In my unmistakably less-than-humble opinion, enjoying good food is probably the most pleasurable thing a person could do in this life. Besides sex of course, but I’m sure we can agree that if one’s sex life is good, such a blessing transcends any earthly pleasures. In such cases, food cums second. For the purposes of this particular piece, however, we’ll be focusing on food.

Cucumbers, chocolate-covered strawberries, and whipping cream are food.

Now picture a penthouse hotel room with king-size beds, huge, plush, fluid-resistant couches, and an eight-person hot tub. Sixteen if half of them are on top of the other half. Now bring in the whipping cream and strawberries. Forget cucumbers, we have these toys.

Let’s git dirty

Wait, this post is about food. Yes, food. Anyway…

Continuing along in the vein of me offering my opinions (which was where this post started and was almost instantly digressed from), I’ll go so far as to state that it’s a fundamental belief of mine that, as far as food goes, prime ingredients require little alteration or enhancement to make them appealing. Like a person.

A beautiful person with zero body augmentation, fake hair, or makeup, is way more attractive than one who needs all the extras. And a beautiful person with a few properly applied, tasteful touches is irresistible. Likewise, a perfect meal is made using only the finest, natural ingredients, expert technique, exactly the right amount of lots of butter, a few appropriate herbs and spices, and a bit of modest but flawless garnish. And just a bit more butter. Always with the butter.

Hmmm… bacon doesn’t really need butter, I guess, but, ah… what the heck!

My approach to food is the same as my general approach to life. I try and keep things uncomplicated by adhering to the K.I.S.S principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. And after packing a considerable number of varied experiences into a fairly short existence thus far (I’m not even fifty), I realize that all the experts (and myself) always return to basics.

The basics are truth. They’re honest. And unless someone’s got a gun pointed at your family and a little dishonesty is required to engineer a desirable outcome (you might have to say whatever’s necessary to make sure they all get shot), honesty is nearly always the best policy.

If one respects the K.I.S.S principle, one realizes that simplicity is honesty at its purest. And vice versa. And, to me, honest food is transcendental. Phony food, on the other scabby, diseased hand, is an absolutely unforgivable affront to the dignity of everyone who holds food dear.

When a restaurant needs to be designed as a carnival attraction, with bizarre furniture, psychedelic lighting, loud music, balloons made of blown sugar, and/or any number of other distracting props, the food isn’t good enough. I don’t care how many “golden forks”, or esteemed stars (or whatever) some bourgeois, “generation pronoun” critic has awarded you, if your restaurant is a scene from Moulin Rouge, it’s because it needs to be.

The same serving of hatred applies to those ultra-modern, sterile, soulless laboratories some “people” refer to as restaurants. What manner of psychological damage does one need to suffer to come to the conclusion that an eatery utterly bereft of personality is an appropriate setting to dine in?

Excuse me, um, chef?

Ah, ah, ahh, please don’t refer to the chef as “chef”, in fact, we call “it” (the sound of his obsequious lackey exhaling loudly, followed by a short fart, every time, so it’s obviously a part of his “its” name). Go. Fuck. Yourselves.

Someone didn’t love me enough when I was a child, did they? 

Good call.

I would far rather sit in the dirt and eat grass-fed, fire-cooked meat with garden-grown veggies off of a rock than voluntarily incarcerate myself behind the walls of some flavour-of-the-month, top chef’s amusement-park establishment. Paying too much for ridiculously priced science experiments for three hours, only to leave hungry, confused, and disappointed isn’t my idea of enjoyable.

Real food, Now THAT’S what I’m talkin’ ’bout!

A bonfire-cooked wild boar, killed with an arrow, is honest. Carbon dioxide mist trapped in a pangolin’s frozen snot bubble while the bass beat rattles your organs to jelly isn’t.

I realize that most artistic people need to go through these phases before finding themselves, and I can’t resent youth or stupidity for its inexperience or lack of wisdom, but I’m certainly not obliged to humour culinary wing-nuts on their path to self-discovery. There are plenty of vapid souls to fill their trendy seats, trading labour credits or squandering the trust fund, hoping to create a believable enough sense of sophistication to fool other idiots. Bon Appetit, boneheads!

And remember that no matter what you paid for that gold-flake Wagyu on Tibetan monkey moss and rhino spleen, like me, you’ll still have to take a shit later.

Somebody had BETTER be cooking that!

What have we become? I think we need another world conflict. The spoiled cultures have become far, far too decadent. Fortunately, another world conflict is clearly on the horizon so maybe it’ll sort out the chaff. Should we be so lucky.

Until the day the meatheads die though, I’ll drive my Chevy to every levy on a self-appointed mission to discover and enjoy authentic cookery the world over. You should receive detailed reports of my findings at semi-regular intervals, but for now, I must go. It’s absolutely imperative that I reach Doctor Ham-bones at the Temple of Beef before the start of the rainy season.

If you’ve not heard from me in six months, send out the elite, reserve cohort of Amazonian warrior priestesses who’ve sworn to protect me should I ever need their assistance. Use this device to contact them if it becomes necessary. Turn the top half clockwise to the bottom half and then press the button that appears in the middle. Then leave it to them. They’ll know what to do and where to find me.

And if you would like to know where to find me on some of my worldwide fooding adventures, please visit here.

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