Guy Fieri Gains Food-World Respect
by Cindi Sutter, Founder & Editor Spirited Table®—content provided by Melissa McCart and Laine Doss
Divine Intervention: Noma’s all-too-brief appearance in New York gave at least one diner a religious experience — and a new appreciation of ants over on Air Mail is one of our favorite reads of the week. Here, Dana Brown compares the pop-up Noma dinner in New York to the cost — and the spiritual experience — of an ayahuasca journey (where a shaman came to him).
Rene Redzepi, chef and co-owner of the World class Danish restaurant Noma in Copenhagen. THIBAULT SAVARY / Contributor/Getty Images
My ayahuasca journey cost $700 for two nights and two doses of the shaman-administered liquid medicine, which was dark brown and viscous, resembling motor oil, and tasted somewhere between molasses and cat piss. A meal at Noma in Brooklyn was also expected to cost $700, for nine courses, and I hoped the offerings would taste better than the ayahuasca. The meal was to be administered by Noma’s world-renowned chef, although, due to a poorly timed case of the coronavirus, Redzepi was stuck in Copenhagen, sending an apologetic video from his quarantine and an emissary, a Noma veteran of 15 years, in his place. To my surprise, and no doubt the hundreds of other diners who shelled out top dollar for this Noma experience, American Express refunded the full price of the meal to make up for the disappointment of not being in the presence of the world-famous chef.
Guy Fieri: No longer the butt of jokes in the food world, says the New York Times.
“For nearly two decades, since before he mailed a reality-show audition tape to the network, Mr. Fieri has plainly believed he was a real musician, contributing worthy entries to the canon.
What is striking now, long after the parody seemed to congeal, is that the wider food community stands ready to believe him.”
Timothy Norris / Contributor/Getty Images
In Grub Street: Is this really the worst steak in NYC? People are apparently getting into old cows since that’s what people eat in so many other places in the world.
Expensive airport bar drinks might be a thing of the past. For many, airports are high-stress places fraught with lines, crowds, and the thought of hours on a cramped airplane. That may be why airport bars are usually bustling with people either biding their time or getting some liquid courage before boarding their flight. That also means that customers sometimes pay four to five times more for an airport drink. After NYC’s The City reported that customers were paying up to $27 for a beer at LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have set guidelines for concessionaires, who must adhere to a “street pricing policy”, which allows airport concessionaires to upcharge items not more than 10 percent of the normal “street” price of an item. In layman's terms, that means that your Airport IPA should probably cost no more than about ten bucks.