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© 2003-2007 Michael C. Berch
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Fri, 04 Apr 2003

The origins of Berch on Food

One of my favourite T-shirts features Homer Simpson. In the first panel he utters his trademark "D'Oh!", in the next one "Nuts!", and in the last panel -- the resolution of this miniature drama -- his face assumes a beatific expression, and he closes his eyes, lost to the world, and murmurs, "Mmmmm....donuts."

I am, in fact, a real life Homer Simpson. (Those who know me will hopefully be too polite to mention the dead-on physical resemblance.) All my life, my thoughts have turned to food pretty much regardless of the immediate context of the conversation. I was finally startled into full recognition of this when, during a conversation on Volkswagen models, someone mentioned the Rabbit, and my first thought was of a very nice spit-roasted haunch of rabbit that I'd had at Spiedo in San Mateo.... about three years before.

The true origin of Berch on Food is an incident at Cafe Claude in San Francisco in 1998. This was a gathering of friends and acquaintances who met on Table Talk, a Web conferencing site run by Salon Magazine, and we got together to toast a visiting member from England. Sometime during the proceedings i was asked about steamed mussels, and within seconds I was holding forth at exceptional, and probably tedious, length about the difference between New Zealand green-lip mussels, Gironde mussels, the tiny Italian ones I had had on a pizza in Rome in the summer of 1968, and ... well, you get the idea.

My good friend Maggie took a photo of me in mid-disquisition, captioned it "Berch on Food", published it on the Web, and has relentlessly urged me to write about food since then. Thus: Berch on Food, writ large and with its own domain name and blog software to boot.

(The inescapable corollary to this, of course, is that due to my somewhat convex physique and rapacious technique with knife, fork, and chopsticks, it is not unheard of for there to be the odd slip or spill, leading my friend Paul to coin the phrase, "Food on Berch". Berch on Food and Food on Berch will remain, I fear, inextricably linked.)

So, in an attempt to recapture the unfocused peregrinations of my thoughts when it comes to food, BoF will take irregularly-timed digressions into various culinary and gustatory matters, both abstract and concrete, including reviews, criticism, speculation, reverie, or just plain ranting.

And I make but two promises:

• Everything you read here will be, to the best of my knowledge, true. While it might be fun to write a flight of fancy like "remembering" a childhood trip trip through, say, Perigord in search of white truffles, it ain't gonna happen. (Correction of factual matters is, of course, welcome at all times.)
• Berch on Food does not accept anything of value from any restaurant or other food vendor in exchange for mentions or reviews. This is largely because Berch on Food has not been offered anything of value by restaurants or other food vendors in exchange for mentions or reviews.

So then. Onward!

Posted at 22:25 | permanent link

(Articles which are no longer in the main column are available in the archives. Click on the year in the left-hand column under "Previous articles" for all entries from that year.)