Food traditions

Europe’s cupcake backlash begins

The dainty dessert is a big hit across the pond -- but not everyone's a fan

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Europe's cupcake backlash begins

Nearly a decade after the upscale cupcake craze began sweeping America, the tiny frosted treats are finally reaching their tipping point on the other side of the pond. In recent years, the desserts have become popular everywhere from Berlin, whose first cupcake shop opened three years ago, to Italy, which, according to Reuters, has been seduced by their “romanticism,” to France and the United Kingdom (last year, the Guardian’s Zoe Williams wrote about their “unstoppable rise”). And now, three years after our own backlash, the European anti-cupcake movement has begun.

In a piece in Sunday’s Times of London, titled “Enough With the Cupcakes, Already,” Laura Atkinson argued that it’s time for the desserts to go away. They’re not only overpriced and unhealthy, she writes, they’ve caused London’s bakeries to fill with “women in their thirties, cooing over the cutesy, calorie-jammed treats as if they were newborn babies.” Atkinson bemoans that cupcakes now represent a “lifestyle choice”: “Cupcake-maker is also the latest alternative career aspiration for a host of yummy mummies who have stepped off the corporate treadmill, moved to the country or want flexible working.”

For Atkinson, it’s not a cake, it’s a culture of frivolousness, artificial domesticity and fetishistic cuteness. In the same vein, writing in the Guardian, Williams argued that cupcakes, like New Yorkers, are fundamentally selfish (nobody, after all, needs to share them) and that “part of the drama and magnetism of these cakes is their forbidden nature … They’re really not to eat, but to watch.” Those damn Americans, and their tortured relationship with frivolous desserts!

Ironically, our own cupcake trend — popularized, in large part, by “Sex and the City,” and New York’s Magnolia Bakery — peaked about three years ago. They’ve since been replaced by frozen yogurt and, most recently, macaroons as the dessert item du jour — and everyone from the New York Times to the Kitchn food blog have written about the trend’s demise.

To some extent Williams and Atkinson have a point — there is clearly something ridiculous about a $6 red velvet cupcake — but amid their histrionic complaints about cupcakes’ impact on gender roles and, in the case of Williams, thinly veiled anti-Americanism, they also miss out on the most important driving factor of the cupcake trend in America: nostalgia. Most of us remember our moms making cupcakes for birthday parties, or school bake sales, and it remains, in many parts of the country, a symbol of modest homey Americana.

When cupcakes went gourmet in the early 2000s, bakers were largely capitalizing on Americans’ childhood memories. In the European context, the cupcake was imported only after it rode the nostalgia wave to trendiness. This makes these complaints — and some recent European cupcake offerings — seem more than a little bit absurd. Take, for example, the new line of New York-themed cupcakes at German McDonald’s. They come in four different flavors — East Village, SoHo, Central Park and Chelsea — each represented by a different character. (The East Village is a hipster in an ugly sun hat, SoHo is what appears to be Midwestern college student.)

Luckily, the folks at Eater used Google Translate to decipher each cupcake’s description — and, oddly enough, the SoHo cupcake manages to encapsulate my feelings about this whole thing pretty perfectly: “After a spree breath through your town a bit and draw the view once again small. At Vanilla cup-cake, perhaps. But only briefly, because he is sooo yummy.” Well said, SoHo. Well said.

Thomas Rogers

Thomas Rogers is Salon's Arts Editor.

Today’s must-see viral videos

Watch: The contested winners of annual hot dog eating contest, robots as second-class citizens, and more

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Today's must-see viral videosI am robot, hear me roar.

1. 365 days of makeup

 ”Natural Beauty” answers that burning question once and for all, “What would you look like if you put on a year’s worth of makeup all at once?”

 

2. “District 9″ … with robots

Kibwe Tavares’ short film “Robots of Brixton” imagines a world where sentient machines are given inhuman treatment by humans. An interesting memorial to the 1981 Brixton riots.

