#his design is a soup of multiple refs

[cadoodledoodleydoo]

▸၊၊||၊ 'Cause you look so good Walking your dog in the neighborhood I said, you look so good You should be a model, yeah you know you should ⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎

[bellacatt-art]

Hello, Harry Potter/Marauders fandom! You've been summoned! 💕

Okay so heres my old OC, Dulcinea! :) In the Golden Trio timeline, she'd be an adult, and she'd be teaching at Hogwarts, but this is her reference from when she was a student there! :D

Some fun facts about her:

♡ She's really good at potions and stuff, but Slughorn never took much of a liking to her, he found her much too loud and chatty.

♡ She was really close friends with Lily and they bonded quite well!

♡ She's a year younger than the Marauders, and although she never found out about Remus being a werewolf until later, she often caught the four of them creeping around the castle and, unlike Severus, was quite fascinated by them! On multiple occasions, she asked if she could join them to wherever they were going, but James was always incredibly quick to decline.

♡ She took a liking to Remus and felt drawn to his calm energy. The two often hung out at the library together and bonded over literature.

♡ Despite being very enthusiastic about it, she's horrible at broom riding. She can't be trusted on one due to her nature of somehow getting the broom to fly way too high and crash everywhere. Sometimes it's quite confusing just why she can't figure it out! :")

♡ She was born on January 27th, placing her under the Aquarius sign :3

♡ Her favourite food is spicy bean soup, as she says "the taste of it feels like home"

♡ When she got older, she could often be seen helping younger students find their way around the castle (especially since the staircases get quite tricky) :)

Sorry for the sudden OC dump, I'm just really happy with how her design looks and I hope you'll all like her too! ^-^

Please lmk what you think of my character and if you'd like to see more of her! I'll post her adult ref for the Golden Trio era soon as well haha! :)

[angeygirl]

which of your oc's is your favourite? :)

This post actually reminded me that I forgot to post Edward's ref sheet, so thanks for that :)

Anyway, Edward is this guys who looks like a crazy old man even thought he's only like 53 who went insane because of ghosts or maybe a concussion, nobody knows. (ooh spooky) So he switches between being a nice, confused guy and chaotic and paranoid. It's not like he has multiple personalities or anything, just extreme versions of the same person. Sometimes he gets very sad because he realizes how messed up his life got but eventually he forgets about that which is kinda upsetting to the three people who know him. Also he works in a soup factory full of ghosts

And he can see the future and sense supernatural stuff but nobody can tell if its real or he's hallucinating

He's fun to write because he's so inconsistent, and since he's been through so much he can be written angsty or silly. I also think he's one of my favorite designs, since I love drawing fluffy hair and sharp angles :)

Funny enough, I made him back in 2018 so he was in no way inspired by Purple Guy even though they're both purple suit wearing lunatics with notable eyes and creepy smiles

[danhung]

Jay Rayner embarasses self in search of internet fame

There appears to be a review going viral delivering a scathing account of aspiring Pete Wells’ impersonator Jay Rayner’s dining experience at Le Cinq. The review, however, is an example of restaurant critic-ing at its worst, and while multi-course fine dining may be losing its luster in our gram-obsessed food culture, the article better attests the decline in relevance of professional food critique as opposed to a genuine experience at Le Cinq. Jay Rayner Sean Spicer’s an attempt at Anthony Bourdain’s unrestrained bluntness and Pete Wells’ cool-kid disaffection, and reveals himself rube. He substitutes vulgarity for substance and sacrifices his credibility to pander to the ignorant. 

I had the opportunity to dine at Le Cinq in April 2015 just after Chef Christian Le Squer took over the kitchen and installed the current menu. I’ll admit the price tag for a meal at Le Cinq is galling, and it’s reasonable to question whether any meal is worth such so much, but Jay Rayner clearly approached this review in bad faith (or he’s a remarkably ignorant diner). 

Let’s go to the play by play:

There is only one thing worse than being served a terrible meal: being served a terrible meal by earnest waiters who have no idea just how awful the things they are doing to you are.

Jay wastes no time exposing his inspiration for this click bait. Pete Wells also opened his viral review of Per Se with a complaint about service. Except, Pete went to Per Se three times and had a legitimate complaint about consistently nonchalant service. Jay meanwhile decides to denigrate the professionals at Le Cinq with minimal evidence through the rest of his review. 

To provide an actual anecdote from Le Cinq, I’d describe the waiters as brusque in a way only the French can get away with. That said, they executed a near flawless service a la russe with courses for my wife and I served so the plates touched the tables simultaneously and never a napkin left attended. Moreover, adjacent to our table, I watched them treat a foreign couple and their child, who clearly did not appreciate the formality of the dining establishment, with completely equal care not once making them feel out of place. The service at Le Cinq was truly impeccable in a way I’ve experienced at few other restaurants, and whether you appreciate it or not, part of the price tag. 

And so, to the flagship Michelin three-star restaurant of the George V Hotel in Paris, or the scene of the crime as I now like to call it. 

I wanted to call this out because Le Cinq was a two-star Michelin restaurant when I dined there. It received a third star in February 2016 and retained it this year. While there are criticisms of the Michelin reviewers and no objective measure of how stars are assigned, one star generally means the food is very good in its category. To get two stars, you need both great food and service. To get three, great food, service, and “something extra”. In Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, he actually quotes renowned chef, Scott Bryan, as saying he doesn’t want a third star because he’s not interested in being that creative. Keep that in mind as Jay Rayner tries to condescend the very creativity that Chef Le Squer was rewarded with a third star for. 

