Category Archives: Los Angeles

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 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 Scout’s newly Smug car

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Smug Scout has something shameful to confess: she does not own a Smug car. She does not have a Prius. She does not have a Subaru Outback or Forester. She does not have any car that would be welcome in Portsmouth or San Francisco or Brooklyn. She drives a Honda Accord coupe, which might be somewhat acceptable were it not for its gas-guzzling V6 engine. Smug Scout wonders if you will understand that she did not have a clue what V6 meant when she bought this car. All she really knew was that it had nothing to do with that processed vegetable juice. She now understands that this car is at its very thirstiest when she is aggressively fighting for parking at the Mar Vista FM or trying to prevent her death on L.A. freeways. As sacrilegious as this will sound, she would rather buy more gas than be splattered all over the road because some useless mongoloid was texting a stream of useless gibberish into an iPhone.

To make matters worse, she does not have an endangered or protected animal on her license plate. She does have an arts plate, which means she pays $50 a year for one art deco palm tree, but she knows that is not as Smug as a moose.

That is why she was delighted when she met a Smug Santa Monica resident at the Mar Vista FM this morning. This woman chatted with Smug Scout on Smug topics such as Proposition 37, which would require labeling of genetically engineered food. Then this woman introduced Smug Scout to some other Smug people who gave her a big sign and a bumper sticker with a cute ear of corn on it. Smug Scout put these on her car immediately.  Now her car advertises her Smug value system despite the eco-hostile engine. If anyone asks, her car is bi-polar.

Smug Farmers’ Market Find: 10/28

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Smug Scout figures some of you are growing weary of her relentless references to Portsmouth, NH and especially its legendary farmers’ market. Smug Scout understands. After all, she finds it quite frustrating to live in a city that has almost 100 markets every week all year long and yet not one of them compares to Portsmouth’s single weekly market that barely runs five months (with only about two of those months featuring actual produce). Smug Scout is rooting for her Mar Vista market to move up to a close, rather than a hopelessly distant, second place, and she has found the farm that she believes will spearhead this effort: Jimenez Family Farm. What is the secret to Jimenez Family Farm’s Smugness? It is the use of diverse, handmade baskets to display produce, which is also this week’s Smug Farmers’ Market find.

If the Portsmouth farmers were to write a manual about Smug basket use, these would be their rules:

  • Do not use two of the same basket or any basket that appears to be machine made. It does not matter if they were made by non-unionized peons in a toxic third world factory as long as they appear to have been handcrafted by birchbark and swamp ash artisans in a local basketry co-op. (Note: if you run out of baskets, you may also use an antique metal baby’s wash basin. Please clean that thing first. You do not want remnants of baby “accidents” re-flavoring your produce.)
  • Do not use large baskets. A small, rustic basket that is not overflowing suggests exclusivity and refined taste. It suggests a limited quantity that intensifies the demand of Smug suckers. Even if you have ten stuffed cardboard boxes hidden in the back, always act like you are about to run out. (Note: this is not a ploy in Portsmouth, where due to miserly crops the farmers really do only have one undersized basket of everything.)
  • Only display officially Smug vegetables in them. This part is surprisingly easy: they are all Smug as long as you know their full name in a foreign language. Never say kale without an Italian component. You may call it “Lacinato kale,” “Tuscan kale,” “cavolo nero,” or, if you want to silence your chatty know-it-all Smug clientele, call it “black Tuscan palm.” Flat beans are “Italian flat beans” or “Romano beans.”
  • Use miniature chalkboards attached to reclaimed wood sticks to list item names and prices. Just watch your spelling; the last thing you want is a stream of Smug customers condescendingly pointing out mistakes. They will not be trying to help you. They will doubt the quality of your produce and expect the prices to go down immediately.
  • Place a folksy tablecloth underneath the baskets. You want those Smug customers to feel as if they are at a rural roadside stand (and that means rural as in Los Olivos, Sonoma, or coastal Connecticut, not some flyover state wasteland where you can find a multi-national array of guns but only one variety of kale).

Why would you put so much effort into this faux backyard display? This should be intuitive: so that you can charge at least one dollar more per pound for whatever Smug vegetable you are selling. Take, for example, the display in the photo at left. Those Romano beans were for sale directly across from Jimenez at the stand belonging to Gloria’s Family Farm. These Romano beans are sustainably farmed, identical in appearance, and just as delicious (according to Smug Scout’s Romano bean taste test). But look at the cheap display! No label and no price, just a disposable cardboard box stuck atop a rat-eaten, half-destroyed golf putting mat. When you ask, which you must do, you will find they are $3 per pound rather than $4.

