We're going to depart, today, from our usual Friday movie, so that we can give a nod to the ongoing Sandwich Duel, in the New Yorker's Cartoon Lounge. Yesterday's entry was especially entertaining because it was all about New York Times restaurant critic (and birthday boy) Frank Bruni, who we read all the time. And it's hilarious. Like this part:

You’re not going to impress Frank Bruni by making a sandwich. The guy has eaten Emeril’s muffuletta, out of Emeril’s hand. The guy has had the big important pastrami thing at Katz’s. He has been to Foxington Whiddle, Sandwich, Northumberland, where the sandwich was invented, and he has had his picture taken in the exact spot, in the ruins, where the Earl of Sandwich took the first bite of the first sandwich. You can’t just “make” Frank a sandwich. So I didn’t.

I set down a clean white plate with a small music-box motor in the center. Frank set the guitar upright in the deep grass and pulled his chair to the table.

“Interesting,” he said, almost too quickly. “They’re doing something like this at Adria’s this season.”

I smiled politely. “No, they’re not,” I thought.

[The Cartoon Lounge: Sandwich Duel, Part 19 [New Yorker]
Happy 44th Birthday Frank Bruni [Eat Me Daily]

Meat Market, the new venture from the folks from Touch, is having a soft opening this weekend before its official opening sometime later next week. Sean Brasel, the former executive chef at Touch, will be manning the kitchen, which will, naturally, focus on the meat. The menu, which is available sans prices on the restaurant's website (we've called for one a few times, but each time have been told that the final menu isn't set yet) seems more interesting than the average steakhouse, thankfully. Check out the house specialties:

• Tropical braised fatty brisket with coconut, mango, Cuban sweet potatoes and wild mushrooms
• Kobe skirt steak with lemongrass, ginger, and roasted local chili
• Buffalo tenderloin steak with chili, espresso and bittersweet chocolate mole butter
• Wild African pheasant with tamari and braised chicory

Sounds tasty. Check it out this weekend; the restaurant is open for dinner only.

Meat Market [Official Site]

• Harrowing Halloween cocktails! [MP: Boston]

• Bloodcurdling butt sizes! [MP: Chicago]

• Eerie economic times for restaurateurs! [MP: Philadelphia]

• Shocking "screaming orgasm" salads! [MP: San Francisco]

• Spine-chilling snakes! [MP: South Florida]

• Tere enjoys lunch at the FIU Hospitality Management Dining Room, where she tries frog legs for the first time. [FoodTastic!]

• Jan writes about the new Apron's Cooking School at a Boca Raton Publix. [Jan Norris]

• Happy National Candy Corn Day! Natalie provides a little history. [Natalie's Nibbles]

• Gail provides a Halloween recipe for fried tarantulas that seems serious. I'm a pretty adventurous eater, but I think I'd have to draw the line at that one. [Short Order]

• Last night's Iron Fork in text ... [Chowhound]

• ... and in images. [Short Order]

• Burger King's profits have risen 2% in the last quarter. Yay? [Washington Post]

• Also on the rise: diabetes, probably due to obesity! [Boston Globe]

• The former CEO of the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant is now facing federal charges for hiring illegal immigrants. [New York Times]

• A Texas man was jailed after refusing to pay for his meal at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Classiest dine and dash ever! [AP]

• What's tainted today? Animal feed! [Chicago Tribune]

As Election Day nears (only four more days!!), it seems like most people we know are living on a figurative diet of electoral projections. From the sophisticated (like FiveThirtyEight or Real Clear Politics) to the intensely simplified and straightforward (as in the case of How Is Obama Doing), there is really no shortage of corners of the web for people to stay on top of political polls.

But! In case you were worried about the soundness or veracity of these polls &mdash both in terms of methodology and outcome &mdash 7-Eleven, Culver's Custard, and Domino's have all got you covered. After the jump, some very important data, factoids, research methods, and maps!

First up, 7-Eleven! As you can see from the map pictured directly below, by 7-Eleven's projections, Barack Obama is the sure winner:

7-Eleven conducted its poll by inviting customers to vote with their cups (exactly what it sounds like). As you can see on the map, many typically red states do not have 7-Eleven stores, which has likely skewed the data in favor of Barack Obama. Furthermore, there is no limit to the number of votes, so an especially ardent Obama supporter could go in several times a day, purchasing coffee in a blue cup each time. On the other hand, per the "Fun Facts" section of the 7-Eleven site, their "George W. Bush cup outsold Al Gore's cup by just 1 percentage point." Also, "the 2004 7-Eleven results tracked identically with published national election results," so, there you have it?

