The refashioning of junk foods as slightly more healthful items is nothing new, but recently, we've noticed something extreme happening in the snack world, and we're not sure what to make of it.

We never got the appeal of Snackwells, because we're pros at not watching what we eat, and there are just so many snack-able foods in this world that haven't come out of plastic wrap. That said, the whole class of slightly-less-terrible-for-you snack foods seemed innocent enough if you were really fiendin' for a sugar fix, and we couldn't really condemn their existence.

However, the times? They are a-changing, and there is a whole new frontier beyond Snackwells. The plethora of low-fat or sugar-free prepackaged sweets lining the racks of bodegas is already mind-boggling, but the ways that junk foods can be turned "healthy" does not end there.

Why, just last week, we walked into a drugstore only to be confronted with a "Snickers: Charged" bar, which contains caffeine, taurine, and B-vitamins. B-VITAMINS! In your candy! After the jump: some of the more head-scratching happenings in snack food and beverage offerings across the nation.

In March 2007, Coca-Cola unveiled Diet Coke Plus, which is basically just regular old Diet Coke... but fortified with B-vitamins, magnesium, and zinc! This totally means that we can stop eating vegetables, and start chugging soda, right? All flippancy aside, we have mixed feelings about a gambit like this. On the one hand, if you were chaindrinking Diet Coke to begin with and switched over to Diet Coke Plus, you're probably not worse off. On the other, the more likely outcome seems like a whole slew of arguments about how diet soda is "good" for you. We have yet to see anyone downing a Diet Coke Plus though, so it's probably too early for outrage (or ringing endorsement).

On the candy front, our attention was brought to a claim that Gummi Bears might be good for your teeth. Xylitol, the sweetener used in Gummi Bears, helps combat a certain kind of tooth decay. We're thinking that someone out there should promote the refrain "four Gummi Bears three times a day keeps the dentist away!"

Finally, we're still stuck on that amped-up Snickers, which is meant to jumpstart a midafternoon slump. The press release from Mars includes the choice tidbit that the new candy bar "offers consumers a bar of substance and a delicious and satisfying way to tackle the afternoon hours when one needs to ‘re-power.’"

Of all of the ways that we've seen junk foods revamped into healthier incarnations, this is the one that seems the most wrong. What's next, junk food manufacturers of the world? Marshmallows with 50% of our daily value of fiber? Calcium-fortified Twinkies? The line has got to be drawn somewhere.

Gummi Bears May Be Good For Your Teeth [Slashfood]
First Candy Bar From Snickers Brand Provides A Boost of Energy with Caffeine, Taurine, and B-Vitamins [Candy Addict]

Burger King just keeps getting negative press. Corporate headquarters asked (well, really more like told) franchisees that they need to stay open late, but they're not keen on the idea. Here's the story from CNN:

The franchisees, who filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, also allege that Burger King's actions violate their franchise agreements, which had contained provisions for shorter hours.

Starting June 1, Burger King began to require that all franchisees keep their stores open until at least 2 a.m. local time on Thursday, Friday and Saturday to better compete with fast-food chains like McDonald's Corp. (MCD) and Wendy's International Inc. (WEN).

The franchise agreement states that stores only have to stay open until 11 p.m., according to the lawsuit.

The company also required stores to open at 6 a.m. instead of 7 a.m. Monday through Saturday.

Burger King Franchisees Sue Over Late Hours [CNNMoney]

The office or school cafeteria, a little corner of the food-service industry rarely covered in these parts, deserves some credit. The same group of people makes lunch or dinner or both every day for the same other group of people using roughly the same ingredients on whatever cycle their deliveries happen to be on. And nobody riots except, occasionally, prisoners (and Darth Vader, in this hilarious Legos video by Eddie Izzard).

Some cafeterias, such as Google's, have a reputation as gourmet. Others are hallowed — see Gridskipper's list of some of Washington D.C.'s powerful lunchrooms, including the Supreme Court and the WTO. Some really suck (think every public school and also prison and also many offices). All, however, share a few key traits:

• The line: It's not a cafeteria if you don't move your little plastic tray down a metal line with the food all behind some pane of glass. Or some similar setup. There's something very comforting in this, as it brings a strong sense of order to the chaotic problem of figuring out what to eat for lunch. Or it's depressingly like an auto plant. You choose.

