Food Poisoning

I had food poisoning this weekend. Did I miss anything important?

I was all ready to write a very TMI blog post regaling you with the dirty details of my day -- which was exactly as miserable you might expect -- but I finally thought better of it. I will relay one story though (Yeah, it's a little gross. Feel free to skip this one).

As you know, when you throw up you can sometimes taste what food item it is that's coming back up. For me, last night, it was a donut.

At first, I was annoyed that that was what was being regurgitated. What a waste of a perfectly good donut!

But then I thought (and this was all occurring while I was hunched over the toilet), "well, if I have to throw up anything, isn't the donut the best thing to throw up? After all I already tasted and enjoyed it -- that's the fun part! All that's happening now is I skip the nutritional impact!"

And I was very pleased with myself for approximately two seconds, before I realized that I just invented an eating disorder from first principles. Whoops.

(Later in the day it happened again -- I was marveling at the fact that stuff kept coming out of me even as I wasn't putting any food into me, and I caught myself wondering how much weight I must have lost over the course of the day. The answer was: less than you'd think! Becoming violently ill is in fact not a good weight loss strategy, to say nothing of a general healthy living strategy, and I don't recommend it at all!).

The Debunkers

Once, when I was in middle school, a friend and I saw a picture of a border guard from some eastern European country inside a Scholastic Magazine and decided it was a fake.

We had a grand time picking out details in the photo that "proved" it wasn't real. The guard's uniform had English on it, not Cyrillic. The rifle he was carrying was wrong (how we know what rifle he was supposed to be carrying, I don't know). There were other "problems" as well that I can't remember now. But I do remember feeling very proud of ourselves for figuring out that the magazine ran a fake photo; when the reality is that the photo was almost certainly real. We were vastly overreading minor "discrepancies" that probably weren't ultimately discrepancies at all.

The New York Times has a really interesting (and long) profile on a TikTok star who announced she had cancer, and then faced an organized community committed to "proving" that she was lying about it for influence, clout, or clicks.

The story doesn't hide the ball for long: unless her oncologist is in on the grift, the woman really has cancer. Nonetheless, it was fascinating to see how many people got so committed, for so long, into being sure she was faking it.

In particular, I noticed the deployment of a sort of Potemkin expertise. The debunkers seized on little details and discrepancies which they persistently viewed as the critical cracks in an otherwise elaborate facade. The tenor was an interesting mix of obviousness ("anyone could spot this is a fake, look at the rubes falling for such a clear con") and sophistication ("look how meticulous my investigation is; the story falls apart when an expert looks at it"). The latter component I think does more work than the former: it concocts an aura of authority that both reassures other readers that the claims are backed up by evidence, and also makes them feel good about being critical consumers not taken in by ruses and cons (when the irony, of course, is that they've talked themselves into not believing the truth).

When I read this story, it reminded me of a similar army of "debunkers" who pore over any claim of atrocity or calamity in Israel/Palestine to "prove" that a claim forwarded by seemingly credible sources (doctors, international media outlets, and so on) is actually a hoax or a lie. For example, this account is dedicated to minute analysis of videos or pictures that purport to show, say, famine in Gaza or bombed out civilian infrastructure, picking out bits and pieces that "prove" it's being staged. There's a whole ecosystem of people on this beat (and not just on the "pro-Israel" side), and their tenor and behavior is very reminiscent of the fanatical debunkers described in the NYT article above. They project expertise via hyper-fixation on detail, and present themselves as simply trying to uncover the truth. But they're obviously not dispassionate; the tiny nits and picks they make to "debunk" adverse narratives are never paired with a similar fine-toothed comb aimed at stories more to their taste. It's not even real skepticism, let alone critical analysis. Yet they have an eager audience from those eager to believe they're seeing through a ruse, who revel in the twin joys of faux-sophistication and confirmation bias.

Now, to be sure, the TikTok case is in many ways simpler: it doesn't have any clear political valence, and it is a single incident capable of being definitively declared true or false. Across the many, many reported incidents of catastrophe and calamity in Israel and Palestine, things tend to be muddier, with more obvious incentives to slant (or invent) claims for political purposes, and there will be inevitably a distribution of results following initial claims. Some will be borne out, some will turn out to be overstated, not what they are initially claimed to be, or even outright falsified. There is value in actual critical assessment and reassessment of what people say is happening inside a war zone -- not the least because even among perfectly good faith actors the chaos of a war zone doesn't lend itself to the conjunction of perfect accuracy and immediate reporting.

Nonetheless, I can't help but think part (though not all) of the deception relies on a persistent assumption that every social calamity is complete and totalizing, such that if there's anything interrupting the grimness then it just cannot be cancer/fascism/famine whatever.

And that's not true. There are times one is living with cancer and yet isn't an emaciated patient confined to her bed. That can be part of cancer, one of the scariest parts of cancer, but a picture that doesn't fit that template doesn't prove the cancer is made up. There are times one is living in a fascist state but does not see jackbooted thugs grabbing people off the streets. That is one of the scariest parts of fascism, but a day one just goes to the market as normal and doesn't see any secret police at all doesn't necessarily falsify the fascism. Cancer isn't always like that, fascism isn't always like that. And famine, too, doesn't always look like "The Vulture and the Little Girl"; a picture of a market with some food in it does not necessarily mean there isn't a famine.

That's why those little bits and pieces aren't the smoking guns they purport to be. Reality isn't as clean as we think it is. People with cancer still go to parks. People under fascism still enjoy nights out on the town. Places afflicting by famine still typically have some food somewhere. Buildings that have been bombed still have unexpected pieces that remain standing.

Each of those faux-"discrepancies" becomes grist for the debunking mill. But it's not real critical analysis; it's just food to keep believing what one already wants to believe.

Requiem for a POB

One of the great traumas of my youth, as my mother tells it anyway, was when a favorite brand of gummy bear oatmeal was discontinued. It was one of my favorite breakfast treats, and learning that it was gone -- and gone forever -- was devastating to my tiny brain. I was heartbroken; sufficiently so that this calamity is still spoken of in the Schraub household thirty-plus years later. It did eventually come back when I was teenager, but by then the magic was gone.

Fast forward to the present, and one of David's favorite contemporary treats is Dole's pineapple orange banana juice (or "POB", rhyming with "lobe"). I had this off-and-on as a kid as well, but my true love affair with it didn't begin until I was an adult. It is a beautiful mixture of the holy trinity of smoothie fruits, and having it in my fridge is tantamount to being able to get a delicious smoothie whenever I want. Since David loves smoothies, this is a major selling point.

Unfortunately, POB has become increasingly hard to find.* And today I deigned to ask someone at the grocery store if they had it, and he said it had been discontinued. I don't know if he just means only that store no longer carries it, or it's no longer produced anywhere, but given my trouble finding it at any of the myriad grocery stores near my house, I fear the latter.

Upon getting this news, I remarked to my wife that this was even worse than the gummi bear oatmeal fiasco, because I'm an adult now and "there's less time". She replied "doesn't that mean it's better?" And I just want to explicitly trace out both of our logics here:

• My idea was that less time is "worse", because there's less time for someone to reproduce the product and return it to the grocery shelves.
• Her idea was that less time is "better", because I'm closer to death and so will have to suffer for less time.

Grim.

Anyway, I am heartbroken. Bring back POB!

* I have no idea if this is anything Trump and/or tariff related -- I'm actually inclined to doubt that it is -- but I'm happy to blame him for it anyway. If other voters can crankily decide every bad thing in their life is the fault of the incumbent party, why can't I?

Free Fire

An apparent Israeli air strike killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen who were distributing food supplies in the Gaza Strip in what the IDF is calling a "tragic incident". The IDF is already promising an investigation at the "highest ranks", but the facts already don't look good. The car carrying the workers was clearly marked (as one can see in the picture above), and the World Food Kitchen claims it was coordinating its movements with IDF officials.