So Smug Scout buys from both farms. Gloria’s lack of labels is kind of Smug, too. Smug Scout enjoys being able to pick out the wild arugula and heirloom spinach from tables crammed with greens. It is like a test that she gets an A+ on, while others around her cluelessly fail. Smug Scout does not need to buy vegetables from a basket to feel Smug.

 

Smug, Preachy, Semi-literate Granola

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As we well know, some Smug products subtly reveal their Smugness. Others display it prominently. Now Smug Scout knows there is a third possibility: strident evangelism. What is this craziness?

It all started when Smug Scout was on the prowl in the Silver Lake Cheese Shop, where she of course encountered a breathtakingly Smug local product: Good Habit Homemade Granola from Thousand Oaks, California, a suburb north of L.A. On the surface, this granola looked like your usual Smug granola: local, homemade, slickly packaged, and appropriately overpriced at $10. As she read the package, she gradually realized that she was dealing with the Joel Osteen of granola.

First sermon: “Our Homemade Granola is made by hand, and loaded with almonds, seeds, and dried fruit. Try it sprinkled on thick yogurt, accompanied by fresh berries, or just eat it on it’s own as a snack.”

Well, other than the disgracefully misplaced comma and apostrophe, Smug Scout can live with this one.  She already eats Bircher Müsli every day, so consider her converted.

Second sermon: “Not all habits have to be bad. You can indulge in something sinfully delicious, that is also good for you!”

Well, other than the disgracefully misplaced comma, Smug Scout is just baffled by this one. She does not know what “sin” something as virtuous as local, vegan, gluten-free granola could possibly be committing. At worst this is like a nun who gets overexcited by her measly sip of communion wine. Frankly, when Smug Scout thinks of “sinfully delicious,” she imagines non-Smug indulgences, such as New York pizza from Totonno’s in Coney Island or deep dish pizza from Pequod’s in Chicago, of course washed down with many chalices of non-communion wine. Smug granola is much more likely to be part of a sober post-gorging penance.

Third sermon: “Other GOOD HABIT’s…….”

  • “Enjoying everything in moderation”
  • “Sharing a meal with friends and family”
  • “Planting a garden (even a small one)”
  • “Cooking with someone you love”
  • “Supporting your local farmers”

Well, Smug Scout has had just about enough of the excessive punctuating and mawkish sermonizing. Now she has her own set of demands for “Good Habit.” She doubts the company will want to read this list, but she wanted to have one ready just in case.

  • Give Smug Scout a house. How can you, you proselytizing granola, expect her to have a garden–“even a small one”–when she lives in an apartment barely bigger than a medieval monk’s cell?
  • Give Smug Scout a big kitchen in that house. Just so you know, she prefers European appliances and reclaimed wood for all surfaces. She would not reject Simon Pearce handblown glassware from Vermont.
  • For that matter, get Smug Scout a gardener. Smug Scout likes the idea of growing unheard of heirloom vegetable varietals, but she is turned off by the yucky reality of kneeling in dirt, burning up in the sun, and most of all wearing Crocs.
  • For God’s sake, learn how to punctuate.
Smug Scout is starting to wonder if she would prefer a granola called Bad Habit. At least it would leave her alone.

Smug Farmers’ Market Find: 10/21

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This week’s Smug Farmers’ Market find is a green pumpkin called Marina di Chioggia (center of photo).  In Italian this means “Chioggia sea pumpkin,” but Smug Scout prefers to say “Marina di Chioggia” because it is much more Smug to use an Italian name that is totally unknown to most people. She learned this practice from Smug restaurants that refer to ingredients in the most undecipherable way possible in order to make diners feel like dumb Americans abroad. For example, seasonal local expensive restaurants will never offer something so pedestrian as black kale. It is “cavolo nero.”

So now that you have your Marina di Chioggia, what do you do with it? Of course you could spend hours turning these lumpy rocks into gnocchi or some street food from the Adriatic coast. Good luck with that. Smug Scout approves of the Smug recasting  and overcomplicating of unfussy peasant dishes, but she simply does not have an electric chainsaw to cut her Marina di Chioggia. Perhaps you are better with knives than Smug Scout, but Smug Scout knows exactly what would happen if she tried to cut it with even her sharpest knife: she would come close to severing half her fingers while the recalcitrant pumpkin would sail across the room and most certainly crash into her full wine glass. No.

Instead, Smug Scout believes you should use your Marina di Chioggia for an arts and crafts project. Now as you probably know, Smug Scout does not spend a lot of time on arts and crafts. She likes the idea of crafting Smug artisanal products, but a pesky obstacle called her grueling full-time job gets in the way of this ambition. Today, however, she has an easy project to propose to you: a Smug fall harvest tableau.

