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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Um, pears, maybe?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tons more photos after the jump...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite the slew of restaurant closings sweeping SoBe, all is apparently well with the dining scene in Brickell, and nowhere better than at Segafredo Brickell. The always-packed bistro, which first opened its doors in mid-January, has already experienced growing pains, and this week brought an expansion of both the space and the menu.

The new munchies include pastas such as the Lasagna Tradizionale, Gnocchetti Sardi and Ravioli D’Argosta; Carpaccio and Capricciosa pizzas; main dishes including a Branzino All Isolana; and our personal fave, a Risotto Pescatora. All of the new items ring in at under $20.

(The tiramisu was already on the menu, but it had to be mentioned anyway).

Segafredo Brickell [MenuPages]
Segafredo Brickell [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Obscure Commercial Holidays" [Stay Free Magazine]

Berries in the Grove, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love your stellar smoothies, the dog-friendly outdoor seating, the live jazz on weekends, and your daily half-price happy hour. I especially love you because I spotted Colin Farrell nursing a hangover on your patio one day.

And now, I can share the spot I love with the one I love and pay a little less: you're offering diners a free bottle of wine with the purchase of two entrees. Thanks, Berries. You sure know how to treat a girl.

Berries in the Grove [MenuPages]
Berries in the Grove [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slow Food Nation [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Photo: via aquatone282/flickr]

If you like your Cuban coffee with an extra dose of trendiness, you have one new reason to celebrate: Cafe Bustelo opens its doors today at the Gansevoort South. The coffee shop is the first of a planned 100 for the company, whose espresso is the top-selling Cuban coffee brand in the country, and which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year.

The space is minimalist and chic - a wall made of coffee cans anchors the room - and we're curious to see the execution of the menu, which is classic Cuban all the way: Cuban sandwiches, mojo chicken sandwiches, croquetas (chorizo, chicken, rice and beans, and plantano and cheese), pastries (guava, chocolate and mojo chicken), rice pudding and flan.

They're also open late and have swapped the traditional Starbucks soundtrack for more SoBe-worhty lounge music. Cool beans!

Cafe Bustelo [Official Site]
Gansevoort South [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

Celebrate the haps at the DNC this week, or prep for John McCain's turn, with election-themed cocktails at RUMBAR at The Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne.

Margarita on Baracks
Whether you consider Obama’s speeches sweet or sour, the combination of the two certainly works for a margarita. RUMBAR nods to this emotive candidate with a little extra passion fruit juice.

Ingredients:
Herradurra Silver Tequila
Cointreau
Fresh lime juice
Passion fruit Juice
Cranberry juice
Grand Marnier

Over ice, combine 1 1/4 oz of Herredurra Silver Tequila, 1/8 oz Cointreau, 1/8 oz of Passion fruit juice and 1/8 oz of Lime juice. In a Hurricane glass, add ice to the top and 1/8 oz of Cranberry juice then pour the contents of the shaker tin on top. Add 1/8 oz floater of Grand Marnier. Garnish with a slice of Lime and a half wheel of Orange. Can be served with or without Salt.

Mc(Sugar)Cain Mojito
As platforms and stances get muddled during the upcoming election, seek this special signature drink to clear your head of the political banter. As the oldest Presidential Candidate, McCain has been dubbed a “maverick” for his party dissentions. As Cuba’s oldest drink, the Mojito’s history lies in a pirate’s lore, making these two veterans a perfect match.

Ingredients:
Mint Leaves
Fresh Limes
Fresh Raspberries
Simple Syrup
Bacardi Razz
Bacardi Superior
Club Soda

Combine Limes, Mint, Simple Syrup and Raspberries and Muddle. Add Ice 1/4 oz of Bacardi Razz and a 1/4 oz Bacardi Superior....Shake and pour into a Hurricane glass and top off with Club Soda and a sugar cane stick.

The Ritz-Carlton [Official Site]

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

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

Iconic Noodle Celebrates 50th Anniversary [NPR]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Via Aaron Gustafson/flickr]

A Design District office dweller told us she mourns Domo Japones’ closing during lunchtime (although sources tell us it will reopen for lunch in the fall), but in truth, those in the Design District have little to complain about concerning lunch options. For an indulgent meal, the risottos (pictured), particularly those on the daily special menu, at Fratelli Lyon are rich, but well worth the subsequent sleepiness you’ll experience during the rest of the afternoon. Speaking of indulgent, Michael's Genuine Food & Drink is arguably the neighborhood’s most popular spot, and just last week we spotted someone consuming the to-die-for burrata appetizer special—intended for at least three very hungry people to share—all by herself! (We pretended to be shocked but were secretly very jealous, even though the warm eggplant salad we enjoyed left little to be desired.) Over at Pacific Time, the lunch portions are pitch perfect, and it’s even possible to order a “lunch-sized” dessert: the hot chocolate fudge cake is so small that you'll almost certainly have room for it, and it's almost guilt-free. Another option for those with a sweet tooth is to swing by Orange Cafe + Art after a meal for one of their addictive chocolate-chip cookies. Finally, Grass Restaurant & Lounge is also open for lunch again, though we’ve yet to meet anyone who goes there for the food. Come happy hour time, though, that’s where you'll find us!

Fratelli Lyon [MenuPages]
Michael's Genuine Food & Drink [MenuPages]
Pacific Time [MenuPages]
Orange Cafe + Art [MenuPages]
Grass Restaurant & Lounge [MenuPages]

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

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

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

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

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

Check out 12-21 at the new Morton's in Coral Gables. From 5:30pm-7pm, there will be complimentary cocktails and bar bites to celebrate the inauguration.

Morton's [MenuPages]
Morton's [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

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

After our friends at Miami.com cited Kobe Club's menu among the most generous offered during Miami Spice, we checked it out for ourselves on Saturday night, and generous it was: there were six appetizer and three side options, five entree choices (eight, if you count the optional Kobe upgrades), and a bonus chef's sampler dessert plate that came for the table to share.

To start, the members of our four-person party ordered the Kobe Club beef tartare, iced hamachi and two American "Kobe" beef cheek ravioli dishes. While no one was complaining, the ravioli took the prize. For the main course, the mustard-rubbed organic chicken was the largest of the dishes we ordered (think rotisserie size), and though perhaps not what one should order at a steak house, the wild mushroom pasta was impeccable. Both of the men in our party ordered the "black" pork chop, which, though of considerable size, were surprisingly lean. We also sampled all of the sides (a request for regular steamed spinach in the place of creamed spinach went unfulfilled), and the creamed corn was by far the tastiest of the three. On the dessert platter, the chocolate cake went quickly, while the cheesecake was good but not to-die-for. Overall, including tax and a bottle of wine, the bill per person totaled $50 - not at all bad for a restaurant with $375 entrees on its regularly priced menu! Tip: The space is tiny and fills up quickly, and we were unable to get same-day reservations on two separate occasions, so do reserve your table in advance. And if Kobe Club doesn't sound appetizing, do check out some of the other Miami Spice offerings. August is nearly over, and the specials only run through September, and there really are great deals to be had.

Dine-o-mite: tips for Miami Spice Month [Miami.com]
Kobe Club [MenuPages]
Kobe Club [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Photo: Via Meepocity/flickr]

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

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

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

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

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

That's right. I'm taking a vacation. I'm off to South Korea, where I plan to eat so much kimchi that I'll be sick of it by the end of the 10-day vacation. The blog will be in the capable hands of Melissa, but expect lighter-than-average posting over the next week.

See you on Wednesday, September 3.

Photo: Denis-zg/flickr

Forget the traditional Miami Spice menu. The Oceanaire Seafood Room is mixing things up with New England Clam Bake Sundays. Available until the end of September, the New England clam bake dinner special includes a choice of soup or salad appetizer, a one-and-a-half pound lobster, mussels, clams, corn on the cob, roasted potatoes and choice of dessert, for $36 a person. A glass of house wine can be added for only $5. After all, if Monday must come around, Sunday night might as well be your last supper.

The Oceanaire Seafood Room [MenuPages]
The Oceanaire Seafood Room [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Bean --- Restaurant [YouTube]

• Ladies' night with Project Runway and Buttercream Cupcakes. Fun! [Kate's Plates]

• Check out the Gold Medal Wine Tour, which will be making its way to multiple South Florida restaurants. By spending $150 on a meal, you too can help end childhood hunger. [Short Order]

• The food on the Miami Spice lunch menu at Table 8 gets raves, but the service could use a bit of improvement. [Natalie's Nibbles]

• Chocolate chip cookies loaded with chickpeas. Deceptive, but also delicious! [Miami Dish]

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

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

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

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

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

Hungry for something to do tonight? Check out the Thirsty Thursdays event at Jaguar, which features South American wines and fresh ceviches, from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

Owner Lalo Durazo and wine consultant Barry Alberts present up-and-coming South American wines from boutique vineyards in an informal yet educational style wine tasting. With over 31 years in the wine industry, wine connoisseur Barry Alberts hand selects and pours three white and three red wines from Chile, Brazil, Argentina and/or Uruguay, and answers any questions guests may have about the featured wines. The wines are then paired with a selection of fresh ceviches and chicken and steak skewers with a variety of Jaguar’s specialty sauces. The part where it gets even better? It's only $15 a person.

