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C O L U M N S
High Life
Extra large
Eating out in America could be a caveman's experience.
 Americans
have a complicated relationship with food. You can tell
this from their sizes. Each time I go to the Far East
and attempt to buy some clothes, I risk ritual humiliation
because nothing seems to fit. But whenever I am in America,
I tend to feel good about my grossly overweight body.
It is the one country in the world where you know that
no matter how fat you are, there will be somebody much
fatter than you.
For an Indian, there are other complications. We are
used to thinking of the poor as being slender, under-nourished
creatures. This is simply not true in America. The basic
rule of thumb is: the poorer you are, the fatter you
are. In today's America, it costs a lot of money to
stay thin.
Part of the reason, I imagine, is because the poorer
people tend to eat cheaper fast food while the rich
can afford lean meat, fresh vegetables, fruit and gymnasium
memberships. Certainly, New York is an exception to
the general over-obese America stereotype. Everywhere
I went in Manhattan recently, the women were thin, tight,
well-toned stomachs being revealed through their low-slung
jeans and their high-cut T-shirts.
On the other hand, even in New York, there is no doubt
that Americans eat more than us. A single portion of
dessert at the average American restaurant could feed
an Indian village for a week. At Chinese restaurants,
they offer you three choices of size, rather like a
Barista. You can have your fried rice regular, large
or extra-large. No prizes for guessing which one of
these is the most popular size.
American steaks are justly famous. Ever since Buffalo
Bill and others of his ilk rendered the American bison
nearly extinct, Americans have always associated good
steak with prosperity and well-being. In the early days
of his marriage to the teenage Priscilla, Elvis Presley
was asked how he handled groupies. "Why go out for hamburger,"
he retorted, "when you can have steak at home?" (As
it turned out, it was Priscilla who preferred takeaway
hamburger in the form of her karate instructor but this
was a later development.)
Even now, Americans will use 'filet mignon' (the most
expensive cut of cow) as an expression to describe something
that is of top quality. All of this is fair enough but
the problem is that food tends to follow language. As
Americans have praised steak and downgraded hamburger,
the hamburger - perhaps America's greatest invention
- has been downgraded to a fast food staple consisting
of the cardboard patty beloved of McDonalds and Wendy's
and so entirely devoid of taste that they have to smother
it in cheese and sauces to ensure that it actually tastes
of something.
Some days ago, I strolled over to Wollensky's Grill,
behind the hotel where I was staying, for a hamburger.
Wollensky's is an offshoot of Smith and Wollensky, the
famous New York steakhouse (which, like everything else
in America, has now transformed itself into a chain),
so the hamburger is made from New York prime steak and
is worth a try even if, like me, you throw away the
bread and the French fries.
New York was madness. The New York Open had just got
over. New York Fashion Week was winding down. And one-hundred-and-forty-two
heads of government and foreign ministers were attending
the session of the United Nations General Assembly.
This meant that every mid-town hotel room was taken
and that the traffic snarls extended for miles. Despite
this, the city was full of mid-Western tourists who
braved the rush and the exorbitant hotel room rates.
Each time I got into the elevator at my hotel, I had
to make conversation with some little old lady in tennis
shoes who had never been to New York before and made
a special effort to live up to unkind uncharacterisations
of the mid-West.
(Sample: A little old lady stared at my Barnes and Noble
shopping bag. Barnes and Noble, as befits a bookstore
chain with pretensions, puts jackets of old bestsellers
on the outside of its shopping bags. This was enough
to befuddle the old dear. "That's wonderful," she said.
"You have a shop here in New York called Gone With The
Wind." I was polite. "No maam, it's the title of a book,"
I said quietly. "No, it's a movie," she said knowledgeably.)
So, as I drank my Diet Coke and contemplated my Wollensky's
hamburger, I was not surprised to see that the party
of noisy tourists at the next table was in a state of
some agitation. "They're charging fourteen dollars for
a hamburger!" they complained to each other. Eventually,
they got up and left muttering curses about New York
cheats. But at fourteen dollars, the hamburger was actually
good value considering the location and the quality
of the beef. But, of course, Americans are now too used
to the ninety-nine cent fast food hamburger.
At the parent Smith and Wollensky, the tourists were
much happier. I have been going there for years and
I think that the quality has dipped ever since the restaurant
turned into a chain. But the tourists seemed not to
notice. They were particularly delighted by the size
of the steaks - when you are an American, size does
matter.
At Smith and Wollensky, the steaks are bloody great
charred hunks of meat that you cannot imagine any civilised
person eating at one go. That, in fact, is the key to
their appeal. I always treat their steaks as curiosities,
worth trying once a year. But regular customers love
them because they are so big.
The parallel is with the Flintstones. To eat at Smith
and Wollensky - or at many other American steakhouses
- is to be transformed into Fred Flintstone. Only a
caveman could eat this kind of food everyday and each
time I cut into one of their steaks, I shout Yabba Dabba
Goo to myself. Only then does the whole ritual make
sense.
But the Flintstones parallel applies to most mid-priced
American food. This was not a particularly foodie trip
for me - most of the time I had no appetite and shunned
the restaurants I usually frequent. One evening, weary
after a hard day trying to cover the prime minister's
trip, I decided to order takeaway Chinese in my hotel
room. (You can do this in mid-priced American hotels.
At the deluxe establishments they would turn the delivery
boy away at the door. But at this kind of hotel, they
are grateful for the lack of pressure on room service.)
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Continued
Part II
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