If the Slow Marketplace was the centerpiece of this weekend's Slow Food Nation event, then the Taste Pavilion was the main course. Ambling through For Mason for the evening session, fellow MenuPages blogger Alexis Wright, her "Sweetie," and third wheel yours truly, prepared to be overwhelmed.

Even before the massive, Fort Mason exhibition hall loomed into sight, we knew we were in for the kind of treat you have to work at. Lines ruled the day, and were overwhelming at first, but after suffering through a couple, it turned out most went pretty fast, and they all had a lovely payoff.

By now you've probably seen a good few photos of Saturday's Taste Pavilion, thanks to intrepid reporters at Eater SF, and the Slow Food Nation flickr pool. What's that? You just can't get enough? Great, here are some more photos and maybe an anecdote or two, after the jump.

I made a bee-line past the gigantic pizza line, the beer tent, and the Native American foods outside, determined to get the lay of the land. But before I could get 20 feet from the door, I ran into my old buddy Michelle Fuerst, of Homemade, who curated the pickle booth. Here she is doing her job, explaining pickles to a couple interested patrons:

And here is a plate of those wonderful, briney treats:

I wandered a little further, bouncing back and forth, clutching my "Slow Dough" and wondering where to spend it first (er, second, as I had just used it to dabble in picklology). Then I saw this guy:

That's Ed Ueber, a retired marine biologist and friend of the owners of Monterey Fish Market, in Berkeley. And that behind him is one hell of a bounty from the sea. The fish section turned out to be great, with a trio of little bites that included squid, a sardine on toast, and a pate:

Next, I wandered past the cocktail bar, where this dude was making a hell of a racket slapping, shaking, and generally molesting a collection of herbs that would eventually become some dynamite drinks. He's Carlos Yturria, and he manages the bar at Bacar:

The cocktail area turned out to be a riot, and a great value in terms of Slow Dough, basically the currency of the event. Admission included 20 "dollars" in the form of little circles that got scratched off at each tasting area. Some things took one, some two, and some three circles. Cocktails, surprisingly, only went for one circle for as many as you wanted.

Below is Lance Winters, distiller at Alameda's St. George Spirits, and the guy responsible for the United States' first domestic brand of absinthe in, like, forever. He's been making the stuff for his own use for about 11 years, he said, using organic wormwood from a supplier in Oregon and one in Davis.

He explained that absinthe turns cloudy in water because it secretes essential oils that are soluble in alcohol but not in water. "As we add water, they start to come out of solution in the form of little droplets. That's the cloudiness," he said. This guy loves his absinthe (can you tell?):

The cocktail section was pleasantly uncrowded, but that cannot be said about most of the event. Here's the line for the cheese plates:

This apparently wrapped around the outside of the building, at its height. By the time I took a stab at it, it was just poking out that side door. It was funny how quickly this room, like probably any long-ish assembly, developed its own culture. One overheard people talking about the cheese line in awed voices, and it soon became shorthand to refer to a member of your party who would be indisposed for a while.

It was worth it, though. That cheese was damned good. I ate mine before I even remembered to take a picture of it, but here's what it looked like in the case:

Another killer line formed at the pizza stand out front. Fortunately, Laverne Dicker and her comrades at the Bread Bakers Guild of America were there with bread sticks to stave off the hunger pangs:

There was so much bread at this place. They didn't just have it for eating, but also for making gigantic snail sculptures. Here's Alexis taking in the last rays of sun out in the Hall of Bread:

Finally, we had a great time sampling coffee under the tutelage of Edwin Martinez, a coffee farmer from Guatemala who was up for the event. His Finca Vista Hermosa, in Huehuetenango, provides beans for Barefoot Coffee Roasters, among others. He was loving pulling people out of the coffee line for special tastings:

And that was about it. For some reason, none of my charcuterie shots came out really well. Fortunately, though, Alexis and I double-teamed the coverage. Check back tomorrow for her more in-depth account of the evening, and still more photos, courtesy of "Sweetie."

A lot of cool stuff happened this morning as my old pal Kim Cuddy and I set out to take a tour of San Francisco's Alemany Farm. The only Slow Journey that was both free and didn't involve going anywhere (or anywhere you couldn't get to on BART), this was for me.

As we tromped through the bushes on the hillside above the farm, lost, but navigating by the landmark windmill, Kim stopped to eat blackberries that grow wild there. We were already late for the tour, so what the hell:

You couldn't get more in the spirit of Slow Food Nation than this place. A former San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners sight, the couple-acre patch just off Interstate Highway 280 and Alemany Boulevard was first plowed in 1995. Since then it's been known as St. Mary's Youth Farm, SLUG, an abandoned lot, and, since 2005, the independent Alemany Farm. It's a prime example of a piece of urban land transformed into the city's own salad bowl.

Once we made it through the gate, Kim and I took a partially guided tour of the farm's crops, corners, and crannies. Check it out, after the jump.

A lot of what Alemany Farm does is experimental. Antonio Roman-Alcala pointed out that people are less inclined to grow their own grains because grain crops are perceived as being space-inefficient. So the farm is growing a row of maiz corn right now, just to see how many tortillas they can get out of it:

Antonio showed us the rows of tomatoes and strawberries that are being dry-farmed. The leaves are limp from lack of water, but the fruits lay heavy and turgid on the ground.

He talked about the olive trees on the farm's east side that have borne a total of four fruits — that's going to take some experimentation to fix. There's an ongoing battle with gophers, who the farm refuses to poison.

"There's a few hawks that hang out here — some kestrals and some red-tails... There are feral cats, but they seem to coexist with the gophers," Antonio said.

As Antonio led the group through the farm's crops, Kim gave me a look. "I'm tired of being in this tour group. You think we can go explore?"

