From the Publisher / Arnold G. York
Well, you can imagine my shock
when I returned to Malibu to find that while I was temporarily absent in Sacramento, The Malibu Times had been banned from Marmalade Café.
Our faithful columnist, a much chagrined Paul Mantee, reluctantly advised me that Bob Burns, the owner of Marmalade, had not only personally barred Paul and his lovely lady, Suzy, from entering the restaurant again, but The Malibu Times was also hereafter persona non grata in those halls of culinary excellence. Forever banned.
I asked Paul, “What have we done to deserve this ignominious fate?”
Well, Paul explained that he and Suzy were longtime weekend patrons of Marmalade and they were particularly fond of the waffles on Sunday morning. Paul had merely suggested, in his most nonconfrontational manner, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Paul had ruminated in print, that he couldn’t understand how Marmalade could manage to serve a cold waffle on a hot plate. Apparently, Bob had taken great umbrage at this observation-even though it had been offered in the most constructive manner-and threw us all out of his establishment.
I must admit I was dumbfounded. I had always just assumed that a cold waffle on a hot plate was one of Marmalade’s “specialties de maison.” I suggested to Paul that perhaps Bob was upset because Paul had failed to appreciate the nuances of French cuisine and that perhaps he was, in fact, a culinary Philistine unworthy of the subtle kitchen of Marmalade.
Paul said that was not the case. He believes Bob is under the impression that his waffles are actually hot waffles served on a hot plate, and to suggest otherwise is inaccurate and malicious reporting and deserving of permanent banishment.
So I asked, “If that’s the case, why do they continue to serve cold waffles on a hot plate?” Paul shrugged his shoulders and confessed that he was as baffled as I was.
Now, lest any of you think this is much ado about nothing, you should understand that there has long been a conflict in this country between a free press and the purveyors of culinary excellence. It’s a little known fact that, despite what you might have learned in high school, the conflict involving pre-Revolutionary War journalistic hero John Peter Zenger was not a simple dispute with the royal governor of New York, but was really a cross-Atlantic culinary conflict. Apparently Zenger had said in print that he thought the British high tea was some sort of effete British affectation, and no real man-certainly no real American man-would eat his sandwiches by first cutting off the crust of the bread, and certainly no sandwiches filled with silly cucumbers. Well the governor apparently thought this was some sort of attack on British manhood and had Zenger clapped into irons. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Fortunately, they can’t clap us into irons for suggesting the waffles were cold, so in the interest of freedom of information, I feel I must warn you that should any of you readers carry a bootleg copy of The Malibu Times into Marmalade and violate the ban, you risk forever being deprived of the joys of a cold waffle served on a hot plate.
And that’s all I have to say on that subject.