Jaguar [MenuPages]
Jaguar [Official Site]

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

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

Cows desperate to become BK hamburgers [AdFreak]

• Yikes! 1 Bleu gets a not-so-stellar review today. In fact, it's completely panned. The only good things mentioned are the view and the wine. [Miami Herald]

• Philippe, on the other hand, gets it right with great upscale Chinese offerings. Their specialty, peking duck, gets rave reviews. [Miami New Times]

• Fish tacos — the perfect way to end a day at the beach. Get them at H2O, an oceanfront cafe in Fort Lauderdale. [Miami Herald]

• Gail Shepherd unknowingly made a reservation at Aizia at the same time an adult entertainment industry convention had taken over the hotel, which is good, because that story is far more interesting than the descriptions of the meal, which apparently wasn't great. (Side note: the hotel and restaurant knew about this convention months beforehand. Why wouldn't they ask diners if they're OK with porn stars parading around during dinner when said diners make the reservation instead of when they're walking in the door?) [Broward-Palm Beach New Times]

• Slainte Irish pub is, unfortunately, mostly a disappointment. The service was glacial, the music loud, and the food not that impressive. [Palm Beach Post]

• A visit to Hooters — er, American Owl Restaurant — in China [Chicago Tribune]

• A guide to Pamela Anderson's favorite LA Vegan Food. [LA Times]

• A crime wave persists in Oakland, Calif., with robbers holding up restaurants, Pulp Fiction-style. [SF Chronicle]

• Massachusetts considering a ban on trans-fats. [MarketWatch]

Do you have a spare $250 lying around? How about a decent knowledge of wines? Apparently that's all you need to get an Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator. No actual restaurant necessary. Robin Goldstein, author of The Wine Trials, made up a restaurant and sent in an application to the magazine, in a sort of experiment to see exactly how they come up with these awards.

As part of the research for an academic paper I’m currently working on about standards for wine awards, I submitted an application for a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. I named the restaurant “Osteria L’Intrepido” (a play on the name of a restaurant guide series that I founded, Fearless Critic). I submitted the fee ($250), a cover letter, a copy of the restaurant’s menu (a fun amalgamation of somewhat bumbling nouvelle-Italian recipes), and a wine list.

Osteria L’Intrepido won the Award of Excellence, as published in print in the August 2008 issue of Wine Spectator. (Not surprisingly, the Osteria’s listing has been removed from Wine Spectator’s website since I posted this.) I presented this result at the meeting of the American Association of Wine Economists in Portland, Oregon, on Friday, August 15.

It’s troubling, of course, that a restaurant that doesn’t exist could win an Award of Excellence. But it’s also troubling that the award doesn’t seem to be particularly tied to the quality of the supposed restaurant’s “reserve wine list,” even by Wine Spectator’s own standards. Although the main wine list that I submitted was a perfectly decent selection from around Italy meeting the magazine’s numerical criteria, Osteria L’Intrepido’s “reserve wine list” was largely chosen from among some of the lowest-scoring Italian wines in Wine Spectator over the past few decades.

A new cooking school is coming to Abacoa Town Center in Jupiter this November. John Carlino, the chairman of culinary education at the Florida Culinary Institute, is opening Cooks Inc: Culinary Solutions Center, which will be geared towards non-professionals.

It's going to be a gourmet store and training facility, Carlino said. The center component is a large square where I'll be doing training, and having wine and food sampling, and cooking demonstrations.

The center is being filled with state-of-the-art cooking equipment. Instead of an overhead mirror, overhead cameras and large screens will provide a view of preparations by Carlino and guest chefs. Carlino said he also will provide continuing education classes to professional chefs.

Carlino, who also owns three restaurants in Connecticut, will stock restaurant-quality gourmet meals as grab-and-go dishes, gourmet groceries and fresh, local produce in the market.

Shelley Owens: Chef Carlino plans culinary solutions through Abacoa store and classes [TCPalm]
Florida Culinary Institute [Official Site]
Cooks Inc: Culinary Solutions Center [Official Site]

After two restaurant-food-deprived days during Tropical Storm Fay, we stopped by Acqua at the Four Seasons last night to make up for lost time. If you haven't been in a while, do go back. It will be clear from the tantalizing menu that a new (and very skilled) toque is in town. Chef Patrick Boucher was previously at the helm of Four Seasons kitchens in Dubai and Bali, and the menu he created upon his arrival in Miami draws upon our multicultural influences. The results are nothing short of mouth-watering.

Tuna lovers that we are, our favorite new appetizer is the Ahi tuna three ways: it's served as a tiradito, Vietnamese roll and Asian tartar. You'll be tempted to share it (and given the main-course portions, this might be wise), but we suggest deciding who gets what beforehand to avoid any arm wrestling.

Those with a sweet tooth won't be disappointed with what we're tempted to deem the Best Main Course Ever: a hazelnut and dulce de leche-crusted Colorado lamb chop, served with broccolini, warm goat cheese and fingerling potato salad. Yes, the combo is unexpected, but it's also brilliant (and not just because we're in favor of putting dulce de leche on almost anything). The milky consistency of the dulce de leche provides a nice balance to the meat, and we suspect even vegetarians would go crazy over this dish.

You might find yourselves so satisfied that you find the willpower to skip dessert. But if you can't (we couldn't), we recommend ending the evening with the Cortadito Creme Brulee for a truly Miami-influenced culinary experience.

Acqua [MenuPages]
Acqua [Official Site]

It's a busy morning here at MenuPages headquarters as we prepare to move our Rube Goldberg-style menu-updating contraption over to our new corporate home, New York magazine. You heard about that, right? They bought the company. We're actually really stoked.

But things are probably going to be in a bit of a tizzy around here for the rest of the week as we disassemble Bunsen burners, put the little bag over the chicken's head, pack up the golf-ball track, wind up the string, etc. The Magic Menu Machine will stay top secret because it has 1 million moving parts, which change every day.

As we curse ourselves for not labeling the 45-lb. bag of screws that holds our Magic Menu Machine together, we look forward to more communication from readers, restaurateurs, and other bloggers. In addition to the most complicated mechanical contraption in the world, what makes MenuPages special is your input, including ratings, reviews, comments, and tips. Thanks for your participation so far. We look forward to a future as a five-star (or 30-point, or 10-mustache) resource for all your dining-out needs.

[Photo: via Freshwater 2006]

• Tourists demanded that Restaurant Gal be meteorologist, flight traffic controller, and hotel owner just before Fay's arrival. [Restaurant Gal]

• A course-by-course description of the Miami Spice dinner at Talula. It definitely sounds like a good deal. [Natalie's Nibbles]

• Hard candy should be a part of everyone's hurricane supply chest. [Hungry Man]

• You can thank all of those biofuels for a 75 percent increase in food costs worldwide. We're hurting here, so you can only imagine what the situation is like in less developed countries. [Short Order]

• The verdict at Palm Grille: OK wings, excellent skirt steak, fresh veggies, good mashed potatoes, big portions, good selection of desserts. [FoodTastic!]

• Sara takes a cooking class with Juliana Gonzalez, chef de cuisine at Sushi Samba Dromo. [All Purpose Dark]

• Chicken, nectarines and rosemary together on a stick. Count us in! [A Mingling of Tastes]

• Identity thieves are stealing food stamps in New York. How awful do you have to be to steal from someone who cannot afford to buy food? [Newsday]

• Boston mayor's food relief plan includes "increased awareness" and potluck dinners. [Boston Herald]

• Japan's trade houses are looking to get into the food market, particularly grains in China. [Forbes]

• The Cheesecake Factory tops a list of 120 chain restaurants rated by consumers. [MarketWatch]

Island Grill in Islamorada is losing its tiki hut after a three-year battle with the Islamorada Village Council. Apparently the tiki bar and adjacent tent, which provide seating for almost 100 people, didn't have the necessary permits.

Former Building Director Catherine Harding initially declared the structure legal, company representatives have long said. But after Harding stepped down in fall 2005, current Building Director Gerry Albertson took the opposite position.

In September 2007, after several hearings before the Village Council, council members granted the Island Grill property a series of exceptions, known as variances, to city land-use laws. Island Grill management had sought the variances in order to be eligible to apply for belated building permits for the tent and tiki hut.

But even the variances didn't solve their problems. Still necessary before permits could be issued: a ruling by FEMA that the hut and tent wouldn't sit in a flood zone, as maps currently show.

"Every time we accomplished one hurdle the village would give us five more. We are in over $275,000 for a bamboo tiki hut," McCormick said, referencing fees for consultants and attorneys.

Island Grill to shut down tiki bar [The Citizen]
Island Grill [MenuPages]
Island Grill [Official Site]

Photo: crume/flickr

Happy 115th birthday, awesome summer beverage! The root beer float was invented on this date in 1893 by Frank Wisner, owner of Cripple Creek Brewing Company in Colorado. Legend has it that one moonlight night, he looked out over Cow Mountain and, to him, the scene reminded him of a big scoop of vanilla ice cream “floating on top of a black, Cow Mountain.” The name of the drink was shortened to "black cow," and the rest was history.

In honor of its quindecentennial (real word!), a bevy of information on all things root-beer-float-tastic:

• Step aside, William Carlos Williams. Three methods for eating a root beer float. The Melting method, the Half-Melted With Spoon method, and the Backwards method. [WikiHow]

• On June 19, 1999, the A&W Root Beer stand in Lodi, California became set the world record for the Largest Root Beer Float at 2562.5 Gallons. [A&W]

• In 2003, Coca-Cola launched Barq's Floatz, a vanilla-spiked offshoot of their Barq's root beer brand, that was supposed to mimic the experience of a soda fountain float. It's no longer available, even though it apparently tasted pretty darn good. [BevNet]

• There are over 2500 brands of commercially produced root beer. This page lists the vast majority of them. [Root Beer World]

• In the late 1800s, The Women's Christian Temperance Union launched a campaign against root beer because it had the word "beer" in it. Root beer magnate Charles Hires had an independent laboratory confirm that "beer" was purely a descriptive term, and the ladies were mollified. [Eat Your History]

• Probably the best homemade making-a-root-bear-float music video of all time, to Tone Loc's Funky Cold Medina. Not that it's a crowded field. [YouTube]

• The Fizz Cup is a plastic thingaroo that you attach to the top of your bottle of root beer (or other soda) and fill with ice cream, in order to make every sip a perfect combo of float flavors. [Gizmodo]

• The "cream" part of the ice cream loves to foam up, so it is advised that makers of root beer floats (and any other type of ice cream soda) add the ice cream last. [We Figured This Out Ourself As A Child]

A 1939 L.A. Times article urging parents to try the novel dessert idea of a root beer float. "Children, especially, are fond of these "floats" which may be concocted in many flavors"!!!!! [L.A. Times (sub req'd)]

[Photo: Root beer float, via jonolist's Flickr]

Have you noticed your grocery bills reaching skyward along with your gas bills? In these tough economic times you've got to economize, and that means eating more lobster. Sorry, but you'll have to buckle down and do it.