"Sure, why not?" I said. We tromped up a hill to the small cluster of fruit trees, where we found a bush/tree thing laden with apples.

How do we know these ugly things are apples? Because this hilarious thing happened: As we waded through the brown grass on the hillside, I began to get nervous. "You think we should be up here?" I said.

"I don't know. Hey, what are these weird fruits? You think they're apples or pears?" Kim said.

"Um, pears, maybe?"

"I'm going to eat one," Kim said. I got nervous, thinking how embarrassing it would be when Antonio came running over, red-faced with frustration at the weekend warriors destroying his crops. The guilt flowed.

"They're apples," Kim said, suddenly flush with knowledge. "Here, Adam, eat this apple."

I did, and with that bite, I lived up to my namesake.

We wandered further and found the beehives kept by the San Francisco Beekeepers' Association, which partners with Alemany Farm:

We found a cracked, paved path leading to a small, shaded grove. "I'll come here and read sometime," Kim announced. We saw this butterfly:

Kim, who has a stong affection for kale, based on a recipe for "kale slaw" that she loves, got really excited about this little volunteer. "It's rogue kale!" She exclaimed:

Finally, it was time to re-join the tour group and, shortly, the real world. The cars that zoom by within yards of the farm belie its tranquility. For me, I've seen that "SLUG" windmill everytime I've driven down 280, and never seen what's under it. If slow food is about making food into a respite from the crush of modernity, then Alemany Farm really does represent the essence of that movement. It's really too bad we had to leave before lunch, but hey, blogs don't update themselves. Here's what we missed:

Well, there's plenty to eat at the Tasting Pavilion, which is where I'm headed now. As always, check back for updates.

Friday was one packed day. In addition to a panel discussion full of zingers and insight, Slow Food Nation got started with the taste pavilions, a day's worth of slow tours and of course, the Slow Marketplace and Victory Garden. This is where I spent the morning, eating, chatting and generally hobnobbing with friend and impromptu guide, the Tablehopper, Marcia Gagliardi.

We met up in the Victory Garden, which splays out in front of City Hall for an entire block, full of circular planters like these:

Tons more photos after the jump...

Breakfast consisted of one of Scott Peacock's ham biscuits:

And a half a mufaletta sandwich from Salumi Artisan cured meats, of Seattle. Marcia, who spent her New Orleans vacation wandering around and tasting mufaletta, declared it excellent:

As we sat on our hay bale, chatting about this and that, the conversation turned to what you can and can't get to eat in New York. Our bale-mate swiveled his head and announced, "I was never able to get a really thick milkshake there. They turn the machine on and walk away for five minutes, and by the time they get back, it's chocolate milk." He's never been to the Shake Shack, he said, but then, he's from the Midwest, so he knows from milkshakes.

This turned out to be Barry Foy, author of the soon-to-be-released Devil's Food Dictionary, polishing off a plate of tlacoyos. I asked him what he was looking forward to eating this weekend. "I always make a bee-line for the cured meats," he said. I'll go to the end of the line and start over if I have to." Look out, Taste Pavilion — get that second salumi ready.

After picking up a New Orleans Iced Coffee from the Blue Bottle stand, we took a stroll through the marketplace:

We met all sorts of folks selling all sorts of food, like Pierre Bellevue, of Pan-O-Rama breads, whose gigantic loaf seems to have eclipsed his head-shot. Sorry Pierre, but what do you expect with bread like this?:

We did manage to get a shot of James Freeman, of Blue Bottle, as we thanked him for the pick-me-up. He was pushing Blue Bottle's Huehuetenango Highland coffee, from Guatemala:

Even though we were full of mufaletta and ham, Marcia and I couldn't help salivating at the rich, red tomatoes on display from Blue House Farm. They're dry-farmed, owner Ryan Casey told me, with a little help from the coastal fog and clay-rich soil:

Another mouth-watering dry-farmed product sat right next to the glowing pile of tomatoes. These apples come from Sebastapol, where husband and wife Paul and Kendra Kolling run the farm Nana Mae's Organics. Volunteer Keith Borglum presided over the pile:

Marcia and I enjoyed a sample of a surprisingly rich peach cobbler-type-thing made with Massa Organics rice:

For some reason I thought the J&P Organics sign was hilarious. Hey, dudes, you're way closer than a quarter-mile. Here's JP himself humoring a tired blogger:

Finally, we had a laugh with Dee Harley, a friend of Marcia's, who runs Harley Farms Goat Dairy in Pescadero. She showed off her new credit-card-swiping-thing, which she said was the smartest investment she had made in preparation for this market. But I don't know. That title could conceivably go to the goats who squirted out what would become this cheese. It's heavenly:

And then it was time for us to go our separate ways, I to the Food for Thought discussion, and Marcia to own this freaking town as the queen of food news and gossip. But not before posing for a couple of photos of ourselves. See if you can guess who's who:

By the way, yes, that is an upside down bus stacked on top of a right-side-up one to make one weird double-decker. It belongs to a group called the Whitehouse Organic Farming Project, or, awesomely, The Who Farm.

That's all for now. Check back for photos of Alemany Farm, the Taste Pavilion, and whatever pops up.

Today's Food For Thought panel discussion, "Re-Localizing Food," was interesting, yes, entertaining, for sure, but almost totally devoid of surprises. Did you know that Michael Pollan is in favor of using sustainable farming techniques and growing food closer to home? Why yes, actually. Did you also know that Winona LaDuke thinks people like those on her White Earth Indian Reservation deserve better access to fresh, local food? Yes, you probably did.

But underlying what might be characterized by the cynical as a one long choir-preach, we found a lovely surprise: These folks are funny. Sure, the humor is a little NPR-ish, but the zingers were not sparse among the four panelists as they rapped on their favorite issues, fielding questions and egging each other on.