• The workers. It seems there's more interaction with cafeteria workers than with service staff in off-site lunch spots. While most deli counter staff will make your sandwich with little interaction, cafeteria workers are famous for providing the friendly exchange that helps brighten your day, or the surly banter that encourages you to eat outside the office now and then. When you think about it, you see these people just about every work day. Probably more than most of your friends.

• Plastic-covered desserts on little plates. Dessert tastes better when it's served like this. Don't know why. Don't care, really. Sometimes, at home, we cut a slice of cheesecake onto a little plate, cover it in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge for an hour, just to re-create the effect. No, not really.

• They are going out of style. This is disturbing. The office cafeteria is definitely on its way out, as companies look for ways to reduce overhead and employees look for ways to not eat institutional food delivered by SE Rykoff. But that's nothing new. They've been going out style for decades now and they will never really disappear. As much as you'd like them to.

This is all by way of expressing a bit of envy for a sous-chef friend who is preparing to join the staff at Google in his former capacity as a web writer. Some people have all the luck, food-wise.

Darth Vader In The Cafeteria [Maniac World]
Washington D.C.'s Top Workplace Cafeterias [Gridskipper]
Google Food Photo Blog [Flickr]

[Photo: Just a workaday lunch at Google via Brett L./Flickr]

• Blu Pizza e Cucina has tasty pizza, but you have to navigate a "massive, maddeningly designed menu filled with so many typesetting tricks—stars, moons, diamonds, forks and knives, red flags, chartreuse boxes, nutrition notes, unattributed quotes—that you can barely discern whether you're ordering a meal or navigating some distant, dizzying land." [Miami Herald]

• Lee Klein looks for a few meals under $10. He finds that La Boite A Pizza isn't half bad. [Miami New Times]

• The Taiwanese-Buddhist fare at Shing Wang Taiwanese Vegetarian, Ice & Bubble Tea is sure to hit the spot. And there's bubble tea and shaved ice! [Miami Herald]

• There is excellent barbecue to be had on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, and it's not too hard to find it. [Broward-Palm Beach New Times]

• The food is consistently very good at Cafe Seville and the rabbit is "rave-worthy." [Miami Herald]

• Ironwood Grille doesn't pass muster. When it tries to be creative, it's not good. Otherwise, it's just OK. [Palm Beach Post]

• New Yorkers are taking their dining rooms to the streets this summer. [NY Times]

• A Chicago coffeehouse serves up conservative politics with its lattes. [Chicago Tribune]

• Investigators are closing in on the farm that produced those pesky tainted peppers we've heard so much about. [AP/MSNBC]

• Cities looking at banning fast food in poor neighborhoods. [Slate]

Photo of plain cheesecake, above: chernwei/flickr

Here's an intriguing one from Sashertootie on Flickr with red beans with a graham cracker crust. Looks pretty tasty, no?

This one has a brownie on the bottom and peanut butter cups on top. Want. Now. From mmmm, brains on Flickr.

I love love love this idea. Totally doing this for my next party. From ::fanny::.

Deep fried cheesecake? Seems...superfluous. From Scuzzi.

Melissss shares a great shot of a cheesecake that has a cookie crust and another layer of cookie on top. Looks heavenly.

Michael's Genuine Food & Drink isn't participating in Miami Spice, but that doesn't mean the restaurant isn't joining in the prix-fixe fun. From Sunday, August 3 until Tuesday, September 30, the restaurant will offer prix-fixe lunch and dinner specials of $22 and $35, respectively. The catch — it's not available on Fridays and Saturdays. We've included the menu after the jump.

