MenuPages

Two (two!) Philadelphia restaurants just made Condé Nast Traveler's 2008 Hot List. The lucky winning restaurants? Rae and Tinto. So kudos to misters Stern and Garces... but what did the Conde Nasties have to say?

Rae: "He wants its flavors to be strong, adventurous even—how else to explain smoked rabbit nachos for lunch? The weekday atmosphere is buttoned-down bonhomie, especially at the row of microbrew taps at the bar, but by evening the lights soften and the regulars move in. The flavors remain intense throughout, whether in the skate with fettuccine and clams or in the riff on the beloved Philly cheese steak, made here with venison and truffles."

Tinto: "The energy-filled upstairs has counter-height tables and an open kitchen, but the downstairs lounge with plush booths is the best way to enjoy the Basque small plates: generously marbled jamón ibérico; tender baby squid in lush ink gravy with crab Bomba rice (a cult brand of grain from Spain); and lamb loin and eggplant skewers wrapped in bacon and served standing upright in shot glasses of sherry jus (pinxtos, $4–$24)."

Rae [MenuPages]
Rae [Official Site]
Tinto [MenuPages]
Tinto [Official Site]

The legal status of absinthe in this country is still kind of up in the air, but we now have two producers of the spirit: St. George's Distillery in Alameda, Calif., which began selling it last December, and now the newcomer Sirene Absinthe Verte from North Shore Distillery just north of Chicago. The latter hit the market just this month after debuting at WhiskyFest. Chicagoist has some tasting notes from the event:

The 110 proof white absinthe has a sharp, herbal bite to it. the 124 proof green absinthe is, oddly, smoother than the white. It also has an amazing mouthfeel. With absinthe shaping up as the year's new hot spirit, this should sell well.

Until just last year, the importation of absinthe was prohibited, and the only way to get it was to very carefully hide it away in your luggage and hope that no one in customs felt the need to verify your declaration. In 2007, a few brands were approved for sale, but they had to meet the FDA's ban of thujone in consumable products.

Thujone's the bad guy here, the one that's been blamed for all of the evils supposedly brought about by absinthe consumption. It can wreak havoc on your brain and nervous system if consumed in large quantities. But by the time you've drunk enough absinthe, which can be up to 75 percent alcohol, to experience any effects from the thujone, you're dead from alcohol poisoning.

We're not exactly running out immediately to try absinthe — we've never been particularly fond of anise-flavored foods — but we love the ceremony involved with drinking absinthe. The special spoons, the cube of sugar, and the precise way of pouring the ice cold water over it.

Introducing Sirene Absinthe Verte [North Shore Distillery]
St. George Spirits [Official Site]
Absinthe [Wikipedia]
Sorry, Absinthe Trippers: Scientists Say You're Just Really Drunk [Wired]
Chicagoist at WhiskeyFest [Chicagoist]

It didn't take long, once the new Grand Theft Auto IV was released yesterday, for foodie/gamer/blogger Adam Kuban to take a virtual tour of the game's eateries. He found that many of the spots bear a striking resemblance to actual New York establishments. That's not surprising, as Liberty City is basically supposed to be a virtual New York.

What is surprising is the level of detail with which the game portrays its fictional Big Apple. Unlike previous versions, which included major landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Capitol building in GTA: San Andreas, GTA IV gets right into the neighborhoods to portray actual local foodie faves. They've also got hilarious take-offs of other local institutions such as the musical Banging On Trashcan Lids For An Hour (Stomp) Check out the screenshots over on New York Eats.

It's just too bad the virtual world doesn't (yet) include smell and taste. Of course, that would make games such as Cooking Mama a lot more fun, too.

The Real-Life Restaurants in New York City from 'Grand Theft Auto 4' [New York Eats]
GTA: IV [Official Site]
Cooking Mama [Official Site]
Adam Kuban [Wikipedia]

Legendary Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster/beer writer Garrett Oliver (pictured) is hosting a special $100 per person "100 percent pork dinner" at Osteria on Tuesday, May 20.

The prix fie menu will include (among other things) snails with fava beans and black pepper salami, ramp ravioli with pigs foot ragu and roasted baby pig with patate al forno and toasted fennel seed. In other words: You need to go. More info can be found over at Foobooz.

Osteria [MenuPages]
Osteria [Official Site]

We just added several new restaurants to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Newly opened Fishtown/Port Richmond scenester pub Memphis Taproom.

• Logan Square's Tower Bistro.

• Popular Drexel Hill pizzeria Goodfella's.

• Ardmore Japanese spot Harusame.

• Northwest Philly restaurant/bar Liberties Manayunk.

You know what marginal group of tens of millions of people are being put at risk for poor nutrition by the global surge in food prices? American's school children! Back in the salad days of 2006 when money grew on houses, glowing accounts abounded on plans to revamp the way kids eat at school, trading the fattening and soulless frozen pizzas and burgers that fueled the childhood obesity crisis (remember that?) for the new religion of local/seasonal/organic.

Now that reality has set in, schools are swapping fresh for canned, seeing higher demand for subsidized lunches, and wondering how they'll cope with 30% to 50% cost increases while the federal per-meal subsidy remains static at an unrealistic 23 cents. Probably not all that well! Our youngest citizens have been historically poor budgetary advocates for themselves, so when their slice of the pie shrinks, that's generally the end of the story. Federal law will see to it that students are provided with a minimum number of calories each day, but that's also true for prisoners.

In this rapidly shifting environment for school meals, you have to wonder, just what are the children eating? Thanks to the wonders of the internet, hundreds of cafeteria menus are available for our inspection. Here's a sampling from around the country of what's being served for lunch today:

• Wicomico County, Maryland — Pork dippers with dipping sauce and dinner roll or hot dog on bun and potato rounds, cole slaw, pears

• Fulton County, Illinois — tortellini, pork tenderloin/bun, baked potato, salad bar, uncrustable PBJ, garlic bread, tossed salad, pineapple chunks, shape up in cup

• Fond du Lac County, WIsconsin — Grilled cheese, chicken noodle soup, raw vegetables and dip, mandarin oranges

• Pinellas County, Florida — Cheeseburger, Cuban pork with yellow rice, cheese stick munch and dip, potato wedges, beans, broccoli, Cuban toast

• Tate County, Mississippi — Salisbury Steak w/Gravy, Baked Chicken Nuggets, Fruit and Yogurt Salad, Ham & Cheese on Bun, Black-Eyed Peas, Straight Cut French Fries, Seasoned Cabbage, Chilled Peach Slices, Mixed Fruit, Fruit Juice, Central MS Cornbread, Rice, Saltine Crackers.

Illuminating! Almost everyone is eating pig products for lunch, and there also seems to be a preponderance of dippable items. Regional themes are clearly in play, like the Cuban toast in Florida and the intriguing "Central MS Cornbread" in Mississippi. It's heartening to see that, however unhealthy the dishes and low quality the ingredients, there's still a nod to culinary heterogeneity. Every school seems to be offering fruit and vegetables in some (unexciting) form, but that's a legal mandate; and besides, one of the articles mentioned that broccoli is now cost-competitive with flour!

But even as our school lunch program is stymied by high costs and crappy product, at least we don't have massive food poisoning outbreaks at our nation's cafeterias! For now, anyway.

Economic crunch seen in school lunch rooms [Bradenton Herald]
Food Crisis Forcing Cafeteria Managers To Try New Menus [AHN]
Food prices take bite out of school lunch menus [Star-Ledger]

[Photo: pingnews/flickr]

Eric Ripert, the legendary new-to-Philly chef behind NYC's Le Bernadin and the Ritz-Carlton's brand new 10 Arts, knows how to get around the media.

In the above clip from the PSFK marketing/trendspotting convention in NYC, Ripert discusses how he gets inspiration for both his food and business. It's well worth watching.

10 Arts [Official Site]
Eric Ripert on Finding Inspiration [YouTube]

With grain prices skyrocketing, corn doing double duty between the gas tank and the table, and beef still reeling from that gigantic recall back in February, the American food industry seems strained, to put it lightly. This might be a good time for a new, more streamlined meat product to start making inroads in the market.

And, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article re-printed in Restaurants and Institutions, that's just what's happening with goat meat. Would you call it the soccer of meats? Maybe:

"It's the No. 1 consumed meat in the world," said Scott Hollis, a goat specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "It's very popular - except here."

But that's changing. As more immigrant groups create demand for the meat and farmers realize there's money in it, more and more domestic farms are producing goat.

Goat is especially popular with Muslim, Hispanic and some Asian communities, particularly around certain holidays, such as Greek Easter, which was Sunday, Cinco de Mayo, and the end of Ramadan, which comes in the fall.

Until recently, though, it was difficult to find American goat meat. If shoppers found goat in stores, it was likely to be imported frozen from New Zealand or Australia, the world's largest exporter of goat meat.

That is starting to change as American farmers get into the meat goat biz - which, as it turns out, doesn't require all that much.

Goats aren't expensive to buy and don't need nearly the land that larger livestock does. That means more small-scale "hobby farmers" have gotten into the business as word of new demand has spread.

That also means that, on a large scale, goat is more efficient and less harmful to the environment to produce. Additionally, it's often slaughtered at small-scale halal operations, which for some reason makes us more comfortable than the giant, industrial slaughterhouses run by, say, Westland/Hallmark.

While goat burgers may not appear on the menu at McDonalds any time soon, we're glad to see a more worldly, eco-friendly meat treat gaining popularity. A brief internal poll revealed MP staffers overall like the stuff in curries, Jamaican jerk-style, in burritos and whole on the bone. MP Chicago editor Adam Peltz remembered a particularly transcendent cut he ate in Lima: "so i got this amazing leg of kid — so succulent and flavorful for juvenile meat."

As for us, eight years of vegetarianism stunted our meat discovery growth, but just as it is gaining fans in the American marketplace, goat is on its way to the top of our meats-to-try list. Now, if we could just find a local restaurant that serves the stuff...

THE OTHER RED MEAT? Goats find way to U.S. plates [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
The American Meat Goat Association [Official Site]
Largest Recall of Ground Beef is Ordered [NY Times]
Photo: Mark Verner [Flickr]

Although we still miss the old days when The Khyber served burritos, the new menu kind of rules. Hamburgers, hot dogs... that whole thing. But we haven't gone there early in the day often enough to sample the whole menu.

That's why we're happy that Philadining tipped us off to the Khyber's pretzel dog: A hot dog wrapped in freshly-made pretzel dough at a price that makes the mall chains look like a bunch of punks.

Meanwhile, another Philly indie rock institution does good things with fried food... even if we don't have their menu. You see, Johnny Brenda's features a constantly changing chalkboard menu. But one of the constants on the menu are the awesome french fries, which Foodzings recently paid tribute to. Crisp, salty, perfectly fried... these are some good french fries.

Also, as far as live music... The Kills are playing Johnny Brenda's on Saturday night and Starkweather will be at the Khyber on the 11th. Do the right thing and go.

Bread Based Snacks [Philadining]
The Khyber [MenuPages]

More Food at Johnny Brenda's [Foodzings]
Johnny Brenda's [Official Site]

[Image via Philadining]

• Rice: food crisis caused by 1) demand 2) distribution difficulties/costs 3) biofuels [IndiaTImes]
• UN: don't forget about commodities speculators! (and the craptastic dollar) [CanadianPress]
• Senate wants to add $200m to the $350m already requisitioned for food aid [NYTimes]
• Following Mars-Wrigley's megadeal, small candy members disheartened [Tribune]
• PM of Thailand, a former cooking show host, to personally make dinner for PM of Myanmar [AP]

Comcast is one of the economic engines that drives Philadelphia. They also, of course, just built themselves a brand-spankin' new skyscraper.

So where are Comcast employees going to eat when they're not hitting the streets?

The Philadelphia Inquirer just filled us in on the Comcast company cafeteria, called Ralph's Cafe:

Lunch choices range from macaroni salad and sandwich wraps to crispy-crust pizza with goat cheese. A sushi chef starts tomorrow on the second floor of Ralph's, which one employee compared to the city's glitzy Stephen Starr restaurants - except that this one is for only Comcast employees and their guests. Partially inspired by Google Inc.'s cafeteria, along with one at the New York law firm where he has negotiated cable deals over long hours, the cafeteria is the most important space in the building, its heart and soul, Roberts said. It will bring employees from different floors and division together, he said. He named it after his father, Ralph, 88, the company cofounder and a board member. Ralph is a dapper and formal man, his son said. "He didn't really think this was the most gracious gesture. I had to say, 'Trust me, Dad.' "In an e-mail Friday, Ralph Roberts said he thought his son had made a good choice. "I wasn't sure I wanted my name on the cafe," he wrote, "but now I am thrilled."

Sounds like it might be time to call up some of your permatemp hipster Comcast friends. Goat cheese pizza = a good thing.

Taking a walk in the clouds [Inky]
Ralph's Cafe Now Open... [The Illadelph]

[Image via Inquirer]

It's time, folks: Take a long lunch, get your car/bus/train fare together, buy a magazine or two for the wait. Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day is tomorrow, and the lines will be phoenomenal!

Nah, we're just being dramatic. It's great. Ben and Jerry's feel-good ice cream company has been giving out free cones since it's one-year anniversary in 1979. Now, on it's dirty 30th birthday, the secret has somehow gotten out. Expect a bit of a wait, but it just may be worth it. You can find participating stores here, and a fun little B&J history lesson here.

