• Meme is reviewed in this week's Philadelphia Weekly, and Adam Erace has nothing but nice things to say. The menu is in perfect step with the season, but that doesn't mean that it's dull comfort food. Rather, dishes are exciting and delicious &mdash enough so that Erace is planning ahead to his next visit. It looks like the whisperings that Meme would revive the Old City restaurant scene were not so far off.

• Also in this week's paper, an interview with Marguerite Rodgers, the designer of Fork:Etc. &mdash it's interesting to get an even more behind the scenes look than servers/bartenders/chefs. Anyway, here's a cool part about what signifies a well-designed space: "People linger. They want to be there. A pet peeve of mine is spaces in which there’s no variety of scale, where everything is the same height. Especially in cavernous adaptive reuse buildings like old warehouses or banks, people can feel lost.”

• Finally, in Sidedish, a look at a whole slew of holiday food events, including Tinto's $25 prix fixe brunch.

• Food stamp use in this country is closing in on an all-time high. Not surprising, given the economic situation. [Washington Post]

• At the same time, food banks are having a hard time keeping shelves stocked, with increased demand and decreased donations. [USA Today]

• You thought we were done with melamine? Oh no. And this time it's hitting close to home: the FDA found traces of melamine in American-manufactured infant formula. [NYT]

• The Times suggests you take charge of the Thanksgiving meal by running it like a CEO does a company: delegate and assign tasks. [NYT]

• And because feel-good stories are hard to come by these days, we thought we'd share this one: a man in Central Florida who owns 27 Golden Corral restaurants will be feeding 20,000 people at the Salvation Army on Thanksgiving. [Orlando Sentinel]

Gourmet.com has a lovely, nearly poetic, piece up about scrapple by Ian Knauer. He goes into details over the origins of scrapple, where it's consumed, and how it's made: nothing revolutionary if you grew up eating it, but an interesting article to see over at Gourmet. He recounts buying scrapple recently:

I bought some last week from a Pennsylvania Dutch butcher shop called Baringer’s, and as the woman behind the counter wrapped my breakfast-to-be in paper, I cautiously asked her for the recipe. To my great surprise she eagerly rattled it off. About 200 pounds of meaty pork bones, about 75 pounds of meaty beef bones, some cheeks from each kind of animal, and so on, right down to buckwheat flour. Then she finished with a cheerful, “And you know it’s good!”

The question is, why don't people blink at foie gras, but allow themselves to feel revulsion at dear old scrapple?

Scrapple: Pennsylvania Pate [Gourmet]

[Photo: Photograph by Shayla Hunter via Gourmet.com]

It's a scant 48 hours (give or take) until we all sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, and we for one are kind of tired of reading about it. Instead, we're thinking of spring.

No, seriously. For a while now (like, years) we've been thinking that it's high time we took advantage of the outdoor space that's attached to our apartment, and we've got a mind to use this long weekend to set up a garden. We have a decent-sized terrace that gets great sunlight — it faces southwest and is hardly ever in shadow — and it's just completely criminal that we haven't yet channeled our Inner Alice Waters and done something productive with the matter.

Enter War Vegetable Gardening and the Home Storage of Vegetables, a 1918 publication of the National War Garden Commission, and helpfully scanned for all to see on Google Books. Though it's nearly a century old, the book is ideally relevant to today's prevailing food trends, melding together the frugality of That Darn Economy with the holier-than-thou gastro-chic of locavorism. Plus it turns out that autumn is the ideal time to start a garden! (Never mind that, for us, the first frost has already happened. Pish posh.)

For a slightly more contemporary reference, we're planning to turn to McGee and Stuckey's Bountiful Container, a guide to container gardening (as opposed to growing stuff in the actual ground) that comes with the highest recommendation possible — our housemate's mom's. We're thinking we'll start easy — cherry tomatoes, carrots, radishes, and — for the sheer surreality of seeing it waving over a third-floor balcony — a few stalks of corn. We're also planning to buy a pair of overalls which we will ostentatiously swoon around the garden supply store while wearing.

If all goes well, by next Thanksgiving we'll have an actual bounty to be thankful for, and won't have to make up some crap about being grateful for good health and family.

After the jump, some scans from War Vegetable Gardening.

War Vegetable Gardening [Google Books, via]
The Bountiful Container [Amazon]

[Photo: What we hope our balcony will resemble, via dawn_perry's Flickr]

• Despite a rash of pro-Spam coverage in major papers, Hormel's profits are down thanks to the skyrocketing price of ... turkey feed. [AP/CNN]

• Salt is the new bad guy. Lower-sodium foods (and advertising supporting them) are set to flourish in '09. [USAToday]

• A 3-Michelin-star Tokyo restaurant , Kagurazaka Ishikawa, apologized for selling bacteria-contaminated black beans. [Reuters]

• The rampant speculation about who will be the Obamas' White House Chef is "fantasy football for foodies," and also totally off-base, says Walter Scheib. [AP]

• Obligatory compare-your-ten-person-guest-list-to-the-army's-hordes pre-Thanksgiving article! [AP]

• Craig LaBan heads out to Northeast to visit Uzbekistan &mdash not the country, but the restaurant on Bustleton. For the curious, Uzbek food is a blend of Russian, Turkish, and Central Asia. LaBan ends with the declaration that "the flavors of this journey would last well into the night," which explains the two bells that he bestows upon Uzbekistan.