LaDuke, an economist, Native American rights activist and former Green Party vice-presidential nominee, got a big laugh — and an appreciative round of murmurs — when she pointed out that the root of word colonization is "colon," meaning, to digest, as in, “how one dominant system digests other systems.” Zing! okay, maybe you had to be there.

But then Gary Nabhan, founder of Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT), responded, “remember that Christopher Columbus, in Spanish, is called “Cristobal Colon... You might call his discovery of America 'The Great Colonoscopy.'” Whoa, where did that come from? These guys are on fire.

Later, as the discussion touched on environmental damage, Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore's Dilemma and, most recently, urged eaters to "vote with their forks," for local food, pointing out that, “the very idea that California exports water to New York City in the form of tomatoes is completely hilarious.” Yes, for some reason, in the context, it was.

As panelists mused on how to make fresh, local, organic produce available to people of limited means, Blue Hill restaurant and Stone Barn farm honcho Dan Barber played the straight man. "Did you have anything to add, Dan?" moderator and Saveur editor James Oseland asked, by way of drawing the farmer-cum-restaurateur out a little. "Being the guy who charges $40 for an entree?" Barber tossed back, "No."

Barber found more of a voice when the topic turned to the highly charged issue of Foie Gras, which Blue Hill has stopped serving, but which he loooooves. He talked about visiting a farm where the geese are treated so well that wild geese have been known to drop out of the sky to join them. A super-humane foie gras farm, you ask? No, really.

It turns out that geese naturally stuff themselves late in the fall to get ready for the winter. At some point during this gorging, they get about as rich and lethargic as those force-fed on industrial foie-gras farms. That's when they go to slaughter, and eventually to mini-toasts. Barber could barely restrain his enthusiasm (and saliva, maybe, but I was too far back to tell), as he described a flock of migrating birds settling in with the domestic flock, who are free to leave if they wish. "I’m listening to this guy, he’s like the goose whisperer," Barber said of the farmer.

“So you’re going to serve, now, certified volunteer foie gras?” quipped Pollan.

But, of course, the hilarity had to end sometime, even as LaDuke pondered the idea of eating 5 million pounds of wild rice. "I could try, but it might make more sense to trade with, say, the lemongrass people… I don’t know who the lemongrass people are…”

Okay, that last one was a bit insider-y, but fear not, dedicated slow-foodist. Video and audio of this and all the panels will be available through Slow Food Nation later this week, and of course, we'll link it all right here.

Food For Thought [Slow Food Nation]
Michael Pollan [Official Site]
Winona LaDuke [Wikipedia]
Gary Nabhan [Official Site]
Dan Barber [Blue Hills at Stone Barn]
James Oseland [Official Site]

We tried to hold off on posting the Omnivore's Hundred meme that has exploded this week, but it's the Friday of a long weekend and our resolve to steer clear of memes just broke down. So what's this infamous meme, you ask? Well, the blogger behind the British food blog Very Good Taste put up a list of the 100 foods that "every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life. The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all."

As you can imagine, the list is tres long, so you'll find it after the jump. Oh, and the rules of the game are as such: bold the things that you've eaten, strikeout the ones you'd never in a million years touch with a 10-foot pole, and leave the ones you'd try but haven't yet as they are.

The MP:Philadelphia Omnivore's 100

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl [New England, holla! - EM]
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu [Y'know... it just doesn't sound worth it - EM]
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine [Sooner than later, hopefully - EM]
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads [The first time was at Southwark - EM]
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini [Although, does having had each separately count? - EM]
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill [Um, depends on how long it's been there - EM]
76. Baijiu or shaojiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

To recap, the only hard and fast untouchables are a raw Scotch Bonnet, cognac with a cigar (and only because of the cigar), and the dread fugu.

[Photo: one of our only dealbreakers via "wili_hybrid/Flickr]

So far in our slow food coverage we've brought you a telephone conversation with director Anya Fernald, a telephone conversation with Michael Pollan, and plenty of writing in italics. That's fine and everything, but this junk is actually starting! Let's get off the phone and into the field.

You can find updates throughout the day here. Meanwhile, you may be interested in some of the chatter going on elsewhere about the "largest celebration of American food."

• Eater SF has sneak-peak photos of the Taste Pavilions. These are the big free sample extravaganzas that also include the Green Kitchen demonstrations. Looks extravagant!

• Serious Eats posted an open letter from Ed Levine to Alice Waters and Slow Food Natoin, in which he makes a good point about an important issue conspicuously absent from this weekend's hustle and bustle.

• Finally, the San Francisco Chronicle is all over this story, including a Slow Food-related cocktail roundup and a Michael Bauer blog account of last night's kickoff dinner.

Shoot, it's creeping up on lunchtime. I'm going to go eat.

• Remember the salad days of college, when all you could afford were burritos? [MP: Boston]

• It's a bittersweet week for our Chicago editor, as her little brother/party correspondent heads off to college. [MP: Chicago]

• Let it be known: The Wire is well-missed. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Aww. Mexico's president misses his momma's mole sauce. [MP: San Francisco]

• The entire MenuPages family misses instant messaging with our South Florida editor, who spent the week in Korea. Also, we are jealous. [MP: South Florida]

• Good news: it looks like the salmonella outbreak might finally be over! [Washington Post]

• Bad news: in the wake of last month's flooding in eastern India, villagers have resorted to eating uncooked rice mixed with polluted water. [Boston Globe]

• Good news! Items at a 99 cent store are still, generally, 99 cents or less. Way to run the least necessary sidebar of all time, guys. [LA Times]

• Bad news: mice can still really put a damper on your food wholesaling operation. [Chicago Tribune]

• Good news: Brazil seems to be handling rising food costs relatively well. Bad news: Argentina? Not so much. [New York Times]

• Table Talk feeds us a little more info on Privé - since we already have the menu up, the picture of the interior is the most exciting.