Meanwhile, Culver's Custard has "Reese E. Buttercup" (John McCain) and "Heath Toffeebits" (Obama) going head to head, and here's what those results looks like:

For clarity, the two "candidates" are ice cream sundaes, and although the Obama stand-in is winning, is it possible that this has less to do with politics than with deliciousness?

Finally, Domino's. (If you'd like an image, we recommend clicking through to the post about it on Pollster.) This poll was less about political projections, and more about pizza preferences tied to political parties (sidebar: check out that alliteration!). Among other things, they found that:

Republicans spend more money per order and use credit cards more than other consumers. They also like specialty pizzas more than most and are most likely to order online. Republicans are also more likely to pick up their pizzas.

Democrats are more likely to pay with cash and like more variety with their orders, more often adding side items and beverages when ordering pizza.

Ready to turn away from FiveThirtyEight or CNN now?

"Coffee and Custard Polls Swing Towards Obama" [The Food Section]
"On Pizza and Politics" [Pollster]

South Florida is getting a new Brazilian steakhouse: Fogo de Chão, which opens tonight for dinner on Miami Beach. This is the Brazil-based chain's 12th location in the US. Given South Floridians' affinity for rodizio, it's surprising that it took the company so long to open a Miami location. Then again, perhaps they were worried about entering an already-saturated market. Do not fear, Fogo de Chão; our appetite for red meat down here never ends.

The restaurant is open for dinner only at the moment; lunch service will begin on Monday, November 3. Lunch and dinner cost $26.50 and $46.50 respectively, and that includes the usual: endless meat and as much as you like from the large salad bar. Those who want just the salad bar pay $19.50.

Fogo de Chao [MenuPages]
Fogo de Chao [Official Site]

Photo: Haroldo Kennedy/flickr

In these lean times, almost any expense can be hard to justify, especially spending more than necessary on food. This, obviously, makes it hard for restaurants that sell anything fancier than a Big Mac to stay in business.

So what's a struggling eatery to do? Clearly, the answer is to practically give the food away and hope things get better. We've seen a couple reports lately of restaurants offering real, legitimate, non-big-mac meals for less than $1. This keeps customers walking through your door, and, hopefully, buying more expensive stuff once they have money again.

You may have noticed in yesterday's FYI the item about the Spanish restaurant offering an "anti-crisis" lunch for one euro. There was also an item on Marketplace the other day about the Four Crosses pub, outside Birmingham, England, where they're offering full pub meals for a pound, a deal that instantly brought in customers by the hundreds.

The manager is happy. He says his booze sales are up five-fold since he introduced the credit crunch menu. Many similar promotions are expected around Britain in the coming months.

We've heard of fewer such offers stateside (the one in the photo notwithstanding). Ironically, New York City's Gray's Papaya chain recently raised the price on their ever-popular recession special--two dogs and a drink. Of course, they don't serve booze, a luxury on which few seem hard-pressed to splurge when the going gets tough.

Spanish restaurant launches 'anti-crisis' lunch menu for one euro [China Daily]
British economy shrinking fast [Marketplace]
Gray's Papaya [MenuPages]

Photo: Via Reverend Andy/flickr]

• Lee Klein heads back to the revamped Chef Allen'sand finds it better than ever. [Miami New Times]

• The Herald does a tour of the Middle East without leaving Miami-Dade and offers a list of spots to get good shawarma and falafel. [Miami Herald]

• As long as you understand that you don't go to Marumi Sushi for a California roll and are willing to try something new, you'll have a great meal. [Broward-Palm Beach New Times]

• Head to Paquito's for a Day of the Dead feast this weekend. [Miami Herald]

• The Herald's Broward roundup goes on a tour of east Asian eateries. [Miami Herald]

• Go to Nunzio's in Palm Springs and get the veal parmigiana. It's a chop, instead of a cutlet, and from the review, it sounds excellent. [Palm Beach Post]

• Go ahead and act like a kid at Bulk Candy Store in West Palm, where you can get as much retro candies as you like. [Palm Beach Post]

• A panel of scientists has come out with a report pretty much tearing the FDA a new one over its ruling that bispenol-A is safe. [NYT]

• A restaurant in Hamburg, NY was closed after officials discovered staff had butchered road kill in the sink. [CBS/AP]

