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" Josh Ozersky is a James Beard Award-winning food writer, B-list food personality, and noted polymath and deviant. The founder of Meatopia, he will answer all your questions on meat, food, food writing, relationships, restaurants, or cooking. He is also available for private tutorials. Why isn&amp;#039;t there more alcoholic food? Save for a few desserts and some savory dishes (and even those don&amp;#039;t have enough alcohol, or lose it during the cooking process), it seems as if all the mind altering has been left to liquids. Why don&amp;#039;t we have food that fks us up? Adam Sachs, New York City Alcoholic food has been hindered, Adam, by two insuperable obstacles. One is that you can&amp;#039;t get enough liquor into food to make anyone but a toddler woozy. Even if you made beef bourguignon with wine that didn&amp;#039;t cook off at all, it still only amounts to a glass or so per serving \u2014 and who is going to get drunk on a glass of wine? A toddler. Secondly, other than amaro, a digestif, I can&amp;#039;t think of a single liquor that tastes good when cooked with, or poured on, food.  However! Such is not the case with weed. The art of making pot cookies and cakes has seen historic advances in the last few years, thanks to a generation of stoner chefs and the implicit permission of law enforcement authorities. I am right now working with rapper Action Bronson on a dish of spaghetti alla olio verde \u2014 that is, with garlic and pot-infused oil \u2014 that will simultaneously sate and stoke your appetite.  I made a barbecue brisket this past weekend, and it wasn&amp;#039;t that good. It wasn&amp;#039;t a disaster or anything, but it wasn&amp;#039;t like the brisket you get in a good barbecue joint. I can&amp;#039;t figure out why. Also: It had a weird black goo on the outside. Alex Ibanez, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania That goo is probably brisket&amp;#039;s greatest enemy, Alex, and is no doubt responsible for some of your worst brisket experiences. Burning wood produces a substance called creosote. It ordinarily flies away with the rest of the smoke, but when it isn&amp;#039;t vented properly, it creates a tar-like buildup up on your brisket. And boy does it taste nasty.  The larger point about brisket \u2014 the thing that is driving you to despair \u2014 is that brisket sucks. There, I said it. It&amp;#039;s gigantic, it&amp;#039;s misshapen, and only a third of it \u2014 the deckle \u2014 is fit to eat. It takes a whole day of backbreaking work and your undivided attention, and in the end it&amp;#039;s not even as good as the worst spare rib. I would suggest giving up brisket entirely. Concentrate instead on things like short ribs and pork belly that cook fast and, when done well, are good all the way through. Brisket is just a bitch. It really is.  How can I tell if my kombucha is rotten? Amanda Green, Austin You can&amp;#039;t.  We&amp;#039;ve had celebrity mixologists, celebrity butchers, celebrity foragers, etc. What subspecies of food/beverage professional is now on deck for their fifteen minutes (or more) of fame and glory? Andrew Friedman, Brooklyn, New York It&amp;#039;s a great question, and one best addressed to Gastrodamus, the food prophet. He told me the following in a vision: &amp;quot;In the future, the line cook at the meat station will become famous, and his virtuosity will be celebrated by the pen of the scribes, and his name will sound out.&amp;quot; I actually agree with Gastrodamus about this. For too long everyone in the kitchen has been celebrated except the person who actually makes your food. This has to change.  I get bagels and lox every Sunday for my girlfriend and her kids, and we all enjoy it. But both the lox and the bagels aren&amp;#039;t what I remember from when I used to eat them with my parents \u2014 which wasn&amp;#039;t that long ago. Any idea why? The lox in particular seems bland and boring. Brian Berkowitz, Darien, Connecticut I could give you some crap about the mystic chords of memory, Brian, but the fact is, the bagels you had with your parents were probably just better. Each year the number of great bagels becomes fewer and fewer. They are like the retreating glaciers of the bread world. But I am willing to bet I can solve your lox problem: If your parents were old-school vulgarians like my own, chances are they ate belly lox, not &amp;quot;Nova&amp;quot; lox. Almost all bagel stores, especially in ritzy areas like your own, serve Nova Scotia lox, which is less salty and fatty and good than the old stuff. Also, since bagels have become so absurdly puffy, I would consider putting them under a heavy weight and squishing them down. They will taste more like the old bagels that way, and will better support their load of belly lox, their shmear of full-fat cream cheese, and the thick slice of red onion that I can only hope you are putting on there too. Have a question? Write askeatlikeaman@esquire.com. I try to answer every question or comment that is sent to me, although it may take a week or two to get to it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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