Allee Willis Blog

30May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Party Jocs” Coasters and Top Chef Masters at Street

30May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Party Jocs” Coasters and Top Chef Masters at Street

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In anticipation of the Memorial Day holiday tomorrow and the many glasses that are about to be lifted these Party Jocs drink cozies make it easy to keep track of your drink and keep your hands moisture free as you chug it down.

Wednesday night I went to my favorite restaurant, Street, in anticipation of lifting a glass in celebration as Chef Susan Feniger won another round of Top Chef Masters on TV. Not only was she one of the final four but she had won 75% of her battles so far.

I went with my good friend, Stu James, who was also Harpo in my musical, The Color Purple. Although I didn’t have the Party Jocs with me and no glasses are evident in this photo we took with Susan we were all in a glass-lifting celebratory mood as the show began.

What’s great about being at Street on the nights that Top Chef Masters airs is that not only can you order any of the completely and insanely inventive food on the menu but also little trays of whatever Susan cooks on the show that night are passed around. We started out with Lamb Kakta Meatballs drizzled with date and carob molasses…

… followed by the Tatsutage Fried Chicken marinated with soy, mirin and sake and crispy fried in rice batter, topped with spicy kewpie mayonnaise sauce.

Then came the Burmese Lettuce Wraps with gin thoke style lentils, toasted coconut, peanuts, fried onions and sesame ginger dressing…

.. and the Paani Puri, spiced potato, chutneys and sprouted beans in crispy puffs of yogurt-cilantro water dipped dough…

… with the Brazilian Acaraje not far behind – black-eyed pea fritters with palm oil, garlic and cilantro stuffed with citrus cabbage slaw and malagueta chile sauce.

Then we topped it off with barbecued pork sliders:

Obviously Stu and I spent as much time taking photos of each other eating as we did talking, all the while watching Susan toil away on TV. The chefs’ challenge this week was to make food “fit for the gods of the heavens”.

Susan was assigned Aphrodite, goddess of love. She went for it with one of the signature dishes at Street, Kaya Toast.

Kaya Toast is a Singapore street cart experience – toasted bread spread thick with coconut jam and sweet butter that you dip in a soft fried egg drizzled in dark soy and white pepper. When you bite into it it fills your mouth with such an unexpected burst and multi-textural slide down the throat that your whole body jolts with the sensation. I can always tell when someone orders Kaya for the first time because there’s always a long drawn out ‘oohHHhhhh’ that accompanies it. That’s love. And it’s certainly fit for Aphrodite.

As individual servings of Kaya Toast were passed around to all of us in the restaurant Susan raced to finish the dish on the show.

As the judging began, the whole restaurant got ready to lift their glasses to celebrate yet another triumph. At that moment I wished I had brought the Party Jocs with me so Stu and I could have toasted in style not to mention hand comfort.

But the only thing about the Kaya Toast is that it looks like a very simple dish. Everyone always thinks it’s going to taste like a grilled cheese sandwich.

And that’s what judge Jay Rayner couldn’t get out of his head, that it looked like a PB&J and he didn’t find that very sexy. So Susan went down in flames…

But I’m here to tell you that it took balls to make a dish like that, on first impression so plain and simple but upon tasting it a cornucopia of textures, tastes and sensations. So come to Street if you want to taste food fit for the gods. And to Jay Rayner and the remaining three male chefs I lift my glass, now adorned with its comely 1960’s fashion statement, and wish them all very happy highballs as they cook to the finish.

26May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Velveeta Camera and “Food For Thought” Party Photos!

26May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Velveeta Camera and “Food For Thought” Party Photos!

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This is one of the few food related items that John Lloyd Young didn’t jewel at my place last Sunday when The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch & APLA hosted “Food for Thought”, the first ever exhibition of his brilliant Pop Kitsch art interpretations of iconically kitschy komfort foods. Had I remembered where I put it I may have used my Velveeta camera to take some fabulous photos that day. Lucky for us I didn’t as you can actually see the work and the beautiful Pop Kitsch guests like RuPaul who came to view it much clearer then my little Shells & Cheese Dinner baby is capable of popping out.

John Lloyd’s eye-popping work costs somewhat more than the three Kraft box tops and dollar shipping and handling one had to send in to get this Velveeta Camera when it was made in the 1980’s. The 110 Kodak film cartridge is still inside…

…just as fresh as John Lloyd’s ever-glowing can of Spam.

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Of course, my preference would be to dump the Kraft Shells & Cheese Dinner cam and go for John Lloyd’s Kraft Mac & Cheese “Dominoes”. It’s hard to a tell from this photo but he jeweled 100 boxes of it and toppled them out on a 16 foot serpentine table.

In 2006, the musical I co-wrote, The Color Purple, lost the Tony to Jersey Boys of which John Lloyd Young was the star and for which he won the Best Actor Tony.

