But how do they taste?
Everyone likes writing about the debut of trans fat-free deep-fried foods at the Indiana State Fair. Everyone likes mentioning the various foods taking the healthy plunge into the oils, including the ride of my beloved deep-fried Oreos. But no one can tell me how they taste. I want to know how the Oreos taste.
This drives me up the wall. Everyone, when they're not writing about deep-fried foods, loves to hear how deep-fried foods taste. They did what to it? How was it? You ate how many? But these questions go unanswered. With journalism's storied history of impartial fairness, we're lucky to get a lone quote from a sun-beat bystander who came to stand on that spot to eat, not talk. Today's Times story falls there. So do the NPR piece, the USA TODAY article, the Indianapolis Star visit, and a post in the Star's Deep Fried fair blog. All in all, I'm left hungry. The closest thing I can find to a first-person account of the Indiana foods are pictures on a blog, written by someone awesomely named Laura Biscotti.
Meanwhile, everyone has food critics on staff, but we send them to fancy restaurants. Believers in gastric fine-tuning, we value the critics' taste buds and stomachs and treat them accordingly. We don't send them to the fair to eat junk.
But we should. You know who eats junk? Lots of people. Millions. We should make the food critics eat the food of the masses, and I'm only thinking junk food for starters. I want to know what the new Cheerios tastes like, whether that fancy orange juice tastes like sunny Florida fresh-squeezed, and if those grill marks really show up on those crazy microwaveable paninis. I want an everyday version of McSweeney's Reviews of New Food based on actual buys from my grocer's freezer.
One of the best examples I've seen accompanies a Chicago Tribune scoop, when a reporter jumps in his car after tasting McDonald's new trans fat-free fries and races to a nearby franchise to attempt a comparison. As much as my mileage may vary from a lone taster's on this food or any other, I trust the reporting because it's delicious.
August 21st, 2007 at 8:21 PM
i agree whole heartedly. in my house, we make a menu for the week. usually the wife makes most meals. when she does, i give them rankings from 1 to 5 stars. it's mostly a joke, but it also lets her know what to make more of…
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:25 AM
dangerous! ever give below a 3?
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:53 PM
patrick, patrick, patrick. *what* would giada think of this post? ENDORSING reviews of junk food?? better make sure she doesn't see this one…
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:19 PM
i have indeed given below a 3…i don't remember what happened or why – maybe i lost consciousness afterwards…
and giada (de laurentiis) is the greatest…are you dating her, too?
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:06 AM
Man, that sounds dangerous. With Giada, there's been a great swing in my emotion. Need to post about this. Before seeing her DC special, I could see her having a position for or against junk food. But after clearly phoning it in and losing much of her A-game outside her kitchen set, I don't know what to think anymore.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:33 AM
Hi Patrick,
"Laura Biscotti" here. I took pictures of the fried food at the fair and I also ate the deep fried oreos. How did they taste? Delectable. I barely missed the trans-fat.
-Biscotti
August 25th, 2007 at 8:56 AM
Biscotti! Thank you for the review. I love the Internet. When the trend leaves Indiana and sees the world, I'll have to double my fair Oreos. Maybe they can bookend the event.