There's Mr. Pickle in his bowler hat and spats. And Ba-Tampte, which "means tasty." Both date back to 1950s Brooklyn.
In the mornings, when you walk through the East Village, you might see their leavings--buckets of pickles, bagged in their brine, outside the still-shuttered fronts of diners and restaurants. Somehow, the pickles remain miraculously unmolested.
Artisanal pickles are so last Tuesday afternoon; I won't buy a pickle anymore unless it was grown on a rooftop in Greenpoint by an intern for a multimedia startup and delivered via covered wagon.
ReplyDeleteAt least one pickle place in Brooklyn is old school--Clinton Hill Pickles is the same people as Guss.
ReplyDelete"Somehow, the pickles remain miraculously unmolested."
ReplyDeleteMuch like the bags of bread left outside of the restaurants in the early morning hours....
Yes let's continue to pretend that artisanal obsessed hipsters from the last decade put local pickle makers out of business and not large companies like Vlasick, Heinz, etc, over the last half century. Go to anywhere else in the country and try to find local pickle makers and people will think you're insane. Be happy the little that exists is still here at all.
ReplyDeleteAnon 11:34- they didn't put the local picklers out of business necessarily, but artisanal places act (and charge) like they've stumbled onto some cosmic secret when they've really just reinvented the fucking wheel.
ReplyDeleteThere are worse things affecting this city than "artisinal" shops. The ingredients are better for you health-wise in most cases (organic and supplied by local farms and businesses), and they too are small businesses. Sure they may be more expensive than the mom and pop shops from the 80s, but the world is changing and sh*t's definitely not getting cheaper.
ReplyDeleteBa-Tempte pickles RULE.
ReplyDeleteNo joke.
All the old local business should just start calling themselves "artisanal." In their case, it would be a truthful claim.
ReplyDelete(Not really though, it is a loathsome and pretentious word.)
@TyN, "organic" certifies compliance with a basically arbitrary government regulatory scheme and says nothing about how healthy food is.
@ Brendan
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking McDonald's Artisanal Hamburgers and IHOP using artinsanal chocolate in their chocolate chip pancakes. I think you're on to something.
@Randall: Domino's already does have an artisanal line of pizza!
ReplyDelete"ART- is-anal"? whats up w/this word? its weird. & who made it up? is it a real word? cant you see, this is a marketing word like "natural". just a substitution. am i correct?
ReplyDelete@ laura
ReplyDeleteAccording to Merriam Webster the word artisan dates back to 1538.
A synonym is "craftsman"
So yes, it probably is an overblown marketing term at this point, since Domino's pizza has gotten in on the game.
on a hot summers day, a nice cold plate of ba-tempte half sours. Delicious!
ReplyDeleteHenry Rollins railing on 'young elitist hipsters' and 'over tattooed trust fund kids. Nothing's changed since then.
ReplyDeletewww.boweryboogie/2010/11/henry-rollins-on-hipsters-at-cake-shop-video
The massive hipsters's egos have just gotten bigger. Hipsters see themselves as perfect, using distortion and illusion known as magical, or in Brooklyn, artisanal thinking. Narcissistic f*ckers.