Author Archives: Smug Scout

Smug Home Inspection: Derek

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Smug Scout lives to locate Smugness in its natural or, better yet, completely contrived habitat. One of her favorite places to do this is in other people’s homes. Sometimes, of course, a favorite place for her may be far from a favorite place for her subjects to invite her. For example, she is fairly sure she annoyed the Smug Barrington Bartender by asking to see her refrigerator a few too many times (after a few too many of Smug Barrington Bartender’s Bully Boy artisanal small batch organic white wheat whiskey cocktails). Smug Scout is sure that Smug Barrington Bartender’s refrigerator is full of multiple varieties of kale, local artisanal spirits, and handcrafted products from her Smug country store. She certainly has nothing to prove to Smug Scout. On the other hand, Smug Scout’s friend Derek had much more to prove after tantalizing Smug Scout by saying she probably would not want to see his messy Portsmouth apartment. She said it would be more than enough just to see the Smug decorative corn stalks on his “balcony” (more like a way station for trash that has been carried outside but not down the stairs), but when he invited her in, his place became fair game for a spontaneous Smug home inspection. What caused Smug Scout to be initially quite dumbstruck was the way Derek’s apartment effortlessly combined Smugness with absolute squalor. At first, Smug Scout did not really want to look around, let alone sit down, because she thought she was in the filthy, debauched lair of a frat boy. Imagine her surprise when she discovered a slew of Smug accoutrements mixed into the rubble:

  • Locally grown Marina di Chioggia. At first Smug Scout could not believe her eyes. She even said: “You have a Marina di Chioggia?” Derek breezily informed her that this Smug, wart-riddled green pumpkin was a gift from local farmer friends. Smug Scout wishes that she had New Hampshire farmer friends who would share such a Smug bounty.
  • Fair trade bamboo bath mat.  In addition to its sterling no-exploitation Derek's bamboo bath matpedigree, this item is Smug because it does so poorly at its only job: soaking up water after a shower. It has zero drying ability, but at least it gives the impression of walking barefoot in some sustainable Southeast Asian forest. You have the added benefit of not having to worry about poachers, smugglers, frightening insects, infectious tropical diseases and other problems that bedevil sustainable Southeast Asian forests. We can probably agree that freezing and wet feet are better than malaria, dengue fever, or being shot with a tranquilizer dart by some cretinous scoundrel poacher who mistook you for an elephant.
  • Derek's coat rackHand forged cast iron coat rack. Smug Scout did not know right away that she was even looking at a coat rack because no matter how long or hard she stared at it, she did not see one single coat. She then realized that Derek does not wear coats (though he has since bought a bright green Marmot jacket) and that he preferred to use this hand forged cast iron coat rack as a wall decoration. Even the following month when Smug Scout attended parties in Derek’s apartment, she noticed that no one put coats on the coat hooks. Smug Scout assumed this was a house rule of Derek’s, so she put her own Marmot winter wear on the back of a chair that seemed far enough from drunk people’s drinks to be safe. Meanwhile, guests piled their coats on the couch. Smug Scout smirked at the idea that the coat rack was empty while the couch was unusable for its original purpose: sitting.
  • Handmade birch bark candles. At first Smug Scout thought she was looking at some phony imitation of birch bark, so Derek had to inform her, quite archly in fact, that these candles were made from repurposed birch trees from the New England woods. These trees, he had to point out Smugly, were not savagely cut down for commercial reasons but rather died of natural causes and reincarnated as a Smug eco-friendly light source.
  • Local and artisanal salts, spices, rubs, spreads. Smug Scout was delighted to see this impressive collection of exotic flavored salt, lavender infused raw honey, and Smug Stonewall Kitchen products from the eponymous store down the street. However, what elevated this display’s Smug quotient is that it is just that: a display. Smug Scout was stunned to discover that Derek neither cooks nor eats in this kitchen.
  • Soap and spoon contraptionArtisanal handmade lavender oatmeal soap and local handcarved wooden spoon “sculpture” to prop up broken window. Smug Scout was especially fascinated by this contraption because it demonstrates critical yet at the same time paradoxical elements of Smugness: ridiculously expensive and handmade products stripped of their intended utility only to receive another, apparently more important one. You see, if Derek neither cleans nor cooks, he may as well use the soap and spoon to perform a function like holding up a broken window that he would rather not pay to have properly fixed. Smug Scout understands this choice very well because she balks at spending money anywhere other than Smug restaurants, stores, and vacation destinations.

