Most people we know seem to have been hit by a dreadful January cold, and we are no exception. The only thing we are interested in eating is an avgolemono-type soup that our mom always made for us when we were sick, but we suspect that most people crave the homey comfort of chicken soup and its alleged curative properties.

This animated version of "Chicken Soup with Rice" is a personal childhood favorite, and the line “in January it’s so nice / while slippin’ on the slidin’ ice / to sip hot chicken soup with rice” seems pretty timely right about now. But what is it about chicken soup (with rice, noodles, or super simple with nothing but broth and veggies)?

Chicken soup as a curative is pretty universal. Just check out the Wikipedia page: there are entries for soup from basically every continent. Apparently, it's been used as a healing soup for cold since Ancient Egypt, although since we're talking about info gleaned from Wikipedia, take this with a few grains of salt. Nevertheless, it's been a home-remedy for colds for a very, very long time, so it's a bit tricky to separate whether it just works as a placebo by way of comfort food or if it has legitimate medicinal properties. On the other hand, there is some real research behind its effectiveness as a cold cure. For example (from the NYT),

Using blood samples from volunteers, [Dr. Stephen Rennard of the University of Nebraska Medical Center] showed that the soup inhibited the movement of neutrophils, the most common type of white blood cell that defends against infection. Dr. Rennard theorizes that by inhibiting the migration of these infection-fighting cells in the body, chicken soup essentially helps reduce upper respiratory cold symptoms.

It's also been shown to have respiratory benefits &mdash greater than those from water! &mdash but most importantly, it tastes good and has charming songs written about it. So, if you too are under the weather, we wholeheartedly suggest watching this video, mustering up the will to make chicken soup (or ordering some in from your favorite place), and feeling better one slurp at a time.

The Science of Chicken Soup [NYT]

The story about the UK's efforts to save the red squirrel was already linked in today's FYI, but I can't help but return to it, since I've written about eating invasive species to extinction (in the particular area in which they're invasive, of course) in the past. It warmed my heart to read about Brits making an effort to eat grey squirrel so that it can stop bullying around the native red one.

The next thought was, which animals could we target here? So we all collectively did a bit of research in our MenuPages markets. It's complicated, of course. Rarely is it as straightforward as this squirrel situation — kill and eat one, save the other, more adorable native one. For one thing, squirrel sounds pretty tasty, akin to rabbit. For another, it doesn't swim around in polluted waters, and it's not terribly difficult to catch. These problems often plague the non-natives we deal with, however.

South Florida: The climate is inviting and welcoming not only to snowbirds and retirees but also to all sorts of invasive species. Unfortunately, animals like Burmese pythons and iguanas aren't exactly known for being tasty. But hey, there's lionfish! And there's always wild boar; Florida's got those aplenty. Granted you'll probably have to shoot it yourself (not easy, and pretty dangerous) and get someone to skin/butcher it for you, but the reward would be homemade local prosciutto. Yum.

Boston & Philadelphia: The Asian shore crab and European green crab are all over the place, but unfortunately they're far too small to eat. And Pennsylvania has a number of freshwater invasive fish, but the waters are too polluted for consumption. Not too far away, in the Chesapeake Bay and in southern New Jersey, the Chinese mitten crab has begun to establish a population. In China, these are considered a delicacy. Toss them with some Old Bay seasoning, and Americans will probably like them too.

Chicago: Eat Asian carp! Thanks to an electronic barrier, they have yet to make it to Lake Michigan, but this fish with a voracious appetite is very common in the Illinois River. According to this NPR story, it's sold mostly to Asian-American communities in California, New York and Chicago. A state senator suggested putting it on state prison menus and others think it should be called something else to make it more appealing to non-Asians.

San Francisco: There are 85 invasive species in San Francisco Bay, several of which — Bay mussels, Japanese littleneck clams, Manila clam, and the Chinese mitten crab is there too — would make for tasty eating, if only the Bay weren't so polluted.

Saving a Squirrel by Eating One [New York Times]
Eat Lionfish, Save The Reefs [MP: South Florida]
Hog Huntin' in the Glades [Miami New Times]
Asian Carp: Can't Beat Them? Eat Them [NPR]

Photo: Wikipedia

For all its kitsch and national ubiquity, we remain dedicated fans of Buca Di Beppo, the family-style redsauce Italian chain known for their planet-sized meatballs and overwhelming wall decor.

The chain was recently bought by the folks behind Planet Hollywood, and it's like Spiderman says: With new management comes a massive menu overhaul. Out go the vats of corporate redsauce, in comes made-fresh-daily pots of marinara, alfredo, and bolognese.

