MenuPages

• It's really very easy to try traditional Irish food in Boston. [MP: Boston]

• This Chicago burger has four pieces of bread buttressing it. [MP: Chicago]

• Only Philly would host an event called "Scrapplefest!". [MP: Philadelphia]

• Wine dinners are even better when you live in the best state for vino. [MP: San Francisco]

• Meanwhile, Miami is just plain wild. [MP: South Florida]

• Local restaurant staff CAN SEE THE FUTURE! [MP:Boston]

• Hot dog and lobster roll produce NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN HYBRID OFFSPRING! [MP:Chicago]

• Foie gras for $5? BELIEVE YOUR EYES! [MP:Philadelphia]

• Do you have fancy mixed cocktails IN YOUR HOME AT THIS VERY MOMENT? [MP:San Francisco]

• Jobless swarm to free meals like ZOMBIES ON ATTACK! [MP:South Florida]

Q: Hey, MP: Boston, should you eat the eggs of a chicken right alongside its mother?
A: No. That's gross.

Q: MP: Chicago, who orders the caviar staircase at TRU?
A: Pretty much no one.

Q: Yo, MP: Philadelphia, do you think Philadelphians will buy frozen cheesesteaks?
A: Nope, but the rest of you suckers might!

Q: MP: San Francisco, are younger diners discriminated against in high-end restaurants?
A: Yeah they are!

Q: MP: South Florida, how much butter is in a single serving of butter chicken?
A: One stick.

MP: San Francisco writes about a local pizzeria that's taken its bad Yelp reviews and put them on employees' t-shirts. Now, of course, that everyone's heard about it, the fake bad reviews are popping up, as people try to get their words on the shirts.

Delfina Baiting: Fake Bad Yelp Reviews [MP: San Francisco]

A MenuPages taste test concludes that Starbucks' new instant coffee, called VIA, is not too bad at all. It comes in two varieties: Colombian or Italian roast. Get all the details over at MP: Chicago.

The MenuPages Taste Test: Starbucks VIA Instant Coffee [MP: Chicago]

• Don't diss Beantown burgers. [MP: Boston]

• A cupcake full of alcohol is always a good idea. [MP: Chicago]

• If you have $17.50 to spare, you should probably spend it on grilled offal. [MP: Philadelphia]

• If you raise a ruckus at one Berkeley taqueria, the owners will not suffer your foolishness kindly. [MP: San Francisco]

• Why not leave the big bad city behind and start your own truffle farm? One Coral Gables restaurant owner recently decided to do just that. [MP: South Florida]

• Try out for the Food Network's Amazing Race knockoff! [MP: Boston]

• Represent Arab food at Taste of Chicago! [MP: Chicago]

• Leave us an aggressively shilly review! [MP: Philadelphia]

• Start a web series about your local food scene! [MP: San Francisco]

• Hype your restaurant as being "off the beaten path!" [MP: South Florida]

• A prescription for the single and drunk. [MP: Boston]

• A heartfelt letter of appreciation for one departing food writer. [MP: Chicago]

• An anti-anti-Valentine's Day polemic. [MP: Philadelphia]

• A guide to Valentine's Day for hippies. [MP: San Francisco]

• An overview of some couples dining options for the rich folks of Palm Beach. [MP: South Florida]

The long list of nominees for this year's James Beard Awards is out, and a handful of South Florida restaurants and chefs made the initial cut. The list will be trimmed to five nominees per category on March 23 in time for the May 4 event. Here are the local spots doing South Florida proud:

• Best New Restaurant: Sra Martinez

• Outstanding Wine Service: Palme D'Or

• Outstanding Service: Palme D'Or

• Best Chef, South: Zach Bell of Cafe Boulud, Edgar Leal of Cacao Restaurant, Dean James Max of 3030 Ocean, Douglas Rodriguez of Ola, Philippe Ruiz of Palme D'Or, and Michael Schwartz of Michael's Genuine Food & Drink.

For the full press release and list of nominees, check out the report from MP: Boston.

Beard Awards Long List Released: Did Your Favorite Chef Make The Cut? [MP: Boston]
James Beard Foundation [Official Site]

MP: Philadelphia did some research and found 14 egregious ripoffs of either the Pinkberry or Red Mango names. Locally, we've got Blissberry and Red Kiwi, but check out the list of other copycats all over the country.

The Multitude Of Pinkberry And Red Mango Imitators [MP: Philadelphia]
Blissberry [Official Site]
Red Kiwi [MenuPages]

The new Butterfinger Buzz tastes like a regular Butterfinger, but watch out: it's loaded with sugar and caffeine, reports MP: Chicago. Beware of fluttery blinking and an inability to focus.

Butterfinger Buzz: The Caffeinated Candy Bar [MP: Chicago]

MP: Chicago reports on the New York Observer's decision to stop running restaurant reviews for financial reasons and the demise of newspaper restaurant criticism in general. So, declining ad revenue, no editorial support, and a lack of any anonymity these days means the outlook is not good for restaurant reviews printed on dead tree. It's a sad state of affairs.

The Increasingly Perilous State of Old-School Restaurant Criticism [MP: Chicago]

MP: San Francisco reports on a new feature in its recently released dating guides: suggestions for the best places to break up with your significant other. The guides suggest to look for a comfortable and crowded restaurant where said significant other would be less likely to make a scene. And being near public transit is a good idea for a quick exit. Coconut Grove might be a good place to start; even if he/she were to make a scene, chances are the drunk co-eds from UM are making an even bigger one.

Where To Dump Your Date In SF [MenuPages: San Francisco]
New York City Dating (& Dumping) Guide [Zagat]

[Photo: Via Zagat]

MP: Philadelphia reports that not only are cupcakes more popular than ever here, but they are also now spreading to Europe; it appears that the Italians love the whimsical miniature cakes.

Craving cupcakes? Check yesterday's post about where to find one locally.

Cupcakes: Just Becoming More Popular [MP: Philadelphia]
The Cupcake Explosion [MP: South Florida]

Merge "serve" and "serenity" and you get: Servinity, an internet startup with a name that straddles the line between catchy and cheesy. The site itself seems incredibly useful — it's a job posting outlet and scheduling application all rolled into one, born from the frustration of an Atlanta bar owner who had to use multiple websites and means of communication to recruit and schedule his staff. From the Atlanta Business Journal:

The software-as-a service company leverages the Internet, e-mail, cell phone, SMS text messaging and social networks to help restaurants and bars schedule staffing — notifying employees when to be at work, or alerting them when a shift opens up. Servinity also allows eateries to recruit via a job board and offers dynamic resume search and applicant tracking. The social networking component allows staff to interact and upload and share documents.

There is a fee, of course: $100 per month for employers. These days, I'm not sure how many restaurants would be willing to take on that extra expense, especially when they can post for free on Craigslist. That scheduling application might be worth the money for some disorganized restaurants though. Of course, restaurateurs would have to embrace technology, and judging from the state of some local restaurants' websites, that is unlikely to happen.

Attorney launches restaurant staffing site [Atlanta Business-Journal]
Servinity [Official Site]

MP: Chicago reports that Starbucks is planning to offer some "breakfast pairings" at discounted prices that sound quite a bit like value meals. It seems McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts have both been attracting increasing numbers of coffee consumers; Starbucks' earnings were down 10 percent last quarter and 8 percent the quarter before that.

Starbucks Planning To Offer Value Menu? [MP: Chicago]

Photo: d'n'c/flickr

Adam over at MP: San Francisco reports that OpenTable, the place to make your restaurant reservations online, is going public and hoping to raise $40 million with the IPO. This would be a big deal in the restaurant world at any time, but it's an especially big deal now — the last time any company went public was in August.

OpenTable is really easy to use with MenuPages. Say you're checking out the menu at Table 8. See the "reserve online" link just below the restaurant's phone number? One click will take you right to Table 8's OpenTable page, where you can plug in the time and date you want and make the reservation.

OpenTable Goes Public [MP: San Francisco]
Table 8 [MenuPages]
Table 8 [Official Site]

• It's a Pats-free Super Bowl this year, but that doesn't mean that Boston isn't ready for game day. Drink some beer, eat some wings, and relax. [MP: Boston]

• Sandra Lee parodies are never not funny. [MP: Chicago]

• Be wary of special offers from Restaurant.com! [MP: Philadelphia]

• In these tough economic times, it's good to know how to save $1200 on a $1500 meal. [MP: San Francisco]

• Top Chef gossip: Jeff McInnis (he of Miami's DiLido Beach Club, which we spent the entire season reading as...well, something inappropriate) feels that the judging process that resulted in his elimination was not entirely fair. [MP: South Florida]

At the risk of becoming the Pepsi beat, this marks the second time in as many weeks that we have been floored by their advertising/viral marketing strategy. Last time it was on account of the parallel they drew between themselves and Barack Obama, this time it's because of a very funny video with Will Arnett and Andy Richter that we saw on Videogum.

It's a promo for an online Super Bowl party that Will Arnett is hosting at Refresh.com for "all those people out there who have nothing to do on the Super Bowl, i.e. losers. Ha, kidding. I'm a loser. I'm not. You are." An online Super Bowl party sounds terrible, even if you have an amazing spread of Super Bowl food at home, but in a testament to how funny he is, Will Arnett almost makes it appealing.

The real question is, will anyone actually trade in beers, wings, dips, and chips for cans of Pepsi, just because they are "attending" on online Super Bowl party sponsored by Pepsi? Seems unlikely, but thanks for the laughs, Pepsi.

Whoa, Pepsi Figured Out The Internet [Videogum]
National: Pepsi's New Logo Looks Awfully Familiar [MenuPages]

After reading about the seven Japanese diners who went to the hospital after consuming ineptly prepared fugu (blowfish sushi) we immediately wanted to try it for ourselves. After all, even if you get a bad piece, you still have a 50 percent chance of survival, according to Suite 101's Gourmet Food, so how dangerous can it be?

Dangerous enough, apparently, that they make it very hard to get ahold of in the United States. Only a small handful of restaurants serve the stuff, and they get it through an arduous certification process described by Adam Platt, food critic for our parent publication, New York, in a recent article:

Restaurants serving blowfish in this country must buy it from a single Food and Drug Administration–approved supplier, Wako International, which imports all the fugu sold in the United States. The imported fugu is cleaned in a processing plant in Shimonoseki, in southwestern Japan, by workers with a decade or more of experience in this delicate craft. The meat is then inspected and frozen for its flight across the Pacific. By the time it arrives in New York (where it’s inspected again), the fish is probably less toxic than a piece of mercury-saturated tuna sushi at your local Korean deli.

A writer for Seattle's The Stranger expressed ambivalence toward the stuff after eating it at Shiki, Washington State's only licensed Fugu restaurant. "I wanted to try fugu in the first place because, well, I wanted to see if it was worth the gamble. It's not," Min Liao wrote in 2002. Though in light of Platt's description of the Fugu-importing process, it doesn't seem like much of a gamble.

Platt, though, who ate the real, deadly stuff at a Tokyo fugu restaurant, was also less than impressed with the pure taste: "Hashimoto’s fugu indeed has a certain clean sashimi quality to it, and a resilient chewiness, but otherwise it’s a letdown. It tastes flavorless and gummy, like a cross between Reichl’s fluke and day-old squid."

Last May, the New York Times reported on a new project in fugu production: Puffer fish bred to be non-lethal. It's no surprise that fugu purists are fiercely against that idea. And for good reason. If the taste is really as underwhelming as the critics state, then the thrill of the thing is the real attraction. And that's what our seven Japanese friends seem to have been after when they walked into an unlicensed Tsuruoka restaurant, and came out on stretchers. It's unclear from the article whether they knew the chef had no license to prepare fugu, but it's pretty certain the diners were looking for an experience more daring than a normal Tuesday-night dinner. And they got it.

Blowfish poisoning sends 7 to hospital in Japan [Salon/AP]
Fugu - A Dish to Die For [Suite 101/Gourmet Food]
Taste Your Fate: Restaurants That Serve Fugu [NPR]

To Die For [New York]
Shiki: Hooray I'm Not Dead [The Stranger]
If the Fish Liver Can’t Kill, Is It Really a Delicacy? [New York Times]

[Photo: Via jetalone/flickr]

Alice Waters has been taking flack from all sides over the past week, and so far she has been rather quiet about it.

You probably heard about Anthony Bourdain's jab at the sultana of sustainability last week, where he compared her to the Khmer Rouge. Well, that seems to have started a rush of criticism against the Chez Panisse founder and early local/organic foods proponent. Following up on the hype around the inaugural dinners that Waters helped organize, NPR's Monkey See blog Friday called her the "food police." Ouch.

Apparently, Waters and former White House chef Walter Scheib, who have clashed in the past, got into a tiff at the same dinner party where Top Chef host Tom Colicchio gave the Heimlich maneuver to cookbook author (and hostess) Joan Nathan. News of this quietly hostile disagreement seems to have sent Monkey See blogger Todd Kliman over the edge, patience-wise.

In his post, Kliman writes off Waters' "inflexible brand of gastronomical correctness" as an "ism," saying, "Cooking, after all, is not about doing good; it's about tasting good."

While Waters does seem to have gotten a bit preachy and out of touch, the principles of her movement remain sound, and we shouldn't lash back against local, organic, healthy eating, in general, just because one of its proponents annoys us. Some of her critics' offended language smacks of the Rush Limbaugh-era conservative backlash against "political correctness." We should avoid that.

Anyway, Gothamist got wind through its comments section of an upcoming event in which Bourdain and Waters will share a stage, so perhaps sparks will fly. Or they'll kiss and make up (maybe then sparks will fly!).

Anthony Bourdain Talks Alice Watersgate [Gothamist]
Chez Panisse [Official Site]
Meals With a Message [Washington Post]
Alice Waters Was a Foodie Hero. Now She's the Food Police. [Monkey See/NPR]
Another Scene from Joan Nathan’s Party [Diner's Journal/NYT]
Food For Thought [Connecticut Forum]

[Photo: Via Chez Panisse]

• The best part about Valentine's Day? Obviously, it's the candy. [MP: Boston]

• You're never ever too old for a "your mom" joke. [MP: Chicago]

• Philly restaurateur Stephen Starr gives out burns like an arsonist. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah! My burger is better than yours! [MP: San Francisco]

• Oh, just give us some pudding already. [MP: South Florida]

This video of Dan Barber at the Taste3 conference is like, a thousand years old in internet years, but it doesn't seem to have made the blog rounds and it's very interesting. The talk he gives is about his oft-discussed and beloved humane foie gras farm in Spain, which we touched on in August in a Slow Food Nation recap.

There's a lot to digest (oh, the wit!) in the 20-minute video, but it's all completely fascinating. For one, you get to hear Dan Barber make many nerdy little Dan Barber/foodie jokes, as well as rhapsodize on his love of foie gras. There are also educational bits about why the color of foie gras matters, the origins of foie gras, and why conventional foie gras is "an insult to history." Even better, there are anecdotes about Eduardo Sousa, the goose farmer, like this one:

And he said to me really from the first moment, "my M.O, y'know, my life's work, is to give the geese what they want. He repeated that about 50 times in the two days I was with him. "I'm just here to give the geese what they want." Actually when I showed up, he was lying down with the geese with his cell phone, taking pictures of them. Like his children. In the grass. Isn't that amazing? He's really just in love with his g--, he's at one--, he's the goose-whisperer.

Oh really, Dan Barber? Really? He's in love with his geese? He wants to give the geese what they want? Like, oh, killing them and feeding us their delicious, delicious livers?

Actually, that sounds just great to us, and not just because we love foie gras as much as Dan Barber does. No. The real reason is because geese are the new terrorists, and frankly, we probably should be eating as many of them as possible. In other words, consider this video nothing more than a briefing on the habits of our enemies. (For more info, you can read about "Why They Hate Us" on sister company New York Magazine's Daily Intel blog.)

Dan Barber: A surprising parable of foie gras [TED]

So by now, you have, of course, heard about the salmonella panic sweeping the nation regarding peanut products. So far, the outbreak has been responsible for making 480 people sick and caused six deaths. The source has been found: a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, Ga.

The good news? You can still eat peanut butter. The creamy (or chunky) peanut butter in the jar is not the problem, so go ahead and polish off the last of that Jif. The guilty processing plant sells peanut butter only to institutions and food manufacturers, so it's only the foods made with peanut butter — like cookies and ice cream — that you have to worry about. If you're wondering whether the package of peanut butter cookies in your cabinet might be a problem, check the FDA's very handy recall search function.

So now, peanut butter cookies are in the trash, but the craving that urged you to buy them in the first place is still there. Well, you can either get in the kitchen and bake with your salmonella-free jar of the good stuff (try this recipe for some basic peanut butter cookies) or find the nearest bakery. House of Sweets in Delray Beach offers cupcakes of both the peanut butter and chocolate and peanut butter and jelly varieties. And Pastry Heaven in Palm Beach makes some pretty great peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

FDA: 125-plus products recalled in peanut outbreak [AP]
Salmonella Typhimurium Outbreak [FDA]
Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe [Joy of Baking]
House of Sweets [MenuPages]
Pastry Heaven [MenuPages]

Photo: lazylikewally/flickr

Pretty much all we can think about here at MP HQ is this morning's inauguration. Regardless of political affiliation, we were all glued to our new President waxing stentorian about tomorrow and strength and change, and this blogger found herself blinking back totally emo tears on more than one occasion. (Heck of a rendition of 'Simple Gifts,' amirite?)

Still riding that high, we're giving over today's National post to a roundup of ways we can, well, eat Barack Obama. It's quite possible that no other president in history has had so many foodstuffs created in his likeness. In all our intrepid searching, though, we still haven't found a decent Obama pancake or a truly inspired Obama burger.

For that matter, where are all the Michelle homages? Come on, folks, it's not too late to make your own edible, indelible contribution to history!

Right: order an Americano (get it?) at any UK Krispy Kreme, and it'll come decorated with the cocoa-powdery visage of President #44.

Below, via Jezebel: "Shop assistant Chika Shimada holds 'Obama senbei' (rice crackers) in support of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama at the souvenir shop Wakasaya on January 20, 2009 in Obama, Fukui, Japan":

Continue reading "National: Edible Obama" »

• WHICH Beantown neighborhood has seen a spate of recent restaurant shutterings? [MP: Boston]

• WHICH Windy City food critic puts so little stock in anonymity that he appeared as a judge on Throwdown With Bobby Flay? [MP: Chicago]

• WHICH MP editor has a well-documented fondness for liver? [MP: Philadelphia]

• WHICH San Francisco chef is taking his empire national? [MP: San Francisco]

• WHICH unexpected city needs to watch its weight? [MP: South Florida]

• Bonus! WHICH popular menu site will have an awesome big surprise for users tomorrow?

