Clark Wolf's Rants, Raves, Diatribes...and a few other Thoughts

Trends for 2009

Smaller restaurants, run by real people and making real food.

Pizza - with everything good from the Farmers Market across the street on top, or from whatever’s left over in the fridge. Random pork works too.

Markets, Farmers and Otherwise. Turns out selling fresh fruit from the back of a pushcart is a timeless and useful skill set.

Even more attention to even better coffee, but maybe with a few hundred less unnecessary calories heaped on or whipped in.

Good (as in, better than just “drinkable”) and affordable wine from all over the world.

Food and Agriculture Policy is center of the plate. As in, Very Important. Let the battle between industrial farming and real food begin in earnest.

If Spring really is coming, let’s roll out the Gardens; School Gardens, Home Gardens, Chef’s Gardens, Victory Gardens -- Survival Gardens. Better get the seeds out now!

Homey, American foods. From a pot of turkey chili to comfy mac and cheese – yes, we have re-entered the mac and cheese economy.

Cooking at home with friends. Even more cost effective than gathering ‘round the DVR.

Which leads to bringing your lunch to work . Don’t forget the recycled disposables.

Breakfast at big name restaurants. Rent covers (24) hours, so let no paid for real estate got to waste.

The Library - yup, it’s a great place to borrow cookbooks and CD’s of cooking shows – when even a sale on Amazon seems like an unnecessary indulgence.

Rantgerine

I don't care if it's New York in a tough economy, people who sell "Whole Foods" at serious prices need to be, at the very least, reasonably civil when they collect cash. There are too many manners-challenged check-out finks at the new location in TriBeCa.

The store itself makes virtually no sense, in layout and the way you're expected to move through the place, the take-out food is pretty awful and their idea of "local" is when a recipe for some prepared food came from Queens (and not the good kind).

But it's one mean cash natzie who really ticked me off when that mean girl refused to help some woman who just wanted to know if the 'on sale' reduction on her package of pricey meat had registered on the - yup - register. She didn't know, wasn't her job and, with a serious screw you attitude, basically told the woman she was on her own. Then she told me to take my food out of my basket.

Told me. Didn't ask. Not a request. Instructed, firmly. Ordered. I took a deep breath and unloaded my 6$ blueberries, some brilliant citrus, some organic walnuts and yes, just one critical beauty product.

When she crisply demanded I tell her what the orange things were (pixie tangerines) even though they had those annoying little stickers all over them I lost it. I wasn't paying top dollar to be her assistant slave when she was too lazy to look up a product number.

So I told her she might consider being a little nicer, have a better attitude at these prices. She told me her attitude was fine.  I was not pleased.  I told her that her attitude was awful and that she'd been really rude to that woman before me. She denied this vigorously and then repeated a totally fabricated rewrite of what had just transpired, moments before, right in front of me.

Ok, I may have suggested that she's soon be out of work, or should be, and she assured me she was secure in her position, having worked there for two years (the store's been open about eleven months). I told her to keep her pricey produce and to count on my not returning, ever.

She was shocked! "You're not going to buy this stuff??" She really thought the argument was reasonable and her behavior within the acceptable norm.

Note to Whole Foods: see Starbuck's Retraining Manuel. Failing that, suck my tangerine.

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