kweekvlees, or: yes, i fucking ate this.

I've just about recovered from the dish pictured above, and the picture really only tells half the story. This was the first "controversial appetizer" served at the Voedsel, Kunst, and Wetenschap symposium at Utrecht's Centraal Museum Friday night. The thrust of the evening's programme was to examine the issues surrounding stem cell-derived cultivated meat, or kweekvlees, and to serve some artful and, yes, controversial preparations of "kweekvlees-inspired dishes". Since I couldn't stay for the whole symposium, I missed the explanation of what was actually in these dishes, from a flesh perspective. I approached them from the perspective that they were lab meat, which was much somehow more challenging than the truth.

The first one was actually controversial, in that I experienced a personal controversy over how much of it I could actually eat. It's a marrow bone, but something about the presentation of this dish led to a deceleration of my enthusiasm, perhaps it was the clear, em..."juice" oozing onto my hand as I held it. But I could've carried through I think if there'd been enough salt to enhance the fattiness of the gooey contents, but as it was...(I'm trying to be kind here)....sigh. Let's just call it controversial.

















The second bite of the evening was completely and thankfully enjoyably edible: bloedworst with a sweet apple vinaigrette. Nice. And then...I had to leave to get back to OT301. Good thing I'd had a bite to eat beforehand with Ed and NICOLE (whose name will be typed in capital letters until I can be sure that I'll never ever forget it again) at Pronto Pronto: duck rilettes and a bruschetta sampler with seared tuna and tapenade, taleggio, and a few cured meat combos. Very tasty, and substantial enough to where I wasn't even sitting there all starving on my way back to Amsterdam. Ultimately, however, it proved to not be enough of a belly ballast for the evening's beer consumption...morning came early the next day.

















+++

P.S. If, like me, you've been trying to figure out if Sonic Youth is still trying hard enough to age gracefully, here's your answer.

+++