Michael's Genuine Food & Drink [MenuPages]
Michael's Genuine Food & Drink [Official Site]

GENUINE PRIX FIXE LUNCH MENU

APPETIZER (choice of)
• Soup of the Day
• Panzanella, rustic bread salad with local heirloom tomatoes
• Crispy Sweet &Spicy Pork Belly with kimchi, crushed peanuts & pea shoots

ENTRÉE (choice of)
• Chopped Salad with tomato, avocado, cucumber, carrot, onion, olives, chickpeas & tahini dressing with choice of grilled free range chicken breast or grilled shrimp
• Pulled Pork Sandwich with celeriac slaw & homemade BBQ sauce
• Wood Roasted Fish Of The Day with sautéed escarole, grilled lemon and Provencal vinaigrette

DESSERT (choice of)
• Summer Peaches with blueberry cobbler ice cream, fennel Madeline, orange dust
• Chocolate Cremoso with sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, sourdough crostini & espresso parfait

GENUINE PRIX FIXE DINNER MENU

APPETIZER (choice of)
• Housemade Country Paté, mustard remoulade, grilled sourdough
• House Salad, assorted greens, heirloom tomatoes, pickled carrots, radish, piave vecchio cheese, herb vinaigrette
• House Smoked Sockeye Salmon Rillettes, preserved Meyer lemon, cornichon, crème fraiche, sourdough crostini

ENTRÉE (choice of)
• Wood Oven Pizza, braised beef, smoked tomato, grilled eggplant, with bufala mozzarella, pecorino romano
• Grilled Rib Eye Cap Steak, Greek faro salad, french feta, salsa verde
• Pan Roasted Local Yellowjack, charred fennel & citrus salad, citrus glaze

DESSERT (choice of)
• Summer Peaches with blueberry cobbler ice cream, fennel Madeline, orange dust
• Chocolate Cremoso with sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, sourdough crostini & espresso parfait

To hear some analysts tell it, yesterday's left-field news of Bennigan's restaurants' chapter 7 bankruptcy is a harbinger of doom for the casual dining industry. From the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch blog:

"These restaurants share many subtle and complex challenges that extend beyond this difficult economic climate," says Ron Paul, president of Technomic. "To some extent, they've become victims of their own success--a mature category with too many units and not enough differentiation, at least in the eyes of consumers."
According to Technomic, the top 20 casual dining chains in the category in which Bennigan's operated had unit growth of 45 percent during the most recent five-year period, well beyond the growth in demand.

We listen to a lot of Marketplace on NPR and this story hits a few notes that have gotten a lot of play over the last year or so: You spend money faster than you can make it, make commitments that your wallet can't keep, and eventually you go broke and lose your house. This seems to be a general trend in the U.S. right now, from gigantic corporations down to individuals.

But there's another trend out there that might lend a hopeful counterpoint to the tired "sad music" they keep playing on that show, at least as far as eating is concerned: It could be, just maybe, that with the rise of the Food Network, the chef as rock-star, and the growing national obsession with eating fresh, local, creatively prepared foods and, the market for the kind of mass-produced family meals in which Bennigan's specialized is shrinking.

This is obviously not a hopeful sign to investors and employees over at the ill-fated chain, but to the national health and well-being, it's a good thing. To get really out there with it, there's a chance that these lean economic times and simultaneous food chic could do wonders for the nation's health: huge, meaty, deep-fried meals become too expensive and go out of fashion, while locally produced fruit, vegetables and proteins become the cheap and trendy option for more Americans. High oil prices may put more of us on bikes, riding to the farmers' market or co-op instead of the ever-pricier and low-quality mega-chain. Healthy lifestyles by necessity!

There will certainly always be a place for casual family dining chains such as Bennigan's, TGI-Friday's, Applebee's, etc. But based on yesterday's news and the subsequent analysis, it seems those gambling on Americans' obscene gluttony may have over-drawn.

