America's Food Revolutions. Here is interesting article from City Journal, 2009. Enjoyable read on how American food culture accelerating. And writer compare, for example, what typical fancy dinner might have been 60 or 70 years ago. Let me read for you. He compared to what it might be today. I'm reading. In a 1769 letter to the naturalist John Bartram, Benjamin Franklin observed that while lots of people like accounts of old buildings and monuments, I confessed that if I could find in any Italian travels a receipt for making Parmesan cheese, it would give me more satisfaction than a transcript of any inscription from any old stone whatsoever. Had Old Ben written this letter 50 years ago in 1959, it's doubtful that many Americans would have agreed.

Back then, a gourmet American dinner might have included tomato aspic, gelatin with canned tomato juice, crab casserole, canned crab with canned cream of mushroom soup and canned fried onions, and cherries, cherries jubilee, canned cherries heated in a chaffing dish with brandy and sugar, flambéed in quotation marks, and poured over vanilla ice cream. Or maybe the entree would have been beef wellington, beef tenderloin and pâté, usually steamed gray in a gooey blanket of dough, or oysters Rockefeller, oysters broiled with melted cheese and bread crumbs. Ethnic food came in two varieties, Americanized Italian, which means spaghetti with meatballs and red sauce with grated quote unquote parmesan cheese from a green cylindrical box, and Americanized

Chinese fried rice and shrimp with lobster sauce. For the everyman there was steak, well done, and mashed potatoes and canned peas, fried chicken and mashed potatoes and canned peas, and meatloaf and mashed potatoes and canned peas, or the newfangled but repulsive TV dinner. Sure, there were a few notable exceptions, like the Four Seasons in New York and Le Trianon in San Francisco. Anyway, the article goes on like that, but to be fair, if you look up fancy restaurant menus from early 20th century America, the writer doesn't mention this, but some of these older menus were quite sophisticated. They were based on French cuisine also, but you know, but Ellis Island I think, Ellis Island fraternity yokels, like the guy writing this article I mentioned, would not have been

let into the door of those clubs. So you know, tastes change and shift over some decades. It's possible that American taste change because FDR, I heard this, someone says this, it may or they may not be true, but that FDR and that whole era, 1930 to 1940, I'm sure it was World War II also, industrialized American food supply because of the war there was now so-called tradition of canned foods. For the same reason you might find in, let's say, Vietnam or other parts touched, Guam, specific parts touched by United States military, they also cook with canned spam, canned condensed milk, which I love canned condensed milk, by the way, it's a wonder. I could eat a can of condensed milk, that to me is a gourmet luxury, you know.

But that's, yeah, I come from a post-apocalyptic environment, so I love condensed sweetened milk. But so people say, and then there's the other matter, which Steve Saylor talked about, that in the 1950s after World War II there was a craze for having clean food, and so packaged, standardized goods were at the premium. This where era of wonder bread comes from and so forth. But in any case, this change in taste remind me also of English food. You may know about creme anglaise. It's a very nice custard cream thing. It's a staple of nice French desserts and such, but the reason it's named creme anglaise is because during Queen Elizabeth time, Elizabeth I, English food was actually gourmet. It was refined and it's only later that the English decided for some reason to go for

Spartan bland style. Excuse if I repeat myself, I may have had food episode in the past, but I don't remember what I talk about even one or two episodes ago. And regarding Spartan style, I'm not saying, for example, that at the regular Joe level and such, you know, to them it's just the foods they know. But at the level, I mean, that drives food culture, you should not dismiss that because, in fact, what I'm saying is the desire for bland food is an elite affectation. It comes upon certain elites sometimes as a trend. In other words, a conscious decision on the part of some elite or so-called elite to go in this direction, to not care about food, ostentatiously not care about it. Or in other words, to ape the laconic fashions of some other culture they admire.

So many times, people may abandon a quite tasty, even gourmet food culture to go instead in this other direction for spiritual. or it's not spiritual, maybe it's again a trendy affectation, in any case deliberate and conscious reasons. One big example is Argentinians, okay, I remember meeting once an Argy girl, I messed up with her, she was fiery redhead, very cute, but I talked to her, I shit on Argentine cuisine, and they are so nationalist about silly things there, like small petty things like this. I even preface, I say, I love your country, I choose to live here, but this food is just awful. And she snap at me, she says, yes, and what about where you are from? The food's terrible too there, isn't it? And well, yes, I agree with this,

but you know, it doesn't affect my image of myself dear to say that my supposed group does not have great food, but she hated me after I insulted the food of a nation. But Argentine food is really atrocious. They make a mockery, and again, Excuse if I repeat myself. I may have said this on past episodes, but I met Italian friend once in Argentina He told me everyone here says that they have a recipe from their Italian grandmother but when you taste it, it has nothing to do with Italian food and there's Is I think it's same actually in United States where there were old world maybe North European which is crap food too, but original recipes, but through some demented telephone games they became casserole this and that. So you know it's like overcooked fettuccine with some

ketchup drizzled on top. This is all this fettuccine bolognese. No it's not retard, I'm talking about Argentine food now. You know it's not cured prosciutto, it's just pork you dump a kilogram of salt on. It's not what cured meat is. My apologies to Argentine friends, but they they get offended so easily. But anyway I go one day to Buenos Aires downtown, just aimless walking around. I go inside this old-style restaurant, wood panel walls, and one of these half-formal eateries where old men, very formal-looking, come in three-piece suits. Some are English cut suits coming in very formal. They sit down, and they eat the local-style Revueltogramajo. It's one of the blandest foods you can eat. It's like an aggressive, deliberately bland food. Scrambled eggs, small fried potato.

So sometimes they add ham or peas to it, but there's no salt, there's nothing. And I see these old men ostentatiously eating there with this kind of thing, with great pleasure. And I remember this kind of aristo gay dude I knew from military family in Buenos Aires who says, yes, I went to military academy in Patagonia, they brutalized us, they raped us or whatever, and we ate this completely tasteless egg slop. And that's when I realized these people are purposely aping English boarding school Spartan dominated by dog style in their food, you know, they're putting it on. They've abandoned for ideological or spiritual, whatever you want to call it, fashion reasons. They've abandoned their Italian and Spanish delicious food traditions because their elite

wanted to ape the British sodomitical Spartan black gruel style in their restaurants and academies. So black gruel, yes, you notice the pork and vinegar, the pork blood and pork meat and vinegar, the food of the Spartan citizens. The homoioi or the equals, as they call themselves, they ate it in their mess halls. Well, so much for that. I mean to say that a similar change might have taken place in America. So in the early 20th century, there could very well have been a high or at least relative nice food style among the rich in the United States. But by 1950 or 1960 or so, this article I'm talking about is generally correct. It would have been casserole and canned goods, you know, canned peach gastrique. Can I make a gastrique for you out of the liquid that comes from boiling dirty socks

when you clean them? Will you let me? I put some vinegar and I make gastrique for you. Anyway, this is a good article, America's Food Revolution, that describes how urbanization, Maybe rising income, so on, I don't think it's totally right that this is the reason, by the way, there must be deeper reason. Not just rising income and leisure and such, there is certainly foodie hipster revolution America from before the time he wrote this article, it's only accelerated since. I mean, hipsters, they do food and coffee and alcohol very well, I will talk food on this show, is this okay? But I know what's on your mind, Trump mugshot. One of the iconic works of art after World War II by now, Trump mugshot. A religious icon, you know, this image by now. How stupid are these?

You know, you can't get dumber than these people, you know, they thought they would humiliate him when, I really don't understand this, they listen or pretend to listen to gangsta rap, they know there is great cultural power and sexiness attached, not just now, But really, there has always been a lure attached to criminality. Girls love criminals, you know, and then they let him put out this amazing criminal mug shot and the girls I hear are just going wild for Trump, okay? This is much worse for them than Hitler, who also went to jail and charmed the women of Germany. You know, Hitler was actually this, I'm saying Trump is worse for them because Hitler actually was a kind of incel, an incel freak, let's say. He was odd, and yet even so, he became a major figure

for women of the time because of his fame, and he had, oh yes, he had training from Erich Jan Hanusen, look that up. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to say that. The Talmudic network trained Hitler, you know. But for women of the time, because of his edginess and criminality and such, and his passion, and he went to prison again, so he became very popular with the women of Germany who voted him in. And you know, libtards, you get what you asked for, right, you libtards? The thing is, in mass democracy, and of course now they have all these methods to mediate mass democracy, but the fact is mass democracy really still is the spirit of the time and you can't hide from it. And in mass democracy, ultimately the desires of women and of mass popular culture, you

get what you asked for, retards, you know? So you send Hitler to jail and you make him into this criminal edgy character. vote him into office because they love that kind of thing. And now with Trump, it's much worse because Trump is not an insult character. But even before, before his coming into politics, he was a major womanizer, socialite idol, a reality TV star, and so forth, mastered the art of Twitter even before then, and mastered the art of posting before any millennials and Zoomers did, you know. So he's now not only a popular folk hero or Robin Hood, You've made him even an image into an outlaw and a protagonist of the world's story. He is so at present, you know, it's like those times. I know some of you have had these times, you're trying to decide on something,