"Despite coordinating movements with the IDF, the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route," the [WCK] statement said.

"This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable," said World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore.

According to the statement, "the seven killed are from Australia, Poland, United Kingdom, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada and Palestine."

One thing this demonstrates is that the current apologia regarding the food situation in Gaza -- that it's not a supply problem, it's a distribution problem -- fails even on its own terms. "Distribution problems" are not acts of God; in this case, they plausibly emerge in significant part from the fact that the people doing the distributing have an alarming propensity to become targets for IDF strikes. If distribution requires security, and security requires people with some measure of military hardware (whether that be guns or armor or flak jackets), and IDF commanders are deciding that everybody bearing military hardware is a Hamas terrorist and is fair game to take a missile to the throat, well, small wonder food isn't being distributed.

That, in turn, underscores a larger point: this attack is only the latest in an avalanche of evidence demonstrating, at the very least, that the IDF's rules of operation seem unacceptably lax. The killing of three Israeli hostages by Israeli fire was perhaps the most obvious exemplifier of the problem, but it doesn't stand alone -- among other incidents, Israel also has been accused of targeting a "clearly identifiable" Reuters journalist with tank fire in Lebanon, and a Doctors Without Borders shelter whose "precise location" was known to military authorities. Haaretz reported this weekend on "free fire" zones that Israel has set up throughout the Gaza Strip, where essentially anyone who crosses the vicinity is deemed a valid military target and shot (this was what reportedly led to the hostages being killed -- they inadvertently crossed into one of these unmarked zones while fleeing their captors). The article suggests that some portion of the reported terrorist casualties Israel is reporting are derived from the uncorroborated assumption that anyone (or at least any military-aged male) killed in one of these free fire zones is a terrorist. As much as we hear about how we can't trust the "Hamas-run Health Ministry statistics" regarding the total number of Palestinian deaths (notwithstanding the fact that these figures have been born out in the past and Israel is not to my knowledge contesting them), we also have to take seriously the notion that right now, in this context and with this government, there is ample reason not to blindly trust Israeli figures and conclusions regarding casualty counts too.

And the conclusion that Israel is acting with cavalier indifference to civilian life is, perhaps, the most generous of the plausible inferences from the evidence. The alternative, of course, is that these attacks are not matters of recklessness but rather are deliberate. This does not require the implausible belief that Bibi has enacted some secret policy to kill all aid workers. It rather relies on the sadly not-implausible notion that some portion of midlevel and field commanders who've imbibed the drumbeat of "the media is the enemy, the NGOs are the enemy, everyone is the enemy, they're all conspiring against us" that is omnipresent in the right-wing press actually take that narrative seriously and are deciding to act on it. It doesn't take the entire army apparatus for this to be a problem -- just a few well-placed people who decide to take lines like "Al-Jazeera is a Hamas mouthpiece" seriously and literally, who feel secure in the knowledge that they'll never face meaningful consequence or punishment for their endeavors.

Either way, this cannot be allowed to continue. The Israeli government has nobody to blame but itself for putting itself in a position where an obviously just struggle against Hamas has become converted in the world's eyes into an indiscriminate pulverizing of the Palestinian people, because over and over again the evidence bears out that this is exactly what Israel has elected to do. Those choices were not inevitabilities, they were choices; and Israel has no cause for protest that it is being held responsible for those choices. It could have chosen differently. It opted not to. People are entitled to draw reasonable conclusions from the facts before their eyes.

Is Originalism a Sandwich?

In the latest iteration of her "notable sandwiches" series, Talia Lavin tackles the age-old question "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" She gathered a host of experts from a range of different disciplines to give their take, and while there wasn't a consensus, it seemed to me (I didn't count) that more leaned against it being a sandwich. The general thrust of the argument that most resonated with me, from sociolinguistics professor Matt Garley, was to frame the question as "Do people commonly or regularly refer to a hot dog (outside of this particular debate) as a sandwich?" In that light, the answer seems to be generally "no", even if it seems to formally meet the dictionary definition of a sandwich ("two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between.").

Later in the post, Talia gets a quote from Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer and former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, who gave some insight on how dictionaries themselves approach this problem. Contrary to (perhaps) popular belief, dictionaries are not in the business of trying to give precise definitions that perfectly include and exclude everything that descriptively falls within the category-type of a given word. I'll quote him at length:

The general thing to know about dictionaries is that you're usually not trying to capture the complete and exact description of something; you're trying to get a general picture of what something means. This is hard enough for concrete nouns that we more or less know, like "horse" or "sandwich"; it's impossible with abstract nouns like "freedom" or "beauty". One of the most famous definitions in lexicography is the one for "door" in Webster's Third of 1961:

"a movable piece of firm material or a structure supported usually along one side and swinging on pivots or hinges, sliding along a groove, rolling up and down, revolving as one of four leaves, or folding like an accordion by means of which an opening may be closed or kept open for passage into or out of a building, room, or other covered enclosure or a car, airplane, elevator, or other vehicle."

This is what happens when you try to be exact—you get something useless.

So most dictionaries, that are written for native speakers and that assume a good-faith effort to understand the definition, give a reasonably broad definition, that will include most things that should be included and exclude most things that should be excluded.

There are, conventionally, two main types of lexicographers: lumpers and splitters. Lumpers include as much as possible ('liquid food' for soup); splitters write a dozen super-narrow definitions, and when a new variant comes up, they write another one.

Dictionaries are generally more lumpy than splitty. A sandwich is a food with something inside a bready thing. Trying to be super-precise is only going to lead to frustration (or the "door" definition above): Most people feel that a meatball sub is a kind of a sandwich but a hot dog isn't, but that's very hard to explain, so unless you have a definition like "… or a split roll having a cold or hot filling (that is not a solid length of sausage)…", you're kind of stuck.

If I can turn serious for a moment—and this is very serious—the reason that this is genuinely important, and not just a parlor game, is that people sometimes put a lot of faith in dictionary definitions. In particular, courts use old dictionaries to try to determine what words meant at a time when laws were written. But that is very much not how dictionaries should be used. If it's this hard to determine what a "sandwich" is, what are we supposed to do about words like genocide, or to bear arms? Or woman in reference to a trans woman? People literally die because dictionaries are misused. There are ways to attempt to answer these questions—corpus linguistics, sociolinguistic interviews—but thinking that a dictionary is an exact map of reality is not a correct one of these.

I wasn't expecting to see this point made in a fun post about the concept of a hot dog, but here we are. And it did crystallize for me an objection I've been flagging recently about "vulgar" textualism or originalism; a practice of judicial interpretation that purports to distinguish itself by close and careful reading of texts, but actually is just very bad at reading texts. Many of the cases that take this approach begin with a very close parsing of dictionary definitions in order to fix textual meaning. But this from the jump misunderstands what dictionaries are even trying to do. Even at the moment they are written, dictionaries are an at best imperfect map onto actual public meaning (the idea being that even if we were looking at a dictionary published today to answer the question "is a hot dog a sandwich", we'd likely be heading off in the wrong direction). And that gap only grows wider as time passes, because the actual meaning of words depends on a host of agreed-upon implicit assumptions and cultural horizons that are constantly shifting and temporally-contingent. 

We run into this question when trying to figure out how to apply an old word ("search") to technology that hadn't been invented yet when the word was written ("heat scanning"). One way of answering "is heat scanning a search under the Fourth Amendment" is to look at the dictionary definition of "search" circa 1789 and figure out if it fits. But that actually wouldn't really be the accurate answer, because what we'd actually want to know is if the relevant interpretive community would have generally used "heat mapping" as falling under the category of search. And that question, in turn, is essentially incoherent unless we also import into that community a host of surrounding cultural and linguistic practices that make "heat mapping" a legible concept that could be part of a robust linguistic pattern to begin with (if you plop down a heat mapper into 1789 without all of that context, then it's going to be seen less as a "search" and more as "eldritch magical witchcraft"). So what we're really asking when trying to figure whether heat mapping qualifies as a search today is "how would the relevant class of interpreters understand the relationship between these words, if they had the full cultural and linguistic context that we have today -- and at that point, our "originalism" is essentially just living constitutionalism.

