Woolcott Redux

 I write this blog, and my other one -- when I write -- for myself. Unlike many others who read it, I actually enjoy my own acerbic writing style, and appreciate my own facility with punctuation. I am, in this, like Alexander Woolcott, albeit with less to say. One consequence of this type of amour propre is my habit of occasionally going back and reading some of the things I've said in previous posts.

 Lacking all modesty, I present here some of my favourites:

Loquacious though I usually am, I am reluctant to waste words describing most of the food on those plates. 

(On reviewing Jimmy's Egg, a now-defunct eatery in Castle Hills)

 

The first, and essential step in making a good étoufée is to make a roux, the simple blend of flour and bacon fat or oil that is the foundation on which all good Cajun dishes are built. A cook who cannot do this successfully should not be allowed to operate unsupervised in a Louisiana kitchen. Young children from Calcasieu to Plaquemines spend most of their formative years learning to get this right. Many never do, and I must count myself among them. Still, I know the formula if not the art, and I certainly know enough to appreciate when someone's gotten it right. The kitchen at Bourbon Street have not gotten it right. 

(From a review of Bourbon Street Seafood Kitchen on Loop 1604.)

 

It's one of those places that thinks it's classy to spell out the prices in text instead of numbers; and whoever wrote the menu has decided that punctuation need not enhance understanding. Those who enjoy studying a menu will be assured of a rousing good time.

    But not a very long good time. The menu is short, with four categories of plates (fowl, sea, land and earth. Can one be more pompous.) The wine list is skimpy enough that even my wife was uninterested in any of its offerings. 

(From a review of the restaurant FOLC, in Olmos Park.)

Having just last week seen Jurassic World, with its much-hyped CG dinosaurs and high approval ratings, my expectations were a little lower for this movie. After all, the star isn't known for his ability to infuse vast quantities of raw emotion into the quiver of a lip or the arch of an eyebrow; and movies of this genre seldom bother with anything more than a bare-bones plot involving romantic tension, shorthand relationships, setbacks, and eventual triumph. This movie didn't disappoint, and who doesn't love a movie where California gets ripped apart? 

(From Lunch and a Movie, a review of the Dwayne Johnson vehicle in 2015.)

The draw of this place, still fairly high on the trendiness meter, is the ambience. A cool, not cold Saturday night at hipster central makes for a good time with friends. Of course, you could have the same kind of good time with them at home, or at a park, or at a really good restaurant. Somewhere else, perhaps. 

(From a review of La Gloria Ice House.)

The menu, I reckon, changes often, because it's printed on simple yet elegant card stock. The computer used to produce it has no capacity for capital letters and lacks a dollar sign. Slashes are used where the word "and" belongs, as if the character's actual meaning was irrelevant. (Does the roast chicken come with either lemon jus or honey jus? Surely not.) (The pedant in me required that little hissy fit.) Or perhaps these are just affectations that, in the mind of the menu writer, make everything feel classy. Well, all these fatuous fashionable departures from custom and meaning still make my eyes roll, but silently; and since I'm writing a review I feel obliged to mention what I would not point out were I engaged in polite conversation. And further, though they are irksome, they are trivial things, on a par with a presidential tweet, but with more substance, if less moment. 

(From a review of Periphery, a short-lived place on Main Avenue.)