Materials required:

  1. One large Marina di Chioggia
  2. One small table

Instructions:

  1. Pick up large Marina di Chioggia
  2. Place on small table

Smug Scout saw this Smug fall harvest tableau at one of Santa Monica’s Smug epicenters, a cafe called Huckleberry. She will review it in a future post, but in the meantime you can replicate its Smug fall harvest tableau in your own home. Just do not let any rude visitors insult it. Here is a sample dialogue to follow in case anyone does.

  • Rude Visitor: So where’s the so-called “Smug fall harvest tableau”?
  • Smug Scout: Right in front of you!
  • Rude Visitor: You mean that ugly green pumpkin on the table? How could you possibly call that a “tableau”? You must think “tableau” means table in French!
  • Smug Scout: Please forgive me. It seems I have insulted you.
  • Rude Visitor: What?
  • Smug Scout: Obviously the bumpy skin of my local organic Marina di Chioggia reminds you of the cystic acne that plagued you all through high school. Probably college, too.
  • Rude Visitor: I did not have cystic acne!
  • Smug Scout: Fine, call it an accident with battery acid. Look, just go get some cheap plastic tableau from Target. You must think that is American for Tar-ZHAY.
Remember: you are not Smug if you prefer vapid beauty in your vegetables.

Smug Farmers’ Market Find: 10/14

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This week’s Smug Farmers’ Market find, Hawaiian eggplant, comes not from the usual Sunday Mar Vista market but rather the Saturday Silver Lake market. Smug Scout was excited to visit a market in L.A.’s Smug epicenter but then was a bit dismayed to find that it was not all that Smug and has no chance of knocking the Portsmouth FM from its throne.  Smug Scout is sure that Smug Portsmouth residents will feel righteous pleasure at the thought that the state of New Hampshire, despite its short fertile season (July), hardscrabble land (thin and rocky soil, scoured by glaciers), limited produce options (mostly flowers and greens), and homogenous farmers (a diverse mix of tenth generation Northern Europeans), offers a market much more Smug than anything in California, the country’s agricultural center and home to more FMs than anywhere in the world. You lose, Cali!

So how exactly did this Silver Lake market lose? Well, aside from Smug Scout’s Smug Eastside friend (pictured), many of the other shoppers did not look either affluent or its local variant, affluent in poor backwoods communist clothing. In fact, if Smug Scout were asked to free-associate, she would use words such as “slovenly,” “cretinous,” and “ghoulish” to describe many of the characters she observed. Seeing them walking on pavement painted like an all green Twister board did not help.

Furthermore, unlike in Portsmouth, this market really is just a place to buy produce, not one to “see and be seen” (at least Smug Scout fervently hopes that is the case). There was no entertainment for the Smug under five set unless you count a JonBenét Ramsey wanna-be (probably aside from the getting murdered part) who was singing and dancing in a way most of us would call obscenely mature. Her only audience was her agent (who may have also been her mother), an oily photographer (who did not appear to work for any legal publication), and a dog (who according to market rules should not have been there in the first place). Smug Scout does not believe this “entertainment” would be wholesome enough, let alone sufficiently law-abiding, to take place in Portsmouth.

But finally one of the crucial reasons this market is not that Smug is its prices. They are simply too low. The produce quality and variety would qualify for Smug status everywhere else in the world, but here the gorgeous vegetables and fruit are tastelessly displayed on synthetic golf putting mats. The prices match these cheap and unsightly tableaux. And this brings Smug Scout back to the beginning, back to the Hawaiian eggplant. She got a gigantic bag of those sexy bi-color phallic nightshades for one dollar.

Ultimately Smug Scout is sold on the Silver Lake FM and her delightful Hawaiian eggplant. She got that eggplant, multicultural organic heirloom tomatoes, puffy sugar snap peas, and beautifully deformed bell peppers with parasitic attachments–all for the price of one shrunken head of conventionally grown lettuce in Portsmouth.

Still, whatever money Smug Scout may have saved on vegetables she then immediately spent in triplicate at an outrageously Smug lunch spot called Forage. “Forage” is about as Smug a restaurant name as anyone could craft. Can you beat that, Portsmouth?

