Vulture Whale | Birmingham, Alabama

Chip Brantley is the author of the new book, The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot.  The co-founder of Cookthink.com, Chip is a former food writer for the San Francisco Examiner and features writer for the Albany Times Union. He has contributed to many other publications, including Slate, Gourmet, the Boston Globe, the Oxford American, and Gastronomica.

Chip also spent several years as the cheese maker at Westfield Farm, an award-winning artisan cheese company in central Massachusetts. Before his career in cheese, he worked as the editorial producer for Movieline.com and as the director of TV development at Mike Newell’s Dogstar Films. Chip lives with his wife, Elizabeth Hughey, and their son in Birmingham, Alabama.

Chip is a long time friend of Vulture Whale and is November’s “Whale Rider of The Month”.  Wes (lead vocals) presented the plaque and sat with Chip for some Q&A—–

WMc: I have been hearing the word “foodie” a lot lately. Are you a “foodie”? Am I a foodie? What is a “foodie”?  Please give an example.

CB: “Foodie” is just one label a food lover can use to describe himself. I think of “foodie” as implying a couple of things: 1) a certain refinement of taste (or a desire to have refined tastes) and 2) a more-than-casual interest not just in the food itself but in the atmosphere surrounding the food and what the food conveys. So a foodie might order a $100 Kobe beef filet just because it’s $100 and it’s Kobe beef. A foodie might go to a new restaurant to see if the hype matches up to the real thing (and to also maybe contribute a little bit to the hype).

Over the past decade, there’s been a division between foodies and chowhounds. Chowhounds pride themselves on having a nose for good food no matter where it is or what it looks like. They generally shy away from trendy places and tend to think of foodies as people who go where they’re told. There’s a saying among them that “chowhounds go for the steak, while foodies go for the sizzle.”

You might consult Alex Kapronos’s book Sound Bites for more information about the rocker/foodie intersection. In the mean time, here’s a simple test I’ve just devised to determine if you’re a foodie:

a) When playing in Nashville, do you pack a nice pair of pants so you can hit Watermark before the show?

b) You have a friend passing through town on business who wants to get together for dinner. Do you take him to Highland’s, Sabor Latino, Que Huong, Bettola, Great Wall, or Saw’s? (Note: This could be a trick question.)

c) Sometimes when you’re singing “Teedy,” do you find yourself thinking about cheese and fruit pairings, like how a pluot would go well with Manchego or some other aged sheep’s or cow’s milk cheese?

WMc:  What kind of cheese would you recommend while  drinking beer and listening to rock music?

CB: You’re in luck. There’s a whole class of cheeses called washed-rind cheeses that are made for beer drinking and rock music. While they age, they’re washed with some kind of brine (sometimes even beer) that promotes the growth of bacteria on their rinds. Two recommendations: Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk and Cato Corner’s Hooligan. Both American. Both Vulture Whale-appropriate.

WMc:  What kind of beer would you recommend while eating cheese and listening to soft rock?

CB: One of those lagers—like Stella Artois—that says, “Hey look, I ordered an import.”

WMc:  How is a pluot like a Vulture Whale?

CB: They’re both hybrids, and they’re both inspired, in a roundabout way, by Buck Owens.

WMc: What is your favorite meal?

CB: Breakfast.

Yo Chip.  When you’re done yakkin’, why don’t you get Kraken on some eggs, and make us an omelette already.

WMc: What’s your favorite action food? Slammers, Poppers, Sliders, Chicken Kickers, or Crackers?

CB: Sliders. (Does the Krystal sandwich count as a slider?)

WMc: Do you love more: the pluot or Elizabeth?  It seems like a tie in the book.

CB: I love Elizabeth more than I love pluots, except during certain times in summer when I’m really hungry.

WMc: Have you and Elizabeth ever had a fight over the last pluot?

CB: Elizabeth eats all the frosting off of my cake, so I always get the last pluot.

WMc: Do you have any special Thanksgiving recipes?

CB: I’ve become a big turkey briner. When we lived in Massachusetts, it was always cold enough to just leave the turkey outside in the brining bucket for a few days before Thanksgiving. I’m not sure how I’m going to store it this year. Maybe outside in a brine-filled cooler with double-bagged ice keeping it all cool. What do you think?

WMc: I don’t know exactly what brine is but it sounds like serious gravy.  Have you ever heard of or had “coke salad”: the congealed salad made with Coca Cola?

CB: I’ve heard of Coke salad, but I don’t think I’ve had it.

WMc: Thank you for turning me on to Honey Crisp Apples. Why are they so good? Is there honey spliced into the DNA?

CB: You’re welcome. Here’s a little history on the Honeycrisp (one word), which has been called the “iPod of apples.” It was  bred by some guys at the University of Minnesota, and they’ve released another variety called Zestar that’s apparently really good.

WMc: If you could wipe one song off of the face of the earth forever, what would it be?

CB: I’m torn between “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” my least favorite Beatles song (I don’t count “Revolution 9″ as a “song”), and “Her Majesty.” Both threaten to derail Abbey Road, which is the album I’ve listened to more than any other. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is just a bad song and I’d be happy never to hear it again. As a little ditty, “Her Majesty” is fine, but I hate that it ruins the silence following the end of the album’s closing medley. Why, Paul? Why?

WMc: Lingo. People are starting to add “ish” to the end of anything they might say to imply “sort of” or “kind of”. They’ll even aswering questions with that one sound. “I thought the show was fun tonight, didn’t you think it was great?” Answer : “ish”.  It’s driving me crazy. What are people saying these days that makes you cringe?

CB: I can’t think of any words/sayings that make me cringe, so I’ll take this opportunity to remind everyone to turn off your cell phone and be quiet during movies.

WMc: Of all the cooking shows, which one is your favorite?

CB: I don’t know if it’s still on, but I loved Jamie at Home, Jamie Oliver’s show about how to cook simple, honest food using only the ingredients found on your fully staffed country estate. The camera work is sometimes a little too whiz-bang for my tastes, but I love how he’ll be walking through the tuber section of his massive garden, lugging an armful of red potatoes, and then all of the sudden come across a hidden mud oven that he lights with some indigenous flintstone and two sticks. It’s a cooking show for people who love both “MacGyver” and “thirtysomething.”

WMc: Now that you are connected in the world of fruit, could you help us have a hybrid named “The Vulture Whale Peach” or something like that? We don’t want a street named after us,or a perfume, we want a signature stone fruit! What are the percentages that you could make that happen? How much would we get paid?

CB: Instead of convincing someone to name a peach after Vulture Whale, why not buy half a dozen peach trees and plant them in your yard. The first year you get fruit, you could germinate the pits and plant them, then graft the seedlings onto rootstock. If any of these bear fruit, you could pick the best one, propagate it and patent it as the “Vulture Whale” peach. Then you could partner with a nursery and get a royalty payment every time someone buys a tree. You could have a Honeycrisp-ish success story on your hands—who knows?

This entry was posted by Jake on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 5:42 pm. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.