The Most American of July 4ths

Today, my wife and I continued the process of moving into our new home -- the "American dream". We also watched the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating contest, ate a slice of apple pie, and mourned a mass shooting.

Hard to imagine a more American day than that.

The Coda to the Israeli-American Food Truck Fiasco

(Previous posts here and here)

Eat Up the Borders, which ignited a firestorm of criticism after uninviting an Israeli-American immigrant food truck from its festival, has issued an apology.

It is, I think, a good apology. It provides relevant context, while making absolutely clear that they own their mistake and affirming their absolute intention to keep working with Moshava Philly in the future. While the apology is primarily -- an appropriately -- directed at Moshava and the Jewish community, it also at one point extends its apology to "the Jewish and Palestinian communities." I've seen some people push on this -- why the apology to Palestinians? -- but I don't have any particular problem. Eat Up the Borders made its own mistake, and yet Palestinians are having it imputed to them. To the extent Eat Up the Borders dragged them into a mess of their own creation, it's fine to apologize for that.

More broadly: apologies are important, and we should be encouraging Eat Up the Borders for doing so here. It's hard to apologize, and harder still when you know that many won't accept the apology and many others will be furious that one deigned to apologize at all. Sometimes it's paradoxically more comfortable sitting with obvious, outright antisemitism -- there is a weird sense of relief in finding a situation where everyone knows this was not okay, and there is the temptation to continue sitting in that comfortable position of righteous anger than to transition to the far more precarious, vulnerable, and uncertain posture of trying to grow forward. 

This is a temptation that must be resisted. If we want people to apologize and work to do better, one needs to respond favorably when they earnestly try to do so. Positive reinforcement is good! And this, I'd note, has been the consistent tone taken by Moshava Philly, which has been emphatic that it likes Eat Up the Borders, thinks they do good work, wants to continue working with them, and thinks this was a mistake they'll learn and grow from. If one refuses to allow for that possibility, one cannot hold oneself out as an ally to Moshava Philly.

In other thoughts: It was notable that, once this story broke into the mainstream, one spotted very few defenders of the decision to expel Moshava Philly. Obviously, they exist and one could find them if one looked, but the usual suspects remained pretty quiet and the slightly-less usual suspects tended to use this as a case of "here's an example of where a 'boycott' goes too far." So that's notable. 

Those who did come out in defense of the expulsion -- JVP's Swarthmore branch was probably the highest-profile case I saw -- really did a sterling job of demonstrating how BDS, at least for that camp of fundamentalist, is about objecting to Israelis existing in any form or capacity. Eater Philadelphia got a quote -- one of the first I've seen -- from one of the persons who initially put pressure on the festival to cut ties with Moshava Philly based on the view that its food was "appropriated Palestinian food that they’re marketing as Israeli food" and therefore "contributes to the marginalization and erasure of Palestinian culture" (as Ron Kampeas notes, when it comes to the food in question, this is both historically illiterate and erasive of Middle Eastern Jewish history).

But the flailing effort to find something -- anything -- that supposedly rendeered their targeting of Moshava Philly something more than just naked national origin discrimination made them look more ridiculous than righteous. A popular move was to claim that "moshava" means "settlement" (it means something like "small village", which, yes, most thesauruses would say is a synonym for "settlement", but not in the sense referred to here). Others poured over social media to find basic statements of pride in being Israeli or love of their country to present as mortal sins (Manny's in San Francisco endured a similar strategy). One "collective", for example, made the shocking discovery that a product that Moshava Philly sold had its origin in a farm which the proprietor began working on "illegally" in 1993 (the intended implication being that it was from an illegal West Bank settlement). Even that six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon tag fell apart when it was discovered that the farm in question was in pre-48 Israel (who knew that BDSers had so much respect for Israeli property law!), at which point they showed their whole self by declaring flatly that "It’s all a settlement: Tel Aviv is a settlement just like Havot Ma’on, or Kiryat Arba." So yeah, that's who we're dealing with.

Ultimately, this story ends on an optimistic note. The festival apologized. The promise to keep working with Moshava Philly was secured, and it appears neither grudging nor coerced. Moshava Philly has been very vocal about how humbled they've been from the outpouring of support they've received. Few, if any, mainstream actors did anything but say "this was wrong". Those are all good things. We can be happy about those good things, and work to build on them -- and it looks like both Moshava Philly and Eat Up the Borders are committed to doing so.

"Safety in Solidarity" and the Israeli-American Food Truck

Yesterday, Jewish social media was roiled by the story of a Israeli-American food truck, Moshava Philly, was expelled from the "Eat Up the Borders" immigrant food truck event after reported community pressure and threats. It was a depressing story, obviously, and a story about antisemitism, also obviously. But I have a few slightly-less (I think) obvious thoughts as well.

It is, right now, unclear whether the event organizers made their decision to remove Moshava Philly because they agreed with and/or where sympathetic to those objecting to Moshava Philly's presence, or whether they regretted the decision but felt their hands were tied due to credible threats that could endanger the entire event. The evidence is mixed, but for purposes of this post I'm going to assume the latter -- partially because that seems to be Moshava Philly's interpretation, and partially because if it's the former then there isn't really much interesting-non-obvious commentary to add.

It is a depressing reality that one has to assume that an organization like Eat Up the Borders, dedicated to promoting immigrant businesses in America, has experienced or at least contemplated what would happen if there was a racist backlash to its practices. This is not an unforeseeable development, at least in broad strokes. One has to think they had an idea of what they'd do in a case like this. So the question is whether this -- removing the targeted truck -- is in accord with that idea. People are saying that Eat Up the Borders would not have reacted in the same way had the racist backlash targeted a Mexican-American truck or an Iraqi-American truck or a Chinese-American truck.

Normally, I hate that "imagine if it were X group" argument, in part because is it often acts as if it is inconceivable that there would be a backlash against any other group. To the contrary, I can absolutely imagine a scenario where a racist backlash targeted the food truck of another community; I can even imagine a situation where the backlash got so dangerous and threatening that the event organizers felt no choice but to remove them from the event. It's not implausible.

But. I do think there is something different happening here. If Eat Up the Borders was facing a racist backlash, I think under normal circumstances they would not hesitate to vocally name it as a racist backlash. It might be a backlash that temporarily defeated them, it might be one that forced them to make a decision they'd rather not make. Racists can be powerful that way. But by naming it, they would lay the foundation for a counterattack: leverage the community to rally against the racists and provide the necessary support, resources, and security to ensure that all are welcome at the event and that the racists would not win in the end.

"Safety in solidarity". That's the motto we hear -- that threats like this don't need more police, they need a community response that unifies in support to keep everyone safe and included.

Something about this case, though, apparently made turning to that idea feel untenable to Eat Up the Borders. For whatever reason, they did not have the confidence that naming this as a racist backlash would generate the sort of outpouring of solidarity that might yield safety. The core "idea" wouldn't work here. People, Jews and non-Jews alike, sense that the foundations for such solidarity have not yet entrenched themselves, at least for Jews. For Jews, there still are hang-ups and excuses and rationalizations for why solidarity can be withheld -- they're powerful, they're appropriating, they're colonizers ... the list goes on. And they know, too, that to some extent the calls for racist exclusion against Jews are coming from inside the house -- opposing this form of racist backlash isn't about standing tall against big bad bigots "out there", but involves standing up and saying no to people on the inside.