An article yesterday in Slate takes a look at why lobster, one of the classic luxury goods, is in the middle of a price slump, especially compared to staples such as grain, meat and olive tapenade. Turns out — at least for coastal denizens — the ugly, delicious sea-cockroaches are kind of the original locavore food:

What explains this crustacean mystery? Food inflation derives from several sources. The price of food can be driven upward by consumer and commercial demand, by speculation in the futures markets, and by producers successfully passing on the higher costs they incur (for gas, fertilizer, labor, processing, packaging, distribution) to buyers. The longer and more complex the supply chain (i.e., olives that are picked in Tunisia, shipped to Italy to be turned into tapenade, and then shipped to Dean & DeLuca to be turned into hors d'oeuvres for yuppies), the greater the opportunities for marking up prices and passing along costs.

Ok, so we don't all live in New England, or even near an ocean, but the economic logic driving this anomaly may just transfer over to other hyper-local products. In San Francisco this winter, barring another oil spill, Dungeness fans could be in relatively flush shape, financially, as could stone crab fans in Florida. Inland cities, obviously, don't have the luxury of dockside seafood sales, but according to this article in the Chicago Tribune, they have fun playing at lobster fishing anyway.

Meanwhile, if you're lucky enough to live in an area where these crustaceans are cheap and plentiful, you've got to get to work. We're nearing the end of both cookout season and New England lobster season, so if you haven't thrown some lobster on the grill, maybe this weekend is the time to do so. We found a really easy recipe on Barbecue Web if you want to give it a shot.

The Great Lobster Mystery [Slate]
Lobster is meaty subject [Chicago Tribune]
Lobster Clam Shrimp Recipe

[Photo: Lobsters for sale at Woodman's, of Essex, Mass. via Paul Keleher/flickr]

• Only sporadic conveys of food aid have made it to Georgia; food is "the major issue." [AP/NYT]
• Companies like Wal-Mart are taking on food safety issues, thanks to increased consumer awareness (and, um, litigiousness). [L.A. Times]
• Apparently peppers from Mexico have been consistently problematic, long before the salmonella scare. [AP/NYT]
• Possible fraudulent grape-mixing in Siena, Italy has the wine world in an uproar. [Tribune]
• A British watchdog group wants to stamp out "bawdy" and "humorous" beer names. [The Publican]

First came Vitamin Water; then designer water. Then tap water became de rigueur for the environmentally hip gourmand. So forgive us for thinking that the beverage companies’ idea well finally ran dry. Clearly this wasn’t the case. Allow us to introduce you, by way of the New York Times , to the new frontier in thirst quenching: Ice.

According to Jane McEwen, the executive director of International Packaged Ice Association, ice is water’s “sister product.”

As a sibling, ice is both mutable and fickle. “There are different forms of ice,” Ms. McEwen explained, and while every cube of ice has the same essential end point — and a purpose little understood in countries like, say, England or France — its use can be manipulated, ice experts say, to improve the quality of the drink it cools. Thus, there is fragmented ice (soda fountain drinks), nugget and cube ice (mixed drinks) and ice that is shaved. There is ice with dimpled ends that is ideal for chewing. There is ice manufactured using patented Japanese methods for eliminating the air bubbles that cloud a cocktail, inhibiting it from becoming a beautiful elixir, frigid and mystically clear.

If you happen to be in the Big Apple, you may want to sample Tailor’s two-inch cubes, which fit perfectly inside a rocks glass and look like miniature works of art. They can be purchased at a mere $15. (Firewater is, of course, included.) Eben Freeman, the bartender at Tailor, is an old pro at re-inventing the quotidian, even the very ordinary and unremarkable icicle.

I Like My Ice Chilled Just So [New York Times]
Drink: Eben Freeman is a Magical Mixologist [New York Post]
Tailor [MenuPages]
Tailor [Official Site]

[Photo: Via Tailor Official Site]

So, have you had enough rain yet? We hope not, because it's going to keep on coming, and coming and coming... It appears that Southeast Florida will just get lots and lots of rain, but the Keys and Southwest Florida might get that plus a bit more if it strengthens to a Category 1 hurricane. We heard that some restaurants are staying open in Key West, but we've called about 15 just now and received no answer anywhere. If you know of any restaurants that are staying open in the Keys, let us know.

And while this storm doesn't seem like it's going to pack too big a punch, now is probably a good time to link to Paula's excellent guide to hurricane food supplies from last year.

mango&lime's Hurricane Survival (Food) Guide [mango&lime]

Photo: National Hurricane Center

Remember some time ago when we wondered here about eating penguin meat? Turns out it's illegal and, according to the couple of accounts within easy reach of a Google search, disgusting. But it turns out another animal you've probably seen most often in zoos and picture books might actually be a promising new food source, if you can get past the idea of dining on Kanga and/or Roo.

Serious Eats yesterday linked to a BBC story about an Australian scientist making the case for farming kangaroos as a type of environmentally sustainable livestock:

The methane gas produced by sheep and cows through belching and flatulence is more potent than carbon dioxide in the damage it can cause to the environment.

But kangaroos produce virtually no methane because their digestive systems are different.

MenuPages' very own Carolina Bolado said she tried the meat once at a game dinner, "served rare, with a mild curry sauce. It was my favorite of the night...gamey, but not tough. Very smooth."

But some on the Serious Eats comments board seemed creeped out. One commenter said that from an Australian perspective, eating kangaroo would be like, "an American tucking into a nice roast Bald Eagle." They raised an interesting point, noting that many other meats have names different from the animal (like beef, venison, pork), but kangaroo does not.

Most of the animals we eat regularly don't appear too often in zoos, books, cartoon shows or as stuffed toys. Since kangaroos do, it may be a tough task to get past the cuteness, mentally. Imagine having to explain to your 5-year-old that the meat on the table comes from the same animals as those beloved Winnie the Pooh characters. But the solution does make a lot of sense, darn it! Sometimes practicality can be a tough sell.

Eat Kangaroo, Save The Earth? [Serious Eats]
Eat kangaroo to 'save the planet' [BBC]

[Photos: Fresh pasta with kangaroo and semi-sundried tomatoes via Lachlan Hardy/flickr; Kangaroos via spaceodissey/flickr]

• Trina got a bunch of allspice from Bee Heaven Farms and photographed it for all to see. It's really quite interesting, especially if, like us, you're used to seeing just the dried allspice. She made some great-looking jerk sauce with it! [Miami Dish]

• Booze should be in everyone's hurricane supply chest. When the power is out and you're all sweaty from picking up palm fronds and tree branches from your lawn, you're going to want a nice cool drink (assuming you can find ice). Here, she gives a recipe for a Hurricane. [Short Order]

• Behold, the power of corn cobs. [Chadzilla]

• Trina points out that fudge (such as the chocolate-peanut butter fudge from Wall's Old Fashioned Ice Cream) does not melt when your power goes out. Not a bad idea — bottled water, canned food, candles, matches...and fudge. Yes. [Miami Dish]

• Aspiring reality TV show contestants are advised to pull on their fats pants and their running shoes! The Food Network is set to run "Eat the Clock," which can be summed up as competitive eating meets "The Amazing Race." [Reuters]

• Wild Maine blueberries may be about as "wild" as a lion in a zoo, but that doesn't stop them from being full of complexity, both in taste and within the species. [NYT]

• To catalog under 'nature is neat-o': chile peppers produce their own pesticides as a means of fending off toxic fungi. [LA Times]

• This weekend bore more sad news for the fishes, with some few hundred found dead in Rhode Island. [Boston]

• Chinese officials have cracked down on streets vendors, but it's still possible to sample local delicacies in Beijing. Think sea horses, bee cocoons, centipedes, and deep fried scorpion. [Toronto Sun]

If your Saturday is free, you might want to check out the Taste of South Florida in Pompano Beach, which will spotlight local farms:

The show has sparked an outpouring of interest from its 4,000 members, who include farmers, ranchers and plant nursery owners. The 50 spots reserved for vendors quickly filled and there is a waiting list, Segal said.

"I expected to have 20," he said. "It's very surprising. We're trying to create more space."

Coffee beans, cheese, vegetables, fruits, fish and native plants are among the items to be sold at an open market. The festival also will highlight green lifestyles, with landscaping lectures by university professors, booths staffed by environmental groups and displays by companies offering alternative forms of energy such as biofuels.

The event, at the Pompano Citi Centre (1955 N Federal Hwy in Pompano Beach) from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., is free.

Pompano site for Taste of South Florida [Sun-Sentinel]
Taste of South Florida [Official Site]

Talk about late to the party! Well, let's just call ourselves fashionable. We found this post from last March (!) on the North by Northwestern website, which is like 1,000 years old in blog time, but it's so perfect, we have to link it here. Check it out, at least one person's (perfectly reasonable) list of the Top 10 Food-Centric Videos. We'll give you no. 5, the California Raisins doing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, cause it's really weird and you probably haven't thought about these guys for a while. If you want the rest, click the link.

The top ten food-centric music videos [North By Northwestern]

As of last week, Elevated Fridays at The Bar at Level 25 added one more attraction to its happy hour: the live sounds of DJ Induce, from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. In addition to the hip grooves, Brickell's newest Friday celebration also features $6 cocktail specials and complimentary hors d'oeuvres from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., courtesy of Executive Chef Michael Gilligan.