The one thing we were particularly concerned about when we heard about the Buca menu overhaul was the fate of the garlic bread. This artery bomb of sliced garlic, gooey cheese, and fluffy bread is singularly the thing that keeps us coming back. For all our attempts at a refined palate (pass the salsify) or good health (more quinoa?), this is perhaps the only food we have ever consumed that we have actually had dreams about. Salty, cheesy dreams.

So we got in touch with the folks at Buca, who not only assured us that the garlic bread recipe would not be changing, but as a show of goodwill passed along method to us, for you. Seriously, folks, this came on a PDF that says "Confidential - Do Not Duplicate" in the lower right corner.

It's written for a restaurant kitchen, so we've adapted it for home use. After the jump!

Continue reading "National: Buca Di Beppo's Ridiculously Delicious Garlic Mozzarella Bread" »

www.nataliedee.com

Have you ever worked service? We have. Our tip jar often looked like the one in the picture. Once, a customer left something like a 30 percent tip. That was a big day in the Martin Household.

Then this guy Eric Hawthorne, some ne'er-do-well "father" and "medical student" waiting tables in Kansas City, Mo., gets a $1,100 tip — something like 1,300 percent of the check, while he was having a bad day, the news report said. Here, watch this video.

Did you catch the part about how Hawthorne is going to spend a lot of the money on his kid? And on books? God, who is this guy, right? He should instead buy 1,100 scratchers. Or maybe use the dough to fly to New York and eat at Per Se. Hey, they serve ice cream. It just happens to be licorice flavor, served with candied walnuts, bosc pears, and walnut mousse. Whatever, we missed our chance, apparently, having stowed the white apron. Of course, the trend for us seemed to be toward a lot more bad days and a lot fewer $1,000 tips. Harumph.

Waiter Receives $1,100 Tip After Having a Bad Day [Fox News Kansas City]
Per Se [MenuPages]
Per Se [Official Site]

[Image: Via Natalie Dee]

• You don't have to be Jewish to eat Chinese food on Christmas, but it sure does up the odds that you will! [MP: Boston]

• Free personal pizzas come to one amazing Windy City bar. [MP: Chicago]

• Guys, bad news: Sparks, the caffeinated beer, is dunzo. How will we stay awake on long nights out now? [MP: Philadelphia]

• For one MenuPages editor, Christmas means Lake Tahoe. [MP: San Francisco]

• You know what would not be a great way to celebrate the holiday season? Dying from poorly prepared fugu. [MP: South Florida]

Oh, the dread hangover! Although by no means a purely seasonal affliction, hangovers sure do seem to occur much more frequently at this time of year. Blame it on too much quality time with relatives, a prevalence of cocktails wherever one turns, long, cold nights, or whatever it is that causes you to drink too heavily. The fact is that for many of us, a hangover is an ugly inevitably that becomes even more likely around the holidays.

Lucky for us (maybe), National Geographic has a feature up on hangover cures from around the world, and all of them are some sort of food or beverage. In the US, we supposedly cope with hangovers by drinking prairie oysters (a potent mocktail of tomato juice, raw egg yolk, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce), but we don't personally know anyone who subscribes to this cure.

How else to deal when it feels as though your liver is about to secede from your body? The silver bullet in Poland is pickles, because "Polish hangover remedies are all about the sour," pickled herring in Germany, and tripe soup in Romania, as well as in Mexico and Turkey. In the Netherlands, they abide by hair-of-the-dog and reach for pints of beer and the Japanese go for umeboshi plums.

Of everything listed, only one remedy sounds familiar: Italians drink coffee to banish pounding headaches, which is the hangover helper that everyone we know swears by, at least to some degree. Russians have the only non-food/drink thing on the list: birch leaf saunas, which quite frankly, sounds wonderful regardless of hangover or not.

We conducted a highly scientific poll over here at MenuPages, and it turns out that everyone has their own particular methods that they swear by. Results after the jump!

Continue reading "National: Eating Your Way Out Of A Hangover" »

Lots of these gift guides are floating around, but they're mostly geared towards home cooks. Of course, the home cook and restaurant patron populations overlap considerably, but given that we deal in restaurant menus, we're targeting the latter specifically. So here are a few ideas for that person on your list who loves a good meal, especially when it's prepared by someone else:

• A Day At El Bulli
This 600-page tome features recipes, but it's less a cookbook than an inside peek into what exactly goes on behind the scenes at the world's best restaurant. It's pretty fascinating, and the 800 photos alone are worth the money.

