On Speck And Its Ilk

Having missed Dada at MoMA by one day, I certainly did not miss the meat at their Cafe 2. The dining hall looks like a workstation for the affluent. Very seriously functional, and possessing stools with trim saddles. Cultured people like to sit on stools, I think, because it makes them feel like their tasks are essential. Since I am generally enthralled with this sort of specious essentialism, and with its concomitant clean lines and love of dark wood surfaces, I thoroughly enjoyed the space. Cured meats suspended from the upper regions, elegant sugar packets arrayed, arugula salads, Fordism employed in the queue.

Anyway, the meat. It looked a little bit like the photo above. Hot sopressata, herbed sopressata, sweet sopressata, prosciutto di parma, mortadella, and speck. This last one was aggressively salty, see-through thin, and had the smokiness of a giant conflagration. Fucking perfect. This was bolstered by the presence of a plug of parmesan that had been twisted out of a mammoth wheel, a slickened range of olives in crockery, and some nicely powdery flatbread they called 'carta di musica.'

The art was also tremendous, particularly the screenprinting.