you're trying to decide where to go next, something like this, on what woman to choose or such, some big looming decision, and then you think you can't make it and so you come out with a list of pros and cons, a table of calculations written or not, where you think you'll decide it by reason. But in the back of your, it's not even the mind or gut, in the back of, there's an instinct, there's a call, you know already which way you'll choose. Because it's not determined by, and it's the same with something like Trump now. It's immaterial if you will win in 2024 or what happens. They've already made Trump the world star, the world protagonist, the image of really the only focal point of life and vitality in a piss dry world. So maybe not as much high things will come from it

as the image of Napoleon inspired in the 19th century. You know, we can't hope for a wave of Stendhal's and Dostoevsky's in our time. You know, now all we have are drug addicts on one hand and on the other decadents like me, but you've made Trump the star of horizon for all those hoping for a break from the denatured caffeine-free artificial green tea world, you know, artificial green tea and fake crab meat world. And Trump is the thing now. So that's all I have to say on it. I'm seeing Zoomers who had no interest in politics, and now they're saying, you know, they were 13 or such in 2016. They're 20 or whatever today. They're saying their old hopefulness and spirit from that time has come back, you know. And you can keep hoping that they will outgrow it,

you libtards, but you know they won't. It doesn't matter anymore, you know. we've won the use because your catalogs are dead, you are dealers in dead words. So actually, because of all this, I must send a formal wish, a wish to Trump. I send an offer, I make a business offer. Mr. Trump, President Trump, I have recently, as of two weeks, announced my candidacy for President of the United States, even as I am the white king, therefore provisional president of the American people. But President Trump, I will withdraw my candidacy and pledge full support to you and will not compete with you in the election of 2024 if you promise to make me honorary ambassador to the Empire of Japan. I guess it's a republic, whatever you want to call it now. But I want to be in front.

I have this image on behalf of Trump in Japan and I would be wearing a special sash, what you call it. It's not a sash, it's first of all a uniform with epaulettes and medals and such, but also a cordon around me of silver and I would, in a grand hall in front of the Japanese emperor, I would raise up high a Sakaki branch in reverence and respect. Sakaki is an evergreen tree that's sacred to the Japanese people in the Shinto religion. And I would say something along the lines of, in the name of Commandator Higimon Trump of the Holy Islands of Hisperides of the United States, I raise up to you, descendant of sun goddess Amaterasu. I would say, I would make a grand pronouncement like this. I want them to introduce me to their women. I want to enjoy the foods of Japan.

I want to live in luxury in Japan on behalf of Trump and reformed the United States in a magnificent uniform. You know, these are kind of my dreams this week as I come back to you on this show and I wish I was in a small sail ship in a river by Saigon with a lovely main ad, lost in a haze of opium. Can I play this for you now? This music that reminds me of this oriental, oriental image of mystery and love and romance. Please listen to this music. Name, White King, Order of White King. Yes, you like, I cannot say the next phrase, but do you like this music? Do you like what I just played for you? Did you like my appearance on show Red Scare? There is a feeling, I think, in the air now. I have sometimes to be careful because of intense media attention, and I assume idiotic law enforcement

malicious attention on me now. But on the other hand, I'm not just being merely self-protective when I say, it's really not just about right-wing this and that. The left has gone so mentally ill that I had friend, friend's father, he showed me text he got from his father after he show his father my book. The friend is a liberal, I will not say what industry, but he's a liberal CEO of a major company who was radicalized by just insane experience, leading corporation infested with leftist lunatic moralists inside it, many such cases. A lot of these CEOs don't control their own companies, they can't, meanwhile you think they're part of some billionaire conspiracy to defraud, And I'm sure some are, for example, George Soros and others, I'm sure they're running

a game, but a lot of these CEOs cannot call shots even within their own corporations. That's not how it works. In any case, he liked my book. He showed his father my book. And his father says, I posted on this, he says, I'm not sure why the right wing has seized on this book. It's about adventure and energy, and I'm going to read Moby Dick now, and I don't see what's white supremacist about it or this thing that the left says. And not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with white supremacism, but in the book itself, I actually praise various peoples and I want the best for all types of peoples. I mean, I praise in the book the Comanche, for example, as herrenfolk, a master race, and the Malays also and others. And

so does Gobineau, by the way. And again, I'm not saying this merely for self-protection, But we are really at a point, and I say this in my response to Mike Anton in 2019, if you want to read it, we're at a point where just advocating for health and vitality and well-turned-out bodies and such, this is seen as heretical fascism of some type. So you know, this is the troll. It's a great opportunity to seize, and it's the troll that Leni Riefenstahl also did, the troll she did on the left and on the hysterical Susan Sontag with the photos she took of the Nuba. And you can get them to commit public suicide if you press the right buttons, you see. And in the Atlantic article on me, these people, look, I don't know if this guy who wrote it

was for real or if he was joking when he said this, but they go, oh, he upset the HR ladies. The person we think he is was not following the rules at his wage-cock job, and he told the HR ladies to fuck off. And people didn't know if this was for real. I mean, how can they think this is something bad? I'm some guess the Atlantic's readership must be the H.R. Martinets, you see. I don't know what was going on there, but it's the same thing with Trump now. The left have become the squares. Nobody likes that. The nurse ratchets and so forth, and they embrace that, the left does. They love the feeling of, it's this feeling, we are the power, we are the state. They get puffed up, but they forget that two generations

at least have gone by in which that position has been caricatured and made to look ridiculous. And they are embracing that ridiculousness. And I think, you know, the party of freedom, the faction of truth, has to forthrightly embrace the opposite. And let us have rebellion and decadence and criminality heaped upon us. What do you think about this? But anyway, I consider Trump's burger choices, as this is an episode about food, consider Trump food choices. I'm sure Trump actually has had quite his fill of fine dining in New York and such. You have seen even movie long ago, American Psycho, Can You Get Me Reservations at Dorsia and so forth. I once watched this movie with a girl and she started crying at the end. I didn't understand why. I thought it was a very funny movie. I asked why. She

say, I can't believe you made me watch that. What does that mean about what you think about me. This why some girls crying, but I'm sure Trump has had his plenty of share of so-called fancy New York food, nouveau cuisine and such, but as the people's billionaire, he's famously, he feeds the visiting football team, the Patriots, the entire spread. I don't think it was the Patriots. It was a college football team. I think Clemson or whatever, he fed them a a whole spread of McDonald Burger King and such, and this is what he enjoys, the Diet Coke nuclear button in the Oval Office and so on. People love it. It's like people I've known who have, they tell people, I have kid taste, so they go to nice restaurant and they feel shy because they want to order the fish and chips or chicken

tendies when everyone else is ordering the Partridge and Malbec reduction and such. I like this. I was in a short trip, recent foreign country. I won't say where I am now or where I was. The food in the hotel was dreadful. I spent five days in hotel with girl. I will not say more. She was a complete main ad. But she ordered chicken tendies, and we survived on that, but mostly on ramen coke for five days. So only on last day we realized we can order McDonald's burger Uber Eats. And I like some McDonald's, okay? I prefer double cheeseburger and a single quarter pounder because it has the right cheese ratio. Whereas if you order double quarter pounder, there's often not enough cheese. And then my go-to favorite at times is the five man's burger, because it has the

right, it's a double cheeseburger, but it has the right cheese combo. And when you order mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, pickled sauteed onion, and often with my friend Yama, we time it, even though we are not ever in the same country, we time it so that we have the five man's burger to enjoy at the same time. and we talk about it after. I prefer five-man's burger. I hear In-N-Out is the best in the United States, but I don't think I've ever had that. I like five-man's and I love Shake Shack, and I think America's burger is best, okay? I said this when I was in Tokyo. I was having Shake Shack's burger sometime. It was far better than the local Japanese attempts at various gourmet burgers. You have to get the fat and grease ratio right. This is what a

lot of gourmet burger thing miss. And now in America, you can occasionally get good gourmet burger. Many nice restaurants have this option and some know how to do it well. It's been a long time since I was in the United States. I was in Brooklyn a while back in Williamsburg there was a place called Roebling Tea Room. I think it's closed now. They had A great burger, maybe this is 10 years or so back, I don't remember, it was about $11, which was considered a lot for a gourmet burger at the time. In Europe now, it's twice that at nice restaurant, but I have to tell you, the usual burger in Europe is crap. The usual burger in South America is crap. I don't mean compared to whatever I just said, Roebling Tea Room, their burger was good,

but it had the right cheese thing and they made their own relish sauce and the burger meat mix was correct. You have, I'm telling you, to get the right mix for a burger. Gourmet places don't do that well because they are afraid to use fatty cuts always. They think they're scamming their customers if they do, but you can't make a burger with lean meat and if you go to East Europe or more particularly the Balkans, okay, and you have cevapi, that's what they're called in Serbia and Croatia and such. Actually, it's a food you can find everywhere from India all the way to Hungary. In India, it's called sikh kebab, slight different, it's much drier. In the Balkans, it's juicy and fatty, and of course, slight different spice profile,

But it's the local equivalent of the burger, fast food type ground meat thing, except they put garlic in it, for example. But it has to have the right ratio of fat in it, which is why the best places that make it also there, it's at train stations and at big open markets and such. If you're ever in the Balkans and you're a big market, that's where you get the cevapi, you get it with fries or bun on the side, not fancy restaurants. I think it's the same with burgers, and gourmet burgers at fancy restaurants, I mean, are rarely good, and when people say they are, it's usually because they've paid a lot, and they lose to admit that it's not that good. That applies, by the way, to many good restaurants, so-called, in general, especially Michelin-starred places,

which are often scams, I'll talk about this later, but let me give you some advice to save you money, okay? because I knew this and I've fallen for the temptation to order wagyu burger or such and just avoid it, okay? I've had wagyu burger all over the world and in Japan also, and the whole point of wagyu beef, though, is the fat marbling. But that's entirely lost when you grind and you do it in a burger. And weirdly enough, the wagyu burger, again, out of neurosis, they choose the leaner cuts of wagyu if that's possible, So it's always, it's never very good. Don't waste your money on it. It's never as satisfying as just your regular Shake Shack burger. So it's neurosis. Many countries, I'm telling you, they consider the fattier cuts of the cow to be low class.

