Ariel Cheung, a food columnist at the Chicago Tribune, did not find my faux profile of her funny. This is her huffy response to it: "Hey there, I’m uncomfortable with that google doc you just shared. I don’t appreciate my name being incorporated in a work of fiction without my consent."
If you missed it, here is the profile I wrote and emailed to her --
A new year demands a new profile. So I have provided one for you. At no charge. I hope you enjoy it.
You always know a journalist by the size of their feet.
That’s because they get larger the longer they’ve been schlepping about, hunting down sources and interviewing world-shakers and salt shakers.
You try wandering around all day searching for lukewarm coffee you can sip and make faces about, just to prove you’re a dyed-in-the-wool reporter, and see how big and flat your feet get!
But that’s not the case with journalist Ariel Chung. Despite many long years on the beat for newspapers such as The News-Register, The Dayton Daily News, USA Today, The Sun Times, and The Chicago Tribune, her feet remain petite.
That’s because she has been trying to get out of journalism ever since she first got into it. She actually wanted to be a saucier in some small Parisien bistro in Montmartre. Whipping up a pale bechamel or golden veloute for heure du dejeuner customers.
But her reporting skills have been so spot-on that editors resort to powerful blandishments such as gargantuan hiring bonuses and a lifetime supply of Bic pens to keep her coming back to the Fourth Estate.
An Avalanche of Accolades
Every time she writes a story it automatically wins some kind of prize. The Prix de Guerre, a Pulitzer, the Order of the Garter, or Victoria Cross. She’s had to rent a garage out in Kankakee just to store ‘em all in.
As a third grader she went undercover in the teacher’s lounge to discover that the impoverished educators were siphoning off rubber bands to sell on the black market just to make ends meet. Her story, published in the Chalkboard Chatterer, blew the lid off of the dirty politics of the local school board that kept teacher salaries below the level of sharecroppers. Six members of the board subsequently committed seppuku.
But Her Heart Connected Only With Cordon Bleu
A life of fame and fortune was hers to grasp. She needed merely to obtain a notepad and a pencil, and then begin to write. Newspaper publishers salivated at the mention of her name. But Ariel had other plans. She saw herself wielding a spatula, not a quill. Deftly turning out crepes suzette, not exposes. But a second cousin once removed suffers from a rare genetic disorder – Aquagenic Urticaria. Treatment is a long drawn out and expensive process, so Ariel agreed to pay the medical bills. Her dreams of a Michelin five-star place of her own were put on hold, and she now aggressively goes after malefactors of crummy cuisine for The Chicago Tribune.
The Scourge of Criminal Cuisine
Chefs who cut corners in the Chicagoland area tremble at the mention of her moniker.
Do they adulterate their saffron with turmeric? She’s on to their little game.
Perhaps they don’t scruple to substitute oleo margarine for Irish butter in a Dutch Baby. She falls on them like a ton of Swedes.
Her keen nose and discerning palate roots out canned soup casseroles masquerading as haute cuisine. No snob she, at church basement suppers she digs into a bowl of beanie weinie with all the gusto of a longshoreman. Her passion for deep dish pizza knows no bounds. She travels to the ends of the earth (or at least as far as Waukeegan) searching for the perfect farmhouse chicken and dumplings. Cruel in her denunciation of slipshod stewing, she is equally generous in her praise of simple straightforward American cooking.
In Her Spare Time . . .
She raises heritage reindeer lichen in an old rathskeller she is currently remodeling.
And . . . she’s always dreaming of that day when she can slip away from all the sturm und drang of journalistic renown to retire to that little white cottage in Maine. Where she’ll serve gluten-free apple fritters to wandering gypsies . . .
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