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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. I don&amp;#039;t understand why restaurant writers are so political. I feel like they have an agenda, or at least a preconception about whom they are going to praise and whom they are not going to praise. What is the basis of their judgment? I really want to know. I feel that as a chef you are trying to get an honest, objective opinion and it seems that the writers are interested in something else.John Tesar, Dallas, Texas John, you&amp;#039;ve been in the game a long time. It can&amp;#039;t come as a shock that food writing, and food criticism in particular, is an intensely political activity proceeding primarily from the writer&amp;#039;s desire to look cool, to excite his or her readers, and, most of all, to please the editors who control his or her livelihood. Be glad you&amp;#039;re in Dallas! In New York, a veteran chef who did great work in the mid 90s is as irrelevant to the writers as Blaise Pascal. The critics today seek untutored, charismatic prodigies like Danny Bowien, who, if he didn&amp;#039;t exist, they would have had to invent. I liked Danny Bowien&amp;#039;s brash stoner food at Mission Chinese, but the New York food writer community \u2014 and make no mistake, we are a community \u2014 have extended him what amounts to a year-long slow clap. Meanwhile, Gray Kunz, for all intents and purposes, was forgotten while he was still here. And, no disrespect intended, but it&amp;#039;s a simple fact that Danny Bowien couldn&amp;#039;t carry Gray Kunz&amp;#039; spoon. The injustice of their respective fates galls veteran chefs, in the same way that strong-minded women can never resign themselves to the fame of Kim Kardashian. The real question to me is why there isn&amp;#039;t more back and forth, more dialog, more disputation, more debate. There&amp;#039;s something like three inches of room for disagreement here. It bums me out sometimes. I&amp;#039;m a hidebound, rigid, doctrinaire conservative, and I am considered a wildman, ideologically speaking. It&amp;#039;s just so strange. Maybe ESPN should take over the food media. I would love a First Take-style review, possibly featuring Adam Platt and myself swapping barbed bon mots.  What do you think is the best bacon? I tried every one at my local supermarket (Publix) and I think Niman Ranch uncured applewood-smoked bacon is the best one, but I wonder what you think.Sandy Sacramone, Sunrise, Florida Well, Sandy, the bacon you mention is a good one. Taken as meat, any premium bacon, such as Niman, Nueske&amp;#039;s, North Country, etc., is better than regular supermarket bacon, just because it&amp;#039;s not all bloated up with water. Take a regular low-grade bacon (Hormel, say) and bend it; you can roll the package up like a spyglass if you want. You can&amp;#039;t do that with bacon that is dry cured; it has real substance to it, real heft. That said, I like the flavor of some of the bad bacons better than some of the better ones, like Niman Ranch, that smoke. Applewood is the brioche bun of hardwoods. It has no place at the table. It&amp;#039;s something I expect to find flavoring chicken sausages, not bacon. Sometimes when I eat too much animal protein and the accompanying fat wreaks havoc on my digestive system. Is it because I don&amp;#039;t eat meat often enough? Can you suggest a training regimen of some sort? Joe DiStefano, Forest Hills, New York It is because you don&amp;#039;t eat meat often enough. The capacity to metabolize animal fat in great quantities is reserved for power lifters, the very young, and the kind of gourmand that doesn&amp;#039;t think of themselves as having a digestive system so much as being a digestive system. Pig Tripper dude loves the Brindle Room burger more than you do, and like you he credits the dry-aged deckle. Can you please clarify the difference between rib eye cap, deckle, calotte and spinalis dorsi.Burger Guy, Boston  Burger Guy has been tweeting this question at me for weeks, and I can&amp;#039;t think of any reason to continue ignoring it. He is referring to a hamburger near my apartment in the East Village which, in my professional opinion, is the best in America. A blogger who doesn&amp;#039;t live two blocks away recently said the same thing, and gave as a reason the use of dry-aged deckle as its primary material. So: what is deckle? &amp;quot;Deckle&amp;quot; is a misplaced butcher idiom, borrowed from brisket, used to describe the &amp;quot;lip&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;cap&amp;quot; of rib steak: that fatty crescent which sits atop the eye and is technically the spinalis dorsi muscle. The &amp;quot;culotte&amp;quot; is a French butcher cut corresponding to the sirloin cap. Totally different muscle. Although probably also good when dry-aged and ground up into a hamburger. I&amp;#039;m terrible at grilling everything but my wife doesn&amp;#039;t seem to notice and makes me do it a lot. Can I get some help, here?Jason Ballenger, Memphis, TN If you really hate it, Jason, just do it as badly as you can and she will relieve you of your duties soon enough; trust me, this trick always works, in all situations. But if you want to get better at it, I would suggest the following five-point plan and then point you to a book. You can also email me directly with any questions or problems you might be having. That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;m here for.   