American Eccentric: I Like Killing Flies
Kenny Shopsin
I love Eccentrics - people for whom the present is another story. A good eccentric is a Zen Marvel. And journalistically noteworthy. There is no truth to the common belief that eccentrics are dysfunctional. They’re not useless simply because they’re of no use to the economy. That's the beauty of them. They're self-contained. A variant of existence itself. They function like artworks, nests of fascinating particulars. Enough of them have been coughed up into my life (you know who you are) that I feel I have nothing to complain of. I've let them take the wheel on my ride for a spell. You've heard of found footage? To me, a life well-lived is an assemblage of found personalities. It's my belief one should collect personalities more fervently than objects.
They can be found anywhere in the world - in big cities and small rural areas. American eccentrics, however, have a unique flavor in a culture with so many different ethnicities and nationalities residing in one place. It means you get a more earthbound type of eccentric, one whose ways are informed by the pluralism of this particular society. Even a grouchy liberal anti-Nationalist like me, who opts for entertainments and artworks that would criticize and mock this country, can get behind the beauty, the genius of a system with endless potential for enrichment from this coalescence of cultures, faiths and ideologies. When it works, nothing can touch it.
As an elder millennial, I’m admittedly also obsessed with food and cooking. In its own way, American cooking can amorphously embody this pluralism. So the intersection of eccentricity, food and the philosophical search for meaning in life at the heart of Matt Mahurin’s 2004 documentary, I Like Killing Flies, really hits all the right buttons for me. The owner and cook at Shopsin’s General Store in New York, Kenny Shopsin, is an American Eccentric par excellence. His Greenwich Village grocery outlet, which over the years slowly morphed into a 34-seat diner, was notorious for its Customer is Not Always Right attitude. It’s the kind of business that could only exist in this country, culinarily and philosophically.
Kenny Shopsin, with his ex-flower child appearance, eternally dressed in a headband over his Jerry Garcia haircut and red suspenders over his Shopsin’s Grocery t-shirt (which, like a Mad Magazine cover, can fold in on itself to spell the phrase, “Eat Me”), runs a restaurant with a lot of rules. These rules are not arbitrary. They’re based on his views on life and business. Those who can stomach them, so to speak, are the kinds of customers he wants to cook for. Feeding people is a sacred activity to him. Like an actor in need of the right director to coax out a deeply truthful performance, this cook doesn’t care to practice his craft for people who don’t appreciate it.
This may seem elitist and judgemental. Who does think he is? Isn’t one person’s money as green as anyone else’s? But Kenny doesn’t care about money. He needs to enjoy what he’s doing, even as he’s a misanthrope and vulgarian with a massive chip on his shoulder.
People are turned off by him. But I think individuals like him are the most American citizens to be found. He is stubbornly devoted to doing what he loves in the only way it can bring him joy. Those who don’t like it can take their business elsewhere. Our constitution guarantees the Pursuit of Happiness. How many of us are actually actively pursuing happiness for a living rather than seeing it as an outcome of the work itself?
Parties greater than four are not allowed at Shopsin’s. No cell phone use is permitted in the restaurant. Kenny does not alter recipes or do special orders. He throws people out who complain or break a rule, as in being a party of three entering with a party of two. Kenny won’t make something if he doesn’t feel like it, if it’s too much work at a late point in a busy day. No two people in a group can order the same dish. If one is incapable of ordering for themself, such that they have to imitate someone else, they can’t get served because as he claims, that dish is not what they really wanted.
Such people - “the review-trotters” as Kenny calls them - don’t know their own minds: “I realize they’re essentially at the wrong restaurant.” Kenny is asked why the diner is getting more and more people of that sort. “The country’s going that way,” he glumly responds.
We see that most of the reasons people get kicked out have to do with ignorance. It’s not exactly their fault. They’re just being themselves, which works for them everywhere else, but not at Shopsin’s. The cook observes that people are so used to getting what they want wherever they go, they have no way of understanding that someone is telling them they can’t have what they want.
