The Lost Jokes of Robert F. Moss

I crack myself up

By Robert F. Moss

Thanks to ham-fisted editing Charleston diners have no idea what the mackerel dish in the upper right corner really is
Thanks to ham-fisted editing Charleston diners have no idea what the mackerel dish in the upper right corner really is

Whenever I’m working on a restaurant review or a light-hearted food feature, I find myself throwing in a bunch of wisecracks and dumb jokes in the first draft. With some, I know right away they are clunkers, and I immediately delete them. Others I pare out as distracting or just plain weak as I go back and revise the draft.

But there’s always one or two that make me laugh out loud right there at my desk. And I giggle again when I’m re-reading and revising. And I think, this is just so lame and stupid, there’s no way my editor is going to let it through. But I leave it in anyway to see what happens.

In my review of Estadio, which ran this week in the Charleston City Paper, I included one such turkey. The published review describes one dish as follows:

Equally brilliant is the "mackerel con potato chip" ($3). A dollop of creme fraiche laced with bits of mackerel rests atop . . .

The original, unbowdlerized draft read like this:

Equally brilliant is the “mackerel con potato chip” ($3), which roughly translates to “mackerel with potato chip.” A dollop of creme fraiche laced with . . .

I’m still giggling over that one. You can thank America’s editors—Mary Scott Hardaway Sam Spence, in this case—for saving you from this and many, many more literary offenses.

But just wait until I release the Complete and Unexpurgated Works of Robert F. Moss . . .

Update 01/10/2020 1:55 PM: after this piece was first posted, City Paper editor Sam Spence fessed up it was him and not Mary Scott Hardaway who struck the offending wisecrack.

About the Author

Robert F. Moss

Robert F. Moss is the Contributing Barbecue Editor for Southern Living magazine, Restaurant Critic for the Post & Courier, and the author of numerous books on Southern food and drink, including The Lost Southern Chefs, Barbecue: The History of an American Institution, Southern Spirits: 400 Years of Drinking in the American South, and Barbecue Lovers: The Carolinas. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.