At the end of the day, Jews know that "safety in solidarity" is not, at least right now, a check we're entitled to cash. It might be different if the people who loudly promoted "safety in solidarity" as the proper Jewish response to antisemitism got loud about instances like this. If they put out the call for solidarity and got a response, that could prove otherwise -- a powerful rallying and mobilizing on behalf of Moshava Philly that would blow away the assumption that solidarity would not be forthcoming. 

But they don't. Maybe because they themselves have mixed feelings about the presence of Israeli-American immigrants -- even as those "mixed feelings", at root, cannot be disaggregated from simple antisemitism and xenophobia. If one has a problem with immigrants because of the policies of the nation they immigrated from, or because they do not express outright hatred and contempt for their home, or because one views the entire culture of that nation as irrevocably tainted and grotesque -- that's xenophobia, full stop. If nothing else, Moshava Philly represents a very clean case where all of the supposed guardrails that distinguish "anti-Israel" from "antisemitism" -- from "it's about the government, not the people" to "it's about institutions, not individuals" -- have fallen away.

But mixed feelings is not the only problem here. Even if there is no such ambivalence, even if the "safety in solidarity" crew knows without a doubt that this is hate, I suspect they're quiet because, deep down, they harbor the same doubts as everyone else about what the response to their call would be.  Even if they know this is hate, they don't know that everyone else knows it too. They know the foundation isn't there yet.

It is worth noting that the entity in this sad affair that seems most invested in actually building this foundation is ... Moshava Philly. They've committed to staying invested in this community, of reaching out to Eat Up the Borders and doing the work. I wish I could say with confidence they'll succeed. It's not guaranteed. But it's worth trying, and they deserve our support as they try to use this terrible moment to build up rather than tear down.

UPDATE: NBC Philadelphia reports two new developments I hadn't heard before. The first is that now event organizers are claiming it had a policy of only allowing an Israeli food truck if a Palestinian one was present as well (and vice versa); this time the Palestinian food truck couldn't make it so they removed the Israeli one. That's a profoundly stupid reason, and also very different from what folks on both sides had been saying yesterday.

Second, it appears now the entire festival has been canceled.

UPDATE 2x: That JVP Swarthmore -- which has "safety through solidarity" in its bio -- is enthusiastically backing the expulsion of the Israeli-American immigrant vendor as a righteous example of BDS is almost too on-brand and makes for the perfect coda to this post.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LVI: The Impossible Burger

Have you tried The Impossible Burger -- the plant-based veggie patty that actually tastes like a regular, meatified hamburger? I have -- at White Castle, of all places. Impossible Burgers are pricier than their dead-animal counterparts, and I figured a slider was a cheap way to try it out with minimal risk in case I didn't like it.

(A friend told me that I was especially brave to try an Impossible Burger at White Castle. I remarked that it would have probably been braver to eat the meat patties there).

How was it? Well, my assessment is in line with the conventional wisdom, I think: it's not the best burger I've ever had, but it's not the worst either, and most importantly it does taste like an actual burger. That puts it head and shoulders above any other competitor, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, if you're like me and you've had an Impossible Burger, take a moment to thank -- or blame -- your local Jew. Because ...

[E]nter a new food-borne Jewish plot: the menacing Impossible Burger.

You may recognize that creation as a non-meat-based patty that claims to be indistinguishable in taste and texture from a traditional hamburger.

But one Joseph Jordan and one Mike Peinovich claim to have uncovered the sordid truth. They announced on their paywall-protected white power podcast — that the fake meat is, as you may have suspected, part of a Jewish scheme to destroy the white race.

It is an odd accusation (aside from its essential oddness), since the scientist-founder of Impossible Foods Inc. is a lily-white gentleman by the name of Patrick O. Brown. But who knows? Maybe his decidedly un-Jewish name is as fake as his burgers, he has bleached his skin and hidden under his T-shirt lies a tallis kattan.

It’s not entirely clear how the newfangled burger ties into the Jewish plot. But it apparently has something to do with the purported dangers of soy and an intent to, as Messrs. Jordan and Peinovich assert, “make it impossible for working people to be able to afford meat, make it impossible for working people to drive automobiles, make it impossible for average people to live in an industrial society.”

And should that case somehow prove less than convincing, Mr. Jordan adds, “They wanna make us into India!”

Making things even more undeniable, he adds that “the new breed of hyper-wealthy Judeo-capitalists in the tech industries especially” want to usurp industries currently run by “goys.”

Mr. Peinovich then provides the coup de grâce: “Oh, you’re not gonna believe this: it’s kosher!”

I do believe it, actually, seeing as the Impossible Burger is -- again -- a plant-based product.

Manny's: The Go-To Spot for Democratic Presidential Candidates in San Francisco

Even if you don't live in San Francisco, some of you might have heard of Manny's. It is a social justice oriented cafe and civic gathering space in the San Francisco Mission whose owner (the eponymous Manny, an Afghan-American Jew) committed the terrible sin of wishing Israel a happy birthday. For this, his establishment has been the subject of protests by an extreme-left fringe.

The protests are not exactly big, and they haven't stopped Manny's from thriving. Nonetheless, the story made the national Jewish press, as tales like this are wont to do. A progressive Mizrahi Jewish social activist creating an affordable cafe that employs formerly homeless individuals being set upon by far-left protesters as a "Zionist gentrifier"? I know click-bait when I see it.

But today, I saw another story about Manny's, one not reported in the Jewish press but just the local San Francisco CBS affiliate: Manny's is, by far, the biggest go-to venue in the city for prospective Democratic presidential candidates. He's already hosted or scheduled to host Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar, Seth Moulton, Beto O'Rourke, Eric Swalwell, Cory Booker, Steve Bullock, and Kamala Harris. It's a roster that apparently dwarfs any other similar venue in the city. If you're a Democrat and you've got national ambitions, Manny's is the hot spot in San Francisco.

The thing is -- I don't even view this as Democratic candidates bravely defying the hard left which sought to marginalize and degrade Manny's. Why? Because I doubt their protest frankly even hit the radar screen of your average Democratic presidential campaign. There's a version of this narrative where the Democrats are visiting Manny's in "solidarity" against the protesters, but I doubt this is even a case of that. The protest movement against Manny's, in terms of its ability to exert influence on mainstream Democratic politicians, is almost certainly so marginal as to be utterly irrelevant. The CBS story didn't even mention the boycott movement (which, to be honest, may have petered out anyway). It was literally a non-story in this story.

When we talk about the supposed creeping influence of the extreme anti-Israel left on Democratic Party politics, this really needs to be kept in mind. There are chicken littles who view every crank carrying a "Zio-Nazi" poster or campus activist calling Hillel an instrument of Zionist repression as the next head of the DNC. And then there's my position is that fringe is fringe, and that the breathless coverage such groups get by the Jewish press massively overstates their influence on anything that remotely approaches a mainstream liberal institution. The popularity of Manny's among visiting Democratic luminaries certainly seems to be powerful evidence in favor of the latter posture. This big scary far-left protest that got coverage across the national Jewish press? Turns out, it didn't even register as a blip in terms of Manny's viability as a Democratic organizing space.

I can't say I blame the extreme-left protesters for trying to portray themselves as bigger than they are -- the voice of the people! (What's the alternative: "We're a tiny fringe that has no real constituency but nonetheless ought to be viewed as the sole authentic representative of the people, because something-something-revolutionary-vanguard!"?). But we certainly don't have to indulge them.

We should struggle against the availability heuristic on our own time. Fringe remains fringe.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LII: Extra Fizzy Drinks at Ramadan

Ramadan has begun, and with it a month of daytime fasting. Speaking as a Jew, that doesn't sound fun (I only fast for one day -- during Yom Kippur -- but we go for the full 24 hours). But at least at night you can eat and drunk what you want.

Just watch out for fizzy drinks, apparently:

A man speaking in Urdu talks about the importance of not having fizzy drinks to open your fast.

He goes on to say cold and fizzy drinks can have a negative effect on your long-term health and could even cause death.