We hadn’t seen each other since the round of award parties back then but a few months ago he e-mailed me out of the blue and asked if I was interested in writing some music with him. When he came over to talk about it he brought me a gift that he had just made, a jeweled box of Triscuits.

I went completely nuts for the box and encouraged him to keep on jeweling. What I saw over the next couple of months I considered brilliant works of Pop Kitsch art and I decided that presenting John Lloyd’s work would make an excellent exhibition as the first artist officially sanctioned by The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch. My Tony loss to him already made a perfect set up for Kitsch. I also thought that his Pop Kitsch sensibility would inspire mine and make for some excellent party props like this sign I painted interpreting the junk food John Lloyd chose to honor in his work.

We both were hard at work up until the last minute before the guests arrived.

And arrive thank God they did as all proceeds benefited AIDS Project Los Angeles. Those who dug deep included Stu James (Harpo in The Color Purple), Lesley Donald (Buster in The Color Purple) and Jai Rodiguez,

as well as Mito Aviles, Chadmichael Morrisette and Tiffany Daniels (Squeak in The Color Purple) posing with John Lloyd’s very first jeweled piece, “Virtue” (not edible!)…

…and a couple hundred more folks who you can see you right here.

When it came to food there was delicious Moms BBQ House soul food versions of John Lloyd’s delicious jeweled food.

Here’s Charles Phoenix modeling the chicken, peas and mac & cheese with me, Sonny Ruscha Bjornson and Mark Blackwell:

“Food for Thought” was also an unbelievably great excuse to order the world’s largest home delivered pizza…

… and to float individual servings of cotton candy in the pool for guests to snack on.

Here’s a lovely display of Spam that accompanied John Lloyd’s bejeweled Spam…

… and the artist vouching for its edibility:

I must say that despite my lifelong dedication to junk food I never tasted Spam until I spiked a cube here. Not surprising to anyone who knows me I found it very tasty. But I digress.

All in all, it was a wonderful day both as a party host and as a conceptual artist. John Lloyd’s and my work melded into one big kitschified fondue and despite the fact that rain was threatened all week the heavens held up so our eyes and stomachs were able to ingest beautiful works of art that my Velveeta camera only dreams of capturing in their full glory.

For full documentation of the bejeweled food fest go here.

To see how the Los Angeles Times enjoyed it go here.

Photos: Melissa Manning for the Look Partnership LLC

20May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Chefs Spoonholder

20May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Chefs Spoonholder

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Brought to you in the early 50’s by realtor and insurance agent Joe Hodge this big mouth plastic chef spoon holder, or spoonholder as Joe spells it, is one of my favorites from my collection of fifty or so chefs in the same genre. I especially like this one because of the tongue relief in the mouth/spoon cavity as well as the clef in his chin as most other plastic chefs are flat in both places.

I also like any establishment that might be located on a street named Dairy.

As cute as these vintage spoon holders are they’re incredibly impractical.

If you’re cooking anything on the stove the chef needs to be close enough so the spoon won’t drip all over the place before resting in his mouth. But if he’s that close he’s sure to start melting and will end up poisoning you. So ultimately most of these chefs ended up hanging on people’s walls for decoration as opposed to actually assisting in the kitchen.

16May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Chase & Sanborn Coffee Can

16May 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Chase & Sanborn Coffee Can

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These days I’ve dialed back down to decaf but every Sunday morning begins with a nice steaming cup of this stuff. Now it’s slightly more exotic brands than Chase & Sanborn but this is the one that got the habit rolling back in the ’70s for me. Though the can may be a little battered now it actually represented lots of breakthroughs in coffee can packaging that revolutionized the industry. For one, the No-Slip Strip, a little sardine like key that you broke off the bottom and used to wrap the metal strip that held the can together into a neat, tight coil avoiding bloody fingers that were inevitable without such an instrument.

Despite the company merging with Nabisco in 1981, a lot of Chase & Sanborn cans still exist today because the key allowed the can to open without squashing its shape so many people kept them to store a bunch of other junk in.

This can was also the first of Chase & Sanborn’s “Pressure Packed” models, an innovation that insured the coffee stay fresher longer inside its little coffee tomb.

Fresh is what I need today given the amount of coffee/decaf I will be chugging as I’m immersed in making sets, props, ipod playlists, name tags and the like for a huge party I’m throwing here next Sunday in addition to whacking away at several song deadlines and attempting to talk myself into working on my first ever performance in 35 years which I’ve also threatened to do this summer. It may not be Chase & Sanborn that I’m swigging back but memories of twisting open this can and THAT smell hitting my nose as I made a cup of coffee before starting out on my day in New York, banging on the doors of record companies trying to get a job, is enough to keep my senses alive and keep me slugging through the day.