Plan what you want to do ahead of time. No rushing or bugging out. Oil everything and shower it with kosher salt before you grill it. Get the grill good and hot. Don&amp;#039;t move things around too much. Pay attention. Grilling is not like baking. You can&amp;#039;t walk away. Make sure you tell your wife how good it is, and how pleased you are with it, when you do a good job. Even if she&amp;#039;s totally indifferent to food, she likes you, and will care that you care. She may even pay attention to what she&amp;#039;s eating.  Do all that, and buy a copy of BBQ 25, by Adam Perry Lang, which is a great introduction to grilling and barbecuing. You&amp;#039;ll be fine. Why is your column all about men? Why is food inherently manly or womanly? Can&amp;#039;t a woman love a steak and a man kale salad?Erin Behan, Brooklyn No one loves kale salad. What&amp;#039;s the best meal you&amp;#039;ve ever had and where, Josh?David Abramov, Mexico City, Mexico I get asked that a lot, and I know that I&amp;#039;m supposed to say I don&amp;#039;t know, and that every meal is different, and there is no &amp;quot;best,&amp;quot; and blah blah blah. But it&amp;#039;s not true. The best meal I ever had was the last night of service at Dona. I ate alone and high, and it was just astounding. An out-of-body experience. And then, at the end of the meal, I asked out the hot lady sommelier, whom I had a crush on, and she said yes and gave me her number. Then I left. That was the best meal I ever had. I remember every dish. Gnudi with brown butter. Uni with burrata. Partridge. Lobster in avgolemono sauce. I got bombed on Metaxa at the end, too. Definitely the best meal. Glad you asked.  When are you going to shut up about tweezer food already? Jesus, that got old fast.Vince Occhiogrosso, Grosse Point, MI I know. It was such an expressive term, though. Everybody knew what it meant. But now it&amp;#039;s just another cheap shot. That&amp;#039;s how the meme life cycle works, I guess.  How does it impact a relationship when one person suddenly decides to adopt a strict diet (pescatarianism, veganism, raw food, Atkin&amp;#039;s, the Fast Diet, Gluten free, etc)? Or, how important is it to be aligned in diet when in love? Melanie Berliet, Greenwich, CT Not very important. The last thing I want from my wife or girlfriend is for her to be another food nerd. It&amp;#039;s bad enough that I have to live with myself. My own wife, if you can believe this, won&amp;#039;t eat chicken skin. And not because of some special diet, either! She just doesn&amp;#039;t like it. I&amp;#039;m not kidding. Happily, there are some things she does like, and those are the things I cook for her and eat with her and talk to her about. If she were into caul fat, and veal patties, and all the other stuff I like, it would be just too weird. On the other hand, they have to like food. If they just munch on power bars, or use Pam spray to cook egg whites, there&amp;#039;s something wrong with them. It means they will be bad in bed. Unless they have serious psychological problems, in which case they will be good in bed. I hope this helps.  If money were no object, and you could have any one piece of cooking equipment, what would it be?Stacy Gallagher, Providence, RI This one. I have a deep freeze and I bought half a dozen corned beefs when they were on sale for St. Patrick&amp;#039;s Day. I cook them exactly the way it says to on the package but it&amp;#039;s always tough and dry. Are they just bad corned beefs? Were they frozen too long? Do I need to just throw them away? It seems like a waste.David Abramov, Mexico City, Mexico I know where you are coming from, Larry. (Great name, by the way.) Nothing could be more frustrating than failing to cook a corned beef. After a baked potato, it&amp;#039;s the simplest recipe in all of cooking. Take the corned beef. Put it in a pot of simmering water. Cover it and go away for three hours. That&amp;#039;s it. But there&amp;#039;s one other step that they don&amp;#039;t tell you about. If you take the corned beef out of the pot and cut it up, which you totally want to do because, come on, it&amp;#039;s been three hours, it&amp;#039;s still tight and tense, like a clenched muscle. You have to let it come down to temperature in the water. Which is another 45 minutes. I know, right? Corned beef is a bitch. It&amp;#039;s never ready when you want it. On the other hand, it stays good in a warm waterless pot pretty much forever. What town is the best red-meat town in America? John Spingola, New York City I mean, I guess I am supposed to say Chicago here, because they love meat so much and everything, and maybe it is Chicago. The thing is, almost all of the prime beef in America goes to New York, because New York butchers and restaurants pay so much more, for the simple reason that they can pay so much more. (A lot goes to the military, too, which is something not many people know.) Of course, a city that loves steak so much that it will support steakhouses serving Choice beef has to be said, in all fairness, to be a great red meat town. So Chicago. Have a question? Write askeatlikeaman@esquire.com! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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