• Mark your calendars! There's a lot coming up in the next few weeks, such as the Rittenhouse Row Fall Gathering ($10 in advance gets you cocktails and hors d'oeuvres) and the Annual Mushroom Festival!

• The Head House Square farmer's market is already supremely awesome, but the tacos al pastor from the Los Taquitos de Puebla stand really push it over the edge.

• Trey Popp visits Paxia and ponders how it measures up with the current proliferation of Latin American restaurants mushrooming all over the city. Answer: it's nothing wildly new or different, but it works.

• This Week In Eats is mostly about the beer this week, but also about jazz and the end of summer. You win some, you lose some!

• Meanwhile, on Feeding Frenzy, we're kept abreast of a big opening (Prive), some things to look forward to (Betty's Speakeasy and 1225 RAW), and reminded of the new Cochon brunch.

• Finally, the 10 Arts review is in, and it sounds like the food has some catching up to do with the stunning interior.

There are some lies happening in this video (there is NO WAY that cherry turnovers are better than PB&J, or apple pie for that matter), but these qualms aside, it's nice to see a slightly underdog pastry get some chops. After all, although tasty, the turnover is no danish, muffin, or even scone in terms of breakfast food popularity.

We've long been curious about how these national food holidays came to be, especially since there seems to be one for every day (for example, National Banana Lover's Day and National Whiskey Sour Day bookend National Cherry Turnover Day). Also, how is each specific date chosen to celebrate National [insert food in question] Day: what is it about August 28th that makes it oh-so-very-cherry-turnover, as opposed to August 29th?

After some digging, it turns out that each day is designated by Presidential decree. A food gets picked for a national day after lobbyists, trade associations, and a whole other host of special interests petition the President to sign off on a national food holiday. Surprise, surprise, this whole phenomenon seems to be a peculiarly American happening.

So, while you bite into your celebratory cherry turnover today (or not), you can once again thank your lucky stars for capitalism, without which we would never have national food holidays. Oh, and ps: today is also Dream Day, to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," which seems timely for this week.

"Obscure Commercial Holidays" [Stay Free Magazine]

With Slow Food Nation all around, a Civic Center marketplace of local, sustainable foods, and every retailer in the city jumping on the bandwagon, it could be easy to make all kinds of grand lifestyle decisions this weekend—“Who says it’s hard to be a locavore? Look at all this stuff”—but what about in January, long after the fruit stands are packed up, when school or work or whatever it is you do is in full swing, where will your new-found values get you then, in the face of Egg McMuffins and Pop Tarts?

I chatted on the phone with food politics whiz and general cage-rattler Michael Pollan yesterday about how to incorporate some slow-food values into one’s day-to-day life. How does one stay a responsible eater when one is busy as all hell? Can you still go to restaurants without ruining the planet? And what’s this all about, anyway?

“There’s been a lot of effort to complicate [the issues],” Pollan said, but in fact, the global effect of your food is simple. “In general, the closer your food is grown to where you eat it, and the less it is processed, the lighter its carbon footprint.”

“Sometimes the drive to complicate things is done in the interest to frustrate people’s desires to do the right thing,” Pollan told me.

Wait, that sounds awfully nefarious. Who would complicate important issues like this on purpose?

“The food industry is always trying to confuse the issue… If you have a sugary cereal and you slap a health claim on it, what are you doing but confusing the issue?”

Pollan pointed out that the highest-impact foods at the store, from an environmental and health point of view, are the highly processed ones, as well as meat, eggs, and dairy. In his most recent book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, he advocates shopping around the edge of the grocery store, where you find dairy, meat, produce, and bread, and avoiding the middle, where you find Hot Pockets, Pop Tarts, and Fruit Roll-Ups.

Pollan laid out three simple metrics by which to determine how damaging your food is to the planet, and yourself:

• Find out the animal’s feed. Grass-fed beef makes less of an impact than grain-fed. Most grass-fed or otherwise sustainably produced meats are labeled as such in gigantic letters.

• How processed is your food? The more that happens to it between the field and the table, the more resources it absorbs and the more nutrients are sapped. “In general, processed food like that [Pop Tart] takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy," Pollan said.

• How far does it travel? The closer to you that your food is produced, the better.

Okay, that’s great and all, and most city-dwellers have access to some Berkeley Bowl equivalent, but dude, who shops for groceries? Many of us eat at restaurants almost all the time. And traveling? Hell, how are you supposed to stay responsible in an airport?

“When I’m on the road I tend to avoid meat unless I’m a place where I know where they get their meat,” Pollan said. “There’s one restaurant in every city these days that’s conceived in the spirit of Slow Foods and Chez Panisse, so I try to find out where that is, and, you know, just keep it simple.” God, he’s unflappable.

“If a restaurant offers grass-fed meat, I’ll order that. I want to support that industry and I really like it,” Pollan said. “I don’t order conventional meat that hasn’t been grown sustainably. I’d be much more likely to order fish, avoiding big, predator fish… those are the ones that are in most danger. Things like tuna and swordfish.”

But Pollan pointed out that there are sustainable fisheries, such as salmon in Alaska. “If it’s wild salmon from Alaska, they’ll usually tell you… More and more, restaurants will tell you where their food comes from and how they source it because it’s a selling point… that’s a very positive development.” You can print out a guide of sustainable seafood from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Neat. So where do you eat out, Michael Pollan?

“I really like restaurants where the chefs are serious about sourcing their food and elevate quality of ingredients over technique. To me, that’s what I really like. And I like pretty simple food. I don’t like fussy food.”

