An guy from New York just talked to me about pasta for three and a half minutes as though I give a fuck. This was a long three and a half minutes – a Coldplay song worth of conversation.
Circumstances: I’m at a wedding in Los Angeles – not Sicily – randomly talking with some dude over some flax seeds, and he launches into this emotional soliloquy about the superiority of Italian food in New York.
East Coast people do this a lot, which is weird, because they’re really far away from the East Coast, which is really far away from Italy. It would be like Jesus gushing about the food in the Valley.
From what other group is this acceptable?
“So, my grandma takes the garlic and mashes it up juuuuuust right, and then she stews the tomatoes…”
Yeah whatever, can you shut the fuck up now? If any white dude from Nebraska tried to pull this, people would routinely spit in his face.
“Yeah, so my great-aunt, the one who raised me, what she does is she gets this canned fish, right? You know, and she opens the lid with a CANOPENER! Now, hear me out. Then she gets some Cream of Mushroom soup and stirs it all up with some leftover spaghetti and bakes it with crunchy Chinese noodles on top!”
Wouldn’t go over well.
The thing that really weirds me out about this behavior is that every other person I know in L.A. is from the East Coast, as they often remind me, yet I really doubt there is a surfer dude in Queens right now gushing about the coleslaw at Neptune’s Net.
People move away from the East Coast at a fairly lopsided discrepancy, as they have been doing for hundreds of years.
In fact, besides the Native population, this is pretty much the only reason that people live in California – to get away from the East Coast and all of the shitty things about it including the weather, overpopulation, and people who have nothing to cling to besides pizza and the Yankees.
As someone who came from Alaska – the Westernmost state of the Union – and actually travelled East to California, this whole sentiment about New York’s cuisine being somehow superior irritates me, because I feel like I’ve met you in the middle of our country, yet I rarely get to gush about salmon without it being weird.
If the East Coast is in fact so fantastic then I don’t understand why people leave it in such vast numbers only to bring news of pizza dough.
I’ve been to New York. The pizza is fine. The pasta is fine. It’s not bad in L.A. either. Pizza is dough and cheese. Much like your relocation, pretty much anyone can do it.