I know it seems like I keep picking on the Ripe group, but to tell the truth, the things they come up with are so silly I just can’t help it. If the food wasn’t darn good, I wouldn’t bother, but I think they can take a little poking.
As you may have read, Ripe now has a “Writer in Residence” named Matthew Stadler. He writes in a rather pompous, overbearing fashion. One of his latest projects is putting cards on each table with small essays. The theory seems to be that these will cause people to debate. I was at Gotham recently, and sat in the back, watching tables come and go. Every group glanced at the card and tossed it aside. Looking at it, I think you’ll see why.
With that in mind, I am posting the original card. I then asked my ever-suffering mother, who is a textbook editor, (she cringes when she reads my site), to translate it for the common man. Her version follows his. Neither one of us is sure she got it right, but it is eminently more readable. Feel free to comment on either version, keeping in mind – what’s the point?
“The Cult of Rousseau”“The frail wanderer, Jean Jacques Rousseau, flourished as a kind of pop icon in 18th century France. He stepped from the pages of books (principally Rousseau’s utopian novel, Julie or the New Heloise, and his pedagogical tract, Emile) to blossom and endure as a wildly popular public image — the Romantic hero. Honest, delicate, and temperamental, the Rousseauian hero wanted an audience to witness his condition. When Rousseau himself quit Parisian society, to escape its mendacity, he moved just a few miles away to the country estate of a wealthy friend, where his exile could be played out in full view. Dining alone in public was the apotheosis of a Rousseauian sensibility. Rebecca Spang calls this practice a “public display of privacy” and identifies the restaurant as the primary stage on which it was enacted.
The restaurant was invented in mid-18th century Paris for sensitive people with “weak chests” whose delicacy kept them from eating the robust meals served by innkeepers. Innkeepers kept tables d’hote – hosted tables – at which guests sat together at fixed meal times and shared whatever was served. It was famously heavy fare. “Doctors cure us from what the Innkeeper inflicts on us.” Restaurants hoped to reunite the doctor and kitchen, long ago severed by the doctors’ ascendancy into science (restaurant is the name of a restorative broth, like consommé, conjured in alembics and served to the frail and sensitive).Those sensible enough to seek the doctor’s restorative broth often subscribed to the cult of Rousseau. In the restaurant, the hero’s drama of frail sensitive could be enacted through the painstaking selection of special foods – delicate foods – that agreed with his refined tastes. The gross matter of the common table would be left to the peasants. Spang notes that menus in early restaurants mimicked Rousseau’s lists of healthy foods, mainly Swiss, found in Emile and The New Heloise: pale delicacies such as rice custard and bread pudding, fresh berries, long-simmered broths that reduced copious vegetables and meats into easily digestible liquids. The Rousseauian prescription could be filled by eating out. At whatever hour, alone at the table, tentatively sipping the restorative broth conjured from the restaurateur’s alembic, the diner put his elevated sensibility on display (as do we).”
Here is our English translation:
“So, you like to dress up and go out to eat in a pleasant restaurant. Have you ever wondered why they’re called restaurants? When and where did they first come into existence? In order to explain this, we need first to talk a bit about Jean Jacques Rousseau, that lonely outsider in society, crippled by his feelings of insecurity and guilt. Since his mother died at his birth and his father constantly informed him that he was responsible for her death, how could he be otherwise?
At any rate, in mid-18th century Paris, the restaurant, from the French verb “restaurer”, to restore, had been invented for sensitive people with “weak hearts” who were unable to eat the robust meals served by innkeepers. Rousseau’s frail health and desperate need for love and attention made the new-fangled restaurant the perfect place for him to play out the drama in full public view. Dining alone, sipping long-simmered broths (restoratives) or nibbling on pale delicacies such as rice custard or bread pudding, he was able to display to the world his elevated sensibility. After publishing a novel, The New Heloise, and Emile, about the proper teaching of children, he did become a wildly popular romantic hero.”
girl_cook says
that’s_just_awful
Anonymous says
I find that piece hilarious, because whatever pretentions the Hebberoys have to “kill the restaurant,” the little essays are aimed principally at the very people who have ALWAYS eaten at such restaurants–well-off, highly educated people. Rousseau? “Alembic?” Please.
Want to kill the restaurant? Fine–how about creating a high-class place that features a diverse array of the populace on any given night? That’s certainly not what you’ll find at clarklewis, and I laughed upon reading the first article about Stadler, in which he lectured about his “revolutionary” writing project to the usual gaggle of art gallery owners, officers with the ballet and symphony, executives of environmental non-profits, etc.
Want to be revolutionary? Fine–take a handful of $100 clarklewis gift certificates down to the shelter at 12th and Stark and give them to the poor displaced people from New Orleans.