Pollan mentioned Chez Pannisse Café right off the bat, of course. “I love Picante, Oliveto. In the city I like Zuni Cafe, Quince.” He also mentioned Kirala, Cesar, and Saul’s deli, in Berkeley, and the new Camino, Pizzaiolo, in Oakland.

Pollan naturally wouldn’t single out an event this weekend as the most important, but he made an interesting point about the planning: “The architects they recruited for this—people in the restaurant business should pay attention to the design.” So there you go, restaurateurs. Get those business cards.

As for the rest of you, hey, good luck getting in to hear Pollan speak this weekend. Most of his events are sold out. But you can check through the Slow Food Nation schedule just in case, and also keep up with the man via his own website. He speaks publicly all the time. Come next busy January, catching a lecture might help you stay off the Pop Tarts a little longer.

Slow Food Nation [Official Site]
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto [Amazon]
Chez Panisse [Official Site]
Seafood Watch [Monterey Bay Aquarium]
Michael Pollan [Official Site]

[Photo: via ">Ken Light/Michaelpollan.com]

• A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge rules taco trucks can stay and vend, instead of being forced to move every hour. [LA Times]

• A look at how two South American nations are dealing with the rise in food pricesw. [New York Times]

• The disease outbreak near Tulsa is, in fact, E. coli, from a local restaurant that is (finally) named. [Tulsa World]

• Here's a guide to Slow Food Nation. The San Francisco event kicks off tomorrow. [SF Chronicle]

You may have heard by now, but Philly has been found to be the city with the most generous tippers! (This comes via Zagat.) That's right - in the face of a national tipping average of 19.0%, Philadelphians average out at 19.6%.

Before anything else, a big huge pat on the back to everyone out there for treating our servers right. All pride aside though, we're curious about what factors might have led to Philadelphians tipping so well. Anyone out there have any thoughts?

"Philadelphians Are The Highest Tippers In The Nation" [Zagat]

Welcome to the first day of coverage of this weekend's Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco. I'll be at the event, snapping photos, talking to participants and stuffing my face, and you can attend vicariously through me by reading the coverage right here. It's going to be a tough job wandering around collecting edible samples, but with your support, I'll get through it. To find out just what this weekend is all about, I got on the phone with Anya Fernald, Slow Food Nation's executive director.

Hanging around, staring at that victory garden outside City Hall, waiting for Slow Food Nation to start, is like nibbling bread while you wait for your entrée.

In this case, that entrée is a local, grass-fed steak with a side of tomatoes from the garden. The bread is homemade from organic flour, and the butter was just churned yesterday at a farm in Marin County.

“Middle America, 30 years ago, this was the norm,” Anya Fernald, executive director of Slow Food Nation, told me, as we chatted about the upcoming Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco this weekend. Part festival, part conference, part exhibition, the four-day American food celebration will draw an expected 50,000 attendees overall, Fernald said.

The weekend includes tasting expos, a marketplace, workshops, panel discussions, special dinners, as well as things like hikes and farm tours, all to encourage attendees to take a second look at the way they—and we, as a society—eat.

The idea is to wean Americans off our current dependence on processed and fast foods, and to “build momentum and demand for an American food system that is safer, healthier and more socially just," according to Fernald’s press statement.

“We want 10 percent of the attendees of this event to make one change ever day, every week. We It might be a small step like I’m going to cook dinner for my family this week or plant a garden, it might be I’m going to learn about food politics or pack a bag lunch… We’re not talking about radical life changes. This is about realistic, doable every day changes that everybody can make,” Fernald told me.

Fernald was quick to address and dispel any charge of elitism. “When did making your own jam become a privilege of the elite? Up until 1950, really a sign of poverty was making your own jam, growing your own garden, and people strove to become part of the middle class by rejecting that,” she said. The slow food movement aims to return to those values.

“Looking at that presumption that this is an elitist movement, I think America has been bamboozled into thinking that fasts food is the food of the masses,” Fernald said. “We need to push back against that notion that fast food is American food.”

But how can a bunch of activists making a big noise about sustainable food in a city as “blue”—downright aquamarine—as San Francisco?

“We’re drinking American wine, beer, we’re making pickles, we’re having dinner with friends, we’re planting gardens,” Fernald said. “It’s really “red state”’ values we’re talking about but they happen to be about food and they’re somehow associated with the left.”

The weekend is packed with things to do, and participants will have the opportunity spend as much time and money as they want. Free activities and exhibitions such as the slow marketplace and slow hikes, compete with ticketed events including panel discussions, dinners, a concert, field trips, and tasting exhibitions, running from $10 to more than $100.

Of all the 115 or so events that comprise the weekend, Fernald pointed to the slow marketplace as a cornerstone. That’s where attendees can buy the produce, grain, and small-scale products central to the movement. It’s also adjacent to the victory garden at City Hall.

Planted in July, the garden’s crops will be harvested and distributed by the San Francisco Food Bank over the weekend. The name comes from the World War II era, when individual families grew food on their own small plots.

Small-scale farming, small-scale food preparation, small, slow dinners with friends—these are the focuses of one massive event. It’s going to be a delicious weekend.

Slow Food Nation [Official Site]

[Photo: The City Hall victory garden, via Slow Food Nation Blog]

Umami -- that savory taste of meat -- gets all the press. Small wonder then that the two of the four other tastes (sweet, salty, sour and bitter) are so aptly named. Perhaps now's the chance for this flavor darling to get squeezed out of the limelight... at least for a little bit.

Fox News reports that scientists may have discovered a sixth taste. Celebrating this new discovery would be a bit premature, however, as (ta-da!) this is the taste of calcium. Yes, calcium: of broccoli, spinach, and collard greens.