 

3. Joey Chestnuts, official winner of Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest

For the fifth year in a row, Joey “Jaws” Chestnuts won Nathan’s annual hot dog-scarfing contest in Coney Island. 

 

4. Actual winner of hot dog eating contest

Professional eater Takeru Kobayashi technically ate more ‘dogs on the Fourth than Joey (setting a world record with 69 buns and beef) , but was considered ineligible for the Coney Island event since he won’t sign an exclusive contract with Major League Eating. 

 

5. Twin infants sync laughter

Well, this is almost as creepy/adorable as those talking babies

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Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew.

Our government’s terrifying food ads

New exhibit reveals the twisted logic of the Department of Agriculture's marketing department through the years

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Our government's terrifying food adsGovernment's attempts to explain healthy pig diet through motivational poster goes awry.

There’s nothing more appetizing than giving human characteristics to the food you’re about to eat. That’s why we always see pictures of pigs with bibs on at rib houses; because for some horrible reason we feel better about eating Porky if we convince ourselves he’s a cannibal.

I always wondered where that strange impulse came from, and now thanks to a new exhibit, “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” at the National Archives, I think I know. The New York Times ran a piece yesterday about the show, which focuses on posters, videos and other media from the Department of Agricultural, spanning all the way back to the revolutionary war.

The most fascinating of these photos is called “Pig Cafeteria”:

The caption reads:

“The Pig Cafeteria” was an exhibit produced by the Department of Agriculture to educate farmers about new methods of farming and raising livestock — specifically, what to feed pigs so that they would be healthy and profitable.

So maybe it’s just poor word choice, because when I see Wilbur here licking his lips and holding out his plate at a Pig Cafeteria, I assume that he will be in for a sad and delicious shock, smothered in barbeque sauce. But maybe Pig Cafeterias are just cafeterias for pigs, not serving them — the way we call where kids eat lunch “Human Cafeterias.”

Definitely check out the rest of the exhibit up in the Times, especially the poster demanding “Eat The Carp”:

Or the kind nurses that come to your home and tell you about the benefits of this “dairy product”:

Man, the past looks totally terrifying and not at all tasty. I’ll take Reagan’s “Catsup is a vegetable” decision* over carp demands or pushy milk women any day. 

*Yes, I know it didn’t actually go down quite like that.

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Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew.

The five most ridiculous defenses of Ronald McDonald

A watchdog group is calling for the clown mascot's retirement, but is being creepy grounds for firing?

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The five most ridiculous defenses of Ronald McDonaldWho wouldn't accept food from this guy?

McDonald’s is under attack again for force-feeding our nation’s children greasy, delicious fries. A group called Corporate Accountability International took out full-page ads today in several prominent newspapers, titled “Doctor’s Orders: Stop Marketing Junk Food to Children.

And while this grievance might not seem new, exactly, CAI is launching another campaign on Thursday against Ronald McDonald himself, whom the watchdog group called a “Deep Fried Joe Camel.” They claim Ronald’s the equivalent of a drug pusher for MSG-addicted kids.

But how “friendly” is Ronald? A new study done by outside marketing group Ace Metric found that in a survey group of 500, an overwhelming amount found a guy with big red lips and white greasepaint more creepy than cute.

McDonald’s refuses to give up on Ronald, though, and its defense on why it needs to keep a terrifying clown as its mascot would be charming if it weren’t so ridiculous and backward. Below, five of the responses McDonald’s has given for keeping Ronald on the payroll.

1. Complaint: “It’s really remarkable how often I saw the word ‘creepy’ [in regards to Ronald],” says the V.P. of a company that conducted the survey.

McDonald’s response: “For everyone who may feel that way, there are more who feel the opposite.”

2. Complaint: Ronald McDonald is an evil clown.

McDonald’s response: “He is a force for good,” says McD’s CEO, Jim Skinner.