But then a link is made to the fact that many of the major fizzy drinks companies are owned and run by Jews. The speaker also claims that according to the Quran, Muslims are not permitted to have relations or friendships with Jews in any way.

It further adds that during the month of Ramadan they have ‘purposely planned’ to increase the gas content in fizzy drinks so whoever consumes them will be affected.

I don't know much about the health effects of fizzy drinks -- though to the extent they're unhealthy I suspect it's the sugar more than the carbonation that's doing the work, so increasing the gas content seems like more of an annoyance than a devious plot.

But then again, I rarely consume fizzy drinks -- an admission which in the antisemitic imagination probably ranks right up there with saying that I skipped work in New York on 9/11. So take my advice with a grain of salt.

Anyway, if you're Muslim and fasting this month, I hope it is an easy one. And if you do like to break fast with a soda, I'm pretty sure you're in the clear.

America's Got Talent: Live!

Jill and I are in Las Vegas for a "mini-moon" (we plan to do a real honeymoon in a few months). The big "event' of the trip was seeing the "America's Got Talent: Live!" show, featuring Season 13 winner Shin Lim as well as several of the more popular runners-up: Courtney Hadwin, Vicki Barbolak, Samuel Comroe, and Duo Transcend.

You know what time it is? Review time! And if you stick it out to the end (or, you know, scroll down), you'll get a bonus review of the Hell's Kitchen restaurant at Caesar's.

Shin Lim

I had never watched AGT before, and the only reason I watched this season was because Shin Lim (whom I'd seen on Penn & Teller Fool Us -- watch these two sets!) was competing. I was rooting for him for the whole competition, and he won! This was very well deserved -- speaking as someone who enjoys magic acts but is by no means an aficionado, Shin Lim is a transcendent talent.

The main takeaway from seeing him live is that he really needs his own theater. Close-up card magic is, by its nature, difficult to translate to a live performance in a big auditorium (especially when you're, like us, sitting in the very back row). The theater had big screens behind him, but the camera work was iffy and so it didn't really capture the magic beyond what you could get from watching him at home.

Again: the moral of this story isn't that I was disappointed. He's still got a jaw-dropping act, and he has a truly fantastic stage presence. The moral is that Shin Lim is so amazing, and so much fun to watch, that he needs a team and resources dedicated to really making his work translate in front of a big live audience. I think he can do it, and I think he can be a legitimate draw once he gets it.

Duo Transcend

The best thing about this husband-wife trapeze act was that it was set to a rendition of Britney Spears' "Toxic" that sounds like it should be in a Batman movie. If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it isn't -- it's a great remix that hits all my musical buttons. The act itself is good, albeit (haha) not transcendent. As a supporting act, it works really well, but I'm not sure I see a whole show around it. They attempt to stretch a bit with a routine on roller skates, which is well-executed but when you think about it is just a land version of pairs figure skating.

The couple is extremely sensual, in a good way, and I think (again, I don't mean this as an insult!) it would actually fit in really well in Cirque du Soleil's "Zumanity."

Also, the husband-half of the duo has a ridiculously -- I mean ridiculously -- muscular upper-body. He looks like a cartoon. I can't fathom it.

Vicki Barbolak and Samuel Comroe

Barbolak's comedic style isn't really mine, but that's okay. There's definitely an audience for what she does (the guy sitting next to me, who was rocking the thickest Missouri accent I've heard since my clerkship days, was definitely all-in for her), and that's what counts. I kind of find her a bit gimmicky. The "trailer nasty" catch-phrase is just that -- a catch-phrase -- and it's less an organic part of the routine than something shoved in for its own sake. Jill did observe, fairly, that Barbolak's brand of comedy almost certainly is raunchier than really permissible at a family show like AGT Live, so she was probably a bit hamstrung.

Samuel Comroe was, from my measure, the performer who shined brightest beyond expectations. I liked him on the show, but his set was just really, really funny. He's confident and has a unique style, and the way he works in his Tourette's into the routine is clever without feeling like it's a crutch. Obviously, as compared to Shin or Duo Transcend, he's benefited by the fact that he doesn't need any special space to perform in. Overall, I found the production values for the entire Vegas show to be "adequate", at best, but that's neither here nor there for a stand-up comic.

Courtney Hadwin

Watching Courtney Hadwin is like watching a high school baseball player who clearly has the goods, but also isn't quite there yet. There's no question she has some impressive pipes. And she has a style (Jill compared it to Janis Joplin) that -- if not entirely original, is at the very least due for a revival. The talent is indisputable.

That said, there's still plenty of work to be done (and plenty of time to do it -- she's only 14! She relies a little too much on the "Yee-oww!" scream -- it's distinctive, yes, but it gets repetitive. The dancing is basic -- it looks like she's recently got a choreographer and has mastered a few moves which she returns to over and over (then again, maybe it's deliberate?).

In short, she's an awkward teenager. And that's fine! She's super-charming (her "regular" demeanor is such a far cry from her singing persona that just listening to her describe her next song is an act in itself (she was also adorably weird trying to do the group bow -- you know, where the cast joins and hands and bows as one? She kept trying to grab Shin's elbow -- it doesn't work if you do that, Courtney!). And she literally signed off each set by saying -- very quickly -- "Thank you, bye!" and just running off.

So there's a lot of room for growth, but a lot of potential growing. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Hell's Kitchen

After AGT, we decamped for Caesar's to visit the new Hell's Kitchen restaurant (which happens to be the grand prize for this season of HK). I was actually happy that they didn't lean into the theme too much -- I was worried that there would be a whole scene of yelling at the chefs and vitriol and abuse which is fine on the show but actually doesn't make for a pleasant dining experience. But there was none of that: other than having a "red" and "blue" kitchen (which I'm 99% sure was only cosmetic anyway), the Hell's Kitchen aspect of the show was basically one of aesthetics. And aesthetically, the restaurant looked very nice.

In terms of food, the menu is similar-ish to the upscale GR Steak at the Paris, albeit cheaper. I ordered a caesar sald, a filet, and Jill and I shared a potato puree as a side and a sticky toffee pudding for dessert -- basically what I would have gotten at GR Steak.

The caesar was fantastic -- arguably better than the one at HK's more prestigious cousin. The steak was cooked perfectly (I've never had a less-than-perfectly cooked steak at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant), but the grilled preparation wasn't my favorite -- I tend to think grill marks on a filet don't go well with the delicate flavor of the meat. The potatoes were good, though nothing to write home about. The sticky toffee pudding was, as always, outstanding (they did substitute a different ice cream for the brown butter, and that felt like a downward move).

Overall, it was a good experience, but I don't think it will replace GR Steak in our rotation. That said, it is noticeably cheaper, and as a non-bank-breaking substitute it certainly works well.

Suit Up Roundup

The latest wedding prep item to be checked off the list is my wedding suit. I like it. It's snazzy. Still have to pick it up post-alterations, though.

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Anil Kalhan explains what was evident to anyone paying attention: John Roberts didn't "overturn" Korematsu in Trump v. Hawaii -- he renamed it.

What do you call a Jewish Indian fusion food truck? Nu Deli. I love this more than I can express (semi-related: I picked up The Last Jews of Karala: The 2,000-Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community at a bookstore the other day. So far, so good.).

Right now, we're seeing growing recognition of the full diversity of the Jewish community. That's good. But it also means reckoning seriously with the fact that the Jewish community has not always been welcoming of our full diversity. Hey Alma hosted a roundtable discussion with six Jews of Color that's definitely worth a read. Sandra Lawson and Donna Cephas write of racism they've experienced within the Jewish community. And the Baltimore Jewish Times just ran a profile on Mendel Davis, son of an African-American Chabad Rabbi.

Nobody expects the National Review to defend the Spanish Inquisition!