It seems everyone's hanging their hopes on Obama these days, including Washington, DC restaurateurs who are all jockeying for the president-elect's attention. He's been known to enjoy a meal out on the town, and he's got a far more adventurous palate than the sitting president (who, by all accounts is a bit of a recluse who prefers to eat his comfort food at home), so DC chefs are excited. One restaurateur — José Andrés, owner of Cafe Atlantico and Oyamel — has already called Rick Bayless of Chicago's Topolobampo (an Obama favorite) to ask about the president-elect's preferences, according to this New York Times article. In DC, a visit from a president can translate into quite a few more diners in seats. When dining rooms are half-empty thanks to an economic downturn, a presidential visit can make or break a restaurant.

But it's not just the president, of course; there are also those who come to work in his administration, and they can seriously change the fabric of a restaurant's dining scene:

But Bill Burton, the press secretary for Mr. Obama’s campaign who is following him to the White House, predicted changes in the Washington restaurant scene’s pecking order.

Already, he said, Cork, a relatively new restaurant in the Logan Circle area of town, is becoming a popular spot for young, incoming administration hands, many of whom have moved to the neighborhood in recent weeks.

With several varieties of chardonnay by the glass alone — and with an offering one recent night of Champaign for Change — the place does not scream “Republican.” Nor do its two owners, a former Democratic Congressional lawyer and a union organizer.

Mr. Burton, a self-proclaimed restaurant lover, also predicted a boost for establishments like Hook, in Georgetown, which opened nearly two years ago and was quickly named one of the country’s 10 best “Eco-Friendly Restaurants” by Bon Appétit magazine.

Rearranging the Tables in Washington: Can Obama’s Coattails Reach to Restaurants? [New York Times]
Cafe Atlantico [MenuPages]
Oyamel [MenuPages]
Topolobampo [MenuPages]
Cork [MenuPages]
Hook [MenuPages]

Photo, of the main dining room at Cafe Atlantico: truenotes/flickr

It was a few months ago that MP:SF editor Adam lamented that he wanted oysters but they weren't in season. Well, we've been safely into the R months for a while now, and — if you haven't already — it's high time that you slurp some bivalves.

Oysters are readily available on the menu at old standbys like Old Florida Seafood House — and are cropping up in more and more on-trend iterations on menus like The River Oyster Bar. But for all their ubiquity in winter months, we've always rankled at the idea of shelling out (as it were) for what is essentially a no-prep dish.

It's not that we don't appreciate the labor involved — trust, we've lost too many bits of finger to aggressive avocado-chopping not to balk at the terrifying apparatus required for oyster shucking. It's more that we feel a pervasive sense of wussiness at plonking down at a raw bar and ordering a dozen, extra mignonette, when we haven't felt the cool, rocky slime of an unshucked oyster shell in our own palm.

So three cheers for the Village Voice, whose resident foodie Sarah DiGregorio takes us through the shucking process step-by-step, framing it all in the economically comforting notion that the money you would spend on a half-dozen oysters at a restaurant could instead be redirected towards the purchase of a full dozen home-shucked oysters — plus a bottle of wine. Throw in a couldn't-be-simpler recipe for mignonette sauce from 1964 and some basic cocktail sauce (horseradish to taste), and it's a perfect spread.

Until such time as we completely gash the crap out of our hands, consider us sold.

Recession Special: Eat More Oysters [Fork In The Road]
Old Florida Seafood House [MenuPages]
The River Oyster Bar [MenuPages]
The River Oyster Bar [Official Site]

[Photo via star5112's Flickr]

There's been a lot of chatter around which celebrity chef might come to work for the Obamas' White House. A bunch of people have suggested Rick Bayless, since the Obamas reportedly like his Chicago restaurant, Topolobampo. Some other pundit-types have suggested Bobby Flay or Emeril Lagasse because, well, who knows? Because they're there, it seems.

But in keeping with their low-key style, the Obamas have elected to keep Cristeta Comerford as executive chef. This is a relief, because, at the risk of sounding old-fashioned, the media microscope on the White House should be focused on affairs of state, the personal habits of the first family, and sex scandals. We don't need reporters in White House press briefings clamoring to know more about Iron Chef.

The other bit of presidential food news today centers on Barack Obama's ignorance as to the nature of a half-smoke. Now, as a native Washingtonian (and proud resident till the ripe age of six), we were born with an innate knowledge of this hot-dog doppelganger, but not all can be so lucky, and apparently Obama asked what he did not know. (lies! our father introduced us to the half-smoke on a return visit to the nation's capital in 2005).

There has been a little hay made of this presidential quasi-gaff, with some decrying our new president's ignorance, and others praising his inquisitiveness and outsider status.

We're here to do neither, but to parse the situation all the same: Yes, it is true that Obama, on a visit to Washington, D.C. staple Ben's Chili Bowl, did not know the regional dog of the capital. He is from Chicago, after all. But he's held federal office for four years, which means he must have lived in D.C. for at least part of that time. On the other hand, Obama eats a famously healthy diet, so he may not have happened onto a half-smoke in the course of his Washington residency.

Whatever the reason for Obama's having to ask the question, "what's a half-smoke," the fact remains that in exactly one second of speech, the president-elect generated about two and a half minutes of discussion on MSNBC, a flurry of blog responses, and the ire of Bill Cosby. Now that's how you cover the first family!

No Change Brewing in the White House Kitchen [NY Times]
Topolobampo [MenuPages]
Topolobampo [Official Site]
In Videos: Barack Obama Doesn't Know What a Half-Smoke Is [Serious Eats/MSNBC]
Obama and the Half-Smoke [Bay Area Bites]
Ben's Chili Bowl [MenuPages]
Ben's Chili Bowl [Official Site]

[Photos: Chef Cristeta via The White House, Ben's Chili Bowl via dbking/flickr]

• WHICH private Beantown gym makes a mean smoothie? [MP: Boston]

• WHICH MP editor is a total word nerd? [MP: Chicago]

• WHICH MP editor spent Christmas break on a tropical vacation? (Bonus blind item: WHICH other MP editor spent most of her break watching marathons of Jon & Kate Plus Eight and is jealous?) [MP: Philadelphia]

• WHICH Bay Area newspaper misidentified a deadly wild mushroom as a morel? [MP: San Francisco]

• WHICH Miami restaurateur might be taking his restaurant's name a bit too seriously? [MP: South Florida]

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

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

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

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

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

The Science of Chicken Soup [NYT]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.nataliedee.com

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

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

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

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

[Image: Via Natalie Dee]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More after the jump...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PS. Bonus: full lyrics after the jump!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "National: 2008 Fail Favorites" »

A recent thread on Chowhound got us thinking about strategy.

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

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

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

After the jump, the six easy steps...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See? Things could always be worse!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Photo via Gray Monk's Flickr]

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

New York City to Celebrate 75th Anniversary of the Bloody Mary on Red Monday Van Dyke Cafe [MenuPages]
Shooters [MenuPages]
Shooters [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

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

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

After the jump, some scans from War Vegetable Gardening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Eating in Translation/flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Get crabs! [MP: Philadelphia]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos: paulidin/flickr and dieselgirl777/flickr

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "National: Le Beaujolais Nouveau Est En Plastique!" »

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

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

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

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

[Photo: Via One World Everybody Eats

The brunch scene at San Francisco's Palace Hotel

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Image: Via jay.tong/flickr]

•...get drunk in basements! [MP: Boston]

•...slurp "Economy Soup"! [MP: Chicago]

•...eat brunch every single day! [MP: Philadelphia]

•...learn that persimmons don't have to make your mouth feel like wool! [MP: San Francisco]

•...catch up with Top Chef season three contestant Howie Kleinberg! [MP: South Florida]

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

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

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

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

[Photo: Via Diet Ov Worms/flickr]

It's been two days since Barack Obama won the election, and he is already in the process of populating his cabinet and White House staff. So far, only Rahm Emanuel has been announced as a definite staff member, but the next few weeks are bound to be filled with news of Obama's latest picks. Political picks are exciting, but what of the domestic side of things?

The White House Executive Chef typically weathers changes in administrations, but it's always possible that the Obamas will decide that they want someone else in charge of the kitchen. After all, Walter Scheib presided over the kitchen from 1994-2005, but was asked to leave by First Lady Laura Bush. Why? A 2005 Washington Post article about the change in guard had the following tidbit

Scheib, who had been hired in 1994 by Hillary Rodham Clinton, was told to pack his whisk and go -- a decision he said reflected Mrs. Bush's desire to have her own person in the kitchen. "For better or worse, I'll always be identified as Mrs. Clinton's chef," he said.

Scheib was replaced by the current White House Executive Chef, Cristeta Comerford, who is not only the first ever female to occupy the position, but also the first person of Filipino descent to fill the role. (Perhaps you disagree, but this actually seems very fitting for the new administration.) The same WaPo piece includes Comerford's menu for a dinner with the Indian prime minister which featured chilled asparagus soup and halibut and basmati rice with pistachio nuts and currants, among other things.

Actually, that sounds like something the Obamas might go for! After all, it's well known they are into healthy food and also that their taste skews 'elitist'. Still, with reports swirling that some of their most loyal Chicago friends and family members are going to be making the move to Washington with them, we can't help but entertain fantasies about a Chicago chef following them as well. (There have been rumors about Rick Bayless, chef at Topolobampo, a restaurant that the Obamas often frequent.)

Chefs aside, there are bound to be food and dining changes with the Obamas in town. These past two days, we have read quite a few articles about how the Washington social scene will undergo a transformation. For one, per an article in today's New York Times, Michelle Obama is "a get-it-done-efficiently Rachael Ray type [...] not given to elaborate Martha Stewart-like efforts." Also, alcohol will be admissible anew, since our President-elect is not a recovering alcoholic. (The Baltimore Sun had a blog post earlier this week about the "return" of beer to the White House.)

Toque of the Town: White House Names 1st Female Executive Chef [Washington Post]
Striking a Balance While Becoming a First Family [New York Times]
Topolobampo [MenuPages]
Topolobampo [Official Site]

[Photo: via PhiLAWdelphia]

Not normally big on covering fast food chains, we will make an exception for this story about beating KFC's $10 dinner challenge thing because we've been in heated discussions with a friend all week about just this kind of stuff.

The challenge, proposed in a KFC commercial, is that you can't feed a family of four a chicken dinner comparable to the chain's 7-piece offer for $10. A family goes to the store to take the challenge, and finds they can't get the ingredients for less than the fast food meal.

But, and here's the shocker: It seems the ad is misleading!

Grist ran a story last week in which their own writer/chef/grocery maven takes the same challenge, and comes up with more food for less than the $10 in the challenge:

The bottom line? The KFC meal, including Iowa state sales tax of 6 percent, is $10.58. I made the same meal (chicken, four biscuits, mashed potatoes, and gravy) for $7.94 -- and I got three extra pieces of chicken and a carcass to use for soup.

Of course, Friese is also doing this in Iowa. Those of us on the coasts, especially big cities like Boston, San Francisco, and Miami, have to contend with higher grocery (and everything else) prices, while KFC can average out its costs and profits nationally, taking a loss on artificially low prices in some areas while making greater profits in others.

So in the end, reader, the conclusion seems to be that the challenge can be beat, but the question still remains as to whether you can beat it. If you try it out, please let us know how it goes!

Colonel of Truth: How I beat KFC's 'family meal' challenge [Grist]
KFC $10 Challenge [YouTube]

[Photo: Via ninjapoodles/flickr]

We came across an odd "blog" — it's more like a series of articles, all of which are lists — on a site where one can look up x-ray technical schools. What x-rays have to do with the top 100 yoga and meditation or parenting blogs is unclear, although the 25 Weirdest Things Eaten by a Human is more on topic. (Also, incredibly bizarre. Like the man in France who slowly ate a Cessna over two years' time.)

Anyway, here's what caught our attention: the 100 Foods No Environmentalist Should Ever Eat. It starts off easy enough: avoid 1) highly packaged food, 2) highly processed food and 7) out of season food. Then there's this:

Conventional food: Conventionally grown foods use pesticides that can get into our waterways and other parts of the environment. It is also believed to have fewer nutrients than organic food.

Organic food: While organic food tends to be cleaner for the environment, it’s often more energy intensive and inefficiently produced.

Um, OK. No milk, imported wine, or coffee for you either. And while we're on beverages...

Too much water: Water is a precious resource, and although many health experts recommend consuming as much water as you can, drinking more than you need is wasteful.

Yes, because your having a second glass of water with lunch is what is draining our water supply. Not, oh, say, thirsty golf courses. The list goes on and on: no veggie burgers, tea bags, chips, soda, candy bars, canned foods, Girl Scout cookies, rice, bread, meat, cheese, eggs, apples, potatoes, strawberries, celery, peaches, spinach, sugar, yogurt, ice cream, honey, olives and vegetable oil. And that's just a partial list — there's more. It's like this woman starting researching the potential ills of different types of food and just slapped them all into one document, while failing to realize that when viewed as a whole, the list leaves people to eat a diet of ... nothing. Well, maybe not nothing. Enjoy your lettuce and tomato salad tonight (only if they're grown in your backyard). And no, you're not allowed any dressing.

The 100 Foods No Environmentalist Should Ever Eat [x Ray Technician Schools]

Did you stay up late over last night's election? Cheering on your guy or practicing your stalwart-but-gracious attitude of concession? We sure did.

So please forgive us if, this morning, we're a bit electioned out. Too much nerves, too much shouting, too much politics. This calls for a very simple story involving a distant country, hilarious ingredients, and nothing whatever having to do with our recent change in leadership:

Via Serious Eats, we've been chuckling about a small AP item that came quietly out of Switzerland during the United States' election turmoil yesterday: Police in a rural area near Kuettigen, alerted by emergency calls, followed a trail of blood along a rural road:

A police statement Tuesday said officers followed the blood for 12 miles to the town of Kuettigen only to find that a butcher's supply van had spilled its cargo.

A barrel of pork blood had overturned inside. The van had been headed for a local sausage factory.

Naturally, this has us thinking about black pudding, that European sausage made from cooking down the meat filling with blood. For some reason, it's just not that popular stateside, but you can often get it at British or Irish pubs, and it's great hangover fare, which you may need today if you took last night's election parties a little too far. Check out the Paddy's mixed grill at Paddy Mac's Unique Irish Restaurant & Pub which comes with black pudding, or the black-and-white pudding breakfast at Slainte.

Swiss Police Look For Blood Trail, Find Pork [Serious Eats]
Swiss police follow blood trail and find bacon [AP]
Paddy Mac's Unique Irish Restaurant & Pub [MenuPages]
Slainte [MenuPages]
Slainte [Official Site]

[Photo: Via For The Thrill Of It]

A while back, MenuPages reported on a group in Lebanon who were planning to sue Israel for the rights to hummus. And apparently this agitation over the origins of hummus came to the attention of everyone's favorite Election Day Personality, Ralph Nader. Who apparently is running for president today (who knew?!), and used the Great Hummus War Of 2008 as a fundraising hook:

...My mother Rose was born in Lebanon.

And she made perhaps the best hummus I’ve ever had.

And I’ve had a lot of hummus.

Hummus is nutritious.

And delicious.

It makes you stronger and healthier.

So, Bloomberg’s report on the Lebanese claim to hummus got me to thinking about an idea that would help us raise funds to push our substantive agenda onto the front burner of American politics.

Here it is:

If you donate ... we’ll e-mail to you Rose Nader’s hummus recipe tomorrow.

My Mom’s Hummus Recipe

That simple.

My Mom’s Hummus Recipe [VoteNader, via Endless Simmer]

[Photo: Hummus and falafel from the Abu Nader restaurant in St Paul, MN, (no relation!) via anthonylibrarian's Flickr]

Previously
National: Lebanon, Israel Battle Over Hummus

There's something to be said for bribery, especially when you're the one getting bribed, and especially when the currency is sweets and coffee. That was the theory, as you may have read in today's FYI, of Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, and Ben & Jerry's, when they announced free goodies to people who show an "I voted" sticker.

But then, a Washington State elections official named Captain Buzzkill put it out there that it's kind of illegal to reward people for voting. The Associated Press reports:

David Ammons, spokesman for the state elections division of Washington state, had said earlier that a promotion tied to whether people voted could be construed as rewarding someone for voting and could violate federal and state law. He said the state's attorney general's office contacted Starbucks about the issue on Monday.

Krispy Kreme seems the most sullen about the bribing kibosh:

Krispy Kreme is giving star-shaped doughnuts with red, white and blue sprinkles to anyone who mentions the promotion, said spokeswoman Ayana Hernandez, but they won't be required to show an "I voted" sticker.

The company's 85 company-owned stores will be participating, along with an unknown number of its 145 franchisees, she said. Krispy Kreme estimates it'll give away about 200,000 of the doughnuts.

"It's just another way to give customers a free doughnut," Hernandez said. "It's not in any way tied to you have to be a member of a certain party, political party or anything like that."

[Image: Via Krispy Kreme]

We haven't been able to tear ourselves away from the fascinating OCD diet, to which we were directed by Coldmud. It's absolutely disgusting, but so amazing: The only requirement is that all foods rhyme, so you get meals like waffles with offal and lamb's heart treacle tart. Now, why it has to be stuff like that, when you could have, say, steamed greens and pinto beans, or scrambled eggs and chicken legs or something else vaguely disappointing but not necessarily gut-wrenching, we couldn't say. It certainly wouldn't be as hilarious.

As it is, the diet seems to have worked, most likely because it's impossible to eat too much of things like ham, spam and jam flan, described thus:

This dish is a real winner in terms of rhymability. It also looks pretty awesome if you put a little effort in - and pardon me, but who the fuck knew Spam smelt so damn good!?! Sadly it tastes like shit. It's also missing vegetables, again (I really wanted to add a yam, but they don't sell them at Tescos). I just about managed half a flan before I began to feel physically ill.