The old Shopsin’s
These rules are not about the petulant, demanding customer. They’re there because they don’t work for Kenny. The no duel ordering within one group rule has to do with the cook not wanting to start all over and cook the same thing again: “Order something else!” Kenny makes no effort to conceal his hatred for people who can’t think for themselves and such people are not who he wants as a customer. He looks at himself as helping such people along in their development. He could kick them out, but by making them order something else, he feels he’s “giving them a chance to explore something basic within themselves - what they feel like eating.”
Ever since Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi character became a part of the culture, it’s been impossible for customers - especially the many, many that Kenny Shopsin has turned away - not to compare the brilliant and weird cook to the terrifying soup purveyor who refused to sell to people who did not observe his strict rules. But people patronizing the establishment on the show (where the cook pre-made all his soups) had to behave rigidly and formally in order to get what they wanted.
While Shopsin’s atmosphere may have seemed chilly to outsiders, there was no regular crowd there. It’s just that people had to be comfortable both with the cook’s loud vulgarity and their own unease with performing public anonymity in that bullshit way that all of us do everyday. “You have to be willing to be who you really are. And that scares a lot of people,” says Kenny, who at the time of filming had been in the location 32 years. You must prove to the owner, who’s also the cook, that you are worthy to feed.
Of course, it can be hard to make up one’s mind at Shopsin’s as the six page menu contains around 900 items (that are cooked from scratch), including 200 soups. The dishes themselves are wild arrangements of ingredients. We’re inclined to think that too large a menu means most of the ingredients won’t be fresh. But Shopsin’s menu is big on permutation, with the matrix of ingredients that each reside in hundreds of different dishes. The confidence of the cook (Kenny probably would hate the term “chef”) says a lot about how he regards his job.
One of six pages of the menu at Shopsin’s. Look at this.
No information about the dishes on the menu beyond a title, which is a blunt rundown of the major elements so as to minimize confusion: Turkey Spinach Cashew Brown Rice Burrito. Pecan Chicken Wild Rice Enchiladas. Chicken Tortilla Avocado Soup. Portabella Mushrooms With Gnocchi and Cashews. Taco Fried Steak. Okra Chowder with Date Nut Rice. “Hanoi Hoppin John” With Shrimp. A salad including green curry, blue cheese, coconut, and roasted pistachios called the “Thai Cobb.”
Shopsin appears to be a genius at combining seemingly disharmonious ingredients in ways that probably hadn’t been thought of, boldly mixing different global and provincial cuisines and adding his own original touches. Since the dawn of culinary practice, certain ingredients have been said to go with certain ingredients. If you follow those rules, the dish ends up being ordinary, despite being a good combination that tastes good. So the mind of this short order savant to deny the basic rules and combine things that would, in all probability, not go well together and have it wind up delicious is a task befitting an eccentric and only an eccentric. There just aren’t many dishes that are unique, avant-garde, and yet delicious in this world.
Mahurin’s simple film observes Kenny and the Shopsin family in action. His wife Eve, also tough and stubborn but ever the optimist, keeps her husband focused. Their five children, who also work at the restaurant, bicker constantly with their father, who they admit has so much gravitas that he wins arguments with them even when he’s not right. The restaurant is like a rural community - not totally unwelcoming, but so suspicious of formality and any trace of pretension that outsiders may feel they’re receiving a chilly reception. A real estate agent who winds up helping Kenny get into his new space admits he felt uncomfortable coming in because of the cook’s open contempt of bottom line, big money types like him. He states that his job involves “helping rich people get richer,” and that his apprehension in going in there had to do with their “reputation in the neighborhood.”
This is an establishment where you trust that the cook has these ingredients together for a reason. That operating in this specific, rule-obsessed way enables him to do his best work and that your money does not entitle you to the opinion that you know better than he does. A level one guest would think that Kenny hates his customers. A level two guest looks closer and sees that what he hates is publicity, hype, needless fuss, groupthink, culinary arrogance, indirect communication and wasted time. It’s already an adversarial relationship with the customers in the restaurant business and there is simply no time for any of that, he explains.