More after the jump...

Continue reading "National: A Gift Guide For Foodies" »

Basically the minute we heard it would be coming out, we started pestering the folks at Destineer about Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine for the Nintendo Wii. Our copy finally showed up last week, and after a weekend of carpal-tunnel-baiting with the wiimote, we can issue our official verdict: Meh.

We were fully prepared to like this game. We really wanted to like it. We love the TV show 'Iron Chef America'; we love the Wii; we love the game Cooking Mama, which ICA was rumored to closely resemble. That rumor is half true: Iron Chef America does resemble 'Cooking Mama,' mimicking the step-by-step gameplay. But saying it "closely" resembles it is taking it a little far, since 'Cooking Mama' has given us many rollicking hours in cutthroat omelet competitions with friends and loved ones, whereas with Iron Chef America, we had to bribe an unfortunate acquaintance with homemade toffee for him to sit through a single round. The game is Just. That. Boring.

To be fair, the developers did try to mimic the format of the TV show. Like the television version, a challenge is introduced with a secret ingredient, you pick your dishes, and then you've got a set amount of time in which to prepare and plate. All the while, Alton Brown is providing running commentary, and ultimately a set of judges (alternately snide, clueless, deranged, and pretentious — just like on TV!) render an apparently arbitrary verdict and declare a winner. Sadly, though, this makes for way better television than it does interactive gameplay. And while we were psyched about smacking down a virtual Cat Cora (anyone else out there so deeply annoyed by her?), it turns out you've got to mow down a couple dozen stock chef characters before you can unlock the actual Iron Chefs themselves.

As we played through (we chose as our avatar the character our friend dubbed "Slut Chef," whose jacket is strapless and who apparently carries around her own amply bouncing milk supply), we felt a growing sense of déjà vu. From challenge to challenge, the game barely varied. Every ingredient that we played offered a "pita" option (okay, to be fair, sometimes they called the dish a "chapati"), with identical gameplay: Chop the ingredient, grill the pita, plate it with olives and a pickle. And unlike 'Cooking Mama,' where chopping was a serious matter of wiimote dexterity (not to mention aching triceps), Iron Chef America was happy with just vague up-and-down motions.

By the end, we found ourself less interested in the actual playing, and more interested in the increasingly snarky commentary that our friend hurled at the screen, Rocky Horror-style. At a certain point his rage overtook his patience and he wandered into the kitchen, wiimote in tow. His screenshot of an unchopped onion half just sat there, Alton Brown's disembodied virtual head babbling about knife safety, until the clock ran down and we won by default. Unexcited by this pyrrhic victory, we turned off the Wii, flipped over to a tivo'd episode of 30 Rock, and picked up the phone to order something, anything that didn't involve pitas.

Ok, as much as we don't want to keep covering these idiotic fast food viral video marketing campaigns, this latest one from Pizza Hut is so galling, we almost feel the need to expunge it from our psyche by calling it out here.

Basically, the premise is that these guys go around and hang out in locally owned, mom-and-pop pizzerias, don't order anything, and have a pizza delivered from Pizza Hut instead. At first we thought they were going to rather rudely make the point that they could get a delivery pizza faster or something, but they don't even do that. They just run around acting like jerks for, apparently, no reason.

Anyway, look at the video below, then just see if you can find any redeeming value. How does this even work as an ad?

According to Ad Age, the chain went through a broker, Zadby, which set them up with video-makers Mediocre Films. The whole thing cost something like $25,000, which Zadby refunds if the videos don't get enough hits. Though they've already reached past the minimum.

And we aren't surprised they're getting the hits. Hell, we're helping them do it right now. But it's not good publicity (we think P.T. Barnum was not really right on that point). There's a reason why they don't make videos of that Burger King character insulting children, or Ronald McDonald with his hand in the till. Though that would make for some much better YouTube fodder.

Pizza Hut's Viral Attempt: Two Days, 100,000 Views [Ad Age]

• Hey shills, if you could just stop insulting our intelligence, that would be fantastic. [MP: Boston]

• Gwyneth Paltrow continues to be the worst ever. [MP: Chicago]

• Agriculture policy needs to change! Get us a Secretary of Food, President-Elect Obama! [MP: Philadelphia]

• Can we just chill with the live blogging already? [MP: San Francisco]

• Distinctly not making us cranky: steamed pork buns. [MP: South Florida]

It's December, which also means 'tis the season for everyone to trash-talk fruitcake. We happen to be of the opinion that fruitcake has an undeservedly bad rap. Truly, guys! It can be quite delectable, especially when loaded with rum or brandy and lots of real dried fruit, as opposed to the luridly-colored candied kind.