Bennigan's files for bankruptcy protection [AP]
Bennigan's Bankruptcy Indicative of Larger Casual Dining Woes, Says Technomic [Market Watch]
Starbucks closing 600 stores in U.S. [AP/B-Net]
Marketplace [NPR]

[Photo: A Bennigan's in Seoul, Korea via Rhett Sutphin/flickr]

• Rice costs triple what it used to in North Korea, which the World Food Programme warns is on the brink of a serious food crisis. [The Guardian]

• The Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger is stuck in court for the time being. [NYT via Salt Lake Tribune]

• Chef-driven restaurants are in store for the new terminal at JFK airport. Maybe people will actually want to show up early for their flights now. [NYT]

• About 13 percent of the average American family's food comes from outside of the United States. [Chicago Sun-Times]

• Australia is just getting the ball rolling on the trans fat issue; their food labels don't even have to list trans fat. [Canberra Times]

The big news today is that Bennigan's has abruptly gone belly up. According to an AP report, the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, and that company-owned — but not franchisee-owned — Bennigan's and Steak & Ales are closed. It's pretty crazy how quickly it all went down:

The general manager of the Bennigan's, located at 11460 North Kendall Drive, told CBS4.COM that he received a phone call Tuesday morning informing him to cease operations effective Tuesday. Monday was their last day of business.

Employees and management teams were not given any warning at all.

"I am as upset as all of the employees are," said the general manager who did not want to be identified.

Bennigan's files for bankruptcy protection [AP]
Bennigan's Restaurant Chain Abruptly Shuts Down [CBS4]
Bennigan's Grill & Tavern [Official Site]
Steak & Ale [Official Site]

Photo: Dogbert10/flickr

Unfortunately, we are skilled in neither software development, large-number theory, nor ad sales. Basically all we have to offer the world is our totally uninformed opinion on everything, plus set of moderate home-cooking skills.

Enter the Google cookbook. This slim little volume was put in our hands the other day, and we feel a little bit like we've been handed the holy grail of the intersection of food- and internet-nerdery. It's 76 spiral-bound pages, and it's not available in stores, on eBay, anywhere &mdash unless, of course, you are a 6-year user of GoogleAds, in which case you get it in the mail along with a spiffy black Google-branded apron.

A quick google search of the google cookbook turns up surprisingly little: various corners of the internet, but nothing epic, nothing quite at the level that we, in our little nerdy heart, feel this deserves.

So we're doing this the right way: THERE IS A GOOGLE COOKBOOK! AND WE HAVE IT! IN OUR HANDS RIGHT NOW! AND WE ARE SHARING IT WITH YOU! RIGHT NOW! AFTER THE JUMP! (also: foie gras-stuffed falafel!)

First, gigantically, the cover:

The book is divided into four seasonal sections, starting with spring and moving through to winter. Each season is separated by a handy little tab, and each gets its own circular logo. The recipes in each season's TOC are divided into categories: Appetizer, Soup, Salad, Entree, Vegetable, Starch, Dessert. It's great. It's so earnest.

We're utterly charmed. We deeply, deeply love the variety of these dishes &mdash Wood-Roasted Lobster with Garlic Crisps and Blood Orange-Cilantro Vinaigrette! Sweet Potato, Spinach, and Shiitake Mushroom Gratin that calls for an entire gallon of heavy cream! Motherfreaking Foie Gras-Stuffed Falafel that is categorized under salad!! Can we just point out that in a cookbook of only forty-three recipes, two call for foie gras?

If you, like us, are now harboring very complexly detailed fantasies about working for Google, allow us to present to you Chef Wade Tamura's Fried Chicken, recommended for fall:

[Photo: Google cookie, via billypalooza's Flickr]

Today's an exciting day, food-blog-wise. You all know "The Waiter" over at Waiter Rant, right? Well, no longer! Now you know a man named Steve Dublanica, a former waiter who writes a blog and whose book debuts today.

The New York Post has the story of a man who shared in print many of the things the rest of us former service industry types wait to tell people until they're too drunk to remember. Serving food that may have come into contact with the floor, giving everybody decaf coffee, regardless of their order, spitting in food, these things happen. Not necessarily by Dublanica himself (well, the coffee thing, yeah) but they do happen, and he'll tell you about it.

For the last four years, Dublanica has made no move to cover up any potentially shocking aspect of the service industry as he cranks out sometimes bitter, sometimes philosophical, sometimes funny essays. He naturally kept his own identity and that of his restaurant a secret, and "Cafe Machiavelli," somewhere in suburban New York, remains unnamed.