He hates being adored, encourages people not to come to the restaurant, and affirms angry customers when they call to complain. He doesn’t want to be busy to the point where he’s not enjoying the act of cooking. In one scene, he proudly shows off the burner in his kitchen in which he drilled holes to allow for more gas, giving him a larger flame that can cook things faster - increasing profits by squashing cooking times. Everything in this world can be replaced, except for time wasted. Kenny’s quest to manage it rather than let it manage him, the way he manages and controls the flames of his grill, points to his existential slant on the task ahead of him. His great opponent is not the food, the customers or the clock. It is himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hpuEfdNDlY
Note the way Kenny - who hated publicity - gets right to work the moment he steps on stage. It’s safe to assume he’s nervous but this guest spot, but I have to give it up to Conan for making the whole thing funny without insulting the lost-in-a-world-of-his-own cook. Shopsin does look to be a good sport in reproducing his famous Macaroni & Cheese Pancakes for a live audience.
A product of intensive Fruedian psychoanalysis, Kenny obsesses over the machinations of his own mind while he cooks. His ability to pontificate deeply on life while cooking wild, eclectic food from a menu that size quickly is frankly extraordinary. We see in the documentary that Kenny’s worldview - very much bound up in a form of Jewish fatalism associated with New York - has been shaped (or rocked, rather) by the events of September 11th and their aftermath.
He seems like a miserable crank, until you realize what he’s saying is informed by a deep sense of realism sprung from his experience. The great joy of I Like Killing Flies is in seeing how that philosophy and Shopsin’s cooking as a way of thinking with food inform one another. It’s a relationship that is coterminous rather than dialectical. In the movie for example, there is a philosophical reason he adds coffee to his chili.
The owner and cook, who can often be found sleeping in a booth in the front window.
If the movie feels claustrophobic, it may be because there looks to be almost no room for people to move around in that kitchen, such that Mahurin has to hold the end of a tiny lavalier mic up to Kenny to get decent audio. Whether that was because Kenny refused to wear a lavalier mic on his body while cooking or because there was no room to operate a boom mic in that space is anyone’s guess. You never use a lav mic to interview someone because it looks stupid. But the director literally holds the business end of that piece of recording equipment that people strap to their bodies up to his subject, which is an insane thing to see in a nonfiction film.
The kitchen looks to be full of Kenny’s improvised solutions to equipment that’s half broken and barely functioning. So Mahurin too is having to improvise solutions apparently on the fly, just like the cook, who at one point takes a banana boat, adds bananas, and then uses an ice cream scoop to top it with pulled pork and coleslaw for The Barbeque Banana Split.
Let’s not forget Shopsin’s vulgarian nature in describing himself as “a fat, old, nasty Jew,” and he repeatedly proves the “nasty” part. Separating eggs in his hands he has the confidence to say to the camera: “This is kind of like feeling somebody’s pussy up. You get to put this thing in your hand that has this, like, viscous feel to it.......it’s not bad at all.” He talks of young people who grow up to be the criminals of Wall Street for whom he’s making breakfast, who go on to “slaughter the Third World nations today. And he’s gonna have chocolate chip pancakes for fuckin breakfast. Good for him.”
One diner interviewed in the film recounts an instance where Kenny told her he would only make a certain dish for her if she showed him her breasts. “Most worthwhile flash I’ve ever done,” she says. On the pulled pork banana split dish, Kenny calls the combination, “just like putting your dick in the wrong hole, you know? There’s like a thrill to it. There’s a friction that occurs when you put an ingredient in an improper dish. That’s the basis of all fusion cooking is that there’s a sexual friction caused by putting the wrong food in the wrong place. And sometimes it works.”
The “Blisters on my Sisters” at Shopsin’s - a mix of Cuban black bean soup, rice, roma tomatoes and jalapeno peppers served on warmed corn tortillas and arugula and topped with eggs sunny side up. Named after a lyric in the Frank Zappa song, “Jewish Princess.”
The bulk of the film follows the Shopsin family as they relocate their restaurant to Essex Market in the lower east side after over three decades. The move is a nightmare, with Kenny the father berating his sons for not being there to help as they’d promised, and then adjusting to the layout of his new space - one with a more open kitchen and dining room that he must force himself to love. The scene where he argues with the old owner about the price and conditions of the building shows his humanity. He admits he was wrong and apologizes for “being an asshole.” He is not so carried away with himself as to be overbearing and impossible.