3. Complaint: Too many damn clowns running around.

McDonald’s response: “There’s only one Ronald,” McDonald’s chief creative officer Marlena Peleo-Lazar said in response to several questions about how many actors portray the smiling clown.

4. Complaint: He is hurting a brand image that is trying to be more adult … like Starbucks.

McDonald’s response: He is the brand image. “It would be almost as if the Geico gecko disappeared, or the Aflac duck,” says one marketing strategist. God forbid.

5. Complaint: Ronald encourages childhood obesity.

McDonald’s response: Around 2004, McDonald’s christened Ronald as a “balanced, active lifestyles ambassador,” and stuck him in commercials where he trained for the Olympics. He got workout clothes. He got a tuxedo. He moved from McDonaldLand into the real world. 

You know who can also move into the real world after being trapped in a fantasy land? Freddy Krueger.

It’s actually in CAI’s favor to have a scary mascot act as a deterrent for children trying to buy fries. It should be thanking McDonald’s for keeping such a creepy figure right in front of the golden arches.

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Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew.

Is it racist to ban shark’s fin soup?

All three West Coast states may eliminate the Chinese delicacy, but is it pro-environment, or anti-Asian?

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Is it racist to ban shark's fin soup?Sandbar shark, one of the preferred species for fins

My Chinese grandfather was well into the latter part of his life when he made some money. He’d brought his children up on bowls of white rice with soy sauce and maybe a little pat of lard if he was feeling flush. And so, when it was time to feed his grandchildren, he loved that he could feed them the good stuff, the expensive stuff. I remember him being happy to see my grade school straight-A report cards, but the grins he showed me then were dwarfed by the supernova smiles he’d flash when I ate with him, precociously enjoying shark’s fin soup and other delicacies cousins my age were studiously avoiding at the kids’ table. And so I wonder what he’d think of the movement to ban shark’s fin.

Following in Hawaii’s footsteps, Washington, Oregon and, most significantly, California have introduced statewide legislation that would make it illegal — and highly fineable — to serve or even possess shark’s fin. (Hawaii’s law calls for fines of $5,000 to $15,000 for even first-time offenders.)

Ban supporters talk about the trade’s inhumane treatment of sharks and an outsize environmental impact. The “Ew-ick-how-can-you-do-that” argument is that fins are largely harvested by cutting them off of live sharks, then dumping the shark back in in the water to die. But the more big-picture concern is about the scale of finning: researchers estimate that 73 million sharks are killed every year to feed an exploding demand in fins by a huge, growing middle class in China. Some scientists estimate that ocean shark populations are just 10 percent of what they used to be, and there’s no telling what kind of impact that can have. As Dan Cartamil, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said on the KPBS radio show “These Days,” “You take away the sharks, and, for example, many coral reef ecosystems become degraded. There are suddenly lots of stingrays, because now they have no natural predators, and then they may eat all the oysters, which is a commercial fishery.” And on and on. So the current scale of shark finning is a real problem.

But then I think, again, of my grandfather, and the night he took a teenage me to a nondescript, fluorescent-lit noodle shop in an undistinguished, vaguely smelly part of Macau. Walking past folding tables with diners on stools, going through an unmarked door behind a curtain, we found ourselves suddenly in a plush, one-table dining room, with relatively regal carpeting and a tablecloth of bright red, the color of celebration. I remember the dinner being wonderful, and that the strands of shark’s fin in the soup were thicker than spaghetti, a sign of quality … and extravagant expense. And it became clear that the room, the table, the whole dinner — so strange and luxurious amid such undistinguished circumstances — was built around the event of that soup; the metaphor of that soup was undeniable. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that much of my grandfather’s life was built around that soup, built around the idea that he could show the world and himself that he’d finally made it, that he could literally feed his family his success. For him, and tens of millions like him, that feeling of satisfaction must be unparalleled.