An interesting blast from the past: the Jewish Current reprints an exchange between Rabbi Joachim Prinz and an antisemitic Christian pastor who heard him speak at an army base in Abilene, Texas. It is striking reading, precisely because the pastor's arguments come couched in language we'd recognize today: he condemns Nazism, acknowledges the existence of some good Jews, speaks in unfailingly polite terms -- but nonetheless makes sweeping generalizations against the faith as a whole to justify his bigotry. It's well worth reading not because of how alien it is, but because of how little the language of "civil" bigotry has changed over the past seventy years.

JTA profiles Alma Hernandez, a 25-year old Mexican-American Jewish women running for a seat in the Arizona House of Representatives. (She's also being targeted by David Duke, which is possibly the least surprising thing imaginable).

Post-Turkey Roundup

Back from seeing the family in Rhode Island. But what is Thanksgiving without leftovers?

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Is Donald Trump boosting a conspiracy website arguing that Jews run the world still news? I think it's still news.

Right-wing website hires a woman to pose as a survivor of sexual assault by Roy Moore in an attempt to embarrass the Washington Post. Unfortunately for them, the Post is a real newspaper that actually does fact-check, so they figured out her scheme. Maybe she should've called Bernie Bernstein?

Tamar Zaken writes on Mizrahi Heritage Month (aka, November): "We cannot define the Mizrachi heritage in terms of expulsion or destruction."

The New York Jewish deli owned by a Yemeni Muslim.

Marty Lederman looks into the fun statutory issues governing who's actually running the Consumer Financial Protection Board right now.

Root Beer Taste Test

I love root beer. As a non-alcohol drinker, it's the closest thing I get to experiencing the varieties of real beer. And so, for years, I've had a dream of performing a root beer taste test. And now that dream is coming true.

Over the course of several days, I've drank a variety of different root beers -- both commonplace and artisanal. I've given them all a grade and some brief commentary. It's my gift to you, but more than that, it's my gift to me.

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A&W: I bought a bottle of A&W for sake of completion, because I already knew I didn't like it. But its one of the big names in the root beer business, so I figured I had to give it a shot. And to be honest, I was pleasantly surprised. I always felt like A&W tasted like it had been left out in the sun for too long, but this was sweeter and crisper than I remembered (although a molasses-type sweetness -- the bottle says "aged vanilla" -- which I wasn't a huge fan of). It does depend on it being fully carbonated -- once the carbonation fades, it start to taste like liquified brown sugar -- but again, not terrible. Still not great though. C+.

Barq's: With all this stress on small, artisanal root beers some may be surprised that I fully expected Barq's to do very well in this challenge. Of the "big three" mainstream root beer brands (A&W and Mug being the other two), Barq's is by far my favorite and is the root beer that is always in my fridge. The famous "bite" isn't anything too extreme, but certainly gives it a personality that one wouldn't expect from a Coca-Cola product. The main downside is that there isn't a ton underneath the bite -- once the snap wears off, it goes downhill really quickly -- but as long as you don't linger while drinking it Barq's is very crisp and refreshing. A.

Mug: Good. Generic, but good. Not a lot to say about this. I last got a bottle of Mug when it came with a Dominos Pizza, and that feels entirely appropriate somehow. B+.

Bedford's: Surprisingly watery. I had tried a bunch of "darker" flavors prior to drinking Bedford's, and when I first sipped it I couldn't quite put my finger on what its distinct flavor was. A full bottle later, and I still wasn't sure, and had no recollection about what it was. There's nothing particularly offensive about this drink, but there's nothing remotely memorable about it either. C-.

Dad's: It was difficult for me to place Dad's flavor (mint? No, that's not right), but it was generally quite pleasant. The problem was there was nothing going on underneath it -- in fact, it was pretty watery. I've heard that some people get "Dad's" as a cute Father's Day gift, and I have to say that it's far better than what one would typical expect for a "gimmick-grade" product. B.

Frostie: Frostie has a cartoon Santa on its bottle. And it tastes like Christmas! I can't even describe what that means; hell, I don't even celebrate Christmas. But it tastes exactly like what I imagine Christmas to taste like. It's a very particular sort of sweet that's pleasing and wintery and not too strong. That taste overlays a pretty forgettable base, but overall this is a strong entry. A-.

Henry Weinhard's: This has a flavor that I imagine is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. For me, it tastes a little like cough syrup. Now, I have to say that if cough syrup tasted like this I'd be really happy -- it'd make a darn tasty cough syrup! But in the root beer category, that's a downgrade. It does foam very impressively though. B-.

IBC: Tastes like a darker version of Barq's. It has a bite as well, though not as distinctive. The flavor is a little richer, and I can imagine people going both ways on it. But I'm a big fan. A.

Sioux City: One taste of this and I was like "we've got a contender." Two tastes and I immediately recanted. This has a dreadful aftertaste -- truly foul. I'm not sure where it comes from, because it has a very nice taste when it hits your tongue. This must be what drug addiction feels like -- a momentary great feeling, followed by awfulness. D+.

O-So Butterscotch Root Beer: As the name describes. This has a very strong -- I'd argue overpowering -- butterscotch flavor that feels incongruous. Like, I can see how someone might think it goes with a root beer base, but they turned out to be wrong. Root beer is sweet enough as it is, this turned it positively sickly. Would not recommend unless you're a true butterscotch fan (which I admittedly am not). C-.

Red Arrow: Like A&W without the sweetness. This is what I imagine dark beer to taste like. Unfortunately, it lacks the smoothness of A&W. In fact, the more I think of it, the more this tastes like my bad memories of A&W. Not a fan. C-.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXIX: Plummeting Caviar Stocks

Rich people, as a rule, love caviar. And Jews, as any good anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist knows, are all rich. But the really woke anti-Semites know that Jews don't eat caviar (it's not kosher). And with caviar-producing sturgeon facing threats from invasive species -- well, it's not hard to put the pieces together (particularly if every puzzle has the same answer):

“Introduced species can disturb the ecosystem of an area,” Seyyed Jafar Mousavi[], the Deputy Head of Intelligence and Operation Department at the Biological Headquarters of Civil Defence Organization, said in an interview with Mehr News Agency, as translated by IFP. 

Some species can do more harm than good to an ecosystem, he noted. 

He noted that Caspian seal, Kilka and Sevruga fish belong to the Caspian Sea; however, comb jellies are alien species that have come from the Atlantic Ocean. 

“We firmly believe that the Zionist regime [Israel] is behind the conspiracy of nuisance species as they had sworn to do so,” Mousavi added.

Good catch (get it? "Catch"? Because fish)! The goyim will fall to their knees if the Zionist cabal can deprive their leaders of their precious caviar!

Las Vegas Trip: Recap and Review

Jill and I, along with my parents and brother, all were in Las Vegas this weekend for a much-needed vacation. All of us love it -- which is amazing, because we're pretty different types of people. My dad and brother are into the traditional Vegas life (playing craps into the wee hours), while Jill and I (and my mom) aren't really gamblers at all. But for us there is great food and other fun activities, and we can keep ourselves amused with video poker without breaking the bank. Highlights:

* Gambling: As mentioned, I'm not a big gambler generally. Mostly I just play video poker, interspersed with some video blackjack. This trip, however, my brother discovered a video craps table and taught me how to play. I certainly see the appeal, and I even was able to fly solo for awhile (it looks more intimidating than it is). But even still, most of my time was spent doing video poker. And luckily for me, I had a bonanza Saturday (for me -- I don't bet large enough figures to actually have a true bonanza) which included hitting a straight flush. While I ended up giving all of the money back on Sunday, it was nice to play with house money for the majority of the trip.

