​It is true that America is home to the Luther Burger. It is true that America invented greasy fast food and continues to love its Burgerdonalds and McKings with heart-stirring (and -stopping) patriotic ardor. It is true that our prolonged prosperity in the 20th Century, our early adoption of refrigeration, and our vast continent of cattle-friendly farmland combined to addict our grandparents to unhealthy quantities of red meat and to enduringly define the American dinner as a plate full of starch and flesh, with an unloved ghetto of frozen vegetalia shmushed off to the side. And it is true that several species of indigenous American grub were meant to power farmers through long days manning a plow, or whatever it is that farmers do. (Think the sweet meatballs and hot bacon dressing of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking and the classical breakfast poison of flapjacks + syrup + bacon + sausage + eggs + toast + coffee. The coffee, as it happens, is a diuretic, which hamper's the body's ability to eliminate the lethal tonnage of the foregoing ingredients.) It's the last point that I've been thinking about lately: Locating the culprit for my expanding waistline amid breakfast foods. More >>

​I don't remember where I had my first Chipotle burrito, and that's the point. I was too busy eating it. I do remember the careful ritual: peeling off rounds of foil, a quick visual examination followed by a dash of Tabasco. The first expectant bite, then another, then another. Setting the burrito down to chew and sip some water. Being hurried but unworried. Feasting like a predator.

The appeal, the process, is so terribly masculine. Don't get me wrong: I've sat alongside many lovely ladies in Chipotles across the country. I would have spoken to them if we hadn't each been in flagrante delicto with our own head-sized fresh-Mex fiestas. At bars and diners, you'll fall into idle chitchat with truck drivers and down-and-outers, boasting or complaining between sips. At the burrito restaurant, you eat. It's understood.

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​One of my roommates is a highly driven young entrepreneur raised in Asia by American parents, and he is an enthusiastic consumer of all ingestibles, be they solid, liquid, or smoke. Like me, his favorite foods are uni and foie gras. Like me, he loves excellent craft beer, appreciates delicately carved usuzukuri, and values freshness of ingredients. He's a goddamned snob, frankly. Yet perhaps once a month, an evil gleam appears in his eye, and he says, "Brandon, you deserve a break today."

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Are one of these the culprit?

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Last week, I bought one bad clam, along with approximately a hundred of its siblings, from a perfectly respectable (and totally blameless) fish monger. The clam sojourned briefly in my refrigerator and then spent an hour or so atop my stove, in the company of tomatoes, coconut milk, chiles, and cilantro. The clam and its siblings were then laid across a bed of thin rice noodles and gobbled up by me, my partner, and two dinner guests.

I'd never cooked clams before, and hadn't intended to. Last Saturday, one of my dinner guests said he and his partner rather liked seafood, and I set about planning a dinner of maki rolls and unagi-don. Then, on Monday, the day before our date, this guest mentioned: "Oh, by the way -- we love seafood, but not sushi."

So much for maki. As we ate our clams Tuesday evening, I asked my guest why he and his partner didn't like sushi, and his response struck me as incredibly retrograde. "Well, it's raw," he said, giving me a look that suggested the wrongness of rawness ought to be self-evident.

"And?" I inquired, around a mouthful of poison.

"That's just not safe!" he said. I didn't argue with him then. But now, as I venture gingerly
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Casserole comebacks aren't just for fat-basking Paula Dean, as fast food and sit-down restaurants continue to introduce them in the form of pies and bowls. Yesterday Eater.com reported Kentucky Fried Chicken's newest gutbomb, the Cheesy Bacon Bowl, an amalgamation of mashed potatoes, fried chicken, corn, gravy, cheese, and now bacon. It's an "abomination," Gawker declared. How bad is it?More >>