longer, and he started to sound (to me, at least) more derisory, more pleased with himself and more God-playing all the time. This audience in Barnes & Noble looked utterly adoring and enthralled, all agog at this bespectacled, hollow-cheeked pedant. Good thing he’s in charge of a cooking magazine, and not a religious cult that encourages people to commit acts of violence.

Things took a turn for the even worse during the Q&A period when a woman asked, “I find that the flavor from cake yeast is much better than from powdered yeast. Am I right?”

I slipped out the side door, and ate the rest of the wrong chocolate on the subway ride home.