Last evening Winnipeg food critic Angry Vegan succumbed to injuries sustained last year in a provoked assault. Long months of invasive (and perversely creative) medical procedures were insufficient to buttress recuperation and mitigate his torments. He was accompanied in his last days by his family and long-time friend Herr Doktor: “As this is a burdensome time for Mr. Vegan’s legal team we ask that you leave them to cope with this crushing loss”.
By nature contrarian, Angry Vegan resisted editorial expectations and developed an approach to restaurant reviews which exposed the bourgeois values inherent in food and drink culture: “The basis of Food and Drink writing is the force of one’s honesty to make vulnerable those who have something to hide”. Mr. Vegan began his career in an act of culinary defiance. He declared himself a dietary vegan, legally changed his name, resigned from cooking school then began to publish terse reviews which captured the ethos of his dining experience. At war with the Food and Drinks community he targeted other reviewers, clientele, menu and wine list wordings, and restaurant ambiance. On occasion, he was known to assess the food.
In his last months, Mr. Vegan wrote reviews about the various nutritional formulae he ingested through his feeding tube. Dictated to Herr Doktor, these articles were submitted to the “Convalescing Courier”, the hospital administration’s monthly newsletter and printed in the December 2014 through March 2015 editions. Mr. Vegan, whose upper digestive tract was bypassed and whose sense of taste had been nullified by medications, insisted that the “strawberry chalk, when slowly poured, released a formidable complex of flavours that provided an enticing contrast to its particulate texture”. The banana formula (a proteinaceous gel) was “sweet as ice-wine but too cloying to provide sufficient counterweight to its overwhelming viscosity; immediate but unforgettable”. Further, “a crisp Frascati could be politely paired” with the strawberry formula whereas the “tropical” gel required being “pummeled into submission beneath the rugged musculature of a proper English bitter”.
Long familiar with the courtroom when alive, Mr Vegan’s estate will face some daunting legal challenges for the foreseeable future. To satisfy legal requirements Mr. Vegan’s disrespected but often read blog, “Mock-Worthy”, has been removed from the web until further notice. A motion to ban the reporting and publication of his murder trial is now before the courts.
Mr. Vegan’s family eagerly anticipate the commencement of their annual Lisbon vacation this Monday while Herr Doktor continues his struggle with multiple addictions. Solicitors will attend to Mr. Vegan’s burial and estate. There will be no memorial service.
Born Heinrich Gunther Ott in 1966 in Norval Ontario, Angry Vegan died in Winnipeg on April 17, 2015. Aged 49yrs.
Survived by many, loved by few.
Herr Doktor
By nature contrarian, Angry Vegan resisted editorial expectations and developed an approach to restaurant reviews which exposed the bourgeois values inherent in food and drink culture: “The basis of Food and Drink writing is the force of one’s honesty to make vulnerable those who have something to hide”. Mr. Vegan began his career in an act of culinary defiance. He declared himself a dietary vegan, legally changed his name, resigned from cooking school then began to publish terse reviews which captured the ethos of his dining experience. At war with the Food and Drinks community he targeted other reviewers, clientele, menu and wine list wordings, and restaurant ambiance. On occasion, he was known to assess the food.
In his last months, Mr. Vegan wrote reviews about the various nutritional formulae he ingested through his feeding tube. Dictated to Herr Doktor, these articles were submitted to the “Convalescing Courier”, the hospital administration’s monthly newsletter and printed in the December 2014 through March 2015 editions. Mr. Vegan, whose upper digestive tract was bypassed and whose sense of taste had been nullified by medications, insisted that the “strawberry chalk, when slowly poured, released a formidable complex of flavours that provided an enticing contrast to its particulate texture”. The banana formula (a proteinaceous gel) was “sweet as ice-wine but too cloying to provide sufficient counterweight to its overwhelming viscosity; immediate but unforgettable”. Further, “a crisp Frascati could be politely paired” with the strawberry formula whereas the “tropical” gel required being “pummeled into submission beneath the rugged musculature of a proper English bitter”.
Long familiar with the courtroom when alive, Mr Vegan’s estate will face some daunting legal challenges for the foreseeable future. To satisfy legal requirements Mr. Vegan’s disrespected but often read blog, “Mock-Worthy”, has been removed from the web until further notice. A motion to ban the reporting and publication of his murder trial is now before the courts.
Mr. Vegan’s family eagerly anticipate the commencement of their annual Lisbon vacation this Monday while Herr Doktor continues his struggle with multiple addictions. Solicitors will attend to Mr. Vegan’s burial and estate. There will be no memorial service.
Born Heinrich Gunther Ott in 1966 in Norval Ontario, Angry Vegan died in Winnipeg on April 17, 2015. Aged 49yrs.
Survived by many, loved by few.
Herr Doktor