I've Cruelly Deprived You of Food Porn

I've been posting an ongoing series on Facebook: photo essays of nothing-special, non-aspirational neighborhood meals in Setúbal, Portugal - with a strong emphasis on baked apples. It's pretty much "What Jim Had For Lunch Last Week", with wry running commentary. Catch up via links below.

October 18, 2025
October 25, 2025
November 3, 2025
November 12, 2025
November 13, 2025
December 1, 2025

Why am I posting this stuff there and not here? To explain, I need to tell a story of heights I cannot scale.

In a previous century, I wrote (as part of a weekly diary for Slate) about the closing week of wonderful Bo restaurant, a labor-of-love operated single-handedly by a feisty super-talented Korean woman named Maria who'd worked in fancy restaurants as a pastry chef but wanted to serve traditional Korean food in a cozy Queens storefront. She was the darling of food critics and of Chowhound's early years, but hardly anyone showed up.

I've experienced the death throes of thousands of restaurants. Normally, they turn glum and hapless. You'd think they'd be glad to see a customer, but, as you enter the dining room, you can feel the mental calculation: "This makes no real difference." Food goes downhill and servers bare their fangs. You lose your enthusiasm and stop coming as the circle turns vicious.

Maria, however, ran through the tape. The more hopeless it got, the better she cooked, and her gratitude to her small cadre of loyal customers only increased. As recounted in the link above, she walked me out to my car after my final meal on her final night, consoling me in my disconsolation. That's strength.


This Slog has been an abject failure, for a variety of reasons I've offered over the years. I have a long acquaintanceship with rejection (Chowhound's brief acclaim was a fluke), so I'm no stranger to the impulse to keep improving in the face of shunning (even when it's counterproductive because the problem all along was that you were too far ahead). I once explained the mindset:

However good you are now, get way way better, and then, when you're certain you're good enough, get way way better still. And then get better. Finally, realize you absolutely suck and triple it.

A vicious circle of rejection can thus provoke a virtuous circle of improvement. In the spirit of The Red Shoes, geometric progression can hoist things so far up the curve of declining results that a dimwitted trombonist/food critic might somehow (I can't take credit because it was mostly epiphany) conjure up fresh and credible explanations for most of the long-standing mysteries (human happiness, theology, cosmology, art, creativity, messiahs, god, autism, addiction, depression (here and here) spirituality, self-destructiveness, art, etc).

So that part was good, I guess, but, ultimately I've proven to lack Maria's strength of character. I haven't run through the tape; haven't shown diehards proper gratitude. I know many of you are here for the sporadic food content, but I've been posting it to Facebook without bothering to copy it over here for the tiny clique of readers who, in many cases, have followed me for years. I am the bitter idiot waiter who scowls at the good guys because there aren't enough of them. I am, alas, no Maria.


I have, though, at least turned out to be a Walter, despite lack of appreciation for the bubblegum (come to think of it, most of the kids just grabbed the gum and sullenly walked back to their seats, oblivious to the gesture and effort from this sweet old guy).