The Ranch Restaurant (family-owned, not a chain) in Rochester, Minnesota offered a splendid salad bar. In addition to the conventional fare (greens, onions, tomatoes, peppers, etc.), there were some items that were distinctly regional: herring in wine sauce, baked beans, cherry jello topped with whipped cream, chocolate pudding and also Watergate Salad.
Watergate Salad, new to me I must confess, is a melange of pistachio pie filling, mini-marshmallows, canned pineapple chunks (with syrup), pecans, and Cool-Whip. Here's a question for those who are expert in Minnesotan fine dining: is your Watergate Salad best eaten with or without herring?
Our waiter at The Ranch, asked whether the tomato soup was prepared with cream, replied, "It's a tomato biscuit with peas and stuff in it." He was slightly off the mark: lots of stuff in the bisque but alas no peas.
Dear Dr. Metablog - You're right on the mark about contemporary art - it isn't. No beauty, no trace of feeling or wit or, as you say, craftsmanship. This is why I haven't listened to radio music for years - the same crap for the ears as for the eyes. I don't want a reversion to figurative art - I'm a big fan of Jackson Pollack - but how Litchenstein and Whorhol got to the gods they are now I'll never understand. Ever read John D. McDonald's Travis Magee series? The protagonist in one novel asks an artist to simply draw a cow, and the artist can't and admits she's caught dead to rights.
Posted by: Jon Brazelton | January 08, 2008 at 07:57 PM