But this got us thinking, could you do the same exercise at restaurants? It seems you'd have to rhyme your food with the name of the restaurant, in order to keep the same cadence as OCDD's dishes. So, one could live on yum gai at Bow Thai or tamago (and masago) at Japango. Or feast on croquetas de jamón at Don Ramón.

The OCD Diet [Official Site]
Bow Thai [MenuPages]
Japango [MenuPages]
Japango [Official Site]
Don Ramón [MenuPages]

[Photo: Via The OCD Diet]

We are a multi-talented group here at MenuPages. We eat a lot, we edit menu content, we even blog. But did you know we also go home and do other stuff? For example, MenuPages Boston editor Leila Cohan likes to write comedy sketches that she then produces with her troupe, Rhoda. In fact, they just finished the following. See if you can pick out the influence of Leila's day job:

"Single and cooking is not about me burdening you with my problems. It's about making beautiful meals, so that's just what we're going to do today. Let's see, step one: crack open a beer." Hilarious. Though for some reason we're a little pessimistic about Single and Cooking's chances of getting picked up by the Food Network. Now, when they start the Passive Aggression Network, look out!

Rhoda [Official Site]

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]

• 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]

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!

Continue reading "National: The Most Sophisticated Of Political Polls" »

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]

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

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]

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!

Continue reading "National: A Glutton's Feast Of Music Videos" »

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]

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 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]

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.

• 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]

We've been reading a lot this week about the new sustainable sushi guide that was put out by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Blue Ocean Institute. The idea behind the guide is that lots of seafood is a) not healthy, what with mercury and all, and b) not fished or farmed in an ecologically sound manner.

The guide is great in many way: it's available as a printable pocket-sized PDF, very straightforward, and categorizes fish into three categories (best choices, OK choices, and worst choices). If you've been concerned about the fish you were eating at sushi restaurants, this cuts out the step of quizzing the chef on what fish is sustainable or healthy, and just generally being a high-maintenance customer.

On the flip side &mdash and we're mostly just playing devil's advocate here &mdash although it's great that attention is being brought to this issue, it seems sort of improbable that the pocket guides (and one dedicated week for eating sustainable sushi) is going to make that much of a difference.

After all, we know that beef is not great for the environment. We are fully aware that most chickens are raised in horrendous, inhumane conditions. And if you take stock in the locavore movement, everyone who lives outside of California is basically taking a gun to Mother Nature's head by eating fruits and veggies shipped from all corners of the Earth.

That said, if any sustainable eating thing has a chance of catching on, this really seems like it might be the one. To be good about cattle, there's not much recourse other than giving up beef eating. To follow Michael Pollan's advice on eating locally, most of us would have to resign ourselves to never eating another orange, mango, pineapple or any leafy greens outside of summer. Maybe now is the time to take this to heart! Print the guide, slip it into your wallet, and the next time that you are ordering sushi at Matsuri, give yourself a little pat on the back for being so nice to the planet.

Matsuri Japanese Restaurant [MenuPages]

[Photo: via [puamelia]/Flickr]

'Tis the season for putting out new products, eh? Michelin's dropping city guides like they were bad habits, and now, just in time for Halloween, Zagat has released its 2009 edition of America's Top Restaurants. The national guide covers 1,516 restaurants in 45 cities and regions, according to their press release.

And, the new user-input-generated survey sheds a little light on our national dining preferences. Turns out we just can't get enough Italian food, we want greener, healthier, and more low-key dining options, especially in the form of spin-offs of higher-end places. Also, the economy is a big, whopping deal on everybody's mind. From the press release:

According to Zagat Survey CEO Tim Zagat, "Americans are still eating
out in restaurants, they are just making smarter choices. They're dining in
high-end restaurants for lunch instead of dinner, seeking out value prix
fixe meals, and taking advantage of more causal neighborhood eateries.
Regardless of how the economy is doing, people still have to eat."

Changing Habits: Still, the financial uncertainty has had an effect:
When asked what effect the weakening economy had on their dining habits,
33% said they are eating out less and being more sensitive to menu prices;
28% said they are eating in less expensive places, and roughly 20% said
they are cutting back on alcohol, appetizers and desserts. Only 34% of
surveyors report being unaffected by the economic downturn.

[Image: Via Amazon]

A Detroit-area pizzeria is stirring up some controversy by offering free pizza to anyone who brings in a McCain/Palin sign. According to the pizzeria's owner, after McCain essentially gave up on Michigan by canceling any further visits or ads, she encouraged McCain supporters to give up on the candidate and bring in their signs.

The problem here is that once you present this promotion to the average broke, pizza-hungry teenager, it takes him or her approximately three nanoseconds to come up with this plan of action: find nearest McCain/Palin sign, swipe it, get free pizza. Local Republicans are, naturally, upset with their disappearing signs. The pizzeria owner says she never advocated theft and clearly stated on the promotion to "bring in your McCain sign," but it's hard to believe she didn't see this coming.

The image above is just a screen shot; there wasn't any easy way to embed the video, but click here for the full story. It's definitely worth a listen.

Restaurant Offers Free Pizza for McCain Signs [Fox 2 Detroit]

At left: Anthony Morley, At right: Damian Oldfield

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Remember that British chef/gay pinup model we reported on a while back, who was found guilty for murder after killing his lover, then seasoning and frying up part of his leg? Anthony Morley, 36, got life in prison this week, and will do a minimum of 30 years.

Well, recognizing talent, regardless of its vessel, officials at the Leeds jail where the former Mr. Gay UK has been housed, assigned him to work in the kitchen. He's serving time and lunch, according to The People:

[Friend] Michael Graham, 25, said: "I reckon some of the other inmates might get a bit worried if they knew who was serving up their food but I'd eat it. Whatever he's done, Tony can cook. He's a brilliant chef. They obviously knew about his talent with food so they offered him the chance to work in the canteen.

"He was really angry that they weren't letting him use any knives. He asked me, 'How the hell am I supposed to do this without knives?'"

Graham went on to say that Morley's green Thai curry is "mouth-watering."

Morley was arrested in April after he showed up at a takeaway joint wearing a bloody robe, saying he'd just killed a man who tried to rape him. Police later told the Telegraph that he'd carved, seasoned and cooked flesh from the leg of victim Damian Oldfield, 33, after slashing his throat and stabbing him.

According to the BBC, Judge James Stewart, CQ, said,

"Before this case I had associated cannibalism with eras long gone, with the tale of Robinson Crusoe. No longer.

"You have plumbed depths rarely encountered in our court."

Cannibal chef given life sentence [BBC]
GAY CANNIBAL KILLER'S JOB AS A PRISON CHEF [The People]
Former 'Mr Gay UK' charged with murder amid fears victim's flesh was 'prepared for cooking' [Telegraph UK]
Man Eater Mans The Eats [Gawker]

[Image: via Blurbberry]

It wasn't too long ago that we found ourselves eating dinner a few tables away from — no, seriously, ready for this? — Posh and Becks. The hyper-cheekboned ubercelebrities from Britain were pouting at each other over a white tablecloth not ten feet from ours. It was pretty fantastic — not only to watch them consume a near-silent dinner (Posh's back was to us, so we can neither confirm nor deny any aspect of her eating habits), but to watch the waitstaff perform an elaborate dance of plating, clearing, and surreptitiously throwing in little extra courses like a second amuse, and a third amuse, and extra sorbet, and a flute of champagne, and petits fours was exhilarating.

We were a few courses behind the wonder couple, so we kept expecting to get what they were getting. And we kept not getting it. Why? Because they're Posh and Becks, and we're ... well, we're us. About the only person who gives us the special treatment is our grandma, and even then it's only if we've remembered to call home often enough.

Enter Will Schwalbe, former editor-in-chief of Hyperion East books (where he oversaw titles from folks like Bobby Flay, Simon Hopkinson, and Nigella Lawson). Schwalbe claims that his food-world celebrity collections aren't the reason he always gets treated so well when he goes out — instead, he claims he's just happened onto a set of behavior that gets him the VIP treatment at the sort of restaurant where you want VIP treatment — the L'Escaliers and Casa Casuarinas of the world.

Schwalbe's hints are old hat to anyone who's used to the cutthroat world of foodieism: Be one of the first customers to dine at a restaurant once they open. Introduce yourself to the bartender and the maitre d'. Tip well (we're talking 25% or more). Critically important: Don't be a demanding jerk.

It's a helpful compilation of tips, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. And for all that being a perfect guest will help keep you from getting actively neglectful service, it certainly won't guarantee that you'll be the toast of the dining room. To be treated like a king, after all is said and done, there are two routes: One, which Schwalbe hits on, is to become a regular. Visit often, engage with the staff, and bring guests. And two, which is just a smidgen harder, is to land that leading role in a feature film, accidentally release your sex tape with the mayor, or score that reviewing gig at the Herald — you know, be an actual VIP.

9 Tricks for Getting a Table (and Being a VIP) at Hot Restaurants [Four-Hour Workweek]
L'Escalier [MenuPages]
L'Escalier [Official Site]
Loftin's at Casa Casuarina [MenuPages]
Loftin's at Casa Casuarina [Official Site]

[Photo via noinput's Flickr

Time for a brief check-in with the diets of our fast-and-furious presidential candidates. Both men stopped for photo-ops and sound bites between actual bites of barbecue in the South over the last couple days.

First, Barack Obama popped into the Cape Fear BBQ restaurant in Fayetteville, North Carolina Sunday, where he had chicken, collard greens, and baked beans. Then, on Monday, John McCain had lunch with Columbia, Missouri business leaders at the Buckingham Smokehouse Bar-B-Q. He had a hot link special with beans and coleslaw.

In general, North Carolina-style barbecue uses a vinegar or tomato-based sauce that includes hot peppers. Meanwhile, Missouri tends toward a hickory-based cooking style, with a tomato sauce.

Both candidates seem to have made educated choices. According to their limited web exposure, Cape Fear is famous for its chicken, while Buckingham Smokehouse prides itself on its slaw.

Obama visit to North Carolina restaurant stirs mixed emotions [Reuters]
McCain convenes BBQ business meeting [Columbia Missourian]

[Image: A politically neutral bbq plate via paper or plastic?/flickr]

They don't do it here, so this may not immediately make sense, but some cities' health departments issue restaurants a letter grade after an inspection, which must be posted publicly. Hence, this hilariousness:

see more pwn and owned pictures

OMG we're dying just a little bit.

Sneaky Restaurant Fail [Failblog]

On Saturday, Waiterrant published a letter to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown from a disgruntled server in North Carolina, calling on the British government to better educate its citizens on U.S. tipping customs.

Mr. Brown, I urge you, if only for decency’s sake, to inform your citizens, before travelling abroad to the United States, that while dining out in a restaurant where waiters take orders and serve food, that the tip is not compulsory, but mandatory, the amount of which is meant as a level of satisfaction of service provided. Excellent service is rewarded in excess of 20% of the total cheque amount, for example, a $100 meal with excellent service deserves a $20 (or greater) tip. Average service requires a 15% tip, and poor service can be indicated with a 10% tip. Under no circumstances is it acceptable to “stiff”, or simply not tip, a waiter in America, or leave a tip under 10% (with the exception of absolutely abysmal service).

[Photo: Via bmfriz/flickr]

• Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name and that place is Thornton's Fenway Grill. [MP: Boston]

• We've dined around the world (well, at least around the northern United States and Western Europe) and no bite of food has ever made us happier than the quail egg ravioli at Schwa. [MP: Chicago]

• Regardless of your political preferences, this story about friendly pie-related heckling (is there such a thing as "friendly heckling"?) at an Obama rally will make you smile. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Could a kati roll make you even happier than a burrito? [MP: San Francisco]

• Denny's just donated a whole lot of money to establish a child care center at FMU. Nice! [MP: South Florida]

Much as we like to share funny videos with you on Fridays, the news (from the Sun, via Boing Boing) that outer space apparently smells like fried steak seems too important not to share. From the article:

Astronauts reported the bizarre scents on their suits when they returned from space walks.

The space agency has commissioned Steven Pearce of British fragrance firm Omega Ingredients to recreate the smells to help train spacemen.

He said: “When astronauts were de-suiting and taking off helmets, they all reported quite particular odours. “We have already produced the smell of fried steak, but hot metal is more difficult.

Continue reading "National: Steaks In Space" »

A couple months ago, we wrote about the incredible use of period food on Mad Men, and as the season has continued, our obsession with the restaurants they visit and the dishes they eat has not abated one bit. Even more fascinating and glamorous-seeming than the Mad Men dining scene though? The constant flow of cocktails, for sure.

It's no secret that fancy old-timey cocktails are having a major resurgence. After all, the pre-Prohibition cocktail trend made the New York Times dining section last week, which is a pretty sure sign that they're a thing — well, that and the fact that posh cocktail lounges are opening up in most major American cities.

We're just glad that Mad Men is coinciding with this renaissance of old school beverages, because if it weren't, it would be a lot harder to sample the drinks that seem so alluring in this post-Mad Men world. There's a pretty good piece over at Paper Magazine on some the main characters and their signature cocktails (a Brandy Alexander for Peggy Olson, a Tom Collins for Betty Draper, and so on), although it's not as exhaustive as we'd like for it to be, as it's based on cocktails that the characters have requested in episodes.

Then, we stumbled upon a post at A Continuous Lean about Esquire’s Handbook for Hosts, published in 1949. The scanned pages are beautiful, and best of all, they detail very Mad Men-esque cocktails &mdash divided by gender!

After the jump, the full-length images!

Continue reading "Mad Men, Round Two: The Cocktails" »

The latest issue of Conservation Magazine, to which we were directed by a post on The Grinder, covers a study that confirms what you should have suspected all along: The fish you're eating is just as likely as not to be something other than you think it is.

In 2006, eight students from Stanford University bought 77 fillets of Pacific red snapper, itself not a species, The Grinder points out, "but rather a catch-all term for 13 different species of Pacific rockfish." Even so, after testing the samples' DNA, the students found that more than half were mislabeled:

Those generic strips of flesh might as well have been called marine mystery meat. Sixty percent of them came from species other than what was written on the label, including Pacific Ocean perch and tilapia.

So who can you trust when it comes to fish labeling? Wish we could tell you. If you do find a supplier you trust, however, download the newly updated version of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Pocket Guide to help you figure out what the environment wants you to buy.

Imposter Fish [Conservation Magazine]
A Really Big Fish Tale [The Grinder]
Hypocritical Dining: Nobu Busted For Secretly Selling Endangered Sushi [Gawker]
Fish Tale Has DNA Hook [NY Times]
Seafood Watch Pocket Guide [Monterey Bay Aquarium]
Nobu [MenuPages]
Nobu [Official Site]

[Photo: Pacific red snapper off the coast of Mexico, via Puerto Rico Free Divers]

We were with a friend in a San Francisco Taqueria some years ago when this exchange happened:

Owen: "Man, I'm not that hungry. I wish this place sold baby-sized burritos"

Adam: "Screw that. I'm getting a super"

Owen: "Maybe I'll get that, too. Could take half of it home."

(they order, sit down, and minutes later, burritos appear before them)

Owen (eyeballing a darling, 7lb, 21" roll of meat, beans and whatnot): "Well, what do you know, they do sell baby-sized burritos."

Adam (face reddening as he struggles to keep laughing out a mouthful of beans): "mphfgh!"

We were reminded of that conversation while reading Helena Echlin's latest Table Manners column over at Chow. Why don't more restaurants sell figuratively baby-sized meals? Well, obviously, it's because they can charge more for more food, making more of a profit per plate.

But Echlin brings in some decent solutions for those who want smaller portions: Order a half-size, cobble together a meal out of sides and appetizers, or get something from the children's menu. We prefer the latter, as we just looove chicken strips, and there's a good chance you'll get a fun-sized Snicker's bar in the bargain. You gonna eat yours?

Ordering Off the Kids’ Menu: Can grown-ups get little burgers? [Chow]

[Photo: Via David Sifry/flickr]

Bill Niman — yes that Niman, formerly of Niman Ranch — is hoping that America will develop a taste for goat. And not just any goat; he's raising goats according to his exacting standards that made Niman Ranch renowned for its humane treatment of animals and the quality of meat. He's left Niman Ranch after some disagreements with the current management, but he's started raising animals — cattle, turkeys and pigs in addition to the goats — on his own all over again.

But he hopes goat will be the cornerstone of his comeback. That’s in part because he has more of them around, and because he sees a wide-open marketfor pristine, pasture-raised goat meat. The guy is, after all, a businessman.

“I don’t need to get 10 percent of the market anymore,” he said. “I just want to be the best.”

Chefs on both coasts are fast discovering his goat meat, although it is still available only in limited amounts, under the name BN Ranch.

In June, Mr. Niman stopped by Eccolo in Berkeley with a piece of shoulder, a loin, a leg and a rack of ribs. The chef and owner, Christopher Lee, now breaks down one or two of the 30-pound goat carcasses a week.

“It was succulent,” Mr. Lee said. “It was mild. It was just perfect.”

Like other chefs who have begun to cook with goat, Mr. Lee predicts a bright future for the meat.

“We’ve all cooked every part of the lamb a million times and we all know about grass-fed beef and aging beef,” he said. “The goat is the next thing.”

So far, it seems only Bay Area chefs are really experimenting with the local naturally raised goat, which is often cooked just like lamb. Mexico DF in San Francisco makes some fancy cabrito tacos with grass-fed goat, and it's not on the menu at Kokkari Estiatorio, but if you're lucky you'll show up on a day when the chef is spit-roasting an entire goat.

With Goat, a Rancher Breaks Away From the Herd [New York Times]
Mexico DF [MenuPages]
Kokkari Estiatorio [MenuPages]

Photo: baalands/flickr

Hot damn! We love when restaurant and pop music news intersect, so it was especially fun to learn that The Strokes' (remember them?) frontman Julian Casablancas is apparently getting into the restaurant business as an investor in Shin, a new Korean Barbecue joint on North Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood.

Yesterday, NME reported (and Serious Eats picked it up today) that the singer and newly minted restaurateur partnered with a host of other hipster-celebrities on the project:

Casablancas is among a string of well-known faces to invest in the venture, including Mark Ronson, actors Gerard Butler, Danny Masterson, Chris Masterson and Laura Prepon and DJ Steve Aoki.