Still, as impressed as Smug Scout was by the random, yet oddly comprehensive, array of Smug products, she could not help but turn up her nose at the squalor. These were the worst sightings:

  • Horrific refrigerator. Smug Scout does not know how to put this politely, nor does she have the slightest inclination to try: she was repulsed by the contents of Derek’s refrigerator, not even to mention the legion of unidentifiable stains decorating its surfaces. She thinks any product bearing a Market Basket label, such as “Fat Free Cottage Cheese,” already a vile over-processed product, must border on inedible. (For those not from the region, Market Basket is a bargain supermarket for those of low taste, lower class, and lowest standards, though Smug Scout has never actually set foot in one to confirm the certainty of her position.)  Another nightmare of chemical processing, Entenmann’s “Softees” donuts, certainly comes from the same anti-Smug source. She does not even want to know what the “homemade” very dark brown liquid in the seltzer bottle is (probably not artisanal black birch liqueur).  She does approve of both the Stonewall Kitchen Chipotle Ketchup and the Sriracha, though the latter container does not look safe to handle.
  • Beheaded cabbage patch kidGrotesque tableau. Smug Scout is pretty sure that Derek got the gourd from the fields of his New Hampshire farmer friends, but she does not believe the same could be said of the Cabbage Patch head. She does not know what the white plastic rat has to do with local gourds and bloody doll heads (nor they with each other for that matter) but vaguely wonders if it has something to do with the Pied Piper. And while she received a similar gourd as a gift from Derek, she will not be re-imagining this grisly trifecta in her own home.

Thank you so much for the tour, Derek! Smug Scout recalls that you sent an updated photo of your “re-Smugged” refrigerator, but it has disappeared into BlackBerry oblivion. Perhaps you would like to re-send it? Smug Scout welcomes any photographic rebuttals!

Smug Cleaning Products Review and Workout

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Method Ecover Seventh Generation cleaning productsSmug Scout is not a natural born housekeeper. In fact, to put it more accurately, she combines an innate disinclination and indifference with a spectacular level of incompetence. She is tempted to pay someone to clean her apartment, but because she prefers to spend her money on food, drinks, vacations, and things to wear, and because her apartment is only a cell-like 650 square feet, she feels she should be able to handle this task on her own.

So handle it she does, albeit rarely and poorly. This morning, however, she could not avoid it because she is having company this afternoon, and with all the (fucking) sun shining in, any dirty spots would be glaringly illuminated. Thus, she got to work using the Smug environmentally friendly products in the above photo.

This post is not really a review of those products, however, nor is it a comparison of them. Why not? Method, Ecover, Seventh Generation, whatever. They are all sensitive to animals and the planet, they are all free of noxious chemicals, they all smell pretty good, they are all available for a high price at Whole Foods, and they are all simply dreadful as cleaning agents. That is as much as she cares to review them because the real issue is the second part of the post’s title: workout. Using these products means actively using all the muscles in your arms and legs. It is not like those TV commercials for environmentally ruinous cleaning products that show a smiling Stepford wife spraying the product on some unidentifiable filth and then effortlessly wiping it away in one smooth gesture. Smug Scout is not sure those products are that miraculous, but she knows they do not involve so many “reps” of such grueling, laborious scrubbing. For example, a small red wine stain on the kitchen floor does not simply come off with a quick spritz of Seventh Generation “Green Mandarin and Leaf All-Purpose Cleaner.” As Smug Scout is on her hands and knees violently rubbing her biodegradable European dish towel over the stain, she vaguely wonders how the hell unripe mandarins and random leaves became qualified to work as cleaning products. She believes unripe mandarins and random leaves need to go back to their day job.

Smug Scout will not be doing such intensely athletic cleaning again for quite some time. Furthermore, she believes she needs to drink more white wine, so if she clumsily splashes a drop on the floor, no one will see it. This is the only kind of cleaning solution at which Smug Scout excels.

Smug Farmers’ Market Find: 1/13

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Lion's Mane mushroom signSmug Scout is back from her winter vacation. Smug Scout slightly regrets that she has been so busy scouting in recent weeks that she has taken no time to write, but now that she is back at work, she can return to her writing duties. On Sunday she was feeling glum about being stuck in bright, sunny Los Angeles when she would rather be in grim, gray, dismal, rainy France, Germany, or Belgium, but a trip to the Mar Vista FM was helpful in distracting her from this preposterous longing. The market was offering greens at virtually every stand, so she of course bought assorted varieties of kale and chard as well as some fascinating skinny-leafed speckled lettuce that was almost the subject of this post.