But, we're not here to build a defense of fruitcake. Rather, we are here to direct your attention to the most hilariously terrible song in the entire history of holiday songs. (We double-dog dare you to try to outdo us on this one!) And so, without further preamble, "Grandma's Killer Fruitcake":

Highlights of this video include, but are certainly not limited to, the following: the very literal reenactments of all of the lyrics, the possum pie, the whole family feast spread, and the very, um, "arty" cinematography.

PS. Bonus: full lyrics after the jump!

Continue reading "National: Grandma's Killer Fruitcake" »

By now we're sure you've heard of the latest Burger King marketing technique: the Whopper Virgins video. BK sent a crew to find people who have never seen a hamburger and have never heard of McDonald's or Burger King. It's hard to imagine that such people exist, but they do: BK found them among the Hmong in Thailand, in a small Romanian village, and in two Inuit villages in Greenland.

The first half of the video is the Big Mac vs. Whopper taste test. Not surprisingly, given that this is a Burger King commercial, the Whopper wins most of the time. It's pretty amusing — these people have never seen a burger, so they don't know what to do with it. One picks off a piece of the bun with his fingers. Another touches it gingerly and analyzes it from different angles, to figure out how best to eat it. One woman asks whether to use utensils or her hands. One girl in Thailand really liked her first taste of pickle.

The whole thing is portrayed as a sharing of cultures, except this type of thing usually doesn't run both ways. First of all, it's sad to think that a fast-food burger is the official American culinary export. Secondly, fast food has a tendency to destroy local food cultures, often to the detriment of the local populace's health. Just watch the part where the Hmong villagers make food for the film crew. They put out a spread of greens ladled out of a large pot, a red curry/stew-type thing and what looked like bok choy. OK, so we couldn't exactly figure out what each dish was, but regardless, it appeared to be a healthy balanced meal with plenty of green things. The kind of food that has sustained these people for centuries. It just takes a burger or two to throw off that balance.

Whopper Virgins [Official Site]
Burger King [Official Site]

'Tis the season for lists of all kinds: Wish lists and shopping lists, pontificating top-10 lists and roundups, predictions, regrets, and resolutions to beat the band. Some look forward, some back, and some look sideways with a loud snicker. We're frankly sick of it, but also can't resist adding a voice to the chorus.

But darn it, you don't need another batch of trend predictions, or a roundup of favorites from last year. Who likes that kind of feel-good mumbo jumbo anyway, especially around the holidays when the stress is killing you? So here's our list of restaurants, restaurateurs, and staff, who had it way, way worse than you over 2008. After the jump, find the best from the At Least I'm Not Them file.

Continue reading "National: 2008 Fail Favorites" »

A recent thread on Chowhound got us thinking about strategy.

The post in question is from a couple who'll be visiting Chicago from Arizona, and the centerpiece of their trip is a dinner at Alinea. They're wondering where else to eat while they're here, which is a normal sort of Chowhound-esque question, but at first we thought they were asking something far more interesting: What should you eat to prepare for a major dinner?

Surprisingly, we've found that the best methods for dealing with double-digit course counts come to us via the crazy world of competitive eating. From the outside, it might seem that ordering the nine-course chef's menu at French Laundry and participating in Nathan's hot dog eating contest have more differences than similarities. But the goal is, ultimately, the same: Consume a truly massive quantity of food without giving up (or, for that matter, throwing up). For all that high-end chefs insist that the tasting menu is an easily scaled mountain, the multiplex of courses mitigated by tiny portion sizes and multi-hour seatings, it truly is a tremendous amount of food.

While we still occasionally find ourself politely declining desserts and mignardises, unable to swallow so much as another sip of water, we've gotten better at marathon gourmet consumption over the years. Taking into account our own experiences (and polling some friends and acquaintances), here's the official MenuPages Guide to Making It Out Of A Tasting Menu Alive.

After the jump, the six easy steps...