The Bar at Level 25 [MenuPages]
The Bar at Level 25 [Official Site]

• We're awfully sweet on martinis these days [MP: Boston]

• Ice cream made with liquid nitrogen sounds like it might be more fun to talk about than to eat. [MP: Chicago]

• Hitachino Owl beer: sweet! Its increasing scarcity: not so sweet. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Go nuts for doughnuts! [MP: San Francisco]

• A collection of 4,000-plus menus from around the world must be some pretty good reading. [MP: South Florida]

Dwyane Wade has a hefty lawsuit ready to greet him when he returns from Beijing, according to the Palm Beach Post:

By the time he returns stateside, the high-flying dunk artist could be told they want him to pony up $25 million, a source close to the case told Page Two.

Wade, 26, is accused of not fulfilling his marketing obligations in what was supposed to become a national chain of sports bars named D. Wade's Place.

"That's ridiculous," said his Miami lawyer, Steven Peretz. "Their company hasn't been a model of success."

Florida was to be a showcase for future investors, the source tells me, with as many as 13 pilot restaurants in West Palm Beach, Daytona Beach, Tampa and other cities. But the first two grills, in Boca and Fort Lauderdale, were shut down after just weeks in business. The others have yet to open.

• We're not that great at the whole guess-the-vegetable game. We're stumped for the second week in a row. [Short Order]

• Sara checks out the Olympics Menu at Miss Yip Chinese Cafe, and it certainly looks good. Judging from the photo, that's a ton of food — enough to satiate even Michael Phelps for a couple hours. [All Purpose Dark]

• Trina profiles the Purple Pie Company, a one-woman show that churns out some great-looking pies. And there's a chance to get free samples at the launch this Saturday in Fort Lauderdale. [Miami Dish]

A tipster told us rising star chef Gerdy Rodriguez was no longer at the helm of 1 Bleu, and a phone call to the restaurant confirmed the fact. Carlos Villa is in charge of the kitchen as the restaurant searches for a new leadership.

While working on a story about the emergence of raw food in Miami, we went to The Art of Food to check out its ‘live’ offerings, only to find that the space appeared closed. The number to the restaurant has also been disconnected.

And although many continue to report that Maison D'Azur is closed, owner Stephen Fortier hinted to The Herald yesterday that the acclaimed French restaurant is moving to ''a really high profile location.” We’d previously reported on Barton G’s talks with The Sagamore to take over Social’s space, but that deal fell through. We now have confirmation from multiple sources that Maison is taking over the space and planning for a fall opening. Ooh la la!

The Art of Food [MenuPages]
Maison D'Azur closes [Miami Herald]
Barton Bumps Social [MP: South Florida]
Maison D'Azur [MenuPages]
Maison D'Azur [Official Site]

• The number of oxygen-deprived "dead zones" in the ocean is growing. This can't be good for the fishies! [Washington Post]

• If you want to waste water in Los Angeles, it's going to cost you. [LA Times]

• The immigration raid on an Iowa kosher meatpacking plant may have had judicial interference. [New York Times]

• The French equivalent of the Department of Health has had a busy summer shutting down restaurants. [Guardian]

• Childhood chronic ear infections can cause a craving for sweets and fatty foods in adulthood. This explains so much. [BBC News]

Exciting news, America (specifically Chicago-region)! As reported on MenuPages Chicago, Kanye West is opening a Fatburger franchise in Chicago and environs. The first KW Foods LLC-owned Fatburger is slated to open next month, and will be the first of ten.

We are happy for Chicago (by all accounts, Fatburger tastes awesome), but even happier for Kanye who gets to join a vaunted rank occupied by Jay-Z, Ludacris, P. Diddy, among others. We're not talking about album sales here, or Grammys, sneaker endorsements, or novelty Christmas albums. No. We mean that of rappers who own dining establishments.

As it turns out, Kanye is not the first hip-hop celebrity to own a Fatburger. Alledgedly, rappers E-40 and Queen Latifah both own franchises here in the US, and Pharrell owns one in China. After the jump, more rapper restaurateurs.

Moving beyond fast food joints, Jay-Z is the proud proprietor of the 40/40 Club, a sports bar and lounge with locations in New York, Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Tokyo, and Macau. There's a quote on the website, from Jigga himself, describing the club as "conducive to [his] lifestyle," which must count for something, right?

Kanye may be the newest kid on the restaurant-owning block, but before he announced his Fatburger intentions, Ludacris was the most recent one. Ludacris's restaurant is part of the Straits stable of restaurants, and is upscale Asian Fusion. His inspiration for opening a restaurant? From his own mouth:

During my travels, I've experienced some of the most diverse international culinary flavours in the world. After experiencing Yeo's modern spin on Singaporean cuisine combined with the sexy dining experience, I wanted to bring this restaurant home to Atlanta.

A word of warning to future rappers-turned-restaurateurs though! Owning a restaurant might not always be the low-key gambit you were hoping for. Just ask P. Diddy about Justin's: sure, the Atlanta location is still in business, but the New York flagship is shuttered. What's more, it just so happens to be where Fabolous got shot in the leg! Oops.

"Kanye West to launch burger chain" [Guardian UK]
"Ludacris -- Rapper Turner Entrepreneur?" [Fast Company]
"Ludacris To Launch Restaurant" [Young Hollywood]

Lee Klein has quite a long story in today's New Times about the whole bottled water controversy .... What struck us is exactly how expensive bottled water is. Here are a few choice quotes from the article:

Jonathan Eismann, chef/owner of Pacific Time, can't fathom why "people are complaining about gas being $4.50 a gallon. Meanwhile they're paying nine bucks a gallon for water."

"A family of three who rely exclusively on bottled water will, by the time the first child is 18, have already spent the equivalent of that child's college education in a public university on that water."

Dasani's Florida stock comes from Broward County, which buys its water from the City of Hollywood Water Treatment Plant, which secures its supply from the Biscayne and Floridan aquifers. It has been estimated that the average bulk cost paid for public water is between one and two cents a gallon. At a Publix supermarket in Miami Beach, a 20-ounce single-serve bottle of Dasani costs, with tax, $1.50 — or $10 to $20 a gallon, about 500 to 1,000 times the price.

Bottled Water Gets the Boot [Miami New Times]
Photo: Wikimedia

• The party is at George's in the Grove, where the noise level is always set to loud, but the food is good. Also: Nutella pizza. Oh man. Yum. [Miami Herald]

• Eating at Fratelli Lyon is "really, honestly, literally just like being in Italy." [Miami New Times]

• Myung Ga Tofu & BBQ seems to be the place to go for Korean food in the area. We're totally craving dumplings right now. [Miami Herald]

• Most everything's nice at Sugar n Spice, which gets two-and-a-half stars. [Miami Herald]

• Area restaurants are really hurting in this poor economy; Gail Shepherd talks to restaurateurs about how they've had to cut back and what they're doing to keep costs down. [Broward-Palm Beach New Times]

We got a little over-excited during this morning's FYI when we discovered that Julia Child had been a spy for the United States' Office of Secret Services — the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency — during World War II. Come to find out that's old news, but what's new is the opening of her service record, along with the identities and records of her OSS colleagues:

The OSS files offer details about other agents, including Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, baseball player Moe Berg, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and film actor Sterling Hayden.

Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt; and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

She started out at OSS Headquarters in Washington, working directly for General William J. Donovan, the leader of OSS. Working as a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence division, Julia typed up thousands of names on little white note cards, a system that was needed to keep track of officers during the days before computers. Although her encounters with the General were minor, she recalled later in life that his “aura” always remained with her.

Julia then worked with the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section, where she helped develop shark repellent. The repellent was a critical tool during WWII, and was coated on explosives that were targeting German U-boats. Before the introduction of the shark repellent, curious sharks would sometimes set off the explosives when they bumped into them.

From 1944-1945, Julia was sent overseas and worked in Ceylon, present day Sri Lanka, and Kunming, China. During these last two years in the OSS, Julia served as Chief of the OSS Registry. Julia -- having top security clearances -- knew every incoming and outgoing message that passed throughout her office, as her Registry was serving all the intelligence branches. During her time in Ceylon, Julia handled highly classified papers that dealt with the invasion of the Malay Peninsula. Julia was fascinated with the work, even when there were moments of danger.

The Lady Was a Spy [NPR]
A Look Back ... Julia Child: Life Before French Cuisine [CIA]
Julia Child, spy? [Chicago Tribune/wire report]

[Photo: via Wikimedia]

• Julia Child (yes, THE Julia Child) was a spy for the OSS in World War II! [Chicago Tribune]

• A top Chinese food safety official commits suicide. [New York Times]

• Burger King employee takes bath in restaurant sink. Makes newspaper. [USA Today]

• Stupid salmonella won't go away. Now it's in pet food. Maybe. [LA Times]

• Loyal customers raise money for a flood-damaged Iowa restaurant. Warms the heart. [Iowa City Press-Citizen]

Insane. I cannot fathom putting away that much food on a daily basis. The man is eating for four (or more) adults, which naturally makes him a legend in Ann Arbor restaurants. Just imagine the terror in a restaurateur's eyes as he watches Phelps approach an all-you-can-eat buffet. Or perhaps those have been quietly removed from menus in Ann Arbor since his arrival.

If you care to see his daily diet in more detail, check out the graphic from today's New York Post after the jump:

Gives new meaning to the term 'breakfast of champions.'

Phelps's pig secret: he's Boy George [NY Post]
Fuel for Phelps [MetaCafe]

The traditional dinner and a movie ritual is getting a makeover at Acqualina Resort & Spa in Sunny Isles during Cinema Paradiso at Costa Grill. On Friday nights, the resort’s oceanfront restaurant will serve an a la carte “appetizer & snacks” menu during film screenings by the pool. This Friday’s movie is Sunset Boulevard, but the featured flick will change weekly (think summer blockbusters and classics with a little comedy and camp thrown in for good measure), and the menu provides enough variety for those wishing to make the event a regular indulgence. Signature cocktails are served by the pitcher (a strawberry caipirinha or raspberry mojito pitcher is $59, tropical punch or bloody mary pitchers are $49) and the menu consists of gourmet takes on movie fare, with offerings like a South Florida Crab Cake, Chicken Satay Skewers, and a Beef and Black Bean Corn Nacho. The best part? We’re sure no rowdy teenagers will be sitting behind you spoiling your fun.

