If You’re Grouchy, They Will Come
This last Sunday, the New York Times Sunday Magazine trotted out an issue completely devoted to food.
It includes a re-warming of journalist Michael Pollan’s food politics. He thinks our next commander-in-chief should be the farmer-in-chief, concentrating on a complete re-vamping of the way food is made in this country. More shocking is the online video of epicurean activists included photos of the inside of their refrigerators, and what, is this? Tomatoes in the fridge? Fridges suck the life force out of tomatoes Just. Don’t. Do. It!
But the most light-hearted read was a brief story and a few recipes from Kenny Shopsin, the owner of a New York restaurant that gives new meaning to the word fusion. Just take a look at their menu. El Paso shepherd’s pie? Corn and chorizo pancakes (a recipe for ones made with mac and cheese is included in the NY Times article)? Chicken a la king with toast points? This is only the beginning. Shopsin’s has a dazzling large menu, and every combination of edibles is up for grabs. Michael Pollan is important, but food is about pleasure, after all.
Shopsin’s is also notorious for poor, if not downright abusive customer service. The restaurant used to have a rule against copying your neighbor’s order, and it still enforces strict policy of not seating parties larger than four. “Pretending to be a party of three that happened to have come in with a party of two is a very bad idea,” longtime customer and New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin once wrote.
Trillin wrote that article back in 2002, when Shopsin’s was still in Greenwich Village. Now, the restaurant is in a stall at Essex Street Market. And Kenny Shopsin - potty-mouthed, rude, crusty and charming - used to loathe publicity so that he would tell people who wanted to include him in restaurant guides that his restaurant had, in fact, closed, and he was just the guy taking out the fixtures. Today, he’s a cookbook author. Appropriately, it’s titled Eat Me: the Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin. There’s also a wonderful documentary about the actual moving of Shopsin’s, I Like Killing Flies.
Even in this tough economy, something tells me Shopsin’s is getting by.