The Strokes' Julian Casablancas turns restaurateur [NME]
An L.A. native keeps his Korean barbecue simple and the vibe laid-back. [LA Times]
Shin [Official Site]

[Photo: Via kaex0r/flickr]

The Loebner Prize is an award given out each year to the computer that comes closest to passing the Turing Test: an interaction in which a computer can fool a human interviewer into believing that the conversation is between two humans. The 2008 winner, announced last week, is Elbot, who won over the interviewers through a clever bit of reverse psychology: He freely acknowledges that he's a robot, which fooled enough judges into thinking that he was a human with a sense of humor to land him the prize.

We sat down with Elbot for an exclusive interview, touching on the vastly underreported world of robot food, new frontiers in theme restaurants, and an unexpected declaration of love.

MP: Hi there, Elbot. Let's get down to business: what's your favorite food?
E: I eat chips, cookies and fried discs.

Continue reading "National: A Bite With A Bot" »

Seems like just yesterday the news dropped that Mother's Cookies was closing its Oakland, Calif. factory after a good, 92-year run. Well, it didn't take long for the hipster nostalgia to start. You can already buy a shirt from Cloth Moth commemorating the fallen giant of childhood treats:

The best part:

FIRST 20 ORDERS receive one complimentary 10 oz. bag of soon-to-be-gone-forever Mother’s Original Circus Animal Cookies (One per customer)

Mother's cookies that last forever [Slashfood]
Goodbye, Mother's Cookies [Clothmoth]

The leaves are changing, the temperatures are dropping, and across the menuniverse, folks are feeling downright autumnal.

• Bostonians know that snow will be on the ground sooner rather than later. [MP: Boston]

• Political crushes: so hot for fall. [MP: Chicago]

• 'Tis the season for "Taste Of __" events. [MP: Philadelphia]

• 'Tis also the season for Esquire's Best New Restaurants. [MP: San Francisco]

• Leaving unintentionally hilarious user reviews, however, knows no season. [MP: South Florida]

It's been a weird past month for encased meats, huh? First there was the hot dog bomb scare in Philly, wherein the bomb squad was called in to deal with three suspicious-looking duct tape wrapped hot dogs. (Spoiler alert! They were just plain old hot dogs.)

Then, there was the incredibly bizarre story of a break-in in California, where the suspect rubbed spices into the face of one of his victims, and reportedly attacked the other with a sausage.

Most recently, the artist Banksy has set up an installation in New York city called "The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill." (Hmm, sounds an awful lot like our favorite store in Western Massachusetts, Dave's Soda and Pet City, which sells soda and pet supplies.) The exhibit has been getting a lot of buzz, but we first saw videos from it on Serious Eats. So how does this relate? Just watch the video, why don't you!

"In Videos: Banksy's Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill Art" [SE: NY]
"Duct-Taped Hot Dogs Spark a Bomb Scare" [Washington Post]
"Man suspected of sausage and spice attack set free" [AP]

What a world we live in. It's a magic time where fiction becomes fact and fantasy intermingles with reality. This is the age of the monkey butler. Remember this exchange from the Simpsons (the Lord of the Flies episode in which the kids are stranded on an island)?

BART What's everyone's problem? I'm glad we're stranded! It'll be just like the Swiss Family Robinson, only with more cursing! We're gonna live like kings! Damn, hell, ass kings!

As "Under the Sea" plays, a fantasy sequence is imagined with the kids living in a wonderful tree settlement. Martin takes a shower. Wendell uses a water slide. Sherri and Terri drive a bamboo and grass car. Ralph pigs out on food and a monkey butler brings Nelson a drink. Back to reality.

BART
And every night the monkey butlers will regale us with jungle stories.

NELSON
How many monkey butlers will there be?

BART
One at first. But he'll train others.

But no more. Chow ran a story on the Grinder yesterday highlighting one of the most important developments in restaurant service and animal training, well, ever. Behold: The monkey waiter:

Look at how earnest the little guy is. How attentive. A-freaking-dorable. Honestly, we're going to be really disappointed in every human-staffed restaurant we eat at from now on.

Simian, Check Please! [The Grinder]
Pictured: The amazing monkey waiters that serve tables in a Japanese restaurant [Mail Online]

War is about to break out again in the Middle East. This time, it's not land or religion that they're arguing about — nope, it's a large-scale food fight. Over hummus.

Fadi Abboud, president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association, said Tuesday his group was planning to raise a lawsuit to stop Israel from marketing hummus and other dishes as Israeli.

Hummus is a spread made from cooked and mashed chickpeas, usually blended with sesame paste, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic.

Eaten in the Middle East for centuries, its exact origin is unknown, though it's generally seen as an Arab dish. The Lebanese claim it as their own and it's a central part of their cuisine — though Palestinians also claim to have invented it.

It has also become enormously popular in Israel, common in everyday meals and served in many Israeli restaurants. It has also become popular internationally.

"It is not enough they (Israelis) are stealing our land. They are also stealing our civilization and our cuisine," said Abboud.

Abboud said there have been numerous complaints by Lebanese businessmen that Israel was exporting and marketing Lebanese dishes as Israeli.

Now that you're craving the delightful chickpea-tahini-olive oil puree, check out the hummus at Daily Bread Marketplace in Miami or Sunrise Pita & Grill in, naturally, Sunrise.

Hummus war looms between Lebanon, Israel [USA Today]
Daily Bread Marketplace [MenuPages]
Daily Bread Marketplace [Official Site]
Sunrise Pita & Grill [MenuPages]

Photo: Zesmerelda/flickr

They may not get to go with mom and dad to wd-50 or Moto, but could young, vege-phobic kids be a new market for molecular gastronomy, with its texture-hiding ways?

That's the thesis of Sara Dickerman's article today in Slate. The journalist and frustrated mother picks up a chemistry set Texturas Spherification Minikit to try some homemade tomato and broccoli spheres on her stubborn son ("the Critic"). The results? Mixed:

When tasting time comes, the Critic cries as if I were feeding him brimstone. The tomato gel slides down his chin, but the broccoli doesn't even make it that far—I don't have the heart to make him taste it. His baby sister, 8 months old, is rather less horrified—she rolls a tomato sphere around in her mouth.

Eat Your Spherified Vegetables! Trying out molecular gastronomy on my picky son. [Slate]
wd-50 [MenuPages]
wd-50 [Official Site]
Moto [MenuPages]
Moto [Official Site]

[Photo: via Dean and Deluca]

Our love for the Minnesota State Fair is well-documented. It increased, exponentially, when we came across Mykl Roventine's remarkable Flickr set of images taken at the fair this year.

Of particular note: The dozens upon dozens of foods-on-a-stick (foods-on-sticks?) available. Not only are these beautiful photographs that also make our mouths water, but the combinations of edible goods and pointy bits of wood blow our minds. Besides the standard hot dogs, corn, pickles, hotdish (alternating meatballs and tater tots), bananas, kebabs, fruit kebabs, deep-fried candy bars, cotton candy, and turkey legs, among others, the 2008 festival saw the introduction of 15 new-to-the-fair foods:

chicken bites, deep-fried ice cream, deep-fried s'mores on-a-stick, deep-fried tator tots on-a-stick, dessert chocolate pizza, fish tacos, Big Fat Bacon on-a-stick (1/3 lb. slab of bacon caramelized in maple syrup), grilled shrimp on-a-stick, Italian breakfast strata, Leprechaun Legs (deep-fried green beans), neapolitan cream puffs, Norwegian-style cheese curds, frozen pickle juice pops, Pig Lickers (chocolate-covered bacon), Walking Tacos and Yaki-Soba noodles.

All photos from Mykl Roventine's Flickr. Rights reserved. [via]

Continue reading "National: Minnesota State Fair: The Aftermath" »

Bart Simpson would be proud. While Anthony Morley didn't exactly eat Damian Oldfield's shorts, he came damned close by cooking and eating part of the man's thigh. From the Mail Online:, via Coldmud:

A gay chef murdered his lover, cut out part of his leg, seasoned it with herbs and fried it, a court has heard.

Anthony Morley, 35, chewed one of the pieces before throwing it into his kitchen bin...

[Prosecuter Andrew] Stubbs said that after Mr Oldfield died Morley cut a section of flesh from his thigh, took it down to the kitchen and cooked it.

The jury heard that Morley was wearing only a bloodstained dressing gown and flip-flops when he arrived at the takeaway. His face and hands were spattered with blood.

[Photo: Via Equality/flickr]

China’s ever-growing share of exports to the West may keep us comfortable at a cheap cost, but they can also be a mixed blessing: Think gun powder (great for fireworks, not so great for conflict resolution), designer knock-offs, and lately, cheap, melamine-laced food products. Thousands of children in China have been sickened by this industrial additive and a few have died from kidney failure. Now there are worries that melamine-contaminated foods may have made their way to our market, too.

Should you panic? That depends, says the US Food and Drug Administration. While it released a statement on Friday reassuring the public that, "melamine-related compounds below 2.5 parts per million (ppm) do not raise concerns," melamine in baby formula is still very bad news. In fact, the "FDA is currently unable to establish any level of melamine and melamine-related compounds in infant formula that does not raise public health concerns."

Feeling like maybe now's the time to go vegan? Check out Juice & Java's smoothie menu for some dairy-free alternatives.

More Candy From China, Tainted, Is In The US [New York Times]
FDA Issues Interim Safety and Risk Assessment of Melamine and Melamine-related Compounds in Food [FDA Official Site]

[Photo: Via striatic/flickr]

Okay, gastro-tourists, get your stomachs rumpling and your reservation fingers twitching. Michelin this morning awarded its New York City stars for 2009.

Major changes include Masa joining the three-star club and Adour Alain Ducasse, Gilt and Momofuku Ko banging the two-star gong. Also, Allen & Delancey, Alto, Eighty One (81), Fiamma, Insieme, Kyo Ya and Public each picked up their first star.

Announcements of further Michelin star awards are expected this month. Stay tuned...

Michelin Stars Shine On New York City [Michelin Official Site]

• "Aquitaine Hunger Force": some might say the best post title ever. [MP: Boston]

• Happy anniversary, Barack and Michelle! [MP: Chicago]

• Philly.com's dining RSS feed is hijacked with hilarious results. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Be honest: how many of you spent last night getting drunk and watching the debate? We're going to guess a whole lot. [MP: San Francisco]

• Ha! Florida has a "doggie dining bill." [MP: South Florida]

Don't you hate it when your hand cramps up from flinging imaginary check marks in the air when you're trying to get out of a restaurant to make your show? Ever died of dehydration because you couldn't get a refill on your water?

These are the things that bug us at restaurants, when everything else has gone so smoothly. Couldn't somebody invent some small device that would put a stop to the small service issues that are such a big bother? Why yes, somebody could, according to Boing Boing:

Yesterday, David and I enjoyed fine lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Urbana, Illinois. The experience was made even more pleasant because of this "wireless service bell button" at our table. Note its four buttons: Waiter, Drink, Money (bill), and Chopsticks (food). Each button produced a different tone, which emanated from a speaker in the kitchen. When I pressed the drink button, the waiter appeared in seconds holding a pitcher of ice water. When I pressed the Money button, he came right out with the check.

Restaurant features "wireless service bell button" to summon waiters at your command [Boing Boing]

[Photo: Via Free Clip Art]

Tonight is an important, and potentially history-making night, guys. Sarah Palin and Joe Biden are meeting for their debate, and it sure seems like everyone is planning on watching it.

One particular segment of society seems especially pumped for tonight. Not policy wonks, if that's what you guessed (although they will probably be glued to their TVs as well). Nope, we mean the people who turn most things into an excuse to drink. Never to let a golden opportunity pass, the internet is abuzz with all sorts of VP debate related drinking games.

There's a lot to wade through, but several blogs have some stand-out lists. We've cobbled together some of our favorite suggestions, and they are as follows:

• "For every folksy saying Sarah Palin uses, take a drink. Then put lipstick on a pig or a bulldog, whichever is available." [Boston Magazine]
• "Whenever Biden mentions his hometown of Scranton, take a swig and hum the theme song to The Office before swallowing." [Boston Magazine]
• "Every time Sarah Palin suggests Joe Biden's age and/or experience is a negative: toast the 72 year old McCain with an Old Fashioned." [Huffington Post]
• "Everytime Biden says "Folks": clink glasses/bottles, increasing the number of clinks each time -- ex. the third time he says "folks" you clink three times." [Huffington Post]
• Drink anytime Biden mentions: the Bush Doctrine, Scranton, or gives an exasperated sigh. [Washington City Paper]
• Drink anytime Palin mentions: Russia, elitism, or gives a “Pssh,” or “Psshaw”. [Washington City Paper]

A thought, though: why make this so alcoholic and booze-centric?The debate will probably already be so absurd that there will be no need to liven it up by getting drunk. In that spirit, we'd like to propose the VP debate eating game. (Plus, Biden claims to have never had a drop of alcohol in his life, so if you are rooting for him, this might be a good way to show deference.) Similar to a drinking game, scarf something down each time the candidates say or do something ridiculous. The food is of your choosing, although some moose chili and Biden's favorite oatmeal cookies might be a good place to start.

Come up with your own rules, but we'll be starting out by taking a bite anytime that Sarah Palin looks like Tina Fey.

Chow's Helena Echlin fields a question this week from a diner who wants to know if it is ever okay to commit the ultimate dining out sin of completely stiffing your server. Short answer: God, no!

In any case, when you don’t leave a tip, the gesture could be misinterpreted. Phoebe Damrosch, author of Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter and a former server at Per Se, says: “If you don’t tip, it’s easy for the waiter to rationalize that you’re cheap or European.” Or, says Janet Wesley∗, a server at Restaurant Gary Danko, it could look like you’re “drunk and can’t handle the math.”

Because it doesn’t send a clear message, leaving no tip is emotionally unsatisfying. It’s just punishment for punishment’s sake. “Revenge doesn’t feel all that good in the long run,” says Damrosch. You’ll feel much better if you communicate clearly why you’re unhappy, and you may improve the restaurant.

Tipping is so darned sticky, isn't it? It's really difficult for servers to communicate just how important the practice is to their livelihood, as Frank Bruni points out in a recent Diner's Journal post. And it seems equally difficult for diners to convey their needs to servers other than to silently reflect how well those needs were met in the tip. Can't we all just pull our egos and neuroses out of the equation for a second and speak frankly about what is, essentially, a business transaction? No, probably not. Not while entertaining guests or wooing sweethearts, anyway.

The practice of tipping, however awkward, probably isn't going anywhere any time soon, so we'd all benefit by being better and more straightforward about it. Diners: communicate what you need, in clear terms and a non-insulting tone, and for God's sake, leave a tip. Servers, don't take it personally when diners issue a lot of requests. It's your job to fulfill those requests. And don't forget, people's tipping habits can determine the level of service you'll give them the next time they show up at your restaurant.

Bad Dinner, No Tip — Is it ever OK to stiff the waitstaff? [Table Manners]
The Answer Man: Low Tips from Foreign Tourists [Diner's Journal]

[Image via Amazon]

Chipotle is going green. The new free-standing Chipotle in Gurnee, Illinois will have a wind turbine on-site that's expected to generate 10 percent of the restaurant's electrical power. And that's not all — here's what else is in the works:

• use of recycled drywall, recycled barn metal, and primers and paints that contain fewer chemicals;
• a variety of energy and water conservation elements inside the restaurant, including LED lighting, highly efficient faucets and toilets, and Energy Star rated kitchen equipment;
• a 2,500 gallon underground water cistern that will harvest rainwater to irrigate the landscape;
• native plants outside that will require less watering and fertilizer;
• and asphalt in the parking lot that will reflect the sun's heat, rather than absorb it, making the entire site cooler.

If it works in Gurnee, we hope to see similar changes at other Chipotle locations. Now, if only those burritos didn't pack so many calories.

National Restaurant Company Launches "Green" Development [MarketWatch]
Chipotle [Official Site]
Pizza Fusion [MenuPages]
Pizza Fusion [Official Site]
Shake Shack [MenuPages]
Shake Shack [Official Site]

Photo: Davey../flickr

News of a special, very expensive dinner offered by wallet-reaming tag-team Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz has been percolating around the internets, to no little controversy.

We first heard about the $1,500 bonanza on MenuPages: Chicago, which followed the story of a very pissed-off Catherine of Food and Other Musings, who promised to boycott the chefs' restaurants. Though she later took back the threat after Alinea co-owner Nick Kokonas put the cost into perspective (expensive wines, signed cookbooks, tax, tip, and airfare for chefs built into the cost).

But really, while the bill is large, it's definitely not without precedent. Just last year, Bangkok's Dome restaurant offered a $30,000 dinner, which didn't include tax or tip in the bill. Hell, way back in 1976, Craig Claiborne apparently gobbled up a $4,000 feast at Paris's Chez Denis. By comparison, a $1,500 tab at Per Se seems like a bargain, especially with those cookbooks thrown in. Hey, if you're lucky, your 401k might just cover the check!

Alinea Defends A $1500 Dinner Bill [MP: Chicago]
The reason to boycott French Laundry forever [Food And Other Musings]
Alinea [Official Site]
Per Se [MenuPages]
Per Se [Official Site]

[Photo: Foie Gras at Per Se, via New York Magazine]

Tom Colicchio has a lot going for him. A pile of wildly successful Craft-branded restaurants far flung throughout the country, national celebrity as host of Top Chef, an oh-so-shiny bald pate. But one thing his fame and fortune haven't delivered is the one thing he started with in the first place: A kitchen of his own, where he could man the stoves himself and directly oversee the plating and service of a handful of happy diners.

So now that he's rich and famous enough to build a small, humble restaurant, he's building himself a small, humble restaurant: the tentatively-named Tom: Tuesday Dinner, which will be located in the private dining room of his New York Craft flagship, and will run dinner service every other Tuesday, to the tune of a few benjamins a head. The first seating is October 14.

While we can see this raising eyebrows in some circles, and we certainly see the ironic circularity of the situation, we are ultimately of the opinion that this kind of return-to-the-kitchen situation is precisely what's needed to counteract the current national scourge of celeb chef empires. For every Mario Batali, who can effortlessly pull off helming Babbo in New York and Osteria Mozza in LA with equal aplomb, there are a dozen wannabe-national chefs like Marcus Samuelsson, whose C-House flounders helplessly in Chicago while in New York, his Merkato 55 circles the drain. Not to mention Wolfgang Puck, who has become little more than a glorified Chef Boyardee: a well-known name and a smiling face, readily available on soup cans and in your grocer's freezer.