• Golfer John Daly was found drunk and unconscious outside a North Carolina Hooters. [LA Times]

• Melamine turns out to be a somewhat common additive to Chinese animal feed, a practice the Chinese press called an "open secret." [AP/Chicago Tribune]

• The original Starbucks team is back in charge, but could the "back to basics" company turnafound be too little, too late?. [NY Times]

The baseball season may end tonight when Game 5 of the World Series resumes. The Phillies and Rays were tied at two after five-and-a-half innings on Monday when rain forced them to stop playing. The Phillies, up three games to one in the series, could win it all tonight. Here's hoping the Rays can stay alive (though fans in Philly may disagree).

In addition to great pitching and defense, the teams have another thing in common: both hail from cities (or in the Rays' case regions) renowned for their excellent treatments of pork in sandwich form. Why Philadelphia is known more for its cheesesteaks than its mouthwatering roast pork sandwich (with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone) is beyond me. Tampa claims to be the home of the Cuban sandwich — though that's disputed — and restaurants there make some of the best versions of the sandwich in the country.

Why not toast to your preferred team with a roast pork or Cuban sandwich? If you're up for spending some time in the kitchen, check out this recipe for an Italian roast pork sandwich Tony Luke's-style. As for the Cuban sandwich, follow the Three Guys From Miami's instructions, and then add a layer of salami to make it a true Tampa-style cubano.

Not up for cooking? Here in South Florida, there's no shortage of Cuban sandwiches. Head to the nearest Latin American Cafeteria to pick up a sandwich, and in the comfort of your own home, where there are no Miami Cubans to gasp in horror, add a few slices of salami to make it Tampa authentic. Philly roast pork sandwiches are a bit harder to find, although Philly Steak Sub Shop in Miramar offers a pork sub with broccoli. Of course, there's always the cheesesteak: try Spanky's Cheesesteak Factory or Philly Connection.

Tony Luke's Italian Roast Pork Sandwich [Recipezaar]
Sandwich Cubano [Three Guys From Miami]

Tony Luke's [MenuPages]
Latin American Cafeteria [MenuPages]
Philly Steak Sub Shop [MenuPages]
Spanky's Cheesesteak Factory [MenuPages]
Philly Connection [MenuPages]

Photos: tumbebunny/flickr and bueller2/flickr

A restaurant chain in the UK is offering a python curry for Halloween this week:

Tracey Kitchener-Kemp, Managing Director of Tootsies, said: “It may sound like a trick but it’s definitely a treat. Hallowe'en is a great time of year to do something a little different, and we’ve had huge amounts of fun creating a dish that can be enjoyed by both our adult and junior guests alike.

“We’re always looking to be innovative with our menus and python is certainly the most original ingredient we have ever worked with. Those who dare to give it a go will be very pleasantly surprised.”

Tootsies said the python had been sourced from a specialist meat supplier.

Tootsies puts snake curry on the menu [Big Hospitality]
Eat Lionfish, Save The Reefs [MP: South Florida]

Photo, of a Burmese python in Big Cypress: piccolo.drago/flickr

When Helen at MP: Chicago posted about an 80 percent discount on Restaurant.com dining certificates, I was a bit skeptical. It basically seemed too good to be true. Normally, these $25 certificates are sold for $10 on the site, but if you enter the discount code "TREATS" during checkout, you get 80 percent off your purchase. That's right — essentially you can get a $25 certificate for $2. That's insane.

A little research was in order. Cacao Restaurant was the first high-end restaurant that popped up on the Miami list, and a $200 certificate for tasting menus for the parents as a Christmas gift came to mind. A call to the restaurant revealed a few restrictions though: you can't use the certificate for lunch, and only one $25 certificate is allowed per table. So the tasting menu is out. Still, it's not a bad deal.

The list of participating restaurants in the area is fairly long. In the Miami area, there's Bella Cuba, Porcao Churrascaria, Canela Cafe, Mykonos and a bunch of others. Palm Grille, Pesca and Sage French Cafe in Fort Lauderdale all participate, as do Jake's Stone Crab Restaurant, Six Tables and El Chamol in Palm Beach County. Just go to the site and plug in your zip code, and a list of restaurants should pop up. The certificates don't come without restrictions, so definitely call the restaurant before you go.

