Describing the foods consumed during an interview is a trick journalists often deploy to give insight into their subjects personality—for instance, one might pair a pop star’s revolution-fomenting statements with her consumption of bourgeois truffle fries. In the four months he’s been working at Bloomberg, former Observer reporter Max Abelson has proven himself an astute observer of the menu, which he has used to do everything from paint a scene of 21st-century decadence in the business and political worlds to suggesting someone may be watching their figure a little bit.
• “’A lot of this is, You know it, but can you prove it?’ [Meredith] Whitney said January 30 over a breakfast of scrambled egg whites with a chicken-apple sausage, a side of salsa, and peppermint tea at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.”
• “‘They have said nice things about it since it came out,’ [Erskine Bowles] said, as guests finished what the program called an ’;East Coast Cranberry Brown Betty’ dessert with yuzu and whipped cream.”
• “‘In 1930, the dinner was beefsteak. This year, the meal featured • “As guests dined on tea-smoked quail at a party in Washington last month, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, President Barack Obama’s coordinator for Afghanistan policy, stood to offer praise for a new report.”
Lunch, anyone?
