GQ food critic Alan Richman apparently prides himself on his contrarian cojones, but more often than not he just inspires a sort of “Who’re you calling ‘we,’ white man?” amazement at the depths of his pampered Yankee solipsism. In his flattering, if oddly grudging June overview of Chicago’s culinary revolution (see: Achatz, Cantu, Bowles), he managed to raise my hackles twice: once in the breathtakingly rude lead (“Something is happening in Chicago, where most of us believe nothing unexpected ever takes place.”) and once at the conclusion, where he describes Chicago as “the Barcelona of North America.” I mean, I see what he’s getting at, but come on, why the hackneyed [blank] of [blank] construction? Can’t Chicago just be Chicago? No one ever feels compelled to describe New York City as, say, the London of the New World. The whole thing wasn’t helped by the “2nd City No More” headline.
ANYWAY, the point of this being that the latest target of Richman’s withering, er, wit is the city of New Orleans, and no matter how miffed I was in June, it’s nothing compared to how the beleagured citizens of that city are feeling now. (Link stolen from Bookslut, who was on this a few days ago.)