Now that he's a big-time author, however, Dublanica has to do things like radio appearances on Bloomberg and Leonard Lopate, guest-blogging for Powell's Books, and being the subject of feature articles in the New York Post, so he had to come clean. He also quit his job, apparently. Now who's going to introduce you to terms like "crop dusting?"

Secret Service: The Waiter Gets Mad — And Gets Even [NY Post]
Waiter Rant [Official Site]

[Photo: An anonymous waiter via independentman/flickr]

Looks like Palm Restaurant, one of the original Merrick Park tenants, has closed up, according to an article in today's Herald:

The Palm, the swanky steak house that adorned its walls with caricatures of celebrities like tennis star Pete Sampras, singer Jewel and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle (pictured), has called it quits in Coral Gables.

One of the original Village at Merrick Park restaurants, The Palm served its last meal on Sunday, the company's Washington, D.C., headquarters confirmed.

Since The Palm opened in October 2002, Fleming's and Morton's had joined it on the Gables steak-house scene along with veterans Ruth's Chris and Christy's. Service continues at The Palm's longtime Bay Harbor Islands restaurant, according to a manager there. The chain has more than two dozen locations nationwide.

Gables Palm is gone [Miami Herald]
Palm Restaurant [MenuPages]
Palm Restaurant [Official Site]

Photo: mag3737/flickr

• Produce gets sunburn? Apparently so — and now sunscreen, too. [IHT (AP)]

• L.A. chefs forced to become "food police," journalistic puns ensue. [LAT]

• There's $1.6 billion in food and beverage advertising targeted at kids. [NYT (AP)]

• Despite speculation, the EU has approved the merger of Mars and Wrigley. [Forbes]

• Weakened economy means more eating at home means higher profits for Kraft. [NYT]

(Also! MenuPages humbly suggests the New York Times revise their capitalization policy with regard to particles, because we stared at that Kraft headline for like a full two minutes, unable to parse it, before realizing the lowercase "in" was not a preposition.)

We got word today that Creolina's in Fort Lauderdale is closed. The restaurant, open since 1991, served Louisiana-style Cajun food for 17 years and now is likely another casualty of the recession. It seemed popular, and it's not like there's much competition on the Cajun food front.

There's no answer at the restaurant, and an attempt to reach owner Mark Sulzinski was rebuffed, so we're not quite sure what's going on, but if you have any information, let us know!

UPDATE: Thanks to Pete and Mike, who left comments below, we learned that the building's owners didn't renew Creolina's lease so that they could expand their bar next door. But there's hope: apparently Sulzinski is looking for some space to re-open in one of the western suburbs.

Creolina's [MenuPages]

New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni expressed surprise today at seeing a modest Manhattan eatery, La Sirene, included on an Open Table list of the city's 10 best:

But I wonder. Is this somehow another sign of how Internet-savvy the restaurant’s chef and owner, Didier Pawlicki, is?

As I noted in my review, he personally replies to almost each and every diner comment about the restaurant on the Citysearch web site, either thanking happy diners or reasoning with unhappy ones.

Has Mr. Pawlicki or someone in his corner gamed Open Table? Or have his aggressive Internet ways spawned an especially Internet-oriented, Internet-activist clientele?

While marketing firms offer business owners like Pawlicki search optimization and other online services, this could be a case of general customer satisfaction that filtered all the way to those customers' online habits, or maybe some very shrewd outreach. The premise of Bruni's blog entry seems to be that Pawlicki is either an online marketing genius or a culinary genius, and indeed he may be a little of both.

At MenuPages, we editors get a chance to see the user-review sausage being made. It's thanks to a personal look at every user-submitted review that we rarely end up on Eater's Adventures in Shilling. And this process gives some insight into how so-called "black pr" (or sock puppets or shills or some possibly nicer, yet-to-be-coined name) works. It's not hard to spot a shill, but what is hard is determining what we'll call here a partial shill.

This may be somebody who knows an owner or staffer and eats at the restaurant as a paying customer and then is asked to post a glowing review. It may be someone known to the staff or owners who actually receives something for free in exchange for a good review. It may be a staffer or owner trashing the competition.