• In the Drink corner, LaBan recommends Madeira as a holiday quaff, if you are seeking the authenticity of the 1700s. "Madeira hasn't been quite as popular since, thanks to vineyard blights, changing tastes, and notoriety for its ubiquity in sauce," but don't let its un-trendiness put you off: apparently, it pairs well with pumpkin pie.

• O, the Caesar salad! In days of yore, it was prepared tableside, but times sure have changed. The last time Rick Nichols had one presented this way was 11 years ago, and his interest was piqued when he saw it on the Butcher & Singer menu. But alas! It is not prepared tableside, but plated which is certainly not the same thing.

We were only sort of half-interested in reading about Margaret Fulton's remarks at the release of Greenpeace's True Food Guide Canola Edition 2009 until right at the end of this article, when she compared genetically engineered food to Adolf Hitler. Seriously:

At the guide's launch, Ms Fulton hit out at the big chemical companies for pushing the "benefits" of growing GE canola to farmers for their commercial gain.

"They're going to control the world," she said.

"We thought Hitler was a bad fella ... these guys could show him a thing or two - and they're creeping up on us quietly without guns or anything like that, but the poison is there."

Greenpeace released the publication to coincide with Australia's first genetically modified crop, canola, which critics say could be toxic. The guide identifies products that are free of genetically modified ingredients, which aren't legally required to be labeled as such.

Food guru Margaret Fulton likens genetically-modified food push to Adolf Hitler [The Australian]
New True Food Guide launched [Greenpeace]

[Photo: Via nieminskihomework]

We saw this video about the creation of the hot dog launcher on Serious Eats earlier today, although it has cropped on on a bunch of other blogs since then. It's a pretty charming mockumentary and is somehow poignantly aspirational. Take for example this bit at the end:

What does the wheel mean mean to mankind? Y'know? What does landing on the moon mean to mankind? And really, I think that's, that's what the launcher means to mankind. Y'know, we think it's one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. I think dreams are very important, and without dreams, things like this would never become a reality.

Another key aspect of the video? The Phanatic is seriously temperamental! (Although perhaps that's not news.) Anyway, more than anything, this funny little movie makes us want a hot dog. We're thinking... the hot dog and fish cake special from Bubby's Brisket might do the trick.

In Videos: Phillies Hot Dog Launcher Mockumentary [Serious Eats]
Bubby's Brisket [MenuPages]
Bubby's Brisket [Official Site]

• Live from Nova Scotia: lobster season is on! There are many fears over plummeting lobster prices, but with tighter regulations and a total of 540,000 traps, perhaps the fishermen will stay afloat. [Chronicle Herald]

• The jury is still out on MSG, scientifically speaking, but consumers really, really don't like it. In light of that, it's somewhat surprising that Campbell's Soup waited until now to stop using it. In any case, expect a barrage of advertising announcing the change. [Chicago Tribune]

• A farm in Colorado decided to have a food give-away, after finding that they had a surplus of produce following their fall harvest festival. What they didn't count on? 40,000 people showing up. [Denver Post]

• The full-blown global food crisis makes it harder to justify using corn for ethanol, instead of for food, and there's a great deal of debate over how to find a middle ground. Let them eat cake? [AP/SF Chronicle]

• A tamale cart in Mexico City advertises its goods via robotic loudspeaker. It's like Wall-E, but with tamales. [LA Times]

• Thanksgiving isn't even upon us yet, but already, Joe Sixpack is looking ahead towards Christmas. And hey, why not? After all, he just wrote "the first book devoted to Christmas beer," and has a lot to say on the topic. So what makes a Christmas brew? Apparently, being Belgian, or a Belgian "wannabe," at least as far as we can tell from this list of beers.

• Freaking out over the Thanksgiving feast that you are hosting? If your concerns are over stuffing, gravy, and wine, Jim Coleman has got a guide for coping. Heed these words, especially: "Do not feel that you have to serve white wine simply because it's turkey. You are having a party. Have both red and white and plenty of it - the worst thing you can do is run out!" Oh, and don't forget to do most of the work on Wednesday.

The third Thursday of November was yesterday, which means that the Beaujolais Nouveau arrived, and oenophiles from all area codes were really pleased.

Meanwhile, there is one very particular population that must be besides themselves with joy. To illustrate:

Yes, that's right: Hello Kitty Beaujolais! It's only available in Japan, and comes in plastic bottles. We're not sure what to make of this, really. On the one hand, there's probably a pretty huge market for this. On the other, the "market" in question is probably roughly 10 years old.

The bottle also has a little feel-good message on the side: "Let people all over the world drink delicious wine and live their days in happiness." Truth be told, this just makes us want to go on eBay to try to scare up a bottle. Imagine rolling up into Cochon or Pumpkin with one of these babies! In a word: ballin'.

