Damned If You Do…!

THIS IS WHAT I FEARED things would get to!

So a blogger decided to recreate, at home, the recipe for some deviled eggs he/she had enjoyed at April Bloomfield’s very popular and much hyped restaurant, the Spotted Pig. The slideshow that accompanies shows the bloggers enthusiastic quest to discover and copy the ingredients of the the flavor profiles of Chef Bloomfield’s $3 bar treats.

I am already over the whole upscaling of lo-fi foods movement. (I fear a celebrity chef’s reinterpretation of Spam. Not that I am particularly averse to Spam; just let it be Spam, please, and not become a foie gras of Spam and fig jam terrine!) So I could understand the fervor with which many of the slideshow’s commenters expressed over someone choosing to elevate something as pedestrian as the deviled egg.

This reaction happens every time a cook or chef takes it upon his or herself to offer their customers or guests to the therapy of comfort food—especially after this most trying year. Someone else is going to wonder why they bothered.

And someone else is going to realize that these comfort food re-imaginings are responsible for $25 burgers, $9 hot dogs, and $20 chicken platters. Which understandably breeds resentment.

And which also has scared a lot of people away from the kitchen, fearful their own culinary output couldn’t hold a candle to what many people are now finding on popular—if overhyped (and according to many reviewers/commenters, most “popular” restaurants are…)—menus, or to what many of their possible dinner guests have watched marvelously being prepared on the Food Network.

Fortunately and unfortunately, you can’t kill a creative spirit, especially in the food/restaurant business. You need some hype just to get noticed in this town. As a chef, you might need to do something radical yet accesible to stand out enough to get that hype (i.e. pastry chef Christina Tosi’s Cereal Milk Bar at Momofuku). Even backlash to that hype gets you press coverage, and is therefore likewise as welcome to a great degree.

So an upscale deviled egg will either get the “devil” in you going or just render you with a devil-may-care attitude. And the people who would decry it—regardless of how right and rational they might be in their arguments—only helped the Spotted Pig get more exposure and hype and have piqued their own rants reader’s curiosity about this special egg that evokes such vitriol (instead of impelling said reader into making completely satisfying deviled eggs of their very own).

Here’s my version from a few years back—early in my “chef”-dom—which I called Heuvos Diablo (dusted with chili powder, hot Madras curry, paprika, and topped with anchovy and bacon) and, for the only $6, was able to make a full two dozen for me and my guests to enjoy, as opposed to the just two you get per $3 serving at the Spotted Pig….

See? See what I did there? Aren’t I just the scoundrel…?! Next idea: the Deviled Ham Burger…!;)

Bun Apple Tea!
.kac.