But it can be very hard to pinpoint, in the larger discussion, when a satisfied customer becomes a shill. Would it be a conflict of interests if a restaurant owner, circulating amongst tables of chatty satisfied diners, mentioned that he'd appreciate any feedback in a certain online forum? Probably not. What if he then sent over a dessert or a coffee? Well, yes, then it would be a payoff.

But what if he was planning on sending out that dessert or espresso anyway and the topic of online reviewing came up naturally in conversation? Well, the adage says something about the appearance of conflict of interest being tantamount to actual conflict of interest, but if everything were that strict, restaurateurs and diners would only ever discuss the weather. And where's the fun in that?

Also, doesn't it make sense that an increasingly net-savvy dining public would naturally post a lot of positive feedback if a particular restaurant regularly impresses? Of course, and you won't find a much more net-savvy group than lower Manhattan diners.

What does all that say about Pawlicki and La Sirene? Well, we don't know yet, but one sure thing is that La Sirene is now on our radar for the next time we're hungry in TriBeCa. Something's working for him.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other
New York Dining [Open Table]
La Sirene [MenuPages]
La Sirene [Official Site]

[Photo: via La Sirene official site]

A couple of Friday reports helped shed a little light on the recent fiasco of a salmonella scare that started with tomatoes and ended with red-faced public health officials.

According to an AP story on the ABC News website, part of the difficulty in conducting a speedy, efficient investigation had to do with poor record keeping that was a result of weak regulations lobbied for by fruit and vegetable growers themselves:

The industry pressured the Bush administration years ago to limit the paperwork companies would have to keep to help U.S. health investigators quickly trace produce that sickens consumers, according to interviews and government reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The White House also killed a plan to require the industry to maintain electronic tracking records that could be reviewed easily during a crisis to search for an outbreak's source. Companies complained the proposals were too burdensome and costly, and warned they could disrupt the availability of consumers' favorite foods.

The apparent but unintended consequences of the lobbying success: a paper record-keeping system that has slowed investigators, with estimated business losses of $250 million. So far, nearly 1,300 people in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have been sickened by salmonella since April.

The rest of the story goes on to be a rather stinging rebuke of the lobbying groups that won the weakened regulations, but perhaps the unintended consequence of this coverage is that it essentially gives the FDA an out:

"If the FDA had been given the resources and authority years ago that it asked for to solve these kinds of problems, I think we would have solved this already," said William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner.

On July 3, Minnesota e-mailed the feds. After tracing credit card receipts — to find what the restaurant's healthy customers didn't eat — there was good evidence that the jalapenos were sickening people. And, officials had a diagram tracing the pepper shipments all the way back to three farms in Mexico.

One of those farms shipped peppers through the same large warehouse in McAllen, Texas, where Food and Drug Administration inspectors weeks later would find a single contaminated Mexican-grown pepper being packed by a neighboring vendor.

AP: Food Industry Bitten by Its Lobbying Success [ABC]
Pepper tip helped salmonella hunt continue

[Photo: Jalapeno peppers via Florian/flickr]

Abokado in Mary Brickell Village has gotten a reputation for being a bit too pricey, and we’re guessing that’s behind the restaurant’s initiative to offer prix-fixe deals, such as the three-course business lunch and the three-hour Abokado Social happy hour (from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.). We popped in after work on Friday to give the lower-priced happy hour menu a sampling. Select cocktails and house wine were $6 (yes, that’s first on the list—it was happy hour after all), rolls were $7, and hand rolls were $5 or $6. Also on the menu is a single Abokado Nacho—a delicious concoction of spicy tuna, avocado and cucumber served atop a deep-fried tempura shiso leaf. While this is one of the most popular dishes at the restaurant, consuming more than one Nacho tends to make people reach for the Rolaids, so we were pleased to see that a single leaf was available for ordering. In total, we had three rolls (the spicy tuna roll is amazing but hot, hot, hot!) and two drinks, and our bill came out to roughly $40. The amount is comparable to what we spend at some of our other fave sushi spots, so color us sold on Abokado Social.