No, they're not bribing us with any more free ice cream than you get.

Ben and Jerry's [Official Site]
Photo: Cresny [Flickr] Free Cone Day 2007

Add this shocker to the list of things we have in common with Drew Carey: A love of bacon-wrapped hot dogs. During our long tenure in San Francisco, we developed a late-night affection for the singular street-treats while stumbling home from bars in the Mission district.

The pork masterpieces are available from carts in many U.S. cities, as well as all over Mexico, so we know it's not just a local cuisine. Who wouldn't want a grilled, bacon-wrapped hot dog smothered in grilled peppers, onions, salsa, crema and sometimes even guacamole?

For starters, the Los Angeles Health Department, according to this fine piece of reporting by Drew Carey for Reason.tv. Take a look at the saga of an intrepid street vendor and her struggle to give the people what they want. And then try to walk away from this and not stop for a package of hot-dogs and one of bacon on the way home. Bet you can't eat just one!

Food Fight: Battle of the Bacon Dogs [Reason.tv]
In Videos: Drew Carey in 'Food Fight: Battle of the Bacon Dogs' [Required Eating]

The Ugly American, the six-month old Pennsport gastropub, just got LaBaned this weekend. So... here's the deal. The Ugly American is located on Front Street not too far away from the Wal-Mart, the Riverview and the whole Souf Philly Columbus Boulevard strip. Foodwise, it does regional American cuisine (muffalettas! garbage plates!) and a mean homemade hot pocket. So what did the good man of the Inky have to say? It's less about the food and more about the waitstaff:

"Our server certainly had that genuine friendly Philly-ness. Where else can a waiter expound upon the fine points of beef butchery, his position against the Barnes Foundation move, his high school and art school pedigrees, slip us his Jersey Shore Realtor's card, mention his contacts in the local porno biz, and offer solid cabernet recommendations all in one visit? (Did he just name-drop Ginger Lynn?)"

Oh yeah. The beef-on-weck (or "wick") is good and so are the toasted ravioli. However LaBan wasn't keen on the duck nachos, which he said used poorly fried chips.

The Ugly American [Inquirer]
The Ugly American [Official Site]

• UN calls meeting with 20 organizations to strategize about food crisis [BBCNews]
• Rice rationing in Vietnam much more serious than Costco's fake rationing [Reuters]
• Sweetened up by Warren Buffett, Mars buys Wrigley's for $23 billion [NYTimes]
• Fat activists working to pass size non-discrimination laws [Tribune]
• 400 lb man slims to 300 lbs in jail; files lawsuit claiming malnutrition [AP]

•The new Clover machines make sure that Starbucks coffee doesn't taste like soil. [MP: Boston]
•The last paragraph of this post contains probably the raunchiest joke ever made on MenuPages. [MP: Chicago]
•No matter how much you love Obama, it's probably unsanitary to purchase his half-eaten breakfast. [MP: Philadelphia]
•OMG, San Francisco has a chain called Pizza Orgasmica! [MP: San Francisco]
•Eating on the sand seems precarious. What if the wind blew it into your food? [MP: South Florida]

America's most exclusive restaurant? It's not what you think. Not Le Cirque or Momofuku Ko or the French Laundry. Nope, the single-table Talula's Table, in tiny, historic Kennett Square, PA, about an hour outside Philadelphia, only accepts reservations one year in advance, and you have to be damned lucky to get one at all.

An upscale market by day, they convert to a restaurant after hours and do one seating a night for their renowned tasting menu. NPR reporter Alex Chadwick visited recently and reports:

A single farm table becomes center stage for one of the country's most exclusive dining experiences. A dozen lucky people gather around it to share an eight-course meal that runs from egg custard with Jonah crab to osso bucco made from pork, all prepared with local ingredients by husband-and-wife proprietors Bryan Sikora and Aimee Olexy.

Because of the restaurant's popularity and its single nightly seating, [proprietor Aimee] Olexy has devised a special system for selecting diners. Though the phone often begins ringing with requests at sunrise, she does not pick it up until 7 a.m. on the dot. The caller is then offered a reservation exactly one year later. Requests for earlier or later are denied, as are attempts to play the VIP card to skirt the procedure entirely.

Talula's: The Toughest Reservation in the U.S.? [NPR: Day to Day]
One restaurant, one table, and a year-long waiting list [Slashfood]
Talula's Table [Official Site]
Photo lifted from Hypsography

In case you haven't heard, Saturday is National Pretzel Day. Philly Pretzel Factory is offering three free pretzels to all customers on Saturday and numerous other local pretzel joints are getting in on the holiday as well. And, while they aren't Philadelphia-style pretzel chains, both Auntie Anne's and Pretzel Time are getting in on the holiday as well.

Philly Pretzel Factory [MenuPages]

[Image via Roadfood]

Damn. It.

Wawa is officially cashing out of Center City. The venerable Center City West Wawa at 20th and Chestnut will be closing on Tuesday and the 17th & Arch Wawa will close at the end of May. According to Johnny Goodtimes:

"Wawa is leaving the city. The Wawa at the corner of 20th and Chestnut is going to be closing at the end of the month, and I have it on good authority that the others will close when their leases expire. Which means that a) they are turning their backs on some of their most loyal customers and that b) the spokewoman I spoke with a couple of months ago when I did a story on the Rittenhouse Wawa was less than truthful with me and in, turn, Philadelphians when she said that they weren't leaving the city."

We hear that the 10th & Arch Wawa will be the latest remaining Wawa in CC to remain open... But that even they will be shutting down at the end of their lease.

Thoughts?

Screw Wawa [Johnny Goodtimes]

• Ban Ki-moon laments global food crisis for the bazillionth time [AP]
• The stalled farm bill contains much-needed relief for poor families [Tribune]
• Reuters has two detailed writeups on the food crisis that review the causes and recount the latest woes, of which there are many [Reuters, Reuters]
• Our pretend cousin Nelson Peltz just bought Wendy's for $2.3b [NYTimes]

Psst. Ever wanted to have you own hot dog cart? Maybe you've entertained dreams of making your own dirty water dogs. Maybe you've read A Confederacy of Dunces one time too many. Or maybe you're just a rich person with too much free time on your hands.

Either way, Hammacher Schlemmer is here to help. We just got word that their catalog now features an "Authentic New York Hot Dog Vendor Cart. Here's the word from HM:

"Made of durable food-grade 18-gauge stainless steel, the cart rolls on two 20" pneumatic wheels and a locking caster with two handles that provide easy maneuvering. It has three removable 360" cu. stainless steel steamer trays that can each hold up to 20 hot dogs or sausages. The front of the cart has a storage ring and hook-up for a propane tank (not included); propane provides fuel for the dual burner assembly housed in the rear interior of the cart directly under the three steamers; burners may be individually controlled by knobs in the cart's rear. A top-loading 3,000" cu. ice cooler keeps your beverages and meats cold; a drain plug on the bottom of the chassis allows you to drain meltwater. The front of the cart houses a two shelf storage or display area for drinks, buns, or condiments; additional storage area is located underneath."

The best part? The cart can be used to make Chicago-style dogs as well.

The Authentic New York Hot Dog Vendor Cart [Hammacher Schlemmer]

There's a very enticingly titled post from Tuesday on Bon Appetit's editor's blog. It's called How To Start A Cooking Club. That sounds like a great idea. We (densely) never even thought of it before, but it's a club where a bunch of friends get together and cook interesting stuff. Fun, right?

While the body of this particular blog entry doesn't specifically outline instructions on cooking club formation &mdash rather a series of jealousy-inducing photos of the author's own cooking club's latest accomplishments &mdash the author sends readers to the extremely handy Bon Appetite Cooking Club page, which does feature pdf downloads on the basics of starting and organizing a cooking club, as well as monthly menus, including recipes and a game plan.

This is definitely the season for getting out of the house, sipping wine on the fire escape, lollygagging with your friends in the park and destroying the kitchen with way-too-ambitious recipes. Get out there and do it, folks!

How To Start A Cooking Club [Epicurious/BA Blog]
The Bon Appetit Cooking Club [Epicurious/BA]
Photo: Aftermath, by Dishevld [Flickr]

• Chestnut Hill's newest Italian restaurant, Bocelli.

• Lots of new restaurants as well.

• A new, corny movie.

• Philly's sexiest dishes.

• Oak Lane's most popular bakery was founded by a pair of ex-actors.

• Ric Romero goes to cooking school: Did you know chicken can be subdivided into thighs, legs and breasts?

• The new restaurant menu calorie law. Who knew an Egg McMuffin only had 300 calories?

• New Center City cajun Les Bons Temps is officially open.

• Creperie Beau Monde is ten years old.

• Our little Sam's Club rice sales limit tagged as "food rationing" [Guardian]
• Japan's butter shortage initiated by dairy cow cull two years ago [Salon]
• More countries (Uganda this time) telling their citizens to garden [AllAfrica]
• FDA to animal feed manufacturers: no more mad cow prions in the mix [Reuters]
• Farm bill, still unresolved, is increasingly out of step with reality [NYTimes]

Yesterday, we're proud to say that Stephen Colbert discovered the cheesesteak. Watch, kids, as we silently curse how Philadelphia has become known for one.damn.sandwich.

Comedy Show On (No Way! Cheesesteaks) [Philadelphia Will Do]

Just as the country has finally re-embraced carbs after the whole Atkins nightmare, now we're all going to be forced onto low-carb diets by rising food prices. First, wheat. There's the worldwide rice shortage that will soon be seriously affecting us. Now beer prices are increasing because of the scarcity of hops and barley.

Two ingredients — hops and malted barley — are behind much of the price increases.

Hops produce the chemicals that give beer its distinct flavor. Some varieties are used to bitter the drink. Others impart its floral aromas. Most commercially grown domestic hops come from Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

After water, malted barely is the next-biggest ingredient in beer. It provides the sugars that turns into alcohol when the beer is fermented.

Barley prices have risen because of worldwide demand for grains, including wheat, corn and rice. Philip Sutton, owner of Skyscraper Brewing Co., a small brewery in El Monte, said the price of a 50-pound bag of malted barley had jumped to $22, or 57% higher than a year ago.

Hops prices are soaring even more. Sutton paid $3.40 to $4.70 a pound for hops a year ago. The least expensive hops he has found this year were $12.63 a pound, and he's paid all the way up to $22.45. But that's only if he can find them.

"The hops that we like to use just aren't available," Sutton said. That has forced him to substitute other hops in some of his beer recipes "and that makes a different beer. It's still good but isn't what we would ideally have," said Sutton, who has raised his prices 20% to 30%.

Rising beer prices hard to swallow [Los Angeles Times]
Asia limits rice exports as prices and uncertainty rise [Christian Science Monitor]

Photo, of barley: Shandchem [Flickr]

After reading yesterday's item in trade mag Restaurants and Institutions about a drive-through dispute that resulted in a double stabbing in Texas (!?), we got just curious enough to Google the term "fast-food rage" (but without the quotes).

Turns out there are all kinds of examples of idiots wailing on one another while in line or in the parking lots of fast food restaurants. Usually, it seems to have to do with vehicular disputes, more like road rage that happens to be taking place in the parking lot of a McDonalds, though there is this one case in Georgia back in August where a woman got so mad at perceived line-jumping inside the store that she tried to run down a couple outside. Yikes!

But none of these fights seem to stem from the one behavior in fast food restaurants that makes us seriously consider throwing a punch: the jerk who takes too long at the self-serve coffee machine. Seriously, if you don't drop that cream in and mix it as you're walking away so the rest of us can get our fix, we think manhandling you out of there should be a viable option.

But a Google search for "coffee rage" (with and without quotes) turned up only this incident in Boston, to speak of, where a couple of customers got into it in the drive-through of a Dunkin Donuts. Again: road rage, not coffee rage.

People, here this now: You're spinning your wheels fighting each other over French fries and drive-through windows. If a state of terror existed around the self-serve coffee dispenser, the world would be a better place.

Fast food drive-through rage leads to double-stabbing [Restaurants and Institutions]
Fast food flare-up: Possible road-rage at McDonald's [KTVB Idaho]
Angry Woman Gets Revenge At McDonald's [Associated Press]
Food Fights Across Boston [Universal Hub]
Photo: Coffee Rage album cover, lifted from Mad Blasts of Chaos

• The PW's take on Ansill's offal-happy menu: "There might be three things, tops, the average eater would consider weird. If this little blond kindergartener at the table next to me can put away the lamb osso bucco sandwich—buttery tatters of braised baa-baa, piled on a raft of toasted brioche, and capped with a button of toasted marrow—believe me, you can too."

• South Street's Eight Days of Eats festival is kicking off next Tuesday in the Headhouse Shambles with a $10 AYCE fest.

• A field guide to Philly's best food trucks.

• PETA offers paltry $1m for construction of artificial meat lab [AP]
• Bad press forces meat industry to support banning downer cows [PE]
• Another cause of the food crisis: structural adj. programs [AllAfrica]
• Congress mad at USDA for sucking, in wake of herapin scandal [VOA]
• In sign of times, McD int'l sales way up, US sales way down [Tribune]

Indian pizza is one of our guilty pleasures. Bred in the corner pizzerias of Jackson Heights, Queens, it's a spicy fusion of pizza topped with cheese, masala powder, onions and lots of hot peppers. Mouth-searingly delicious? Hells yeah.