The actual Hebberoy mantra should be revised to “kill the restaurant…but only to the extent that you do not affect your clientele base or your bottom line.”
Truly revolutionary.
nancy says
As I commented earlier, I tried twice to read it and simply could not muster the energy
Dave J. says
Every time he uses Rousseau or Roussouiean I substitute Hebberoy or Hebberoyian.
Wouldn’t that be “Hebberovian”?
Seriously, though, someone needs to lock Stadler in a room with Jeffrey Steingarten and/or Ruth Reichel (or the writings of Elizabeth David, or James Beard, or Julia Child, or…) and not let him out until he can write about his dinner without using a word like “alembic.”
girl_cook says
They can become like trading cards!
Vapid1 says
They just make it too easy.
Betsy says
Where’s the gin? I thought that surely there’d be some mention of gin – as a restorative tonic, if nothing else…
PDXFoodDude says
Is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel
Vapid1 says
I think the piece reeks of gin.
ExtraMSG says
I think there are two main problems with it:
1) They end with a statement that suggests they have a point, the “as do we”, but I don’t think the point is clear at all, if there is one. How does this fit in the context of their “Kill the Restaurant” theme. It seems to me that Ripe fits more closely with the Inn. Is Gotham, then, their anti-Ripe, their response to Ripe, the rebirth of the restaurant? If the essay was just left as history, then fine, it could just be a bit of interesting history about the origin of restaurants, but they seem to want to say that it’s more and you expect them to want to say that it’s more. But where’s the beef? Do we have to wait for future installments to get the point?
2) It tries too hard to be poetic rather than readable. As I say below, I think it’s probably largely paraphrasing. But I imagine that it actually makes whatever Spang wrote less intelligible. Looking at the book reviews, though, I’m going to try to pick up Spang’s book. I enjoy food history, especially from a quasi-scholarly angle.
Here’s what I wrote elsewhere:
>>>I think it’s on the right track, really. It could use an editor to bring it down to earth a little, but I’ve read worse as a philosophy minor in college. Some won’t like it just because it’s trying to be intellectual, just as some won’t like any restaurant where they feel uncomfortable in shorts and a t-shirt.<<>>I just read some reviews of Spang’s book, Invention of the Restaurant. It’s not conjured out of nowhere; it’s straight from the mind of Spang. My guess is the essay is more paraphrasing than actual writing.<<>>It may be a bit highbrow for Portland, but is that something that Gotham should be ashamed of? Should they dumb-down their essay? It’ll be interesting if people who were accusing me of thinking Portland restaurants should make mediocre food now accuse Gotham of expecting too much from their diners. And the thing is: people don’t have to read it. As you say, they can just toss it aside.<<<
tha-krza says
If it were actually readable, I’d have no problem with it. But unfortunately it is full of useless SAT words and really very boring. As Nancy said, I tried twice too…and had to give up. Dumb me down, s’il tu plais.
Vapid1 says
I think you’ll be waiting for a long time to get the point MSG. In that I don’t think their is a point. This is produced by a group that is supposedly fomenting revolution; however they don’t know what result they want (see W article). They talk about change and being different. That is their sole angle. That is their hook. That is their marketing gimmick. It has never been about what their trying to do. It’s about convincing people they are different. All these little affectations are like a teenager who gets piercings, and dyes their hair. They talk about being different, they attire themselves in the trappings of being different, they may honestly feel different, yet underneath they’re just another confused teen trying to find their way. It’s cute, and sad. Of course this says nothing about the quality of the restaurants or the food. I just love sitting around the quilting circle.
As far as the writing itself goes. It’s attrocious, ineffective, crap. Stadler needs to to stop copping a style and learn to write. Pick up some James Salter and see what a real wordsmith can do. I really enjoyed reading the piece with some of my own modifications. Every time he uses Rousseau or Roussouiean I substitute Hebberoy or Hebberoyian. This trick also works with Stadler and Stadlerian. When he mentions books insert the names of the ripe outfits. It’s great fun
Vapid1 says
Actually Hebberovian would mean: Of or from Hebberovia a small landlocked provence of Latvia known for it’s nasturtium infused gin.
Extramsg says
If it’s an historical piece, though, and alembics are truly what they used, what’s the alternative? (Though perhaps a brief description of an antiquated device might be in order.)
shuna fish lydon says
I have to say that I liked that the card was printed with letterpress. A tactile and an old technique, I read a little but mostly laughed at his title. We should all be so lucky, as my grandmother would say.
tha-krza says
What is the title: The Restorative Broth? The Frail Wanderer? The Restorative Yet Romantically Frail Alembic?
Glad Crack Press can spend time on this but not even respond to my many calls asking them to do my wedding party invites. We luckily found a smaller and less expensive press anyway.
PDXFoodDude says
It is called “The Cult of Rousseau”. I can’t wait to collect the entire set.