* Boxing: This trip was not originally envisioned to be a "boxing" trip. But that ended up being somewhat of a theme. I found reasonably priced ring-side (fourth row) tickets for Friday Night Fights card at the MGM Marquee ballroom, so Jill, my father, and I all attended. It was a fun show (all but one of the fights ended in knockouts). There was also boxing on NBC Saturday -- putting all my wagers together on both evening's entertainment, I ended up $6 (hey, being up is being up). But in reality, my overall win/loss stat for this trip hinges entirely on a bet that remains pending. I put $60 on Mayweather by decision (technically, Mayweather and "will go" 11 1/2 rounds); a bet that will pay slightly over double if it hits. Getting 2:1 odds on Mayweather by decision? I'll take that action all day.

* Other sports: A few years ago, we were in Las Vegas for my brother's birthday. My gift was a bet on the Cowboys game, and we just hung out in the sports book watching the game with a rooting interest and chilling out. It was really nice. This year, Jill and I had some time to kill on Sunday, so we decided to do the same thing with the Maryland/Nebraska basketball game. I bet on Maryland to win (they were favored by 3), and Jill picked the "over" on points (123). It was a fun and exciting game that (in general and from the vantage of our bets) went to the wire. Final score: Maryland 64, Nebraska 61. My bet pushed, but with 125 points Jill collected on hers.

* Food: Since (despite what the last three entries indicate), I'm really not a huge gambler, the highlight of any Vegas trip for me is the food. This trip we mixed up some old favorites with some new entrants.

* Noodles (Bellagio): My favorite Thai dish is Pad See Ew (or Gway Teow -- as best I can tell there is no real difference between them). The best Pad See Ew I've had in a place I've lived is at Amazing Thailand in Minneapolis, though Asia Nine in DC is a close second. Frankly, Berkeley should be ashamed at how badly it is losing this category. But anyway, the best Pad See Ew I've had anywhere is at Noodles. Just spicy enough to be perfectly flavorable, and delicious in every bite. Jill, Jason and I had been before and we nominated it for our first restaurant Thursday night. It was a hit with the parents as well. And when Jill and I had one more dinner before we left Sunday night, we thought about trying someplace new -- then decided we'd rather just close the show at Noodles again. And it was delicious. Again. I will, however, agree with everyone who says it is overpriced. 9/10.

* Burgr (Planet Hollywood): Another repeat for Jill and I, new to Jason and the parental units. This is a high-class burger joint, and the burgers were exceptional. Dad and I also shared a pudding shake (half traditional chocolate milkshake, half caramel pudding), which was excellent (and impressed dad with the novelty). French fries were wonderful -- I brought the extras back to my hotel and tried in vain to keep nomming on them (unfortunately, I was too stuffed from all the other meals). The only thing that didn't match the memory was the spiced "devil dogs". Though impressive in length -- at least 1.5 feet -- they weren't sauced with quite the kick I remember. 8/10.

* Crush (MGM Grand): This was the first newbie for us, which Jill and I attended late after the boxing match. We weren't super-hungry, so we kept it light -- a caesar salad for her, a bowl of french onion soup for me, and a margherita flatbread for us to share. Of the three, the caesar was genuinely bad with an overwhelmingly mustard flavor. The french onion soup was genuinely excellent -- savory with a perfect cheesy crouton on top. And the flatbread was fine but unspectacular. It's hard to screw up a flatbread. The highlight might have actually been the blackberry cocktail Jill ordered, which even non-alcoholic I thought was wonderful. 6.5/10.

Trevi (Caesar's): Jason recommended this one (I don't think I had been, though I admit it looked somewhat familiar. I have spent a lot of time in the Forum shops). Jason raved about it, but I was a little underwhelmed. The mozzarella fritta had virtually no flavor (and nowhere near enough marinara sauce to make up for it). Their specialty was a "lasagna pizza" that they graciously made with ground beef instead of ground pork. It was good, but nothing eye-popping. This was still a good meal under any objective metric, but given what one can find in Vegas I can't say I came away impressed. 6.5/10.

Mastro's Ocean Club (CityCenter): We always try to do one nice steakhouse, and the Ocean Club was this year's pick. Mom and Dad had been to the version in Scottsdale, but it was entirely new on the rest of us. I ordered a bone-in filet (I always get a filet), which was excellent. My dad kept insisting that the mac-n-cheese here was the greatest dish ever invented, but I can't say I shared his enthusiasm. Other sides (and the "butter cake" dessert) were right on par with the filet though. But the true highlight was Jill's "Kansas City Strip". If there was one dish this entire trip that knocked my socks off, this was it. And the thing is, a New York Strip (I checked -- they're the same thing) is by far my least favorite cut. Yet this rendition just melted in your mouth like butter. It was absolutely unbelievable. Also, I have to compliment the ambiance of the restaurant, which had this very cool inside balcony thing going on. On price points -- well, you're going to be paying a bit to eat here. The party behind us (15 people) reportedly racked up a $3700 bill. 8.5/10.

Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill (Caesar's): Jill and I are big GR fans, and we had already been to Burgr and (on a previous trip) GR Steak. So we wanted to complete the Ramsay trifecta. While still quite enjoyable, Pub & Grill definitely ranks last of the three. For someone like me who doesn't eat pork or shellfish, the menu ended up being surprisingly limited (and even the pretzels we ordered as appetizers turned out to have bacon in them! They did take them off our bill). The ale onion soup was quite good, and the wings Jill got were delicious. But when you're up against Burgr and GR Steak, that's tough competition. Oh, and I think this is massively overpriced -- the pub burger, for example, is far more expensive than what you'd get at Burgr. What's the point of that? 7/10.

Bonus hearsay entry -- Tao (Venetian): This was the scheduled meal that got bumped for boxing. But my mom and brother still went, and they thought it was great. But they did say that it might not have been for Jill and I. It was absolutely for the bachelorette party that was knocking back sake bombs like there was no tomorrow.

* Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: This might get its own post, since it's not really Vegas-related except for the fact that Jill and I started watching it there. So all I'll say here is that (a) it rapidly shifted from "show we'll watch after we finish House of Cards" to "show that we'll finish binging before returning to House of Cards" and (b) we watched 9 episodes in 24 hours, including one in the back of the Planet Hollywood sports book waiting for the Maryland/Nebraska game to begin. It's really good.

One More Fast

It has been a busy few weeks hasn't it? Packing for my move, driving from Minneapolis to DC, Rosh Hashanah, moving into the new apartment, trip to Vegas, unpacking boxes ... it goes on. Today was supposed to be cable and internet installation, but, you know, it's Comcast, so obviously that didn't happen (I'm using the internet in the resident lounge, which was its own special saga). Tomorrow is Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur is on Saturday. I'm hoping to duck out of the break fast to watch the Mayweather/Alvarez PPV -- I bet a total of $80 on that fight ($40 on Mayweather and $40 on it to go 12 rounds).

How was Vegas? Well, on the gambling side, let's just say that I'm suddenly very glad to be starting work at a big DC law firm. But the food was magnificent. In addition to Gordon Ramsay steak, we also ate at Central (I'd been to the one in DC and knew I liked it), Noodles (the penang fried kway teow needed some soy sauce and sriracha, but was fantasstic once I mixed those in), Gordon Ramsay's BurGR (delicious, even it did take me way too long to recognize the play on the spelling -- we're going to try to make our own devil dogs), Julian Serrano's Tapas (awesome), and D.O.C.G. (excellent homemade pasta).

Still, I'm quite tired, and ready for all the chaos to end. We probably have to do some shopping on Sunday (our dresser didn't survive the move), but after that it's clear skies ... I hope.

Review: Gordon Ramsay Steak - Paris Las Vegas

In my life I have been to many nice steakhouses. The Palm, Morton's, the Prime Rib, the Capital Grill, Manny's, Chicago Chop House, Ray's the Steaks, BLT Steak, J & G Steakhouse, among many others. Back when Jill was a vegetarian, we actually used to go to steakhouses relatively regularly, since we discovered that steakhouses had the best vegetables. They'd invariably give you a massive baked potato and a forest of broccoli, making Jill a very happy camper. We even had an idea for a book where we would drive across the country visiting America's great steakhouses, where Jill would do an anthropological study from a vegetarian perspective (I'd provide comic relief as the dumb, carnivorous boyfriend). It was to be called Meat and Potatoes. Unfortunately, Jill is back on the meat train so the concept's gimmick is gone. But we still liked the idea.