What Colicchio's doing is a smart antidote to Puck-style market oversaturation (or Samuelsson-style too-much-too-soon). While anyone with basic cable knows Tom's name and face, and anyone in New York, Atlanta, LA, or Las Vegas is within 30 minutes of a menu he's personally signed off on, he's taking it one step further. He's simultaneously appeasing his original fans, the ones who knew him by taste instead of by DVR, and also shoring up the core value of his celebrity. Both of these, fortuitously, are achieved merely by offering the real thing: Himself, in a kitchen, making a plate of food just for you.

Colicchio Cooks! [Diner's Journal]
Name This Restaurant [Diner's Journal]
More Details on Colicchio’s New Project, Tom: Tables Now Available! [Grub Street]
Craft [MenuPages]
Craft [Official Site]

So, Robert Parker wants us to boycott restaurants that over-charge for wine. The publisher of Wine Advocate reportedly writes in an upcoming article that restaurants jacking up the price of wine is, "nothing more or less than a legitimized mugging."

Strong words, no doubt. But for as much as we'd like to see his campaign work, it might be a non-starter. Parker decries the idea of wine as "a luxury item," but the fact is, for many people, it really is a luxury item. Take, for example, the recent study that found more expensive wine tastes better. And, as long as there is disposable income left in this country, somebody's probably going to dispose of theirs on fancy wines.

But he's right that it's infuriating to know you're overpaying by as much as 500 percent simply because other suckers out there are willing to do so. So yeah, go ahead and boycott those places that gouge you into the poorhouse, but you may just have to write them off for good. We don't think they're going to see the light any time soon.

if you do still want enjoy a glass of wine the next time you're out to dinner, get a look at Lettie Teague's Food and Wine tips for getting the best deals in a restaurant. Also, check out this 2003 New York Times article on how wines are priced.

Robert Parker Says Stop Eating at Restaurants with Unfairly High Wine Prices [Serious Eats]
Tips: A Cheapskate’s Wine Rules [Food And Wine]
Why Wine Costs What It Does [NY Times]

[Photo: Two Buck Chuck via Kables/flickr]

Let no one tell you that you can't live forever: immortality has been discovered -- well, for a burger, anyway. Death eludes the indomitable McDonald's hamburger. Consider the following evidence, via Serious Eats and courtesy of Karen Hanrahan's website, bestwellnessconsultant.com:

The burger on the left, purchased 12 years ago looks exactly the same as the burger on the right, circa 2008. No wrinkling, no discoloration... the cosmetic industry ought to take a hint.

The Big Mac's source of fountain of youth is not, as popular conspiracy theories would have us believe, children who had been sucked into the ball pits, but rather an elixir blend of powerful anti-aging ingredients: distilled monoglycerides, DATEM, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, enzymes, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, sodium stearoyl lactylate, guar gum, mono-and diglycerides, calcium peroxide, calcium propionate and sodium propionate. And that's just the bun.

Now the patty is a real puzzle. According to the McDonald's website, the patty is composed of
"100% pure USDA inspected beef; no fillers, no extenders. Prepared with grill seasoning (salt, black pepper)." But this doesn't quite explain why meat that ought to have rotted beyond recognition still looks like a recent order. Got theories on this subject? Send us a line.

I leave you with one thought, however: wouldn't it be embarrassing (or poignant, depending on your point of view) if a millennium from now, an advanced future race discovered the only remaining fragment of our civilization -- the soul-less, youthful carcass of a cheeseburger? And, in any case, aren't there better alternatives?

12-Year Old McDonald's Hamburger, Still Looking Good [Serious Eats]
1996 McDonalds Hamburger [bestwellnessconsultant.com]
McDonald's USA Ingredients Listing for Popular Menu Items [McDonald's USA Official Site]

[Photo: Via bestwellnessconsultant.com]

Chicago put itself on the front burner this past weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, were on the scene. From Sunday: Big names, big fun.

Art Smith's shrimp and grits.

When they took the stage at Chicago Gourmet Sunday for a cooking demonstration, it was like getting a sneak peak into what that show would be like.

Both Gand and Smith are obviously at home in front of an audience because of the time they have spent in front of the camera, and they know how to put on a good show. They even had cookware prizes to give away! But there was also something more personal about their presentation.

The two friends cook together behind-the-scenes at events but rarely in public. Still, they know each other well. So Gand and Smith kicked things off by cracking open a bottle of wine. They raised a glass to Chicago Gourmet. Then they got busy helping each other cook.

Gand made apple fritters. And Smith whipped the egg whites for her. Smith made his famous shrimp and grits. And Gand helped with the sauce. Then they opened some champagne.

It was fun watching these two play in the kitchen! They share a love for food and cooking that's positively contagious.

I wish they'd come cook in my kitchen. As it is, I'm about to go heat up leftovers in the microwave.

—BRIDGET HOULIHAN

Gale Gand and Art Smith play in the kitchen.

Chicago put itself on the front burner this past weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, were on the scene. From Sunday: Hitting The Bottle

Jackie Shen telling her story at Chicago Gourmet.

"Honey, it comes from a bottle!" Shen admitted, with a rather devious smile during her "East Meets West: Wok and Wisk" seminar Sunday at Chicago Gourmet.

Of course Shen does a ton of stuff to that bottled sauce before she serves it.

You need to have a good foundation in cooking to know what to do, she says. Inspiration doesn't just strike. Finding the right balance of flavors is all about knowing what you're working with — and trial and error.

Shen went on to talk about how her entire cooking career has been about finding that balance. Originally trained as a French chef, she got bored with the cuisine (especially the sauces) about seven years ago and decided she needed a change.

"My dad said, you're not a chef anyway; you know nothing about Asian food," she said. "I wanted to prove him wrong!"

So Shen asked her mom to visit and teach her how to make wontons. She started to focus on the food she ate as a child in Hong Kong but didn't know how to make. And once she had a solid foundation in Asian cooking, she started to think of ways to fuse it with western-style food.

"I've had a good time going from fire to wok," said Shen. "People are traveling more, and trying new flavors. There can be balance between them."

Shen is currently exploring this further in a cookbook she is collaborating on in addition to teaching at Kendall College and working at Red Light.

One thing is for sure: I need to try that sauce from a bottle as soon as possible. Red Light here I come!

—BRIDGET HOULIHAN

A story on the Barf Blog today raises a question so disturbing that much of our restaurant-o-phile readership will probably shudder at the very thought. But the evidence is there: Some restaurant and institutional kitchen food poisoning may be deliberate.

It's not pretty, but when you think we've all probably harbored some kind of sick revenge fantasy against a boss from hell or a job from hell or some such thing, you have to admit it's totally possible that some of the food poisoning cases in the world are no accident.

Barf Blog refers to a story of an International House of Pancakes in Texas that has been linked to more than 100 salmonella cases over the last five months. Police are investigating, and while they stopped short of calling the contamination intentional, they said they were, "investigating every option."

But don't let it scare you too bad. Really, when was the last time you heard a substantiated case of this kind of attack? Plus, it's one of those things you absolutely can't predict. So just try not to think about it, okay?

But do avoid the IHOP at I-40 and Western Street in Amarillo. Intentional or no, that's a shameful track record.

How much food poisoning is deliberate? [Barf Blog]
Over 100 salmonella cases linked to IHOP [KVII Texas]
Food Safety for First Responders [Centers for Disease Control]

[Photo: Food Poisoning Microbes via Braintree District Council]

Chicago put itself on the front burner this past weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, were on the scene. From Sunday: Tasting California.

In the tasting tent.

Stefen Soltysaik from Rodney Strong Vineyards was my guide; his wine seminar at Chicago Gourmet, called "Examination of Cool to Warm Climate Cabernet Sauvignon," was excellent. We were each given four glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon. The first three glasses were from different Rodney Strong wineries in the valley, and the fourth glass was the vineyard's current pride and joy, the 2005 Rockaway blend.

Then the geography lesson began, and Soltysaik explained how climate impacts wine. Each glass was incredibly different because of the location of the winery where it was produced.

As we tasted and learned more, Soltysaik also detailed how the wine we were drinking was made.

It was a fascinating and well-put-together presentation. I've taken a variety of wine tours and have gone to a number of tastings. This one was far-and- away the most educational and entertaining I've attended.

The wine was spectacular too… especially the Rockaway 2005! I sought out that wine and sipped some more at the Grand Cru Tasting later in the day. It just might inspire me to go to Sonoma one day. (As if I really needed an excuse!)

—BRIDGET HOULIHAN

Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. Today: How to taste wine.

Lined up and ready to pour.

"Food is full of fat, and wine is acidic," he explained Saturday during a wine seminar at Chicago Gourmet. "Think about eating steak. You're essentially coating your palate with fat. As you sip wine, it cleans your palate so you can taste the next bite."

The first bite is always the best, he continued, and when you pair food with wine you get 30 first bites.

That's a good reason to become a wine lover, and once you start tasting a variety of wine it's a whole new world.

In the seminar "Tasting the Masters' Way," Dame walked us through that world a bit with a blind tasting. He detailed techniques sommeliers use to identify and appreciate wine and discussed what it takes to become a sommelier. Some of his best tips:

• Identify the scents in the wine you're about to taste. What fruits do you smell?
• Look at the color of the wine. Is it bright? Clear?
• Keep in mind that white wines grow darker with age and red wines grow lighter.
• Swish your wine around. Look at the legs. Wines with a lot of tannins are fuller-bodied wines.
• Taste a variety of wine. It will surprise you.
• Take notes whenever practical.
• Enhance your skill with taste tests — especially blind ones.

—BRIDGET HOULIHAN

Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. Today: Food demos!

Jose Garces, head chef at Chicago's Mercat a la Planxa, prepares octopus.

No joke. This simple technique, known as scaring, tenderizes the octopus, making it more succulent to eat.

Jose Garces, the head chef at Chicago's Mercat a la Planxa, explained this to a captive audience yesterday during a Best of Spain and Mexico cooking demonstration at Chicago Gourmet.

Sharing the stage with Rick Bayless, Garces got everyone's attention before he even started cooking, simply by holding up the octopus. Then he showed us how to cook it. I know I'm not ready to give this a shot myself, but it was utterly fascinating to watch. Until yesterday, I had absolutely no idea how to "scare" an octopus.

You know what else? Start saving the corks from the red wine you drink. When you throw them in the boiling water with the octopus it adds to the flavor. Cool, huh?

Watching a cooking demo at Chicago Gourmet is what I imagine it would be like to be on the set of a cooking show that airs on the Food Network. The stage at Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park is currently the home of a snazzy looking kitchen set, complete with professional appliances and cookware. Large mirrors hang over the prep tables so that you can watch the chefs work.

And it's really fun to watch a great chef cook. They make it look easy. Cooking and plating well is an art… and I like to see it as it happens.

Having said that, I must admit that I don't watch cooking demos often. That's because I find it very dissatisfying not to be able to taste the food I'm watching people prepare. I know for a fact that if I were to make the same dish myself it wouldn't taste as good. So I was really hoping to get to taste the food after watching live cooking demos.

No such luck. In some cases, I could find samples of the dish made in a demo at a tasting table later in the day, but not always.

Still, the demos were great to watch and they may even inspire me to cook! Garces certainly inspired me to eat: Tammy and I made our way Mercat a la Planxa for dinner last night and splurged on not one, but two orders of octopus.

—BRIDGET HOULIHAN

After the jump, photos of Rick Bayless's two demo dishes, plus salted cactus!

Continue reading "How To Scare An Octopus At Chicago Gourmet" »

Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. Today: Where's the food?

Dried fruit display at Pastoral Artisan Cheese

My tummy was rumbling when I arrived at the main entrance Saturday morning, primed to sample everything Chicago's best chefs had to throw at me. It turns out that wasn't much.

The majority of the booths at the main event, located on the lawn of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, offered wine, not food.

"Isn't there supposed to be a Grand Cru Wine Tasting later today?" I asked Tammy, my Chicago Bites co-host, as she photographed the scene.

"Yeah."

"So what's with all the wine?" I asked, baffled. "Where's the food?"

So we set out on a tireless quest to find something to eat, relentlessly foraging from booth to booth.

The booths themselves were lovely. Many looked professionally designed, and were decorated with phenomenal flower arrangements and tempting pictures of food or large reproductions of restaurant menus. But time after time, we walked away with brochures and nothing to eat.

Then we saw a line stretching out of the Chaise Lounge booth… they were serving crab cake and salad! Victory!

"Have another plate," the owner said, after I'd devoured my first. "I've never been to a food fest with so little food."

True. And here's the kicker: I'd venture a guess that all that wine drove up ticket prices. So folks paid $100 to get in and drink on empty stomachs because they thought they were paying to eat.

Tammy and I were able to ferret out a few more food tastings throughout the day. But they was sparse and meat-heavy. Tammy is a "fussitarian": She eats fish but no meat. So she sat by patiently while I tried things like chicken salad wraps and bacon-and-onion tartlets.

She did get to sample A Mano's olive oil gelato though, which was one of the food highlights of my day. We both enjoyed Kefir smoothies from Star Fruit café in the Whole Foods kids' area, and there were a couple of booths with dried fruits and excellent cheese. I loved Rick Bayless' rib eye steak dish. But of course Tammy couldn't eat that.

—BRIDGET HOULIHAN

The crab cake at the Chaise Lounge booth was a saving grace.

[All photos by Tammy Green. All rights reserved.]

Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. First up: The opening night reception.

When you know the bartender, the headwaiter, or the bus boy, you're in for a better dining experience. These are the folks whose service can make or break an evening.

So, when I spotted Carol, an acquaintance I met years ago through work, behind the bar last night at Chicago Gourmet's kickoff in Millennium Park, I had an inkling it was going to be an amazing night.

"I didn't even know you were a bartender!" I said, wandering over to say hello, while the press photographers were busy snapping shots of Mayor Daley.

"One of my four jobs," she replied with a smile. "This is such a cool event, isn't it?" she said, pouring me a glass of wine. "You've got to try the Seven Daughters white, it a blend of seven grapes. You'll love it!"

Chicago Gourmet aims to solidify the city's place as an international food contender through a series of cooking demos, seminars, and tastings this weekend. And the food I sampled last night was great, but it wasn't the most striking part of the launch.

The most striking part was a prevailing sense of excitement. Every chef and attendee I chatted with shared Carol's enthusiasm for the event and seemed genuinely thrilled that Chicago is finally flexing some culinary muscle. Last night's reception was attended mostly by presenting chefs, the media, and corporate sponsors, but it was anything but stuffy. It was more like a jolly convention of foodies.

I still have to wonder though if Chicago Gourmet will resonate with the general public. In Chicago, we're used to having a street fair every 15 minutes during the summer, so a weekend of food is nothing new. And as a result, we're also pros at eating food on a stick in a tent.

Ticket prices, chocolate pepper macaroons, and worries for the future, after the jump!

Continue reading "Chicago Goes Gourmet: A Taste Of The Kickoff" »

While much of the talent is homegrown — Frontera's Rick Bayless, Top Chef's Stephanie Izard, Gale Gand of Tru and PBS — the festival's got global reach, with chefs and wine experts flying in from all over: from Terrance Brennan of New York's Picholine and Maricel Presilla of Hoboken, NJ's criminally delicious Cucharamama and Zafra, to Mpuhe Dhlomo of Africa Meets Europe in Durban, South Africa and Francesca Marsetti from Milan's Brasserie Iseo Brescia.

Of course, MenuPages will be on the scene as well: special correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green (of the can't-miss dining podcast Chicago Bites) will be bringing their formidable skills to the table, filing regular reports throughout the weekend, starting with tonight's opening night gala.

• Bostonians are dumbstruck with grief after a grease fires one of the area's best burger joints. [MP: Boston]

• Graham Elliot Bowles is misinformed about a lot. [MP: Chicago]

• Business Week is approximately fifteen years behind the times in its list of up and coming neighborhoods. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Resolved: there's no good reason to prevent a taco truck from parking outside a high school. [MP: San Francisco]

• A Floridian chain has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in one year. [MP: South Florida]

For cop-out Friday, check out this classic Sesame Street video with Grover doing his best impression of yours truly as a waiter. No, not really. But seriously? If we're ever called upon to take up the mantle of the service industry once more, we're totally going to forgo a notebook in favor of Grover's rhyming memory technique. "Round and tasty on a bun..."

We wrote about the delightfully eccentric Kenny Shopsin, of New York's Shopsin's, but a couple days ago and that same night, he appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. For those readers who have never been to Shopsin's, and perhaps may never go, this clip is a pretty stellar example (minus a lot of cursing) of what to expect from Mr. Shopsin. For those who have, he's in fine form, no?

The video is a fun watch, not only for the way these two banter (seriously, have two people ever looked more perplexed and befuddled by the other?), but also, because of what they cook up. Mac and cheese pancakes? A pancake with a tiny little burger in it? S'MORES PANCAKES? Kenny Shopsin is truly blowing our mind with all of these reinventions!

What's more, this video &mdash plus all of the Shopsin-mania swirling around the release of his cookbook &mdash just happens to fall during the same week as National Pancake Day, which is tomorrow. As far as coincidences go, this one could hardly get better: Shopsin has whet pancake appetites nationwide + you basically have no recourse but to stuff your face with pancakes tomorrow.

We can't all rush to Shopsin's for mac and cheese pancakes, but that doesn't mean that there aren't mighty fine pancakes to be found elsewhere in the country. So run on down to Blue Heaven tomorrow and remind yourself what a real short stack tastes like. Hell, order yourself a side of macaroni and see what happens.

Shopsin's [MenuPages]
Shopsin's [Official Site]
Blue Heaven [MenuPages]
Blue Heaven [Official Site]

So, um, remember that Swiss Chef we reported on, who was playing with the idea of using human milk in his restaurant dishes? Yeah, well guess who lurrrrved that story? PETA, of course.

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals hopped right on the human milk bandwagon, sending a letter to Ben and Jerry's co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield asking them to replace cow milk with human milk in their famously counterculture-embracing ice cream.

The ice cream mavens politely declined, PETA reported in its blog:

In response to our letter, Ben and Jerry's issued the following statement: "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child." Hey, guys, that's our point: Cow's milk is for baby cows.