Recession Special: Eat Fancy For $2!!! [MP: Chicago]
Restaurant.com Gift Certificates [Official Site]

It's not exactly restaurant-related, but we were still fascinated by the howstuffworks article linked on Cold Mud today, detailing the history of why we're so terrified of strangers poisoning our children's Halloween candy. Did you know most such cases turned out to be frauds, perpetrated by the parents themselves? Disturbing:

There have been at least two confirmed deaths linked to tainted Halloween candy, but strangers didn't cause them. In a 1970 case, family members sprinkled a 5-year-old child's candy with heroin to hide the fact that he'd gotten into his uncle's drug stash. In the other case, which occurred in 1974, a man named Ronald Clark O'Bryan of Houston, Texas, laced his son's candy with cyanide and the child died. The motive was a big insurance policy that O'Bryan had taken out on his son. To make the poisoning appear random, O'Bryan also poisoned his daughter's candy and the candy of three other children. None of them ate it, however. He was eventually convicted of murder and died by lethal injection.

[Photo: Via rochelle et. al./flickr]

• Calorie counting is back, or so says The New York Times. Didn't realize it had ever really fallen out of favor. [NYT]

• The LA Times editorial board calls for all food from China to be tested for melamine. Here's a better idea in the meantime: if a food product says "made in China," place it back on the shelf. [LA Times]

• Environmentalists are urging the FDA to re-evaluate the agency's position on bisphenol A, which is found in most plastics and has been deemed safe in small quantities. [AP]

• A woman who's had a bit too much to drink gets on a mechanical bull at Johnny Utah's in New York. Now she's suing the restaurant for causing some injuries (which are unspecified) by allowing her to a) get on the bull drunk and b) cranking up the speed to get her to fall off. Isn't that the point? Someone please dismiss this case. [Newsday]

• A restaurant in Gijon in northern Spain is offering a one-euro recession special lunch menu that sounds like an amazing deal: seafood soup, ribs with rice or chicken or anchovies with a salad, bread, dessert, and a drink. According to a manager, the restaurant isn't losing money, but it's not making any either. [China Daily]

At Hops Grillhouse & Brewery, kids eat free all day every Tuesday with a paying adult. The kids have to order from the kids' menu, and the adult must order an entree. At two kids for every paying adult, that's not a bad deal.

Hops Grillhouse & Brewery [MenuPages]

Andu Restaurant & Lounge [MenuPages]
Andu Restaurant & Lounge [Official Site]

Everyone's all abuzz today over the launch of MTVMusic.com — a massive repository of basically every music video ever made. We are particularly psyched because there are many many awesome food-related music videos (and songs!) that really get our juices going. Please rock out on these for the remainder of the day.

Bjork's "Venus as a Boy" — quite possibly the best use of a fried egg since "this is your brain on drugs."

Three more classics (including a fearsome man-burger hybrid, a life-size chicken, and millions of peaches) after the jump!

ZZ Top's "Burger Man": The tale of a common, everyday man who falls into a pit of toxic sludge and becomes a burger-shaped quasi-monster. Bonus: Hot chicks on spaceships!

Most people don't realize that POTUS's "Peaches" is not a weird novelty rock song; rather, it is actually a thinly-veiled critique of the anti-locavore movement:

Cibo Matto's "Know Your Chicken." Starring Man, Woman, and Chicken!

Millions of other music videos (okay, tens of thousands) are at mtvmusic.com.

Be afraid, college students and the creative underclass. Be very afraid. No, it's not because jobs are drying up faster than ramen noodles to an unwashed pan. It's not because you'll never get another student loan again, and Sallie Mae will send a death-squad to your house to collect on the current one. It's not even because this is the year you realize waiting tables is going to be the highest-paid job you've ever had (provided you get paid, that is).

You should be afraid, underpaid people, because the latest product to fall victim to a contamination scare is none other than the staple of your diet, Cup Noodles.

Okay, so we're being a touch dramatic. But still, most of the half-million cups of freeze-dried noodles recalled Friday over fears they were contaminated by insecticide had already been sold in Tokyo-area stores, according to Asia Pacific News Service:

The product was made at a Nissin factory in Japan. A series of previous scares have involved food imported from China.

The health office said on inspecting the Cup Noodle they had discovered paradichlorobenzene, the key chemical in bug repellent, but no puncture or other abnormality in the cup.

Nissin was voluntarily recalling around 500,000 cups made on the same factory line the same day, a company spokesman said.

They were sold at supermarkets in Tokyo and neighbouring areas with most of them already gone from store shelves, he said.