Anyway, the point is that while I'm normally not much of a foodie, steakhouses are one area I do feel qualified to talk about.

We're in Las Vegas for my brother's 24th birthday, but Gordon Ramsay Steak was my dinner selection. Jill and I are huge fans of Chef Ramsay -- we religiously watch Hell's Kitchen and Masterchef, and have checked out his other shows too. Ramsay has three restaurants in Vegas: the Pub and Grill at Caesar's, Burgr at Planet Hollywood (where we're going for lunch today -- incidentally, it wasn't until the airport until I got the play on words), and Gordon Ramsay Steak at the Paris. The latter was the easy choice -- in addition to the aforementioned love of steak, the head chef is HK Season 10 winner Christina Wilson. Unfortunately, she's on vacation this week, so we didn't get the chance to meet her. But it was still neat to be in her restaurant.

GR Steak is right on the floor of the Paris casino. As we were walking up, a troupe of showgirls in tight football-inspired outfits came marching past blowing whistles and waving at the crowd. Though probably a coincidence, I choose to believe this is how they greet all incoming reservations. The restaurant is separated from the casino by a short tunnel (chunnel?) which represents the move from Paris to London. Thematically the decor is heavily based on red and black -- my two favorite colors -- so I already had warm feelings. The restaurant is two stories high -- a bottom floor which is wide open to the kitchen and very boldly designed, and a top floor which has a balcony and some more private, quieter rooms (we ate in the latter). The layout will be quite familiar to Hell's Kitchen fans.

On the way up, our hostess pointed out an art piece on the ceiling that she said "was inspired by the way Chef Ramsey moves his hands while creating his famous beef wellington". I thought the piece was pretty cool, but I couldn't begrudge my dining companions a bit of an eye roll. At first, this looked to be a running gag for the evening -- the folks at GR Steak were very anxious to highlight Chef Ramsay's personal involvement. There was Chef Ramsay's "personal" five course tasting menu, which was "personally designed" by Chef Ramsay, and if we got it we would get a photograph "personally signed" by Chef Ramsay. The times "Chef Ramsay" came within three words of "personally" rapidly started to reach a breaking point, and I couldn't decide if they were offensively trying to impress the rubes or defensively trying to assure us that Chef Ramsay lent more than his name to the establishment. I was actually mildly intrigued by the tasting menu, as it was clearly inspired by the Hell's Kitchen menu. Unfortunately, being unable to eat either a lobster risotto or scallops, it wasn't worth it. I'll have to get an autographed photo personally signed by Chef Ramsay some other way.

Now to the important part: the food. The opener was a variety of complimentary artisanal breads, which were all quite good. Appetizer-wise, I tried the ale onion soup and a caesar salad. The soup was, as my brother put it, very "beery" and thus more bitter than your typical onion soup. The caesar was delicious but simple, save for the included scotch egg. Overall, the appetizers were perfectly good, but did not distinguish themselves from any other nice steakhouse which does the same thing. I should also mention here the beer, wine, and cocktail list, which came on an iPad. We're not a big drinking family (and Jill hit her limit when we found a bar earlier that afternoon that offered BOGO cosmopolitans), so only my mom and my brother got drinks. My mom's Vodka Martini was a fine if normal example of the genre, but my brother confirms his red wine (I believe a Malbec) was superb.

We all ordered steak (except my mom, who foraged off the rest of us): one filet (I got American prime beef, they also offered American Kobe), one beef wellington (Jill), and two ribeyes (my dad and brother -- dad got his Pittsburgh-style). But before I talk about the steaks, let's talk about sides. Typically, steakhouse sides are massive, but, with the exception of a loaded baked potato the size of a landmine, these weren't. Our other three sides: sauteed spinach, sauteed mushrooms, and potato puree, were all reasonably portioned, but definitely not "family style" (which is to say, they were perfectly able to be spread out amongst the whole family, because "family style" usually seems to assume the Duggars are dining out). The table consensus was that the baked potato and sauteed mushrooms were amazing, the spinach okay, and the potato puree good but a little difficult to eat given how gloopy it was. Again, judging on appetizers and sides, thus far GR Steak is well within the wheelhouse of a nice steakhouse, but doesn't distinguish itself.

But then we get to the steak. Oh, the steak. All four of our steaks were ordered medium rare. All four came out a perfect medium rare. Seriously, these were basically the platonic ideal of medium rare. It might not be an exaggeration to say this was the best cooked steak I've ever had. The filet had a peppery glaze on top which would not have been my personal choice (I'm very no-frills when it comes to my steak), but was nonetheless delicious. I also got to try the wellington and the ribeye, and both were exceptional. The ribeye, in particular, seemed to be somehow almost as tender as the filet, which is a remarkable accomplishment. All four of us easily polished off our entire plate. Literally our only complaint was the oddly-shaped steak knives (the handles are perpendicular to the blade), which were hard to hold (especially it seemed for lefties).

At that point myself, my brother, my dad, and Jill were all prepared to happily enter a food coma. My mother, however, had not gotten her own entree and thus was interested in dessert. Since we were nominally celebrating Jason's birthday, we acquiesced, and the waiter was quite emphatic that we get the the Sticky Toffee pudding, which is apparently their signature dessert. It was great -- I'm not usually a fan of toffee, and the "brown butter ice cream" served to look like a stick of butter initially raised an eyebrow, but everything came together beautifully and topped off a delicious meal.

So to sum up: For me, my top two steakhouses have always been The Palm and Manny's in Minneapolis. The question is whether GR Steak could topple these venerable institutions from their perch. And for me, it's too close to call. On the one hand, I definitely prefer the sides, soups, and salads at Manny's and the Palm (if GR steak showed off the platonic ideal of a medium rare, the Palm offers the platonic ideal of a caesar salad). And as noted with respect to the filet I'd rather have it without the pepper glaze. On the other hand, ribeye-for-ribeye I think GR Steak smokes anywhere else I've ever been. And again, each steak was cooked so absolutely perfectly I was left in awe.

But who needs to choose? Manny's is delicious, the Palm is delicious, and Gordon Ramsay Steak - Paris is delicious. Any one of them will leave you going home happy, and all of them should get a spot on your must-try list.

Ambience/Decor -- 9
Service -- 8.5
Appetizers -- 8.5
Sides -- 9
Steak -- 10
Dessert -- 9
Overall -- 9

The Problem with a Kitten is THAT

This post is not inherently interesting to me, seeing as it's fundamentally a debate over the best way to communicate that gay sex is contrary to God's plan. But it did give an interesting quotation from famed right-wing bioethicist Leon Kass:

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone—a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive….

[Eating] on the street—even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat—displays in fact precisely such lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. Hunger must be sated now; it cannot wait. Though the walking street eater still moves in the direction of his vision, he shows himself as a being led by his appetites. Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. Eating on the run does not even allow the human way of enjoying one’s food, for it is more like simple fueling; it is hard to savor or even to know what one is eating when the main point is to hurriedly fill the belly, now running on empty. This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.

I admit it never occurred to me to think that licking an ice cream cone, or noshing on a snack while walking around town, was a harbinger of social decay. This sort of massively overdetermined analysis is replete in Kass' school of thought, and I really just don't understand it at all.

(One might also wonder about the consistency on display here. After all, couldn't one as easily say that eating things with your teeth is the natural way of doing it, the way nature intends, and all this "utensil" nonsense is just amoral human artifice? Possibly, but I prefer to think that neither God nor the moral system really concerns itself with such mundane trivialities as what sharp object we use to dissect the food we eat.)