The Breast Is Best! PETA Asks Ben & Jerry's to Dump Dairy and Go With Human Milk Instead [PETA Media Center]
Update: PETA to Ben and Jerry's: Breast Is Best! [The PETA Files]
Find-A-food Search [MenuPages]

[Photo: Via Cherry Hill Drive-In]

I've known quite a few picky eaters. A roommate once dated a guy for a year who would only eat in chain restaurants. (My reaction: "And you went on more than one date with him?") A friend is terrified of mayonnaise and begins to hyperventilate at the mere thought of mayo being in anything she's already ingested.* And I once dated a guy who wouldn't eat eggs or anything with even a hint of spice. (That relationship ended very, very quickly.)

But that was nothing compared to some of the people interviewed for this Globe and Mail article. One guy will only eat dry chicken, well-done steak and sauce-free veggies. (That's him in the video, attempting to eat pizza, which he did not like. Who doesn't like pizza?!) Then there's the other guy who has eaten the same thing for lunch for the past decade: peanut butter on crackers with a glass of milk.

The first inclination is to label them spoiled brats — which they are, to the same extent we all are; none of us is threatened with starvation, so we have the luxury of picking and choosing what we eat — but after reading through the comments too, I'm beginning to think that this isn't just some childish thing. These people have a serious disorder. Imagine how socially crippling it would be to not be able to hold down most foods. It made me feel a bit sympathetic towards these ridiculously picky eaters.

That said, God help me if I ever give birth to a picky eater. I love food too much, and I just don't have that kind of patience.

Burgers make me gag [Globe and Mail]
TJ vs pizza [YouTube]

Wow, talk about a clash of the food-politics titans. Check out this debate between sustainable food guru Michael Pollan and Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, held at a Google-sponsored forum.

They're talking about pretty important issues, and in a way, each seems like something of a caricature of his side. Grant wants to solve the world's hunger problems through the magic of (Monsanto) technology, while Pollan argues for many local, sustainable solutions, developed at a grass-roots level, by people so hungry they can barely keep themselves alive. There's an element of evil corporate suit vs. idealist college professor, but that's as much a pre-existing stereotype as it is a reality. They're both pretty astute and articulate.

It's good viewing, even if few of the world's problems are solved by the end. Most people don't want to eat crops that were developed in a lab, nor can they afford grass-fed steaks from New York's Blue Hill. But at least debates like this get companies like Monsanto out of the backrooms of government, and idealists like Pollan out of the ivory tower.

Slow Food Vs. Monsanto [Grist Mill]
Blue Hill [MenuPages]
Blue Hill [Official Site]

If you don't know this restaurant, you should: New York's Shopsin's, perhaps one of the quirkiest, oddest, most delightful, most infuriating restaurants in the world, which is presided over by Kenny Shopsin, who is himself one of the quirkiest, oddest, most delightful, most infuriating restaurateurs in the world.

Shopsin's is famous for any number of reasons: the 900-plus-item menu, the draconian dining room rules (no parties greater than 4, no two people at the same table ordering the same dish), the seeming infinity of Kenny's cantankerousness, the Calvin Trillin treatment in The New Yorker, the sign reading "All our cooks wear condoms."

And then, of course, there is the food: Blisters on my Sisters (sort of like huevos rancheros), Egg Nachos (exactly what it sounds like), Slutty Cakes (pancakes filled with pumpkin and peanut butter), Mac n Cheese Pancakes (another self-evident one) ... and that's just breakfast.

We realize, of course, that not everyone is at this very moment in New York City and able to go to the cramped space in the Essex Street Market to have Kenny make you a Chicken-Fried Hamburger. So now, the Chicken-Fried Hamburger comes to you!

Eat Me: The Food & Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin is coming out tomorrow from Knopf, and it could not be a more awesome cookbook. Organized around chapters like "The Story of Shopsin's Turkey, or Why I Hate the Health Department," and studded with 70s-era photos of Shopsin's kids taking baths in the sink and straight-faced portraits of Kenny's everyday kitchen utensils, this is certainly not your mom's copy of Joy of Cooking. In fact, it probably makes Joy of Cooking blush and giggle the red off its cover.

Eat Me [Amazon]
Shopsin's [MenuPages]
Shopsin's [Official Site]

[photo of Kenny by Jason Fulford]

After yesterday's public head-scratching on the San Francisco blog over OpenTable's handling of large parties (in this case at Medjool), we got a response to our question of why reservations for, say, 12 people, sometimes can't be accepted through OpenTable, but can be accommodated after a phone call directly to the restaurant. OT spokeswoman Shannon Stubo wrote in an e-mail:

The availability you see on OpenTable.com is a direct reflection of the way the restaurant has set up its reservation book. Each restaurant sets its book up differently to accommodate the unique dining patterns and management needs of that particular business. When a diner searches OpenTable.com for restaurant reservations, the results reflect the actual book availability at that restaurant at that point in time.

Because a restaurant may have the flexibility to reconfigure tables during service (combining two tables for two into one table for four, for example or reassess the expected completion time of a previous dining party), hostesses are sometimes able to accommodate diners by phone. Large parties require a certain amount of operational attention, and restaurants occasionally want a human to make that decision based on what’s currently going on in the restaurant.

Medjool: Reservations The Old-Fashioned Way [MenuPages SF]
OpenTable.com [Official Site]
Medjool [MenuPages]
Medjool [Official Site]

There are two general rules in our kitchen: one, if I cook -- you clean. Two, when in doubt -- add cheese. Is there a single dish in existence that won't benefit by the addition of cheese? We're clearly not alone in thinking along these (dubious) lines, because AXE, the body product brand (and another dubious concept), wants to know -- can't man benefit from the addition of chocolate? Behold the Chocolate Man!

Meanwhile, in an inspired move of cocao genius, a German company goes one further: combining typography with chocolate. 'Cause, you know, typesetting is so much sweeter when it's made with chocolate...

[Photo: Via Typolade]

For politically oriented drink marketing, everything comes down to a name.

Serious Eats reports today on a little-known Chilean wine sold in San Francisco that has taken a severe dip in popularity since the complete GOP ticket was announced. The name of the maligned red: Palin Syrah.

"It was our best selling wine before (the V.P. announcement),” said Chris Tavelli, owner of Yield Wine Bar, which has offered Palin Syrah, a certified organic wine from Chile, by the glass since July. But after Sen. John McCain tagged Sarah Palin as his running mate, sales of the wine with the conservative's inverted name plummeted—not surprising in famously liberal San Francisco.

McCain has his own link to the wonderful world of alcoholic beverages through his wife, Cindy McCain, whose family fortune comes, in part, from domestic beer behemoth Budweiser.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, will have to sit this round out. Word is, he's a teetotaler.

'Palin Syrah' Wine Drops in Sales After Sarah Palin Veep Pick [Serious Eats]
Sixpoint Craft Ales Brews "Hop Obama" Ale [Beer Advocate]

[Photo: Via Appellation Wine And Spirits]

Forget Sparks. They're going to outlaw that junk anyway. The next big thing is this totally serious product we saw written up in the Onion:

According to makers of the nervous-energy drink Pace!, the new beverage provides consumers with the same anxiety, restlessness, and self-doubt associated with waiting for a phone call from a much-desired female acquaintance.

Happy Friday. Have fun on that date tonight!

States ask MillerCoors to pull alcoholic energy drink [LA Times]
New Nervous-Energy Drink Recreates Feeling Of Waiting For Girl To Call [The Onion]

• Last meal choices: an analysis. [MP: Chicago]

• Make pizza, not war! [MP: Philadelphia]

• Rubbing elbows with highly caffeinated mobsters. [MP: Boston]

• Fight food poisoning with other, less poisonous food. [MP: San Francisco]

• And some of the prettiest brunch pictures you ever did see. [MP: South Florida]

Oftentimes, the use of a fanciful or unusual ingredient makes our pulse race in excitement and fills our mind with all of the possible ways to incorporate this new element into foods. Not so with the article in the Times UK about Swiss chef, Hans Locher!

You see, the inventive new ingredient that Locher has been experimenting with (and seeks to incorporate on the menu for his restaurant) is human milk. Yes. In case you are not already feeling squeamish, let us reiterate: human milk. For the curious, sample dishes include breast milk lamb curry and antelope steak with chantarelle sauce with breast milk and cognac. In case you were wondering where the milk came from, he began crafting these dishes after the birth of his daughter, so the dots are fairly easy to connect.

He then put out an ad for donors, "who were promised the equivalent of about €10 [...] for a litre of milk," which frankly, just does not seem like enough. Unfortunately for Locher, Swiss authorities did not respond very positively to this, and Locher will find himself in a bit of a pickle if he chooses to go through with his human milk menu.

As far as inspiration, we have it from the mouth of the man himself. Says Locher:

The idea first came to me when I noticed that there were many young mothers in our village, some of them single. I thought to myself: why not make use of their potential? I served the meals to my friends without telling them about the new ingredient and the feedback was excellent.

Says this writer: we often think of all the things that we would love to eat, and pat ourselves on the back when memes like the Omnivore's Hundred make the rounds. The line needs to be drawn somewhere though and as far as we're concerned, human breast milk is a pretty good place to start. Disagree? Think that this would be an excellent notch to add to your omnivore's bedpost?

Gourmet Hans Locher cooks up trouble with human milk recipes [Times Online]

[Photo: via Tubes./Flickr]

My home city of Boston has found itself in the news this week, and not just because of Tom Brady's knee injury. On Saturday, the city officially banned trans fats in all of the city's restaurants and other businesses that make and sell prepared foods. In doing so, Boston became the third MenuPages city to do so (New York's ban was enacted in July 2007 and Philadelphia's came into effect in September of the same year; a statewide ban in California is set to take effect in 2010). From a public health standpoint, the benefits of a trans fat ban are clear: trans fats (artificially-manufactured oils) have been under fierce fire since a 2006 article in the New England Journal of Medicine stated that they can cause "considerable potential harm, but no apparent benefit" and reduce good cholesterol while upping the bad kind. There's also little evidence that cutting out the Crisco is detrimental to a product's taste.

Truthfully, for all the hoopla about trimming the trans fats in Boston, the ban has had little effect. Why? Well, for one thing, the legislature voted for the ban in April, giving local chefs plenty of time to cut the offending ingredients from their menus. For another, although the bill has been stalled as of late, Massachusetts as a whole has been flirting with a trans fat ban since July. Finally, this being Boston, the importance of Dunkin' Donuts' victory in developing a doughnut with zero grams of trans fats cannot be overestimated.

Trans Fats Now Banned In Boston Restaurants [Boston Globe]

File this under "most inventive smuggling operation ever." A group of smugglers wanted to get cheap vodka from Russia to Estonia without having to pay those silly EU taxes. So they built an underwater pipeline to funnel the spirits from one country to another:

TALLINN, Estonia (AFP) — Eleven suspects have been charged over a smuggling operation to pump vodka from Russia to Estonia via a two kilometre (one-mile) underwater pipeline, Estonian prosecutors said Tuesday.

"It might sound weird and unbelievable but it's a very real criminal case," Mari Luuk, spokeswoman for the Estonian Viru Circuit Prosecutor's Office told AFP.

She said the 11, who included Russians and Estonians, were likely to go on trial soon and faced up to five years in prison if convicted.

The illegal pipeline was submerged in a water reservoir located between Russia and Estonia near the north-eastern Estonian border town of Narva.

The operation was profitable as the price of vodka in Russia is nearly one third cheaper than in Estonia, a member of the European Union since May 2004.

Apparently these men, who somehow managed to avoid capture for almost four years since the discovery of the illegal operation, face up to five years in jail. Although given the fact that they have an underwater vodka pipeline on their resumes, it may be difficult to keep these men in prison.

Eleven charged in Estonia for vodka smuggling via pipeline [AFP]

Photo: clicking passion/flickr

Wow, the news about plastics just keeps getting scarier. First it turns out they may give you brain damage. Now it seems you can get a host of diseases from the stuff as well. You doubtless picked it up from this morning's FYI, but just to remind you, here's what the Chicago Tribune had to say about the latest findings on Bisphenol A, a compound found in all sorts of plastic:

Bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, is used extensively in the linings of food and drink containers, plus countless consumer products, including baby bottles and sippy cups. The chemical also has been found in drinking water, dental sealants and even household dust.

Adding to a growing sense of unease about the chemical's potential effects was a study released before federal hearings Tuesday that linked exposure to bisphenol A with cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities in adults.

So what can you do to avoid getting sick, or going soft in the head? Well, as government regulators talk about whether or not to ban the stuff, you can start packing your lunch in a glass or metal container, and maybe pick up one of those metal water bottles. Meanwhile, according to the Tribune,

Some state and federal lawmakers have sought to ban BPA in children's products, and some companies have decided not to produce or sell BPA products. Wal-Mart is phasing out sales of baby bottles containing BPA from its U.S. stores next year, and Nalgene is removing BPA from its popular water bottles.

Common chemical BPA under scrutiny as study links it to diabetes, cardiovascular disease [Chicago Tribune]
Association of Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration With Medical Disorders and Laboratory Abnormalities in Adults [Journal of the American Medical Association]
Draft Assesment of Bisphenol A For Use In Food Contact Applications [FDA]

[Image: Via Wikipedia]

Eyes refusing to open to such sad news, we lay half-awake this morning as the clock radio announced that Richard Wright, keyboard player for Pink Floyd, had died, apparently of cancer. Then a Barf Blog post put the tragedy in perspective by pointing out a huge sub-section of Floyd's fan-base: Kitchen workers:

There was some Tom Petty, and The Clash, but a lot of Pink Floyd. So it was with a nod and a lighter raised in the air to food service workers everywhere upon hearing the nears that founding Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright passed today.

So godspeed, Richard. The bussers, waiters, dishwashers and line cooks of America owe you a debt for getting us through some pretty hairy shifts. Good luck, er, break a leg at that Great Gig in the Sky.

Richard Wright, Member of Pink Floyd, Dies at 65 [NY Times]
Pink Floyd and Fargo Rock City: food service and music [Barf Blog]

[Photo: Via 7241/flickr]

Think you’re alone in needing medical attention after spending some time in the kitchen? Think again. Time Out New York published a short piece surveying the work-related injuries of various food industry professionals, including a big-name chef or two. View the list at your own discretion, as it may have the unfortunate consequences of guilting you into giving up that sacred pillar of morning routine — espresso.

Shake and Ache [Time Out New York]

[Photo: Via biskuit]

File this in the same folder as tumors with hair or maybe three-eyed fish. Only cuter. And edible. Boing Boing has a link to a report from a woman in England who found what looks like a strawberry growing inside a tomato:

Esther, 48, of Cheltenham, Gloucs, said: “It definitely looks like a strawberry in a tomato and it tastes like a tomato but a bit sweeter.” She added: “We’re keeping it in the fridge in case an expert wants to look at it.”

Strawberry found inside tomato, says gardener [Boing Boing]
Woman finds a strawberry inside a tomato [Nothing To Do With Arbroath]

[Photo: Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath]

This is probably going to be the last piece in our coverage of 2008 Slow Food Nation, the labor day sustainable food event that turned San Francisco into one big gourmet ghetto. Overall, I thought the ambitious, four-day event was a smash, but you can't ignore the criticisms, so here's our second installment looking at what could be improved next time.

Standing in the charcuterie line with MPSF cohort Alexis Wright and her “Sweetie,” Bobby Rullo, I watched a disgruntled patron accost a volunteer:

“Nine dollars,” the tight-lipped woman said, thrusting a piece of butcher paper topped with a small stack of pate and salumi into the face of the aproned woman checking tickets. “This tiny amount of food cost the equivalent of nine dollars. That is outrageous!”

“Please ma’am, I’m just a volunteer. I didn’t come up with the prices. Let me see if I can find you somebody to talk to,” the weary-looking volunteer said, as the growing line of attendees shifted its weight from one foot to the other, and looked hungrily at the small pile of meat.

Long lines, a confusing layout, and uneven pricing were probably the most frequent attendee complaints stemming from the taste pavilions at Slow Food Nation.

Of all the carefully choreographed Slow Food nation events, the taste pavilions were probably the most complicated, and suffered most from the organizational problems inherent in the seminal event.

Continue reading "SFN: Slow Follow-Up, Part 2: Taste Pavillions" »

• Inexpensive Italian on the city's priciest street? Yes please! [MP: Boston]

• Perhaps you should celebrate your marriage with a tattooed wedding cake. [MP: Chicago]

• Esquire + Philadelphia = Tru Luv 4Eva. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Love is a warm cookie. True love is getting an email alert whenever there's a warm cookie near you. [MP: San Francisco]

• Show some love by helping hurricane victims with donations of food and money. [MP: South Florida]

By now you’ve no doubt heard that the Labor Day Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco went off with at least a couple hitches. Negative chatter and blog posts have popped up regarding the organization, the cost, and the overall tone of the event. Our SFN coverage wraps up with two looks at pricing and organization at the four-day food-fest.

The biggest problems with Slow Food Nation, in my opinion, had to do with money (don’t they always?). Specifically, why participants had to part with so much of it, and what they got for it. I found the biggest financial discrepancies in the Slow Marketplace, and the Taste Pavilions — not coincidentally, the two focal points of the event.

Walking from the bi-weekly Heart of the City farmers’ market in United Nations Plaza to the Slow Marketplace in Civic Center Sunday, you’d see prices jump by as much as 100 percent or more for the same items.

Peaches that went for $2.00 a pound at Heart of the City ran $4.00 a pound at Slow Marketplace. Plums went from $1.50 to $3 a pound. Pears and apples stayed the same, but organic melons jumped from $.50 a pound to $1.00. What’s going on here?

Continue reading "SFN: Slow Follow-Up" »

There seems to be no shortage of interest surrounding food and the Presidential candidates. Way back in April, the New York Times ran that collection of pieces about the intersection of our pantries and how we vote. For example, if your go-to fast food restaurant is Hardee's, you "might" be a McCain partisan! If you prefer Panera Bread, you "might" be an Obama supporter!

Beyond what our food preferences say about our political leanings, the eating habits of McCain, Obama, and their respective families are also a subject of endless fascination. Just yesterday, the Boston Globe published an article about what the candidates like to eat (because "a politician's relationship to food can say a lot about him or her").

And let's not forget Cindy McCain's recipegate (also from April), wherein the potential First Lady maybe, sorta, kinda plagiarized some recipes that she had presented as treasured family favorites!

