Jesse-ian Heresy of "Different people like different stuff.

BURN THE INFIDEL!

Are San Francisco Burritos a separate sub category?

I think so.

Have you ever had a steak burrito at, um... this place in Noe Vally (on 24th, across from a grocery store, not too far from Castro IIRC)?

that stuff their tortillas with black beans and grilled steak

Yes. Nummy.

I guess I am taking issue with the descriptor of "grey"

I see that as a different issue. If the food's not grey, that is.

I see that as a different issue.

OK then.

People can like whatever they want. . .except bacon, which is of the Devil.

Also, now I am starving, but I don't know what to eat. None of the cafeteria food downstairs. I am getting the hunger headache, too. So sad.

re Irish food:

Now I want curry fries, which I've only ever encountered in Irish joints.

And there's nothing wrong with cabbage, until you boil it into a noxious grey slime that lingers like skunk in your kitchen.

See, I don't really have a problem dealing with stinky-smelling food as long as it tastes good. I guess I can separate the taste from the smell, except for chitlins. But that's just as much knowing what they are as how they smell, so. . .

I don't really have a problem dealing with stinky-smelling food as long as it tastes good.

Oh, it tastes pretty much like it smells, by that point.

In some ways, demarcating what makes a special regional cuisine is almost impossible because there is a constant shifting, intermingling and transference between cultures.

So curry in Britain may actually date back as far as Richard I (or at least the word may).

Of course there are certain signature dishes for any culture, but when one examines the actual origin of ingredients, then it becomes clear that culinary history is as deliciously complex as any other history.

I mention this because I'm doing research and I have James Trager's book The Food Chronology open on my lap. And the discussion of what is Irish food is sort of falling into my thoughts (though I'm researching food along the silk road, so I'm looking more at things like apples, peaches, noodles, grains that were transformed by contact with either the West [in China] or the East [in the Roman Empire]).

Also, I'm learning why Buddha is in a loincloth in India, but wears robes in Japan and China.

Well, Charles Lindberg wasn't the first person to fly across the Atlantic.

But he was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, right? I enjoy Jaywalking immensely (when it doesn’t make me cry), but I agree that they need to get their shit straight when being snarky about others’ knowledge.

Ah, the old stereotype about Irish food. I used to try to get out of it by saying that the Irish had known how to cook and that the Brits forced boiling on them with colonization. Unfortunately, I read an article about a Pre-Norman archaeological site on the east coast of Ireland which consisted of beachside rock-lined pits the anthropologists thought were used to boil meat.

What is true is that Irish cookery has had a real overhaul over the last 15 years or so. Irish chefs have made the world scene. That same generation of chefs is looking at traditional Irish cuisine and doing to it what Alice Waters has done for American cuisine.

The food the average Irish person has is very close to what the average British person has. But there are Irish dishes like soda bread, Irish brown bread, Barmbreac, Colcannon, etc. I’ve never been to Ireland, unfortunately. It’s a dream of mine to be able to afford that. But I have sampled upscale Irish food from Irish cooks in the Bay Area. And I’ve made my own nearly every year since college when I host a St. Patrick’s dinner for friends. (I didn’t like the way St. Pat’s had been turned into a green leprechaun cirrhosis holiday and wanted to celebrate actual Irish culture.)

Just as an aside: Corned Beef & Cabbage is an Irish-American dish in origin. It is thought that the newly arrived Irish wanted to make (Irish) Bacon & Cabbage, a traditional dish, and couldn’t find Irish Bacon. So they sidled on down to the Lower East Side and got corned beef.