Cat Cora Doesn’t Do Ranch Dressing

A while back my wife and I were traveling and had some time to kill in the Salt Lake City Airport so we found a restaurant that looked like it had okay food and sidled up to the bar. I’m not going to bother with much of a description of the airport or the restaurant except to say that if you’ve ever been in a nice suburban mall you’ve been where we were. The place was Cat Cora’s Kitchen and I honesty don’t remember much about the menu or the food other than to say it was the kind of bland meh that passes for upscale in an airport because it’s better than McDonald’s or the sports bar. What I DO remember was what the bartender said, with grave seriousness, when I asked for a side of ranch dressing to go with my fries:
“Cat Cora doesn’t do ranch dressing.”
There was a beat of silence after as my wife and I assessed. Was he joking? Did somehow we miss the Michelin Stars on the way in? No. He’s not joking. This petite fonctionnaire was deadly serious. This was Cat’s house. In Cat’s house she and her house and her food are to be respected so yes you fucking plebian, Cat Cora doesn’t do ranch dressing.
Taken aback we inquired further: What about mustard? Was Catsup okay? Were all dips banished or just Ranch — and what’s Cat’s problem with Ranch anyway?
Confused and genuinely curious as to where all this was going, we peppered the acolyte with questions. Being a true believer he never wavered. Cat Cora was going to change the way we eat. We the unwashed masses didn’t know better so she was going to make us see. She was going to deprive us of our goo and force us to expand our culinary consciousness beyond processed American crap and guide us to gastronomic nirvana. All this, he assured us, was going to happen and it was going to happen in the middle of the Salt Lake City International Airport.
The food came and was exactly the burger you’ve had in any airport eatery in the country, only with sweet potato fries to let us know it was fancy, and without the goo that makes it work. We paid and left, from then on whispering to one another with sly glee ‘Cat Cora doesn’t do Ranch dressing!’ whenever we encountered someone who’s rhetoric or attitude far exceeded the quality of their offerings. I mean come on — who did this guy think he was? Even in a chemically-altered state of mind food had never elevated me to such heights of ecstasy so as to be a religious experience.
I grew up in the United States in what’s probably a pretty typical middle class family. My Babi, my parents, and a few other members of the family are good home cooks and all of us like to eat. Typical fare was pork chops with scalloped potatoes, dumpling soup, BBQ, stews, corned beef and cabbage — you get the idea. Lots of meat-and-potato-and-greens dishes with the occasional authentic lasagna whenever I’d get over to see that side of the family for some holiday. Hearty meals that were tasty and to me embody to me the very definition of the phrase ‘simple pleasure’. Delicious, but never life-altering in the literal sense.
Fast forward a few years and we’re in a fancy steak house in Coronado. I’d never had A5 wagyu beef, nor did I have any clue there were grades of beef well above USDA Prime. Next to us was a woman and several small children mewling and crawling all over the place. I remember them because this wasn’t the kind of place you would normally see a harried mother and her brood of energetic spider monkeys. A hole in the rice paper a Buddhist friend of mine would say — a glimpse into a world of wealth wherein you bring your kids to the best steakhouse in the city as we mere mortals would to a Sizzler.
My first bite of wagyu beef literally startled me. It was impossibly good. So good I didn’t believe it at first, my eyes darting from the plate to my wife to the wine then off into space. What just happened? I’d had food before — fried food, filling food, delicious food, soul food, street food, fine food and everything inbetween. Never anything like this. Had it not been for that meal I wouldn’t have believed it was even possible. Apparently, my mouth was capable of having its own kind of orgasm.
That was two years ago and while I’ve had many fine meals since, none comparable to that steak in Coronado. I’ve thought a lot about why that might be and it wasn’t until I watched Bourdain’s Lyon installment of ‘Parts Unknown’ that it occured to me the problem may not be my food choices so much as my complete ignorance as what makes good food good. When he ate at Restaurant Paul Bocuse, he referred to it as ‘the meal of his life’ — high praise from a man well known for his disdain for hyperbolic bullshit. In fact, Bourdain was so giddy he was taking pictures of the food with his cell phone and insisting that his dining companion (Chef Daniel Boulud) share with him snaps he was taking as well. Think about it: two world renowned culinary figures, men who have seen every kind of food imaginable prepared in every imaginable way, giddy and taking cell phone pics of their dinner the way most of us would a plate of Wild Wasabi Tacos to post to Instagram.
So here’s a thought: if my lovely and I went to that restaurant right now and had that meal, would we appreciate it? Would it taste as good to us as it did them? Would we be so delighted at its presentation? While I’m willing to believe the food is that good -foodgasm good- I’m honestly not sure if I’d have the same experience at this point in time. Maybe Cat Cora’s schlubby acolyte was right. Maybe I’m so naive that, like what happens when I go to an art museum, I am so ignorant as to the context of what I’m looking at that I don’t really see what’s right in front of me for what it is —
— Or, it’s just food. It’s either good or it isn’t and no amount of knowledge of the culinary arts will change the fact that there are things other people love (like lobster) that I think taste like desiccated dog doo. I didn’t even know wagyu beef existed before that night in Coronado and I certainly don’t know anything about cuts of beef even now. Maybe food is something best enjoyed when you don’t think about it too much. You put it in your mouth. You shut up. You listen to your tastebuds.
This is the first in a series wherein my wife and I prepare for a pilgrimage to Lyon, ‘gastronomic capital of the world’, to find out. We’re going to learn as much as we can about French Cuisine, we’re going to become as fluent in the French language as we’re able, and we’re going to do everything else that’s reasonably possible to educate ourselves about where we’re going and why it is so highly regarded. This will not be an easy process, or a short one. A pilgrimage isn’t supposed to be. We both will post here: french history, cuts of beef, verb conjugates, wine, and the cuisine. Wherever the path takes us we will go for we are gastronauts in search of a good nut. Despite Cat Cora’s acolyte being comically ridiculous, he (and she) were right to point out there’s a whole world flavor out there beyond the realm of Ranch dressing on fries — and we aim to find it.
à bientôt
-D