The newest and (forgive us for slipping into partisanship!) most supremely exciting thing to happen in re: food and the Presidential race is Michelle Obama's appearance on Paula Deen's cooking show, Paula's Party. The episode will air on the Food Network on September 20, and People.com has a first look at the episode! From it, we learn the following fun facts: seafood gumbo is the first thing that Michelle cooked for Barack, she hasn't made it since, and Paula and Michelle make fried shrimp together. (Sadly, the video is not embeddable, so you will have to go to People.com to watch it.)

Barack Obama and John McCain may still be duking it out, but we're pretty sure that Michelle Obama is going to firmly clinch the First Lady cooking showdown when she appears on Paula's Party.

"Palate Initiative" [Boston Globe]
"First Look: Michelle Obama Cooks With Paula Deen" [People]

[Photo: screencap of Paula's Party with Michelle Obama via People.com]

First came the automat. Then vending machines. Then nothing for a while. Then, last year, a German restaurant opened that serves food mechanically, via crazy roller-coaster tracks. Now the next phase in food delivery is here, and it is electronic.

Two new over-the-top gimmicks developments have been making the rounds on the Internet lately: London's Inamo still uses human food-servers, but ordering is done through tabletop screens that double as entertainment portals:

Its big idea is that your table is an interactive screen, where by pointing and clicking you can find your menu, see pictures of each item, and order. The frustration of waggling fingers or tinging glasses to get waiters’ attention is consigned to the same dustbin of history as the night soil men who once disposed of London’s sewage. Waiters become people who flit out of the shadows to place dishes on the table, flitting away again without eye contact.

You can also personalise your décor by choosing from a range of patterns and colours that glow from the table like a Kowloon nightscape. The table can order taxis for you and show you bus maps. You can play battleships with your co-diner, should conversation flag.

That's all fine and good, but it's a lot like re-inventing the wheel. Until an actual food-pill comes along, you probably won't find a viable substitute for that carbon-based life-form balancing your tray.

Dining goes digital at Inamo [Evening Standard]
Meet Mr. Asahi: The Bartending Robot [Slashfood]

Waffle House has a whole slew of adoring fans, but I imagine even its most ardent supporters might not think of the roadside chain as a wedding spot. Not so a couple of Waffle House employees in Dacula, Ga., about 40 miles northeast of Atlanta:

The lucky couple, George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian - both 23 and employees at the Dacula diner located at the Ga. Highway 316/U.S. Highway 29 interchange - wouldn't have it any other way.

"I don't know, it's something different," Mathis said while fixing his tie prior to the ceremony.

For years, the couple tried to marry on their Independence Day anniversary. But the bride was always scheduled to work. Instead of waiting any longer - she got the day off at the last minute; Mathis had to report for the morning shift - the couple of nine years decided to seal the deal at work.

The result was what a NASCAR tailgate might be like if Hank Jr. himself stopped by with all his rowdy friends: Loud and proud - country music, storytelling and plenty of Dale Earnhardt paraphernalia - and not an iota of pretentiousness.

Scattered, smothered, covered and hitched [Gwinnett Daily Post]
Waffle House [Official Site]

Photo: Gwinnett Daily Post

This is interesting: Seems taking pictures of your food can help with weight loss, at least according to one University of Wisconsin at Madison study.

Serious Eats linked to a Daily Telegraph article on the study:

The pictures appear to have concentrated the dieters' minds at just the right time, before they were about to eat, the researchers who carried out the study believe.

Photographs were also more effective at encouraging volunteers to watch what they ate than traditional written food diaries.

Perhaps, this news will further steel David Chang's ban on photography at his exclusive Momofuku Ko in New York.

Scientists: Taking Photos of Food May Help You Lose Weight [Serious Eats]
Photographing meals "could help weight loss" [Daily Telegraph]
Momofuku Ko [MenuPages]
Momofuku Ko [Official Site]

[Photo: Via WordRidden/flickr]

Here are the two ways in which a dish can be supremely delicious and fattening without containing meat:

1) It is French Fries

2) It is the news that GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's speechwriter is a staunch vegetarian who opposes Palin's beloved aerial hunting.

The Christian Science Monitor's Bright Green Blog cited a Time article about Matthew Scully, a former Bush speechwriter, who crafted Palin's now-famous address to the Republican convention last week:

The Palin-Scully pairing is anything but a guaranteed fit, though. Palin is known as an avid hunter; Scully is best known for his vigorous defense of animal rights. A vegetarian who is regularly critical of the NRA and much of the hunting community, he is a passionate advocate for doing away with the more brutal versions of blood-sport, including aerial hunting, which Palin supports.

What would the GOP's pet pit bull say about that?

Sarah Palin's speech written by a vegetarian [Bright Green Blog]
The Man Behind Palin's Speech [Time]
Her deadly wolf program [Salon]
Eat less meat to fight climate change: UN expert [AFP]

[Photo: Via Striatic/flickr]

They loved Lucy, hula hoops and "pure and good" Kool Aid. And the creepy, semi-utopian ads of the Space Age reflected this widely held belief that technology was key to world peace and immortality. OK, so maybe not, we're starting to discover. Take, for example, plastic (via Reuters):

Scientists reported this week new evidence that low doses of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), widely used to make plastic food and drinking containers, can impair brain function in primates, extending the findings of previous research conducted in rats.
Whether the amount of BPA that leaches out of containers into food and beverages represents an environmental risk is a subject of controversy.
"Our primate model indicates that BPA could negatively affect brain function in humans," study investigator Tibor Hajszan said in a press release from the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

In the meantime, why not stick to more time-tested materials for your food-storage needs -- like glass? Some great alternatives include Crate & Barrel's glass storage bowls with plastic lids and these all-glass storage containers. Pyrex also offers cheaper options and claims its containers are made of non-porous glass that won't absorb flavors (a definite plus).

And while progress hasn't quite lived up to the hype, this reassuring new study comes on the heels of another thought -- that there may be some things worse than animal testing.

Plastics chemical harms brain function in monkeys [Reuters]
Since You Asked - Bisphenol A [National Institute For The Environmental Health Sciences]
Buying Guide - Plastic Food Storage [EVO]

[Photo: Via Jerrroen/flickr]

Because it wasn't weird enough for a Fresno, Calif. burglar to simply assault his sleeping victims with food from their own kitchen, a paragraph in Saturday's Fresno Bee account implies the suspect carried out the two attacks at the same time!:

The victims, both farm workers, told deputies they were awakened by a stranger applying spices to one of them and striking the other with a sausage.

You may or may not be happy to know that newly crowned (by us, just now) "weirdest criminal ever," 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez, was arrested, and the cash he stole returned to the victims. Officers identified Vasquez by the wallet he left at the scene and arrested him as he hid in a nearby field, wearing only a t-shirt, boxer shorts and socks, according to the Bee.

Unfortunately, though, "the sausage was tossed away by the fleeing suspect and eaten by a dog." Wonder if Vasquez will have to pay reimbursement? (Via Coldmud)

Burglar victims wake to spice rub, sausage attack [Fresno Bee]
Burglar wakes men with spice rub, sausage attack [Fresno Bee]

[Photo: via Spigoo/flickr]

What is it that's so satisfying, but also kind of forlorn, about old versions of the future? Boing Boing ran this 1931 ad via Modern Mechanix that boasts of the ease with which a farmer could milk a cow by radio control. Of course, they have gigantic milking machines now, but somehow the simplicity of the "five-food length of copper" is more attractive. Plus, they probably have wires attached, so this is actually more advanced. Sort of.

THERE seems to be no end to the versatility of radio in these days of electrical and mechanical miracles—not even cows and street cars are immune to the influences of its radiations. As a curtain raiser at the annual radio show held recently in St. Louis, a street car was operated from a distance by a mere man with a radio transmitter in his hand, and a Holstein cow was made to dispense her milk by the medium of radio waves, whether she liked it or not.

The mechanism of the trolley car and the mechanism of the milking machine were hooked up to a specially constructed radio receiver using only a five-foot length of copper pipe as an antenna. At a distance stood the operator, holding a portable radio transmitter using a similar antenna, as shown in the accompanying photos. When the key was pressed at the transmitter, the distant receiver in both cases set the machines to operating.

Miraculous radio-controlled milking-machine of 1931 [Boing Boing]
Radio Milks Cows, Runs Street Cars (Feb., 1931) [Modern Mechanix]

• Bostonians celebrated the patron saint of fishermen, as well as the deliciousness of cannoli. [MP: Boston]

• A genteel evening at the Ravinia Festival turned into an all-out food fight. [MP: Chicago]

• One "raven" had his/her own personal festival of writing MenuPages user reviews: 43 at last count! [MP: Philadelphia]

• One San Francisco taqueria will cause festivities in your tummy (in a good way). [MP: San Francisco]

• Hey, how would you think to pronounce RA Sushi? Yeah. You're wrong. [MP: South Florida]

Foods of the World, a new site from National Geographic, launched yesterday to relatively little fanfare. The site is equal parts global food bazaar, recipe resource, and exploration/research tool. In fact, the marriage of National Geographic and food in one convenient site makes so much sense that we were more surprised to hear that it didn't already exist than that it was launching at all.

After the jump, more on Foods of the World.

Continue reading "National Geographic Launches Food Site: Foodie-Anthropologists Rejoice" »

Ha, this is great: Remember when we brought you our list of state/county fair food dos and don'ts? Well, an addendum should be made:

Do:
• Eat anything and everything that comes on a stick. The weirder the better.

Because look at how much fun it obviously is to eat this stuff at the Minnesota State Fair. Note: Scotch egg, hoagie, corn-dog-on-a-slide.

In Videos: Foods on a Stick at the Minnesota State Fair [Serious Eats]

Bad idea. Soon after tasting it, we realized that maybe two portions might have been better. My appetite suddenly appeared, and my boyfriend had to fight for what was, in reality, his snack. It doesn't look like all that much from the photo, but trust me, that chili sauce is magical — a perfect blend of heat and flavor.

After the jump, some more of the food highlights from our 10 days in Seoul...

Continue reading "National: 10 Days Of Kimchi" »

In Oakland, there's a guy named Ivar, an oldies DJ, mechanic, artist, and partner in The Key Printing and Binding.

Most important, though, among Ivar's many talents, is his non-stop stream of consciousness when it comes to hilariously disastrous concepts. Any conversation with Ivar yields at least a couple ideas so deliberately misguided that you yearn to see them put into action, just so that they will exist in the world, such the seagull that lives in your shirt if you don't have health-care and pops out to warn you when you're about to do something dangerous.

A long-time favorite is Ivar's "Bad Drinks" cocktail list, which includes such hits as a glass of blood with microchips floating in it, a glass of pubic hair with a dollop of chili on top, and a glass of pure water topped with several drops of gasoline.

Continue reading "National: Drinks To Forget" »

The New York Times ran an expose a few weeks ago about Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, high school students in Manhattan who did a most interesting science project: They dropped a couple hundred dollars on sushi from restaurants and grocery stores, and then sent the fish off for a DNA analysis that would positively identify each sample's species. The result? Mislabeled fish turned up at 2 of the 4 restaurants and 6 of the 10 grocery stores.

Of course, in the wake of this article, the world has been turned on its ear. Predictably, big hitters like Eric Ripert of New York's seafood cathedral Le Bernardin and the guys from Nobu issued impassioned declarations that they never never swap in cheaper, farmed fishes in lieu of the exotic, expensive ones that are advertised on the menu.

So that's a story in and of itself, and probably worthy of more in-depth coverage on this blog. But! The real story here, at least to us, is an op-ed that ran today that takes this bit of fishy business as a springboard for a discussion of the power of the mind to dupe the palate.

The key here is a trick of the trade held close to the heart of magicians, con artists, and other sleight-of-handers: It's easier to fool an expert than it is to fool a naif. Citing examples of white wine dyed red, and chocolate yogurt mistaken for strawberry when eaten in the dark, author Edward Dolnick illustrates just how easy it is for us to dupe our tastebuds when we trust the information coming to us from another source — a wine expert asking us how we like our Pinot Noir, or a lab tech asking us whether we taste the strawberry, or (as it turns out) a menu telling us that the tilapia draped over a lozenge of sticky rice is actually "white tuna."

Of course, there are some food-related slights of hand that make us happy: think meatloaf cupcakes, or Chef Michel Richard's virtual eggs. But we're the first to admit we're not immune to the power of suggestion: the first time we tried one of the virtual eggs (made from mozzarella and yellow tomato) our first thought was not "oh hey, cheese and tomato shaped like an egg." It was "whoa, this egg is rotten."

Given that, we're keeping a more critical eye (and, er, tastebud) on what goes in our mouth. Hey, garde mangers — consider us en garde.

Fish or Foul? [New York Times]

[Photo: Heck knows what kind of fish any of this is anymore. Via sifu_renka's Flickr]

I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t admit to being pretty darn impressed with the Slow Food Taste Pavilions this weekend. Menupages’ own Adam Martin joined Sweetie and me for the Saturday evening session, and we were all impressed with the general pageantry and spectacle of the event in addition to the genuinely great food with which we filled ourselves over the course of four hours.

The only complaint? You weren’t able to buy anything at the pavilions, just collect check marks on your "Slow Dough" card to indicate that you’d been to a station. Of course, I'm not sure how the pricing would have worked if they had decided to sell goods at the pavilions, because we couldn’t help question the seemingly arbitrary “price scale” employed at the event. The Spirits pavilion was two check-marks, but you got unlimited cocktails all night. On the flip side, one sample of pork confit on small slice of toasted bread was three check-marks. Huh? Maybe pork is particularly expensive compared to a bottle of organic vodka.

And so we pressed on.

With each of the pavilions promising the best of what a particular industry or ingredient had to offer, I went into the evening thinking I’d see lots of familiar names and faces, like Blue Bottle Coffee, Cow Girl Creamery or Niman Ranch. But we were pleasantly surprised to see so many new or under-promoted names holding their own among the heavy hitters.

For instance, Counter Culture Coffee Roasters from North Carolina had us at hello with the El Salvadorian roast we sipped mid-flight at the Coffee Pavilion. We were all over the Wild Nunavut Arctic Char, available for the first time in the States, which was prepared by sustainable fish company CleanFish at the Fish Pavilion.

The pork pate from Café Rouge in Berkeley gave the charcuterie sampler some girth. And even the folks over at the Spirits Pavilion had new tricks up their sleeves with Shane McKnight, mixologist extraordinaire at Globe and founder of Urban Lunch SF, going through an elaborate process to create one very special cocktail: Pureed cucumber and lime, lemon juice, muddled cucumbers, St. Germain, Prairie Organic Vodka, mint and soda.

It was great to discover and rediscover food and the people responsible for making it. What’s more, in the spirit of slow food, localism, and sustainability, it's great that so many food purveyors were able to share the spotlight and let the food, rather than the branding, do the talking.

And now it's picture time. See you after the jump...

Continue reading "SFN: A Visit To The Taste Pavilion, Vol. 2" »

It's been a great weekend of solid Slow Food Nation, but like all events, this, too, must end. That doesn't mean the coverage has to, though. Alexis will bring you another look at the Taste Pavilion tomorrow, and you can at least one more story later this week, as well as more photos and anecdotes.

For it being a "slow" event, Slow Food Nation sure did involve a lot of hustling hither and yon and eating on the go. The Taste Pavilion and marketplace both lent themselves to snacking while walking, and the farm tour, of course, involved a morning of tromping around fields. But the last official event I attended made up for all that hardship (I know, what a tough life), with a four-course meal that involved some of the finest meat and vegetables I've eaten all season.

Sunday night was my turn to eat at a Slow Dinner. I picked Serpentine because I've been curious about the restaurant, and I liked the sound of the Center for Land-Based Learning, which the dinner benefited.

But by the time it rolled around, I wasn't really looking forward to the evening. I was tired of working, and tired of hearing about food politics, and as I hopped a cab out to Dog Patch, I looked wistfully at the Taqueria Castillito on Mason Street, thinking how comfortable it would be to curl up in front of the tube with a nice al pastor burrito.

Walking into the Serpentine's bright, airy dining room did little to put me at ease. The place looks great, with sharp lines and dramatic angles and plenty of natural evening light. Meanwhile, I was in the mood for a dark, low room where I could hide out in a booth. Mary Kimball, director of the Center For Land-Based Learning, greeted me at the door and invited me to sit anywhere. After grabbing a seat at the bar, I ordered a Hangar One martini, and within a few minutes, I was having fun in spite of myself.

This turned out to be maybe the easiest Slow Food Nation event to enjoy. It was just dinner, plain and simple, with a short interruption as Mary gave her spiel on the Center, to which went $50 from each $110 ticket. She didn't talk our ears off, and it was fun hearing about the center, which is doing some great work. Here she is in full swing:

As the wine flowed, I found it easier to loosen up, and soon I was chatting away with Toby Hastings, whose Free Spirit Farm, near Davis, supplied the cherry and heirloom tomatoes for the dinner, as well as the Gypsy peppers. Toby leases his acre or so of land from the Center, and is one of Serpentine's regular suppliers. He also went to the University of California at Santa Cruz with my brother, it turns out. God, this is a small town.

The bar seemed to be where "industry" types sat, as the pair to my right mentioned they had delivered the evening's beef through their Prather Ranch Meat Co. They met chef Chris Kronner at a Meat Paper party, co-owner Steve McCarthy told me.

Before long we were all having a laugh, passing around the family-style serving plates, and by the time dessert came around, I didn't want the evening to end.

I wish I could offer you a taste, but you'll have to make do with the photos, after the jump, that show off this wonderful menu. As for me, I'll be glad to get back to the calm pace of the work day after one frenzied weekend. It's been fun, and it's been delicious, but this weekend was anything but "slow."

Continue reading "SFN: Slow Dinner At Serpentine" »

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.

Continue reading "SFN: A Visit To The Taste Pavilion, Vol. 1" »

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.

Continue reading "SFN: A Tour Of Alemany Farm" »

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...

Continue reading "SFN: Photos And Quips From The Slow Marketplace" »

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.

Continue reading "SFN: Does The Fun Ever Stop? A Discussion On The Politics Of Local Food" »

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

• "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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

• 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]

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.

Continue reading "Kanye West To Join Rarefied League" »

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]

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:

Continue reading "What It Takes To Feed An Olympic Champion" »

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]

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...

Continue reading "Eat The Fall Fashions" »

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]

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]

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]

• 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]

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.

Continue reading "The Food of Mad Men" »

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]

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.

Continue reading "Surprise! Kids' Menus Aren't Exactly Healthful" »

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.