Costa Grill [MenuPages]
Costa Grill [Official Site]

• Sara checks out Cita's Italian Chophouse, which, from her description, is good but could use a little something extra. [All Purpose Dark]

• These photos from Neomi's new menu look great. [chadzilla]

• Hilda loves the Miami Spice menu at Chef Allen's. [FoodTastic!]

• Chef Sandra Stefani of Casa Toscana teaches Paula how to make fresh pasta. We had one bad experience with fresh pasta and never tried making it again; perhaps a class would do us good. [mango&lime]

It's nice when an organization blows off its embarrassing stereotype. You know who could use a little of that jelly? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They don't like fur and they don't like meat and they have this reputation for being the kind of people who will get offended by just about anything that once had a face and now does not. Who wants those people around?

But this nice little story about a recent PETA campaign against cockroach eating at Six Flags amusement parks sounds so polite and good-hearted, it definitely deserves some coverage. Granted, we got the story from the PETA website, and Six Flags wasn't available to corroborate it this morning, but it seems reliable enough, and so polite:

After receiving a letter and several e-mails from PETA, the company has decided not to repeat last year's live-cockroach-eating challenge as part of its Halloween "Fright Fest." PETA explained that encouraging teens and others to cause pain and death to even the smallest life form as part of a promotion can desensitize them to suffering in general.

"We're on to other Fright Fest events that do not include any living creatures!" wrote Six Flags Public Relations Manager Sue Carpenter...

To show its thanks, PETA has sent Carpenter a box of vegan chocolate roaches.

Six Flags Scraps 'Fright Fest' Live-Cockroach-Eating Challenge After PETA Plea [PETA]

[Photo: via University of California at Davis, Department of Entomology]

• The UN begins a $214 million program to provide food in 16 "hunger hotspots" around the world. [AFP]

• Despite the many recalls, the head of the USDA says all is well. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

• And you thought inflation here was bad — Venezuelans are dealing with 33 percent inflation on food, and the government just raised prices again. [BBC News]

• Some backyard gardeners in Connecticut tried to donate some of their extra veggies to an organization that feeds the needy. Turns out they can't; all food must come from "approved sources" to avoid unknown health problems. Because e. coli is never found in grocery store veggies. [Newsday]

• Sudan, which has the potential to be the "breadbasket of Africa," is exporting lots of food while at the same time receiving tons of food aid from other countries. Meanwhile, those in Darfur starve. Something's wrong here. [NYT]

Steakhouse fever has hit Miami: The end of summer/early fall will bring three new steakhouses to town.

Aventura, which is already home to the succulent Bourbon Steak (as well as chains like Houston's and Morton's) will be home to two of these new steak spots. The first, restaurateur Cameron Mitchell's Ocean Prime, opened its doors this past Saturday. See if these menu highlights make your mouth water: Chilean Sea Bass with Glazed Carrots in a Champagne Truffle Sauce, White Truffle Caviar Deviled Eggs, “Surf and Turf” with Diver Scallops and Slow-Braised Short Ribs, and Ginger Salmon with Stir-Fried Snap Peas and Soy Butter Sauce.

Aventura will also be the newest site of Beverly Hills' famous power lunch spot The Grill on the Alley (pictured), which will open up in early fall at the Aventura Mall. What to expect? USDA Prime steaks and chops, fresh seafood delivered daily and the day’s soups and desserts to be made from scratch. Menu items include the Lobster Martini appetizer, New York Pepper Steak, John Dory with lemon butter sauce, Chicken Pot Pie, Fresh Crab Louie and Braised Short Ribs.

Finally, the owners of the recently closed Touch are opening a carnivorous venture called Meat Market this month, in the original Pacific Time space on Lincoln Road. SoBe is already home to the wildly successful Prime One Twelve and the much slower Texas de Brazil, so the management of Meat Market is looking to shake things up by serving steaks in a three-tiered format: "Tier One will feature simple, a la carte steak selections cooked in a variety of ways, from wood grilled to broiled in a state-of-the-art, infrared oven at 1200 degrees. Tier Two will offer reserve cuts from name brand, ultra-premium resources....Tier Three will feature house specialties representing Brasel’s unique culinary style."

Break out your carving knives!

Ocean Prime [Official Site]
The Grill on the Alley [Official Site]

Remember a little while ago when we got all huffy about the trend of bacon in and on everything? There was that bacon bra that Serious Eats got all gaga over, and of course there is Hats of Meat, which doesn't confine itself to bacon.

Well, all pork products aside, there is something really fun about edible clothing, probably because it's so gross, but, you know, right there, just begging for you to taste it and get body hairs stuck between your teeth. And today, Serious Eats came back on itself and showed us the tofu bra, for the vegetarians.

So we thought this would be a good time to see what other food clothes are out there, underwear and otherwise. We found a bunch of good stuff, including this cupcake dress (via Picture This):

More after the jump...

You know, there seems to be a huge market for weird brassiere ingredients, such as these chocolate numbers (via StrangeCelebrities.com):

And, naturally, a cheese bra (via la_mala1/flickr):

We had a really hard time finding any men's clothing for the snacking, be it bacon, tofu, chocolate or other. There was a bacon tie, but it was a print. We did come across this little gem, however. Yeah, it's, um, totally for real (via design2d.co.uk):

Tofu Bra [Serious Eats]
Bacon Bra [Serious Eats]
HatsofMeat.com [Official Site]

And we thought we had a lot of menus. CBS4 has a story about Broward resident Dan Barlow who has been collecting menus from all over the world for the past half century:

Free time on a vacation can often be spent shopping for a collectible or memento from your trip. One South Florida man decided to collect something as he went around the world that may leave your mouth watering and your wallet remembering a cheaper time, restaurant menus.

"When we traveled around the world, it was part of my travels to bring back interesting things such as menus," Dan Barlow, also known as the "Menu Man" said.

His collection dates as far back as 1948 and features over 4,000 menus from restaurants from Paris and Egypt, to the menu for the very first TGI Fridays.

South Florida man serves up his menu collection [CBS4]
Photo: CBS

• Another day, another Whole Foods crisis: Fallout from recalled beef hurts the bottom line. [NYT]

• Another day, another UN food aid shipment: This one's to Georgia. [AP/IHT]

• The CSPI thinks restaurants should display their health dept. ratings in their windows. [Time]

• Holy crap, it's expensive to open a restaurant: $2.5m for an Olive Garden?! [LAT]

• The consumer food safety group LGMA has finished its audited first year with flying colors. [BusinessWire/MarketWatch]

A marginally scientific story on Forbes.com last week ranked the United States' 15 hardest-drinking cities. MenuPages is proud to boast two markets in the top five: San Francisco, at number three, and Chicago, at number five.

However, as glad as we are to have brought home a couple of "Lushies" (MP Chicago's imaginary award, not Forbes'), we have issues with the process by which the team at Forbes arrived at its results:

The remaining 33 cities were then ranked based on their residents' responses to three different questions on the [Center for Disease Control's 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey]: whether they had at least one drink of alcohol within the past 30 days; whether men had more than two drinks per day or women one drink per day; and whether they had five or more drinks on one occasion. In each case, higher-ranking cities reported larger percentages of their population answering in the affirmative.

To determine the 15 hardest-drinking cities, we added up the rankings from each category, counting the "five or more drinks on one occasion" question twice, since it most directly addresses the question of problem drinking. We then sorted that sum into our final ranks.

Basically, according to this one set of fuzzy research, San Francisco is not as boozy as first-place winner Austin or runner-up Milwaukee, but it is more sauced than honorable mention Providence (fourth) or Chicago. Boston came in ninth after a three-way tie for eighth between Seattle, Cleveland and St. Louis. Philadelphia and South Florida didn't make the list, though Florida was represented by Jacksonville (14th) and Pennsylvania got on the board with Pittsburgh (11th).

America's Hard-Drinking Cities [Forbes.com]

[Photo: Manhattans at San Francisco's Vesuvio via bradleyjames/flickr]

Bored of making your famous chicken cacciatore every time you have a dinner party? Pick up some new recipes from Miami's top chefs during any of these three (coincidentally Asian-themed) cooking classes taking place this week. Looks like school is back in session!

Sushi Samba Dromo Sushi & Sake 101
They're back! After a one-year hiatus, SUSHISAMBA dromo's Sushi & Sake 101 classes will re-launch this week with the introduction of the new SUSHISAMBA dromo Sake Sommelier, Midori Roth. The two-hour class will be conducted with the help of SUSHISAMBA dromo’s Executive Sushi Chef Shoyo Lida and includes five flights of sake, a selection of SUSHISAMBA’s signature dishes, variety of sushi rolls, edamame, tempura and sashimi. August 13, 7pm-9pm, $75.

Eleanor Hoh's "Wok Star" Class
Learn to cook like a Wok Star at Eleanor Hoh's sizzling stir-fry session, which includes four dishes paired with Prosecco and Tiger Beer. In addition to the healthy, tasty recipes, Hoh is a charming hostess, and the kitchen showroom is any would-be chef's dream. At Mia Cucina, 20385 Biscayne Blvd., Aventura. August 16, 12pm-3pm, $65.

Interactive Culinary Demonstration & Mumm Champagne Luncheon at The Biltmore
The Biltmore's interactive luncheons are a favorite among Coral Gables foodies — probably due in equal measure (no pun intended) to the speed at which the Champagne flutes are refilled and the fool-proof nature of the recipes. This Saturday, Chef José Mendín of Sushi Samba Dromo shares tri-cultural culinary traditions. August 16, 12pm, Cellar Club members $48, non-members $60. RSVP at 305.913.3203 or at the website.