For the rest of us, let's just marvel at how darned many cups of noodles must enter the world in a day. If one production line of one factory cranked out 500,000 of them, and the company has 29 factories worldwide, according to its website... We don't know how many production lines are in each factory, but still, that's a whole freaking lot of Cup Noodles.

Fortunately, for you, and ironically unfortunately for Nissin, the immense popularity of Cup Noodles and similar products has led to a sizable trend of ramen restaurants popping up in cities all over the United States. It may not be the $0.50 meal you're used to from the cup, but trust us, a bowl of ramen at O Noodle Shop will at least be a lot tastier and better for you than anything freeze-dried.

Japan's Nissin recalls 500,000 noodles over insecticide fears [Asia Pacific News Service]
Nissin Foods [Official Site]
O Noodle Shop [MenuPages]
O Noodle Shop [Official Site]

[UPDATE: As L2M noted in the comments, O Noodle Shop is closed. So don't go there for ramen noodles. You will not find any.]

[Photo: Via Mappi 1322]

Chef Jeff McInnes is a busy guy. The chef de cuisine at DiLido Beach Club in the Ritz-Carlton is on the next season of Top Chef (which begins airing on Wednesday, November 12). Aside from his day job, he's got all of the press activities for Top Chef, plus he's working on a cookbook that he's "praying will be out in December."

I caught up with him at one of these press activities, where I managed to monopolize his time for 10 minutes. The Bravo publicity folks were milling about, ready to swoop in the moment they saw someone pull out a notebook, so we talked mostly of non-Top Chef-related things. (The one thing he was allowed to tell me: It was "exciting" and a "great experience.") Like how so much of the dining scene in Miami is shifting from South Beach to Brickell and the Design District. About his stages in Egypt, Istanbul and the Greek Isles which influence the way he cooks at DiLido. So the food has a Mediterranean bent, although he steers clear of Italian, since so many others on Lincoln Road do it. And we talked about the five farms throughout the state from which he buys produce. He even found a local farm — The Little Farm in Goulds, which is "like a petting zoo, but they kill the animals" — to supply him with goat cheese.

In between presentations, televisions blared Top Chef promos for the upcoming season. Not one featured McInnes, which makes me think he's either told to pack his knives and go in an early episode, or he quietly stays out of drama and just gets the job done. After spending 10 minutes talking to him, I'm inclined to believe the latter. He came off as soft-spoken and friendly, and just didn't seem the type to get involved in drama. Think the anti-Howie Kleinberg.

As McInnes is the only local chef in this year's competition, we're squarely in his corner. Go Jeff!

DiLido Beach Club [MenuPages]
DiLido Beach Club [Official Site]
Top Chef [Official Site]

• Various big names in the retail food business are voluntarily adding easily visible nutritional icons to their packaging. [NYTimes]

• Wal-Mart removed some Chinese eggs from their shelves. You guessed it — melamine! [AP/SF Chron]

• ... but the World Health Organization just announced that Chinese eggs are a-okay. Unless you eat, like, twenty a day. [AFP]

• The original Slow Food conference opened yesterday in Turin, Italy, and is drawing comparisons to the Olympics. [SF Chron]

• Vermont (yes, the state) has set up speed-dating sessions between its local farmers and various buyers — supermarkets, restaurants, colleges, etc. In our humble opinion, this is the cutest thing ever. [AP/WaPo]

The idea of recycling kitchen grease into diesel fuel is probably not news by now, but grease is certainly not the only by-product of food production produced by commercial kitchens. Can we find an alternate disposal method, then, for things like cans and utensils? How about art projects? Boing Boing Gadgets has hit on an artist in London who is doing just that. Check it:

Giant skull made out of kitchen utensils [Boing Boing]

[Photo: Via Boing Boing]

The Original Pancake House [MenuPages]
The Original Pancake House [Official Site]

Photo: Debora Ayoub

Get ready for sticker shock. Prices have skyrocketed for February's South Beach Wine and Food Festival. That Grand Tasting for which you paid $187 last year? (And $137 in 2007?) It's $212.50 now. And that's pretty standard for the big ticket events, most of which went up by about $50. Still, Lee Brian Schrager, the man in charge of it all, expects sellouts.

''I don't know if even I would be spending that kind of money right now,'' says Schrager. ``But we feel our audience will pay it. It's good value for the money.''