However, when she saw the sign for lion’s mane mushrooms (along with its name in Latin, surely a necessary reference for all the customers who may otherwise only know it as Japanese yamabushitake or pom pom blanc), she knew she had found her winner. Smug Scout was attracted by the sign’s promise: “rare – delicious – nutricious [sic].” Now we already know that all mushrooms are delicious and nutritious, and it seems like this one delivers on both counts: it can taste like lobster, it is 20% protein, and it has been proven to reduce anxiety, improve memory, and even regenerate dead or dying nerves (or something like that, but you are not reading Smug Scout for scientific accuracy).

Lion's maneSo that is all fascinating, but what makes this mushroom so Smug is the fact that it is rare and thus unknown to most people, even other mushroom cognoscenti. It also seems like it will stay that way because not many people are even able to buy these mushrooms from Tanya the backyard farmer from Thailand (previously introduced in “Smug Farmers’ Market Find: 10/7”). In fact, when Smug Scout says “not many people,” she means “one.” Yes, Tanya showed up to the FM with a table full of oyster mushrooms and one single lion’s mane. She offered to sell this solitary specimen to Smug Scout. As Smug Scout was photographing her prized bounty, she found herself mixed up in an unfriendly exchange with a disgruntled rare mushroom seeker.

  • Disgruntled Rare Mushroom Seeker [to Tanya]: Wow! You have lion’s mane mushrooms!
  • Tanya: Not anymore.
  • Smug Scout: I got it.
  • Disgruntled Rare Mushroom Seeker [to Tanya]: But the market just opened five minutes ago! And what does she mean by “it”?
  • Tanya: There was only one lion’s mane mushroom…
  • Smug Scout: …and I just bought it.
  • Disgruntled Rare Mushroom Seeker [still to Tanya]: That’s outrageous you came to the market with only one single mushroom to sell!
  • Smug Scout: I guess you need to get here earlier next week.

At this point Smug Scout received a look of death from Disgruntled Rare Mushroom Seeker, who then stormed off fiercely. Tanya was unfazed by the outright hostility (Smug Scout believes some of that was lost in translation, the rest in indifference) and actually went on to tell Smug Scout that she took Smug Scout’s recommendation to roast oyster mushrooms with olive oil and grilling spices and was so delighted by their uncanny bacon flavor that she stopped buying bacon altogether and has even asked for permission from the FM manager to bring samples for customers so she and her non-Thai husband can market the oyster mushrooms as a bacon substitute. All because of Smug Scout! Yes, Smug Scout is shamelessly proud of her influence here, especially because she advocates for pigs, who would certainly also support this new marketing of oyster mushrooms.

The lion’s mane, on the other hand, tasted like a crab cake (a good one with no filler). Smug Scout is happy to advocate for crabs, too. But she will have to get to the market next week even before it opens to avoid a mushroom fueled version of “High Noon.”

Smug SmackDown: Christmas Trees in Los Angeles

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Smug Scout is not a big fan of major holidays except insofar as they free her from work, which, grimly enough, is almost always at the same time as large numbers of riffraff and ruffians who moronically clog stores and roadways. She has a particularly strong distaste for what these same riffraff and ruffians treat as “drinking holidays,” mainly New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, and July 4th. Smug Scout does not need an officially sanctioned holiday to drink more than joyless Puritans believe she should.  Miraculously, perhaps, she manages to create special occasions for drinking that do not require fireworks, dwarfs in green, or throngs of obscenely stupid revelers. She designates these (actually quite frequent) special occasions “going out to dinner.”

Unlike trumped up American booze holidays, Christmas does not inspire quite as much hostility, though she also does not especially like it. Drippy and overplayed Christmas songs make her scowl, excessive cheap and flashy decorations make her shudder, and grinning imbeciles in Santa caps and reindeer antlers make her want to throw up. She is somewhat amused watching television footage of brutal stampedes at low class chain stores. And although she generally insists on doing all of her shopping at FMs and local independent stores, she will admit she took advantage of Neiman Marcus’s free seasonal rush shipping to reward herself with a pair of handmade Pedro Garcia shoes that she will not be able to wear until she is in L.A. again in two weeks anyway.

Yes, Smug Scout is celebrating Christmas on the East Coast, where the air is cold and living trees outside match the decorated corpses inside. She does not feel any Christmas atmosphere in L.A., though the city’s flagrant phoniness seems well suited to that of the holiday. On the plus side, what L.A. may be lacking in old fashioned or noncommercial authenticity, it scores generously in Smugness, especially Smug Christmas trees. Smug Scout will present to you now three Smug Christmas trees, one from Hollywood and two from Silver Lake, and would like to see if you can determine the winner of the Smug Christmas Tree SmackDown.