You're probably not alone if you try to avoid these leafy veggies — but that may be precisely the fault of these new-found taste receptors: calcium in large quantities tends to have an unpleasantly bitter taste.

There may be reason to rejoice about this discovery, after all, according to Michael Tordoff, a behavioral geneticist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

People don't consume as much calcium as nutritionists would like, and one reason for this is that foods high in calcium don't taste good to many people. Tweaking the taste could encourage a calcium-deficient population to consume more of this key nutrient.

That's um, great and everything, but in the meantime – pass the pork, would you?

Yes, MSG, the Secret Behind the Savor [NY Times]
Sixth (and Fifth) 'Taste' Possibly Discovered [Fox]

[Photo: via aquatone282/flickr]

Disclaimer: call it cheating if you'd like, as it's not specifically about Philly dining, but since a) Baltimore doesn't have a MenuPages blog, b) Philly is the closest MenuPages blog to B-more, c) anything to do with Baltimore sets off little blips on our Wire radar, and d) this may be our only chance to talk about the greatest show in the history of television, we are seizing it.

A really good read, which didn't pop up on our radar until today, came out in Gourmet a couple of days ago. The piece is about the Baltimore Public Schools (omg, just like on The Wire!) and some dude named Tony Geraci, who is the new top chef for the school system.

It opens up by setting a positively pastoral scene: Geraci meandering through a farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore, lovingly plucking ripe tomatoes off the vine, and dreaming up nutritious and delicious sound recipes for the BPS students. We won't give it all away, but will say that it is encouraging and heartening to read about somehow who cares about food making it his mission to conquer obesity and malnutrition, one delectable school meal at a time.

We just wish that Namond, Michael, Dukie, and Randy could have dug in to the same lunches, although food may have been the least of their problems. We also sincerely hope that other public school systems - like say, ours! - benefit from the same treatment before too long.

"Baltimore's New School Chef" [Gourmet.com]

[Photo: lunchbox via moonjazz/Flickr]

• A takeover-style robbery in Hayward, Calif. is just the latest in a wave of such crimes. [SF Chronicle]

• A much friendlier trend is also taking off in the form of underground restaurants. [New York Times]

• Could hot dogs in the school cafeteria cause colon cancer? [AP]

• Chicago-area rail commuters face last call in their beloved bar cars. [Chicago Tribune]

• The review for Izakaya in Atlantic City is up, and Adam Erace waxes about a meal that is "an uncoordinated blur of deliciousness." Final verdict is that it may be pricey, but the food is close to perfection.

• Totally intrigued by Izakaya based on the review? Read more about it (sort of) in this interview with a sous chef there.

• There's nothing like the start of the school year for making a body crave sandwiches. In that spirit, this week's Field Guide is on hoagies.

• And, um, speaking of the spirit of things, the recipe of the week is a pork neck banh mi. Yes.

There have been two late summer openings that seem to have stirred up quiet excitement and anticipation as their openings loomed closer. The first? Root. The other? Bistrot La Minette. Neither have been flashy, big name openings like say, Parc (to name the most obvious), although they do have beyond respectable names attached to them.

Any-old-who, we have seen them go from their nascent days of being talked about, to actually opening and seeing the menus, until most recently, when the blogger reviews have begun to trickle in.

Finding Philly went to Bistro La Minette, and reports on their "kickass experience." They describe an attractive space, and then really get into the meat of things with descriptions of the food that make us want to drop everything right now and shove our face into plates of paté, etc.

A few days back, Living On The Vedge dished out the scoop on their meal at Root, deeming it "a BYO fresh out of Cali." The menu is "tight," but it's not a flawless meal, and also not 100% imaginative. Final verdict seems to be that it has room to grow (insert all the gardening jokes your heart desires).

No matter the outcome, it's always oddly heartwarming to hear about a restaurant when it's nothing but an idea, see the pieces come together, and finally find out what the food and decor is like. Plus, it's a never ending cycle: it won't be long before we're hearing all about Prive...

"Bistrot La Minette" [Finding Philly]
"Veg Out: Root" [Living On The Vedge]

Bistrot La Minette [MenuPages]
Bistrot La Minette [Official Site]
Root [MenuPages]
Root [Official Site]Parc [MenuPages]
Parc [Official Site]
Prive [MenuPages]
Prive [Official Site

[Photo: a buzz-y bee via mist of love/Flickr]

Ando invented the pre-cooked, freeze-dried noodles in 1958, when he was 48 years old. When he was 61 he invented their kissing cousin, cup noodles. "In life," he was known to remark, "there is no such thing as too late."

This year, demand for his inventions is expected to surpass 100 billion servings. Staggering, yes, but surprising? No. As the man famously (and perhaps cryptically) said, "mankind is Noodlekind."

Iconic Noodle Celebrates 50th Anniversary [NPR]

[Photo: Ramen selection, via davidrmunson's Flickr]

Last week Miss Manners touched on the subject of correcting typos in retail store signage. Judith Martin took the nit-picking, though highly sympathetic, letter writer gently to task for the greatest etiquette infraction of all — correcting others — but then pointed out that it's not rude to inform the store's management of their public spelling mistakes. The letter-writer had alerted a salesperson who, Miss Manners pointed out, likely couldn't have cared less.

Same goes for restaurants, we would think. As a professional menu-dealer-with, we find typos everywhere, both at work and after. But does it do to correct these? It's a given your server won't care. In fact, unless you actually need to send something back or get more ketchup, your server probably won't even listen to you when you report on how the food is.

Back in June, Jane Black wrote a column in the Washington Post advocating an extremely passive-aggressive method of communicating menu typos: She describes a daydream wherein,

I enter a restaurant, order and sweetly ask the waiter if I can "hold on to the menu" during dinner. Then, using a distinctive purple pen, I discreetly copy-edit the descriptions of the dishes...