Continue reading "The MenuPages Guide to Making It Out Of A Tasting Menu Alive" »

• Elderflower liqueur might sound a little twee, but it sure is delicious! [MP: Boston]

• Mimosas: they're not just for drunk brunch anymore! [MP: Chicago]

• We don't care if it's distilled from the poo of a civet cat (it's not, by the way), $38 is still too much for a shot of tequila. [MP: Philadelphia]

• A Thanksgiving hangover may not have been caused by alcohol, but the symptoms (inertia, upset tummy) are the same as the vodka-induced variety. [MP: San Francisco]

• Miami is about "a foreplay of cocktails." [MP: South Florida]

These days, it's virtually impossible to escape economic downturn talk. On balance, this is a good thing: it would be foolhardy and shortsighted to ignore reality and pretend that everything is hunky-dory. Still, after reading (and writing) an ever-growing number of articles or blog posts about people clamping down on spending, or restaurants bracing themselves for a rough couple of years, it's beginning to feel like we could all stand to dial-down all of the doomsday talk.

On that note, we would like to direct your attention to this Funny or Die short directed by Adam McKay. It's totally absurdist, nonsensical, and wonderful! It also does a a bang-up job of injecting some levity into the current somber climate.

Feeling the financial pinch? Stavenhagen's Food Pawn Shop in Brooklyn will buy your sandwiches, taco salads, popsicles and omelets. The food there is exotic, never skanky, although there is no guarantee against cockroaches or needles! Yum. Most importantly, although they are willing to pay "top dollar" for "cob salad," tuna hoagies, and baked ziti, do not even try to come in with gum or breath mints (they are very emphatic on this point).

See? Things could always be worse!

Stavenhagen's Food Pawn Shop with Steve Buscemi and Will Ferrell [Funny or Die]

It's the time of the year when food editors sit around and try to guess at what will be the hot new dining trends for the coming year, and the food blogs are currently abuzz with prognostications. Some are serious, while others aren't. The whole thing is a bit silly, but here at MenuPages, we love to indulge in silly behavior on occasion. Here, then are our collective predictions/hopes for dining trends in the coming year:

• MP: Boston editor Leila thinks the pork belly craze might extend to bellies of other animals, particularly lamb, which she noted is on the menu at New York's Momofuku Ssam Bar.

• MP: Philadelphia editor Elsa hopes for a reduction in steakhouses.

• MP: South Florida editor Carolina agrees. Also, big bowls of soupy noodles: cheap, filling and recession-proof. Look for these to become more popular.

• Helen of MP: Chicago thinks sandwiches — like banh mi and cubanos — will be big, and salami will trump bacon as the salted meat of choice.

• And according to MP: San Francisco editor Adam, the cupcake craze will be replaced with doughnuts.

What's for Dinner Next Year? [Diner's Journal]
Epicurious Predicts Top 10 Food Trends for 2009 [Epi-Log]
And Even More Food Trends, Including Those of Gastrodamus [The Feedbag]

The New York Times is reporting that, in an interesting bit of interactive advertising, Kraft Foods is going to be promoting Stove Top Stuffing via bus shelters. But not just any old bus shelters: Bus shelters that are heated, much in the manner that Kraft hopes that Stove Top Stuffing warms consumers' hearts.

“Stove Top as a brand has a great equity in the area of warmth,” said Ellen Thompson, brand manager for Stove Top at Kraft Foods in Glenview, Ill. “This is an opportunity to expand into a multisensory experience.”

We were actually unaware up until this moment that warmth was something in which a brand could have equity, but we suppose Stove Top needs to grasp at whatever straws they can for the annual post-Thanksgiving stuffing sales downturn.

To accompany the heated bus stations, the Stove Top folks will be distributing single-serving cups of stuffing, which they are pitching as a recession-friendly side dish option. No word on whether they will be dressed in amusing costumes — turkeys are so late-November, so we've got our money on giant croutons, or maybe a lovable, huggable bottle of Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil.

The ten heated stuffing shelters will be scattered around downtown Chicago, where commuters will presumably jostle for space with the untold hundreds of stray animals and homeless folks who will be attracted by the warmth. Forty other bus shelters bearing the same slogan — "Cold, provided by winter. Warmth, provided by Stove Top.” — will not be heated, and commuters will presumably look around in confusion and be all "what the heck do you mean, 'warmth'? It is winter in Chicago," and then swear off Stove Top forever.

Hot Food, and Air, at Bus Stops [NYT]

[Photo via Gray Monk's Flickr]

It is the unbiased truth that there is nothing better for a hangover or a wait at the airport than a bloody Mary. Some may disagree, but they simply haven't come into the light yet.

