Jason Sheehan, we already miss you and your meandering, pointless memoirs masquerading as Seattle Weekly restaurant reviews. The Surly Gourmand's got your back this week, with nary an effing expletive. But leave it to newly minted editor-in-chief Mike Seely to jump the shark (as it were) with a cover story, no less, about a fictitious "chef" named Lou Kohl and his imaginary restaurant, The Dirt Farm.
If ever a subject were ripe for parody, it would be the sanctimonious restaurant biz, given to oversize egos and preposterous philosophizing, but Seely is so ham-handed (as it were) that his characters bare (bear?) no relation to reality. In short order, the mountain-man chef awakes from his naked slumber, butchers a giant bull, does a line of homegrown coke, forces "visiting author" Michael Pollan to behead a coop full of hens, humiliates his "guests" (who include a passel of plausible locavore foodies like Michael Hebb, Kurt Timmermeister and Matt Dillon, as well as Hollywood types like Gwenyth Paltrow), then dispatches a harmless llama. Pollan says grace.
"What a hoot," concludes Seely. Not.
There's a video, too, deep inside the Weekly's website. Doesn't even try to be amusing.
More fun: this piece in The Atlantic, which at least engendered some lively debate.
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