And speaking of fried cheese (as I was, in the previous post about the sandwich
at Cassell’s Hamburgers (that’s a close up of it above - the cheese is the flappy, wing-like things sticking out at the sides) – the other night I
went to Loteria, a superior and not entirely inauthentic, Mexican restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, with top
English photographer Jason Oddy, who’s in town for one thing and another.
I always think the best thing about Loteria is the chicharron de queso,
“griddle toasted Oaxaca and Jack Cheese with with corn tortillas, guacamole and
salsa verde cruda” though I must say I always refer to it as the “cheese hat.”
Young Oddy seemed puzzled by it at first:
But soon saw the appealing side:
You could perhaps think this was a move from anticipation to
acclamation, as in Fry’s Five Boys chocolate, but without the desperation and
pacification, and certainly without the realization that it’s Fry’s:
I know I ate a fair amount of Five Boys chocolate as a kid, though I’m
pretty sure I ever went through the five stages. I also
think the chocolate was pretty ordinary but the packaging and the form was unbeatable.
And I started wondering whether there was any connection
between Five Boys chocolate and Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stage model
of grief and bereavement. It seems a
little unlikely. Five Boys was launched
in 1902, and manufacturing ened in 1975. Kübler-Ross’s
On Death and Dying wasn’t published
till 1969. I haven’t the slightest evidence that Kübler-Ross ever ate or even
knew about Fry’s Five Boys, and of course she was Swiss, so I imagine she wasn't a fan of English chocolate.
Still, I can’t help thinking
there’s some curious convergence at work here.
And I’m pretty sure I’d buy a chocolate
bar with five faces moulded into it labeled Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Sounds like a project for Bompas and Parr.
