It can’t be good, can it?

We are all well aware of the role that the senses play in advertising, with shopping environments beginning to resemble nothing so much as they do a casino. But this roadside billboard on River Highway created by Charlotte-based ScentAir for Bloom grocery stores  takes the cake … er, rancid filet. Fragrance oil is blown by high-powered fans during prime commute times of 7 – 10 a.m. and 4 – 7 p.m.

We’ve a few problems with this. OK, more than a few. But for starters, do people really want to smell cooking steak making their hungover ways to work at 7 a.m.? Second, can drivers and passengers in the cars screaming by on the highway really get the full effect (the answer, we suppose, is hopefully not — though it seems likely that those stopping for gas will smell it and probably pick up a Slim Jim meat stylus in the convenience store).

Which brings us to another problem: Does artificial meat smell make anyone want to do anything besides throw up? Let us know.

To celebrate the release of their book  Flying Pans: Two Chefs One World, Ron Oliver and Bernard Guillas, from San Diego’s famed Marine Room, recently hosted a twelve course dinner at Café Bouloud on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Surprisingly, the Frenchman decided to scratch the wine and instead pair each dish with cocktails so complex they kept up with with the meal in terms of covering the flavor spectrum between sweet, spicy and just simply surprising.

The rock lobster salad, for example,  served in a pool of cool orange sauce (tangerine and carrots) was paired with a rum (vanilla and spiced), coconut milk and passion fruit mojito  (“a faux-ito rather,” said the table’s resident cocktail expert who insisted on swirling and sniffing every drink as though it were a glass of wine) and garnished with a “swizzle” of sugarcane. The formal dining room at Boulud, however, hardly did the tropical drink justice.

But the obvious  climax of the meal was clearly the filet mignon, towards the end of the menu. After the plates of apricot ginger-glazed Tasmanian steelhead had been scraped clean and cleared, it was finally time for the main attraction. “This is what I’ve been waiting for,” said one eager carnivore.

The cocktail came first and was the color and texture of blood. The Hendrick’s based Grain of Paradise Hibiscus martini (you guessed it, faux-tini)  includes peppercorns, oregano and hibiscus flowers and is garnished with a sprig of oregano and a pickled onion.  This is no fruity beverage for your average dainty faux-tini-sipper. This is a red-meat cocktail. One young lady described it as “medicinal” and immediately sent it back in disgust.

The Filet Mignon Tierra Y Mar was served in a puddle of chile cocoa sauce and accompanied with a crab-stuffed squash blossom and maple boniato, a tropical sweet potato. The plump round piece of beef was charred black and the steak knife practically melted into it revealine a dark red inside. The table was quiet except for the occasional “mmm, so tender” and contented grunt.

Zucchini flowers were pushed aside as an extravagant afterthought. “Can you even eat that?” someone asked, poking it suspiciously (and stupidly).

Make your own Grain of Paradise Hibiscus Faux-tini:

• 2 cups dried hibiscus flowers
• 1 teaspoon grain of paradise black peppercorns
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon oregano leaves
• 2 cups Hendrick’s gin (do not bother making this if you don’t have Hendrick’s)
• 12 pickled onions
• 4 sprigs oregano

Combine hibiscus flowers, peppercorns, water and sugar in small saucepan over medium heat. Simmer slowly 15 minutes. Remove from heat. Add oregano leaves. Cover. Steep 20 minutes Strain through fine sieve. Refrigerate until well chilled. Combine 1 cup hibiscus syrup with gin in mixing bowl. Stir well. Transfer half of mixture to martini shaker. Add 12 ice cubes. Shake 15 seconds. Strain into 2 frosted martini glasses. Sker 3 onions onto each oregano sprig for garnish.

Wednesday night in Vancouver, as everyone who bothered to open their eyes this morning knows, 23-year-old Shaun White became the first person to ever win two consecutive gold medals in the snowboarding halfpipe competition. Granted, the sport has only been worthy of the Olympics since 1998 and its athletes are still considered — as one grouchy old man on MSNBC’s disgustingly bad “Morning Joe” put it — “the same hippie kids who show up on your door smelling like pot and asking for food.”

Well, this particular stoner kid won his second gold medal by careening off the 22-foot-tall halfpife, performing two front flips, twisting 3-and-a-half times and then landing. On his feet. And since he was the one to invent the maneuver (and the only person to execute it successfully so far) White of course gets the all-important naming rights. And for this trick, White chose “The Tomahawk.” Don’t think about it too much. These are snowboarders we’re talking about.

White explains that he came up with the name for the trick during his strenuous training regimen: “I was eating two steaks. The first one was in New York and it was called the Double Eagle. I thought this is an amazing name for a trick. Then I was in Aspen and had a steak call the Tomahawk. It was like a big-boned Tomahawk, 30 oz. I finished it.” (Now that deserves a gold medal.)

While it does seem a little strange that the restaurants gave such creative names to their steaks (then again, maybe it’s just the weed speaking — perhaps we should ask White if the steaks also tried to talk to him) we are pleased that such fine cuts of beef both inspired and most likely gave the so-called “Animal” of snowboarding the strength he needed to accomplish this remarkable feat.

And for White, the gluttony doesn’t stop with the Gold: “The owner [of the Aspen restaurant] said if I play video games with his son, I’m going to have free Tomahawks for life.” That poor child.

Contrary to what you might think this is not kosher salt, though that’s what most butchers seem to use, but if you like decorative tin and wooden boxes tied with twine and salt laced with dried herbs meant for meat, then we suppose you could do worse. It sure looks nice in the shop.

LaFrieda Meats has sales in the range of $40 to $45 million a year and slices, grinds, packages and delivers 300,000 pounds of meat a week. A week!

But what about that study making the rounds, the one that says people who eat more red meat are more likely to die? Could it hurt the empire? La Frieda has an answer, and yes, it amounts to fuck you, study. “Those studies are nothing new,” he says. “There are plenty of things out there that are far worse than red meat.”

Inside La Frieda’s meat locker

More beefy vistas and the Butcher speaks after the jump.

Some in the media industry see this as just another food industry fiasco. They might not be quite as susceptible to the dulcet tones of Matthew Mcconaughey’s voice as are the stocky well-fed women of middle America.