Chef Kerry Sear owned the former "Cascadia" restaurant in downtown Seattle. I thought we were safe from him in 2008 when Cascadia closed, but he has come back, more loathsome than ever.
"Why do you hate him?" one might ask. Why indeed? He first had the audacity to come up with a drink concoction that was part gin martini and part slushy. He combined a juniper-infused sorbet with an already juniper-infused martini and made me an overweight drunk.
That evil bastard.
Then he went on to decide, cruel man that he is, to use his proximity to the Pike Place Market to start selecting fresh seafood and high quality produce for his meals!
The nerve.
I made the mistake of trying Cascadia just as I was starting to lose weight in 2005. Chef Sear had obviously paid some reviewer to give him a good write up, so I gave it a shot. The devil-made-flesh had the audacity to create this lobster dish with ravioli and a citrusy sauce that made me want to eat more and more. How could I ever lose weight with that around?
Damn him.
In an effort to infiltrate his loathsome organization, I held my nose and went undercover to some of his cooking classes to see what kind of addictive poison he was putting in our food. He hooked us with a sausage stuffing wrapped in prosciutto that put 10 pounds on me at a single glance.
He was on to me and wasn't giving up any of his secrets.
Then he went and had a child and suddenly even children were not safe from his evil ways. What child - or adult? - can resist a chocolate-space-needle with ice cream and cotton candy clouds?
The HORROR
And let's not forget his scheming right-hand man, Jeff the sommelier. That insidious snake plyed me with Mavrotragano wine from Greece and made sure that no one else sold it, so I had nowhere to get my supply but from him.
At least *he* had the decency to skip town when Cascadia closed.
But Kerry Sear, he has gone on to head up a new restaurant and has the pure, heart-of-darkness, soullessness to force his high-caloric genius on the unsuspecting diners of Seattle. He has already begun to undo years of my weight loss at his "Art" restaurant (if by "Art" he means "evil") and is making my life a living hell yet again.
Will I never be free???!!!
I HATE KERRY SEAR!
Tag: food
Dim Sum
When I first moved to Seattle in 2003 I had never heard of dim sum. For those who don't know, dim sum is almost a ritualistic lunch in Chinese culture; it consists of small, bite-sized dumplings that are brought around on carts. You pick the ones you want, eat and talk and sip tea. It is a treasured cultural experience.
It is also terrible food.
I tried, really I did. Liking dim sum is, among we white folk in 2008, what liking sushi was in 1998: a sign of cultural sophistication, a way of saying "look at me, I'm a white guy who is culturally aware." As with sushi, in its native land dim sum started out as the leftover meal: take whatever you didn't eat the night before and cook it up and call it good.
Today they take mystery meat (pork, chicken, or if you are lucky, shrimp), and wrap it in some kind of rice or wheat dough. Then you steam or boil it until it is sticky and has the texture of wet paper. Then you serve this gristly, pasty concoction in a cute little bamboo steamer. The fried version of this can be good, depending on what's inside, but the boiled/steamed ones are like eating a squish ball.
So you eat these little bite-sized carb/fat balls, one at a time as they come around on their little carts, and never quite feel like you've had a meal, then suddenly you are full. A massive insulin spike hits until, two hours later, it drops and you are starving again. There have been studies done showing that dim sum is incredibly high in calories, mostly from sugar and white flour. There have been calls in Hong Kong to reduce this lunch ritual to aid in fighting the obesity epidemic.
Don't get me wrong: give me a pizza or macaroni and cheese and I'll eat to excess. But at least with those I feel satiated. And you don't get gristly mystery meat on your cheese pizza. There's nothing worse than biting into a dim sum ball only to find you can't chew what's inside.
So no offense to my dim sum loving friends, but I can't pretend anymore: I hate dim sum!
I Hate Alton Brown
My fetish for all things cooking goes back to the late 70's when I was a little kid, home all summer with nothing to do but watch daytime TV (or play in the 110 degree Arizona heat). It was either watch PBS or Soap Operas. Julia Child won.
In the 90's, when I was on my own and finally got basic cable, I quickly became a food network junkie. The channel has had many shows that should have never been born (Martha Stewart always made my skin crawl, Emeril is a lousy cook); most were just informational, very few were actually good. But still I watched, learned, and dreamed of a day when I could get decent kitchen supplies, a useful kitchen, and access to good ingredients.
I also read. A lot. I had just finished "On Food and Cooking" (hmm, I need that new edition...) when Alton's show, Good Eats, debuted. At first it was a revelation! Basically it was the TV version of that book. I watched it religiously and learned much. When we moved to Seattle my cooking languished, still I read and watched and learned. In the last few years I've finally been able to cook again and experiment and put all my learning into practice. That's when I discovered that I hated Alton.
It was during the contest show "America's Next Food Network Star" when it happened. The contestants had a challenge to participate in an Iron Chef contest where they were first the chefs, then the announcers. If you've seen the Iron Chef format, you know that there's one master announcer (Alton in the American version) and then two runners who work the floor while the chefs do their thing. Well, during this competition Alton was being a complete ass, asking the floor announcers really obscure questions, trying to rattle them. One of the contestants, in the heat of the moment, shot back some little insult to Alton. He had a fit. A childish pout about how she was the bitch and he was the master and she should not talk back to him that way (well, that was the post-production version with voice-overs, so maybe it didn't go down that way).
