PSYCHO-GOURMET -- Geoff Nicholson on food, sex, obsession and the madness of the mouth.

BRUNCHING WITH BUKOWSKI

2012-02-09T06:08:00.000-08:00

I ate last week at Fred 62 in Los Feliz. Apparently the place was designed by two guys both named Fred, both born in 1962 – which seems as good an explanation as any. I like it there, it’s a kind of superior diner (not all THAT superior), hipsterish but not offensively so, with automotive-styled interior, car head-rests on the back of the seats in the booths, Cadillac tail lights for lamps.

HOW ODD OF GOD

2012-01-30T13:34:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve been sitting here thinking, “I wonder what vulture tastes like.” Probably not all that great: I imagine that an all-carrion diet probably doesn’t result in great flavored meat. In any case, unless there’s a sudden dramatic change in my lifestyle, I suppose I’m not ever likely to experience that funky vulture flavor. For that matter, I don’t imagine I’ll ever get to taste the osprey

THE LEGEND OF THE GOLDEN ARCHES

2012-01-25T18:15:00.001-08:00

We were in Palm Springs at the weekend, in the middle of a windstorm that resulted in a huge power outage. It was scarily impressive. We’d planned to have lunch at the Blue Coyote – a more than decent Mexican restaurant - but they had no power and weren’t serving. And neither was any other restaurant in downtown Palm Springs. So we got in the car, as the wind and palm fronds whipped around

AMAZING GRACE

2012-01-25T16:34:00.000-08:00

We’re regularly told that the breakdown of modern society is accelerating because families no long sit down at the dinner table and eat together. Personally I suspect there may be one or two other reasons for the breakdown of modern society (if indeed it even is breaking down), but even so in a world of shifting uncertainties, it’s good to know there’s a place where communal eating still

PAY LESS WITH BAYLESS

2012-01-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

I went to the Red O restaurant on Melrose Boulevard last night, Rick Bayless’s Los Angeles outpost, though scholars differ on how involved Bayless actually is with things there - not very is the received wisdom. It’s a good looking room: that's the "tequila tunnel" you see above, the service was friendly if sometimes a bit fussy. the food was fine, the starters better than the main courses:

THE BEST JERRY, THE BEST

2012-01-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

A belated plug for a book, Best Food Writing 2011, edited by Holly Hughes, published by Da Capo. I’ve been buying copies of this annual anthology for years. When I constantly used to fly back and forth between New York and London I found it made for great plane reading, since I could never cope with anything more joined up. As well as containing pieces by the likes of Jay Rayner and Hugh Garvey

LOVETT OR LEAVE IT

2012-01-08T12:29:00.000-08:00

Once again I’ve been thinking of Mrs Lovett in Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” and some of the lyrics from “The worst pies In London,” the ones that run:*Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop!Does a business but I notice something weird.Lately all her neighbors' cats have disappeared!Have to hand it to her --Wot I callsEnterprisePoppin' pussies into pies!Wouldn't do in my shop!Just the thought of it's enough to

A LOOK BACK: SOME THINGS I ATE AND PHOTOGRAPHED IN 2011

2012-01-02T13:38:00.001-08:00

Actually it was the other way round. I photographed some things, then I ate them. Eating them and then photographing them would be just weird and disgusting. Early in the year I had an “art idea.” I realized that I eat a sandwich for lunch pretty much every day of my life. Occasionally I eat out or buy a ready-made sandwich but more often than not, since I work at home, I make my own. Here

DO THEY KNOW IT'S SOLSTICE?

2011-12-29T18:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I’m reassured to know that I’ve married into the right family. Every year at Christmas my sister-in-law Leyardia sends us a food parcel. It contains a fruitcake and a Christmas pudding of her own making, along with some local produce, from where she lives, on Lopez Island, just off the coast of Washington state. There are always some jars of Lopez Larry’s “Soon to be Famous” mustard

A HITCH

2011-12-21T08:58:00.001-08:00

So, the blessed Christopher Hitchens has moved on to a fine and private place. I never met him, though I know quite a few people who did. They’re divided between those who think he was the most amusing company anyone could ever have, and those who were introduced to him half a dozen times and on each occasion he behaved as though he’d never met them before. I suspect that like all truly

LOOKING FOR MISS GOODBAR

2011-12-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

Well, Diane Keaton has published a memoir titled, Then Again, and it sounds more interesting than the average Hollywood autobiography, and even her “food issues” (is there any actress who doesn’t have “food issues”?) seem more interesting than some, at least the way she tells it. The story goes that while she was dating Woody Allen she heard another actress say that bulimia was a terrific way of

'YOU BETTER COME ON IN MY KITCHEN"

2011-12-05T09:23:00.000-08:00

I was flipping through Terry Richardson’s Diary – only metaphorically – it’s just a photo blog - and I came across some photographs captioned “Lydia Hearst at the Chateau Marmont.” And the first thing I thought was, boy, that’s a really nice stove. The first place I ever lived in LA had a stove like that, if not quite as big, so maybe it’s an LA thing. Perhaps the Chateau Marmont retains the