Sushi Samba Dromo [MenuPages]
Sushi Samba Dromo [Official Site]
Eleanor Hoh's Cooking Classes [Official Site]
The Cellar Club at The Biltmore [Official Site]

• Reusable chopsticks: the eco-friendly way to eat sushi. [Short Order]

• A five-ingredient (for the five Olympic rings) drink to keep you going while cheering on the US team. [All Purpose Dark]

• Kate is underwhelmed by the offerings at Fratelli Lyon. [Kate's Plates]

• The ribs at Fat Man's BBQ look so good. [Daily Cocaine]

So, you want to eat better, do you? More fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, and less fat, oil, sugar, and salt, right? Well, that's going to mean discipline, and learning to appreciate and crave the flavor of a ripe apple or a bowl of museli over that pile of disco fries.

Yeah, freaking right. That's why there's science. We don't need to change our behavior through such outmoded methods as willpower and strength of character. According to the Telegraph UK (Via Coldmud,) we'll soon be able to use chemicals to do it for us:

The new research is focused on compounds called flavour modulators which, when added to food in tiny amounts, stimulate specific pathways into the brain that trigger a response normally associated with eating tasty food.

Most humans are genetically disposed to crave fattening food because, for millions of years, it was in short supply. But the current over-abundance of calorie-laden food puts current generations at risk of obesity.

But seriously, these additives are really creepy. The Telegraph compares the effort, with a straight face, to, "cruder attempts to change eating patterns by adding child-friendly flavourings such as chocolate to unpopular vegetables." Give it a second thought and imagine just how it might feel to chomp on a piece of fatty, rich broccoli. Ugh, it might be pretty darned gross.

Maybe the answer isn't to change the flavor of broccoli and friends, but to use those veggies in concert with less saintly ingredients, giving the veggies first chair; like our old pal broccoli dressed up with a shred or two of cheddar. Perhaps healthy eating is less about discipline and more about variety. And that doesn't mean the variety of flavors with which you can impregnate leafy greens. We'll say it again: Gross.

Healthier eating tastes better thanks to a clever trick [Telegraph UK]

[Photo: Romanescue broccoli via Moria/flickr]

• With the ranks of food snobs swelling, is ice snob-ism the next frontier? Judging by the existence of gourmet ice, perhaps! [New York Times]

• Oh noes! First the spinach, then the tomatoes, and now ground beef! Yet another recall, yet another weekend spent wondering if anything is safe to eat. [Washington Post]

• China is mad into wine these days, but one billion new oenophiles is way more than current production can handle. Fun fact though: turns out there are lots of vineyards in China! [Slate]

• That warehouse club might not be saving you as much money as you think. [ABC News]

• L.A. could be the next city to require restaurants to post calorie counts. Is this going to be the new smoking ban? [LA Times]

Apparently there is some sporting event getting underway over in China that is so popular, NBC is covering it.

But before the Olympic athletes can get started with their sweating and huffing, there must first be a whole mess of pomp and circumstance. You'll probably watch the opening ceremony tonight, or else you'll Tivo it and keep it in your DVR forever because you are an uncultured boor if you erase it.

In addition to the big public ceremony, of course, there's one hell of a party for the heads of state. Unlike the recent G8 conference (perhaps because of it?) the menu for China's kickoff banquet hasn't made the rounds of the internet yet, but Xinhua News has the summary (all spellings [sic]):

The "royal lantern" assorted cold dishes, including crystal shrimp, beancurd sheet fish rolls, goose liver pate, leafmustard boiled with oil, and a thousand-layer beancurd cake, were served on a traditional Chinese royal lantern-shaped plate.

Specially-designed "Bird's Nest" seasonal vegetables have been served due to the special moment of Olympics, and the steak on lotus leaf and cod in soy sauce have combined Chinese and Western characteristics together.

Also on the banquet menu was the matsutake soup in "melon cup".

The guests were also served with a refreshment and fruit icecream.

Chinese-style food served to dignitaries for Beijing Olympics [Xinghua]
Athletes Fear Chinese Food Will Spoil Olympic Run [ABC News]

[Photo: topgold/flickr]

Can it be done? Since we are not, currently, in West Virginia (and also we do not, currently, have a death wish), we turn our powers of deduction to the matter.

Let's start in the obvious place: Champion gurgitator Joey Chestnut won the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4 this year by eating 59 hot dogs in 10 minutes. That'd be an average of 5.9 a minute, right? But we were a little suspicious — that's like saying someone who does a 5-hour marathon is running 11.5-minute miles, whereas in reality the miles are much faster at first, and take longer as the race goes on. So we sat down in front of a YouTube video of this past July's contest, planning to count Joey's consumption over the first four minutes.

That failed. So instead, we turn to Gothamist's liveblog of the eat-off, and with some counting-backwards skills have decided that Joey Chestnut can eat at least 32 hot dogs in 4 minutes.

But what is that in terms of weight? Nathan's hot dogs are sold in grocery stores in 12-ounce packs of 6, weighing in at 2 ounces per dog. And we'll assume that Nathan's buns are more or less equivalent to white Wonder buns, which at 43 grams per bun convert to just about 1.5 ounces per bun. 2 ounces for the dog plus 1.5 ounces for the bun means that a full hot dog, Nathan's contest-style, weighs 3.5 ounces.

And how many 3.5-ounce dog-and-bun combos do you need to get up to 4 pounds? Just about 18.285 hot dogs — half what Joey Chestnut packed down.

So is eating the homewrecker dog in 4 minutes doable? Totally. Is it advisable? Not so much.

Gigantic horrifying hotdog -- 3.5lbs -- is free if you eat it in 4 minutes [BoingBoing]
The Mother of All Hot Dogs--HillBilly's Homewrecker [Al Dente]

[Photo of the homewrecker via Al Dente]

• Nothing hits the spot on a muggy August night like a good margarita. [MP: Boston]

• Fresh or frozen, fish is the best. [MP: Chicago]

• It's the most wonderful time of the year for farms. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Are you counting calories and pennies? A farmers market could be your new best friend. [MP: San Francisco]

• Limoncello popsicle martinis? YES. [MP: South Florida]

The internets were abuzz yesterday after WPLG's Dirty Dining blog took a stroll down Giralda in the Gables and found plenty of health code violations.

There's the usual stuff, like grease accumulation on the floor of Randazzo's (which is probably more of a hazard to the cooks than to diners), a few dead roaches at Archie's Gourmet Pizza, which might make us think twice about eating at these places but probably won't compel us to avoid it altogether. But here's what really angered us, from the entry for Las Vegas:

“Identity of food product misrepresented. selling SWAI for GROUPER”

A stroll down Giralda. Part 1 [Dirty Dining]
The Cooler [South Florida Daily Blog]
Dirty Dining Series Takes on Giralda Ave. [Coral Gables]

Photo: Dirty Dining

• A Chicago cop is suspended after allegedly demanding a free coffee from Starbucks. [Chicago Tribune]

• Today's a lucky day for the Chinese. You'll need luck getting a reservation in a restaurant, church, event hall, or any other place that might have to do with a wedding [Xinhua]

• Could it be possible that those calorie counts popping up on chain restaurant menus are more complicated than they seem? [Los Angeles Times]

• As the 2008 Olympics kick off, a look at a different kind of "sport:" Competitive eating. [LA Times]

• Lunch has a new hero in actor Michael Douglas (natch). [Times Online]

We finally gave in to the massive hype surrounding Mad Men and watched all of season one over the course of last weekend. Although we were stubborn to the end, it turns out that everything we'd read about it is true. The acting is superlative, the sets, costumes, and historical references completely impeccable, and the whole tone of the show really captures the tense, feverish excitement of the advertising industry in 1960.

What we weren't expecting, but were totally taken with, was the incredible attention to food and dining in 1960. Once it hit us that food comes up constantly on the show, we started scribbling down notes about everything they put in their mouths. (Dirty! But true.) After the jump, the Mad Men diet.

Scene after scene on Mad Men takes place in restaurants that can only be described as swanky. The softly glowing lights, unobtrusive classical music, and understated decor of the dining rooms would fit right in with most nice restaurants these days. But, oh, the food!

From our notes, and with some help from the Television Without Pity forum on Mad Men, it seems that when people weren't drinking heavily, they were eating lots of oysters Rockefeller and caesar salads. Other items on the Mad Men menu?

For drinks (easily one of the main food groups): whiskey, scotch, Manhattans, Rob Roys, vodka gimlets, and martinis. The employees of Sterling Cooper truly own the idea of a liquid lunch, and that's not even considering all of the bracing swigs knocked back behind closed office doors.

Home-cooking on the show is standard 1950s fare: celery with cream cheese, many a pot roast, a ham generously cloaked in a layer of pineapple, Waldorf salad, and a parade of casseroles all make appearances. Some of the dishes are probably best left to history, but many left us with a powerful desire to revive retro canapes. All in all, very Joy of Cooking!

Finally, if you were dining in New York's finest restaurants of 1960, you might have expected to see the following on the menu: goulash, beef wellington and other foods wrapped in dough or puff pastry, caviar, shrimp cocktail, rumaki, and classic desserts like baked Alaskas. We bet it all tasted pretty good, but didn't they ever get bored?

Aside from making us want the cocktails/not want most of the food, watching has made us wonder: how outdated will our food seem fifty years from now?

[Photo: authorwannabe/flickr]

• Commenters are giving poor Sara Liss flak about her omission of Tropical Chinese from her roundup of South Florida Chinese food. (She has a good reason, as she writes on her site: sometimes it's good to point out places besides the heavy hitters.) [Miami Herald]

• The service might be a little slow, and there's no a/c, but the food at Red Light sounds unbelievably good. [Miami New Times]

• The food is both eco-friendly (organic!) and healthful (nothing fried!) at Green Gables Cafe. [Miami Herald]

• Need a cup of coffee? Try one of these places. [Miami Herald]

• Gail Shephered is embracing the mackerel, which is not overfished, probably doesn't have tons of mercury, provides lots of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, and is prepared beautifully at Blue Fish in Delray Beach. [Broward-Palm Beach New Times]

• Unlike most restaurants that bill themselves at "Mediterranean," Mazza's focus is Greek and Middle Eastern as opposed to Italian. [Miami Herald]

You may not actually kill for fried chicken, but at least one guy was willing to take a murder rap for, among other things, a big pile of KFC and Popeye's.

