Friday, November 25, 2011

Turkey gives way to stomach-turning BBQ

Public domain photograph of various meats. (Be...
The Record today promotes meat that is deliberately
burned, a sure-fire way to make it even less healthy.


You'll find photos of Thanksgiving meals on A-1, A-6, A-7 and A-8; as well as L-1 and L-3, but for a real stomach turner, check out the charred meat on the cover of Better Living today.


Barbecue pit masters have perpetuated the mythical benefits of "char," and gullible food writers like Elisa Ung have swallowed their arguments whole.


Unfortunately, meat cooked at high temperatures until it burns or chars has been linked to cancer, and the Woodland Park daily has no business glorifying carcinogens in a restaurant review (Better Living centerfold).


But it's what readers have come to expect from the dessert-obsessed Ung, whose review of The Blind Boar in Norwood presumably was edited by her boss, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill.


Ung and Sherrill are blind, too, rarely bothering with the details of how the food they sample and promote is raised or grown. 


Today, Ung tells readers the barbecue restaurant uses naturally raised chicken, but the pork and beef she sampled remain mysterious.


Bones to pick


Either Ung is ignorant or helping the restaurant owner hide the real quality of the meat. She spends more than half of the review describing everything but the food, and wastes space saying the theme restaurant is "less appropriate for anyone looking for a formal dining experience."


Can't readers figure that out for themselves?


What can readers conclude from the Eating Out on $50 review of Baste in Ridgewood, a Greek-inspired chicken restaurant, where free-lancer Jeff Page went over his budget, even though he fed only himself and one other person (Page 21 in Better Living)?


Either Page overeats or the restaurant is too expensive for a budget review.

On Pages 22 and 23, the weekly inspections appear, but where are the restaurants and other food places that are fined for violations of the state sanitation code?


More dead meat


Dead meat or poultry seems to be the edition's theme -- a story on the number of deer killed on state roads appears on Page 1.


In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, readers are served a rare treat: a Road Warrior column that begins and ends on L-1. 


The commuting columnist actually ran out of topics that have nothing to do with commuting.


Two stories from Englewood appear on L-1 and L-6, though the first duplicates a story that ran just four days ago. However, there is no Hackensack news today.


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2 comments:

  1. Barbecue is not cooked at high heat. Surely you know that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't say it was.

    It's true that barbecue often is slow cooked in a smoker, but you don't get that char unless you finish it at a high temperature.

    ReplyDelete

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