"Smoking Out Smokers, Lively Bludgeoned, Hello Kitty for Alkies" [AdRants via Jezebel]
Cochon [MenuPages]
Cochon [Official Site]
Pumpkin [MenuPages]
Pumpkin [Official Site]

• Cupcakes can provide a break in the Thanksgiving dessert monopoly held by pumpkin pie. [MP: Boston]

• Lion and bear meat are available for purchase in this great country of ours. [MP: Chicago]

• Pork on a spit that looks like doner kebab meat provides a double dose of delicious visuals. [MP: Philadelphia]

• All-you-can-eat pizza is on the rise! [MP: San Francisco]

• Winemakers on motorcycles are awesome. [MP: South Florida]

• A new study shows that keeping food diaries via text message might help kids stick with the activity, thus reducing child obesity. [Washington Post]

• Not helping to reduce child obesity? Fast food ads. [LA Times]

• High-end New York fromagerie Murray's Cheese goes Midwestern with stores inside supermarket chain Kroger. [New York Times]

• In a sort of Black Friday for the wine industry, vineyards nationwide will be holding events next weekend. [Wall Street Journal]

• Everything you wanted to know about tainted food, all in one place! [Slate]

• The Raw Cafe @ Boyd's has a well-priced bento box that will not break the bank at all. "For $13, the kitchen serves two pieces of pristine tuna nigiri alongside a spicy tuna roll, tuna tartare, gyoza dumplings, bacon-wrapped shrimp, two rounds of California roll, salad, and a bowl of miso soup." So, sit up in the mezzanine, gaze at all of the expensive things surrounding it, and feel satisfied with your bargain of a lunch.

• Craig LaBan has a long and thoughtful story about wine pairings for Thanksgiving. Most are mid-priced, but there is a $10.99 wine in play. Which is a good segue for the next item...

• ...The long reach of the financial crisis is extending all the way to Thanksgiving, and as such, Dianna Marder has a piece up about money-saving strategies for the holiday. Consider a frozen turkey, or (gasp!), turkey breasts if you are a small gathering of people. At the very least, make as much from scratch as possible.

• Table Talk is full of newsy bits: Arturo Burigatto bought back Vickers rather than see it turned into a funeral parlor, Bryn Mawr's Yang Ming now has a chef-in-residence, T. Burke's has a new executive chef, and Boutros' Mediterranean Specialties opened in the food court at the Bellevue. We must admit that it's both cheering and surprising to still see so many openings.

• Hinge Cafe in Port Richmond is visited by Trey Popp, along with his wife and "junior food critic." Says Popp, "next time I'll go the down-home route, especially if the housemade pierogies are available. And there will definitely be a next time: I've got to have another piece of Simone's mom's oatmeal cake. Topped with walnuts and coconut, it was the best dessert surprise I've had in ages." Basically, it's a comfortable, homey place, and the better food there is the one that falls in the same category.

• The Week In Eats covers several holiday dining options, including a Thanksgiving menu at Tavern 17, and an environmentally friendly ("green," if you will) festival on Germantown Ave. Oh, yeah &mdash and a Thanksgiving after party at Devil's Den, complete with Eagles game.

• Wokano, located at Wing Phat Plaza, is Chinese food for the brave at heart. Totally, completely, and wholly authentically Chinese, the menu has things like duck tongue and pig intestine, and you will encounter bones and meat that looks like what it's called.

In the year 2200, when historians are looking back to the 2000s to figure out what made us tick, we sincerely hope that they think of doing a study of eBay. Actually, scratch that &mdash looking at eBay would only make them ten million times more perplexed about what our civilization was like. Why's this? Because what people will buy and sell on eBay is insane, particularly when it comes to food stuffs.

We saw something recently about buying good vanilla beans and chocolate on eBay for bargain-basement prices. This seemed reasonable enough, but after some poking around, we spiraled down a rabbit hole of pre-made cakes and the like. Then, we had the idea of looking for other foods on eBay, so without further ado, some important findings.

1. George Bush is toast. "This is an original George Bush toast portrait burned into premium potato bread! This is a very unique tribute to our 43rd president."

After the jump, more eBay food finds, all three of which are a harrowing looks into what people will try to sell.

2. Man-shaped Cheetos. "You are bidding on a cheeto that is shaped like a man singing one way and when you turn it, it looks like it is boxing. It is as big as a quarter. this cheeto has not been altered in anyway. The story behind this is i packed my daughter cheetos for her lunch and she found it in her bag."

3. Sweet potato hippopotamus. "This item is a sweet potato that formed in the general shape of a hippopotamus. It is presented exactly as it was harvested (minus a tiny tail which fell off during the process). The photos below are of the actual item you will receive."

4. Eagle-shaped bacon. "Here is the oddest item I have ever sold on ebay. It is a piece of bacon that I fried this morning. Notice the patriotic shape of our nations American Eagle."

There are no words.

• The FDA opens three permanant offices in China to keep an eye on exports after a series of scares over tainted products. [NYT]

• Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrive! Such as it is, with the disappointing grape harvest in the supplying region. [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• A teenager shoots his father, then turns the gun on himself, after they fought when boy brought home the wrong fast food order. [Local 6]

• A recent study finds that cutting down on fast food advertising actually does affect childhood obesity. [LA Times]

• Food banks are feeling the economic pinch as would-be donors keep the canned goods for eating. [Washington Post]

Starting in... 10 minutes and lasting all the way until 8pm is Happy Hour at Ansill. Okay, so this has existed for a while, and technically it's not only tonight, but every Monday-Friday, but just consider it a friendly reminder.

The point is that from 6pm-8pm, you can sit yourself down at the bar and order $5 Finlandia martinis, $3 Yards drafts, and $5 prosecco too. Even better, for the sweet, sweet price of $1, you can have yourself an oyster. It'll be hard to tear yourself away from dinner there too, but that's neither here nor there.