A photo of the menu after the jump...

Abokado [Official Site]
Abokado [MenuPages]

• Iowa workers protest conditions at a kosher meatpacking plant. [New York Times]

• A DC raw foods restaurant will be nation's first "crowdsourced" restaurant, offer oat-hemp balls. [Washington Post]

• Users of Los Angeles food banks are hungry. [LA Times]

• West Bank Palestinians are thirsty. [Chicago Tribune]

• Meanwhile, in Japan, they're going wild for eel drinks. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Tobacco Road is celebrating 96 years on Monday, and in honor of the birthday, the restaurant is offering 96-cent burgers. Stop by on Monday between 11:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. for your cheap burger. You can't just show up empty-handed though; print out this page and show it to them when you get there. Keep in mind that you also have to eat it there; no cheap burger take-outs.

Tobacco Road [MenuPages]
Tobacco Road [Official Site]

Photo: RetoTo/flickr

Lately, Brooklyn-based duo Matt and Kim have been in pretty heavy rotation in our music library. These guys are just so poppy and summery, it's great. But we had no idea just how fun and apparently food-obsessed they were until seeing this video. Look at that! Wouldn't you totally like to have lunch with these two and talk about things like Mr. Potato Head's psychological problems or how awesome frozen grapes are? Answer that after you watch this, the funnest foodiest music video ever:

Matt and Kim [Official Site]

• Mac and cheese, please, filled with fancy ingredients. [MP: Boston]

• Oh, let's just have a basic dinner: a tiny bird drowned in Armagnac. [MP: Chicago]

• A crepe would not be creepy! [MP: Philadelphia]

• Can we just have some damn coffee cake that won't kill us? [MP: San Francisco]

• How about just some fish that won't give us food poisoning? [MP: South Florida]

Palm Beach County will now be hosting its own restaurant month in September called
Flavor Palm Beach. You know the routine: an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert for one low fixed price: $20 for lunch and $30 for dinner. The list of participating restaurants won't be released until August 15, but in the meantime, you can get on the mailing list and register to win a Flavor meal for two.

Flavor Palm Beach [Official Site]

• EPA bans carbofuran residue on domestic and international foods, food safety advocates rejoice. [Washington Post]

• The New Orleans Times-Picayune is reviewing restaurants for the first time since Hurricane Katrina. [New York Times]

• McCain sees Obama's trip to Germany and raises him a visit to an Ohio German restaurant. [LA Times]

• New England based grocery chain thinks Whole Foods stole its slogan. [Boston Globe]

• Colorado scientists can tell you just how good (or bad) your senses of taste and smell really are. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Just think — local beef, from Cuba? Well, so it's not local in the strict 100-mile interpretation, but still. John Parke Wright, a Florida rancher whose ancestors were very involved in the Havana-Tampa trade route, is just waiting for the day he can set up a cattle operation on the island. Here's why:

"From 1860 to 1960, Cuba had some of the best land for cattle in the Western hemisphere," says Wright. In 1960, Cuba had about 6 million people and 2 million cattle, but now has only 2 million cattle for 12 million people, he explains.

"There's a tremendous need to restock Cuba's ranches, and the opportunity has to be given to people like me," he says, adding that he'd start out by sending 3,000 head of cattle, tractors, trucks, and irrigation equipment to Cuba as soon as the two nations adjust their policies to allow for that.

Photo: justydrink/flickr

Looks like Chef Allen's will be undergoing some renovations this week; the restaurant is closed for the rest of the month and won't re-open until August 1. According to the press release, it'll sport "a sleeker, modernized interior, including a larger bar area, a private wine room, and two party rooms." A new menu is in the works as well that will focus on locally caught sustainable fish and regional produce. All this in a week and a half? Seems ambitious.

Chef Allen's [MenuPages]
Chef Allen's [Official Site]

Perhaps unsurprisingly given our occupation, the bulk of our life plans revolve around food and our bucket list is no different. We want to do the full tasting at The French Laundry and eat roast chicken at L'Ami Louis. We want to visit the food centers in Singapore and the open air markets in Provence. Most of all, though, we want to eat our way through the United States. There are huge regions we've never explored and we're very anxious to eat barbecue in North Carolina, gumbo in New Orleans, and ripe-from-the-tree avocados in California, to name just a few.