So they think it's really high class again. You can't use, you can make steak tartare out of lean meat but not a burger. They don't understand this. So the French especially will confuse. They all, well, lean meat steak tartare, or whatever tartare we make, that's kind of ground, so we should make the burger also. But let me say a few words on steak itself. In terms of beef, steak isn't my usual favorite. And yes, may I talk about my favorite foods? I've noticed that people enjoy to hear list of what I've had for dinner. I know you cannot dispute tastes. They're not usually transferable, but maybe you do not find this an imposition. Maybe you like to hear me talk what I like to eat, but when steak is good, it can be best, but it's not my usual favorite.

At its usual quality, steak is quite bad compared to the cheaper cuts when they are well prepared. So even a chuck roast, if you slow cook it, and many restaurants actually know how to make a good pot roast or chuck roast, I think that's often superior to their steak cuts. But you take a meat culture, let's say the American South, the South of the United States has the best meat cookery in the world, I think. Maybe South Africa or Australia are compatible. I've heard, I've never been to Australia, I've heard, but for slow-cooked meat, would you go to Australia? The girls have very thin lips, I've heard. But for slow-cooked meat, for ribs and such, Nothing compared to Southern United States. Texas barbecue ribs are the best meat for me. Real Texas giant barbecue rib.

Real Texas beef brisket. Nothing compares. And I'm told the Anglos of other colonies have similar meat cookery, but I don't know. There are some occasional competitors in meat cookery to the south that say Cantonese barbecue. And I mean, but not the usual kind. You see, it's a question of consistency. All over American South, you can find good barbecue, but Cantonese barbecue usually is not done well. It's dry or whatever. If you are ever in Hong Kong, I highly recommend something called Cam's Roast Goose, K-A-M. That's about as good as the best Southern barbecue, and not just the goose, they cook pork belly and everything there very well and such. Usually there's a long line outside, But you wait, it's okay, Wan Chai neighborhood, very pleasant neighborhood of Hong Kong.

It's a wonderful city, I hope it's free from the chink someday. Another good competitor for American barbecue meat cooking style is Spanish kind of, I don't know its formal name, it's Asador style, a kind of oven cooking style. Like the traditional roast oven places in Castile. They cook suckling pig and suckling lamb, is it called suckling lamb? Small lamb, suckling pig, they cook it in these. The best places for it are Segovia and Avila, places right outside Madrid, an hour outside or so for such cookery, but you can find it in Madrid too. By the way, if you do go to Madrid or Barcelona, please do some research on the popular restaurants, because for example, Botin in central Madrid, which all the tourists go there, and it's reputed to be the oldest restaurant in the world,

but it's truly awful. such places in general in any city, you need to be careful because they rely on their reputation and they know that they'll always have a new stream of tourists coming in, so their food often is a dreadful and a shame. Happens also with tourist trap restaurants in Paris, which is why many casual, let's say, culinary tourists to France get a wrong impression of French food. A friend mentioned today, since we're on subject of food, it's very unsavory, and I know this is food episode. Maybe I shouldn't say this on a food episode, but normies, normal fags, they go to a foreign country. They will try the local cuisine, and they think they're experiencing the local culture, and you should try unusual foods, but they completely ignore everything else.

They do not care about the local news, the local history. They barely go to any of the historical sites, and when they do, it's to take a shot. They don't understand the context of that site in the history of the nation. They don't do the simplest thing to understand the nation, which is you go to a bar with locals and you talk to them, or you merely sit outside at the table and you watch the crowds for a few hours. They don't even do that. It's all about the food, and they think they're foodies, but usually they get completely distorted version even of that, but in the case of what I told you, Botin, the Madrid government should step in because they're giving tourists a completely false image of what Spanish barbeque is like. It's a complete scam, the so-called suckling pig there.

Do research before you eat suckling pig or lamb in Spain because, again, the most popular places anywhere that pilfer stupid tourist operation. In Madrid proper, if I could give you a suggestion, I don't actually know good place for such dish for lamb. I can tell you there's a place called El Gran Asador Lecanda in Salamanca district that makes truly authentic and amazing suckling lamb in traditional barbecue style. I can only tell you these things because I'm no longer in such place, but if you go there, go to such, or they should really pay me for doing advertising for them. This is similar barbecue style, but they cook it in these pot, in these, I think that, I forget what, they're ceramic pots, red pots in an oven, but it's a big portion for two or more people.

Crisp, beautiful, slow-cooked lamb style. But anyway, that said, these are my favorite cuts of meat. not the steaks and such. But regarding steak, I have my opinions on this, so let me go off on steak. Almost any cut of steak can be good if it's well done. I prefer the fattier or chewier cuts even in steak, so a hanger steak can be very good, a ribeye. But even filet, so-called filet mignon can be wonderful if it's, for example, let me give you a hint. If you're ever in Buenos Aires, you go to a place called Don Julio. It's impossible to get a reservation. There is usually huge land outside, but it's for good reason, you can wait in line. You know, Angela Merkel, when she came, she ate there, and other celebrities and so forth, but although it is pursued by tourists,

in this case, it's actually good and it's worth it. And do not be afraid to order such thing as filet at a place like this, because even though there is no fat, and so you might assume it has not such good character, It's soft like butter, and this is another thing, but good steakhouses now have wood burning grills, and it adds special taste. You cannot cook at home certain cuts, because, look, regarding steak, it caused a stir recently when I said steaks in Europe are not good, compared to steaks in America. And I think in general, this is true. And this is, I posted in response to some health influencer, he was saying steaks in Greece were relatively cheap. He was looking at ribeyes per kilogram. I don't know what it would have come out to, maybe $15 per pound.

I guess this is considered cheap in America now for ribeye because America again is a sheep shearing operation where everyone gets ripped off. But there were these ribeyes and they looked awful. They look like they were cut by a retarded 10 year old with a spoon and no marbling. They would have been so tough. I know exactly what they would have been, steaks in Europe generally. I mean, with some exceptions, steaks in Europe are awful. In East Europe especially, in Greece, in the Balkans especially, a miserable, tough, inedible rubber. I remember some years ago I was at the Balkanoid restaurant and this middle-aged American woman is there with a local friend. They're sitting at next table over and she asks for a steak and I wanted to do an intervention

but, okay, I say let people live their lives, okay, but she, uh, I knew what would happen. It was a nice restaurant, and I'm sure she expected an American-style, juicy, medium-rare tender steak, and instead she got this gray, with shade of pink, this gray rubber thing, right, and she could barely cut through it. She predictably complained, to which the waiter, of course, was puzzled, but I thought you ordered beef steak. This is beef steak. Okay, never get the beef steak. Okay in the East Europe or Russian shithole It's like having street grill meat in Kinshasa. It's oily rubber tennis ball trash steak Okay, and most of the steak in Europe is like this most of it even some actually of the heritage so-called steaks Excuse me, they attack my throat

Heritage steaks they often say the breed of the cow in Europe you go to a nice restaurant They will say, this is from Zimmental cattle from Switzerland, and they're used for premium steaks across Europe. But this kind of steak also can give you a tough, tasteless piece of meat compared to actually many American neighborhood steaks, and this is what I'm saying. Probably the run-of-the-mill American corn syrup saline solution injected mystery meat is not much better. But on the whole, in most American cities, you can find a decent piece of steak, whereas in all of East Europe you can't. and there are, mostly you can't, and there are improvements now I hear with, they do hipster, dry-aged, and attention to sourcing. Even the, oh god, they attack me. They attack me. Putin, ah, sorry.