Food fest tickets: cough up the dough [Miami Herald]
South Beach Wine and Food Festival [Official Site]

The weekend's food news seems to have been dominated by the eminently disgusting story of the family that is accusing an Australian hotel of intentionally serving them a particularly unsanitary bowl of complimentary ice cream.

We don't want to help proliferate that story (well, not any more than we just did), but we mention it because it served as a pretty perfect comic backdrop to Slashfood's Saturday list of decent foods with dirty-sounding names. Some, like spotted dick, just come naturally, while others, like buttered crumpet, are really only funny because you're already thinking dirty. But for some reason, this variety is so funny.

It was such a relief to find something so innocently juvenile among all the true reports about people acting as rotten and petty as they do in that hotel story. The way we read it, it seems the family was nasty to the waitstaff, the staff reciprocated in kind with a nasty prank, and now each side has lawyers to be professionally nasty to each other.

In that context, wouldn't it be nice if the grossest thing you had to think about all day was the middle-school interpretation of the name, "Fluffernutter?"

Pub accused of serving ice cream contaminated with human excrement [Telegraph UK]
Spotted Dick and other foods that sound dirty but aren't [Slashfood]

[Photo: Via Cupcake Girls]

• Here's a recap, in text, of the Chowhound Chowdown at Paradigm on Friday. [Chowhound]

• And here it is in photos. [Chadzilla]

• The food is still great at Forte di Asprinio, but it was deserted on Friday night. Uh-oh. [Chowhound]

• The Upper Eastside Greenmarket is back! Found so far: stone crabs, baked goods and persimmons. [Chowhound]

• The beers have gone up a dollar at Zeke's on Lincoln Road, from $3 to $4. [Riptide 2.0]

• Lee Klein tells of his experience at the Miami International Wine Fair. [Short Order]

• A grim reminder that the financial crisis is about so much more than jobs, foreclosed homes, and retirement funds: it's also calamitous news for the global food crisis. [WaPo]

• On the plus side... potatoes? Cheap and less subject to market fluctuations than grains, they are a promising solution to global hunger. Just don't tell the Irish, circa 1850, mkay? [NYT]

• Oh, China. Although it's fun to write out sentences like "another day, another melamine contamination disaster!" at this point, we'd rather hear that all is A-OK with your food supply. Sadly, this time, it's a melamine-tainted egg scare. [AP]

• Crazy weather patterns in Europe = ideal mushroom growing conditions. Okay, global warming. You win this round. [Chicago Tribune]

• The Massachusetts Oyster Project is sowing oysters in the Charles River for the purposes of water clean-up. Neat idea, even though it means they will be off limits for nomming (pollutants and all). [Boston Globe]

There's no accounting for why we're so obsessed with finding old Sesame Street videos on YouTube, but for some reason this week has been all about digging up old clips of that "falling baker." Remember him? He'd come out of the kitchen with a pile of messy treats in whatever number they were singing about, announce them, then promptly fall down? Worked for us when we were five, and apparently our sense of humor hasn't matured one bit.

On this lazy Friday, please enjoy the number 10. If you have time to kill, click through to the video page, and you'll see nos. 1 through 9, as well. Chuckles all around.

Just got word that Meat Market, the new steakhouse from the people who were in charge of Touch, will be opening in the old Pacific Time spot on November 3. No news yet on the menu, which hasn't been finalized yet, but expect lots of red meat. Chef Sean Brasel will be heading up the kitchen, just as he did at Touch.

Touch [Official Site]

• What do a Boston-area restaurant and a bookmarking site have in common? Confusing names. [MP: Boston]

• If you want to make Alinea's smoked paprika taffy at home, you'd better plan ahead. [MP: Chicago]

• As Philly anxiously awaits the outcome of this year's World Series, they snack on pretzels and mustard. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Celebratory dinners with group checks are the worst. Even worse than the worst? When your go-to restaurant for such shindigs closes. [MP: San Francisco]

• You know who could use a bailout? Miami restaurateurs. [MP: South Florida]

Chef Johnny Vinczencz of Johnny V is responding to the economic crisis by opening a casual and inexpensive restaurant in the old Louie Louie Italian Bistro spot on Las Olas, according to the Sun-Sentinel's food blog. No item on the American comfort food menu will cost more than $20. The opening date is set for November 12.

Johnny V to open second restaurant [Sup]
Johnny V [MenuPages]
Johnny V [Official Site]

• Apparently October is also National Dessert Month. Natalie writes all about tiramisu. [