The pre-kickin'-it food plans of other MP editors are after the jump, but really, we're awfully curious about what's on your list, so leave it in the comments.

Helen, MP: Chicago:

• Ortolan. OMG totally absolutely Ortolan. This is my total absolute #1.

• Street food in Bangkok or Singapore (or both!)

• Butter-poached lobster at Per Se or the French Laundry (it’s never been on the menu when I’ve been there - sigh)

• Meat from an animal that I’ve slaughtered/hunted myself (cow? Sheep? I feel like I owe it to my carnivorousness to look something in the eye, then kill it and eat it)

• The duck fat fries at Hot Doug's in Chicago

• Oysters straight from the ocean – see them in the water, reach in, shuck, slurp. Repeat.

• Pibales – baby eels – outdoors, at 3 in the morning, drunk, in Basque Country

Adam, MP: San Francisco:

• Monkey Brains on the half, um, head. Just to see if I’d have the stones.

• Caviar. Lots of really expensive stuff, not the $12 budget shit I’ve had so far. What does a $100 mouthful of fish eggs taste like?

• Ostrich egg(s?)

Elsa, MP: Philadelphia:

• Like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, except with jamon, boquerones, and various chocolate things, I would like to eat my way through Spain.

• The other thing would be a seafood tour of the world, especially since there is so much potential for both incredible variety and the best things I have ever put in my mouth. Just think about the differences between say, Japanese, Icelandic, Croatian, and Peruvian seafood. Or, Spanish, Scandinavian, and Cape Verdean, etc.

What's on Your "Bucket List"? [Serious Eats]

[Photo: I Can Has Cheezburger]

• Linda Bladholm leads you on a great tour of the Indian, Indonesian and Filipino holes-in-the-wall downtown that cater to cruise ship workers. [Miami Herald]

• Did you know that restaurants have to pay $900 for the chance to participate in Miami Spice? Here's a good roundup of some of the better deals among the 100 or so restaurants participating this year. [Miami Herald]

• George's in the Grove might not be the best place for a quiet dinner, but if you want good food in a fun atmosphere, looks like it's the place to go. [Miami New Times]

• Fuegovivo gets two-and-a-half stars, sounds a lot like the many other Brazilian churrascarias that seem to be all the rage these days. [Miami Herald]

• It's only been open for a month, but the Jam Cafe is already busy with people stopping in for a snack or a light meal. [Miami Herald]

• Scott Simmons found lots to love at Bar Louie. [Palm Beach Post]

• Fresh from her trip to Guatemala, Gail Shepherd searches for some of the dishes she'd had on vacation. She found success at La Rosa in Lake Worth and El Chapin in Palm Springs. [Broward-Palm Beach New Times]

It happens every year about this time. Oppressive heat and humidity and general grossness make us nostalgic for the heady days of mid-April, when the temperature was mild and just about everything was newly in (or coming into) season. But one favorite was just on its way out, and right about now we miss it terribly.

Fortunately, there is hope yet for oyster lovers.

Traditional wisdom states that you must not eat oysters during months without the letter "r" in them. That is to say, summer months. A few years ago, while researching this story for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, we learned that that had to do with the oysters' spawning season--they get all milky and weird when they spawn.

According to this little New York Times item from earlier in the week, oysters and other shellfish — especially local harvests — can become contaminated from summer algae blooms or "red tides."

But there is hope yet, oyster lover. You don't have to wait until September to slurp. One thing we learned during our trip to the San Francisco Bay Area's oyster country is that some local farms are growing imported varieties, such as Kumomotos, from Japan, which spawn in alternate months from our North American regulars.

Also, as the Times points out, government regulations prevent aquaculture outfits from selling shellfish grown in contaminated water. Many growers finish their oysters in clean-water tanks, which flush out contaminants.

So there you go, you can totally eat oysters in the summer if you order th