In Good Company
In his review this week, Mike Sula visited the otherwise well-received Urban Belly, and declared the soba noodles with scallops in blue crab broth to be "an unmitigated disaster."
According to a Google search, so are these things:
- The U.S. Treasury Department's original plan to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
- John McCain
- Dick Cheney's attempts to talk to House Republicans over the original bailout plan (term also used: "bloodbath")
- The second intifada
- The decision to recall President Mbeki from the South African government, resulting in the resignation of eleven ministers, including the deputy president and the finance minister, in protest
- The UK military's new computer system
- Aaron Broussard
- Not, apparently, the Iraq War
Reader, Digested: Old News Made New [previously]
Urban Belly [MenuPages]
Urban Belly [Official Site]
The noted gastrophiles at Chicagoist have rounded up their picks for 
Burger King has just licensed out their name for a series of, err, "potato snacks." Not potato chips. Potato snacks.
We just got an email from Kurt Warnstedt of 
We're sure that one of the Chicago arthouse cinemas will put on a Sembène retrospective sooner or later (
1) Orange You Glad He Didn't Say Goodbye?
• 
But we found the lack of a byline confusing, and when we started really reading instead of skimming, we came across sentences like this: "Such culinary serves as a base of family relations, as it teaches a husband and a wife to remain attractive and sexually active, regardless of age and life troubles." And later, on fried food: "Such food creates an excess of slime, contributes to adiposity, tiredness, heaviness. As a result, when time comes to a love game, it isn’t accompanied by trembling and excitement, and turns into a usual satisfaction of physiologic needs."
Oh dear...what an astute observation, though. We don't have the foggiest notion whether this was written by an idiot savant, an ESL dropout or a randy translation algorithm, but we also cannot deny certain universal truths about the relationship between food and sex that are explored in this piece.
We come to you with a contrite countenance and doleful eyes, hoping we'll one day win back our credibility with you, should you ever deign to forgive us the grievous sin we committed yesterday morning. Do you remember when we suggested that you ought to take an 
Padma Lakshmi, the carefully calibrated co-host of 
for $35 inclusive, those with reservations will be able to sample wines from top Pinot Noir growing areas like Burgundy, California and Oregon. Not you, though, because it's already booked! Normally, we don't write about booked events, but we have something we want to discuss: the pluralization of Pinot Noir. Obviously, we've already expressed our opinion in the title of this post. Google 
Step 1: Call up