The Carnivore Project

Tipping Prompts?

Some US restaurants have started 'helping' foreign diners with cards that explain tipping. Is this a step too far? Or only fair, given the cultural differences when it comes to tipping? (Debate over at Zagat)

My gut feel - it seems a little gauche. I'm fully empathetic to the plight of the service industry, and how annoying it would be to have ill-tipping (through ignorance or spite) diners, but tipping is still ostensibly optional. Tipping is something a social contract, not a legal one - else it would be embedded in the cost of the meal itself (like in the UK). To remind diners of the 'rules' of tipping is like a pregnant woman aggressively demanding that she get a seat on the train. Yes, she should have one, but the act of asking makes everyone defensive about it...

I love overseas visitors

(Staplers and hole punch are 100% London though)

Carnivore Hero: Roger Moore

Roger Moore may seem an unlikely Carnivore Hero, and indeed, my affection for him stems primarily from his stint as James Bond (another Carnivore Hero for another day).  I'm also fond of Moore because he was born and raised in the neighborhood where we now live, and is charmingly proud of it.  Moore, however, merits the title Carnivore Hero because of his affection for the gourmandic arts (i.e., eating a lot).

Moore begins an interview with the Sunday Times by noting "you can tell that I’m a pig because my memories are all about food, taste and smell." Although he's being a little disingenuous (his memories are also about rhesus monkeys and circumcision), the Carnivore Project is duty-bound to salute any former Bond and local boy who so proudly highlights his love of food.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

The Week in Meat (Memorial Day Weekend)

For our overseas readership (a confusing phrase, when one is a transplanted American), this was an incredibly important weekend. 

Although most sensible god-fearing, mammal-devouring folk aren't afraid to flame their meat year round, Memorial Day is the traditional starting pistol for the rest of the population.

A few notable bits and bobs:

Bacon: A Love Story is in stores  (including Amazon). Why haven't you bought it yet?

The Blue Ribbon Bacon Tour, as recommended by Heather 'See Above' Lauer, has hit the road - with the first stop in Phoenix (where they can fry bacon on the sidewalk in June). Further destinations will include prominent cities like Chicago and Minneapolis as well as dens of iniquity like Vegas and DC.

The cute people at Cakewrecks have a post on meat-themed cakes. I particularly like the one that just looks like a huge hunk of raw meat. Unsubtle. Tasty.

PETA has started an anti-meat campaign (well, a single billboard) claiming that serving meat to children is 'cruelty'. Clearly, they're not eating in the right places. (Incidentally, did anyone else read the 1 minute interview with some PETA guy in the Metro last week in which he came across sounding like a normal human being? I can't find it online, because the Metro site is painful to search. Maybe I imagined the whole thing...)

Grelha D'Ouro

Bathsheba over at the Stockwell News blog gave us a nice shout-out (thanks!) during an interview with the Londonist , which has inspired me to post another Stockwell restaurant review. Today:  the Grelha D'Ouro, on South Lambeth Road.

The British Media loves Meat

Not only are bacon sandwiches good for you (kinda), but the Guardian ran a lengthy excerpt on Kansas City's American Royal BBQ Competition. 

Believe it or not, although the writer does a great job, the American Royal is actually even better than he describes it. Biggest party in Kansas City plus vast tracts of meat. The entire midwest smells like smoked pork for a week afterwards.

[Thanks to Dan & John for the leads]

Hamburgers in London: The Wheatsheaf and Smith's of Smithfield

So here I am, an American living in London.  Occasionally friends or a family member will ask me what it is that I miss most about the US, probably as a way of filling awkward conversational silences, but perhaps in the hopes that I'll say something gloriously clever, or at least funny.  But my answer is always the same:  I miss hamburgers. 

(My fingers insist on typing the word out as "haumburgers" this morning - perhaps this is phonetically symbolic of my ever-increasing Englishization, which manifests itself as an enormously pretentious-sounding Mid-Atlantic accent?*)

So, yes.  Hamburgers.  It's not that they're unavailable in this city, or even that they're not very good.  They are as widely available as in any American city, and many are very tasty.  But they are not perfect. 

Carnivore Heroes: Hung, Drawn and Quartered / Maria's Market Cafe

For the past three weeks, we've been ushering out of town guests around London, showing off the local landmarks (Smiths, St John, The Eagle, Smiths again, The Eagle again, Smiths for a third time and Neal's Yard Dairy). (Also spotted: a museum). 

As you can imagine, a roving pack of transatlantic gluttons can intimidate the service industry, but we've had two examples of carnivore heroism that deserve mention.

Hi.

Apparently there are two meat brackets going on right now -  run by the the food bloggers at So Good and ESPN 2's Uniwatch. Thanks to Deadspin, who clearly had same free time between site redesigns, there's now a bit of a flame war over who came up with the idea of the meat bracket first.

I'd like to think that, ever since two cavemen first discovered that you can slow-roast a sabretooth, the human species has been arguing about how best to destroy and devour the world around it. 

I have a dream - a dream in which sports bloggers and meat bloggers can sit down and devour flesh together. Let's all shake our greasy hands and move on to more important discussions. Not who came up with the bracket first (because, you know, we did), but which meat is best? 

Go Bacon.

Still Famous

Still loved in London. Thanks, Metro!