Sideswipe: August 20: Tasteless canapé?

Looks delicious and contagious.

A coronavirus-inspired canapé is spurring backlash at a restaurant in Chicago. The snack at Alinea is a coconut custard with Szechuan peppercorn and freeze-dried raspberries and it generated controversy after a photo of it was posted on Instagram: "Unbelievable," Dave Baker wrote when he shared the image on Instagram.  "This isn't ok… this isn't 'cute.' This is shameful. How unbelievably disrespectful to anyone who's life has been lost. I don't care how you spin it, this is unacceptable."

Alinea restaurant co-owner Nick Kokonas repeatedly defended the dish saying they were not being flippant…"Art is often meant to provoke discomfort, conversation, and awareness. This is no different," he wrote. "This is not disrespectful. This is not 'pro Trump'. This is not making light of the situation. This is manifesting and making visible what we all cannot see and reminding patrons, right as they arrive, that we are aware that this is still with us and will be for some time. What would be disrespectful would be to serve shots of booze on the patio and not acknowledge what is happening to our country."

Commenters were not convinced. "I think I'm mostly just blown away that given the everything that's happened in the last 7 months, people cannot check their ego long enough to say, 'You know what, you're right — probably a bad look to make food in the shape of a coronavirus cell' and instead vehemently defend their right to provoke instead of having an ounce of respect for the victims of this pandemic," one wrote.

Riffing on 2020

Sued for a kiss goes viral

A personal trainer is suing his date for £138,000 ($277,000) after claiming he got a cold sore after she kissed him. Martin Ashley Conway, 45, claims he has been left 'traumatised', with his life and work seriously damaged, after catching the herpes simplex cold sore virus through kissing date Jovanna Lovelace, in her 30s, during a romantic meet up in London last year.
Conway claims his date was 'negligent' in kissing him when she had an 'active cold sore' and owed him a duty of care to protect him from contracting a 'virus for life'. He said he developed flu-like symptoms and mouth ulcers and had to be rushed into hospital after suffering a panic attack and left him needing therapy. But he has been told by a judge that he must prove at trial later in the year it was her that gave him the cold sores.

Did you know?

1. The top layer of the M6 toll road in the UK is made from 2,500,000 pulped Mills & Boon romance novels which were added to the concrete as a sound absorber.
2. In Finland, they have 'National Sleepy Head Day', where the last person in a family to wake up is thrown into a lake or the sea by the rest of the family.
3. Only 3 per cent of Americans choose to marry someone of the opposite political party.