'Who was that anonymous proofreader?' chefs would whisper to one another. Correct-a-girl strikes again! Eliminating menu mistakes, one restaurant at a time.

But seriously, menu typos can be galling, and some obsessive types just can't see their way toward letting it rest. What's the best way to get the corrections to the menu-meister? Find out who that person is, and tell them. Most restaurants won't take it personally, just like they won't take constructive criticism of the food personally.

After the meal, if the typo seriously still bothers you, get up, ask the host who writes the menu, then either ask to speak to that person or convey a message via the host, indicating the typo. That's your best shot at getting your voice heard, but really, is it worth the trouble? (Sigh) Actually, yes. The restaurant, concerned for its reputation, probably does want to hear where it can improve, and the rest of us will dine easier, knowing Correct-a-girl (or boy) is out there, watching.

How to Proofread, Politely [Miss Manners/Washington Post]
The Art of Criticism [Table Manners/Chow]
Typos a la Carte, Ever A Specialty of the House [Washington Post]
White Problems — Typos on Menus [Stuff White People Like]

Photo: Via Aaron Gustafson/flickr]

• At least eleven listeriosis-related deaths in Canada; everyone is in a tizzy (especially the meat suppliers). [Bloomberg]

• Utah has to get 6 million carp out of Utah Lake, on the condition that they do something with the dead fish. [AP]

• MSG consumption is apparently linked to obesity. (Hey kids! Correlation is not causation!) [NYT]

• San Francisco is gearing up for this weekend's Slow Food Nation Festival. (MP's own Adam Martin will be there!) [SFChron]

• A man was found in the ceiling above the women's restroom in a Florida restaurant, spying on female patrons. [TCPalm]

We have, in the past, wondered about how it is that the Pinkberry/Red Mango frozen yogurt trend hadn't yet landed in Philly. After all, people in LA and New York have been praising the stuff in exultant terms for a couple of years now, in numbers high enough that you'd think the chains would find it worth their while to open up in other parts of the country.

In fact, just last week, while skimming the Chowhound boards, we saw a post that put forward the same question. The subject was "has the frozen yogurt craze hit?" and the author asked about where to find "tangy fro-yo (pinkberry, red mango and various knock-offs)" in Center City, with none of the answers being quite the thing.

Well, they should have checked out this thread or maybe taken a jaunt down South Street (on second thought, we don't typically recommend the latter to our friends/enemies/frenemies), because new fro-yo place in just that style has opened!

It's called Phileo, and both beXn and Living On The Vedge have put up reviews that are largely positive. Pluses include: the self-serve model they employ, tasty yogurt, the variety of toppings, and the fun, poppy decor.

So there you have it, Chowhounder, and anyone else who was curious about the dearth of Pinkberry-style yogurt in Philly! There you have it.

"Yogurt Love" [beXnlog]
"Philly's First Fro-Yo Foray" [Living On The Vedge]

[Photo: Phileo interior via eatingsnowflakes/Flickr]

The news hook on our earlier post came on the heels of a somewhat anachronistic decision by the FDA last week to allow food producers to irradiate spinach and lettuce, infusing them with just enough radioactivity to kill the micro-organisms that cause hazardous infections. From the Associated Press:

The Grocery Manufacturers Association had originally petitioned the FDA seeking to expand use of irradiation to many more types of produce several years ago. But in wake of the 2006 E. coli outbreak from spinach — which killed three people and sickened nearly 200 — plus a list of lettuce recalls, the industry group asked the FDA to rule on the leafy greens first.

The FDA still is considering what other types of produce might be OK to irradiate. Often mentioned as possible are tomatoes and peppers, which have been the focus of investigators trying to trace this summer's nationwide salmonella outbreak.

Remember when, a few hours ago, we said that just a modicum of forthcoming information could make the difference between a careful populace and a panic-inducing epidemic? Well, when big, faceless government organizations and big, faceless lobbying groups get together to talk about injecting scary technology into people's food, it helps to put out a bit of information on that plan. Otherwise, you get films like this:

FDA: Irradiating spinach, lettuce OK to kill germs [AP]
Search Results: Irradiation [FDA]

Is it just us or has this been a banner year for insane food-safety stories? First there was that gigantic meat recall, then the gigantic salmonella mystery, then just last week a Chicago man sued a restaurant where he claims he acquired a nine-food tapeworm in 2006. Also, Canada is in the middle of a deadly food poisoning outbreak.

Now comes news from the Tulsa World that one person has died and at least another 11 — and possibly as many as 20 &mdash were apparently infected with E. coli bacteria after eating at a "local restaurant" in Locust Grove (Mayes County), Oklahoma.

It is rather amazing that the newspaper shied away from naming the restaurant, or explaining its reason for omitting the name. Though in the wake of the reporting on that that salmonella scare, maybe it shouldn't be that surprising. In that incident, federal authorities took months to determine that the culprit in the scare was not tomatoes, but rather serrano and jalepeno peppers imported from Mexico. They only uncovered the truth after Minnesota scientists put them on the scent. Meanwhile, tomato growers lost around a quarter-billion dollars.

The tomato industry will survive that scare, but unless it is part of a huge chain, one restaurant in one small town in Oklahoma will probably not survive the death of a patron. So it's understandable that either Mayes County health officials or the World's editorial board withheld the name, pending confirmation of the infection source.

Isn't it scary that you could be put at risk of a serious illness to save the reputation of a business? On the other hand, wouldn't it be unfair for a restaurant to be associated with a deadly E. coli outbreak if it is later cleared? Unfortunately, there seems to be no universally good way to handle a health threat such as this.