ORGANIC BOUNTY

2011-12-01T15:17:00.001-08:00

Well, this is exactly why a man might run a blog called Psycho-Gourmet. There’s a recent piece by the divine Elina Shatkin in Squid Ink, the food blog of the LA Weekly, about a book titled “Natural Harvest: a Collection of Semen-based Recipe. The headline says, “We threw up in our own mouth” which seems an especially interesting use of the royal “we” - plural throwings-up but into a singular

LONDON CALLING (BUT NOT VERY LOUD)

2011-11-27T11:16:00.000-08:00

I don't think I ever showed you this. It's a piece I did for Gourmet Live.You can read it at their website here:http://www.gourmet.com/food/gourmetlive/2010/092210/london-calling And do let me apologize for the photograph - I don't really look like that, honest.LONDON CALLINGPUBLISHED IN GOURMET LIVE 09.22.10A jar of mint sauce leads to a rare experience for Geoff Nicholson —commonsense and

MAKE MINE MILLET

2011-11-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

I was in a Mexican restaurant t’other day, and there was some loud, annoying, full-of-himself clown at the next table making a song and dance to the waiter about how he wanted his margarita made with “top shelf” tequila and “top shelf” triple sec. Leaving aside the question of whether the waiter was likely to add some top shelf saliva to the mix, the real issue here is surely that if you you’re a

MASTICATING WITH MANSON

2011-11-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

I ate at LA’s Osteria Mozza last week, the fancy Italian restaurant run by Nancy Silverton, Joseph Bastianich and Mario Batali. It was an interesting week to be in a Batali establishment since he’d recently been railing against capitalism (or something) saying, "The way the bankers have toppled the way money is distributed – and taken most of it into their own hands – is as good as

AOK

2011-11-09T11:43:00.000-08:00

I ate a lot of OK food in England: a couple of OK curries, an OK steak at Café Rouge, an OK all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet in Woodford, an OK Cornish pastie bought from a shop in Highgate. This is not a complaint, OK food is infinitely better than not OK food, but of course we always hope for more than OK, and fortunately my trip provided some of that too. The best restaurant meal I had was

FOOD FUN

2011-11-07T09:15:00.000-08:00

In one of my manifestations I write for Gourmet Live. This week is their "Humor Issue." Here's a link to my piece on "Funny Food" http://www.gourmet.com/food/gourmetlive/2011/110211/funny-food

STEEL CITY STOMACHS

2011-11-03T17:10:00.001-07:00

If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning you’ll know that the title doesn’t only refer to the psychosis of eating, but is also a pun on “psychogeography,” defined by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." That’s him above, on the right with the specs

NO WORST THERE IS NONE

2011-10-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

I’m about to go to England for ten days or so, not primarily for the food I admit, but I do find myself looking forward to English “fayre,” the odd pork pie, the odd bit of pheasant, some good English cheese, and there’s the promise of a "real" English curry in Sheffield. Fish and chips always figure too but in fact I just had some “British” fish and chips here in L.A. at H. Salt on

CHUBBY CHASING

2011-10-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

What with one thing and another (health concerns, public education, Michelle Obama’s “let’s move” campaign, and fast food joints listing calorie counts on their menus) you may have been worrying that America is running out of ways to fill its eager, bloated craw with carbs and fats. Fear not, Applebee’s is on the case. After some moderately strenuous hiking in Joshua Tree last weekend we

HOT HOT HOT

2011-10-04T17:54:00.001-07:00

And speaking of hotdogs … Is there anything in the world sexier than the sight of a woman with a hotdog? Well yes, actually, I think there are a great many things sexier. Nevertheless, there’s evidently something about a woman eating phallic-shaped food that does something strange, powerful and ignoble to the male spirit. We snigger. We think of oral sex. We become foolish adolecents. (A

GOOD DOGS I HAVE EATEN

2011-10-03T16:01:00.001-07:00

There are people in Los Angeles who’ll tell you that Pink's on La Brea sell the world’s best hotdogs. I wouldn’t know. As I get ever more curmudgeonly I find I’m ever less prepared to wait in line for things, and I’m particularly reluctant to stand in line for a hotdog. At most hours of the day and night, certainly at any hour you might actually want to eat, Pink's has the longest lines of

ROLL WITH IT

2011-09-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

The biggest problem with eating in New York is that there are so many restaurants, both high and low, and so little time. And certainly when you hit on a bad one you feel doubly resentful; not only are you eating terrible food, but there are thousands of restaurants serving better. Knowing that I didn’t have world enough or time, and since a great many restaurants have a little stash of takeout

WATER DISPERSION

2011-09-27T12:04:00.001-07:00

So we went to New York and, among other things, we ate at WD-50, home of Wylie Dufresne’s brand of molecular gastronomy, though he prefers not to call it that. The restaurant is in a part of the Lower East Side where not so long ago no sane person would dare set foot. Now it’s a desirable area and there were a bunch of bars and restaurants near to WD-50 that looked very inviting. WD-50 itself