You hear Putin, I was about to say that even in Russia lately there's hipster culture with beef, but Putin has used a throat weapon because I'm introducing the stakes of the Russian sphere. Mostly, no, you cannot, And even in West Europe, the steak is bad at rubbery, usually. And it's no excuse to blame it. They have cope excuses, they say, oh, it's because the steak is grass-fed and the cow needs to move around. And I'll get to that in a moment. That's no excuse. You just need more pasture land. And there's plenty of pasture land in Russia. I wish you had conquered Russia so you could get more pasture land, although the Russian beef is, again, terrible too. Russian oligarchs import beef from Uruguay and such. The Argentine beef is grass-fed, and when it's good, it's excellent,

because in Argentina, Argentina's so large and depopulated that the cows don't need to move around so much to find plentiful pasture land. So, in other words, the beef does not have to get very tough on account of the cattle needing to become stringy and muscular. But I'll get to Argentina beef in a moment. Don't think that you can go to Argentina because of its reputation and just get tasty beef. Most of the steaks for tourists are terrible. It's disgusting, overcooked fat, kind of yellow fat, but very unpleasant taste, overcooked corpse steak. I don't know how to describe it. Some of the most popular steakhouses in Buenos Aires, they serve rock hard steak. I mean, literally, I couldn't chew it. They don't even know how to cook steak. Most of it comes brown.

They take short ribs in Argentina and throw it on the grill. You know, it's got some chew, you see, as in you can't chew it at all, it's cardboard. But I prefer American steak, even neighborhood American steak restaurants with normal grill. Now they have charcoal grill, wood grill, it doesn't matter. They can make it much better than I can at home. Just normal American neighborhood steakhouse. Listen to Phil Hendry, Ted Steakhouse, Ted of Beverly Hills, where we love to put our meat in your mouth. Listen to this. All right, Ted Bell from Ted's of Beverly Hills, man. God, what got up your ass today? Ted's of Beverly Hills. Ted's of Beverly Hills, as you know, is featuring now our brisket as well as our smoked sausage. Yep, that's right, Ted Bell has smoked sausage. That's the...

Don't worry about it, Phil, I got this. I got this. All right, Ted Bell is joining us here from Ted's of Beverly Hills, so the prize, you just went ahead and you led with that, huh? Yeah, exactly what I did do, Phil. I led with what has been a slogan. Now, you know, we have never tried to be advertising slogans. People to immediately assume that we're going into some dirty direction, non-family-friendly direction. The idea of Teds of Beverly Hills has always been, yes, it's a steakhouse for it. Yes, we do encourage mostly adults to come in. Yes, we do have the adult entertainment. But it's over. If you really needed to bring your kids, if you couldn't find a babysitter, if it was just, yes, we have a family atmosphere here at Teds of Beverly Hills.

my meat in your mouth, telling you I'm talking about restaurant critic, don't mention his name. That's right. Tender juice, thick American meat. This is what we like. But really America has advantage with steak. Again, relatively easy to get good or decent steak in most American cities and towns. Not true for Europe. But the point that grass-fed beef does not need to mean that the beef is stuffed because, again, they claim the cows have to move around a lot. But in places like Argentina and certain parts of the United States, there's so much pasture land, you can have certainly tender grass-fed beef. And then in Europe itself, Spain is an exception. Spain may have best beef in the world, some think so. other advice on steak varieties. This, by the way, in Spain is where the cow runs come

from, the rodeo origin in South Spain. They transferred it then to American Southwest, and they have amazing breeds all over Spain that do not fit the pattern I just told you regarding European meat. In fact, Rubia Gallega variety, or blonde Galician, is a breed that can rival the best wagyu beef, some of the best restaurants now in the world serve this instead of wagyu because while very good wagyu beef, the real kind, is great, some people think some chefs say it's just a fat bomb, that it's too marbled, too much fat. So I don't agree with this. I like recently in Tokyo you go place they serve so-called omi beef and such person could call this kind of beef pure fat. It's delicious slab of totally marbled beef. But although it's fatty, I don't think it loses any of the beefy taste.

This is to me supreme beef taste. And in Japan you can get this for not so much money by the way. When it reaches anywhere outside Japan and you won't even find it named omi beef or such, It's insanely expensive outside Japan. But it's worth it in Japan, I think, very beefy, ultimate steak. And the supremely, what's important, consistently good. It's never bad in Japan, real wagyu beef. Whereas Spanish steak, even of the top breeds, it can occasionally be not so good. It can have a steak or it can be gristle or such. But I do think the steak gourmets, who now a top restaurant in London and New York, they this Spanish steak, I tell you, is better than Wagyu. And I think they may be right, that at its best, Spanish steak is probably better. In the following sense, it's got some chew to it.

It's not really just, as they say, to me the problem of Japanese steak is not the fat, it's very soft and the texture and so forth, whereas Spanish steak is more so-called beefy taste and some chew, and it's interesting that the older cows or oxes are chosen for slaughter in this case. They have to be at least seven to eight years old to be slaughtered. Completely grass-fed, of course, on green pastures in northwest Spain. And in that time, let's say, the working of the muscle, that working of the muscle gives beats, they say, character and chew us on. But then, of course, it's aged sometimes for many months. And again, I do not recommend that you get such steak at home. I know some of you have gas grill and such, you like to grill, but it's not the same because it...

Again, this is called rubia gallega, or blonde galician. It's a quite green Celtic region. There are other micro regions of Europe that do beef well, but it's rare. Florentine beef, for example. Florence beef in Italy, the Canina, excuse me, the Canina beef, breed beef variety. It's a nice white cow that also makes wonderful steaks, old, old cow variety, a Roman cow. I personally like the Zebu cattle. This is tropical cow variety. It has a hump and then you can barbecue, slow cook that hump for two days. And that hump is 70% fat, delicious barbecue. You can find it only in Brazil, I think. It's the only good barbecue that they make. I know Brazilians like their so-called churrasco barbecues, their barbecue and spits and such, but the beef quality is not usually very good.

This is what I'm saying. It's very hard to find good beef anywhere in the world. But I tried cooking one of these, I'm telling you, a Spanish Rubia Gallega when I lived in Spain, blonde Galician breed, I got, oh, I'll make it at home because I've made good ribeyes in the past on a pan, okay? And I tried one of these aged steaks on a pan and it doesn't taste good at home. Unless you have some fancy wood-burning or charcoal-burning grill, you should go to a restaurant that has these and let them do a professional job on it. Another lesser-known Spanish variety of cow breed is retinta. Retinta beef, in in my experience, is consistently amazing. Someone correct me, but I think this is the breed of the cow the same as the bulls used in bullfighting.

And you can see, actually, you can sample the bulls in the bullfights themselves. There are restaurants that proudly serve oxtail stew made from the beef of bull slaughter during bullfighting festivals. And it's quite delicious, it's a way, I think, also to honor the animal, I believe. It might even give you injection of androgens and right into your blood. I mean, it's true that if you eat true Iberico porks, these are the half wild, they're not quite boars, but they are related in some ancient way to boars. They are kind of lacy, lacy porks, and they live in southeast Portugal, southwest Spain. And you can look up the studies that you eat the meat, especially the fat of those pigs, and you can come up with false positive if you're an athlete for androgens, illegal androgens and such.

Maybe something happens if you eat the tail in a stew of a bull who died in bullfighting. But the retinta beef, if you ever see such a thing or the equivalent of French, what is it called, I don't know what it's called in Spanish, but the French protected regional denomination type thing of South Spanish beef. You can always count on a steak that is both tender and has very beefy chew, but not too much and amazing flavored beef will give you power of bull. Is this okay? They almost always come in some kind of ribeye variety. But yes, aside from these exceptions in Europe and it's basically just these or at extreme gourmet restaurants in Europe where you can find good beef, otherwise avoid the beef in Europe. But aside from this, American steaks again are far superior to European as a rule

where even neighborhood American steakhouse can sometimes have excellent steak and on European neighborhood menu it's almost always the worst thing there. Made for disgusting normies who want to feel like they are big men, they're rich in such things. This kind of attitude especially common in East Europe and the Balkans. It's always some fat guy with lazy eyes you know, lazy doll eyes. I'm a big man. I eat steak and fries every day for lunch. I'm the don. That's how they think, you know. The thing, though, is even in, let's say, in France, at nice restaurants, you're almost guaranteed a good steak and such, and then the regional exceptions I made, it's still the case European beef and maybe meat in general just is not very

good. I mentioned Japanese wagyu earlier. There's no calculating for taste, but the thing about Wagyu in a Japanese restaurant again it will be good 100% of the time if it is the real Wagyu in or from Japan okay because there's a lot of fake Wagyu. I remember I ate one in Argentina a long time ago Wagyu so-called steak or they put it in a stew it was a complete scam it's just this dry thing it's indistinguishable from any other beef you just get marked up some ridiculous amount but if you see Wagyu on a menu in Japan or anywhere else that's imported from Japan usually exhibiting the rating system for Japanese beef, then you will be guaranteed a good tender cut of beef. Whereas even, unfortunately, with the top breeds I've mentioned from Europe, they are inconsistent.