The Shopsin family struggle to get everything together even as it’s observed that Kenny is still coming up with new recipes for the menu right up to the last minute. Because Kenny’s aversion to Capitalist notions of success ensures that he has no desire to expand, open other locations or oversee a restaurant empire, he can only do so much business and is at peace with the idea of never being a rich man. Filmed over a three year period, the design of the movie itself, which looks to have been made for pennies, mirrors the Shopsin family’s hardscrabble approach to getting things done.
The new Shopsin’s
It’s not just that the mind of this particular American eccentric is a raging fire, unable to stop calculating and creating in a period of inactivity. It’s that doing so would negate the entire purpose of his existence. He is using that griddle, those deep fryers and modified super burners to get to a larger truth through the experience of his work. Running that restaurant is a condition of his inner life. In my hometown, two of the more notable Chicagoan eccentrics I can think of - photographer Vivian Maier and musician/artist Wesley Willis - seemed similarly possessed by a marrow-deep itch to do what they did. Kenny Shopsin explains that he has to create to “neutralize the venom I produce in my dreams.”
One can imagine Maier or Willis articulating something similar. The act of creation allows for the mind and its complicated methods of protecting and sabotaging us, to go away. This is when artistic expression becomes something more than just making something. It can be a conduit for thinking clearly, with the potential for speaking to others with the same seemingly indefinable ailments. Kenny’s joy of doing what he loves on his terms and the common experience of the people enjoying their meals as part of a community: perhaps this is how we can approach truth in a Democratic society. Not some impossible idea of Absolute Truth (which has nothing to do with Democracy), but that this cook’s search for truth is rooted in having things in common with his community, while engaged in a practice that, in its minutia, is teaching him all about life.
Two worthwhile documentaries on uniquely Chicago eccentrics who also were madly self-possessed by their respective crafts: Finding Vivian Maier (2013) and Wesley Willis’s Joyrides (2008)
For me, this makes Kenny a model of American pragmatism- perhaps the only philosophy Democracy can produce. In a country whose lack of a deep tradition of philosophy (which is not to say in the least we’ve not produced great philosophers and thinkers) can be attributed to many things - a persistent anti-intellectualism, a focus on practical pursuits or a desire to break away from the past and start something new - pragmatism may be just the term for encapsulating an American approach to the subject. Philosophy not as some cloistered, intellectual exercise rooted in abstract European ideas about truth and beauty, but a dialogue with poetry, music, literature or in Kenny Shopsin’s case, cooking.
Enlightenment thinkers like René Descartes and Immanuel Kant, who attempted to introduce certainty into philosophy in the late 17th century essentially asked the question, “How can we know what’s true? Or at least that our thoughts are on solid ground?” American pragmatists like William James, Charles Sanders Peirce and later John Dewey argued (to drastically simplify if I may here) that we can’t. All we have is conversation and experience. This is pragmatism: a view of the world centered on practice. The things we know are inseparable from the things we do. That these activities enable us to reach our full potential as human beings. A continuous cultural commentary that attempts to explain America, through any number of expressive mediums, to itself.
Food is one way we try to understand ourselves and Kenny’s exploration of the mysteries and vagaries of life resides in his dishes. Cooking, for him, is a form of thinking. He’s like John Coltrane, who used jazz to try to scratch away at deeper, more profound spiritual discoveries about life and existence. It’s said that a successful diner sits atop five pillars as far as ingredients are concerned: coffee, flour, butter, sugar and eggs. Master the use of these and one can be successful. Coltrane had his sax. Shopsin has his spatula and these five “elementals.”
We’re ready to write him off as an amusing, potty-mouthed griddle jockey with a deplorable excess of Big Apple attitude. But pay close attention to what he’s doing while he’s talking about assessing the meaning of his existence. He’s a genius - able to improvise endlessly with his ingredients and techniques. The way he creates a “glazed pancake” by heating up a spatula directly on the burner and then smearing it on sugar he spoons onto the cake to harden it (I’ve impressed my own guests with this trick). Or the way he’s able to turn anything into a soup. It is not the presentation and prestige of the chef that makes his food work, nor is it the hyper-fussy sourcing of top-shelf ingredients - a practice that he scoffs at. It is simply and honestly his skill that makes all the difference. A style of cooking that is imaginative, witty, and endlessly inventive.