Los Angeles-20121209-00105#1: This Smug Christmas tree is from the Hungry Cat, a restaurant in Hollywood that specializes in seafood and seasonal cocktails. The tree is green. Many of the ornaments are made from repurposed oyster and clam shells with cheery handwritten seasonal messages inside them. There are no gifts, only gift ideas under this tree: Hungry Cat spices and gift certificates. A cute pumpkin sits next to those.

Barkeeper Christmas Tree#2: This Smug Christmas tree is from Bar Keeper, a store in Silver Lake that sells retro barware and glassware, exorbitantly expensive artisanal small batch spirits, and local drinking related crafts, such as handmade coasters. The tree is silver. The ornaments are their own coasters, ribbons, and beads. The gifts under the tree are actual full bottles of champagne. These are great gifts, Smug Scout hints to her readers.

Intelligentsia Christmas tree

#3: This Smug Christmas tree is from Intelligentsia, the breathtakingly Smug “coffeebar” in Silver Lake that sells single source direct trade coffee at the highest price and for the longest wait you could find anywhere. The tree is flaming hot pink. The ornaments are glittery snowflakes and the company’s own branded cups. There is not a single gift to be seen anywhere near this tree, though if you want to give your Smug loved ones 3/4 pound bags of whole coffee beans for up to the not quite bargain price of $80, you will find a large array on the shelves to the right.

Winner: #3. Come now, any competition that involves Intelligentsia is practically over before it starts. But for the record Smug Scout would like to announce that she would not want anyone to spend $80 on a 3/4 pound bag of coffee for her, no matter what kind of fucking Columbian geisha santuario it comes from. Merry Smug Christmas! Or Merry Smug Xmas for you pagans out there.

Smug Cocktail Gold Medalist

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Smug Scout’s favorite Smug mixologist Lisa was highly displeased to think that another restaurant, that Smug magnet Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica, might offer a cocktail more Smug than any of hers. Lisa really does not need to worry about this. Yes, it is true that one drink, Lift Off, has Old Tom heirloom small batch artisanal gin, arugula, fresh cranberry, lime, agave, and small batch ginger beer in it. Such a drink sets the bar very high for any Smug mixologist. Still, Smug Scout would like to point out to Lisa that she has created many, many very Smug cocktails, so her Smug cocktail output is much higher than that at Rustic Canyon, which has a paltry list. Nonetheless, Lisa was feeling competitive, so she decided to outdo Lift Off, if not send it crashing to the ground, by creating a cocktail whose name is still under wraps but contains Tru organic gin, fresh pressed kale, apple juice, lemon, ginger, and agave. Now it is very clear: in the Smug Cocktail Olympics, Lisa is the gold medal winner.

Smug Scout tried it when she went to Akasha on Friday. She was delighted that Lisa had someone in the kitchen cold press what must have been bushels of kale because there was a huge vat of kale juice. This drink was extraordinary. It was not only the most Smug cocktail Smug Scout has ever had, but it was also one of the very most delicious. It is the perfect embodiment of virtue and vice, the apotheosis of the Apollonian/Dionysian split. In fact, since Smug Scout is also the apotheosis of the Apollonian/Dionysian split, you could say that this kale cocktail is Smug Scout in drink form.

But in case you believe Nietzsche would have scoffed at such twaddle or simply do not give a fuck, Smug Scout will move on to her next topic: yet another highly annoying conversation she overheard between a polite bartender and, this time, a customer you would have no choice but to describe as a dour Nordic troll. Since Smug Scout likes Nordic people, she would like to clarify here that blonde hair and blue eyes do not automatically signify beauty. Even this gene pool is occasionally befouled by unfortunate features, pasty sickly skin, and freakish balding patterns.

This dour Nordic troll first irked Smug Scout by officiously setting up his iPad on the bar. Smug Scout would not want an iPad in front of her when she is sitting at a bar or, if she really thinks about it, sitting or standing or lying down anywhere at all in the world. Furthermore, she would not have had space for an iPad because she had a Smug seasonal cocktail array in front of her, and this is much more entertaining, not even to mention more ethical, than a gadget made by faceless serfs in China.

Smug Scout should have known that the iPad on the bar was a harbinger of greater repulsiveness. It came when this cretinous specimen spoke. Below is the conversation as Smug Scout would have handled it.

  • Smug Bartender: May I get you something to drink?
  • Dour Nordic Troll: You do offer seasonal cocktails here, right?
  • Smug Bartender: Yes, here is our list.
  • Dour Nordic Troll: You call this seasonal? I’ve had some of these so-called seasonal cocktails before. In other seasons.
  • Smug Bartender: Do you live in L.A.?
  • Dour Nordic Troll: Yes, in Silver Lake.
  • Smug Bartender: I knew it. Well, then you must know that L.A. has only three seasons: fire, awards, and summer. Fire season can be a problem unless you like Cajun blackened produce.
  • Dour Nordic Troll: So then what are all those cocktails she’s drinking?
  • Smug Bartender: Those are seasonal cocktails from the private list.
  • Dour Nordic Troll: Can I see it?
  • Smug Bartender: No.
  • Dour Nordic Troll: Fine, just bring me a beer and some chicken wings.
  • Smug Bartender: Great seasonal choices. Would that be Super Bowl season?

