July 11, 2009

• A Rose by Another Name

  November 2008

  “The times, they are a changing… or not.” Bob Dylan

  Even in less stressful times, presidential eras influenced the way our nation dined. Thomas Jefferson blew Washington away with the culinary artistry he imported from France, introducing America to new dishes like macaroni & cheese. His buddy Ben Franklin disapproved of such culinary excess and advocated the healthy virtues of an all-corn diet. Today, corn industry marketers are trying to counter the unhealthy image of the ubiquitous high fructose corn sweetener.

  Most presidents who followed the Founding Fathers emulated Jefferson’s culinary style. Even man-of-the-people Andy Jackson continued setting lavish tables that awed the nation. That changed, to the chagrin of Washington insiders, with the cornbread and coffee diet of Abe Lincoln. He shocked elitists with an inauguration menu of mock turtle soup, corned beef & cabbage, potatoes and blackberry pie. Nothing else. Even in a nation at war, detractors complained that Lincoln’s culinary asceticism besmirched the dignity of his office. It too set a precedent though.

  During the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover also set a White House table with which the common man could identify, actively promoting a new dish, corned beef hash, as a penny stretching meal. Seeking a populist connection, Bill Clinton projected a fondness for cheap fast food, particularly donuts. His administration corresponded with the high water mark for franchise fast food, in Des Moines as well as in America. When George W. Bush premiered his Texas White House, smokehouse brisket was pretty much impossible to find in Des Moines, or anywhere outside the southwest. After eight years of ranch feasts from Crawford to Iraq, barbecue has been the number one growth segment of Central Iowa’s restaurant industry, for three years in a row. Every new barbecue restaurant here has included beef brisket on its menu.

  At the moment, leading indicators point to lean years of culinary influence during either a John McClain or a Barack Obama administration. McCain forged his image on the rations of a prisoner-of-war diet. Obama would become the thinnest president since Lincoln. Besides, these are hardly fat times.

  Befitting a creature with a dual hemisphere brain, humans have traditionally indulged conflicting behaviors while dealing with hard times – feast or famine, one after the other. First we dance to the end of time, indulging the epicurean advice to eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die. That thinking gave history famous banquets on the eve of Waterloo, champagne toasts to the iceberg that sank the Titanic and even death row budgets for condemned convicts’ last meals. On the other hand we also assume Lincoln’s more austere method of leading by self denial. That example gave us U.S. Grant dining on tin rations, Gandhi fasting against the salt tax and Lyndon Johnson replacing the linens and candlelight of the Kennedys with lights-out picnics on the Pedernales.

  This year’s end approaches with a toast of good riddance to a time in which the waters around us have grown – tornados, floods, credit crises, rampant inflation and a sixth year of war. As if to demonstrate humanity’s bipolar nature, those same six years have been a time of bloom on our beat. Des Moines’ independent food and beverage scene grew and prospered as in no previous era. While similarly sized towns were losing their personalities to the chains of corporate America, Des Moines responded to independently owned cafés that began offering fresh & local foods. That success encouraged food producers to rediscover the diversified bounty of the black earth of Iowa.

  The international credit crunch now looks like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” stopping the expansion of the corporate chains. Industrial franchise restaurants are so leveraged in speculation that their money lenders have stunted their growth. 2008 will become the first year in ages when new independent restaurants in Central Iowa outnumber new chain restaurants. A healthy independent restaurant scene is a good thing, because human minds do not thrive on asceticism alone. That’s why most diets fail – we need to reward self denial with self indulgence. If we skip dessert for a week, we then want two at once.

  That’s also why taverns are believed to be immune to economic downturns — they provide the kinds of affordable luxuries that keep spirits up. In that vein, tiki bars, an invention of the Great Depression, provided a cheap escape. Today, tiki bars and tiki cocktails are making comebacks with contemporary twists. One original tiki drink was named for a Hollywood celebrity who represented an American ideal of her era. The “Mary Pickford” (light rum, pineapple juice, maraschino liqueur, grenadine syrup and a cherry) was sweet as the girl next door. It’s contemporary equivalence, the Paris Hilton (vodka, orange vodka and Mountain Dew), is trashier and far more intoxicating.

  Another, more infamous, early 20^th century cocktail was the “Jack Rose” (apple brandy, fresh lime juice, grenadine), named for one of New York City’s most corrupt public officials, an infamous bagman. Jake Barnes quaffed “Jack Roses” in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” but the cocktail fell out of favor as the Gilded Age gave way to World War II. Now it’s back, gangbusters, but some partisan bartenders are changing its name. They are now called “Chris Dodds” after today’s compromised Senate Banking Committee chairman, at least in some politically partisan taverns. A Rose, by any other name, still tastes as sweet, and as sour.

  • 5:42 pm
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