Again, you may have this blonde Galician or even in a Paris Steakhouse beef, like Paris super gourmet nice restaurant that may be superior to the Japanese, but sometimes it will have a smell. Other times it will be a tough grisly in an unappetizing way. And then there's nothing you can do even at good rest. You know that smell come from when they do not castrate the ox, the bull I mean, to turn it into an ox. They do not castrate at the right time. And so then it can get a very unpleasant smell. And so an American borgar, even at McDonald, is usually, I repeat to you, better than any foreign interloper burger type thing. This is, again, show about my food opinions. I know tastes vary, but I hope you enjoy. Tastes do not vary that much. I find gentlemen enjoy my restaurant

and recipe recommendations almost always. This is a show for gentlemen of good taste. I must take break now. I am fasting. I am not eating any animal products today. No oil or wine for me today. I will be right back. I'm having fruit only. I'll be right back. American food revolution, tracking also American coffee revolution. Hipsters do good coffee. It used to be, for example, maybe I've lived to Logan, Argentina. I will keep using it as an example because I remember the food situation there actually very similar to America. It must be a dual world thing to have bad food for a long time and a food and coffee revolution recently. And many years ago, the coffee was uniformly terrible in Argentina, but occasionally you could get a dedicated Galician perfectionist waiter.

Many of the wait staff in Buenos Aires were older Galician, very formal guys, the Galicia very poor area of Spain, and I suppose there was a lot of immigration to Argentina, even in the 1960s, 70s and such. Excuse me, Putin still attacked my throat with the Havana Ray. But this man, a Galician, was a dedicated soldier who manned his station among the decay of that city. It's an interesting video by Borges, the writer, who was blind and he walks around Buenos Aires and he remembers how it was, and then versus what you, the viewer, see now on camera. It's very depressing. But that said, I still think Buenos Aires is a romantic city with great potential. You want to talk Paris 1920s. This is a place that could become that, it's just because it's so cheap now.

And also it's not just that it's cheap, but because Cambodia is cheap, you go to Cambodia there's nothing there, there's a temple and then the villages have unpaved roads, whereas Buenos Aires is made as a reasonable facsimile of a place like Madrid, or sometimes they copy parts of Paris. But the point is, it has, in theory, nice facilities, if it could only solve its problem of decline, which is not so much the decline, there is not so much a matter of the filth, the dirt on the streets, which is tolerable. But the fact that many of the pretty white Argentines have left the country, or they've become shut-ins and given up the streets, really, I don't want to say more about this. I should talk this on a future episode.

I think an episode on the upcoming election in Argentina called for their presidential election this October, and I think an election will not solve that country. It's really amazing a case where a country is thoroughly destroyed by women, and in particular mothers, and let's face it, sons giving in to overbearing mothers. I'll explain why this is a future episode, but the dynamic, to put it short, the dynamic is the fear that these overbearing women have of the streets is so infectious, and the men of that country, for whatever reason, whether it's the Mediterranean mama's boy thing, but they've allowed themselves to be so cowed by their mother's fear that they really abandoned the country, the streets, they abandoned everything because their mom told them that it was dangerous,

and a good boy does not get involved in that kind of thing, does not go on streets in that way. It wasn't always this way, in the late 90s I hear there were, you know, I don't want to say skinhead, but there were tough, doggo gangs on the streets and such, and it's just, I've never actually met the people so afraid of so little. I'm talking about restaurants where you need to ring a doorbell to get in in the center, nice area of town, called Recoleta and others, and you know, that's supposedly the nicest area of town, and you have to hit a doorbell in many places to get in. terrified supposedly of crime, and there is not really any crime actually, but if it manages to reestablish at least let's say the unsurveiled nightlife of the 2000s, early 2010s, and to

keep prices low, it's a city I say with enough facilities that it wouldn't be such a big shock, it would be comfortable for a welcome home to many frogs from America and Europe, aspiring artists and such, but we will see. So anyway, I remember before recent hipster coffee revolution, there were still a couple of old waiters who would make amazing espresso out of crappy industrial grounds because he did trial and error. He min-maxed his espresso machine with temperature plays and such until something good came out. But outside that level of professional dedication, you'd be guaranteed washed out water coffee, just like in the United States. So the Brazilians derived as chafe, tea coffee. This is what they say when they contemptuously talk about American or coffee,

otherwise coffee outside their domains, coffee that's too weak, water coffee. But now, you can find both in America and Argentina, dedicated hipster coffee shops. They have $20,000 espresso machines and minute attention to coffee sourcing, heirloom coffee from all regions of the world. And I can't complain about this. I drink a tremendous number of coffees during the day. I have Canadian farmer friend who say he guesses that most coffee in the world is fake. He bases this claim simply on statistics of coffee consumption versus coffee production. So places like Brazil and Ethiopia have high coffee production, so does Vietnam. But these places also have huge domestic coffee consumption. And so his argument is that most coffee consumption in the world is far beyond what gets produced.

It doesn't add up. He thinks most coffee sold in normies stores is fake. Maybe it's not even chicory, it's just flavored plastic, I don't know, fake beans. And this is all the more reason than to patronize local hipster coffee places. You can be guaranteed real coffee has particular taste, but look, I don't know. The bureaucrat loves his Colombian Dunkin' Donuts blend. Although I do have to say the slogan of Dunkin' Donuts, America runs on Dunkin'. It's a kind of slave fuel for zog slave masters, okay? It's not fine, it's not okay, but look, it's interesting, there is general revolution, frivolous things like coffee, food, wine, I mean, what do you want? Let people be decadent like this. It's not like they would be concerning themselves

with anything better, it's one of the few good points of hipster urbanite culture, if they wouldn't be into this, they'd just be more into social justice, busy bodying. Let them at least make good sexpresso. Let them get a taste for good wine if they want. This City Journal article, I'm sorry by the way about the quality of the recording on this show. I will have to keep coughing throughout what I'm talking to you because they will not stop attacking my throat. But through this City Journal article I mentioned, food trends in America as of 2009, including in wine, were interesting. There was one, Warren Winiarski, a Straussian professor who actually wrote, I hear, the chapter on Machiavelli for the first edition of the history of political philosophy edited by Cropsey and such,

which I recommend to any listener. The book I just mentioned is a decent introduction if you want just short intros to Aristotle, Machiavelli, and so on. But he abandoned being professor to, he micro-researched it, he became a wine farmer. He studied the climate and terrain of California, compared it to France, places in France he knew, grew wonderful wine, and he made a winery called Stag's Leap, where in 1970, I think, his Cabernet Sauvignon won the blind taste test in France. It was the first time an American wine won, it caused a big scandal, there's a movie about it. In decline, things like food, wine, parties, pastries, this become much better. You look satirical of Petronius, you see this. I suppose there's this much, but this article I mentioned, again 2009,

by which time American food scene was already vastly improving, article makes the case that possibly America is the number one food destination now in the developed world which brings to mind just the other day, dispute, big dispute breaks out on Twitter. I suppose they were preemptively promoting this episode on food, but 4,000 quote tweets and 60 million views, last I checked, Philippe LeMoyne and another Frenchie, Pascal Gobry, stomping, they are stomping for French cuisine as the best, as is their right. And Americans, many proud, in this case they are proud regime loyalists and some self-declared and neoliberals, who I'm guessing are part of the lobster risotto contingent, most of them, but some American nationalists, period, but I think a lot of the Washington, D.C.,

Tyler Cowen types, again, the lobster risotto ethnic restaurant circuit. The people who think flour doused with chocolate and pepper syrup in Washington, D.C., counts for haute cuisine, gourmet quesadillas and such, I don't know, but everyone insisting that no, America has the best food, not France, and many replies indeed insisting on Mexican superior taste or other ethnic eateries, but that's not American, and these debates that sometimes break out, which country has the best food, well, when you phrase it that way, I guess that's what it is, it depends how you define it, right, is the question which Which country has the best native cuisine style as such? Which country, because of its economic condition or otherwise, is maybe developing its taste

for whatever reason, for fine food and coffee and so on, and it happens to host the best restaurants in general of whatever origin? Are you judging what the average man eats versus what people have available if they want to splurge and celebrate or to enjoy a fine meal and so on? These are all different questions, but people predictably obfuscate when they want to win an argument. Okay, that's fine, but I'll answer all these questions. Why not? The best food style as such is without a doubt the French style. Even the Japanese who have their own high cuisine and who actually do have the best food in the world at the moment, I'll get to that in a second, but even they at the height of their wealth some years ago had a French food craze, and still in Tokyo you

You can find from that time French restaurants as good as in Paris, even now. But because they've had economic problems the last 10 or 20 years, they've switched instead to an Italian food craze. So you see how this works. So on every corner now there's an Italian restaurant, whereas maybe 1990s it was French. Which also, by the way, answers some of the arguments or complaints I see in this so-called debate now. People asking, well, if French food is so great, how come every town I know has a Chinese or a Japanese-Italian restaurant but not a French one? And the answer is because you're poor. America's not prosperous. It's poor. You cannot afford the ingredients used in real French food. You cannot have the skills of a chef who'd be able to pull off even a French stew.