(Also eminently appealing? The late night menu which features such epicurean delights as bone marrow with parsley salad and capers, and house cured salmon with greek yogurt and dill.)

Ansill [MenuPages]
Ansill [Official Site]

[Photo: bar at Ansill via Ansill]

Frank Bruni had better watch out; he's got a middle-schooler vying for his job. Well, not really, and even the kid in question, David Fishman, would admit that he should probably finish school first. He only just turned 12, but already he enjoys fine dining and keeps a notebook where he records his impressions of restaurants complete with Zagat-style ratings.

One restaurant in particular, Salumeria Rosi on New York's Upper West Side, thinks he's great. On his first visit, a solo one, the hostess had no problems squeezing him in on a busy night despite his unaccompanied-minor status. Of course, everyone, including Chef Cesare Casella, in the restaurant was curious about this kid eating dinner by himself:

But the young foodie has cultivated a new fan in Chef Casella, a burly man who generally tours his restaurants with a trademark sprig of herb in his pocket. Mr. Casella came over the evening of David’s big night out to extend a greeting, and sent him home with a gift of fine hazelnut spread. Though David was disappointed that the restaurant did not serve gelato, he got points with Mr. Casella for knowing a little something about Italian cuisine.

“He reminded me of me, when I was younger,” said Mr. Casella, who used to drive all over Europe by himself to try the best restaurants. “He is so cool, though — more confident than I am when I eat out by myself.”

Mr. Casella likewise made an impression on David. “He looked like a real meat guy,” David said. Like a butcher? “Like a butcher-slash-guy who would eat a lot of meat,” he clarified.

Here's an idea for David: Pitch your services as a kids' menu consultant to mid-to-high-range restaurants in the city, particularly those that see a lot of families. Help these places figure out some fun, interesting dishes that appeal to kids without being completely dumbed down. Hey, maybe they'll even pay you in something other than free meals. Those aren't bad, of course, but you've got to save for college, right?

12-Year-Old's a Food Critic, and the Chef Loves It [New York Times]

Photo: Eating in Translation/flickr

• PETA released a video taken undercover at a West Virginia poultry plant that shows workers kicking, stomping, snapping necks and doing all sorts of other awful things to turkeys. [NYT]

• The UN moves into rebel-held territory in eastern Congo to distribute food to people who used to grow most of the country's food, until rebels confiscated their fields. [AP]

• If you happen to have any Lean Cuisine frozen dinners — specifically the pesto chicken with bow tie pasta, the chicken Mediterranean and the chicken Tuscan — you might want to get rid of them; consumers have found pieces of blue plastic inside. [Los Angeles Times]

• Wal-Mart is donating more than 90 million pounds of fresh food over the next year to Feeding America, the country's largest hunger-focused nonprofit organization. [NYT]

• Grocery stores. That's where the money is during a recession, apparently. And it's not surprising, really — people still need to eat, and they're cutting back on restaurant meals. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• This week's edition comes with a review of Ekta, which, for several reasons, cannot escape being compared to Tiffin. Although the decor doesn't quite match up, the good news is that the food does &mdash to the point of leaving Adam Erace feeling like he cheated on Tiffin.

• Fancy cocktail lounges are wonderful, divey bars are fun, and beer pubs are a delight, but is there anything more suited to the season than a nice wine bar? If you are of this opinion, the Field Guide has got your back with a round-up of wine bars.

• One of the wine bars mentioned is Tria, and Tim McGinnis interviews one of the bartenders. She likes the jobs “from an educational standpoint" and says "I knew nothing of beer, wine and cheese before. There’s more to it than I expected.”

In our long observation of the world of food-loving people, we've noticed that a major tenet of foodieism is the I'll-eat-anything attitude. The movement is led by testicle-and-worm-chowing high priests Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain, who approach nearly everything with an open mind and an open mouth. A degree of gastronomic uninhibition is a matter of pride — we'll happily admit that we rely on our own culinary adventurousness, our willingness to try new things, as a cornerstone of our self-identification as a Food Person.

But a recent spate of anti-picky-eater backlash has gotten us thinking a little more critically about just how much an adventurous palate is a necessary element of being a gastronome.

In a post yesterday, Jezebel's Sadie Stein lamented that Barack Obama is a picky eater, a quality she finds intensely off-putting in a boyfriend — let alone a potential leader of the free world. A Serious Eats post on whether diners with aversions should fake allergies garnered nearly fifty comments. Perhaps most notably, on his blog, Michael Ruhlman calls out all those people who fake allergies or ask for substitutions as complicit in the creation of "A Nation of Culinary Sissies."

Here's where we take exception: The jumping-off point for Ruhlman's rant wasn't some dude in line at Subway ordering plain turkey on white bread, no condiments. He was moved to rage by the guests at the 20-course, $1500-a-head Keller-Achatz dinner, held last week at Per Se in New York, whose various dislikes and allergies piled up to the point where fully half of the tables present required various per-diner modifications of the set menu.

We think there are two big problems here. First, we would imagine that most of the diners ready and willing to drop a grand and a half on a meal that's been called a religious experience would bristle at the suggestion that they aren't fully fledged appreciators of good food and good drink. These are people who are demonstrating in an absolutely unambiguous way that they're committed ingredients, preparation, flavor, innovation, chefs, servers, restaurants — what more does Ruhlman want from them?