We first noted its arrival in Philadelphia back in January, when we found "Bombay-style Pizza" on the menu of Great Northeast joint Royal Pizza. Now we're equally pleased to have found, thanks to our latest Northeast Philly menu runs, that it's also on the menu at Villagio Pizza and Salvito's Pizza Palace. Northeast Philly pizza has officially gotten arond 10,000x tastier.

Royal Pizza [MenuPages]

Villagio Pizza [MenuPages]

Salvito's Pizza Palace [MenuPages]

[Image via Heckasac]

A torrent of articles from around the country have made certain what we noticed anecdotally the other day at the supermarket: America is in the grips of a severe matzo shortage. While there was just enough to go around for seders on Saturday and Sunday nights, observant Jews are scrambling to find supplies of the unleavened bread to sustain them for the rest of Passover, another five or six days of dietary restriction.

Theories for why this is happening this year abound, but are ultimately limited in scope. The aforementioned articles have pointed to recalcitrant retailers like Trader Joe's who have declined to carry matzo this year, stymied suppliers like Manischewitz that couldn't make Tam Tam mini-matzos because of equipment failures, and cantankerous consumers who didn't plan ahead and rushed to buy the limited cache of matzo all at once.

But these explanations ignore the reality that, while matzo is certainly a niche product, what this amounts to, more or less, is a bread shortage. As people around the globe are increasingly — and for many, painfully — aware, the price of wheat has DOUBLED in the past year. Matzo, as you may or may not know, is made of NOTHING BUT wheat! So it costs more to make, and less was made. We're merely implying causality here, but let's put aside our lack of hard evidence and consider the following:

All of a sudden, the people of the developing world are rapidly increasing their average daily calorie intake while the land, water, and energy resources used to grow food products are rapidly diminishing in quantity and quality. The wealthiest ten percent of the world has been materially unaffected by this imbalance, but billions are forced to sacrifice and hundreds of millions are on the brink of starvation. It is unfortunate that the richest decile of the world's population — the people who are in the best positions, politically and economically, to address the food crisis — have little in the way of structural incentives to make the sort of wholesale systemic changes to the global food/energy system that is necessary to ensure sufficient, reliable and equitable supplies of foodstuffs.

Earth Day and Passover are just the kinds of navel-gazing opportunities we need to encourage us to consider how to go about feeding ourselves in this new era of unprecedented high demand and low supply. While many await a technological panacea to rescue us from our present conundrum, no real solution is possible without a shift in attitude by the world's producing class (that, or we could start eating a hell of a lot less meat). The matzo shortage story may not exactly be a warning shot across the bow, but it's certainly a sign that no one's entirely immune to global commodities turmoil.

It’s Passover. Who’s Hiding the Matzo? [NYTimes]
Matzo in short supply for Bay Area Passover [SFGate]
Hit or miss with finding matzo as Passover looms closer [MercuryNews]
As Passover nears, matzo in short supply [Contra Costa Times]
Matzo shortage at many Reno stores looms for Passover [Reno Gazette-Journal]
Price Volatility Adds to Worry on U.S. Farms [NYTimes]
In Lean Times, Biotech Grains Are Less Taboo [NYTimes]
Rising Demand for Meat Takes Toll on Environment [NPR]

[Photo: no more matzo, in any language (missapril1956)]

N.B. Special bonus! There's also a shortage on Kosher-for-Passover margarine because farmers planted ethanol corn in lieu of cotton last year. Hope you like your flourless chocolate cakes dry!

The confluence of dining and the 2008 Presidential race is a curious one. Here in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama has been spending a heavy amount of time campaigning in both the fading industrial cities of Northeastern Pennsylvania and in rural central Pennsylvania (aka "Pennsyltucky.")

Too bad eBay's the newest variable in the equation. We just got word that Barack Obama's partially eaten breakfast of sausage and waffles from a Scranton diner has been put up for sale on eBay.

On Monday, April 21, Obama stopped by Scranton's Glider Diner, a 24-hour institution in the NEPA city, for a campaign breakfast. Shortly after, his breakfast turned up on eBay. Here's the description from the seller with typos intact:

"THIS IS BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S BREAKFAST FROM THIS MORNING, 4-21-08 AT THE GLIDER DINER IN SCRANTON, PA. WINNER GETS HIS USED DINER PLATE WITH HIS USED SILVERWARE AND UN EATEN PORTION OF HIS WAFFLE & SAUSAGE LINK. IT WAS WRAPPED WITH SARAN WRAP IMMEDIATELY AFTER HIS DEPARTURE AND IS NOW IN THE FREEZER AWAITING THE LUCKY WINNERS BID!!! THIS IS 100% AUTHENTIC AS YOU CAN SEE HE WAS AT THE DINER BY THE PICTURE AND IT WAS ON ALL LOCAL NEWS STATIONS. THIS PLATE WAS WRAPPED BY THE WAITRESS THAT SERVED HIM. GUARANTEED AUTHENTIC, HIS DNA IS ON THE SILVERWARE. ALL PROCEEDS GO TO HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT!!!! HAHA"

Obama's breakfast is selling, as of 12pm Tuesday, for $76 with six days left in the auction. Seller dixpea has a 99.6% positive eBay rating.

As for the Glider Diner, food gurus Jane and Michael Stern recommend the hot roast beef sandwich with gravy.

Barack Obama's Campaign Breakfast [eBay]
Glider Diner [Official Site]
Glider Diner [Roadfood]

As America gets ahold of itself in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's recent visit, the time has come for parsing and analyzing every little thing His Holiness did while abroad in our native land. Not the least of these is what he ate.

Last week, former Cardinal John Ratzinger visited the United States for the first time since becoming the Catholic church's 265th pope in 2005. While in New York City, celebrity chef, local restaurateur and cookbook author Lidia Bastianich, along with a team of high-profile chefs cooked for His Holiness. Bastianich emigrated from Italy in 1958, when she was 12, with the help of Catholic Charities. From the New York Daily News:

Bastianich was asked two months ago if she would like to cook for the Pope, and didn't even believe it at first. "I looked around behind me, to see if they were talking to someone else," she says. "The Pope even looks like my father, and I kind of feel as if it's my father coming to dinner. For me, it is an opportunity to welcome someone as family and make the Pope feel comfortable."

You can take a look at the full menu on Serious Eats, as well as some recipes on ABC's website. There's also a website dedicated to the visit with a full roundup. We simply can't imagine the pressure Bastianich must have felt, but she seems to have pulled it off. Congratulazioni, Lidia!

Bastianich plans a meal fit for the Pope [NY Daily News]
Cooking for the Pope: Lidia Bastianich Comes Full Circle [Serious Eats]
Recipes: Cooking For The Pope [ABC]
United States Papal Visit 2008 [Official Site]
Lidia Bastianich [Official Site]
Photo: Nuncatrezeamesa [Flickr]

It's primary day in Philadelphia. The news trucks are all parked outside of Independence Park, the pundits are pontificating and everyone is kind of anxious to see how the election will turn out. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been holding PR blitzes for their past campaigns over the past two weeks...

But what we can't get enough of is the fact that Chelsea Clinton has become the Clinton campaign's unofficial emissary to the LGBT community. Moreso, that she spent Friday night doing a bar crawl of Philly's gay bars. With, err, Ed Rendell and Rob Reiner.

So here's the story. On Friday the 18th, Woody's and Bump hosted a "pub crawl through Philadelphia with Chelsea Clinton, The Governor, Rob Reiner, Dan O'Donnell along with Michelle Clunie and Robert Gant from "Queer as Folk." You know — an event to lure those all-important urban LGBT votes away from Barack Obama (making, we bet, Mark Segal real happy).

How did it go? NBC's Matthew Berger was there:

Led around the neighborhood by Gov. Ed Rendell, Chelsea was mobbed by local gays and lesbians, as she walked from one club to the next. They ran up to hug her, posed for pictures and certainly invaded her personal space.

“I grabbed her ass,” one young woman exclaimed to her friends after snapping a picture with her arm around the former first daughter.

“Chelsea, the gays love you!” one fan exclaimed, as she took the microphone at Bump, a restaurant and bar that was her first stop. “Oh, gosh, I don’t know if everybody loves me,” she responded.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton ate at the Continental on Sunday night.

Woody's [Official Site]
Bump [MenuPages]
Bump [Official Site]

• Fast food calorie listing rolls out in New York to yawns [NYTimes]
• Food safety art project terror professor's case dismissed [TimesUnion]
• Federal crackdown on raw milk not sitting well with farmers [Tribune]
• WFP: 100m more people on food assistance than six months ago [BBC]
• Slow Food movement looks for a hook in Asia's fast lane [Reuters]
• Matzo shortage raises more questions than it answers [NYTimes]

see more crazy cat pics

Omg, lolcatz are soooo cute. You know who agrees? Jones Soda. They luv the little guys so much they haz contest for label! And you can vote!

For the uninitiated (anyone, anyone?) lolcatz are the hilariously cute photoshop jobs where people make "capshuns" of pictures of animals &mdash usually cats &mdash in lolspeak, "teh furst language born of teh intertubes." They come from the site icanhascheezburger.com.

Now the way hip marketing staff over at way hip Jones Soda (known for using customer-submitted snapshots on its labels) has this very fun idea to make lolcatz labels for its bottles. They did a call for submissions, and now there's a post up where you can vote on the favorite. It is, no surprise, getting a lot of hits, but the funniest part is the ire raised in hardcore lolspeakers posting comments about how their submissions didn't get picked:

i uhgri meh copeez have ben owevrluked. maybeh dis kitteh site needz mawr hutzspa awl mai cheezez neber make it wen i iz lauffin 2 much at mai own. theez wunz nawt sew hyoomoruss

• Ban Ki-moon issues his daily reminder on the direness of the food crisis [TPA]
• If the food crisis is bad now, what happens when there are 9 billion of us? [CSM]
• For starters, we'll have to give up our opposition to GM crops. Oh well! [NYTimes]
• Meanwhile, crop prices are wreaking counterintuitive havoc on farmers [AP]
• China's new food safety laws carry a maximum punishment of life in prison [Guardian]
• Gullible Australians believe the stupidest food safety myths [SMH]

We've just added a whole bunch of menus to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Joe Pesce — a Center City Italian/Seafood restaurant with a pun-tastic name.

• Independence Brewpub successor & conventioneer magnet Field House.

• Ambitious Pennsport New American Peppercorns.

• One of South Street's newest additions, the Miami Cafe.

• Beloved Essington hangout Lehman's Tavern.

1. It's primary season.

2. As the dominant city in the state that will make or break Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, Philly is getting all up in this jawn.

3. Restaurateurs are getting in the act. The picture above of a sign at Tangier was snapped (typo included) by a Phillyist reader. Meanwhile, we just got word that West Philly's Abbraccio is serving as an honest-to-God polling place for its Southwest Philly district. Meanwhile, Silk City Diner is dropping with the pretense and holding three straight nights of Barack Obama events.

Proofreading Philadelphia [Phillyist]
Tangier [MenuPages]
Tangier [Official Site]
Abbraccio [MenuPages]
Abbraccio [Official Site]
Silk City Obama Events [Philebrity]
Silk City Diner [MenuPages]
Silk City Diner [Official Site]

•"When in France (even though this loaf is not a French native), one must have a nice and crusty bread to have on the counter, in case of emergency (or spontaneous company)." [MP: Boston]
•"Pastries are funny." [MP: Chicago]
•"Philadelphia is every bit as much a hamburger town as New York." [MP: Philadelphia]
•"Discounted drinks and cheap eats; there’s nothing better to get the reluctant tax payer spending again." [MP: San Francisco]
•"Sure, we want restaurants to have sufficient toilet paper in their restrooms, and we like it when they offer up the daily specials' prices. But it's not really something that needs to be legislated." [MP: South Florida]

Collingswood, NJ restaurants have been on a roll lately. First, Craig LaBan reviewed Javier (poorly, but whatever). Then the Food Network filmed a grilled cheese-themed episode of Throwdown With Bobby Flay at The Pop Shop. Now the Philadelphia Daily News is reviewing Casona, a new Cuban/Nuevo Latino restaurant from the people behind Mixto and Tierra Colombiana:

Cuban Springroll ($6.95) features pork, ham, cheese and mojo. The spring roll wrappers were crunchy, and this combo was an example of the "nuevo," but I found the traditional Empanada Queso ($6.95) superior as morsel-in-a-casing. The Ensalada Citrica ($9.95), or Citrus Salad, was a disappointment. As a veteran "rubber necker" in a restaurant, I saw many a delicious-looking salad on other diners' tables. I should have taken better notice of what they were ordering, but was taken by the description on the menu of hearts of palm, avocado and orange slices with cranberry vinaigrette. The dressing was too harsh, and the salad was loaded with those soft canned black olives. While the Vegetarian Platter ($15.95) certainly held no appeal to me, the noncarnivore of the group enjoyed the plantains, beans, rice and vegetables. Personally, I would have liked an accompanying sauce to liven things up and attention to presentation to make it seem less like a clump of sides. Ropa Vieja ($16.95) is a very traditional Cuban dish. It translates into "old clothes," which doesn't sound very appetizing but certainly is descriptive of this dish of seasoned shredded meat. The meat is cooked to the point of, well, old ragged clothes. Accompanied by creole sauce, white rice and plantains, it was worth a try for authenticity, but not a keeper. More to our liking was another traditional dish, Lechon Asado ($17.95). The slow-roasted, citrus-marinated pork was also shredded, but the texture and flavor was much more appealing than the flank steak.