Those skills take time and they're expensive. Very few people can do it. By analogy, it's the same reason, again, Japan has switched to an Italian food craze. It's just cheaper ingredients, less elaborate cooking skills required. But in American restaurants that are high cuisine and so on and consider good American food now, it is actually French food. In fact, it always was, but it doesn't matter what name you put on it or even if you use other or local ingredients, which French food always focus on local ingredients and innovate with foreign ingredients, too, but it's the cooking style, the technique to a large extent also of flavor profile. American good food now is actually French food. And if you don't see

high cuisine French name restaurants, again, it's because they'd be too expensive. But otherwise, this article I mentioned at the beginning of episode rightly says that America's food revolution came about because of French food, because Julia Child, who pioneered French cooking, and also because of Alice Waters, with her famous restaurant Chez Panisse in California, these were what really changed the American food scene. In other words, it changed because it became self-consciously based on French cooking styles, as it probably was at the turn of the 20th century, excuse me, 19th to 20th, I mean. And owing again, then, to, you say, culturally economic changes in America, it's arguable that if you live in one or two, three major urban centers in America, New York, let's say,

I, sure, I would guess New York restaurants overall have an edge on restaurants anywhere in Paris or Madrid, maybe. But you are still getting French or Spanish or Italian food, basically. It's American in name only. And it's interesting the way these things change. Excuse if I maybe repeat myself, but I remember I was in Lisbon in early 2000s. Portuguese food is as such decent cooking style, it can be quite good, not spectacular, but good. But when I was there, it just seemed awful to me. It only seemed that way, though, because of circumstances, my own as well as local unfortunate events. I was broke at the time. I lived in a pension, I think for about five dollars a day. I had a room outside the central plaza, a center of town where there's just Moroccan hashish dealers and Angolans.

you know, I felt like a hunted gazelle walking on the street living there. And I remember the chess lady, you know, when I tell you these things, they want my white skin, you know, but that's how I felt. But even broke as I was, what I had, I splurged sometimes to taste local cuisine at nice place and it was not very good. I mean, the only good things were the cheap Aleira sausage and charcoal grilled Aleira sausage is made of bread, garlic, meat, and cured, and it served as a lunchtime working class special in Portugal with french fries and fried egg. It's very, I like this kind of sausage thing. They were doing, like all Iberians, they were doing decent sausages. And then there was charcoal grilled sardines with coarse salt. You can't go wrong with that, but it gets boring.

You can't have that every day, And aside from this, it just seemed terribly bland. One note, every dessert, milk, eggs, milk, eggs. It's all some variety of egg tart or flan or such. I think I will have future episode on entirely dessert, dessert making and dessert food traditions. Would you enjoy that? But the whole cuisine in Portugal seemed that way. And then aside from my being broke, Lisbon itself was in a very bad condition at the time. I didn't know it when I was there, but they were in the middle of a heroin spiral, depression spiral. And now if you go to Lisbon, they've solved their drug problem, it's become cleaned up. It's overrun actually by American tech expats, it's very annoying. They drive prices very much up and any place you eat out, it's always this tech nasal voice,

this know-it-all voice, very ostentatiously talking about tech problems to display to others in the restaurant. It's very disturbing, but if you go now, there are actually great restaurants serving improved Portuguese cuisine. Very famous one is called Solar dos Presuntos. I suggest you go there, you have the goat. It sounds strange. Would it be a large goat, tough goat leg on a plate? It's not. It's very well cooked again in Iberian barbecue style, small pieces, but so you know the question, where is the best food? So much I say depends on situation. There's Portuguese cooking style as such, as a form and a potential on one hand, then on the other hand there's the reality of the situation where it may be that in 2002 you could maybe get better Portuguese food in Maputo Mozambique

than in a Lisbon restaurant, I don't know. So in this sense, I'd say, as a country overall, probably in Europe, Spain now has the best food, the most consistently good, accessible cuisine. You can, in other words, get a great meal in a Spanish place for 20 euros, whereas in France, you can only get very good food at the top restaurants or some other ones that are unknown to most people. But so I do think Spain has overtaken France maybe in the last 10 years with the highest concentration of food obsession in Basque Country, North Spain, and France is then maybe next to Spain. But if you consider then merely cities, I think New York or maybe Los Angeles even would have slight edge over these, which then would color the opinions of, say, American regime loyalists.

I mean, when they've actually developed a palette and it's not, you know, complete peasants like Podesta or Huma Abedin and the shtetlbillies like Anthony Weiner who think lobster risotto and mac and cheese with rubber overcooked lobster on top is hood cuisine. But maybe New York and LA do have a slight edge over European particular cities. As for countries, it has to be Japan. I believe Japan has by now, by far the best restaurants in the world, the best food in general. It's a complete come down to go from Japan to any other country in terms of food. Even with that economic downturn, It's really only affected the highest end type things, they're like French food, and there are still amazing French restaurants. It's really only affected the frequency, let's say,

of high end French restaurants, because they require ingredients not commonly found in Japan. Whereas their own cuisine, first of all, why is Japan the best, okay? And look, I'm a long time food fanatic. Maybe too much so, I go various place. First thing I do besides, well, besides jerk off behind a dumpster to bless the city as my own, right? But I try all the unusual foods and such. Everyone knows I have always the best recommendations for where to eat. And I say Tokyo has, by far, the most impressive food anywhere I've seen. It's not even close. First of all, they have their own developed food styles, native food styles. They don't just cook the food of others, although when they do, they do it as well as in Italy

or France because their chefs are Japanese perfectionists, and they go to study in foreign countries and they come back with full skills. You know, you don't need immigrants to have good diversity in food styles. It's not Mr. Tyler Cowen, the recipes and skills are teachable, you see. Ingredients are importable. But they have their own very developed food style where there are so many actually distinctive of Japanese dishes and food styles, that if you're there for a month, you can eat something good and very different every day, and you'll never get bored. And the versions you get of these in the West, even at nice places, aren't really comparable. So just to take even supposed street food, like on okonomiyaki, it's called sometimes Japanese pizza or something,

but it's not that. It's a kind of flat cake or pancake. It's not really a pancake, but made with cabbage and various toppings. It's amazing in Japan, and it's a whole style of its own with its specialized traditions, specialized restaurants. It has a totally different taste than versions in the rest of the world. But what really makes Japanese food seem so amazing is the circumstance, the fact that people there are in fact in general richer than elsewhere. Low wages and economic downturn now notwithstanding, I haven't seen such open opulence in any other cities as you do in the nice parts of Tokyo. I don't know any other city where you go and you see Lamborghinis and Ferraris go by you every day and it may just be Asiatic, crazy rich Asian type wanting to display your opulence,

but that exists in other countries too, that's a Mediterranean thing also and you do not see that in the Mediterranean. But they are still very rich and it's reflected in their food and food tastes And furthermore, people eat out every day, it's part of their culture, and in some cases they have to. They do have, let's say, expendable income for luxuries, but they have small apartments or small kitchens. And because they work hard and they all eat lunch out, so it's also just, so everyone eats out, I mean, everyone eats lunch at restaurants. Second of all, it's accepted that if you meet friends, you're going to take them out. You are not going to take them to cook in your own apartment or take out whatever. You'll take them to a nice restaurant.

So this, the demand I mean, the demand for good restaurants, everyone, millions and millions of people eat out. The demand is huge and then the supply, the competition in Tokyo is just fierce. And you'll go out of business if you don't have super tasty food. And you will forgive me, I am in the midst of starvation, psychosis. I am going to take a break not to take a snack. I will not break my diet. It's merely to get a smoke and a coffee because they will keep constricting my throat. Havana Ray from Mr. Putin beaming it right into my brain. I will be right back. I've come back, yes. That's it, though, in Tokyo, the competition between small businesses to the extent that even a neighborhood chain, Yakitori, this chicken skewer type place, even when they cook it not on charcoal grill,

they have some kind of electric grill, will usually give you a better experience than any supposedly very good restaurant in Europe or America. And be much cheaper, by the way. I mean, a more comforting experience, more satisfying food, and yes, more refined even. Even in the neighborhood casual place in Japan, It would rank, you transfer any, for example, chain chicken skewer place from Tokyo, an average one. You transfer it to New York or Paris and there would be a line around the corner every day to be considered one of the best places in town. And as for the high-end food in Tokyo, it's quite amazing, the sushi omakase meals, which can be quite expensive, but there's nothing like them in the West. You do not have, in other words, the option in the West to splurge on the equivalent,

not even at the top end places that pretend to be the highest end sushi, it will not be like that. I mean, even like an average sushi or makase place, let's say in Tokyo, nowhere near. Tokyo's on another level. I have Japanese friend, he's American businessman friend, but very refined man, loves Napoleon era art and many such thing. He has Japanese waifu, they travel recently to Lisbon, and so I tell him my favorite restaurants there, and they say all but one or just two blend, no flavor. And I'm not surprised, it doesn't compare to Japan. Now the Japanese did invent MSG, you know, so there's that, it's quite questionable you can say, but it's not just the flavor enhancers. The level of cookery, the flavor isn't anywhere near

quite aside from that. And by the way, if you want to know the restaurant in Lisbon that even Japanese high-taste women liked, I can tell you because, again, I'm not there, but when you go, it's called Taverna Albaricoke. It's right next to the military museum and it's still not very well known, so you can easily, usually get in. I recommend to anyone there, and I know I have listeners in Lisbon and nearby, it's a very casual place, but they do everything well and they've resurrected old Portuguese recipes, but they do them very competent. Very few such places in the rest of the world, but the rule in Tokyo is this, excellence, and in this context of comparing the food of different countries, you might want to bring up rating side, for example, ratings agencies

