Yellowtail Sushi at The Kress
Photo: Niccolo Biliotti
The other day, I took my sushi-obsessed nine-year-old to the trendy sushi bar at the new Hollywood hot spot The Kress. (She had heard that Selena Gomez from The Wizards of Waverly Place had eaten there, and simply had to go.) And while I was admiring the decor (and wondering how we were going to get past the paparazzi when we left), she ordered a plate of yellowtail sprinkled with edible gold. She pulled me out of a daydream (in which I had to beat off an admiring horde of supermodels) with the words "Look, Daddy, I'm eating gold." Which is about what I'd expect to hear from her; she's been a fan of truffles for years. And she decided early on that lobster was the bomb.
It also made me think about how these days we just don't have much in the way of awe-inspiring foods. Truffles are expensive; but they're not especially outré. Wolfgang Puck has been serving white truffles on pizza for years. And a take-out spot called Cube offers a frozen truffle pizza. Caviar has maintained its high-class image over the years – but you can buy good American caviar for a lot less than smoked salmon these days. There are rare vintages of wine to pay a small fortune for – but as a rule, they're not especially better than reasonably priced, less-rare bottles.
The thing is that we've reached a point in history when most of us have risen far above our old porridge-and-roots days – and haute cuisine has descended to a point where it can be purchased fresh, frozen and freeze-dried. It's tough to be a food snob anymore. We just don't have truly outlandish meals like they used to have back in, say, ancient Rome.
In Satyricon, Petronius describes a meal that was consumed by the Roman Emperor Nero. In part (a small part), it consisted of: a bronze figure of a Corinthian donkey, wheeled in carrying silver trays of dormice seasoned with honey and sesame seeds; an enormous wild boar filled with live thrushes who flew out when the boar was slit open; a whole boiled pig, stuffed with sausages and pudding that poured out when the pig was carved; roast hares with wings sewn on their back to suggest Pegasus; and wines, none of which were less than a century old.
Now, I don't know about you, but none of that stuff sounds especially good to me. Indeed, I'm rather concerned about the mess the thrushes would make inside the boar. And I belong to a fringe political group whose culinary and moral code specifically prohibits the consumption of dormice. But there's no denying that they sure knew how to party in those days. Sushi flecked with edible gold? Amateur time! You haven't really gotten down till you've spent the evening dodging thrushes and wondering if just one more dormouse would put you over the limit.
– Merrill Shindler