Food Issues

As I consume the Food Issue of The New Yorker, I burp out opinions.

On being a Michelin Inspector:
Something doesn't jell.
1. Why do these people always have to eat alone? If they had a dining partner, they could sample more things and they would not look totally suspicious, for what pathetic individual goes to an extravagant three star restaurant to eat three courses with wine on their own? This does not make sense to me. If I worked in the restaurant and saw a lonely diner doing this I might think they were a Michelin inspector, or a tourist from Michigan (I'll grant you that).
2. If M., the inspector in the story, has dinner with the guy who handles Michelin guides in the US, she's blown her cover, and even though perhaps she may not ever go there again, they should not have done that. Also, if the restaurant knows the Michelin guide guy, it will make sure to give these people the most amazing meal of their lives. Regular humans may not get the same treatment, which is why sometimes one goes to highly touted restaurants and one can't fathom why, since the service is snotty and the food, meh.
3. Which leads me to this final point on the subject of Jean Georges. I've had dinner there. The food was very good. Some of it perfect, some ongepatchket. Not everything worked. Still, I don't remember a single dish we ate and we were 4 people. Not one. I've had meals at other fancy places like Gotham or even A Voce that have been much more memorable.
The service at Jean Georges was good at the beginning (although I don't understand why staff at such places confuses discretion with icy, long faces) and then we were forgotten. I would not have given this restaurant three Michelin stars. Two maybe.
But who asked me, right?

On spit cakes:
I do not appreciate being told that there used to be marvelous German cafés in New York where you could stuff yourself with cake and now they are no more. I haven't decided if this breaks my heart or makes me inmeasurably angry.
It upsets me to no end that people don't go to a café to eat cake anymore. I don't either, but I like to have the option. In Mexico City, there are European style cafés with excellent cakes and cookies which also serve tortilla soup or huevos rancheros if you so desire, and they rock.
One of the few things that New York lacks in terms of food is such European style cafés, like they're a dime a dozen in Paris (and disappearing fast), and where you can have a prix fixe lunch or just inhale a Chocolat Liegeois any time of day, or have a cup of coffee and sit there for eighteen hours. I resent this. (Café Select on Lafayette tries to be like this, but not enough cakes). Also, now I want a spit cake.

On Poutine:
Calvin Trillin, a hilarious food writer. Just this description of Poutine had me in stitches: "surprisingly inoffensive". I was in Montreal and didn't dare taste the stuff. It just looks gross.