Casona [PDN]

[Image via Philadelphia Daily News]

• The global food crisis and riots aren't going away [NYTimes]
• Guyana's idea: give everyone seeds for gardening [AP]
• USDA brazenly says slaughterhouse oversight sufficient [Baltimore Sun]
• Will the country-of-origin labeling bill go far enough? [LATimes]
• Walmart to pull the plastic baby bottles w/ leaky chemicals [Tribune]

We've just added a whole bunch of menus to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Yakitori Boy, Philly's only (as far as we know) yakitori/tapas/karaoke bar.

• Northeast Philly slice & cheesesteak haven Apollo Pizza.

• Blue Nile Falls — 215's newest Ethiopian restaurant.

• Beloved South Philly steam table exotica purveyors Indonesia.

• Cake, a Chestnut Hill bakery/coffeeshop.

Good news for Northeast Philadelphia fans of Shank and Evelyn's sausage and chicken-and-broccoli rabe sandwiches: A branch of the restaurant is opening inside Cappy's — a popular neighborhood bar over in Tacony.

Michael Klein broke the news at Food & Drinq:

"Jerry Volpe, who's a partner, says he'll do the same sandwich menu: cheesesteaks, roast beef, roast pork, sausage and peppers, hoagies, fried eggplant and chicken cutlet , plus sides. None of the breakfast items, because he'll serve from noon to 10 p.m. daily."

Cappy's is located at 6901 Frankford Ave. (Longshore Avenue).

Shank's in the Northeast [Food & Drinq]
Shank and Evelyn's [MenuPages]

[Image via Holly Eats]

Philly food critics (though, alas, not us) made it onto the Food Network last night. Bobby Flay headed over to Collingswood's Pop Shop for a fun little grilled cheese throwdown.

Serving as judges were Art Etchells of Foobooz and Drew Lazor of CityPaper.

Check it out.

Throwdown With Bobby Flay: Grilled Cheese at Collingswood's The Pop Shop [YouTube]

• We just got the menu for Pearl. Now check out the CP review.

• Maia is finally opening.

• The food at Cafe Colao is admittedly awesome. But, says CP, the service is a mess.

• How about the intersection of food and UFC?

• Tips for cooking Passover-style for all the Jews in the house. Oh... and keeping Kosher can be, y'know, difficult & stuff.

• Are fast food chains going to put calorie counts up on menu boards in Philly? Don't count on it.

• Tonight is the official opening night for Ludwig's Garten successor Time.

• The next chapter of the food crisis will be about Asia's lack of water [AlterNet]
• Half a decade into drought, Australia gives up on growing rice [NYTimes]
• Bangladesh, of all places, expects bumper rice crop this year [AFP]
• EU, eager to set an example, to avoid food export protectionism [BBC]
• World Bank/UN food plan puts blame on, opposed by rich countries [Guardian]
• A core inflation figure that excludes food and energy is unhelpful [Union-Tribune]
• Intern takes the heat for McCain recipe plagiarism mini-scandal [AP]

We've just added a whole bunch of menus to MenuPages. Here are today's new selections:

• Pearl, the Rittenhouse Square Nuevo Asian nightclub/resto.

• The City Avenue branch of Pei Wei Asian Diner.

• Manayunk cheesesteak institution Chubby's Steaks.

• Lee's Hoagie House's Bensalem incarnation.

• West Philly Haitian joint Soleil De Minuit.

Oh brother. The Chink's Steaks controversy just got picked up by the Washington Post.

So here's the backstory for all of us who aren't caught up in the foodie minutae... Chink's Steaks was founded in Northeast Philly back in the 1950s by Samuel Sherman, who was nicknamed "Chink" as a child after his supposedly slanted eyes. Then in 2004, Asian-American groups started boycotting the restaurant:

Asian American groups began lobbying Groh to change the name in 2004, after 21-year-old Susannah Park, who is Korean American, heard about the small eatery from friends. When she called to ask why it is called "Chink's," she said she was told: "Because the owner had slanty eyes."

Park, now a 25-year-old college student, grew up in Clarksburg, W.Va., the adopted daughter of white parents. "I had all kinds of experiences with that word," Park said. "Growing up in West Virginia was traumatic. . . . Imagine being one of the only Asian American kids in a town that's almost all white."

Park's campaign to get the name changed was unsuccessful. In fact, it elicited a backlash when neighborhood residents began a petition drive to support the restaurant. Philadelphia magazine in its "Best of Philly" edition mocked Park and called her effort "the worst complaint" of 2004.

The comment board for the story is especially vitrolic.

Asian Groups Fight to Change Eatery's Name [WaPo]
Chink's Steaks [MenuPages]
Chink's Steaks [Official Site]

[Image via Holly Eats]

Even food can be divided along party lines! At least so say the pollsters quoted in today's New York Times story about it. Actually, they divide it even further: by candidate. We'll start with cereal. Can you match the cereal to the candidate? (No peeking at the article! Answers are after the jump.)

1. Bear Naked Granola
2. Kashi Go Lean
3. Fiber One

The first thing that comes to mind is the high fiber content of each of these cereals. Go America! Most of you are starting the day right.

As far as beverages are concerned, Republicans like Dr. Pepper, bourbon, scotch and red wine. Democrats like Pepsi, Sprite, gin, vodka and white wine. (Pepsi? Seriously? All the Democrats we know, most of whom are under 30, are Diet Coke drinkers.)

So political strategists actually use your food habits to target you with propaganda for their particular candidates. Which strikes us as amusing, really, because we imagine that food is not exactly the best indicator of the way someone will vote. Especially given the increasing popularity of natural/organic/hormone-free/local foods, which are apparently favorites of Obama supporters. As the article mentions, there are often a number of different reasons for eating natural foods: environmental (traditionally left-wing), health (bipartisan) or quality (also bipartisan — Republicans like local heirloom tomatoes too).

Still, we must admit, this kind of stuff is fun.

What's for Dinner? The Pollster Wants to Know [New York Times]

Photo, of some political cheese at Zabar's in Manhattan: msnyc111 [Flickr]

Answers: 1. Obama; 2. Clinton; 3. McCain

Sad news to report about a three-year-old Northwest Philly standby. Mount Airy's Hamlet Bistro is closing on April 23. According to owners Janis Weiner and Jonathan Schmalzbach:

"Hamlet Bistro will be serving its last meal in Mt. Airy on April 23. It has been an honor to be a part of Hamlet and to watch our extraordinary chefs, Raul and Jennifer, create this intimate world of food and warmth. Now they are embarking on a new life in another state, so please come and wish them well on their impending nuptials, uncork a final bottle of wine with one of your favorite meals, and say farewell to Celeste and Lynn, outstanding servers and orchestrators. Our warm thanks to this great community that embraced us and made this last three years so memorable."

Back in 2007, we wrote about Schmalzbach's side job as a crossword puzzle writer for the New York Times. We'll miss 'em.

Hamlet Bistro [MenuPages]
Hamlet Bistro [Official Site]

• Gastropub cuisine with a Belgian twist has hit the Main Line 'burbs at Teresa's Next Door.

• Yakitori Boy's newest drink? An "aloe vera-tini."

• Philly loves old school cocktails.

• Good news: we're 15 years maximum from non-food crop biofuels [Telegraph]
• France up and passes law banning prorexia propaganda, confusing public [WaPo]
• Should we be concerned that China's food prices are up 21% this year? [BBCNews]
• Psychographic pollsters say you vote what you eat. Mmm...granola [NYTimes]
• With Philly restaurant name, tradition trumps empathy and understanding [Tribune]

We're going to commit a heresy here, but Philadelphia is every bit as much a hamburger town as New York. We'd rank the hamburger at the Standard Tap against the legendary Corner Bistro burger any day. Hell, the burger at Good Dog (stuffed with roquefort and topped with onions) even tops the BLT Burger.

But, as we mentioned previously, NYC chain Goodburger is opening in Philly, courtesy of a partnership between Goodburger and Pete Pashalis (Pietro's Pizza). Here's the word straight from founder Nick Tsoulos:

“With goodburger’s success in New York, we felt sure that it was a concept whose time had come,” he says. “Because of my work with Pietro’s, I’m familiar with the Philadelphia market, and I know that people here are ready and waiting for a truly great burger.”

The “not so” secret to goodburger’s success lies in the hands of their well-trained “burger chefs,” who cut, grind and form each goodburger by hand in their own facility, maintaining total control and quality of each and every burger. Everything at goodburger is cooked to order, and unlike many fast-food concepts, goodburger uses only china plates and silverware for in-house dining and environmentally-friendly biodegradable packaging for take-out. Also working to set them apart from the crowd is their list of wine and beer, served on-site.

In addition to single and double goodburgers, the menu offers a selection of other sandwiches, including house-made, all-natural turkey burgers and chicken sandwiches featuring Bell and Evans chicken, veggie burgers, French fries served plain or with their signature cheddar cheese blend, Texas steak chili and milkshakes made from Ben & Jerry’s premium ice cream.

“We think of the goodburger as a fresher, more flavorful burger than any other one out there,” says Tsoulos. “We’re proud and excited to bring our burgers to a great food town like Philadelphia.”

Opening day at 1725 Chestnut Street is April 26 May 3. We'll have the menu up the minute they open.

goodburger [MenuPages]
goodburger [Official Site]

[Image via Gothamist]

Yes!

Virtually all of you will be getting a $600 tax refund this spring in an ill-advised scheme to restart the U.S. economy. The myopic goal of the refund is for us to spend the money immediately on consumer products and services, so why not blow it all on one epic restaurant meal?

Let us cast aside the $1000 sundae (gold foil) at Serendipity 3 and the $1000 omelet (ten ounces of sevruga) at Norma's — both in New York — as pure silliness, and instead focus on tasting menus, but sans alcohol. If you added in wine pairings, you could go over $600 on the first sip.

It's remarkable, isn't it, that you can spend $10,000 easy on 750 milliliters of fermented grape juice, but it is extremely difficult to imagine a $10,000 meal that doesn't involve kilos of truffles and caviar and the like. Can a $100 meal provide as much palate pleasure as a $1000 bottle of wine? We'd posit so; the price to quality ratio for wine is logarithmic, but only geometric or maybe even just arithmetic for food. Suffice it to say, a $600 meal is going to be really, really, really good, and a lot less risky of a financial investment than a $600 bottle of wine. So where, on Tax Day 2008, are our $600 meals going to come from?

Well, not too many places in America — sorry, Uncle Sam! Even the most renowned and priciest restaurants in the United States are hard-pressed to get you up to the $600 mark on food alone. French Laundry, Thomas Keller's landmark fresh/seasonal restaurant in Yountville, CA, charges a mere $240. Alinea, Grant Achatz's cutting-edge molecular gastronomy spectacle in Chicago is all of $195 for twenty-odd courses; possibly one of the best deals in the country, and actually worth some fraction of your refund.

Superexpensive restaurants tend to cluster in money cities, which is why Joel Robuchon chose unseemly Las Vegas for his first venture in the United States; his eponymous restaurant in the MGM Grand has a $385, sixteen course tasting menu that's nothing to sneeze at. Right now, the menu includes a dish with abalone (which retails for over $100 a pound) and baby leeks in a ginger bouillon, for example.

America's ultimate money city is, of course, New York. Where else could those aforementioned $1000 dishes exist without shame, and even find customers! The second most expensive restaurant in the city is Per Se, Tom Keller's other restaurant. The prix fixe there is $275, not much of a premium over the rural California version.

Our winner today is Masa, the country's preeminent sushi restaurant (at least if you use cost as your primary metric!) It was opened by Chef Masa (there's a surcharge for the surname) in 2004, with the only menu option being a $350 omakase, exclusive of drinks, tax and a mandatory 20% tip. The prix fixe has only risen $50 in the past four years (only!), but don't fret: you can tack on a supplement of Wagyu beef from Masa's home prefecture of Tochigi to nudge it up to $600, thus fulfilling the mission of wasting your tax refund.

Meanwhile, Wagyu beef is the culprit at the most expensive restaurant in the world, Tokyo's Aragawa steakhouse. There, a twenty ounce cut of some of the best-quality meat in existence runs a shade over $600, depending on the exchange rate. For a single piece of steak! And the service and decor are shoddy! Still, wow.

French Laundry [Official Site]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]
Joel Robuchon [Official Site]
Per Se [MenuPages]
Per Se [Official Site]
Masa [MenuPages]
Masa [Official Site]

[Photo: your tax refund, in meat form (at Aragawa, via dottyguy/flickr]

It's gonzo publicity stunt time at The Capital Grille. To celebrate the Flyers taking on the Washington Capitals on the NHL quarterfinals, the chain's Center City location will temporarily rename itself "The Flyers Grille." A banner has been put up on the Capital Grille sign (right) to show the change and to root for the home team. Of course, the DC location of the national steakhouse chain will be rooting for the Capitals. Boo!

