“Sweeping generalizations are the key to everything, and they invariably contain nuggets of truth. “I love sweeping generalizations,” he said. Basically, you’re taking sloppy bits of fish and making them into these exquisite little bonbons, and that seems inordinately gay to me.”
“I’ve been to restaurants in Japan where they bring out a watermelon in its entirety and they open it up and inside it’s full of ice and one little pink piece of sushi in the middle. “Japanese food - that is some seriously gay food,” Mr. Mexican food? The ultimate in straight cuisine. “A crusty loaf of whole-grain bread is both ferociously lesbian and wildly heterosexual.” “Organic olive oil, thick porridge, heaping helpings of wheat germ,” he said. Doonan freely uses “lesbian” to describe certain earthy, healthful foods. If you wanted to ruin a politician’s career, just publish a picture of him shopping for macarons.” I can’t believe any red-blooded straight guy can even walk into a macaron shop.
“The macaron craze is the ne plus ultra of gay fooderie. “Gay foods are more decorative they’re more frivolous,” he said. It feels art-directed, not just tossed together and deep-fried, with an attention to aesthetic and dietary detail. The way he sees it, gay food is lighter and brighter. Now they’ve gayed it up, and British food is incredible.” “British food used to be so straight when I was a kid,” he said. Consider the grub he grew up with in England. Straight food, according to the Doonan rubric, tends to be leaden, full of protein, thick with fat. Nevertheless, there are times when his thoughts on the sexual orientation of food can be unexpectedly eye-opening. (His book title is, of course, a wink at the best-selling “French Women Don’t Get Fat.”) And it might be pointed out that he’s putting an extreme, satirical spin on tropes and stereotypes that have been in circulation for 30 years, ever since “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” drew a similar line in the culinary sand. It does not take long to figure out that his self-helpish bons mots should be sprinkled with liberal shakes of sodium. Doonan is like lunching with the “Jersey Shore”-era grandnephew of Oscar Wilde. “Because the Black Angus meatloaf, that’s a whole lot of hetero to digest,” he said.ĭining with Mr. A gentleman might succumb to meatloaf, sure, but instead of pairing it with mashed potatoes, he should ask for a salad as a substitute. We have Black Angus meatloaf - that’s the Burt Reynolds of foods.”Īnd balance, he counseled, was key.
But then it’s balanced out with some real classics. “Just the words ‘baby arugula salad’ - you know you have some gay options. “It’s actually a very good mixture of gay and straight,” he said, as he surveyed the Knickerbocker’s menu. “Gay men don’t stay trim because they only eat gay food. Think of it, if you must, as bisexual eating. Seeking out a balanced diet of both is the savviest way to stay svelte. Doonan’s new book, “Gay Men Don’t Get Fat” (Blue Rider Press, $24.95), is that the vast range of the world’s culinary options can be boiled down to two core categories: gay food and straight food. One of the tongue-in-cheek propositions of Mr. If I wanted to slim down after the holidays, he suggested, I should try to eat like a gay man. In his eyes, my problem was not merely that I was prone to eating too much, but also that I ate the way a lot of straight men automatically do: with gluttonous, meat-and-cheese-and-avocado-mad disregard for the repercussions. Doonan, slim and sprightly at 59, was doing his best to guide me through the dietary pitfalls of a typical lunch in the city. “Maybe if you apply it topically,” he said.Įither way, those chips were all wrong. Isn’t avocado supposed to be good for your skin?