Eat, Drink and Be Wary

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, May 11 1997; Page F01
The Washington Post

Here's what I expect from cafeteria food: It doesn't have to be good, but I want to
know what it is when I see it.

I am old-fashioned. I want to be reasonably confident about which is the meat and
which is the vegetable. (And don't try to trick me by making the charred thing the
vegetable.) I want no tofu. If something is white and square, I want to know it must be
Styrofoam, so I can take appropriate evasive action.

I bring this up because the other day in the Washington Post cafeteria, the following
foods were offered at the "World's Fare" nook: "Hummus, babaghanouj, olives, Syrian
salad, tabouleh salad, marinated artichokes, falafel and basil vinaigrette."

I was standing in a crowd -- all of us staring in wonderment at this stuff -- when I heard
a woman ask The Post's food critic, "What are those little round things?"

This violates The Cafeteria Ethic.

Rule No. 1: The foods must be instantly, and insipidly recognizable. You shouldn't have
to wait for some guy in a chef's hat and a bearnaise stain to tell you what the little round
things are. If they are round, and in a cafeteria, they should be overcooked peas.

But "falafel" was the answer.

"Hmmmm," the woman said, obviously still puzzled. Then, pointing to a mishmash of
brightly colored chunky stuff, she asked, "And what do you suppose this is?"

That was babaghanouj, silly (pronounced: babaghanouj).

You don't know what babaghanouj is? What kind of an idiot are you? It's eggplant and
tahini.

You don't know what tahini is? What a moron! It is a compote made from sesame
seeds and the strained juice of Middle Eastern woo-woo bushes, or something.

Am I getting through? Hello! Who do you have to sleep with to get a ham sammich
around here?

One day this week the Washington Post cafeteria served the following salads:

1. "Frisee, watercress and radicchio with sun-dried tomatoes, basil, goat cheese
crumbles, apples and cinnamon cider vinegar." Goat cheese crumbles!

2. "Belgian endive, frisee [Safeway must have had a frisee special] and mint with
asparagus, red bell pepper, enoki mushroom, white beans, green onion, golden raisins,
olive oil and balsamic vinegar."

I called up the cook at a local high school, read him the menu, and asked if they had
anything like that in his cafeteria. "We got vinegar," he said.

Now, I must point out that The Post's cafeteria is not some swank corporate dining hall
with liveried waiters and doilies on the tables. It looks like a bathroom at a bus station.
The silverware is cheap plastic, virtually useless, as supple as a human ear.

If fancy-schmancy snooty nouvelle salads like these are in a place like this, I wonder
what they are serving at the World Bank cafeteria, or the boardroom at IBM? Boeuf
Wellington with confit of Andalusian gooseberries in a braised Austro-Hungarian
persimmon-tahini ragout?

The transformation of this cafeteria into an international dining facility is part of a national
trend, a headlong rush to impress and amuse us with diversity in all fields, at all costs.

I am all for diversity in the workplace, and in schools, and in neighborhoods. Just not in
cafeterias. This is intruding into hallowed ground.
Cafeteria food should not have many components. It only takes one stinkeroo ingredient
-- say, frisee, whatever that is -- to ruin the whole thing. And since everything in the
salad looks the same and is covered in something that looks like stomach pumpings, you
can't pluck and weed that stinkeroo thing out. Plus, with all these salads there is too
much proximity. I don't want things touching. Give me food the way Swanson prepares
it: in divider trays. Who made the rule that food has to look like a DeKooning canvas?

Why can't I go back to the old days of cafeterias -- before the onslaught of cilantro?

In the old days, when there was no such thing as frisee -- when the only kind of lettuce
was iceberg lettuce, and darn tootin' cold and flavorless iceberg lettuce at that --
cafeterias were rigid places. There weren't any salad bars, no siree. There weren't any
food islands in the middle of the room. There wasn't any "fusilli" pasta. There wasn't any
pasta. There was buttered noodles.

There was a line. You picked up your tray, and you walked the line. And then you had
to commit. Did you go for the canned pear on the wilted lettuce leaf with the dollop of
cottage cheese in the indentation? Or did you press on, hoping for the fruit cup? Then
you hit the entrees. You had three picks: beef, chicken or fish, all in the same round,
patty shape with a brown or a yellow gravy. You couldn't dawdle, because the line was
inching up on you. You had to commit. It wasn't that there were people in Europe
starving, there were people behind you starving.

Then there was the roll/potato/rice choice. You had to commit, and then walk on, finally
to the dessert choice, which was always cake, pie or Jell-O. The Jell-O had a thin layer
of ambient dust on it. You put the cold plate on your tray, and you moved on down the
line. And you paid someone so sullen he made Mike Tyson seem like Liberace. What
happened to that kind of cafeteria?

I'll tell you. It went the way of pin boys and woodie station wagons. And there is no
turning back.

At The Post, today's soup is, I kid you not: posole.

What's the main ingredient in that, shoes?

The Tony Kornheiser Unofficial Home Page
Anyelet's Demesne
GeoCities