Inqlings [Inquirer]
The Capital Grille [MenuPages]
The Capital Grille [Official Site]

In case you might not have heard, it's primary season in Pennsylvania. The good folks at the Inquirer, always eager to gauge the local mood towards Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, decided to stop by a Philly lunch truck.

The lunch truck of choice? Mike's Lunch, located on Front and Pattison hard up by by South Philly' s warehouses and by-the-river factories:

"As for Obama, the Illinois Democrat, a few pollsters suggest that the racial element may influence how this group votes. Sonny Russino, a 47-year-old short-order cook in Mike's truck who seems heated by something other than his grill, comes close to articulating the argument. "This country isn't ready for a black president," he says. "Obama has too much luggage. He is bringing too much of the past - racism and slavery - into the future. And his pastor says bad things about America. "There's too much of this Afro-American thing in the country these days. Like in the music world, with rap. It seems to me they all want to take charge."

In the stark world of race and politics, two African American fruit packers have a different reason for eschewing Obama.

Sheila McClain, 47, of Frankford, and Karen Baker Williams, 48, of North Philadelphia, hit Mike's for lunch and did the "I am woman" thing. "Obama's too inexperienced," Williams says. "And a woman's point of view is better." "You're right. She's OK," McClain agrees. "Her being a woman, she'll do a good job."
"You know, I was holding a Hillary poster getting on a bus the other night," Williams explains, "and the bus driver says: 'Don't you get on this bus holding that. I'll beat you up.' "I told him: 'You try it. I'm still going to vote for this female.'"

Thus, another day of South Philly life was captured by the Inky.

At the lunch truck, taste for the familiar [Inquirer]

[Image via Inquirer]

• American policymakers still in denial about ethanol's role in food crisis [NYTimes]
• The IMF estimates that 100m people are severely affected by food crisis [FWI]
• Bush releases $200m from food fund for immediate stability aid [CNN]
• The World Bank wants to raise $500m for food aid, especially in Africa [MG]
• Haitian food riots, having taken six lives, finally quiet down [VOA]

On a recent visit to the Philly area, Barack Obama stopped by a ShopRite in East Norriton for a photo-op.

Judging from the picture above, Obama was pretty surprised to discover the existence of Tastykakes.

What type of Tastykake would Obama prefer? [Philly Edge]
Obama Mystified By Tastykakes [Philadelphia Will Do]

Since we're all about vacation today, perhaps it's time to show you this video of a restaurant we're just a tiny bit obsessed with. It's part of the Hilton in Maldives and is, according to this video and others, the world's first underwater restaurant. There's no narration here or anything. Just pretty pictures. Cool, eh?

Pity poor Haddonfield, NJ restaurant Javier. In an Inky review, Craig LaBan called it a "dramatic display of mediocrity," called his $29 fish entree "a five-act tragedy," accused employees of finking on each other and the service on his first visit as being "disastrous." Yowch.

A sample excerpt:

"What has Javier delivered for this investment? A dramatic display of mediocrity served at outrageous prices.

My $29 tuna entree alone was a five-act tragedy. First came a dish prepared completely differently from the potato-wrapped fish described on the menu, which it turns out, was several weeks out of date.

Then came skulduggery as a neighboring waiter dissed our server: "He's new. He was supposed to tell you that."

Of course, it wasn't his fault the kitchen had totally undercooked the fish, hardly searing this still-cold piece of tuna, though we'd asked for it medium-rare.

The tuna redo, predictably, brought a steaming gray hunk of fish so carelessly overcooked, I really didn't want it anymore."

That said, LaBan did like the "suave" maitre d'.

[Image via Akira Suwa/Inquirer]

Javier [Official Site]
Javier [Inquirer]

• At global economic conference, food crisis trumps credit crisis [NYTimes]
• France says: the EU really needs to do something about the food crisis [BBC]
• One reason food prices are up: vastly increased farm input costs [WSJ]
• South St. Paul stockyard, once largest in the world, shutters [Post-Bulletin]
• Singles are eating black noodles for love on Black Day in S. Korea [Reuters]

More info on the soon to open Memphis Taproom.

Our man Joe Sixpack stopped by Memphis the other day and got a sneak peak at the menu:

"Chef Jesse Kimball (right), formerly of Matyson and Lacroix, gave me a peek at the planned menu - it’s much more extensive than you’d expect from a neighborhood tavern. Look for artichokes marinated in IPA, tempura butternut squash, leek fondue, a ploughman’s lunch and lots of vegan dishes. And, in a nod to the neighborhood’s ethnic roots, the Port Richmond Platter features pierogies, potato pancakes and kielbasa from Czerw’s."

Opening day is skedded for late April. We'll have the official menu the day they open — and we can't wait. Weird almost-in-Kensington location aside, this place looks amazing.

Memphis Taproom [Official Site]
Memphis On Tap [Joe Sixpack]

We're taking a vacation in Mexico this week &mdash Mazatlan, to be exact &mdash and thought we'd share a few photos of what we'll be consuming. These are all from other people's Flickr photostreams, but they give you a good idea of what's going down the gullet in the Pearl of the Pacific.

There will definitely be plenty of these:

It's especially delicious with a couple of these:

More jealousy-inducing photos after the jump:

You have to be careful of the dangerous and apparently cannibalistic wildlife:

But seafood in Mexico isn't always cooked. Just throw some lime juice on there, marinate and you've got a wonderful ceviche:

You don't always have to eat seafood in Mazatlan. These people got to go to a party back in 1986 that included puerco, a whole roast pig (though they do still make this today). Check the classic apple in the mouth of the dinner and the extra-classic sta-prest pants on the diner.

If you need a bite on the run, you can stop by a taco stand for a snack that will likely cost less than a dollar and taste a million times better than almost any fast food in the U.S.

Finally, for dessert or maybe breakfast, there's got to be a stop at the Panederia. These pan dulces are super good and not too sweet:

There's just barely time to catch the last rays over the Pacific. Awesome:

Photo: Cassadota

•Is it really appropriate for a restaurant called Gandhi to offer an all-you-can-eat buffet? [MP: Boston]
•Should certain cuisines always be cheap? [MP: Chicago]
•Can restaurants withhold tips from its workers? [MP: Philadelphia]
•Will there ever be a disagreement-free "best-of" list? [MP: San Francisco]
•Is there anything wrong with a four-egg omelet? [MP: South Florida]

What's the best way to nab that unattainable table or bounce back from a missed reservation? It's not necessarily bribery. An article in Restaurants and Institutions this week indicates that the best solution may be a mix of common sense, basic manners and flexibility.

If you are so late that your table has been given away, apologize and ask, "Is there anything you can do for us?". Most restaurants get far more last-minute cancellations than they'd like to admit, so the chances are slim that there will be nothing available for you all night. Many restaurants also have at least one reserve table that they reluctantly bring out for unexpected situations.

If the restaurant truly cannot offer you a table, try eating at the bar, as you'll get a sense of the restaurant's items and the chef's style, and the food might even be cheaper. As a bonus, you can forge a relationship with the staff, increasing your likelihood of getting -- and keeping -- future reservations.

But other solutions are equally as practical and more employable. for example:

Problem: The waiter tells you all about the special but doesn't mention the price.

Solution: A good way to get at the question without seeming rude is to ask, "What price point are the specials?" This phrasing is a little less specific and better than saying, "How much is that?" If you are with people you don't know well or are treating someone and don't want to seem stingy, keep in mind that specials are generally the same price as the more expensive menu items.

Experienced diners know all this stuff, but it makes good reading anyway. And even you, savvy Menupages reader, may pick up a hint or two.

Restaurant Etiquette 101 [Restaurants and Institutions]
Momofuku Ko [Official Site]
Image: Timon [Flickr]

Back on Monday, we reported that Deuce was closing. On extremely short notice, no less.

Now, the mighty Michael Klein reports that there is hope for (the Rachael Ray-featured) Deuce:

"Indications are strong that Deuce, the Northern Liberties pub that closed Sunday, will reopen in mere weeks. This would cheer up Rachael Ray's producers, who were all over the joint 48 hours before, shooting the Food Network show Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels. Supervising producer Wade Sheeler yesterday said he was "shocked" at hearing of the shutdown. Former owner Laura Vernola said she knew of the closing, but had been confident that the restaurant would reopen under new management before the show's scheduled premiere in early summer."

We'll keep you posted of the reopening as it happens.

Inqlings: A Ray of hope for Deuce? [Inky]
Deuce [MenuPages]
Deuce [Official Site]

What is it about formerly McDonald's-owned Mexican chain Chipotle that gives it such a ferocious cult following? Fast Company tried to find out. Apart from commiting the sin of calling Chipotle "the Bono of the fast-food business" (!), they think it comes down to a combination of quality food and a social responsible message:

"Good food wrapped in a socially responsible message has created legions of Chipotle fans -- and a superhot business. Acquired by McDonald's in 1998 when there were only 14 Chipotles, the company went public in 2006 with 500 stores and watched its stock rise from $22 to $110 in 18 months. The now-independent outfit is enjoying an 80% revenue run-up over three years, and by year's end, it will have 840 stores and top $1 billion in annual sales."

Chipotle is influencing America's food supply chain as well — both Burger King and Wendy's have started considering imitating their humane-pork options.

Chipotle [Official Site]
Ode to a Burrito [Fast Company]

[Photo: Carnitas burrito, Flickr: skeptict]

The Wall Street Journal just gave the thumbs up to Cuban cuisine in Philadelphia. Here's what Elva Ramirez had to say about Cuba Libre and Alma de Cuba:

Cuba Libre:

"The warm toasted flatbread is served with a heavenly mango butter. The fire-and-ice ceviche -- tuna steeped in coconut milk, ginger and jalapenos, served in a coconut shell over dry ice -- turns heads when it comes to the table. For entrees, the saffron-infused arroz on pollo (chicken with rice) and ropa vieja (shredded beef stewed with tomatoes) are Cuban comfort foods raised to high art."

Alma de Cuba:

"In addition to an extensive rum menu, Alma de Cuba has three versions of mojitos, using different types of rum. Consider any of the fresh ceviches, such as the sweet Ecuadorian shrimp with roasted tomatoes, to start. The vaca frita is a twice-fried skirt steak served with sweet onions over a fragrant white rice. The lechon asado is a crispy pork with garlic mojo served over a creamy yuca mash. Don't skip the chocolate cigar, an almond-cake and chocolate-mousse confection, for dessert."

Philadelphia's Upscale Cuban Cuisine [WSJ]
Cuba Libre [MenuPages]
Cuba Libre [Official Site]
Alma de Cuba [MenuPages]
Alma de Cuba [Official Site]

An innocuous restaurant review over at the Philadelphia CityPaper has turned into an object of controversy. The problem? In the comment thread, an ex-employee accused the management of Northern Liberties' Arbol Cafe of taking tips away from servers.

Fair enough, but then the management of the restaurant wrote in — and that's when things got messy.

An ex-employee wrote in to CP:

"The owners of the Arbol cafe do not allow their workers to keep their tips. While getting paid 7 dollars an hour to bus, clean, set, take orders, run food, do dishes, and bleach bathroom/floors, the tips from customers are kept by the owners. Tipping the owner is considered rude and telling servers that they can't is poor practice. After a four hour shift (28 bucks) with no tips, which one time a server made 30 dollars in tips I was unable to keep it."

Here's how the Arbol Cafe's management responded:

"The cafe has been open all of three months and is undergoing drastic rennovations. Prior to our hiring any person, we make it quite clear that they will be paid above minimum wage to start. It is also our clear intent to not have waiters or waitresses but rather, persons who are interested in working and growing as a team and excelling in the project's full potential. [...] Our goal is to bring to the community a relaxed, casual, family atmosphere where tipping is optional for the customers and not needed by the staff. All money generated goes towards financing the rennovations as well as aiding us in being able to pay the workers well above minimum wage in respect to their ability and contributions."

In other words, the original accusation was right and management was holding on to the tips. In response, CityPaper readers wrote in to accuse the restaurant of "stealing" from their waiters and waitresses, of being "deceitful," "unethical," of misappropriating tips and of "exploiting" employees. However, other readers are standing up for the restaurant:

"People. It is not stealing from the employee to pay them a wage that is far above the normal restaurant wage. It is not stealing to involve the employee in what is basically a profit-sharing arrangement. And it is not deceitful to tell any future employees the situation ahead of time and have the willingly sign up. Arbol cafe is a model business run by two people who care about what they are doing and the people they are serving, as well as the people that work for them. Their food is out-of-this world good and they deserve better than to be slandered on internet message boards. Go try them out. Talk to the owners (They are so friendly it is hard not to. How many other businesses are like that?), you'll see."

And thus, the great Philadelphia restaurant war of 2008 kicked off with a bang.

Arbol Cafe [MenuPages]
Arbol Cafe [CityPaper]

We all know how strongly food can affect mood. Ever been hangry? It's not a pretty sight. But in an environment where very little else has the power to elevate, the role of food moves from attitude adjuster to a hook on which to hang your sanity.

This NPR story from Daniel Zwerdling takes a pretty fascinating look at the role of meals and cooks on possibly the most remote outpost on earth: McMurdo Station, Antarctica. There, according to one worker, the quality of meals can "make or break morale of the whole station."

