Greg Smith to Babbo

"But I would have to say that who has had the largest effect on the whole planet without us really paying attention across the board and everywhere is the entire banking industry and their disregard for the people that they’re supposed to be working for… the ways the bankers have toppled the way money is distributed and taken most of it into their own hands is as good as Stalin or Hitler and the evil guys."  Is this a quote from Greg Smith, the Goldman Sachs London executive who unleashed a much ballyhooed Op-Ed piece, critical of the rapacious corporate culture of the concern within minutes after resigning? No it’s from Mario Batali, the world renowned restauranteur and owner of Eataly, quoted by the Times (“After Chef’s Hitler Remark, Bankers Change Lunch Plans,” NYT, 11/09/11) at a panel promoting   Time Magazine's Person of the Year year issue. Wall Street took umbrage at Batali, but an Occupy Wall Street type boycott of Batali restaurants by Wall Streeters never materialized and the same heavy hitters who who originally expressed passionate indignation are still competing for reservations at the famed chef’s over priced eateries. Mario is there an opening for Greg Smith, as a greeter, at Babbo (after all he is a Stanford graduate)? Remember that Goldman Sachs was the firm which reputedly bet against its own customers, writing credit default swaps against the collateralized debt obligations it was marketing “Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won," NYT, 12/23/09).  It’s a plot similar to The Producers, only there was no light at the end of the tunnel, no hit play that inadvertently doomed the bad guys and spared Goldman’s customers their loss. Now Wall Street executives are lining up like shoppers outside Walmart’s on that infamous Black Friday of 2008, when the sky was falling, raising their voices in a collective mea culpa, one more holier and more self congratulatory than the other in condemning Goldman and admitting that there’s a little bit of larceny in even the most honorable of men. Hopefully no one will suffer the fate of the Wal-Mart worker, who was crushed to death in that infamous stampede. (“Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death,” NYT, 11/28/08)

Chef of the Year

The worst thing about Mario Batali mentioning Hitler, Stalin and bankers “in the same breath” (“After  Chef’s Hitler Remark, Bankers Change Lunch Plans, NYT, 11/9/11) is the reminder that Time Magazine voted Hitler and Stalin Men of the Year in l938 and 1942 respectively. It’s also a reminder of what Time once was, a part of  the fiefdom of the conservative  Henry Luce. According to the Times, Batali’s problems began when he joined a panel of movers and shakers including Brian Williams, Anita Hill and Jesse Eisenberg to publicize the “Person of the Year Issue.” Ordinary folk who want to unload their piggy banks to get into redoubts like Babbo and Del Posto will now find it that much easier— now that Wall Street is twittering itself hoarse You’d have thought Batali were Joe Paterno or worse Jerry Sandusky the way the gang who brought you credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and John Corzine indignantly responded to being compared to tyrants. How can you compare selling someone securities that you yourself are betting against to the kind of atrocities perpetrated by Stalin and Hitler? The answer might be found in digging out your previous issue of the Times with its piece on the atrocitologist Matthew White who has written a book entitled The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s l00 Worst Atrocities. Truth be told Batali himself was contrite. The Times quoted a statement issued by one of his spokes folks in which he said, “It was never my intention to equate our  banking industry with Hitler and Stalin, two of the most evil, brutal dictators in modern history.” How can Batali expiate his sins.  Like Lindsay Lohan, of course, by working in a soup kitchen.

Diasporic Dining XVIII: Eataly

You know what a fleshpot is. Eataly, the new Mario Batali food emporium on 23rd street, is a fresspot.  Gourmands are crowded together like the abused animals in Food, Inc., only the animals have no choice in the matter, while here the humans willingly undergo the experience of the goose on its way to becoming fois gras. Covetousness led Cain to slay Abel, but seldom has it led to the kind of suicidal thronging on display amongst the patrons of Batali’s experiment. Malthus would be proud, as would Swift, who in his infamous Modest Proposal suggested eating babies as a way to solve the hunger problem in Ireland. The ingenuity of the great salesman and promoter is to make people want to do something that they would ordinarily have second thoughts about, if they had their senses about them. Here people actually jostle to buy food to eat while standing in long lines to get a crowded table in a loud central atrium, where they pay large sums of money to not have their basic needs met. There is something charmless and impersonal about Eataly, and it’s ironic since Italy is a place filled with trattorias and ristorantes—along with rural spots in the mountains where elderly men play bocce—that are notable for their personal quality and intimacy. That old-world charm is why generations of Americans have flocked to Italy, and the absence of it in Batali’s latest environment is what makes Eataly a flop.