Irritated by reader complaints about the cost of eating out I decided to visit a classic Parisian gastro-palace, as a reality check. I imagined it less as review, and more as an observational piece, full of moments of joy and bliss, of the sort only stupid amounts of cash can buy.

The classic line of the prejudiced, state upfront that you’re not judging exactly what you’re judging. As a professional restaurant critic, Mr. Rayner ought to be well aware of what “stupid amounts of cash” can buy. Let’s be honest, food is food. Ingredients can only be so local and so fresh, and to some extent, put together in only so many ways. A huge portion of the expense of fine dining is the theatrics, but Mr. Rayner appears to have no appreciation for it whatsoever, or at least no interest in objectively recounting it to his readers. It’s clear he intends this piece as red meat for the very readers he’s supposedly “irritated” by.

There’s a little gilt here and there, to remind us that this is a room designed for people for whom guilt is unfamiliar. It shouts money much as football fans shout at the ref. 

This is the restaurant in a Four Seasons Hotel for which the Four Seasons brand wasn’t luxurious enough so they named it after a King. What was Jay expecting? The meeting house for the Jacobin Club? 

There’s a stool for the lady’s handbag. Well, of course there is.

Yes, because that is part of the whimsy of dining in an establishment predicated on treating you like royalty. You can’t go to a restaurant, wonder about what “stupid amounts of cash can buy”, and then be disappointed that it’s all a little too Marie Antoinette.  

Menus the height of Richard Osman are brought. My female companion, who booked the table, is given one without prices. Waiters look baffled when we protest, but replace it.

Though Jay writes this like a service mistake, this is called a “ladies menu.” It’s an anachronism, but it is part of the theatrics of Le Cinq, a modern take on Louis XIV opulence - so yes handbag stools, menus without prices for guests, and waiters that pull out a lady’s chair are part of the experience. Totally understand if you’re not excited to indulge nostalgia for bourgeois and patriarchy, but then why are you at Le Cinq in the George V Hotel? 

At the end there are some pleasant enough chocolates. At these prices there should be.

By “pleasant enough chocolates,” he means a three tier petits fours cart full of homemade marshmallows, bonbons, nougat, and chocolate that would intimidate even Augustus Gloop. This comes after multiple dessert courses and a similarly overflowing cheese cart, attended by an almost too enthusiastic fromager. My wife and I were so stuffed, we asked to have them pack two of everything into a dainty chocolate box to take home (which they gladly obliged). If this is what Jay meant by “at these prices there should be,” then I agree. 

The canapé we are instructed to eat first is a transparent ball on a spoon. It looks like a Barbie-sized silicone breast implant, and is a “spherification”, a gel globe using a technique perfected by Ferran Adrià at El Bulli about 20 years ago.

In another example of Jay’s overreach for effect, spherification was invented in 2003 and improved on through 2005, so I guess 12-14 years rounds to “about 20.” 

Jay’s calculexia aside. He’s clearly straining for fine dining cred by name dropping El Bulli and trying to act like spheres are so over. First, El Bulli was considered one of the greatest restaurants ever and is now closed so why can’t another high end chef pay homage? Second, I’ve only had spheres at other fine dining establishments (and a pickleback in Williamsburg) so I’m not sure this is a disqualifying menu choice. 

This one pops in our mouth to release stale air with a tinge of ginger. My companion winces. “It’s like eating a condom that’s been left lying about in a dusty greengrocer’s,” she says. 

Jay’s version of the Pete Well’s “bong water” description, except it doesn’t come close to being appropriate (in any sense). I’m fairly certain the amuse he’s referring to is a campari and orange “air bag” so for anyone with a palate “greengrocer” is probably the furthest you could be from apt. Moreover, because it’s a “cocktail in a bubble”, it was meant to be served as part of a champagne course (yes, that’s how a meal at Le Cinq starts), a note that both Jay and his knows-what-used-condoms-in-their-mouth-feel-like companion seem to have forgotten. 

Spherifications of various kinds – bursting, popping, deflating, always ill-advised – turn up on many dishes. It’s their trick, their shtick, their big idea. It’s all they have.

This is true, Le Cinq’s schtick is spherifications. I know spheres have almost as bad a rep as foams, but they are a reasonably challenging technique that you don’t see in most conventional restaurants. If all Le Cinq served was expertly prepared french bistro food, Jay would surely be complaining about that given his fixation on price. I, for one, found the spherifications pretty unique - there was the flavored “air bag”, the “soup dumpling” and frozen spheres, all with different textures and structures. It was certainly not a monotonous onslaught of calcium alginate El Bulli copycats. 

My lips purse, like a cat’s arse that’s brushed against nettles.

No one cares about your infantile reactions to food, nor your reliance on vulgar analogies to try to keep us interested because you lost any tasting notes you had from your meal (if you take them at all, I can’t believe you get paid to do work like this). 

I have spent sums like this on restaurant experiences before, and have not begrudged it.

Ah, the “I’m not a racist; I have a black friend” of restaurant reviewing. Just because you enjoyed a meal at another restaurant once doesn’t mean you’re objective now. 

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Also, Jay doesn’t know how to use an iPhone. Here’s a side by side of his photo of french onion spheres taken on his iPhone 7 and a photo I took on my iPhone 5S, both with available lighting.