Lost Magazine
>Arteries clogged with junk assets
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Nick Kolakowski on hyperbole, food writing, and the economic crisis @ Lost Magazine.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )My first meal as a luxury editor was Tuscan boar, shot in the vineyards that once served as the front lines of the wars between Sienna and Florence. The chef dished its grilled flank alongside a chianti bottled at Castello Di Bossi, the 21-bedroom castle at the heart of those vineyards. Our host, who had purchased the fortress with the profits from a jeans-making business, boasted about pulling the trigger on the beast himself.
Food is a signifier of wealth. You order the porterhouse-for-two when you’re flush; you ask for the Value Meal when you’re reduced to that last buck-50. On the afternoon that boar lunch took place — more than three years ago — the Wall Street titans who formed our company’s core readership seemed to believe the universe was only in the business of serving premium steak, at least to them.
And why not? The stock market was bubbling merrily towards its zenith, the showrooms along Park Avenue glittered with Porsches, and dozens of Caribbean backwaters had been bulldozed flat in anticipation of becoming the next ultra-exclusive getaway.
Millions of those frothy dollars went towards meals — and as editors at Doubledown Media, we devoted whole columns to describing that culinary fat of the land. On the private jets it was the packages of Milano cookies tucked in the leather cabinets beneath the seats, and beef with a chili-and-paprika sauce ready for microwaving in the galley. At a banquet table set at the Antiguan high-tide line it was lobster claws and champagne. In Capri it was gnocchi, in a delicate baked shell that split apart at the first fork-stab. Back in New York it was Stellatus caviar, paired with Skyy 90 vodka.
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