And so foes of the ban, including Chinese American California state Sen. Leland Yee, are tempted to say things like, “This is an attack on Asian culture.” And Jon Kauffman of SF Weekly sharply noted that it’s not hard to see “an anti-Chinese subtext in the ban,” with the language of the debate rife with “echoes of Americans’ fear of the rising Chinese middle class, and the persistent suspicion and disgust many Americans feel toward other cultures’ foods.”

But, Kauffman continues:

“Globally, we’ve reached the point at which the collapse of an ecosystem has to take precedence over one culture’s culinary heritage. No matter who the primary ‘market’ is, overconsumption is taking sharks — and bluefin tuna, and Atlantic cod, and hundreds of other species — away from all of us, and we all have a right to demand action. The situation is becoming drastic, and drastic, across-the-board bans are warranted.”

If the science is correct, I’d have to agree. (Sorry, grandpa. Really. I’m sorry.) I mean, the cultural import of the dish is, to be frank, as much about the demonstration of status as anything else, and there is no limit to the creativity of aspirational culture to come up with the next big status symbol. I mean, go ahead and buy another pair of Prada shoes instead of taking me out for shark’s fin. It’s fine. I don’t mind, and after a while, you’re not going to mind either. After all, the nature of status symbols is that the more they’re attained, the shallower their actual meaning, and the more attractive the next, other thing eventually becomes.

And cultures evolve. As Judy Ki, of a pro-ban group called Asian Pacific Americans Ocean Harmony Alliance, said, “I personally don’t think our culture is that fragile that it would fall apart without one little delicacy. My grandmother’s feet were bound. That was part of ‘our culture,’ and I’m very glad we’ve said that’s wrong.” (It’s worth noting that several California Chinese American legislators support the ban — and the bill was originally co-sponsored by a Chinese American assemblyman.)

But there is something disconcerting about this ban. A Chinese American chef, Jonathan Wu, noted, “It’s a tough call, but I support the ban. While we are at it, I’d also ban Caspian caviar and bluefin tuna [Caspian sturgeon and bluefin tuna are both considered endangered by many scientists] until their fisheries recover — no doubt, that would raise an uproar in certain other cultural communities.”

And that’s the thing: It’s not that this ban is “racist” as some have put it, it’s that it’s the kind of thing that smells a bit of cynical political posturing, scoring cheap environmental points because no politician is going to lose any votes that matter. Get rid of a grody-sounding food that only the Chinese are stupid enough to save up their money for? Easy! Try to take away the endangered tuna from voters’ Friday night sushi date, though, and there’ll be hell to pay. And don’t even think about doing anything about factory farming, the cheap-meat industry that is unequivocally ruining huge swaths of our ecology and our health. It’s not a good state of affairs when we can easily get up a head of steam behind laws that take away others’ pleasures, but refuse to even take a hard look at our own. 

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Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam.

Toys that really cooked

Turns out you can create a whole dinner menu based on foods made by toys. So we did. Bon appetit!

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Toys that really cooked

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With the sad-making news last week that the Easy-Bake Oven as we know it will be going to the Great Incinerator in the Sky, we here at Salon Food started reminiscing over our own toy food memories. There were the Easy-Bake knockoff Chuck E. Cheese pizza ovens, there were the heartbreakingly dear Snoopy Sno Cones, there were the furiously lame Queasy-Bake Cookerator Dip n’ Drool Dog Bones.

It wasn’t long, then, before Aviva Shen, editorial fellow extraordinaire, realized that you could put together a whole menu of toy-made foods: “Basically,” she said, looking at dozens of Easy-Bake bootlegs, including one that grilled hamburgers, “if a child had to survive on toy oven food alone, they could do it … though they would quickly develop diabetes.”

Bah! A small price to pay for self-reliance! And probably no more dangerous than giving hormone-charged 17-year-olds keys to thousands of pounds of rocketing steel. (Probably.) So we scoured history to find the finest play-date victuals. Please, sit back and enjoy our menu of toy-made foods.

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Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam.

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