Several years ago, perhaps during the mad cow scare, it became something of a trial to get beef at a restaurant that was properly cooked. To get anything less than well done, you had to order rare, and do so clearly and emphatically. I always suspected that this problem–which seems to have abatted–had something to do with health inspectors, or regulators, or some government warning of some such.
But even so, it is a shock to learn the extent to which health inspectors are increasingly regulating what is served at restaurants.
“What’s been fascinating the city’s chefs lately is a technique long used in France called sous vide,” reports Gabrielle Hamilton in the New York Times, “in which serving portions of seasoned and vacuum-packed food are submerged in barely simmering water. This long, slow and low-temperature cooking makes the food taste more intensely of what it should taste like, preserves its nutritional value and often creates a texture of unspeakable silkiness that everyone ought to experience.
“Except the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene won’t allow it. In recent weeks, having caught wind of the use of this new technique — not by a single report of food-borne illness but rather through the restaurant coverage of newspapers and magazines — inspectors have shut down the system at many restaurants, standing by to make sure that chefs have destroyed the shrink-wrapped food, fining them for serving sous vide dishes and forbidding the use of the equipment used in their production.”
{ 5 comments }
Health and MENTAL Hygiene?
What an awful city.
Well have attacked you (more than once) for bothering to read the New York Times, I must now admit that have printed a good story and that you did a good deed by passing it on.
Even Adam Smith (as we all know, not the pure free market man of legend) understood that it was not in the interests of butchers to poison their customers.
Even if there was no such thing as a civil suit (and, in the United States, there is not much danger of a lack of tort actions), it would still not be in the interests of chefs to poison people who eat their food.
Their reputations would be rather harmed by such a story (and such stories would get publicity).
As for Reactionary:
Quite so. For all its many virtures, New York City has long been one of the great centers of statism in America.
New York State had an income tax even before the First World War (it is older than the Federal one) and New York City had zoning and gun control before the First World War also.
Since the 1930′s taxes have exploded in New York (both State and city) – even more so than they have in other parts of the United States.
It is true that up to the late 1950′s taxes as a percentage of income were about avarage in New York State(as it was a high income State in could afford a big government), but since then New York has seen taxes go to near the top of the 50 States – even as a percentage of income.
If my memory serves only Maine has higher State and local taxes, as a percentage of income, than New York State – and (at a guess) I suppose that if one lived in New York City one would pay a higher percentage of one’s income in tax (in various ways) than one would in any town in Maine.
Even when politicians try to limit statism in New York then get defeated. For example, the Governor did try and limit the budget in his early years – but then he seemed to lose heart.
Just recently a New York Court demanded that the State vastly increase the education budget (already one of the highest in the nation).
So, in the face of the New York area establishment, there is little anyone can do.
The exMayor of New York was O.K. (by New York standards) but the present Mayor (Mr Bloomberg – also a Republican) has various statist obsessions (such as his vast subsidy program for organised crime – by his, highest in the nation, cigarette tax). Thank God he did not get the 2012 games.
I suppose the New York elite will only really come to an end when a few things happen.
The stock market and real estate bubble bursts (all financed by credit money expansion of course) and they can no longer deduct their State and local income tax from their incomes for Federal income tax purposes.
Under the “alternative minimum income tax” they can not do this (the one good thing about the A.M.T.) – so eventually they are going to get hit.
The rich New York “liberal” is an institution I would love to see come to an end.
Of course they will still live off their trust funds and their government bonds (State and Federal – the money paid on these is, I believe, not taxed). But they will not be as powerful.
They should allow the technique, but call it “freedom vide”.
- Josh
I call it “Crock Pot”.
You call it crock pot? I call it CRIMINAL! How could you so recklessly endanger yourself and those around you, with so little thought of what our enlightened rulers might think? Think of the children! Something must be done! Nanny-state powers: activate!
Comments on this entry are closed.