Lisa has already informed Smug Scout, in terms you could call absolutely non-negotiable, that she will never be a guest bartender. Smug Scout accepts this interdiction, but she would like to keep Lisa heading towards new frontiers of Smug cocktails. What is the next one? Smug Scout thinks it is organic purple mizuna.

Smug Restroom in Silver Lake

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Smug Scout recently had dinner at a French restaurant in Silver Lake called Café Stella. When she arrived, she had no idea she would find an especially high level of Smugness because restaurants aiming to be authentically French do not feel they need to bother with any trifling preferences of American diners, Smug or otherwise. In fact, it is much more likely that French restaurants in this country will imperiously denounce and even operate against such preferences, because they know that Smug people love all things French–the more authentique the better, even when that looks like utter contempt and hostility towards their American countryfolk. Of course, since Smug people also scorn their own countryfolk, especially oversized flyover state philistines who gorge savagely in troughs at chain and buffet “restaurants,” they do not take any hostilité personally.

Still, Café Stella is in Silver Lake and thus faces aggressive competition for Smug business, so for purely commercial reasons it makes sense that the menu will include items such as beetroot, Jerusalem artichokes, and wild arugula. Naturally, Smug Scout ordered and loved these locally grown vegetables, which she washed down with more than one verre (more like a bouteille…non, more like a bouteille +) of eco-insensitive French wine. (Smug Scout does not even want to think about the long journey of those bottles from Marseille to the Port of Los Angeles, though she imagines it to have been a scenic one, perhaps accessorized by chic French sailors in blue and white striped shirts and berets with red pom-poms on them.)

Anyway, whatever opinion you have of Smug Scout’s French wine consumption, most likely not much of one, you will not be surprised to hear that she needed to visit the restroom. And this is where she discovered Café Stella’s hidden monument to Smugness: a roughhewn reclaimed wood sink. Smug Scout’s mouth dropped open when she saw this sink! But this crudely formed deep woods sink is not the only Smug part of the story. No, Café Stella was not content just to have a Smug sink. Café Stella also wants its guests to have a restroom experience Smug Scout can describe only as rustique. First of all, the cold and hot water controls are merely decorative: this sink only dispenses cold water. Furthermore, there is no soap. And finally if you want to dry the cold soapless water off your hands, there are no towels.

Smug Scout was absolutely jubilant as she dried her hands on her jeans. She was jubilant because it is a powerful commitment to Smugness to violate what Smug Scout believes to be a city health code just to give Smug patrons a nonsensically phony yet primitive camp-out hand-washing adventure. She later found out there is a second restroom that has a wood-free sink, hot water, soap, and paper towels. How fascinating that Café Stella has a Smug refuge within what is otherwise a slickly beautiful restaurant. Une autre bouteille de vin de Gascogne s’il vous plaît! Smug Scout will deal with her carbon footprint crisis another time; she wants to go back to that Smug restroom in Silver Lake.

Smug Restaurant in Culver City: Akasha

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By now you probably know that Smug Scout spends a lot of her time (and probably half of her salary) in Smug restaurants, which are flourishing these days as more and more customers have Smug demands when they go out to eat. Let us discuss the most obvious indicators of a Smug restaurant:

  • Reclaimed wood everywhere possible (floor, walls, tables, chairs, bar, restroom accessories, clipboards to display the check, restaurant signage)
  • Old fashioned yet industrial light fixtures, such as exposed Edison bulbs or other oddly shaped bulbs dangling on wires
  • Complete farm names listed for each menu item
  • Only in-season produce, even when that means a menu limited to greens, root vegetables, and citrus
  • Cocktails with small batch spirits and local fruit, vegetables, and herbs, all coming from the FM that is most local to the restaurant (except in Portsmouth, where the one single, if monumentally Smug, FM does not have enough produce to supply more than a handful of low volume restaurants for a very short season)

However, one indicator that may be less obvious is the frequency with which kale appears on the menu. A truly Smug restaurant will heavily feature kale, at least two or three types, generally curly (i.e. Scottish) and black (i.e. cavolo nero) in at least five dishes on the menu. What is it about kale? Smug Scout does not really know. Smug Scout thinks rainbow chard is prettier and Bloomsdale heirloom spinach tastes better. Perhaps kale is Smug because the foodie cognoscenti had to rescue it from its previously obscure, unpopular status, just like an extremely ostracized acne-bespeckled nerd with braces and head gear who grows up, becomes buff, stars in SNL, and is suddenly hot.