Smug Farmers’ Market Find: 10/7

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Smug Scout was tickled to go to the Mar Vista farmers’ market this morning and see that one of her favorite backyard farmers had a massive pile of oyster mushrooms. She bought one pound of them because she has made a miraculous discovery: when she marinates them in local organic olive oil and Santa Maria BBQ spices, then roasts them in the oven till they are dark, shrunken, and brittle, they taste very similar to bacon. This is important because Smug Scout does not eat pigs. She does not eat pigs because pigs are smarter than most American voters. She is sorry for pigs that their stomachs are so delicious. She is also sorry for pigs because a manic, insatiable bacon craze has struck Smug big city restaurants (not so much in L.A. due to the greater popularity of anorexia) and forced chefs to corrupt formerly meat-free dishes, such as salads, vegetable sides, and even desserts, with that one ingredient whose first name is spelled every single way except O-S-C-A-R.  Hipsters and gimmicky chefs do not say bacon; it is pork belly, smoked jowl, fatback,  pancetta, porcetta, prosciutto, guanciale, lardo, lardons, serrano, or Speck. Sometimes it is even pig’s tail, snout, trotter, or eyeball for a very special genus of hipsters, those unique Smug-epicenter-dwelling male specimens who suffer from what Dr. Smug Scout has diagnosed as “toothless machismo.” This condition leads them to believe they would go out and kill their own animals if only they were not pale, spineless, and glued to their MacBooks all day.

Frankly, Smug Scout wonders what could happen if this bacon-by-any-other-name furor continues to grow. She imagines the following nightmarish scenario at  a favorite Smug restaurant:

  • Smug Server: Good evening. Do you have any questions about the menu?
  • Smug Scout: Yes, I see you have a multi-national array of bacon products in every dish I can comprehend. That does not strike me as very inventive.
  • Smug Server: I did not hear a question.
  • Smug Scout: Correct; you heard a critique. Here’s the question. I am wondering what this is: “Candy-striped beet salad with goat cheese, organic micro-greens, and бекон.”
  • Smug Server: That is a beet salad with Russian bacon.
  • Smug Scout: Does it taste like vodka?
  • Smug Server: Actually, most customers think it tastes like bacon.
  • Smug Scout: I see. How about this one: “Wok sautéed long beans with purple cauldron garlic and 熏肉.”
  • Smug Server: That is beans with Chinese bacon.
  • Smug Scout: Does it taste like soy sauce?
  • Smug Server: Actually, most customers think it tastes like bacon.
  • Smug Scout: Oh, really. How about “Grilled local lemongrass tofu with red quinoa and เบคอน”?
  • Smug Server: That is tofu with Thai bacon.
  • Smug Scout: Let me guess: most customers think it tastes like bacon. I will be having a liquid dinner. Please bring me a Knob Creek Bourbon Manhattan. Please try not to put any bacon in it.

Final reminder: To be on the cutting edge of Smug, cut yourself loose from that slavish, shopworn Brooklyn hipster cliché and eat local organic oyster mushrooms. Just do not eat them raw. You will not think you are eating bacon. You will think you are eating a sponge.

 

Open your own Smug coffee shop: Silver Lake model

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Smug Scout feels sorry for you if you do not live near a Smug epicenter that has a Smug coffee shop. Perhaps you live in a flyover state. Perhaps you live somewhere that only has soulless and charmless chains like Starbucks. Perhaps you do not care about overpriced coffee, but you are interested in a profitable business model. Whatever the case, Smug Scout will help you open your own Smug coffee shop.  Smug Scout does have one warning before she starts to share her vast expertise: she is not a businesswoman and really has no idea how anyone would actually open a Smug coffee shop or even how profitable it is. She does not know, for example, if residents of flyover states would like to pay extortionate prices for superior single-source coffee. Smug Scout does know that there are people out there who pay under $5 for a single cup of coffee, but she does not know exactly where, how, or why. Still, she is a Smug Scout, not a bargain or budget or cut-rate scout.  And when she recently visited Intelligentsia in Silver Lake, she learned some lessons she will happily pass along to you.

Lesson 1: You do not need to spend much money on interior design as long as you have some Smug arts and crafts friends who can do a little tile work. A small, high visibility area of beauty in the front, for example under your Rolls Royce espresso machine, will compensate for the fact that the rest of the place looks like a makeshift 70s rec room. Note: make sure that the plywood planks that line the walls are reclaimed. Tip: go to your local ghetto or low-income neighborhood and “reclaim” the wood from a house that bears a sign advertising reclaimed wood.  The sign will read “foreclosed” or “bank owned.” That way, your Smug coffee shop will have authentic rundown touches that fit with your bunker style dangling bare light bulbs.

