Dec 15, 2020
Jewish Comedy as a Love Language
It’s hard to say what about it is more charming to me, the hilarity of it or the inescapable Jewishness of it. Mel Brooks could be any man in my family.
Rax King is a James Beard Award-nominated bitch. Her work can also be found in Glamour, MEL Magazine, Catapult, and elsewhere. Look out for her monthly column Store-Bought Is Fine for hot takes about the Food Network, and her essay collection Tacky (Vintage 2021).
It’s hard to say what about it is more charming to me, the hilarity of it or the inescapable Jewishness of it. Mel Brooks could be any man in my family.
The soundstage’s kitchen didn’t have a dishwasher, so he was forced to make dishwasher salmon in the oven instead—like some kind of hack.
Visiting a beloved bar is less about the bar itself and more an attempt to re-inhabit happy memories, to open a door that leads to them.
It was a corny, educational joy, as if Bill Nye and Monty Python had teamed up to teach America how to cook.
On other cooking shows, the cooks might make mistakes and laugh about them. Ina Garten has never made a mistake.
I am no gentile, but a Jew, with chill Jewish parents, who loves the pepper-and-onion slice at Alfie’s.
What does the word “country” mean? Does it mean anything on its own or does it just color in Americans’ fuzzy sense of what constitutes Americana?
Do we hold the specialness of each meal at the core of our travel? Or is a meal that happens during a vacation a shadow of the memories it serves to create?
I suspect that these shows, which characterize speed and hustle as natural elements of cooking, are part of the male professional kitchen’s effort to divorce their work from the feminine history of cooking.
Critics say that Sandra Lee’s idea of cooking is nothing more than opening a can and having a cocktail. Here’s the thing: That’s true! But who cares?