for restaurants, but the problem is that none are actually fully reliable. Things like TripAdvisor, it's not TripAdvisor, there's another one that's a complete scam where the restaurants actually pay to be listed at the top. But even TripAdvisor are bonkers. They're completely nuts, for example. In Lisbon, again, or in Buenos Aires, things will get good ratings if the food is cheap and plentiful. But as for quality, you can't predict literally anything from Google ratings or TripAdvisor ratings in terms of will this be tasty. It fills you up and it's cheap, gets great reviews. Michelin is supposed to be the standard, okay, but it's not. I noticed people saying France has so many more Michelin star restaurants compared to America, or per capita, whatever, and look in this case

as well as the high frequency of Michelin star restaurants in Basque Country, Spain, or in the Ribera del Duero Valley, I think, which is prime wine producing region of Spain. It's reliable only in the general sense that It's a good indicator, good tasty food is here in high quantity. And I think actually Japan has overtaken France as the number one Michelin star place in the world. And again in that sense it's accurate in the sense of generally saying that place has better food, better good restaurants than that other place. But it's not reliable at all when it comes to particular restaurants. And in Japan this is true most of all. Michelin stars are a complete scam in Japan. I wish I could find this old article, it's very interesting, made the case quite plainly,

but just so unfortunately so much of old internet has been wiped out, but it made the case very clear that in Japan the Michelin ratings are literally a corruption scam. And the thing is for all its great taste, Japanese cuisine depends largely on ingredients and on very simple treatment of simple cooking techniques. And it's absurd to give Michelin stars, for example, to Odin, which is, that's not the Norse god. O-D-E-N, which is a simple stew of a few braised goods. By the way, tastier than most foods in the rest of the world, yes, because it's Japanese. But simple food that's often sold from, stand on the street, you know. That's the thing with Tokyo, you know, I can't stop talking about it because you can get $8 meal that would be considered amazing food in the rest of the world.

for example, soba buckwheat noodle soup place with fried shrimp or such or other. They vary them by the day. It's $8, $9, incredible taste, leaves you feeling fresh and good. There's nothing like that at that price, nothing like that anywhere in the developed world. This isn't a terrific show, by the way. Are you mad at me because of that? The Japanese people eat high carb. They eat fried every day in seed oils and everything you think is bad, but they're thin and healthy and live to 80 years plus. Okay, I'm sorry this has gone too far. That's for another time. I'm one of the first people to talk about the evils of seed oils, but you've been told recently a lot of nonsense, exaggerated nonsense about this. I mean, they're not poison, and in most people's lives,

they're actually the least of your problems. Don't get me wrong, any rational government would maybe ban them, and in Japan, they don't ban seed oils, but they do ban GMOs, I think are banned, and many things that are present in Western diets are banned in Japan because their government actually cares about their people. But it's tedious, the constant haranguing on this particular point from people who don't even understand why seed oils are bad, why polyunsaturated fats are supposed to be bad. Sunflower oil is not that bad, for example, and I've always said this. And in the high oleic variety of sunflower oil, it has a fat profile very similar to olive oil, so it's really not bad at all. And it's standard in gourmet chips and such in Europe to be cooked in this high oleic oil.

You know, I've talked this before, but still pile drivers keep on pressing on such points. Enough of this. Most of people, priority should probably be to getting, let's say, 10, 11, 12% body fat. That's far more important than these micronutrient concerns. So if you've got fat around the waist, I think seed oils are the least of your problems. I'm not saying you should eat them, but obsessing this way is, you know, maybe you should just eat less, you know. Maybe what you eat matters less than that you eat less, you know, and two fat girl going two mile run every day, but then immediately after run, each of them eats four loaves of bread, two sandwich when they get back home. What do you think will happen, the retards? You get fat that way, just eat less.

The thing is, it's interesting that the places with the best, tastiest food, the best food in the world, are quite thin. It's funny how that works, Japan being one of them. So in general, I agree with Stephane Guionet that it's a food reward problem that causes obesity. In other words, food so-called scientists, or engineers in the West have worked to make junk food just addictively tasty, nachos, borger, and such. So, America fats and Mexi fats, I think Mexico has overtaken the United States as the fat capital of the world. There are huge parts of Europe that are fat too. Hungary, Germany, and parts of Spain, I think, are the leading fat places in Europe. They just keep stuffing themselves addictively. On the other hand, you look at Japan, at Paris,

At Madrid, not all of Spain, because again, most of Spain is getting to be quite a fat country now, but the rich parts of Madrid, everyone is thin, the girls are thin, it's funny how that works because precisely in those places, the food so incredibly tasty, but what explains it, I don't know, my friend Menaquin on four things, they just have evolutionary or cultural protections. In other words, they've gotten used to the very tasty food, they've just learned to eat only small portions or are doing so under social pressures to be sexy or whatever, I think that's the reason they're being immediately shamed and self-shamed if they get a little bit fat. But yes, they cured meats, though, for example. Cured meats, most people in the world probably have never tasted really cured meats.

And all due respect to my friend Nigulo, but the prosciutto, so-called in Croatia, their denatured version of prosciutto, the prosciutto, isn't really cured meat, it's just salted, salted meat. And this is what the Croatian peasant does. If the recipe calls for putting a little salt, they will add three kilogram of salt to one pound of ham leg, and the result is this inedibly salty stuff they call prosciut, and it's the shame of the Balkans. And it's the same in Argentina, where they think that they've kept the cured meat traditions from Europe, and they have these cold-cut, wretched platters that you're served in wine bars and beer halls, and it's all just overly salted ham for palates of dumb, excuse me, numb three-year-olds. Excuse, that's an Argentinian friend saying that,

by the way, not me. But in Spain, I mean they have true, real cured meats, better than the ones in France and Italy, I think, which aren't supposed to be all that salty, but the special taste you get from the curing bacterial process itself, and my friend Menaquin on four points out this taste I just mentioned is basically a nuclear bomb, okay, it's a food reward nuclear bomb in your mouth, okay? I mean the Doritos and such, the things food scientists that are essentially trying to reproduce this taste sensation, among others, but this one by chemical and artificial means, but it's just a nuclear bomb in your mouth. And the thing is you eat and it's not that high calorie, even the fattier cuts of ham because you end up eating not that much. And I suppose the Spaniards,

again at least the ones in nice parts of the country, have learned to enjoy it in moderation. So the rule remains that wherever you have the most highly developed food cultures, France, Japan, parts of Spain and Greece, where I just saw what his name, it's not Guy Debord, it's not Bobby Flay, It's the other R1B West hunter-gatherer chef, the one who likes to scream, very entertaining. Gordon Ramsay, and he say he prefers the food in Greece to the food in Italy for cuisine. But anyway, in such places, you actually have very thin people and longevity and so on, and Crete. And Basque Country, again, food capital of Spain, it has the highest life expectancy in Europe, I think. They're socialist Neanderthal feminist bastards, but it works out for them. They used to be cannibal, you know.

You can still see this on their faces, the Basque women, this gigantic face that you see in Almodovar movies sometimes. It's not just among the Basques. The cave women from Rioja and other parts of that part of Spain, you feel like they could eat you, they could chew on your joints. But I saw the Almodovar movie from 1989, tie me up, tie me down, I highly recommend this. A wonderful comedy, what a lovely love story. Antonio Banderas plays a mentally deranged stalker who kidnaps a starlet, he makes her love him with his, ultimately it's proven he makes her love him with his prodigious cock and sex. What a wonderful story, I believe in this, I think so. Medea killed her own children out of her love for Jason. Do you believe in this, this kind of woman? Do you think women are like this,

or was this a Greek fantasy about demonic women, a kind of wishful thought about demonic hypersexual women in the same way medieval Teutonic Christians had fantasies about angelic women. I like the demonic women better. I wish to be eaten alive by them one day. Then I am guaranteed a fortuitous rebirth, you know. But as for food now, so Michelin stars in general are not good way to judge restaurants. You can find this in many cases if you try one. there are many Michelin star and two star restaurants that are quite mediocre that usually made out to be stuffy places for date night and such. One of my favorite places had a Michelin star and lost it and I asked the owner, why? Don't you want it back? And he say, owner tells me, no, it's high stress.

It's high stress in me, high stress for the customers. Michelin star places become, again, date type where the whole pressure and the experience that come, they call it an experience and it comes, they come to your table and tell you a sob story. And he just say, I want people to come here and have a good time. And he was right, the food in his restaurant, by the way, was better than in Michelin star or two star places I've eaten at. And so, I mean to say it's not a reliable guide in that sense. And if you want just good food, a decent and democratic way to look at things, let me change the subject for a moment. You look at stews, you know. Stews are, you can say, democratic. I am a big fan of stews, okay? You take a place like Jamaica. It does two things well in terms of cuisine.

There's its grilled meats, which does it entirely because of a sauce that hides the flavor, the jerk seasoning and such. Most nations, however, do not even have that. They can't even do grilled meats right. But Jamaica does grilled meats well. I suppose, but it does goat stew very well. It's very interesting, there's a frog who likes to joke about the Jamaicans because they smoke ganja, they have dreads, and they have goat curry. They're basically a version of the Aryans. They've preserved Aryan traditions in Jamaica. It's interesting, but I'm a big fan of steels. My point is in, it's still, it's goat curry. The Jamaicans can give a run for money to high food traditions of the world, as can other places that make good stews. I'll make even third world places. I'll elaborate in a moment.