I’m not ashamed to say I own Kenny Shopsin’s cookbook. Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin is the most fascinating, absurd and in some ways infuriating cookbook I’ve ever come across. There are recipes (which eschew fussy maxims about sourcing and preparation) from Kenny’s menu bookended with a mixture of typical lewd observations and philosophical tidbits regarding them in nearly every section. A sample from a section on making hamburgers: “Try to resist the impulse to press down on the patties with a spatula while they are cooking. This not only presses the juices right out of them, it also compresses the meat, and that combination defeats the point of everything you have done up to this point. I still do it from time to time. I can’t help myself. I guess it’s a lot like masturbating. I feel really good while I’m doing it, but then I feel bad afterward.”
In a country where the act of “selling out” doesn’t seem to be the serious accusation it once was, it is deeply important for this cook to hold on to the principles that are guiding him. He questions the morality of serving people food that he admits is loaded with butter and sugar, rationalizing that it’s what grown adults are choosing and it makes them happy. In fact, everything about Kenny’s philosophy goes against whatever the commonly held belief shared by the masses tends to be. There is ample evidence of this cook's delight in being a contrarian but Kenny’s view of things has always sees him finding happiness in betting in the opposite direction of public opinion. If I have a soft spot for miserable cranks who hate everything (whom I think people need to treat better - some have done some uniquely amazing things), it’s because in my life, I’ve also been at a distance from mass tastes, trends, views, attitudes and habits.
Even as one gets the sense that this particular eccentric is someone who, at heart, would like to be loved by the masses he claims to despise for all the right or wrong reasons, his famous and oft-quoted speech near the end of the movie (which I’ve attached here rather than quoting it), despite sounding a rotten attitude with which to raise a child, is a response to the pressure of always having to perform the character of an exceptional person and how phony and depleting that is. To strive for good, from a place of admitted lowness. I guess I must deeply identify with this view. An assertion can’t be pessimistic if it’s honest:
What was going on in the US when this film was made - the controversial Iraq War, the pedophile priest scandals, and the rising tide of white collar corporate crimes - informs Kenny’s outbursts. Had the film been made five years earlier or later, they could just as well be informed by the maladies of those respective periods.
Late in the movie, just after the move, there’s a tragic development, changing the Shopsin family dynamic forever. But Kenny & Company saunter on. Another day of cooking, searching for meaning in grilled chicken, pancakes, sliced avocado and mayonnaise. The eccentric cook is having trouble locating things in his new kitchen, despite having more room to move around and better equipment. He mentions the feeling of being totally immersed in what he’s doing, zoned out as he and his loyal employee Jose, are involved in the details of what they’re doing. That this is the elusive halcyon seduction, the cleansing peace of what he’s doing - “better than a good night’s sleep” - that makes him worthy. That moment we’re privileged to have, perhaps only once in our lifetime, when the wheels leave the ground, and what we are doing has begun to resemble music. We channel the sublime.
Prior to this, the cook is shown gathering ingredients for the day’s work. During this mundane quotidian chore, Kenny saunters up and doles out the most succinct and perfect summary of what constitutes an attempt at making a fulfilling life that I’ve ever heard. It recalls Camus’ idea of Sisyphus not as a pathetic model of futility, but in the manner of his capacity for finding meaning in a given pursuit:
“The way that I choose to function is to pick an arbitrary stupid goal, become totally involved in it, and pursue it with vigor. And what happens to you in that pursuit, is your life. Understand that they’re stupid but not stupid to pursue because it’s the only way you can inject meaning into your life. Otherwise you’re left with this great......why bother?”
Immediately preceding that: “Where the fuck is the marinara?”
The Shopsin Family
I Like Killing Flies currently is available to view for free on Youtube. I also recommend Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin for upping your comfort food game.
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