theatre

seen and heard: "pig: a restaurant"

Last night, I scampered over to the Upright Citizen's Brigade theatre in Chelsea to see Pig: A Restaurant.  This witty one-woman satire on food fetishism is a welcome, refreshing gut-buster for anyone involved in the wild world of foodie-ism. Pigs feet, Rue Dejean market, Paris 18e

"Pig" is a series of monologues (from chef to hostess, owner, supplier, food critic, and even the chef's former "I invented morels" mentor) from a pork-centric restaurant.  My personal favorites were those of model/actress/hostess Aurora and the eerily Insatiable food critic.  Intermixed with each character portrait (or should I say, "pork-trait") is a series of silly, spot-on media quips.  The intro alone is razor-sharp in its wit: a mock-up of the modern restaurant website, where the music's too loud, the landing page takes forever to load, and the menu is nowhere to be found.  (By the way, who ever decided that PDF menus - see inconvenient smartphone downloads - were a good idea?).

But don't get all worked-up, food-disinterested vultures.  Your circling stops here.  Because this self-deprecating, restaurant-referential sketch is nothing but a hysterical love letter to "ravenous" foodies of all kinds.  If there's a moral in sight, it's not "stop eating pork, fried in schmaltz, topped with cracklin", but rather "the fact that we can dream up and consume such things is ridiculous, privileged, and indulgent - so let's at least not take ourselves so seriously".

Click here to read the Gothamist review, featuring a picture of my favorite faux food critic.