But when you step outside the stew, you look at what Jamaicans eat, and it's things like, I don't know what you call it, but it's like a patty, an empanada, like dough that's filled. But it's not just that. Then they put that filled dough, like every nation has it, the burek, whatever you want to call it, mandu. It's like a dumpling, in this case fried, like an empanada, right? But then they put that in a bun of bread, like coconut bread. And so it's quadruple starch, quintuple, depending on the filling of the empanada. And that to them is, you know, that's good food, or spaghetti with ketchup, or whatever, like in Haiti. It's this kind of thing. The stews though, almost any nation can do a good stew. It's a kind of democratic way to judge cuisine. So let me say a word about stew.

From one point of view, the stew is just the common man's slop, in other words. And this is why stews, again, are so similar from country to country, because the people are pretty much the same anywhere. I believe this. It's the aristocracy that sets the particular tone of a nation, that determines and carries its particular mission and destiny. The people generally are the same everywhere. They want their bellies full, their definition of happiness and good is generally very similar. It is why democratic populism in the end doesn't make a lot of sense. I know all of the arguments, okay, but it breaks down in practice. Leftist populists, democratic populists, always end up, for example, busting open the doors of every nation they take over, eventually,

because the logic of life leads them that way. Sooner or later, they realize, well, these other people from this other place, They're just like us, and we can use them as allies. And so there are ways around this, like bribing people with a national closed economic welfare state, but I think in the end, nothing really works. I'll describe the dynamic of this, the political process in a future show. This is not political show. Nationalism and populism are not the same thing, though, is the point. Historically, they're very different things. You see this in Mishima, casual aside at one point, where he even says, through the mouth of a character, I think, but it is the aristocracy that even only knows how to honor the gods. Without them, the boorish multitude would just as happily

let the gods lie in dishonored obscurity. And maybe this is a good thing to repeat, though. There's nobody coming to save you. You can't outsource salvation to some supposed uprising of the people. Oh, I'm going to raise awareness. I won't do anything, but yeah, the people will eventually rise up because I'm outraging them. They're useless cows. No, they won't. They will never rise up. And when they do, they're easily subverted and put down. Unfortunately, it is the task of an aristocracy, always, that they set the particular path of a nation. But anyway, this is reflected, I think, in popular cooking styles. So you can go to many different parts of the world, and stews, again, will generally be so similar. I found Brazilian stews almost identical to stews in East Europe or Turkey.

I had Friendly Maid in Argentina once. She cooked me a stew. She was so proud, I was estofado. It's almost exactly very similar to what a friend's grandmother made in East Bloc. Stews are a place where actually, again, so-called third world cuisines can actually compete with high European food, maybe. A good Mexican slop stew, a Peruvian sudado, it's called a fish stew from Peru is called sudado, very similar to Hungarian carp fish stew or such. Even in the spicing, by the way, a Peruvian seco, Peruvians do stews well. A seco is a meat stew from Peru. It's extreme similar to something from all over Europe, almost exactly the same thing. A Mexican, and it's not imported, by the way, from Europe. I mean, maybe ultimately it is, but there's been so many generations

that it's been made native, But yet, take a Mexican spice stew. You know, you can compare it to Indian or Thai curry. All of these can be very tasty and satisfying, and with a couple of relatively minor spice changes, it's all the same thing. But again, to point out why even here, certain nations end up excelling, I think you can make a French, Spanish, these two nations in the end master the art of the stew in two directions that define the ultimate possibilities of the stew. Look, this food show, I'm just talking my favorite, I have no agenda here, this is okay. Maybe I make list of what I had for dinner every night. You can make poster with this. I'm eating nothing now, I'm in a starvation psychosis. This is why I talk foods. There are Lebanese lamb and liver and tripe stews,

almost identical to what you find in Portugal, by the way, with no connection, no genealogy between the two. It's just the natural organic outcome of the life of the people. This is what I'm saying, it's the people's food, but it was done right, ultimately, most of all in France and Spain. Done right, I mean, the people probably had stews just like in any other nation. They added a few local ingredients, and then local specialty chefs developed for maybe slight better palates of aristocracy in these two countries. In two directions, in France, the ultimate stew, everyone knows it, it's beef bourguignon. This is the signature addition of French stews that's so simple and nice is the wine. The simplest of wine, I mean, just elevates the dish to use food fag language.

So I don't know why other peoples actually have trouble with this concept sometimes. the addition of acidity to a stew. I suppose vindaloo does, but even that is a Portuguese import to India to add wine. And it's not just acidity, wine adds something else besides sourness. And I think this is why French stews are so nice, whether it's beef bourguignon, or there's lamb navarran, which I usually use white wine. It's a lamb spring stew with lamb, vegetable, green peas, green beans, I think. I'm drunk a little bit, coffee. Or there's dobe of lamb, D-A-U-B-E, from Provence, which also uses wine. And the double use of stock plus wine, this make for very special flavor. And other nations didn't think of this, or did not have wine or an equivalent that could make similar taste.

I'm not evangelizing from this. Some of you surely prefer the slope of other nations. Real Thai chicken green curry can be quite amazing. Szechuan stews, entirely different spicing profile. Do you like the numbing? I believe that numbing spice is a neurotoxin, but that's for another time. But really, for satisfying flavor for me, nothing better than a French wine and stock-based stews like the one I just mentioned. And then there are the Spanish stews which go in a quite different direction. It's funny that many times you look at sausage, potato, and bean, the Spanish stews are very similar looking at least to East European and German stews. And it makes sense, they were goths, right? I mean you take goths from East Europe, you put them in Iberia, and you won't believe what happens.

Sausage and bean slop, amazing. But they do it, they do something good though with it. They take it much farther than East European stews which can often be quite bland. Because the Spanish method is to intensify the flavor to such a great degree through reduction of collagen things. You know, the most famous stew of such variety is the chayos. It's not just tripe, it's known abroad if you order chayos, if you find it in a restaurant that serves Spanish food, it will usually just be tripe, sausage, and chickpeas. but the original recipe is tripe, snout, pork foot, and traditionally it is not made with any chickpeas, it's just these things I mentioned, plus sausage in a thick sauce that is reduced with pepper, I think, tomato, or I'm not sure if they use tomato,

but the final result is this thing packed with collagen, your lipstick together. I've eaten some bad chaios before though, it's inconsistent, it has to, the meats all have to be very tender, and the sauce slight spice and not really sour. In North Spain, they often put a fried egg on top. The South Spanish don't like this particular stew though. I knew a very friendly Andalusian hormone lawyer who he once snaps at me when I asked him, do you like this food? He says this is a barbaric, this is barbaric. You know, he told me you should eat small squids on a plate. What do you call it? On a hot plate and such. They like the small squids. But this is not my fault, okay? Take it up with Nacintale. I'm not Tartessian. I do not

do the H.P. Lovecraft, Toulhou, squid ink type thing. I like the Gothic stews. But it isn't just Cayos. If you've ever been in a real Spanish restaurant, you should not miss their so-called spoon plates. I think it's what they do best. And the most famous Spanish dish, by the way, paella from Valencia, whatever that region of Spain is called, it's in its own way another such stew, actually. The key to paella is not the rice, as people think, it's the reduction of the stock to where it becomes so concentrated and collagen-y that is the essence of Spanish cooking, that intense tasting brown collagen reduction stock sauce. But it's present in varieties of their actual other stews too. So anything, for example, with peas or chickpeas, one of the best stews I had was chickpeas,

black blood sausage, and foie gras stew. It's cold weather, ultimate comforting food. But again, they achieve this hearty feeling better than any other nation, I think. So they take peasant, you know, the default peasant cuisine of mankind, and both the French and the Spanish say their high, their high cuisine traditions, they say, we're going to make it more peasanty and more hearty and more comforting than you can even imagine. And they both achieve this Hobie feeling, I think the best of any nations. One particular stew I've never had, but it sounds amazing, is the Alsatian stew. It's called, it's cooked in a dough-sealed kind of clay or ceramic oven pot. It's called bakuf. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right. Here are the ingredients. I'll tell you the ingredients, for example.

One pound boneless beef chuck trimmed and blah, blah, blah. Boneless pork shoulder, boneless lamb shoulder. They use all meats. Coarse salt, coarse black pepper to taste. Three cup dry white wine. One fork cup parsley leaves. Two teaspoon juniper berries. This I love. This is what I love. The juniper, five cloves garlic, bay leaf, carrots, onions, leeks, thyme, duck or goose fat, Yukon gall potatoes, sick cut bacon, and flour, okay? You know, and it's the juniper berries. For me this, oh I'm so hungry now, for me this very nostalgic and winter food smell. This stew must be amazing. Who want to cook it for me? Look I put out alert now. I can't keep going. I put out advertisement. I'm looking for French Alsatian beauty to make me back off a stew I just read for you

And then five days of debauchery if we may, you know with wine bottles discarded on the floor I hope look I hope you like light Epicurean show. I will be right back soon to follow up Please we meet in few days I can do desserts if you like or we will see until then BAP out