So it was with a great deal of relish (rimshot) that we read about the drink's recent 75th anniversary. According to a press release from the Tri-State Hospitality Association,

The cocktail was originally called the "Red Snapper" because the term bloody was considered harsh for a drink in the 1930s. When Tabasco sauce was added to the drink the name "Bloody Mary" became a household word. In the 1960s it became popular to serve the cocktail with celery due to a guest at the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago.

New York City to Celebrate 75th Anniversary of the Bloody Mary on Red Monday
Zeitgeist [Official Site]
House of Shields [Official Site]
Home [MenuPages]
Home [Official Site]

[Photo: Bloody Marys at the Zeitgeist, via Jef Poskanzer]

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]

Continue reading "National: Victory Gardens For Fun And Profit" »

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]

• 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]

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.

Continue reading "National: eBay — A World Of Food" »

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

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]

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]

• 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]

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]

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

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]

Do you remember back in April when we wondered, with guarded optimism, if restaurants that charged customers on a sliding scale or voluntary basis could succeed? Well, it turns out at least one of them can't, but amazingly, the problem doesn't seem to be in the One World Everybody Eats business model, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

“As the restaurant grew, I didn't have the expertise at running a kitchen,” acknowledged [owner Denise] Cerreta during a media teleconference call on Friday. “We needed more structure and a more professional kitchen.”
A recent review of the business showed the restaurant was overstaffed and management of employee time was poor. It never even had an employee time clock. The restaurant also had failed to keep concise records of food costs and fixed costs. All told, mismanagement cost the restaurant $8,000 to $10,000 a month, Cerreta said."

So it would appear that a few things necessary to succeed as a restaurant include well-managed money, a legitimate management presence, and, possibly charging money for the food. Possibly. The One World Everybody Eats cafe did survive for five years, and Cerreta insisted in the article that they're not going to close now. But darn, it seems that, on some level, Cerreta faces the choice of charging her customers or paying her employees. Oh, that's an easy one.

Restaurants That Rely On The Kindness Of Customers [MenuPages]
One World Everybody Eats [Official Site]
Nonprofit eatery can't bring home the bacon [Salt Lake Tribune]

[Photo: Via One World Everybody Eats

The brunch scene at San Francisco's Palace Hotel

A less-than-flattering history of brunch that ran today in Restaurant-ing Through History portrays the meal as having been invented by lazy students, popularized by drunks, and surviving today as a dumping ground for, as Anthony Bourdain puts it, restaurants' “old, nasty odds and ends.”

But in spite of its less-than-savory past, we love brunch, and we don't know anybody who doesn't. And RTH's treatment of the meal does not neglect its brighter points:

Beginning in the 1970s champagne, screwdrivers, and mimosas often formed a large part of the advertised brunch attractions. Many restaurants included a drink with the price of the brunch, while others charged extra but poured free refills...

Especially popular on Sundays and holidays, brunch often features food that is — or once was — regarded as “special,” such as Canadian bacon, Hollandaise sauce, and Belgian waffles.

And yet, most of your highest-echelon chefs don't really seem to bother with the midday meal. Perhaps it is considered a bit gauche to swill bloody Marys and hollandaise early in the day. But hey, that's fine. Some of the best things going on the brunch buffet need little change. How are you going to improve on a carving station? And, perhaps more importantly, no hungover diner wants a culinary surprise first thing in the "morning."

Let's do brunch — or not?
Does bacon get any better than this? [Chicago Sun-Times]

[Image: Via jay.tong/flickr]

There was a semester in college when we thought it would be funny to keep a box of Franzia Chillable Red on our desk, and a couple of plastic dining hall glasses handy, so that we could offer people a really cheap drink when they stopped by the dorm room. Mostly this lead to lots of visitors and a decline in productivity that lasted about as long as we could afford this little stunt (not that long, you can be sure).

Since then, our tastes have matured, if only marginally, but we still harbor a fondness for Franzia. So we were elated to find, while poking around on Chow, a treatise/taste test on the stuff from 7x7 booze blogger Jordan Mackay. It was a bit of a disappointment to see Franzia declared "undrinkable," especially since Mackay and company only tried "legitimate" varieties, and not even Chillable Red. In the little video segment, one panelist compares the Franzia Chardonnay to, "Sweet, musky cologne that's been washed off by sweat."

Well, guess what, Robert Parker Jr., Franzia happens to be the most popular wine in the world, with 88,019,050 glasses sold in restaurants in 2005. So sip on that. In fact, don't. It's delicate flavors and bouquet would be lost on you.

Cutting Corners: For box wine, it’s back to square one [Chow]

[Photo: Via Diet Ov Worms/flickr]