But second, and more insidiously, there's the fact that there is a stigma attached to having a food aversion. The stigma is so great, in fact, that people who merely dislike something (yogurt, eggplant, raw onion) will lie to their server in order to avoid the ingredient, shifting the matter from one of a prejudiced palate to one of medical necessity. What's the point here? Avoiding the server's scorn? Eliminating the possibility of the chef saying "no, seriously, they'll never taste it" and adding the anchovies (oregano, corn, garlic) anyway?

When did it become such a bad thing to want what you want? We think it's time to Take Back Dislike. We'll start: we freaking hate horseradish. MP:SF editor Adam can't stand eggplant. MP:Philly editor Elsa loathes bananas. MP:Boston editor Leila will not go anywhere near anything that contains mayonnaise. MP:South Florida editor Carolina likes chocolate and likes mint, but if they're together in a dish she will run the other way. And the five of us have as much gastronomic cred as anyone else you're likely to meet.

Being a person who loves food — call it a gastronome, a Food Person, a gourmand, a foodie — doesn't actually mean that you have to love all food, any more than being a music fan means you have to love Puccini as much as you love death metal. It's okay to be a picky eater. Leave the bat brains and the fermented shark to the Andrew Zimmerns of the world, and hold your head up high as you ask the kitchen to hold the mayo.

[Photo: Sandwich monster, via amyclaire123's Flickr]

Although it looks like a giant skewer of doner kebab meat, the meat pictured above is actually pork on a spit from Cantina Dos Segundos. How is it prepared?

First we thinly slice the pork into rounds. Then we marinate the pork for 24 hours. Then we place a large spanish onion onto the spit, followed by the pork rounds. Then we place a peeled pineapple at the top of the trompo, allowing the juice to drip down onto the slowly cooking pork.

The tacos al pastor are made with this pork.

Cantina Dos Segundos [MenuPages]
Cantina Dos Segundos [Official Site]

[Photo via Cantina Dos Segundos]

• Those new Chinese branches of the FDA? Lots of forced smiles going on over that. No one seems very happy. [AP]

• 11% of US households are experiencing food scarcity. Why is this only being reported in the British press? [Reuters/Guardian]

• The UN is back in Gaza issuing food supplies, but warns that they'll be out again in days unless Israel gives up their blockade. [AFP]

• Employees of Justin Timberlake's New York restaurant are suing him, claiming unpaid wages. [HuffPo]

• A new biography of Queen Sofia of Spain reveals that the late King Hassan II of Morocco was obsessive about food, and traveled with his own cooks because he didn't trust anyone. [NYT]

• Three bells for Distrito! It's elevated and nuanced Mexican food, and Craig LaBan lavishes praise on practically every single element on his dining experience there.

• Two bargain rieslings from this weekend's Drink feature. Both a "classic take" ("a pretty nose of honey and beeswax, with juicy peach on the palate and a balanced finish of citrus pith and acidity") and a drier wine ("a lemony whip-crack of tartness, a crab-apple crunch of pippin green followed by a minerally flare of coriander and white pepper") are profiled.

• A look at the recently Prohibition Taproom. The sign, which reads nothing but BAR is a luminous neon beacon, pointing the way to the entrance. As Rick Nichols puts it, oOn a commercial strip, who'd ever notice it? But here in the dark, not a mouse stirring (well, maybe a mouse) in the Loft District, it is something of a beacon and a safe harbor, as straightforward and direct as that hospital H." The place also has presentable looks, good beer, and good grub.

We have interests other than food, one of them being Haruki Murakami and every book he has ever written. We love his books because they are both beautifully written and have winding plots with supernatural elements, plus they are laden with nostalgia, which is always appealing. One thing we have always noticed is that Murakami talks about food a lot in his novels. Like, really. A lot. So it was interesting to see this Q&A with him on the Time Magazine website, where a couple questions are devoted to &mdash among other things &mdash food.

• In response to a question about Western culture in his books: "When I write that my character is cooking spaghetti for lunch, some Western readers say it's strange: 'Why is a Japanese guy cooking spaghetti for lunch?'"

• In response to a question about the significance of food in his stories, and his ideal meal: "My favorite meal is when you have no idea what to cook and you open the refrigerator and find celery, egg, tofu and tomato. I use everything and make my own dish. That is my perfect food. No planning."

The nice thing about the food in Murakami's books is that it is rarely, if ever, sushi. This makes sense: after all, we do know that the Japanese don't exclusively eat sushi. The dishes that Murakami reels off end up sounding far more exotic than sushi, even though they might have Western elements (like spaghetti), if only because they are somewhat unexpected.

We don't know of anywhere in the city to get dishes like the spaghetti bedecked with cod roe shown above, but somewhere like Yakitori Boy is a decent non-sushi option if you feel like taking your dining inspiration from Norwegian Wood.

10 Questions for Haruki Murakami [Time]
Yakitori Boy [MenuPages]
Yakitori Boy [Official Site]

[Photo: Japanese cod roe spaghetti via egseah/Flickr]

It was fun to read this morning's post on MenuPages in Portfolio's Odd Numbers blog. Writer Zubin Jelveh seems to grasp, intuitively, the most effective technique by which MenuPages ratings can be ranked. But he doesn't explain it explicitly. Nor do we, on the site, so let's do that now:

Basically, your restaurant search, like any inroad into a huge pool of data, will narrow its focus with each condition you apply. Say you start with a neighborhood — we'll use the New York site, since that's what Zubin writes about — so say you start with the Upper East Side. There are 587 restaurants listed in that neighborhood. How to choose where to eat?

