Copyright: The New Pork Times, p. 1,
Section 2, Fold 3.
- PoMo's of NoHo -
New postmodern gourmet restaurant breaks with
the narrative discourse of the traditional bourgeois meal.
By H. G. Levine
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
The hottest, new restaurant on the theoretical scene is PoMo's
of NoHo. The ultra-elegant black and chrome
eatery, in the heart of eastern Tribeca's northern
lip, offers a menu of surprising, sophisticated dishes and encourages diners to
create their own postmodern -- or "pomo" -- culinary statements.
PoMo's chefs proudly serve up a sensuous
deconstruction of what they call "the hegemony of a historically-specific
taxonomy of foods, flavors, courses, and semiotic culinary texts that we
must eat. " PoMo's menu explains that "unusual flavor
juxtapositions disrupt the taken-for-granted meal paradigms of the last two
centuries providing a visceral awareness of the arbitrary structures of
sit-down dinner consciousness. " Or, as a famous scholar has put it: "The history of all
hitherto existing societies is the history of lunch."
PoMo's creators and chefs, Izzie
deBeste and Ime Notinparis, say that regulars often begin dinner with Dairy
Queen-style vanilla-fudge mousse a la mode, partially desublimating
the hungers of the inner-child as well as the inner-pagan. Many then conclude
with oysters on the whole shell, served on a chopping block with a large knife
and mallet.
Newcomers
seeking immersion in a completely postmodern gastronomy (pomo-gastro)
can have the dishes and their order chosen randomly by a small hand-held
computer called Igor Stravinsky. It is named in honor of the composer John
Cage.
Our Postmodern Dinner
We let the Igor
choreograph an "Italo Serendipity Pastiche"
for our party. For cocktails Igor selected a frozen latté martini, and for
appetizers a tangy, sea-green artichoke jello served
in stemless champagne flutes.
The pasta, an
instant old favorite, was moose tortellini with purple pumpkin pesto sauce.
This was followed by an intermezzo of tarragon-pepper llama cheese on
wafer-thin slices of freshly decolonized watermelon.
The central
culinary statement of the meal, a true multi-ethnic masterpiece, was the
flaming, Peking-goose souvlaki casserole served with
baby peas and infant carrots in fire-proof Tupperware.
The wines, of
course, had a Greco-Roman motif. The pungent Ecuadorian Ouzo mingled playfully
with the liberated watermelon, while the darkly-hued, clove-flavored Anisette
Cabernet, from Scotland, added regal dignity to the moose pasta and the crispy
casserole.
The post-entree salad presented hydroponically-grown,
organic baby-iceberg lettuce hearts drizzled with extra-virgin, raw-almond,
sweet and bitter, warmed, off-white, Ghirardelli chocolate sauce. At first it
all seemed too transgressive and neo-Cubist, but by
the end we were licking the plates.
Our meal concluded
with a demitasse of chilled broth squeezed from regendered
kumquats. It was served with culturally-independent pumpernickel bagel fingers
and an impertinent Ohio Beaujolais.
Further Postmodern Culinary Adventures
On subsequent visits to PoMo's of NoHo we sampled more of their nonlinear gastronomic
fare. We especially enjoyed twice-cooked schnitzel, prosciutto
chitlins, line-caught anchovy soup, and (our personal
favorite) egg foo schnitzel. Also exceptional were
free-range pigeon tetrazzini, shark caviar on
hand-woven seaweed triscuits topped with tiny balls
of Cherry Garcia, and a large, rectangular platter of something swirly called "Jackson Pollock's last breakfast."
All items chosen by the Igor Stravinsky arrived at surprising times. The schnitzels,
for example, appeared in the traditional dessert position accompanied by a
frosty crystal mug of recaffeinated bitter-orange
seltzer water, from Jersey City.
Members of our party divided over the success of a few dishes, in particular a
snappy creole Dijon-mustard gefilte fish baked in a
hollowed-out copy of The Joy of Cooking. Some said it was worth the
trouble, but others found it difficult to swallow.
Pomo's Chefs Write Books
PoMo's creators are not only brilliant chefs,
they are also serious food scholars. Their first award-winning book was The
Invention of Lunch: Cultural (Re)Conceptions of the Mid-Day Meal in Vichy
France. It showed that during the German occupation the Vichy French
government heroically re-imagined the mid-day meal as an unconscious "idee de resistance" (idea of
resistance). Contrary to what many believe, and against all odds, during the
entire period of occupation Vichy French officials bravely ate their lunch,
especially goat and sheep cheeses. This was also their way of avoiding contact
with lowly "sauerkraut eaters. "
The authors'
second book was the now famous Rhetorics of
the Smorgasbord: Learning from Lapland. It proved that the popular, pagan,
pot-luck picnics were not first created by Swedish meatball makers, but rather
by wealthy Laplanders, the so-called "Lapps of luxury." The word "Smorgasbord"
in the Lapp language means: "If you bring it, we will all eat it."
The authors show that in their free-form buffets, "the Lapps, the ne plus ultra traditional people of Scandinavia,
brilliantly pre-articulated the anarchistic arbitrariness of postmodernity, especially lately." As the Lapp leader Olaf the Indigestible once explained: "All that is
solid melts in the fondue pot. "
Beyond All Gastronomic Paradigms: Nomo's
PoMo's chefs, Mr. deBeste
and Ms. Notinparis, have also designed a
revolutionary, post-postmodern restaurant that they promise "will
transcend all previous culinary paradigms, except some snacks. " They call their new eatery NoMo's.
Although PoMo's jettisons the narrative discourse and taste
articulations of the classic bourgeois meal, it still retains the course
structure of the middle-class Sunday dinner at grandma's house. NoMo's, with an utterly post-postmodern cuisine,
will entirely abandon courses and even individual dishes.
PoMo's now displays the freshest NoMo inventions at a Saturday afternoon "Brupper" (the meal between brunch and supper). In
addition, the lively String Cheese Quartet plays computer-generated music
featuring compositions by M.S. Dos and O.S. Ten.
This new,
revolutionary post-postmodern dining emporium -- called NoMo's
of PoMo's of NoHo -- will
open next year, somewhere in the Bronx.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Harry G.
Levine writes restaurant reviews for hereinstead.com and teaches sociology at
Queens College, CUNY.
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