An AP story on CNN today reports that Tremayne Durham, 33, of New York City, confessed to killing a former employee of an ice cream company after the company wouldn't give Durham a refund on an ice cream truck he'd bought. Savvy negotiator that he is, Durham saw a long string of potentially cruel and unusual prison food in his future and made a delicious plea deal:

Durham agreed to plead guilty to murder -- but only if he could get a break from jail food. The judge agreed and granted Durham a feast of KFC chicken, Popeye's chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, carrot cake and ice cream.

After Wednesday's sentencing, Durham was to get the rest of the deal -- calzones, lasagna, pizza and ice cream, his defense attorney confirmed. They will pay the tab.

Fortunately for Durham, he won't have to walk the green mile, but he was able to get a hell of a meal out of the deal anyway. Just goes to show, no matter how dire the situation, it sometimes is possible to have your fried chicken and eat it, too.

Defendant trades murder plea for KFC, pizza [AP/CNN]
Final Meal Requests [Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice]

[Photo: jslander/flickr]

• Monsanto wants to sell their dairy hormone business, presumably to focus on their many other monopolies. [New York Times]

• The latest victim of unsafe food stuffs? Boy Scouts. [Washington Post]

• When will people learn that pre-made sandwiches are a Bad Thing? [Boston Globe]

• As New York goes, so goes LA: calorie counts might be added to the menus at Angeleno chains. [LA Times]

• Not necessarily food-related, but did you know that there were two unrelated tiger attacks in Missouri within the past week? TWO! [Detroit Free Press]

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (you know, the same folks who have been really pushing the trans fat regulation) released a report earlier this week on the calorie counts of kids' meals at fast food and casual chain restaurants. What the group found, not surprisingly, was that almost all kids' meals exceed the recommended 430 calories-per-meal limit.

“Parents want to feed their children healthy meals but America’s chain restaurants are setting parents up to fail,” said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan. “McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and other chains are conditioning kids to expect burgers, fried chicken, pizza, French fries, macaroni and cheese, and soda in various combination at almost every lunch and dinner.”

Besides being almost always too high in calories, 45 percent of the kids’ meals at the 13 chains studied by CSPI are too high in saturated and trans fat, and 86 percent are too high in sodium. That’s alarming, according to CSPI, because a quarter of children between the ages of five and ten show early signs of heart disease, such as high LDL (the “bad” cholesterol) or elevated blood pressure.

• Chili's country-fried chicken crispers with cinnamon apples and chocolate milk: 1020 calories
• Chili's cheese pizza, homestyle fries plus a lemonade: 1000 calories
• KFC's popcorn chicken, baked beans, biscuit, fruit punch, and Teddy Grahams: 940 calories
• BK's double cheeseburger (since when is that on the kids' menu?), fries and chocolate milk: 910 calories
• Sonic's grilled cheese, fries and a slushie: 830 calories

What's a parent to do? Well, for starters, steer clear of these restaurants, since the adult dishes are notoriously calorie-laden as well. Another idea: share your meal with the kids. It's a win-win situation really; you consume fewer calories, your kid gets something more interesting than the standard chicken nuggets and fries, and you save money. Nowhere is it written that children's diets need to consist solely of burgers, fries and unnaturally shaped pieces of fried chicken. They might even like sampling from the grown-up menu.

Option #3: go to Subway. The sandwich chain had the most nutritionally acceptable options for kids with juice boxes, apple slices, raisins and yogurt to accompany mini-subs.

Obesity on the Kids' Menus at Top Chains [CSPI]
Kids' Meals: Obesity on the Menu [CSPI]

Photo: AFP via ABC Australia

• Sara checks out happy hour at the View Bar at the Regent in Bal Harbour, where the food is good and the crowd is young and hip. [All Purpose Dark]

• Here's the first review of Cita's Italian Chophouse, and it's a good one. [Blind Mind]

• Danny provides photographic evidence of his meal at Choice Cafe, which looks amazing. [Daily Cocaine]

• Puerto Sagua Restaurant's Cuban comfort food hits the spot on Miami Beach. [FoodTastic!]

In a relationship as tenuous and charged as that between server and customer, it seems like almost any mistake can be plugged into the phrase, "there's nothing worse than..."

It's just that, when you're hungry and somebody else is controlling the flow of food to stomach, you're really in their power. They can make you squirm with an action as minor as leaving a plate up on the order window for an extra couple of minutes if they want to. Of course, you have a fair amount of financial power over them, too in the form of that gratuity you'll calculate at the end of the meal.

Even though we all know tipping is customary here in the U.S., sometimes it escapes the casual or infrequent diner just how important it is to the livelihood of the service staff. In a review of the new book based on the blog Waiter Rant, Wall Street Journal writer Moira Hodgson reminds us:

A lot of customers don't seem to know that waiters are rarely paid a proper salary. In New York, where the minimum wage is $7.15, they receive just $4.60 an hour, with the assumption that tips will make up the difference. Waiting on tables is a job where the compensation depends on the whim of the customer, and [author Steve]. Dublanica has been working for tips for the better part of a decade.

Most of us, especially frequent restaurant customers, know the importance of tipping and know that, even on an off-night, stiffing a server is a major transgression. Things happen in restaurant service. It's imprecise at best, and diners, especially those who have put in time on both sides of the notepad and white apron, usually understand this and make exceptions.

However, in these increasingly lean times, when people don't want to give up dining out altogether, at least one news source found they are cutting back not just in drink orders or frequency of nights out, but in tips. To which we say, "booooo." An article in the Harrisburg, Pa. Patriot News, picked up by Nation's Restaurant News, found servers and bartenders reported getting smaller tip percentages in addition to smaller total sales.

This is a travesty, and we know our readers would never think of fudging the tip, but what of the friend handling the bill when a group goes Dutch? What are your options if that person leaves a smaller-than-appropriate percentage on the bill?

Well, you can raise a polite stink, acting like the small gratuity was a group mistake and that all ought to cough up another dollar or so. But that's awkward. You can quietly slide a few more dollars into the check folder, but why should you be stuck making up for somebody else's bad manners?

Unfortunately, the thing to do, it seems, is to be just a bit gauche and either set about the tip calculation yourself, on behalf of the group, or chirp up about making sure not to forget the 20 percent. Sure, it's uncouth, but hey, so is splitting the check to begin with. And there's nothing worse than when that doesn't work out.

Take Your Own Damn Order [Wall Street Journal]
For restaurant workers, economy eats away at tips [Patriot-News via Nation's Restaurant News]
How to split the check? [Chowhound]

[Photo: via respres/flickr]

• California strawberries will be shipped to China for the first time ever for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics. [NYT]

• New at this Olympics: etiquette classes for all American athletes that include things like "don't spear food with your chopsticks." [WSJ]

• Food consumption at the athletes' village is insane: 9,000 bananas, 4,000 liters of cooking oil and three tons of rice per day. [China Daily]

• Health inspectors have been working overtime for months to make sure that China's food supply is safe for the athletes and visitors. [AFP]

• The Brazilian soccer team have decided to stay in the athletes' village (in the past, they've splurged for hotels and brought their own food), but are having a difficult time asking for menu changes. [Reuters]

Fans of Creolina's rejoice! John Tanasychuk at the Sun-Sentinel reports that the restaurant is definitely re-opening in Davie in September.

His new restaurant, Creolina’s Dixie Take Out, will be located at 13150 W. State Rd. 84 in the Randal Plaza. There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts and a McDonald's in the same plaza.

...

The house specialties—étouffée, jambalaya, beans and rice—will remain. But prices will be lower. Jambalaya was $8.95 a lunch and $12.95 at dinner. It will be $6.95 all day at the new Creolina’s.

The chef will also add classic Southern dishes, many of which he’s offered as specials. Look for country fried steak, chicken and dumplings, pulled pork and country-style ribs. Sides will includes corn bread, greens, black-eyed peas as well macaroni and cheese.

One of the particular objects in need of a good smuggling strategy, for us, is raw-milk brie. Not so much the question of storage (false-bottomed backpack, cheese wrapped in toweling), as the question of how on earth we would be able to keep ourselves from eating the entire freaking wheel before departing Country A, let alone entering Country B.

Well now the journey is a little bit shorter (though the temptation to consume en route is no less great): instead of having to haul in our illegal dairy products all the way from France and thereabouts, we can just take a quick hop and skip across the northern border: Hallelujah, Americans: Quebec has legalized raw-milk cheese!

Of course, it's not an unregulated free-for-all. To offset any potential health concerns, there are some restrictions being laid down:

Under the new rules, Quebec will require each cheesemaker to know his or her milk supplier personally, and to be knowledgeable about the dairy operation in question. As well, milk suppliers for this specialty segment of the market will be subjected to much higher standards of cleanliness than those imposed even on France's raw-milk cheese producers.

Quebec Legalizes Raw Milk Cheese; Many Americans Rejoice [Serious Eats]
Another good reason to say 'Cheese' [Montreal Gazette]

[Photo: raw brie (from Quebec!) via druckfehlerteufel's Flickr]

Even in the face of a shattering chapter seven bankruptcy, it looks like die-hard fans of Bennigans and Steak and Ale need not give in, entirely, to despair. The Orlando Business Journal reported Monday that two New York financial firms will be taking over management of the chains, and may spare them the wholesale liquidation that seemed almost certain:

Atalaya Capital Management LP and CRG Partners on July 31 told Orlando-based JRJ Restaurants Ltd., which operates two Central Florida Bennigan's restaurants, about the company's plans, JRJ Restaurants principal Tyrone Nabbie told Orlando Business Journal.

