POSTED: Friday, July 23, 2010, 8:11 PM
Trey Popp, who's been our restaurant critic here at City Paper
since 2006, is moving on to Philadelphia magazine — but not before we got him to highlight his five most memorable CP food review experiences during his tenure here. We'll miss you, Trey! Take it away.
"Is Trey Popp a pen name for Jeffrey Dahmer? Oh, that's right, Jeffrey Dahmer is dead. But his ghost lives in Trey Popp."
ThereÂ’s no counting the things for which I have
City Paper to thank, but that letter to the editor is one IÂ’ll never forget.
"What does Trey Popp have that I don't have, besides lack of morals?" its author asked. "I'm not even sure that he wouldn't eat a baby."
Apparently that was just the sort of uncertainty
City Paper hoped to inspire, because the story that gave rise to such passionate vitriol — a description of the
suckling pig at Pico de Gallo that made the uneasy reality of the dish perhaps a bit too palpable for some sensitive souls — paved the way for another 136 columns over the next four years.
Thanks for reading them. Thanks to Drew, and Ashlea Halpern before him, for publishing them. I couldnÂ’t ask for a better editor. Nor for a better publication to explore all the things I wanted to explore through the prism of food and restaurants. CP is getting a
great new columnist in Adam Erace, but the reverse is more important than most people probably realize: He's getting a great new place to write.
Drew asked me to put together five memorable columns in a parting Meal Ticket post. If memories alone were the sole criterion, that would be easy: IÂ’d base my picks on letter-writers and online commenters. After all, I have one of them to thank for the fact that I can now find my byline by Googling "Trey Poop." ThatÂ’s memorable.
But as fun as online combat is, IÂ’m grateful to CP for more than its engaging readers. It was also a place that had no qualms about letting a restaurant reviewer address issues ranging from cultural history to immigration policy to our sometimes pathological relationship to eating. None of these are the classic stuff of a restaurant review. You wonÂ’t find them in the typical daily-newspaper restaurant column. But they are unquestionably relevant to eating in America, and IÂ’m proud to have been a part of a weekly paper that recognizes that.
So in that vein, here are a couple columns that inspired spirited combat, and a few more that hopefully persuaded you that thereÂ’s more to eating than the bite at the end of your fork.
Presentation turned out to be a slightly thorny issue. The visual effect of a whole piglet on a small platter serves to remind everyone that something not far removed from infanticide has taken place. One got the sense that the photographer was not thrilled with this assignment.
2. El Camino Real
"Whether you like this place or not, one thing is clear: Trey 'Poop' is an incompetent and worthless reviewer."
"I personally feel that this review is not a review but a bitching of snobbery."
"disgusting, trashy article."
3. Garces Trading Company
Pat Buchanan speared a fractal tuft of frisee from his Lyonnaise duck salad, catching a bacon lardon in its springy kinks. "You've got a wholesale invasion," he was saying, "the greatest invasion in human history, coming across your southern border, changing the composition and character of your country." The chicory crunched between his molars, slipping slightly where a poached egg yolk had slicked the white-green shoots. "Look," he went on. "They've got their own language, their own culture. They don't want to be Americans."
4. Table 31
I wondered if there had ever been a people that wasted good food so cavalierly as I had just done. My head grew light. The ancient Romans came to mind.
"When we recline at a banquet," Seneca wrote, "one slave mops up the disgorged food, another crouches beneath the table and gathers up the leftovers of tipsy guests."
At least I had not dined in a supine position, vomited or availed myself of a table slave.
5. Chifa
In 1943, the Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong visited Washington as a guest of the U.S. State Department. After tiring of formal visits with "gray-haired people all day," he went with an American colleague to a Chinese restaurant. What he found there astonished him.