But of course Smug Scout loves kale, and she loves a Smug restaurant in Culver City called Akasha that stars kale in many menu items. In fact, it is her favorite restaurant in Los Angeles, perhaps the entire West Coast (and is even a formidable opponent for Smug Scout’s favorite East Coast restaurant, Fore Street in Portland, Maine). Because of her frequent and enthusiastic visits, she knows the owner, the chef, several of the servers, and of course all of the bartenders. The bar manager/ sommelier/mixologist, Lisa, has even become a wine tasting friend. Smug Scout believes it is rare for someone to be so equally skilled as a sommelier and mixologist. Lisa is also proud to offer cocktails that are free of bacon (such as the persimmon/pomegranate punch and citrus jalapeño margarita in the above photo) though she has not yet made one with kale (please, Lisa?). You can surely understand why Smug Scout fantasizes about living above the restaurant and going there every day.

However, she does not fantasize about working there, because, as at any Smug restaurant, there are some vile and repellent customers. During a recent visit, Smug Scout saw some people in this category. She was sitting at the bar, as she prefers, when a group of four people arrived. She would describe these people as members of the aged arrogant moneyed lower classes, she thought perhaps “industry,” as they say in L.A. First, they imperiously displaced everyone near them in order to commandeer corner seats at the bar. Smug Scout scowled at this sense of entitlement. But the real irritant with such people is when they order food, because aged arrogant moneyed lower class people have a lot of special requests, none of them Smug. Smug Scout overheard a highly annoying conversation between a bartender and a grizzled large-nosed leathery female, whose primary goal in life, from what Smug Scout could tell, is being the unsightly spoiled wife of one of the short squat balding wealthy men. Smug Scout is not impressed by this level of ambition. Smug Scout will not replicate the exact conversation because the bartender’s answers were far more polite than the unsightly spoiled wife deserved. Thus, the below conversation is how Smug Scout would have handled it (and proof that she is highly ill-suited to work as a bartender in Akasha or any Smug establishment):

  • Smug Bartender: Would you like another glass of wine?
  • Unsightly Spoiled Wife: Yes, and we’d like to order some food. We would like a Caesar salad, but why is this one made with kale?
  • Smug Bartender: The chef prefers kale. The customers prefer kale. Customers have told us they would like to see kale in every single dish on the menu, not just half of them. One customer even wants it in all the cocktails, but we will not be indulging her.
  • Unsightly Spoiled Wife: But kale doesn’t belong in a Caesar. We want romaine.
  • Smug Bartender: We do not serve romaine.
  • Unsightly Spoiled Wife: Do you have any lettuce?
  • Smug Bartender: We do not serve lettuce. We only serve organic locally grown seasonal greens.
  • Unsightly Spoiled Wife: Well, can you put any of them in the Caesar?
  • Smug Bartender: I do not believe the chef cares to make a Caesar with mizuna or  frisée.
  • Unsightly Spoiled Wife: The nerve! Then we will have the chicken wings.
  • Smug Bartender: People like you are the reason that dish is offered. Our kale eating customers do not gnaw on the wings of a bird with more brains and refined taste than you have.
  • Unsightly Spoiled Wife: I hope the chicken wings at least do not come with kale.
  • Smug Bartender: No, but before those chickens met their untimely end, they feasted only on the best organic local kale, so you will be consuming kale, just once removed.
  • Unsightly Spoiled Wife: I can’t win here, can I?
  • Smug Bartender: No, but let me bring you that glass of wine. I will refrain from adding a purple kale garnish.

You can certainly see why Smug Scout is not cut out for such work. She has no tolerance of those who choose chicken wings over kale. She wishes Akasha would remove that dish from the menu, just as she wishes to see kale in the cocktails, but she still loves Akasha more than any other restaurant.

Smug Bowl = Smug Nature Experience

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Big city Smug people, unlike their woodsy New England and Pacific Northwest counterparts, have an ambivalent relationship with nature. On the one hand, they love its dramatic beauty and lovely pre-reclaimed raw materials. On the other hand, it can be messy and disgusting, even dangerous. This is why big city Smug people, for example, tend not to like sleeping in a nylon bag on top of insect-infested dirt or grass, an unsavory activity also known as “camping.” Smug Scout recently read in a Smug West Coast magazine called “Sunset” about a popular new Smug activity known as “glamping.” She has a strong distaste for such inane neologisms, but now she understands what this one means: large tents with reclaimed pine plank floors, king size feather beds (naturally including turndown service), elk-antler bedside lamps, and private bathrooms with heated slate floors. It means local seasonal organic cuisine, often featuring local seasonal organic wild animals, served in a rustic lodge dining room or by some bearded laconic peon directly to the tent. It means outdoor activities that require North Face or Patagonia faux roughing-it costumes and, for legal reasons, an extremely experienced team of local guides. Smug Scout believes that this pale, defanged adventure can cost about $500 a night.

