A Hilarious Excerpt From McSweeney's Reviews of New Food

Brazilian Nutmeat
Submitted by E.C. Bachner

I had savored the world's most delicious and spectacular foods—glistening mangosteens, rambutans, litchis piled on plates in Arabia like the genitals of dead gods, cheeseburgers from the Tastee Diner in Cambridge that tasted of everything America had ever wished to be, and really frigging great pizza. I turned to raw food because my face was wrecked and I had failed in all of my dreams and, honestly, I just wanted to be thinner, but also, I have always been convinced that nothing vegan could really ever be as gross as such comestibles as Dinty Moore Beef Stew or a Subway sub with double tuna.

I invited Dave to take me to the raw-food restaurant, because I wanted to impress upon him that my face was wrecked, I had failed in all of my dreams, and he had swallowed the sweetest years of my life. The place was eerily quiet. And the people eating there weren't thin. Dave ordered the "generous portion of our smoky, winter-spiced nutmeat topped with a sweet cherry glaze and served over fresh spinach." I happily tucked into my sea-vegetable salad and stevia drink, and Dave got this look on his face somewhere between the look he gets when he's had too much coffee liqueur or smashed his hand into the car door and the way he looks at his last traveler's check. He looked like every bone in his face hurt. "This has to be poop," he whispered. And he left.