Yesterday, Bobby Ampezzan, a young, relatively new writer at the Democrat-Gazette, wrote in a review of Rosalia’s that the new bakery was “as welcome in Hillcrest as British hegemony was in Hong Kong, back in the day.”
Which is as nonsensical as your favorite Wally Hall-ism, but funnier for its pretentiousness from my perspective.
I’ve started a collection of the best Ampezzans (Ampezzisms?) in the hope that Doug will carve out a special corner of his Words column for them.
The best of the rest:
In a December review of Prego, he used the words “gimcrack” and “badinage” in the early going.
Back last July, in a review of Ferneau, here’s how he described lamb chops: “These are grain-fed Midwestern ewes, aged slightly (that is, post-mortem) before baptism in a truffled demiglaze. Each bite is so stultifying you lean your faces closer as if sharing some coterminous whirling rapture.”
But my favorite came later in that Ferneau review, which was built around the conceit of a new, rapidly dissolving relationship.
It ended with Ampezzan recalling insults traded by he and his date before their last meal, which included an order of salmon and shrimp.
“The smoked salmon is lumped on the side, and the grilled cheese itself is a little dry. The shrimp is, well, little more than what it is.
“Where before you couldn’t be sure of the food or the frisson, now you know. She and the salmon are ‘a little dry.’ You and the shrimp are ‘little more than what it is.’ ”
Which might be the greatest extended, sex-and-seafood metaphor since, “My taste includes both snails and oysters.”