It seems, however, that a good rule of thumb for public health officials would be to provide as much information as possible, as early as possible, occasionally omitting a detail that may be incriminating. For example, if health officials had reported earlier in the week that a trend may be afoot, perhaps that one fatal case would have avoided dining out. Of course, it may have taken all week to identify the trend.

In the end, restaurant patrons just have to accept that there will always be some small risk in having others cook for them. Risks can be reduced by ordering cooked food over raw and checking out health inspection scores, but they can never be fully eliminated.

One dead, 11 sickened in possible E. coli outbreak [Tulsa World]
Canadian Officials Link 4th Death to Food-Poisoning Outbreak [Bloomberg]
Food Safety [USDA]

[Photo: Via Meepocity/flickr]

• In a food-recall heavy summer, another one! This time it's Pepperoni Pizza Hot Pockets that consumers should avoid, at the risk of biting down into plastic. Mmm. [Market Watch]

• North Korea has created a new soy and corn based noodle to combat hunger problems. The noodles have more protein and fat and "delay feelings of hunger." [BBC]

• Some colleges and universities across the country are eschewing plastic trays in their cafeterias for reasons of being "green" and "not wasting water." The number of broken dishes does not seem to have gone up... yet. [AP]

• Hey, have you heard about that economy? In another sign of end-times, school lunch prices are also going up! [NYT]

• Healthy food prices are not just a US problem: fresh produce is a luxury item for Aboriginal communities in Australia. [ABC News Australia]

• "Where can I get a slice of pizza at 2AM?" [MP: Boston]

• "Is there any more vodka?" [MP: Chicago]

• "Why is this butter sculpture of Shawn Johnson so toothy?" [MP: Philadelphia]

• "Maybe we should all go to a tiki bar." [MP: San Francisco]

• "Why are Thursdays always so thirsty?" [MP: South Florida]

Mr Bean goes to a fancy restaurant for his birthday and orders steak tartare, not knowing that he'd be presented with a plate of raw meat. Not one to apologize for the misunderstanding and send it back, he gets a bit creative. Enjoy!

Mr Bean --- Restaurant [YouTube]

• Have you been waiting for years for the chance to irradiate spinach with FDA approval? If so, your time has come. [Washington Post]

• Is you local sushi restaurant ripping you off? Quite possibly! Is this the second time in a year this has been a news story? Quite possibly! [New York Times]

• Hurricane Fay soaks Florida for the fifth day in a row. We suspect this can't be good for either Florida's delightful residents or its delicious crops. [LA Times]

• Best. Cranberry crop. EVER. [Boston Globe]

• Burger King's profits went up 42% in the last quarter, but investors remain nonplussed. [Chicago Tribune]

• While summer weather continues, a nice cool summer soup is a lovely change from grilling.

• More on summer cooking: this time with a focus on quick and easy, and "involving the usual suspects of late summer - chicken, corn, tomatoes, zucchini, sugar snap peas, watermelon and berries."

• As far a newsy items go, Table Talk reports that Cooper's Brick Oven Wine Bar and Cactus Restaurant & Bar are opening within days, along with a flurry of others (Root, Du Jour, and more).

• A case is made for dining on insects with a report on the a Creepy Crawly Cuisine Cook-off at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Home Slice's grand opening is tonight from 7pm-9pm and they will be giving away free slices of pizza! The pizza looks pretty mouthwatering, and besides, it's pretty hard to argue with free.

On top of the gratis pie, there will also be both a 6-foot cheesesteak and 6-foot vegetarian cheesesteak to sample, plus entertainment. Sounds like a pretty solid way to spend a Thursday night.

[via Foodaphilia]

As a New Englander, we grew up thinking certain words were totally normal, only to have illusions shattered when we got to college. For example, a traffic circle is a "rotary" and a water fountain a "bubbler," and we honestly didn't know otherwise. Although we betray our Massachusetts roots with these words, our most pronounced regional words are definitely food terms, and the soda vs. pop vs. coke map that has been circulating this week has only fed into our latent stubbornness about the correct names for different foods.

First, this map. It shows "pop" dominating the Northwest and Midwest, "coke" being the preferred moniker in the South, and "soda" as the fave nomenclature in the Northeast and on the West Coast. (Soda is also the name of choice in all of the MenuPages cities. Fancy that!) The soft drink issue gets even fuzzier in the face of more obscure regional names. Supposedly, some people in New England call it "tonic" although we've never heard this. Ever. The Wikipedia page for soft drink naming conventions says that Southerners also call soda "drink" or "cold drink," which just seems confusing.

We're pretty sure that we're right about soda being soda, but that's hardly the last word in regional food names. New Englanders seem to be the most persnickety about their words, but the differences exist everywhere. One person's milkshake is another one's frappe, Floridians call Mahi Mahi "dolphin," and some people put sprinkles on their ice cream while others go for jimmies. Aside from soft drinks, the sandwich naming divide seems to be the biggest of all, with hoagie vs. sub duking it out for top dog. Again though, a Wikipedia page exists for the Submarine sandwich category, and it is all over the place. Hero, grinder, po' boy, Italian... and the list just goes on and on.

By the by, one last bit on the subject of the soft drink map: we're super curious about what's going on in sections of the map where one name is a complete outlier. What's going on with that one northwestern corner of Nebraska where they call it soda in a sea of pops? Why is it that the two opposing coasts are both holding down the "soda" fort? (And can we turn this political?)

[Photo: via sx70manipulator/Flickr]

A new Burger King ad campaign seems to have struck a chord of resentment with at least one critic, as it portrays a cow apparently furious to have not been turned into food. From AdFreak (Via Coldmud):

[T]his new BK ad falls flat by failing to address why a cow would be mad at someone for not killing and eating it. That's the kind of relationship I'd want broken if I were the cow. But then, what this guy does with livestock in his private life is none of our business.