Well, if you know what kind of food you want, that makes it easier (you can search by cuisine), but often times you don't. Often, you're thinking in terms of quality, price, and location, and you want a few options.

The best way to search is to first sort by rating. Then scroll down and scan with your eyes the number of dollar signs and number of reviews. The more reviews, the more you can trust the stars, which are created by readers like you. A restaurant with four and a half stars based on three reviews is not as solid an option as one with three and a half stars based on 50 reviews, but it may still be worth a shot.

It also may be worth your while to sort by the number of reviews. In our example, the restaurant with the most reviews is Pio Pio, which gets an average of four stars for food and four and a half stars for value, based on 123 reviews. That means it might be a good, mid-priced choice for, say, a weeknight. A theme among the most recent five reviews is inconsistent service, so it may not be the kind of place you go if you're in a hurry or trying to impress someone.

Depending on what you want, you can narrow your overall search based on type of cuisine and features required (delivery, al fresco, and so on). If you're a veteran user, you probably know all this already. Do you have your own special techniques for mining the vast reserves of raw MP data? Please share!

The Best and Worst Restaurants in Manhattan [Portfolio]
Pio Pio [MenuPages]
Pio Pio [Official Site]

• China's reputation as food contamination central has earned the country some of their very own USDA offices! Three, to be exact &mdash and they just so happen to be the first to ever open outside of the United States. [AP]

• In what might be the weekend's most adorable food-related story, a 12-year old from Manhattan's Upper West Side is an aspiring food critic. Not only does he write up restaurant reviews in his journal, he also goes out to eat on his own at sophisticated restaurants. All together now: aw. [NYT]

• The business lunch suffers in these gloomy financial times. The problems are twofold, when you think about it: less business to lunch over, less money to spend on lunch. [Chicago Tribune]

• On the other hand, the economic downturn is a boon time for Spam? Hormel, the company that makes Spam, is ramping up production because Americans have traditionally turned to Spam during penny-pinching times. Important note: increased production is not the same as increased sales. [NYT]

• Good news for scallop lovers: the Eastern Seaboard is currently chock-full of young scallops, after six years of dwindling crops. Patience required though, as the little scallop babies won't be fished for another couple years. [Boston Globe]

• Go ahead, get biblical. [MP: Boston]

• Wanna know how to cook mussels? Think sex. [MP: Chicago]

• Get crabs! [MP: Philadelphia]

• Let us introduce you to The Game. [MP: San Francisco]

• Hogfish just sort of sounds dirty, or at least like cross-breeding. [MP: South Florida]

• It turns out that the majority of fast food meat is derived from corn. [Time]

• Barack and Michelle Obama are simple, yet adventurous eaters, while Malia and Sasha prefer kid food like mac and cheese and French toast. [Seattle Times]

• Good news: access to food is improving in Iraq. [CNN]

• Bad news: access to food is decreasing in Gaza. [AP]

• Chinese milk is still tainted. [New York Times]

• Table Talk has some chatter about the three Valentino trattorias: they have been split up and Caffe Valentino alone is holding down the fort. Also, another South Jersey restaurant week-like deal is underway, this one called "Off the Hook." (Can you guess the theme?)

• A world without the Italian Market? Say it ain't so! Alright, so no death-knell has sounded, but this piece from Rick Nichols is planting some seeds of fear.

• Love the tailgating, but hate the parking lot? Then this write-up of The NBC Sunday Night Football Cookbook is likely to be right up your alley.

• Mrs. Quicke's, a traditional Brit-style cheddar, is likely to throw even the most knowing of`cheddar connoisseurs for a loop. American-style experts, that is. What makes it different? "Whereas most Americans become creamy and sharp as they age, the British versions become intensely earthy. The flavor is mushroomy and nutty, with a texture at once crumbly, creamy, and sparking with flavor," says LaBan.

Today is, admittedly, a dreary and cheerless day. The gloomy weather is not a compelling incentive to go out and be social. If there was ever a reason to battle those hibernating instincts though, it may well be Happy Hour at Devil's Den.

Their Happy Hour routinely features half-priced draft beers plus a stellar, and reasonably priced, small plates menu. (Beer-braised pork crostini? Pancetta, celery root, and fennel salad? Sign us up!) Tonight is like a bonus, because you can feel good about your philanthropic self as you sit cozily ensconced at the bar.

See, the Happy Hour tonight is a fundraiser for Passyunk Square. Proceeds from tonight's Happy Hour will go professional street cleaning for the Passyunk Square neighborhood. So, to sum: delicious food + cheap beers + money goes to neighborhood revitalizations = as good a motive to go eat and drink as there ever was. And since it's Happy Hour, it will not cost you dearly either.

Devil's Den [MenuPages]
Devil's Den [Official Site]

Curtis James Jackson III, probably better known to the world as 50 Cent, was on the Tyra Banks Show talking about, among other things, his Vitamin Water endorsement deal. Well, okay &mdash he didn't talk about the deal , but he did talk about drinking Vitamin Water and why he likes it. So what, if anything at all, does this have to do with Alton Brown?