We've heard of prisoners rioting over the loss of peanut butter or some such dish, but at least they get a few hours of sunlight a day. In Antarctica, when it's night, it's dark for months on end. During that time there is literally no other sustenance than what comes out of the kitchen. From NPR:

Occasionally, diners lose it. Despite all the menu options, the institutionalized feel at McMurdo can often push people's buttons. Ebel, the maintenance worker, says he went "berserk" once in 1994 because he thought the cooks were always flavoring dishes with curry.

"I cleared that galley once, I cleared the whole serving area," Ebel recalls. "They were peeking around the corners at me, 'Mike calm down!' And all the food and plates got in the way."

Think about that as you head to the farmer's market for spring vegetables. They're sold out of asparagus? It could be so much worse.

Food is Morale Booster or Breaker in Antarctica [NPR]
Photo: Antarctic Sunset #4, Peterkelly [Flickr]

• Inside Pennsylvania's wine industry.

• Opening day at Citizens Bank Park is hell on the hot dog vendors.

• Goodburger is coming to Philly.

• CityPaper goes to New Jersey to check out Javier.

• West Philly has a new Ethiopian restaurant... and we'll have the menu within the week.

• Speaking of menus, we have the menu to Mae Molly's... and it might just be the least known restaurant in Philly.

• Mmm... artisan preserves.

• CP declares war on overused menu terms.

• Vegan mac & cheese: approved by hippies and crusty punk rockers alike.

• As Haitian food riot violence continue, PM urged to step down [AFP]
• US & EU complicit in global food crisis, and must act to mollify it [NYTimes]
• WHAT FOOD CRISIS? Meet the $100k kitchen that's sweeping the nation [NYTimes]
• Defying government regulation, raw milk sales continue to skyrocket [AP]
• Post smoking ban, UK pubs report an increase in food sales [Mirror]
• In display of vulgarity, Seoul to put on Guinness Records food fest [Chosun]
• UK closer to banning food additives linked to child hyperactivity [Telegraph]

This month's issue of Food & Wine is focused on the Mediterranean (Cruise ships! Turkey! Spain!), which works out damn well for one Michael Solomonov. The former Marigold Kitchen chef and current face behind Zahav took Food & Wine's Jen Murphy on a culinary trail of Israel.

Well, not exactly. Murphy wrote about a research trip Solomonov and his staff took to Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Solomonov's hometown of Ganei Yehuda:

"The group set out to hit four kebab shops one day, five hummus parlors the next. A daylong eggplant extravaganza segued into a night of club-hopping and ended with a predawn bureka, a savory breakfast pastry stuffed with tangy Bulgarian feta cheese. [...] At Busi, a kebab house in Tel Aviv’s Hatikvah Quarter, Solomonov likes to order one of each of the specialties: shashlik (skewered chunks of meat, like chicken liver) and kofta (ground meat—usually lamb or beef—mixed with spices, then formed around skewers). Bulgarian- and Romanian-style kebabs are thicker and have a lighter texture than others, because cooks knead a small amount of sugar and baking soda into the meat. “But all Israeli kebabs, no matter their origin, are cooked over open coals,” Solomonov says. Accompanying the kebabs is one of Solomonov’s favorite dishes, an earthy eggplant, pepper and onion stew. The eggplant is fried before being pickled in a piquant dressing. “The eggplant in Israel is so much fresher that it’s almost sweet,” says Solomonov."

Solomonov also gave Food & Wine a list of his favorite Israeli restaurants, including one that specializes in that most rare dish, foie gras kebab.

Israeli Restaurant Picks [Food & Wine]
Everyday Food of Israel: On the Hummus Front [Food & Wine]
Marigold Kitchen [MenuPages]
Marigold Kitchen [Official Site]

There's some weird stuff going on in restaurant kitchens these days. In the video (which should be edited down to, say, three minutes, but is still interesting — just ignore the annoying blond woman), chef Stuart Sage of Tang in Dubai demonstrates how he uses liquid nitrogen like a deep fryer to cook food — in this case, a tomato espuma — at ridiculously cold temperatures.

What freaked us out was how he scooped the espuma out of the bowl full of liquid nitrogen and immediately presented it to the woman. We'd be terrified to eat it, for fear that our tongue would immediately freeze and break into 100 pieces, and then how would we taste food. (Shudder.) Of course, the nitrogen had likely evaporated at that point, and besides, we breathe it in and out every day, right? Still. Just a teensy bit scary.

Restaurants - Cooking with Liquid Nitrogen in the Real World [YouTube]

Work as a Philadelphia food writer and you write about Joey Vento. Cause and effect.

Yesterday, we wrote that the Geno's Steaks owner was holding a press conference. The Daily News's Damon C. Williams stopped by and found out that Vento wants the city's Fair Practices Ordinance changed, claiming it violates his rights to hang his sign demanding patrons order their steaks in English only:

The sign - "This is America . . . when ordering, please speak English" - was hung more than two years ago. Since then, Vento has been on the defensive, saying that he has tons of support and that he isn't the racist that the news coverage made him out to be.

Vento and his lawyers intend to bring the fight to City Hall.

"We are sending a formal letter to the mayor on [Mayor Nutter's] comments that Vento was a 'black eye on the city,' and we want a one-on-one conference," said Vento's co-counsel, Shannon L. Goessling, of the Southeastern Legal Foundation. "We also want the appointing of a special panel that will help rewrite the law so it won't be unconstitutional."

Philebrity has a different take.

Sequel to Geno's sign flap: Vento wants apology & rewrite of law [Daily News]
Geno's Steaks [MenuPages]
Geno's Steaks [Official Site]

An upcoming vacation has us stocking up on pulp novels, and it was impossible to resist breaking into Ian Fleming's Moonraker a bit early. James Bond novels often include wonderful descriptions of classic meals and this is no exception, starting with dinner at M's mythical Blades card club in London:

"Well," said M. "Caviar for me. Devilled [sic] kidney and a slice of your excellent bacon. Peas and new potatoes. Strawberries in kirsch. What about you, James?"
"I've got a mania for really good smoked salmon," said bond. Then he pointed down the menu. "Lamb cutlets. The same vegetables as you, as it's May. Asparagus with Bernaise sauce sounds wonderful. And perhaps a slice of pineapple."

But that's just our own latest exposure to the vivid descriptions of Bond's culinary escapades. Throughout the series the meals keep coming, including crab legs and pink champagne at "Bills on the Beach" (rumored to be a thinly disguised description of Joe's Stone Crab) in Miami, langouste in France and an endless stream of scrambled eggs and bacon all over the world. He even manages to scare up eggs Benedict and a bottle of Old Granddad on a train in Japan in You Only Live Twice.

Fleming can cook a meal on the page that hits as close to the gut as anything that doesn't actually consist of food. In fact, we would submit that many of his descriptions come off more satisfying than the real thing. We'll take a dining chapter of Bond over a real-life Egg McMuffin any day.

It's unlikely, on our upcoming trip, that we'll enjoy a "delicious lunch served by an even more delicious stewardess" on Continental, as Bond does in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. As long as there is a Fleming novel or two in the beach bag, the real-life menu can't hope to compare. We'll let it try, though.

So What is James Bond's Favorite Drink? [Accidental Hedonist]
James Bond food and eating [The James Bond Dossier]
Joe's Stone Crab [MenuPages]
Joe's Stone Crab [Official Site]
Photo: Pink Champagne (a Bond favorite) by Gareth Lowe1 [Flickr]

• Paraguayan food comes to Philly at the Arbol Cafe. Hint: Get the lomito.

• Valanni just expanded their seating area.

• Yes, healthy food can be found at 30th Street Station.

• LA's Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles sues Chicago's Rosscoe's Chicken & Waffles [Tribune]
• EU Development Commissioner brashly calls African food crisis a "tsunami" [BBC]
• Minnesota Twins ballpark signature food item to involve walleyed pike? [Star Tribune]
• On farms, environment losing ground to little-known foe called CAPITALISM [NYTimes]
• Food riots in Haiti continue for a third day; UN peacekeepers worried [Guardian]
• Mich. closer to issuing food stamps bimonthly, encouraging produce purchases [MLive]

It's amazing what you can find on YouTube. For instance, a commercial for everyone's favorite Starr-owned martini and tapas jawn, The Continental.

Continental [MenuPages]
Continental [Official Site]

Potatoes are a terribly versatile starch; you can mash them, smash them, fry them, scallop, dice, puree, bake, roast, gratinate, chowederize and latkefy them...they take well to almost any preparation. Now that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has decided that they are the food of the future by dint of their caloric yield per acre (a critical metric in an era of unmitigated cereal price spikes), there will be opportunity for even more permutations of potato dishes, like some of these exotic specimens:

"Tornado Potato" — as purchasable on the streets of Seoul (superlocal):

After the jump, spuds galore!

Potato and Bacon Galette — may look like a pastry, but in reality, so much better (Loua):

Scotch Quail Egg with Purple Potato Salad — presented as a way to use leftovers, but worthy of primacy (Biggie*):

Sweet Potato Green Tea Soft Serve a.k.a Asabu Sabo — because potatoes can do anything (tychenyt):

Tofu Wrapped in Potato — potatoes can act as a powerful exoskeleton (tofu666):

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad — is it chicken? is it croutons? Guess again! (su-lin):

Red Potato Pizza — of course it tastes good (QuintanaRoo):

Potato Candy — these are made with a queen's ransom of sugar (pixchica):

Shimiimo a.k.a. Dried Potatoes — a traditional wintertime preparation in Japan; apparently they taste like mochi when fully dried (mistubako):

What is the strangest thing you've ever done with a potato? Actually, on second thought, maybe we don't want to know.

Potatoes seen as 'food of the future' [Food Navigator]

What is it with Germans re-enforcing their own stereotypes? The country known for efficiency and automation, birthplace of the automat, has now debuted a new kind of mechanical restaurant that uses a fantastic series of tracks, screens and conveyor belts to deliver fresh, often locally sourced food. From the BBC:

Supersonic sausages, high-pace pancakes and wine bottles whizzing down to the customers' tables with the help of good old gravity. One pot is spiralling down so fast, it looks like an Olympic bobsleigh (but it's only Bratwurst).

What's more, at the 's Baggers restaurant in Nuremberg, you don't need waiters to order food. Customers use touch-screen TVs to browse the menu and choose their meal....

Up in the kitchen, it is man, not machine, that makes the food. They haven't found a way of automating the chef, just yet...

Then it is put on the rails and despatched downhill to the correct table. Manna from heaven, German-style.

The restaurant is the brainchild of local businessman Michael Mack.

"I wanted to come up with a complete new restaurant system," Michael tells me, "one that would be more efficient and more comfortable".

We don't think the waiters of the world need to worry too much about their job security in the face of this latest development in automated foodservice. It is fascinating, though, and as the BBC reporter (who strangely doesn't get a by-line in this story) points out, there is no need for a tip in an automated restaurant.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., we're working on new ways to hilariously add steps to the food preparation process. What if Michael Mack and the Rube Goldberg competition guys got together on a project? The result could be the most entertaining mechanical comedy of a restaurant ever. We really hope they consider it.

Fast Food, German-Style [BBC News]
's Baggers restaurant [Official Site]
Automat [Wikipedia]
Burgers The Excruciating Way [Menupages Blog]
Bamn! [MenuPages]
Bamn! [Official Site]
Photo from 's Baggers' Website

Meet Joey Vento, publicity hound.

We all know the Geno's Steaks owner likes being in the spotlight. There's the famous "This is America. When ordering, please speak English" sign and, of course, a Fox News appearance or three. Not to mention the endless media mentions in the Inky and Daily News related to his pet issue of immigration.

But today, Vento is holding one of his rare press conferences. He hopes to present proposals to alter Philly's Fair Practices ordinance — the one he was charged with discrimination over:

The changes Vento seeks were not available yesterday. That he's not in the mood to be rejected was apparent from the headline on the release sent to the media announcing today's event: "Change Rules or Face Lawsuit."

Oy. If anyone wants to liveblog this for us, they're more than welcome to. The press conference takes place at 11:30 at Geno's.

Vento to hold press conference on 'please speak English' ruling [Inquirer]
Geno's Steaks [MenuPages]
Geno's Steaks [Official Site]

• Cloning-for-food moratorium still USDA modus operandi [Reuters]
• Genetically modified taro moratorium in effect in Hawaii [AP]
• Food riots are the new energy, water riots in developing world [UKPress]
• British mildly upset that food additives lower kids' IQs [UPI]
• Also, they throw away $6b worth of fruits & veggies a year [RWM]
• China plans 24/7 monitoring of food factories during Olympics [Guardian]
• Calls for food sovereignty in Canada...sounds like energy independence [SunTimes]

1. Northern Liberties' Deuce, the first opening in Bart Blatstein's Liberties Walk, is closing tonight. CityPaper has some more info and, according to owner Laura Vernola, "it just didn't work out."

2. Gourmet hot dog/comfort food spot 707 will be shutting their doors on April 30, with the owner alluding to Food & Drinq about "concept debacles."

Deuce's Last Night is Tonight [Deuce/CityPaper]
707 to Close [Food & Drinq/Inquirer]

Good magazine just published their list of America's Tastiest Streets — and Philadelphia is nowhere to be seen on it.

