As anyone who's read Anthony Bourdain or Ruth Reichl knows, “voice” is essential to every food story.One of my favorite “voices” is that of Jeffrey Steingarten (right).
If you’ve ever watched "Chopped," "Iron Chef" or the "Next Iron Chef," you’ve seen Steingarten – he’s the chubby, spectacle-wearing, white-haired gent in the blazer who swoons over bacon. This was not always the case.
A Harvard trained attorney, Steingarten officially entered the world of food when Anna Wintour asked him to take a job as the food critic for Vogue. He did. That decision yielded him two national bestsellers, a Julia Child Book Award, a James Beard Book Award nomination and countless appearances as a judge on various Food Network programs.
For those unfamiliar with Steingarten’s prose, “The Man Who Ate Everything” is a must read. A series of essays, it reveals Steingarten as an enthusiastic amateur. His enthusiasm is infectious but it’s his dry wit that leaves me literally laughing out loud. Here’s a small smackerel of Steingarten’s musings on “Greek Cuisine” to whet your appetite.
“The Greeks are really good at both pre-Socratic philosophy and white statues. They have not been good cooks since the fifth century B.C., when Siracusa on Sicily was the gastronomic capital of the world. Typical of modern-day Greek cuisine are feta cheese and retsina wine. Any country that pickles its cheese in brine and adulterates its national wine with pine pitch should order dinner at the local Chinese place and save its energies for other things. The British go to Greece just for the food, which says volumes to me. You would probably think twice before buying an Algerian or Russian television set. I thought for ten years before buying my last Greek meal.“
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