Fact the first: Alton Brown is the newest spokesperson for Welch's Grape Juice. The press release from Welch's states that

Brown will be appearing in television, print and online advertising, as well as in-store merchandising for Welch's 100% Grape Juice. In his own unique style, he'll blend ingredients of wit, wisdom, and science to explain what makes Welch's 100% Grape Juice, made from the entire polyphenol-packed Concord grape, so special.

Fact the second: Formula 50, 50 Cent's own flavor of Vitamin Water is grape-flavored. GRAPE! Really, it's like Alton Brown and 50 Cent are spirit animals.

We find the Alton Brown/grape juice pairing much more enticing than the 50 Cent/Vitamin Water one, but that has a lot to do with how much love we have for Good Eats. A tiny food/science geek part of us is excited to have Brown teach us cool facts about grapes and grape juice. However, the real question is this: now that grape juice and grape-flavor water have locked down celebrity endorsements, who will be in the tank for grape soda?

Alton Brown Joins Welch's in Standing Up to Free Radicals [PRNewswire via YumSugar]

• The European Union lifts its ban on the sale of ugly, misshapen vegetables, much to the chagrin of cuter, more popular vegetables. [NY Times]

• Having had it up to here trying to remember what's tainted this week, the FDA has slapped a detention order on dozens of foods imported from China. [AP/Miami Herald]

• Whether its residents know this or not, it appears Los Angles is a city ripped by strife: Two bagel bakeries, with different styles, rule the breakfast scene. Are you Brooklyn Bagel Bakery or Western Bagel? [LA Times]

• The former director of a New York City nonprofit has been charged with stealing more than $500,000 in government aid to feed hungry children. [Newsday]

• A woman in the UK will avoid jail time after chasing a restaurant owner around his kitchen with a meat cleaver in a dispute over money. [The Scotsman]

It's expensive, and it's last minute, but if we had either the time or the money, we would go to the La Serre Game and Wine Dinner at Lacroix tonight.

You have half an hour to make reservations, rush over, and find $95 dollars to put towards the 4-course and 4-wine meal, but c'mon! It'll so be worth it, if you can pull off all of these elements.

Lacroix [MenuPages]
Lacroix [Official Site]

• Pub & Kitchen is reviewed in this week's City Paper. There is no trickery on the menu here: you get what is described, and this is something to rejoice over. (See: the boiled egg with salt, which is in fact, a boiled egg with salt.) Straightforward is not to be mistaken for 'boring' or 'less good' &mdash quite the opposite.

• This Week In Eats has got you covered, especially if you are interested in: beer, champagne, or wine. Also a class on "Entertaining For Less" which is probably a good skill to have up one's sleeve these days.

• Also in this week's City Paper, a look at Q-Ba. By all rights, it should have a Cuban-inspired menu, but as it stands, it leans heavily Mexican. Perplexing &mdash and not entirely successful. According to chef Paulo Carbajal, "a new menu featuring authentic recipes borrowed from owner Cuba Casona's grandmother" is in the works.

A review for Cowgirl in New York came in just this week that caught our eye. It was pretty lukewarm, but there was one interesting part:

The potatoes were cold and the veggies very clearly came from a can or, worse yet, were frozen. They had chunks of okra thrown in to make it seem like they were fresh - they weren't.

So, we just thought we'd set the record straight. Here's the comparison, broken down into easily digestible components:

• Nutrition: In this regard, the two are the same. According to this study at the University of Illinois, "consumers should be confident that if a food is suggested as being 'high in nutrient X,' then the form (canned, frozen or fresh) will not alter that. So, for example, those canned tomatoes have just as much lycopene as fresh tomatoes. Advantage: Tie.

• Additives: Frozen veggies have none. They are sliced, diced, blanched (i.e. plunged into boiling water for a minute and then into ice water) and frozen, so no problems there. Canned veggies, however, have salt, and lots of it. It acts as a preservative, and though many companies now have lower-sodium versions, that's still extra salt that you don't need. And when it comes to canned fruits, they're generally swimming in corn syrup (sugar: another preservative), which adds lots of lovely calories. Advantage: Frozen.

• Taste: Absolutely no contest here. Despite what the reviewer above may think, frozen veggies win the taste test hands down. Why? Because they taste almost exactly like the fresh veggies in many cases. If you buy good frozen corn or green beans, you probably could not tell the difference once they were sauteed and plated. Try doing that with salty, soggy, overcooked canned green beans. Advantage: Frozen

So now you know. Fresh and in season is best, but when that's not an option, frozen beats canned. Of course, canned stuff is useful; think tomatoes, which don't freeze well and are very useful canned, and cucumbers, which also can't be frozen but when canned transform into lovely pickles. But for many 'side vegetable' staples, like peas, carrots, broccoli, green beans, corn and spinach, you're better off buying it in the freezer section.