Lesson 2: While you can skimp on decorating costs, you  do need a La Marzocca Strada Mechanical Paddle Commercial Espresso Machine so that your Smug customers will know you have the utmost control of the extraction rate of their single-source Ethiopian coffee. This is the most expensive thing you will buy for your Smug coffee shop, and it will cost you $15,000 because it is made by unionized Italian craftspeople in a workshop (you will not call it a factory) near Florence.
Lesson 3: Okay, now that you are feeling shellshocked about the purchase of your Strada Mechanical Paddle, you can relax because you will not have to spend any money on uniforms for your staff.  You will only be hiring hipsters to work there, so just make sure they understand they have to maintain Grizzly Adams beards and wear hats and plaid shirts every day. Do not expect women to have facial hair; do not hire any who do. Unlike the men, the women need to be pretty, wear clean clothes, and appear to look in a mirror from time to time.

Lesson 4:  Because this is a Smug coffee shop and you will have Smug regular customers, you need to have a menu, printed on obviously recycled paper, that changes every day or at least seems to because you have a date on it. You will probably have the same coffee all the time, but if the third world region where your single-source coffee comes from begins a civil war that leaves the purebred coffee plantations in ruins, you will need to find a less war-torn banana republic to source from.  It does not matter; Smug customers will insist on Sub-Saharan African and Central American single-origin coffee, but which specific country is of no consequence. They do not know where those countries are and do not plan to visit them. It is much more important that you use reclaimed plywood clipboards to display your menus.

Lesson 5:  Try to think up other Smug touches so that you do not look crassly commercial. Of course you want to sell a lot of preciously priced coffee beans, faux-handcrafted architectural coffee cups, espresso machines vastly inferior to your Strada Mechanical Paddle, and branded t-shirts made by American Apparel, but it is bad if every object you place is for sale. You need at least one object that is not for sale. You may want to consider an antique steel test tube holder. Tip: do not get test tubes for it. That is the domain of those pretentious, now passé “molecular” restaurants. Get clear glass bottles instead, pour some filtered water in there, and get some local backyard flowers no one will know the name of. Native grasses with blossoms, which you previously knew as weeds, will be perfect. 

Lesson 6: You will have no problem attracting Smug customers as long as you have one rule and one rule only: all customers must bring a MacBook Pro. Post this rule if you wish.  You will get even more customers if you align your Smug coffee shop with Smug Apple products.

Smug Scout is finished teaching for today. However, she will go back to Intelligentsia soon to refresh her knowledge. She loves everything about that place!

Smug Farmers’ Market Find: 9/30

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Today’s Smug farmers’ market find is this Compostables depository. Now technically Smug Scout has known about and used this Compostables depository for several years, so it may not be a new find, but it is still an important one to highlight, especially because Smug Scout was unusually grateful to have it there today. Part of being Smug is not putting food waste in the trash with the very, very few non-recyclable items you purchase. Smug Scout first saw compost many years ago in Germany, where it is called Biomüll (“biological” garbage) and has its own bins on the street to be picked up with trash and recyclables.  She always remembers how disgusting and rank those Biomüll bins were.

But now she is Smug and has her own problem with Biomüll.  It is still rank and disgusting, but now it is in her kitchen. She keeps a plastic bag under her sink, which she brings to the Mar Vista Farmers’ Market and empties every Sunday. That sounds easy and virtuous.

Too bad it is also rank and disgusting. This morning when Smug Scout reached under the sink to get the compost bag, she thought she smelled a rotting corpse. (She has actually never smelled a rotting corpse, but she now understands why people on TV throw up violently after exposure to one.) Then, to make matters more vile, she realized the bag, a bag she may have reused one time too many, had a leak, and a loathsome brown trail was crawling across her kitchen floor.  She shook her head in horror at the idea that her beautiful Gerbera daisies, Fuerte avocados, September Bright nectarines, and Lompoc asparagus could leave such unspeakable remains, that all those inedible stems and pits could metamorphose into such a stinking, seething mass.

The next problem is the disposal of this putrid bag of death. While Smug Scout does not shy away from performing Smug acts in public, the exception is when she is dealing with this gruesome, if ecologically high-minded, business. Now Smug Scout always arrives at the FM shortly before it opens at 9am, and while her main reasons are to get the prime produce and to avoid the murderous parking lot gridlock, her previously unacknowledged reason is to dump her compost without anyone nearby wondering if she is unloading half-decomposed body parts. When she emptied her repugnant load of organic sludge this morning, she also put the leaky plastic bag in the neighboring bin, the one for all other recyclables (yes, including plastic bags, you Smug San Franciscans!). That bag just had its final reuse.

Now you must all wish your farmers’ market had a Compostables depository! Smug Scout is sorry for you if you do not have such an opportunity to compost.