The firms said they plan to keep the franchise system's infrastructure intact in the wake of the Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing of the restaurant chain's parent company, S&A Restaurant Corp. and its affiliated companies, Nabbie said.

Rick Pastorek, president of BOL Inc. of Baton Rouge, which owns six Bennigan's in Louisiana and one in Memphis, Tenn., said Atalaya and CRG have had conference calls with franchisees, leaving him optimistic about the brand's future.

Report: Firms to take over Bennigan's franchise system [Orlando Business Journal]
Bennigan's franchise system taken over [Nation's Restaurant News]
Butters' Very Own Episode [Wikipedia]

[Image via Uncyclopedia]

There will, of course, be sushi and cocktails for those who aren't quite so flexible, and all of the bar proceeds will benefit the Boys and Girls Clubs of Miami-Dade. The party starts at 7 p.m. and is RSVP only; today's your last chance to call 305-864-3434 x105 to reserve a spot.

RA Sushi Grand Opening [All Purpose Dark]
RA Sushi [MenuPages]
RA Sushi [Official Site]

Photo, of the Viva Las Vegas roll at RA Sushi: jellybeanjill13/flickr

• A U.S. food aid shipment has arrived in North Korea; it's just one load out of 500,000 tons of food promised. [AP]

• Potato chip and french fry manufacturers are lowering their levels of acrylamide, a possible carcinogen, to avoid CA labeling laws. [LA Times]

• New food trend 1: Cafeteria theft! Fairfax, VA estimates it lost $1.2m to school-age fruit swipers. [WaPo]

• New food trend 2: Pharmacognosy. That'd be the study of naturally-derived medicines, like ginger, turmeric, etc. [MLive]

• Ted Allen's new TV show, "Food Detectives," isn't off to a promising start. Thank heaven for Alton reruns. [NYT]

A lot of great things come to mind when one thinks of Mexico, including the ancient Mayan ruins of the Yucatan, the blazing hot Mexico City rock scene, and some of the world's loveliest beaches. But one thing that may not have popped right into your head while viewing your mental Mexican highlight reel is our southern neighbors' penchant for enormous sandwiches.

Over the weekend, the BBC documented a torta fair in Mexico City where, for the second year in a row, torta makers from around the city have cooperated in making Latin America's longest sandwich. At 44 meters (48 yards), 600kg (1,320 lbs), and 30 ingredients, this year's behemoth beat out last year's by one meter. From the BBC:

"We broke our own record today," said Jose Antonio Arellano, a torta fair organiser.

The fair is aimed at boosting the torta which has taken a back seat to other fast food in recent years, Reuters notes.

Fair organisers expect more than 160,000 visitors during the fair and hope to sell upwards of 200,000 tortas.

However, the record for the world's longest sandwich currently resides with Taiwan, where a June 26 video by Diagonal View shows students creating a 1,874-foot monster. The nuclear submarine was skinny, though, weighing in at only 4,400 lbs.

Mexico, we call on you to accomplish a hat-trick of gigantic sandwichery by plucking the "world's longest" title from the hands (and mouths) of the Taiwanese. It will seal your place as the dominant sandwich power of the world, and will bring the title to North America, where we in the United States will eyeball it jealously over that big back fence, leading, hopefully to the most delicious competition yet joined by our two nations.

Mexico rustles up giant baguette [BBC]
World's Biggest Sandwich [Supersized Meals]
World's Longest Sandwich [Diagonal View]

[Photo: Finishing up the world's largest sandwich via Supersized Meals]

Quick. Glance at the new menu at Chef Allen's. What's the first thing that comes to mind? For us, we thought of Michael's Genuine Food & Drink — maybe it's just that the first word on the menu is "snacks," but the structure is similar. Once you get past the snacks section, you realize of course that the menus are completely different. But that's just the first thing that came to mind.

The most obvious difference between the old and new menus is the lack of a regular tasting menu. Perhaps the tasting menu had fallen out of favor with diners, or maybe it's a result of the economic slowdown; diners are less likely to splurge on a tasting menu. As far as prices go, Chef Allen has kept them very reasonable; the new streamlined menu likely helps to keep costs down.

The self-professed new focus is local, sustainable seafood, of which there's plenty on the menu. That said, there's also some non-local options like swordfish, Maine lobster and yellowfin tuna.

What do you think of the new menu?

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

There's plenty to deride in the American Beauty-Style love of trash that is London Bananas, but without that pretentious nonsense about "so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it," the straightforward exploration of discarded food-scraps leaves itself open to interpretation, either as a haunting study in urban isolation or, as one Boing Boing commenter put it, "a slapstick comedian conspiracy."

The "about" section is refreshingly brief and matter-of-fact: "I have lived in London, UK for about a year. When I arrived I noticed something straight away: there's a lot of banana skins around..." The site's creator soon got a camera and began photographing the skins, and by now hundreds of such photos make the site a way bigger time-suck than it has any right to be.

But you know there's something totally fascinating and hilarious about bananas. Why, it was just a little over a month ago that we tried to remind the world how funny these fruits naturally are. Back in 2002 Slate ran a whole essay on the question of which end of the banana is the correct starting point (we personally prefer the center-snap, as it keeps with the fruit's comedy background). It makes sense, then, that a site like London Bananas would have huge, um, a-peel, in spite of seemingly uninspiring subject matter.

Maybe there really is a whole lot of beauty in the world, but damned if we need Wes Bentley to lecture us on it.

London Bananas [Official Site]
Are You Peeling Bananas Wrong? [Slate]
Keeping Bananas Funny [MenuPages]
American Beauty [IMDB]

[Photo: Via London Bananas]

• Airplane food used to be fine china, silver, an extensive wine list, and good food. How times have changed! [NYT]

• A recent study reveals that the kids' meals at fast food chains are loaded with calories. Is anyone surprised? [AP/Philadelphia Inquirer]

• As leaner times continue, Whole Foods is trying to shake off the "Whole Paycheck" moniker. [NYT]

• On the plus side, this whole flailing economy thing means that the price of lobster is going down. Mysteriously, lobster consumption not rising either. [Boston Globe]

• All the news about the harms of corn syrup means that some consumers are starting to shy away from it. [LA Times]

Feeling frugal? Why don't you...

• ...buy cut-rate fruit? [MP: Boston]

• ...live off biscuits and gravy? [MP: Chicago]

• ...eat the amusingly named "steam-banger"? [MP: Philadelphia]

• ...spend some time at a cafe that doesn't frown upon nursing one coffee for hours? [MP: San Francisco]

• ...eat some dollar dollar burgers, y'all? [MP: South Florida]

La Marea is one of our favorite South Beach spots, so we'll definitely be checking out this Happy Hour, which includes $8 limoncello popsicle martinis, $5 beer & wine and a complimentary tapas sampler with the first round of drinks. TGIF!

La Marea [MenuPages]
La Marea [Official Site]

Sorry, folks. Though it is Friday and you were maybe expecting a movie, it's not happening today. We've interrupted the normal 2.5-minute end-of-week time-waster so that we may bring you this amazing story of intrigue, mystery and Michelin stars. From The Independent:

Pascal Henry, 46, a Swiss motorbike courier, set out in May to eat in every Michelin three-starred restaurant in the world – 68 restaurants in nine countries in 68 days. He had reached restaurant number 40: El Bulli on the Costa Brava, acclaimed as the finest restaurant on earth, when, after his dessert, but before paying his bill, he vanished.

On his table he left his hat, some photographs and a notebook signed by some of the finest chefs in the world listing all the dishes that he had eaten so far.

That was just after midnight on 13 June. Since then nothing has been heard of him. His bookings in the remaining 28 restaurants have not been taken up. He was due to return to work this week. He has not appeared.

The last supper: mystery of the Swiss motorbike courier [The Independent]

[Photo: via jaqian/flickr]

We were just going through some Herald stories and found one we'd missed from earlier this week about the murder of one of the Che Sopranos Pizza & Pasta owners. Maximiliano DeVita, who founded the Italian-Argentine restaurants with his brother Leandro, was killed after a dispute with an 80-year-old neighbor.

DeVita owned a unit at 7625 Harding Ave. in North Beach, and recently rented it to a new tenant.

[Orlando] Alonso, who neighbors said had a history of harassing residents, refused to allow the tenant to move in, DeVita's friends and family said.

The new tenant called DeVita to complain. His wife, Valeria DeVita, dropped her husband off at the apartment while delivering food to clients Friday night.

''DeVita knocked on [Alonso's] door in order to talk to him about harassing his tenant,'' according to a Miami Beach police report.

Alonso, a retiree with no criminal past in Florida, grabbed his .38 caliber revolver and answered the door.

He later told police that DeVita ``began insulting him verbally.''

According to police, Alonso walked away, tossed the gun on the sofa and put on a pair of shorts.

But DeVita continued insulting him, Alonso said, making him so angry he picked the gun back up.

He squeezed off one round, according to police. ``He observed Mr. DeVita dropped to the walkway and [Alonso] shut the front door and purposely did not call 911.''

All three Che Sopranos locations are staying open despite the tragedy.

Condo clash ends in killing [Miami Herald]
Che Sopranos Pizza & Pasta [MenuPages]
Che Sopranos Pizza & Pasta [Official Site]

• Shockingly, Miller Lite's craft beers were not so successful. [Chicago Tribune]

• Are there are too many blueberry growers? And if so, could Whole Foods stop charging four bucks for a pint? [Boston Globe]

• Congressman John Dingell thinks that this whole salmonella probe could have been over and done with quite some time ago, calls the whole situation "Keystone Kops." How your sausage gets made, people. [LA Times]

• The World Food Program has resumed emergency operations in North Korea. [Washington Post]

• A new pill may be able to fool your muscles into thinking you've exercised. May we suggest the brand name Lazify? [New York Times]