Cowgirl [MenuPages]
Cowgirl [Official Site]
Comparison of selected fresh, canned and frozen fruits, vegetables, legumes and protein foods [UIUC]

Photos: paulidin/flickr and dieselgirl777/flickr

• The UN warns that it has exactly two days' supply of food in Gaza and no more. [BBC]

• The four largest ethanol producers have teamed up to create a new lobbying group called "Growth Energy." The message: don't blame ethanol for high food prices. [US News]

• A survey of schools in South Carolina found some that had action plans for food allergic students, while others did not. If your kid has severe allergies, you might want to check with the school about what happens if he or she has an attack. [Reuters]

• A Georgia restaurant had its liquor license removed after authorities found photos of underage drinkers on Facebook. [AJC]

• The Hawaiian plate lunch — two scoops of white rice, macaroni salad, and meat slathered in gravy — may see its popularity rise with a Hawaiian-born president in office. [NYT]

Tonight, at Per Se in New York, two culinary titans will meet and do battle. Not against each other; rather, against the waistlines, livers, and prevailing economic sensibilities of a roomful of diners, each of whom ponied up a cool $1500 for a twenty-course meal (plus wine pairings) prepared by the extremely famous hands of chefs Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz.

While we have a mild obsesssion healthy journalistic interest in both Keller and Achatz, what we don't have is a spare $1500 lying around. (Even if we did, we'd be SOL: Keller's publicist told us that tonight's meal "sold out fairly quickly," though there are still a few seats available for its encore performance on December 2, at Alinea, Achatz's Chicago restaurant.)

Enter the New York Times, who remedy our poverty of knowledge (if not our poverty of wallet) by assigning Pete Wells to cover the evening. Pete has probably the best seat in the house: He'll be in the actual kitchen, watching as two of the most precision-oriented culinary teams in the world converge. And to get our mouths all a-watering, he has the menu — truffles, sturgeon, and lobster, oh my! — which he's amusingly tagged as "Mentor_Protege_Dinner.pdf"

That tag is only tongue partially in cheek: Achatz trained under Keller at The French Laundry before striking out on his own, and Keller's influence is present in much of what he does. In Wells' post, Michael Ruhlman, who's worked closely with both chefs (he wrote the introduction for Alinea and was a main writer for all three of Keller's cookbooks), takes a somewhat Freudian perspective:

“It’s probably more complicated from Grant’s perspective,” said Mr. Ruhlman. “Talk about the anxiety of influence, the need to slay the father. Keller looms so tall in this industry, I’m sure he does all he can to stay out of its shadow without alienating the friend and mentor to whom he owes so much.”

Maybe that $1500 price tag also offsets some therapy sessions? Or maybe sometimes Blackberry, Tobacco, Kola Nut, Nepetella (course 17) is just a cigar.

Thomas Keller and Protégé to Go 20 Rounds [NYT Diner's Journal]
What You Get for $1500 [NYT Diner's Journal]
Per Se [MenuPages]
Per Se [Official Site]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]

[Photo: Tomato, by Lara Kastner, via Alineamosaic.com]

previously
Alinea Defends A $1500 Dinner Bill
National: Keller, Achatz Offer Body Blow To Bank Account

It's getting close to that time again, folks. That weird occasion each year when a pretty good wine turns great through the use of some simple marketing hype and a dash of mystique. That's right, it's Beaujolais Nouveau season. But this year, the tradition is changing a bit.

The low-priced, easy drinking red has long been considered kind of a big deal in the fall thanks to a buzz created by the strictly controlled release date: It becomes available on the third Thursday in November, at which point distributors compete not only to see who can get the wine onto store shelves faster, but apparently who can make the biggest racket about it. Restaurants put on special menus to go with the wine, and stores trumpet its arrival.

The classic thing is to see gangs of motorcycle couriers revving up to sprint the first shipments out of little towns in the Bueaujolais region, shouting, “Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!” as they race to Paris.

This year, however, some bottles have been released early, loaded onto ships, and are on their way abroad in leisurely fashion.

Of course, the bottle you pick up in the wine shop would most likely not have arrived via frantic motorcyclist. In past years, it probably would have been flown, but a Reuters story today reported that producers this year are going to ship a lot more bottles by sea — a drastically more efficient method — and are using plastic bottles, in a bid to reduce their environmental impact:

Georges Duboeuf, the largest maker of Beaujolais Nouveau, struck a deal with the French government to allow an early release of his wine so that he could use ships to haul about 75 percent of his 2 million U.S.-bound bottles, instead of the one-third that usually arrives by boat.

“It significantly changes the (carbon) footprint and it keeps the cost level down to the consumer, as well as keeping it in that $10-$12 range,” explained Barbara Scalera, a spokeswoman for Duboeuf's U.S. agent W. J. Deutsch & Sons.

The move is expected to lower the freight costs by a third and the result is that the suggested price for Boisset's Mommessin Beaujolais Nouveau and Bouchard Aine & Fils Beaujolais Nouveau will be $12.99, instead of up to $14.99 for U.S. consumers.

When asked if shipping by air negated the carbon footprint benefits, [Boisset America spokesman Patric] Egan replied, “Because we produce less, more of it needs to be here more quickly.”

Although some wine lovers may not like the idea of plastic bottles, Egan said it does not harm the wine.

“It's not great for long-term aging. But for up to three years it protects the wine just as well as glass,” he explained.

Beaujolais Nouveau goes ‘green’ — in plastic [Reuters/NBC]
AskPablo: Glass vs. PET Bottles [triplepundit]

[Image: Via Carabin.fr]

This Maryland "Crab Cake" caught our eye this morning, while scrolling through Google Reader. At first glance, it was based on nothing more than the bright colors and lovable little crabs, but then we realized it was a cake, and then we