Smug Scout will be blunt: she is no more interested in glamping than she is in camping. She does not want to sleep in some foppish tent. She does not want to eat local seasonal organic wild animals. In fact, she hopes their living relatives will pillage those overwrought “tents” while the phony campers are away on some trumped-up “wilderness experience.” She certainly does not go “rafting” or “fly-fishing.” Her desire for all things rustic seems to have one massive limitation: she does not like to visit the scene of the rusticity; she really only wants a precious souvenir from it. For this precise and utterly cockeyed reason, she recently fell in love with the reclaimed wood bowl you may have already spotted in the above photo of a reclaimed wood bowl. This reclaimed wood bowl is a Smug masterpiece because it has the rare distinction of simultaneously embodying both the stunning beauty and unpredictable ferocity of nature. You can see the lovely rings and the handcrafted looking shape. You can guess that it was as expensive as handcrafted objects with zero practical utility usually are ($80) and purchased at a Smug venue (the artisanal Piedrasassi wine tasting room in Lompoc, California). What you may not see, what you must feel, is that it has extremely sharp, rough edges. You could get a splinter. You could cut yourself. You could catch your hand-knit fair trade humane non-mulesed-wool sweater on its feral points.

So we are left with the following paradox: Smug people would rather bring nature indoors than bring themselves outdoors. So be it. This pretentious tomfoolery is much better for the local economy than a bunch of primitives in sleeping bags who use trees for toilets.

Smug Cocktail in Santa Monica

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Here is a revelation for approximately none of you: Smug Scout consumes many Smug cocktails. She has mixed feelings about these, if mainly glowingly positive, so you may in fact be wondering what exactly makes a cocktail Smug. Here are the crucial criteria:

  • It will take a ridiculously long time to make, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, because every single element will be painstakingly layered and mixed (seldom shaken), of course very, very slowly, which is to create excitement as well as to justify a breathtakingly high price that Smug customers will call “the cost of artisanal molecular labor.”
  • It will be made by a bartender, called a mixologist, most likely a man in a three piece suit and laughable Civil War era facial hair. He may have a watch chain, but this is purely decorative, as he only knows how to use his iPhone to tell time.
  • It will feature local artisanal small batch spirits with brand names unknown to almost all customers, including some of the Smug ones. You will not find anything as gauche as Grey Goose, Bombay Sapphire, etc. You will find handmade looking labels that are covered in text in old fashioned looking fonts. The most Smug spirits today, especially rye and bourbon, will not come from a flyover red and redneck state but rather New England or the West Coast.
  • It will include any of the following ingredients: local organic fruit, possibly marinated or infused in the booze; local organic vegetables, possibly pickled in house and displayed in mason jars; spices, always in their whole, unground form; and heirloom eggs, usually minus the anorexia-unfriendly yolks.
  • It may require devices not commonly associated with drinks, perhaps a mini blowtorch to char a citrus peel, or a compressor to pressurize nitrogen for a dramatic, even potentially deadly, chemical coldness without the boring pedestrian quality of ice cubes. Still, Dr. Smug Scout would like to point out that no one has needed to have her stomach violently removed after eating plain old dull ice cubes; on a Smug scale, having your stomach chopped out is ultimately less Smug than drinking a cocktail with ice.
  • If it is a drink on the rocks, it will feature one single rock. Smug cocktails do not need more than one specially shaped gigantic ice cube that in Smug Scout’s opinion drastically reduces the amount of alcohol she is paying an extortionate sum to drink.
  • It may feature foams, bubbles, airs, mists, vapors, smoke, and flames. Smug Scout finds this presentation no more than vaguely interesting. After impatiently waiting an eternity for her drink, she does not care that it arrives in a cloud of smoke or mist or fog or smog or whatever the fuck it is. All of that drama disappears after one sip and leaves no trace beyond a massive bill.
  • It may feature garnishes you will not want to eat, such as a raw bean or unripe berry or blackened lemon rind (see above), or absolutely should not eat, such as a piece of leather or tobacco for “Wild West” style cocktails, or removable parts of trees, such as twigs, bark, acorns, and leaves. Smug Scout imagines those latter items in Smug New England cocktails.

