Old Media vs New Media

Downtown Marfa

Marfa, Texas. 0 miles.

As I settle in, I’m finding Marfa similar in many ways to my home village of Athens, NY. There’s the complicated relationship between long-time residents and artistic newcomers, (many of the latter are absentee homeowners who’ve innocently driven up property values); the wide-spread desire to encourage more economic activity for the good of the community, which is often at odds with the hope that the very style that makes the place special will not be lost in the process.

Earlier iterations of Marf-ictecture, as here, are most prevalent.

Gazing out at the windswept, golden landscape, I have the luxury to ponder subjects and stories of varying degrees of importance. Over the next several weeks, roadfoodie.com will reflect this. I must also report that the restaurant Maiya’s, just down the main street from Hotel Paisano (on the right in the picture above), serves an excellent dish called Sunnyside: asparagus in a gratin dish, topped with a fried egg and generous shavings of good Parmesan. Right up my alley. (My neighbor’s generous casserole-full of spinach lasagna looked and smelled like cheesy-green heaven, too.) Tonight I’ll be dining at a restaurant that’s been receiving copious amounts of positive underground buzz, Cochineal (aka Tom and Toshi’s).

Meanwhile, this thought on a subject much discussed recently in my profession:

Old Media: You read an article in the New York Times about traveling in Italy. The author, a much-published cookbook writer, describes eating polenta

The Texas star is often proudly present.

at a cozy, fire-lit restaurant in the piney woods of Tuscany. There, he befriends an Italian family, and the mother tells him of her own special way with polenta. Back home, the author expertly adapts the recipe for American readers. You shop for, and cook the dish; it is every bit as tasty as the article is captivating. You clip the article and tuck it lovingly into your current favorite Italian cookbook. Every time you open the cookbook, the article seduces you anew with its evocative writing. You make the recipe so many times that it becomes your own.

New Media: You decide to make polenta for your best friend’s birthday party. You Google “polenta” and “recipe,” and quickly choose a likely-sounding dish from the four hundred thousand results. You shop for the dish and make it for the party; the resulting gruel is the consistency of wallpaper paste and has no flavor whatsoever. You are embarrassed. You throw out the one-page recipe, update your status on Facebook, and send out an outraged tweet. You decide cooking at home is too much of a hassle. For the next party, you order a pizza.