The winners were Queens, New York's Roosevelt Avenue (Korean-style fried chicken, tamales, Cuban food, Filipino cafeterias, northern Thai food and the esteemed Arepa Lady), Houston's Travis Street (New Texan restaurant T'afia, Mexican standby Tacos A Go-Go, kitschy AM joint the Breakfast Klub and plenty of Vietnamese food), Seattle's Fremont Avenue North (Thai, Greek, Japanese and Puerto Rican), Chicago's Broadway (seafood restaurants, Thai bakeries and ethiopian cuisine) and quite a few more in Miami, Nashville and Los Angeles.

So that got us thinking... What are Philadelphia's tastiest streets?

Our choices:

1) Bustleton Avenue

The Northeast does not nearly get the love it should. Just off the top of our head... Angelo's Pizza Kitchen is a killer old school Philly-style pizzeria that for some reason has a healthy sideline in barbecue ribs. Cafe Zohar is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it Israeli restaurant that's so authentic that even their website is registered in Israel. Steve's Prince of Steaks is the archetype of neighborhood Philly cheesesteak spots. And then there's Stolovaya, a Russian shrine to all things deep-fried. Fried potato and deep fried chicken in garlic crust? Yes, please.

2) North Fifth Street

Yeah, we were thinking of that episode of Parking Wars where that parking inspector stops at a random corner in the Badlands to pick up grilled chicken sticks for a dollar from some Puerto Rican lady. We admit it. A drive (or SEPTA run) up North Fifth Street means a drive from San Juan to Santo Domingo to Mexico City to Seoul. Over by Girard Avenue, Taco Riendo bridges the gulf between Boricua and Mexicano with pork chop tacos. Further up, Porky's Point keeps the faith with mofongo, tostones and PR-style roast pork sandwiches to go. Tierra Colombiana is an upscale restaurant whose menu combines South American and Caribbean items. Then as you get closer to the MontCo border, Korean restaurants like Jong Ja Jip suddenly pop up.

3) South Ninth Street

We're saving the obvious choice for last. But for optimum deliciousness, this is the place to be. A fresh-baked Italian loaf or homemade broccoli rabe pizza from Sarcone's Bakery. Chicken parmigiana from Villa di Roma. Pepperoni slices from Lorenzo Pizza. An Angelo Cataldi sandwich (extra Armenian cheese and grilled chicken, please) from Bitar's. The heart-stopping La Lupe torta with beef milenesa, chorizo, roast pork, mozzarella cheese and American cheese (!) from La Lupe. A combo banh mi from O Sandwiches. A pain bagnat and cafe au lait from Rim Cafe. And a cheesesteak from Pat's King of Steaks. Face it people, this one wins hands down.

Have a better idea for Philadelphia's tastiest street? Let us know.

America's Tastiest Streets [Good]

The April, 2008 issue of Budget Travel includes a wonderful piece on pay-what-you-want restaurants worldwide. We had no idea this was even a trend, but this little roundup gives four examples, including two in the U.S., one in Europe and one in Australia.

The idea is that you go into one of these restaurants, eat like normal and then pay what you feel is appropriate by dropping some cash into a box or using a customer-operated credit card machine. This seems, weirdly, both intimidating and welcoming. It's nice to feel like you're trusted, but it might be intimidating to feel you're essentially rendering judgment on the place by the amount you leave. What if it wasn't that good? Should you stiff them?

While the pay-what-you-like trend reminds us of these underground kitchens that are taking hold in various urban centers, it seems there is much more at stake. The casual dinners thrown at someone's house are simply a nice thing to do and would stop if they weren't fun and/or financially viable.

These restaurants, on the other hand, pin the financial health of the owners and staff on the fair-mindedness and generosity of their customers. It seems to us an experiment that puts a huge amount of faith in humanity and would be very depressing if it failed.

Pay-what-you-like Restaurants [Budget Travel]
Pirates of the Kitchen [Menupages SF]
Photo courtesy of Terra Bite Lounge [Official Site]

For anybody who has worked in a kitchen or watched a professional cooking show, you know efficiency is possibly the most important trait one can bring to the table, er, workstation. Just the opposite in the annual Rube Goldberg competition. This year, contestants built machines whose sole purpose seems to be to make the heads of people like Gordon Ramsay or our old restaurant boss Larry explode in a burst of professional fury. Ha.

The winning entrant and home team at the Purdue University-hosted event took 156 steps to construct a hamburger, using a patty that had already been cooked. Hilariously, the machines seem really bad at making their burgers while taking way too long to do it. But the competition isn't about making burgers, it's about making teamwork and ingenuity, which gets done in spades.

By the time they're done working on these contraptions, the teams in this competition could probably knock out breakfast for a couple hundred people without breaking a superfluous egg. Maybe they can come down to our local diner and give a lesson. Larry should come, too.

A hamburger in 156 easy steps [Slashfood]
Purdue's 156-Step Burger Maker Wins Rube Goldberg Contest [Gizmodo]
Rube Goldberg Contest At Purdue [Purdue News Service]

Read Bindi's reviews on MenuPages and one thing will stand out: Philly diners hate the $18-per-person minimum.

Samples:

aes97: "The $18 minimum is particularly insulting, as it seems to stem from the assumption that most diners are cheapskates and thus have to be forced to order enough to justify taking up a table."

Monkeyboy: "When I come out to eat I don't want to do the math to make sure I meet a minimum purchase. When you go out you want to eat a meal and enjoy yourself."

Anonymous: "My husband wanted to order appetizers first, but he was not "allowed to." The waitress said he had to order everything at once. I guess she was afraid we wouldn't meet the $18-per-person rule. The pickle plate & chutney samplers came without bread. We asked what we were supposed to do with them. The waitress cleverly answered that you can use them to "enhance the taste of your food" or put them on bread. We asked, "We have to order bread, it doesn't come with it?" She confirmed that was correct."

Munchies: "Having spent over $70 at our table of 4, we were informed (after we had finished) that there was a $20 minimum per person and if we didn't order $18 worth of dessert we would be charged an additional $18. When we asked the manager if they should have told us that before we ordered she curtly replied "It's on the menu." and then turned to me and said "People come here for dinner, you shouldn't come here for snacks."

So what did Craig LaBan think of Bindi? Well, he didn't get to the minimums... but he did dig the pork vindaloo:

Turney’s pork vindaloo, though, may be Bindi’s best example of a refined classic. The typical slow-stewed meat is upgraded with yieldingly soft seared tenderloin. And the meat’s aromatic crust of black cardamom, clove, cumin and nigella seeds sparks against the hot and sour gravy, a vinegar- and wine-tinged brew that unfurls with sweet spice on the tongue before a final whip-crack of chile heat. A comforting puree of creamy cauliflower and a sweet mango-date chutney cushions the vindaloo’s bold flavors.

An update of Indian cuisine, faithful to authentic flavors [Inquirer]
Bindi [MenuPages]
Bindi [Official Site]

[Image via Ron Tarver/Inquier]

• Italian food undergoing an (ethnic) identity crisis in Italy [NYTimes]
• Humorous Absolut ad prompts boycott calls from silly Americans [Tribune]
• Embattled Atlantic City casinos cutting food and drink comps [USAToday]
• India's structural economic problems exacerbating food shortages [BBCNews]
• Might the World Bank implement a "New Deal" for African agriculture? [AllAfrica]
• Food riots in southern Haiti leave four dead [Reuters]

Over at WIP, Glen Macnow has assembled a list of Philly's best cheesesteaks. You know... for Barack Obama to try. Something tell us, however, that Obama stopping by Chink's Steaks wouldn't help his chances with the Asian-American vote.

After 45 Cheesesteaks, the Best Were... [Inquirer]

•Oxtail obsession: totally justified. [MP: Boston]
•Exemplary empanadas: cheap and tasty! [MP: Chicago]
•Obama's omission: how can you go to Philly and skip the cheesesteak? [MP: Philadelphia]
•Agricultural art: controversial in Mexico. [MP: San Francisco]
•Deceased delis: won't someone please think of the pastrami? [MP: South Florida]

Like many foodies out there, we're always looking for little ways to stymie the onslaught of love handles that comes with our chosen pastime/profession. We'd rather not join the charmingly dubbed Fat Pack. So this headline in the Hot Sauce blog was eye-catching: "Eat hot sauce, lose weight?" Hey, could there really be some kind of slimming magic in that little bottle of capsaicin we love so much?

Yes, it turns out, but it is a terrifying and black magic. In addition to simple appetite suppression and encouraging water consumption, part of the "hot sauce diet" includes Pavlovian-style conditioning:

Hot sauce is toxic and can make your face flush and feel uncomfortable. This discomfort creates a situation of aversive conditioning.

However, part of the plan seems like a stroke of genius. We all get periods of near-uncontrollable hunger, where some outside help seems necessary to supplement the will-power. For us, it's late at night, for Dr. Spiro Antoniades, who developed this hot-sauce weight-loss method, it was right after work, when he would gorge before the family dinner.

Antoniades employed his “pushback” — one teaspoon of hot sauce in a glass of tomato juice — to calm his appetite, pique his thirst and cause him to drink water. He found that, by using his pushback, he was able to eat dinner normally.

Eat hot sauce, lose weight? [Hot Sauce Blog]
The Fat Pack Wonders if the Party's Over [NY Times]
Photo: Fat Kid Sauces [Official Site]

Over at Serious Eats, there's a fairly comprehensive guide to the roast pork sandwiches of Philly. The source is credible (Philadelphia magazine food critic Joy Manning) and the coverage is completely in line with how 2008 is turning out to be roast pork's media year.

Manning's picks include all the usual suspects: DiNic's, John's Roast Pork and Tony Luke's. However, there are a few unexpected surprises on the list: DiBruno Brothers' Pronto and Chickie's Italian Deli.

In the piece, she also gives Chickie's vegetarian hoagie props and we've gotta agree. That thing is, vegetarian or not, a work of art. Garlicky broccoli rabe, baked eggplant, homemade roasted peppers and sharp provolone cheese? Hells yes.

The Best Roast Pork Sandwiches in Philly [Serious Eats]

Food & Wine just released their annual Best New Chefs in America list and Jim Burke of James made the list. Here's what the mag had to say about the Bella Vista restaurateur:

Jim Burke, 34, is the owner and chef of James, a seasonally-focused, modern Italian restaurant in the Bella Vista neighborhood. Before opening James with his wife, Kristina, in 2006, Burke worked with top Philadelphia chefs Marc Vetri of Vetri (a Best New Chef 1999) and Vince Alberici of The Marker. He later headed the kitchen at Stephen Starr’s Angelina. He also did a stint at the Michelin-starred Ristorante Frosio in Almè, Italy.

Other winners include Tim Cushman of Boston's O Ya, Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu in the California wine country and Michael Psilakis of Anthos in NYC.

Food & Wine appears to like James: Their risotta was previously named one of the best restaurant dishes of the year.

The full press release can be found here.

Food & Wine Magazine Names Best New Chefs in America 2008 [F&W]
James [MenuPages]
James [Official Site]

• When Polish artisanal family farms and EU regulations don't mix [NYTimes]
• Miller to craft-ify their Lite beer, destroying both in the process [AP]
• Corn hit six dollars a bushel yesterday. That's really scary! [Guardian]
• What do Texas, the NFL and award-winning wine have in common? [Tribune]
• World Bank: well, it's possible Asia will survive food price spikes [Reuters]
• Bomb defused near Istanbul McD's could be any number of angry parties [CNN]

Burger King has just licensed out their name for a series of, err, "potato snacks." Not potato chips. Potato snacks.

We just got word from snack makers Intensely Different that they have officially unveiled a line of Burger King potato snacks. The chips/snacks/whatever come in two flavors: "Ketchup & fries" or "flame broiled." Yes — hamburger flavored chips. Are they the American version of British bacon flavored crisps? Who the hell knows. But, because we love you, here's the company's description of the "flame broiled" chips:

The BK™ spin on chips is nothing short of a revolution. Our hearty flavor now packs a crispy punch. A savory bag of crunchy, bite-sized flame-broiled taste whenever you want it.

Meanwhile, we admit this sounds like an April Fool's kind of post. I mean, hamburger flavored potato chips? But it's not. However, here's a fast food related prank for you.

Intensely Different [Official Site]

Poor Barack Obama just made the biggest PR error possible when visiting Philly (in primary season!) — he didn't try a cheesesteak. During a half-hour tour of the Italian Market, Obama visited Claudio Specialty Food and DiBruno Brothers, where he tried a $99.99 jamon Iberico ham. Afterwards, he told a crowd of supporters at the Penyslvania Convention Center that "I'm going to get a cheesesteak next time I come."

But political analyst Larry Ceiser thinks the cheesesteak omission was intentional:

"I think some of the places that were must-stops, aren't must stops any more [...] "I think some of the places that were must-stops, aren't must stops any more. I think that the Kerry experience was certainly a bad experience and I think the candidates look at that. Also, I don't think they want to take the chance of the immigration issue."

For those with short memories, John Kerry committed a major food etiquette faux pas by ordering a cheesesteak with swiss cheese back in 2004 that gave some pundits ammo. That stinks, friends. If cheesesteaks can't stay apolitical, what can?