Smug Scout may not be Smug enough for all of those elements, but she is Smug enough for some of them. She recently had an incredibly Smug and lovely cocktail at a Smug restaurant in Santa Monica called Rustic Canyon. It is called Lift Off and features Old Tom heirloom small batch artisanal gin, arugula, fresh cranberry, lime, agave, and artisanal ginger beer. It may not have arrived enshrouded by mist, but its Smug pedigree is strong:

  • It took ten minutes to make by a somber bartender in a brown three piece suit and 19th Century facial hair.
  • It contains local arugula. Arugula. No additional commentary necessary.
  • It contains a raw cranberry that Smug Scout was strongly advised not to put in her mouth and chew.
  • It contains a gin Smug Scout did not know: Old Tom. At first she thought it was an obscure brand, but then later she learned that it is a rare recipe from the mid-1800s. This is more Smug even than Prohibition-era cocktails because when it comes to drinks, the older the recipe, the more Smug the concoction. Still, Smug Scout wonders cynically what is next. American Revolution-era pirate-imported rum cocktails made by bartenders in waistcoats and tricornes?
For anyone seeking further information on Old Tom gin, here is a description from the incredibly Smug Ransom Spirits web site. Smug Scout is not sure if this exact gin was part of her Smug Cocktail–not one of the cagey Rustic Canyon employees she asked revealed the brand–but it was either that or one of three like it available in this country.
N.B. Someone at Ransom needs to learn correct apostrophe placement.

“This Old Tom Gin is a historically accurate revival of the predominant Gin in fashion during the mid 1800’s and the golden age of American cocktails. The recipe was developed in collaboration with historian, author, and mixologist extraordinaire David Wondrich. Old Tom is the Gin for mixing classic cocktails dating from the days before prohibition. Its subtle maltiness is the result of using a base wort of malted barley, combined with an infusion of botanicals in high proof corn spirits. The final distillation is run through an alambic pot still in order to preserve the maximum amount of aromatics, flavor and body. Only the ‘heart of the hearts’ (the very best portion of distillate) is retained for this special bottling.”

http://www.ransomspirits.com/spirits.php

 

Smug Recycling Contraption

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If there is a Smug recycling contraption somewhere in the world, where do you, my Smug readers, think it could possibly be? Take this test:

  • A. Switzerland, which has the highest rate of recycling worldwide
  • B. San Francisco, which has the most comprehensive recycling program in the U.S.
  • C. Los Angeles, which offers full recycling and composting at area farmers’ markets
  • D. Portsmouth, which is in the state of New Hampshire

You will be astonished to find out that the winner is D, Portsmouth. Enough with the Portsmouth mania, you non-Portsmouth residents may be crying out. Too bad Portsmouth routinely outdoes all other epicenters in virtually any Smugness competition. Smug Scout simply cannot ignore the fact that Portsmouth all but invented Smug Scout.

And now Portsmouth has this new bossy and redundant recycling contraption. Smug Scout is fascinated that it not only tells you what to do, it also repeats that same information as what not to do. For example, the left side is for “No Trash” but the right side is for “Trash.” Similarly, the left side demands “Cans” which the right side rejects: “No Cans.” This redundancy is moron-friendly. In essence, a moron only needs to read one set of instructions to operate the contraption accurately, but if he/she is too befuddled, the other set gives the same instructions negated, so the chance of accurate placement of disposed items increases. What a Smug and savvy system, Portsmouth!

The other aspect Smug Scout loves is the implicit dire warning involved in the sign on the right: “Landfill.” For Smug people, “landfill” may as well mean “nuclear waste dump site.” For Smug Portsmouth residents, it may also mean “Turnkey Landfill,” which is a grotesquely large fetid stinking mass of a garbage dump in the nearby town of Rochester. Smug Scout only knows about this because a Smug Portsmouth Bartender friend took her there as part of an extensive tour of his hometown and its environs. He thought it would be funny for Smug Scout to be utterly disgusted. Smug Scout was actually more disgusted by the anti-Smug restaurant he brought her to afterwards, but she digresses.

In short, you do not want to need the “Landfill” side. You do not want to buy anything you have to dispose of there. You do not want that self-righteous judgment from spying Smug bystanders. If you cannot finish, for example, that revolting pasty, gummy, flavorless, vicious-insult-to- the-New-England-tradition clam chowder from, for example, New Hampshire’s worst restaurant (could it be in…Rochester?), you would be better off dumping it in the toilet and renaming it “puke.” After all, in an eco-obsessed Smug context, “threw it up” is somehow less egregious than “threw it out.”