That's when it hit me: Alton is a nerd and a lousy cook to boot.
First, the nerd part.
There he sits, imperiously looking down on others while they compete. Commenting, criticizing, and being a basic know-it-all. He can tell you the physics behind why something sticks to a grill or why that hollandaise is a buttery mess. He'll do his show with cheesy stories and lousy acting. And its always him who plays each part.
I bet he was always the Dungeon Master when he played D&D as a kid.
Then, there's his food.
I've tried his recipes in the past and they have not turned out well. The brownies were like dense, dry cakes. The macaroni and cheese was gooey with a terrible texture. But I attributed that to my own failings as a cook (and my lousy ovens). But it was watching him on his new show where he drives around the country and eats what the locals eat... that convinced me that it wasn't just me: he really has no taste in food.
He was at some LA grease pit where the cops go for burgers, getting advice on what's good. They recommended some heart-attack inducing monstrosity that had more than a pound of meat with various other fried things on it. Alton loved it. It was basically a vehicle for fat and carbs. It will give you gall stones, cholesterol will go through the roof, insulin will spike, and it will be exploding out of you later in a brown, gassy, noxious mess. But mmmmm so tasty! Where's the subtlety? The nuance? The delicate flavors? Any idiot can slap together a mess of grease and meat, slide it on a bun and call it food.
This past weekend, the final nail went into the Alton Brown coffin. I was watching part of a special where several Food Network chefs each cooked a summer dish in South Beach, FL. Tyler Florence was the glue holding all the different segments together. As he helped Alton with some grilled fish thing, Tyler made the mistake of saying something helpful for us viewers at home. Alton had to cut him off and explain, in his know-it-all way, why what Tyler said was obvious and how much more about it Alton knew. His was the most boring dish at the table, but he was the most pompous.
You were just grilling fish. Get over yourself!!!!
Time to TiVo Giada's shows. Even when her shows are bad she at least has a nice body and an infectious smile.
In the 90's, when I was on my own and finally got basic cable, I quickly became a food network junkie. The channel has had many shows that should have never been born (Martha Stewart always made my skin crawl, Emeril is a lousy cook); most were just informational, very few were actually good. But still I watched, learned, and dreamed of a day when I could get decent kitchen supplies, a useful kitchen, and access to good ingredients.
I also read. A lot. I had just finished "On Food and Cooking" (hmm, I need that new edition...) when Alton's show, Good Eats, debuted. At first it was a revelation! Basically it was the TV version of that book. I watched it religiously and learned much. When we moved to Seattle my cooking languished, still I read and watched and learned. In the last few years I've finally been able to cook again and experiment and put all my learning into practice. That's when I discovered that I hated Alton.
It was during the contest show "America's Next Food Network Star" when it happened. The contestants had a challenge to participate in an Iron Chef contest where they were first the chefs, then the announcers. If you've seen the Iron Chef format, you know that there's one master announcer (Alton in the American version) and then two runners who work the floor while the chefs do their thing. Well, during this competition Alton was being a complete ass, asking the floor announcers really obscure questions, trying to rattle them. One of the contestants, in the heat of the moment, shot back some little insult to Alton. He had a fit. A childish pout about how she was the bitch and he was the master and she should not talk back to him that way (well, that was the post-production version with voice-overs, so maybe it didn't go down that way).
That's when it hit me: Alton is a nerd and a lousy cook to boot.
First, the nerd part.
There he sits, imperiously looking down on others while they compete. Commenting, criticizing, and being a basic know-it-all. He can tell you the physics behind why something sticks to a grill or why that hollandaise is a buttery mess. He'll do his show with cheesy stories and lousy acting. And its always him who plays each part.
I bet he was always the Dungeon Master when he played D&D as a kid.
Then, there's his food.
I've tried his recipes in the past and they have not turned out well. The brownies were like dense, dry cakes. The macaroni and cheese was gooey with a terrible texture. But I attributed that to my own failings as a cook (and my lousy ovens). But it was watching him on his new show where he drives around the country and eats what the locals eat... that convinced me that it wasn't just me: he really has no taste in food.
He was at some LA grease pit where the cops go for burgers, getting advice on what's good. They recommended some heart-attack inducing monstrosity that had more than a pound of meat with various other fried things on it. Alton loved it. It was basically a vehicle for fat and carbs. It will give you gall stones, cholesterol will go through the roof, insulin will spike, and it will be exploding out of you later in a brown, gassy, noxious mess. But mmmmm so tasty! Where's the subtlety? The nuance? The delicate flavors? Any idiot can slap together a mess of grease and meat, slide it on a bun and call it food.
This past weekend, the final nail went into the Alton Brown coffin. I was watching part of a special where several Food Network chefs each cooked a summer dish in South Beach, FL. Tyler Florence was the glue holding all the different segments together. As he helped Alton with some grilled fish thing, Tyler made the mistake of saying something helpful for us viewers at home. Alton had to cut him off and explain, in his know-it-all way, why what Tyler said was obvious and how much more about it Alton knew. His was the most boring dish at the table, but he was the most pompous.
You were just grilling fish. Get over yourself!!!!
Time to TiVo Giada's shows. Even when her shows are bad she at least has a nice body and an infectious smile.
![[bluehost]](http://jeffreysewell.com/wp-content/files/site_images/bluehost.gif)