Obama: "I'll try that cheesesteak next time" [Daily News]

[Image via Associated Press]

God bless animators with too much time on their hands. They come up with hilarious stuff like the below video. We've enjoyed the combination of hip hop style and food media in the past, but this takes the cake so far. Idolator blogger Anthony Miccio astutely points out that Snoop Dogg's "butternut reduction" line is kind of addictive. Well, you just watch. It's great:

I Cannot Get "Butternut Reduction" Out Of My Head [Idolator]
Akon Calls T-Pain [Superdelux]

• It's rhubarb season.

• The virtues of steaming vegetables.

• Hooligan cheese: hells yeah.

• News of lots of suburban restaurant openings.

• How to get around the PLCB.

• Philly's got a new Israeli restaurant. Of course, we'll have the menu soon.

• Is "Vieterans Day" an insensitive headline? Maybe. But the Vietnamese restaurant it's about is pretty awesome.

• Brothers running a restaurant. It fueled the movie Big Night and it fuels the real life restaurant Maia.

• Sake Fest!

• Where to get snacks for the Philly Film Festival.

• If there was ever a sign of the apocalypse, Burger King potato chips might be it.

• Stem rust scare threatens Asia's wheat crop; it could wipe half of it out! [ATimes]
• Seattle to ban foam containers and tax paper and plastic bags [SeattlePI]
• Food costs make up 1/3 to 1/2 of families' budgets in Asian countries [Bloomberg]
• Argentine farmers, 3 weeks into strike, back to the fields during talks [NYTimes]
• N Korea's food crisis now bad enough to force elites to ration food [RadioNeth]
• Nigella Lawson gains a few pounds and doesn't care. Keep it on, sister! [Telegraph]

We are so happy that baseball is back. We managed to get tickets to Opening Day at Dolphin Stadium; the Marlins lost to the Mets (boo!), but it was still a great time.

To celebrate, we thought we'd present a photo essay of ballpark food from each of our cities. We've actually visited and eaten in each of the parks listed, except for the two in the Bay Area. We'll start with our favorite: Philadelphia.

Citizens Bank Park

We hate the Phillies (ed note: not us!). But we think their ballpark is great, and we love the fact that we can get a Tony Luke's roast pork Italian sandwich for about the same price as at the restaurant. Whenever we go to a game there, we arrive early to get our sandwich before the game starts, because by the third inning, the place is mobbed.

US Cellular Field

We had to get one of these at every White Sox game (and we went to quite a few throughout our college career), sans ketchup of course. The sauteed onions really were key, and you could smell them as soon as you walked into the stadium.

Wrigley Field

We heard that there were Chicago-style hot dogs at Wrigley Field, but we were never able to find any. Were they reserved for those sitting in the lower level? (We sat there once ... in the bottom of the ninth inning when the Cubs were being blown out.) Every hot dog we had at Wrigley was boring (frankfurter, bun, mustard, maybe raw onions), but the photographic evidence indicates that interesting hot dogs do exist there. So clearly we weren't looking hard enough.

Fenway Park

So there's the Fenway Frank. It's famous. We're not quite sure why. We remember having a hot dog at Fenway, but we don't remember much about it. Conclusion: it was forgettable.

AT&T Park

After a quick image search and a chat with San Francisco editor Adam M, we learned that garlic fries are the way to go in both stadiums. And boy do they look good. The ones above are paired with a Polish sausage that has been ruined with ketchup. We'll never understand that.

McAfee Coliseum

See? More garlic fries. And a Chicago-style hot dog. It doesn't look completely authentic (poppy seed bun?), but hey, they're trying.

Dolphin Stadium

We've been to about 20 times as many games here as at the other ballparks, yet we can't remember the last time we actually purchased food at the park. Two reasons: 1. When you go to so many games, that overpriced food can get expensive. 2. The concession stand money goes to Wayne Huizenga. Not a good thing.
There's a Caribbean food area where you can get Cuban sandwiches and jerk chicken, which aren't bad options. But really, the best option is to bring your grill and tailgate (see above). That's what the enormous parking lot is for.

Photos: tumblebunny, 81timesayear, Thinking Violet, andrewmalone, fancydee, mojo!, nicaorgullo [Flickr]

Word on the street is that a new branch of burger chain Five Guys will be opening in King of Prussia within the next 120 days. We've written about the glories of Five Guys before and, well, KoP shoppers are damn lucky for this.

Currently, the chain's nearest outlet is located in Springfield. There is a Center City location as well.

Five Guys [MenuPages]
Five Guys [Official Site]

[Image via Serious Eats]

We just got the beer list for newly opened South Philly restaurant Devil's Den courtesy of newspaper columnist Joe Sixpack. Although the restaurant name might be all-American, the 16 draft beers are heavily Teutonic. Here's the debut list:

Dogfish Head Red & White
Schneider Aventinus
Spaten Lager
Ommegang Rare Vos
Founders Devil Dancer
Lucifer
Ayinger Celebrator
Blanche de Bruxelles
Yards Philly Pale Ale
Philly Rowhouse Red
Victory HopDevil
St. Druon French Abbey
Gaffel Kolsch
Franziskaner Hefeweisse

New taps [Joe Sixpack]

Aside from April Fools Day, the fourth month of the year carries a few holidays of note: Passover, Thomas Jefferson's birthday, ummmm... Okay, maybe those are the only ones, but what we celebrate around here is National Grilled Cheese Month, which lasts all of April.

Among the cheesy, gooey reverie taking place:
-Registration is now open for the First Sixth Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational, taking place April 19 in Los Angeles
-The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board has a bunch of recipes and tips and even a video up on its site
-Surely, millions of Americans will cook millions of grilled cheese sandwiches all month long without even knowing it's a holiday
-The Grilled Cheese Blog, while so far quiet on the subject, will likely explode, just a little bit, in a fervor of enthusiasm over this unsung celebratory month.

After the jump: A recipe and a very creepy video

First Sixth Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational [Official Site]
Wisconsin Grilled Cheese Sandwiches [WMMB]
The Grilled Cheese Blog [Official Site]
Photo: Esther17 [Flickr]

For us, the best grilled cheese is cheddar on wheat, with a bowl of tomato soup, a pile of dill chips and some brown mustard on the side. In case you are from Mars and don't know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, here is a recipe for the simplest one ever, from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board:

8 slices firm-textured sandwich bread
Mayonnaise, optional
Mustard, optional
1/2 pound (8 ounces) Wisconsin Cheddar cheese, mild, medium or sharp, grated
3 to 4 tablespoons butter, softened

Cooking Directions:
Spread bread slices with a thin layer of mayonnaise and/or mustard. Evenly divide the grated Cheddar over four slices of the bread. Top with remaining four slices.

Heat half of the butter in a large (12-inch) skillet over medium heat. Place sandwiches in skillet. Spread remaining butter over top slices of bread. Cover skillet. Cook about 3 minutes, until underside is golden brown. Carefully flip sandwiches with spatula and continue cooking, uncovered, 2 to 3 minutes, until cheese is melted and underside is browned. Serve immediately.

Tip: Using 2 to 3 ounces of processed cheese to replace part of the Cheddar imparts a creamy, silky sandwich. Processed cheese was traditionally used in grilled cheese sandwiches.

And, just so you don't think we focus solely on good, wholesome tastes around here, witness one of the creepiest YouTube videos ever, courtesy of the Grilled Cheese Blog, on hideously mocking making the classic sandwich in the microwave. Gross:

• Meet the newest Puerto Rican restaurant on the North Fifth strip: Cafe Colao.

• It's never too late to celebrate the repeal of prohibition. Maybe that's why McGillin's is hosting a repeal party.

• Drink colonial style with raspberry shrub.

• As conventional farming input prices rise, organic gets competitive [NYTimes]
• Japan, not satisfied by USDA assessment, to study cloned animal safety [Reuters]
• Feed a cold: study shows your immune system is sensitive to diet changes [ScienceDaily]
• Melamine pet food maker starting to settle lawsuits with aggrieved owners [USAToday]
• American Airlines to begin testing on-board a la carte meals [CNN]
• Pernod may have overpaid for Absolut; liquor industry in a tizzy [ Tribune]

We recently heard about new NoLibs BYOB Swallow. We're going to add their menu shortly, but in the meantime we just needed to add this sneak peak from Foodaphilia, who took some amazing pictures of the cheese plate, flank steak, quiche, tuna, apricot tart and profiteroles. Needless to say, this stuff is sheer brilliance:

It wasn't hard to figure out what Liz was going to order, she loves flank steak and since it was accompanied by rice, I knew right away she was going to love it. We agreed that the marinade was very delicious, slightly sweet and salty, likely from the additions of sugar and soy, the steak was tender and cooked well. It was served with sticky rice and seasoned swiss chard.

And thus, the Northern Liberties restaurant renaissance continued step-by-step.

Swallow [Foodaphilia]

Today is the only day besides Halloween when we purposefully make our food appear to be something that it's not. Ironically, unlike on Halloween, April Foods deceptions are actually intended to "trick" the targets rather than simply gross them out. Since the attempts usually aren't that convincing, we settle for mild amusement. To whit:

• "Grilled cheese sandwiches" by seachelle323:

• "Dessert sushi" by Dot D:

Many more appetizing simulacra await you after the jump...

• "Spaghetti & meatballs" by deb33:

• "Fish sticks" by Karrie20:

Karrie20's description of her creation:

"Fish sticks" (Twix bars rolled in toasted coconut), "Mashed potatoes with gravy" (Vanilla ice cream with caramel syrup), peas & carrots (Peanut butter cereal dipped in green candy melts and small caramel pieces dipped in orange candy melts.)

• "Meatloaf cupcakes" by whisperawish:

• "Poo cupcake" by traoki/flickr:

• "Spilled coffee" by Zeroth57:

• "Poissons d'Avril" by rubykhan:

Another kind of April Foods joke we've encountered takes the form of offering someone something spoiled; we think this is more April Cruel than April Fool, and do not condone it.

And remember, the best time to do an April Foods joke is some random day in August. They'll never see it coming!

[Photos: flickr]

Yes, we know what day it is. Just because it's April 1 doesn't mean every crazy idea you hear is a joke. For example, this video about human cheese (only moderately safe for work--there are two topless shots with the naughty bits blacked out) is obviously a spoof, but the whole concept might not be so crazy.

A friend forwarded a very convincing post on Why Travel To France about a dairy in Singly that apparently specializes in the stuff. We know from precedent here at Menupages that the sale of human milk is legal and that there is some kind of demand for it, so why not?

Also, after a trip through Alta Vista's Babelfish translator, the site for Le Petit Singly sounds very straight-lipped. So is it a joke? Find out after the jump!

Cheese Made of Breast Milk [Trendhunter]
Human Breast Milk Cheese Made In France [Why Travel To France]
Le Petit Singly [Official Site]
Question Of The Day: Human Breast Milk In Restaurants [MP Chicago]
Photo: Why Travel To France

This is what you get if you try to order human cheese (we ran the French text through Babelfish, hence the awkwardly translated English):

Then you, one proposes to you to eat cheese made starting from HUMAN mother's milk and that connects you? A small precision is essential at this stage: ALL the ELEMENTS, EVENTS, NAMES, MARKS, PLACES and LABELS purely fictitious and/or are used in a diverted way. On the other hand, we would be strongly interessés to have your "hot" reactions. Hesitate-therefore not with us to communicate them by e-mail. While waiting, the 5 last gogos to have been made here, have héhé:

Foobooz's Kristen Henri was on Throwdown! with Bobby Flay on the Food Network last night. She served as a judge, alongside Drexel University's Adrienne Hall, of the competition of our age... Bobby Flay vs. The Pretzel Boys:

A few months ago, I got an email from a production company asking if I would appear as a ’soft pretzel expert’ on a new, unnamed, host-free Food Network show that traveled the country, focusing on local specialties…

So I showed up at Drexel’s hospitality school for this mystery show and while we were waiting for the producers to do something with us, my fellow judge Adrienne Hall, chef-instructor at Drexel, told me that her culinary students–who were in the next room with the Pretzel Boys–suspected what I had not: that this was a Throwdown!

I don’t have a TV, so I didn’t know what Throwdown! was. I was a tiny bit mad because I don’t really like surprises (note: except champagne, that’s always a nice surprise). My options were to bolt or to suck it up. I was already miked, had signed a release and didn’t want to be a bad sport, so I sucked it up.

Sure enough, Throwdown! it was. Bobby Flay walked into the next room and the culinary student crowd went wild. While the Flay team and the Pretzel Boys went at it making their product, Adrienne and I had to talk to the camera about our pretzel preferences. Here’s where it got ugly.

The producer wanted us to say what we thought made a great Philly soft pretzel. They asked us to mention something about ‘cheese sauce.’ I protested. A true Philadelphian would NEVER EVER sully a pretzel with cheese sauce. We clothe our pretzels in mustard and mustard only. You want to argue about what type of mustard, fine, but not cheese. Never cheese. I’m a purist.

He insisted, I frowned.

Read more here.

Me and Bobby Mc... Flay? [Foobooz]

• Global poor complacent, forgiving of their gov'ts as food prices rise [Reuters]
• American farmers planting just the right amount of corn and soya [NYTimes]
• Study: most Americans haven't noticed food or fuel cost changes [AP]
• Gov't & farmers unite to efficiently and effectively combat global hunger [Reuters]