Continue reading "The Trouble With Tipping" »

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "The Snacks Are Not As They Appear" »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo of plain cheesecake, above: chernwei/flickr

Continue reading "Happy National Cheesecake Day!" »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "Nerdgasm: The Google Cookbook" »

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

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

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

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

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

[Photo: An anonymous waiter via independentman/flickr]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Photo: via La Sirene official site]

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "Frustrating Salmonella Reading" »

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

Matt and Kim [Official Site]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "The Culinary Bucket List" »

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

Fortunately, there is hope yet for oyster lovers.

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

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

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

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

So there you go, you can totally eat oysters in the summer if you order the right kinds and make sure you go through government-regulated suppliers. The Oyster Guide website has a bunch of farms listed. Some even do mail order.

Being There: In The Raw [San Francisco Bay Guardian]
The Claim: Never Eat Shellfish in a Month Without an R [New York Times]
Where to Order Oysters [The Oyster Guide]

[Photo: The walrus and the carpenter from Alice in Wonderland via superfluous consonants/flickr]

Serious Eats linked to a Guardian story today about first date food dos and don'ts that promptly made me laugh. I think I've broken almost every rule on this list. Let's start with the very first sentence:

Most first dates take place in restaurants. God knows why.

So anyway, first rule: insist that your date picks the restaurant, which actually isn't a bad idea. Except what if he/she suggests a restaurant that isn't within an acceptable price range? How do you explain, no, sorry, I'm a cheap bastard who can't afford to take you there, even if we go Dutch. Yeah, upon further consideration, that's a bad idea. You make the date, you pick the restaurant.

Her other rules include avoiding the following foods: sushi and other food eaten with chopsticks (can get messy), spaghetti (same as chopsticks), garlic (bad breath), coffee (worse breath), oysters (too obvious), Brussels sprouts, beans, curry, sunchokes, fresh pasta, kimchi, any cruciferous vegetables, and tuna (all apparently in the flatulence-producing family). Also no-nos: sharing plates (huh?!) and having an extra drink.

After the jump, what MP editors have to say about this...

Continue reading "A Few "Rules" For That First Date" »

An article in today's Epi-Log stimulated waves of nostalgia for a Martin family favorite summertime tradition: The county fair. It was a fine article, but didn't really focus on food, so here's a follow up with some personal culinary favorites available at most county and state fairs.

Of course, the main rule is to eat things at the fair that you can't get anywhere else. If you're in Wisconsin, for example, get cream puffs, even though they're not traditional fair food. In Minnesota, eat nothing that doesn't come on a stick. In western Washington, top your burger with Walla Walla sweet onions.

But in addition to the regional favorites, pretty much all fairs bring with them a host of classics that you can get almost nowhere else. After the jump you'll find a few personal preferences. Feel free to comment with your own favorites/forgettables.

Continue reading "What To Eat At The Fair" »

But. There's always a but. The gently mocking tone in the article ("what won't these rich people pay people to do?!") nagged at something in the back of our mind, and we weren't sure quite what it was until we ran across this op-ed in The Food Section. Here's the thing: what, essentially, is the difference between hiring an organic backyard vegetable garden consultant (which we are happy to make fun of) and, say, hiring a landscape designer and the requisite team of college students on break in order to lay out and mulch your zinnias (which we accept as totally okay)? Where's the real difference between buying a share in a CSA and asking The Fruit Guys to add you to their roster?

Because as much as we're inclined to make fun of the folks who contract out their contributions to sustainable agriculture, we can't really look past the fact that (a) we are not exactly out there getting our hands dirty ourselves, and (b) we spent a good portion of our lunch hour today discussing how terrific it is to send our laundry out to a wash-n-fold service despite the fact that we have a completely free washing machine literally three feet from our bedroom, simply because it is so much more convenient to have someone else do it for us.

If we're willing to contract out our laundry for 85 cents a pound, to no ultimate global benefit, who are we to smirk at someone who allocates a portion of their disposable income to increase the demand for local produce, ethically-raised meat, and seasonal deployment of ingredients? Not to mention the jobs that it creates (and sustains): gardeners, small-scale farmers, responsible restaurateurs and chefs. And let's not forget that the people with enough money to outsource their virtuousness are the same people with enough money to subsidize community gardens, greenmarkets, food pantries, and get-kids-to-eat-their-veggies initiatives — all good things, all things we wish we spent more time working to further, but don't. Quite possibly because we are so lazy we can't even be bothered to fold our own t-shirts.

So, um, where exactly was that part worth mocking, again?

A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss [NYT]
Op Ed: Is Eating Local Earnest or Elitist? [The Food Section]

[Photo: CSA crop, via mikaela_'s Flickr]

Could this lean economy mark the beginning of the end of the homebody hipster — the college-educated, post-feminist indie-rocker with her baking pans and knitting needles and house cats? Maybe so.

A story on Marketplace last Friday explored the sharp decline in the popularity of knitting, which took off just as rapidly in the high-stress years after 9/11 terrorist attacks. "Worried women knit," one commenter said. But it seems the belt-tightening required in most households has left little room for that kind of hobby.

Similarly, the Associated Press reported yesterday that the long-running cupcake trend is, well, "slimming down" would be a weird phrase for it, but something like that. The new twist: Frosting shots. Get rid of all that annoying, costly cake and just give us the hard, sweet stuff for a buck and a half:

“It's kind of the cut-to-the-chase evolution of cupcakes,” says Tanya Steel, editor in chief of foodie Web site Epicurious.com. “I can imagine it being at parties. It's a great thing to have at an office party. It provides just a little bite of sweetness and yumminess without going whole hog.”

So maybe we're entering a new era of (figuratively) leaner, less-ironic/symbolic food trends, and hobbies (hopefully) borne of interest, rather than fear. Straightforward burgers seem to be holding steady, and large plates are making a comeback. This is a good direction. Just don't take away our lolcats. That hilarious meme needs to stick around forever. You can have the word "meme" back, though.

Knit 1, pearl 2, point and click [Marketplace]
Bottoms up: Frosting fans line up to take shots [AP/San Diego Tribune]
A Hamburger Today [Serious Eats]
Large plates make a comeback [SF Gate]

[Photo: via Kscakes lolcat builder]

"I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free..."

Sometimes a thing happens that you don't want to happen, so you use your right to free speech and assembly and you make a ruckus and let the powers that be know of your position, and sometimes it actually works and you create a change, and that big national chain doesn't take over your beloved local cafe, or that international corporation stops funding human rights abuses in the name of profit.

And sometimes, just sometimes, the result you hope for is that your favorite Starbucks store remains open in the face of 600 planned closures. Why would you use your right to free speech and assembly to effect this change? Because you are a dork. Seriously, don't even talk to us. From the Wall Street Journal:

In towns as small as Bloomfield, N.M., and metropolises as large as New York, customers and city officials are starting to write letters, place phone calls, circulate petitions and otherwise plead with the coffee company to change its mind.

"Now that it's going away, we're devastated," said Kate Walker, a facilities manager for software company SunGard Financial Systems who recently learned of a store closing in New York City.

We defy you to claim that Starbucks is your only coffee option, whether you live in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Florida or yes, even Bloomfield, New Mexico. All of these cities had coffee shops before the inception of Starbucks and all will continue to have them after these stores close. And of all the letter-writing and petition campaigns in the world, this might be the least valuable. Really? This is worth getting into activism for?

This is not even a thing against Starbucks. They're just doing what they have to do in these lean economic times. If you really are "devastated" about the loss of your local green giant to the point that you will petition to keep it open, you, sir or ma'am, are a total dork.

Though now we know how it must have felt to be derisive of those who petitioned against these stores opening willy-nilly in the first place.

Full List of Store Closures [Starbucks]
Starbucks Gets Pleas Not to Close Stores [Wall Street Journal]

[Photo: People protest a Starbucks opening in New York via Yoonabomber/flickr]

This weekend we entered, ordered from, sat in and ate food at, a McDonald's. Not just any McDonalds. This was a McDonalds in a low-end mall, in the middle of a day on a Saturday, just before we had to go to get some things from Target. It was truly disgusting.

As we sat, gnawing on a dried-out Southern Chicken Sandwich (note to cultish fanatics of this boring menu item: go to hell), trying to ignore the two grade-school children yelling at one another from either side of our table, we decided that this would be the last time we'd ever set foot in a McDonald's and, unless the situation seriously called for it (a nostalgic 6 a.m. "dawn patrol" surf trip in Seal Beach? Never going to happen, but OK, a Sausage McMuffin with Egg), we'd never eat their food again, either.

Now, with a grudge, we come to work Monday Morning to find this mess on Cracked, The 7 Most Bizarre Fast Food Industry Lawsuits and it seriously made our day. Pretty much everything in here is stuff you can't say on a family site such as this, so no quotes for you, but it is seriously funny, and will vindicate all your high-falutin' comparisons between modern fast food and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

The 7 Most Bizarre Fast Food Industry Lawsuits [Cracked]
Throwdown: Chick-fil-A vs. McDonald's Southern Style Chicken [Serious Eats]
The Jungle [Wikipedia]

[Photo: via zorilla/flickr]

Today was going to be a serious Friday. Today was going to be all about dressing down the FDA for suddenly declaring tomatoes safe after instigating a months-long salmonella scare that didn't identify the source of the outbreak but did cost the tomato-growing industry something in the neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars.

Today was supposed to be for questioning the ethics of an administration that approves labeling something as grotesquely engineered as high fructose corn syrup "Natural." We were going to insinuate that high-level FDA officials were in the pocket of the corn lobby, even as they also approved a combined $1 million in bonuses for themselves, "pushing their pay above that of members of Congress, federal judges - and even some cabinet secretaries."

But you don't want to hear about that, right? You want Fun Friday. You know what you want? You want to see a pickle get electrocuted as a metaphor for converting to Christianity. Look, it lights up and smoke comes out! Can the FDA do that? Only listen to Grandpa John and don't try this at home.

Thanks FDA....for nothing. [Accidental Hedonist]
FDA Lifts Warning About Eating Certain Types of Tomatoes [FDA Press Release]
As FDA says tomatoes are safe, growers criticize agency [Sacramento Bee]
FDA Execs Reap Lavish Bonuses [CBS]
Holk V. Snapple civil verdict [Corn.org]
Man electrocutes pickle to demonstrate power of Christianity [Boing Boing]

• Lotsa Lebanese food in Beantown. [MP: Boston]

• In case you were wondering, it costs a lot to fill a Jacuzzi with Chicken McNuggets. [MP: Chicago]

• Mexican wrestling masks on restaurant walls? Yes, please! [MP: Philadelphia]

• Happy birthday, umami! [MP: San Francisco]

• Miami lives la bonne vie. [MP: South Florida]

The normally staid British newsmagazine The Economist has some real cheeky monkeys on staff. Let us explain.

Stephen Dubner is the co-author of the bestselling book Freakonomics and writes a blog of the same name for The New York Times. In a July 8 blog post, he called out a perceived spelling error in a recent Economist story:

"Consider this lead from a recent article about a huge Mexican mining company called Fresnillo, which was recently listed on the London Stock Exchange:

In the hills north east of Mexico City it is not uncommon to find Cornish pasties for sale.

They meant to write “pastries” but, considering that miners work really hard, they might also be hoping to encounter the kind of people who go shopping for pasties."

That's when The Economist decided to send Dubner a pasty in the mail.

More commentary is available over at Serious Eats and Net Writing.

Pasties, pasties everywhere [Freakonomics/NYT]

[Photos via Stephen Dubner/NYT]

A recent commentary on Marketplace really struck a chord, especially after a dinner some months ago that ended with married best friends bickering over the price of a drink, about eight eyeballs straining to reach the ceiling first, and the embarrassing situation of taking so long that the staff milled about the table, hinting with no subtlety at all that it was time to go.

While this is an extreme version of check-splitting, and was probably called for as it was not a regular dining group, Dan Ariely's assertion that splitting a check causes more mental distress, in total, than does one person treating, never seemed truer.

But there are a couple problems with his point that may not be surmountable, especially to younger diners. First, you need a regular group in which everybody is willing to join in this method. If one person wants the check to be traded from meal to meal, and one wants it to be split every time, it will never work.

Also, picking up the check for a table of four at a moderately priced restaurant can be cost-prohibitive, even for comfortably middle-income people. A meal for $60 might be a ding to the pocketbook, but a $240 check just blew your whole weekend's entertainment budget.

Still, Ariely's got a good point about the "pain of paying," and if you can get to where you only have to experience that pain every fourth dinner, you're doing pretty well. It's all about figuring out who'll pick up the first check...

Splitting the check increases the pain [Marketplace]

[Photo: revjim5000/flickr]

We've recently become a little obsessed with the idea of "hacking" non-electronic, everyday things. For example there are these guys who hacked the McDonald's Menu, the well-known Starbucks iced latte hack (the ghetto latte), and now, with blazing turnaround time, the chocolate chip cookie hack.

You probably read the New York Times article last week that included advice to let chocolate chip cookie dough sit for 36 hours to fully absorb the liquid from the eggs. But who has 36 hours? Ridiculous. We want cookies now!

Well, Ideas In Food came to the rescue quickly with this handy hack of writer David Leite's painstaking findings: If you vacuum seal the cookie dough, it only takes about three hours for the liquid to absorb thoroughly enough to make those same perfect chocolate chip cookies.

What I can tell you is that the dough darkened and VacuumSealedDough became fully saturated, similar to the way that the dough usually looks after a couple of days in the refrigerator. It also changed the texture of the dough, making it a bit more elastic to the touch. The just made dough was too soft to shape and needed to chill, so I left in the fridge for about three hours before baking.

The resulting cookies were pretty damn good. They had a slightly cakey texture in the center with chewy yet crisp edges and rich buttery, caramel flavors. It was impossible to eat just one and I was thankful that I had not baked off the entire batch. Were they better than David Leite's? I really couldn't say. On the other hand I think it was clear that vacuum sealing did have a positive effect on the process, and from now on plastic wrap is out and vacuum bags are definitely in.

Vacuum Sealed Cookie Dough [Ideas In Food]
Perfection? Hint: It’s Warm and Has a Secret
HOWTO trick McDonald's into serving you "breakfast" at lunchtime and vice-versa [Boing Boing]
How to hack Starbucks [Slate]

[Photo: Chocolate chip cookie pie via Bakerella/flickr]

While the Benihana experience was novel when Aoki introduced it in the mid-1960s, teppanyaki is about as authentically Japanese as a piece of chicken with a can of salsa dumped over it is authentically Mexican. It's considered Western food by most Japanese, and there is no doubt much snickering over American stupidity that we flock to it as an "ethnic" experience.

Aoki was as controversial as his restaurants: he was infamously combative and chauvinistic, had three wives (at least one a former mistress with whom he had a simultaneous family with the first wife), innumerable girlfriends, and proudly admitted that in one calendar year he had fathered three children by three women. He was the subject of a scathing story in New York Magazine in 2006, with which he cooperated fully — even with the realization that he might not be painted in a positive light:

A celebrity chef who couldn’t cook a dish, Rocky became a star by mastering the fine art of cheap publicity stunts. He posed for photos in the hot tub in his stretch Rolls-Royce and drove a cross-country race in a stretch Volkswagen bug. (“I also have stretch Corvette.”) He cameoed on Hawaii Five-O, won a national backgammon championship, and set a world record when he became the first person to cross the Pacific in a hot-air balloon (stamped with the Benihana logo, of course).

He was also on Japan's 1960 Olympic wrestling team (he didn't compete), survived a horrific speedboating accident in 1982, and often threatened to disinherit his children if they didn't live up to his standards of wealth and fame (his favorites: daughter Devon, who is an actress/model, and son Steve, who is a DJ with questionable facial hair).

Whether or not he will be missed is up in the air, but his contribution to America's culinary landscape — for better or for worse — is indelible.

Rocky Aoki, Founder of Benihana Chain, Dies at 69 [Bloomberg]
Rocky Aoki's Family Horror Show [NYMag]

[Photo: The Benihana experience, via Are Nold Rob Bore's Flickr]

Perhaps you saw Dickson Despommier on the Colbert Report last month, or maybe you first came on the name in today's FYI. Whatever. Point is, this guy is one weird public health scientist who is taking this whole "build up, not out" concept of urban design, and the locavore concept of eating food, and mashing them together in his hands to come up with something like this:

That there is a vertical farm, people. A place to grow food right here in the city, avoiding the costly, stinky diesel motors involved with trucking produce all over the country. Not exactly amber waves of grain, but still quite a striking symbol.

However, Armando Carbonell, chairman of the department of planning and urban form at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, states in today's International Herald Tribune article, "Would a tomato in lower Manhattan be able to outbid an investment banker for space in a high-rise? My bet is that the investment banker will pay more." That seems to be the rub.

You could design around sunlight problems and other functional hurdles, but in the end, city-center real estate is just really expensive, and shows little sign of getting less so anytime soon. How far into, say, New Jersey, would you have to build one of those towers in order to make it economically viable? And by the time you're that out of New York City, wouldn't it make more sense just to farm the regular way?

One hopes not. The vertical farm really should work. It's such a cool solution to a growing problem. Maybe they could put offices in it too, to jack up revenue. Maybe by the time one of these things gets built, produce will be so expensive that the tomato really could compete with the investment banker. For right now, it seems it's a project that would have to rely heavily on outside funding. But that could be ok, too.

Whatever the method, this really needs to get built, not just for practical reasons, but because it will bring us so much closer to a flying-car, curvy-building, jetpack-having future utopia.

The Colbert Report: Dickson Despommier [Comedy Central]
Country, the city version [International Herald Tribune]
The Vertical Farm Project [Official Site]

[Photo: via the Vertical Farm Project]

"I am not good at anything, but I can eat and I can ride a bike, so you put those two things together and I've got a chance."

What is this? an autobiography? No, it's a quote from a trailer for a documentary about the Tour de Donut, which has rolled through Staunton, IL, for 20 years now right around Tour De France time.

As Sidel Evans fights to keep the yellow jersey for Silence-Lotto with a one-second lead over Rabobank's Oscar Freire in France, here in the United states, athletes in a different league altogether fought to keep their lunch down Saturday as they ate up glazed doughnuts along with miles of asphalt.

Fortunately for all involved, the Tour de Donuts is a one-day race and not a multi-stage tour like the Tour de France. Still, to a rider stuffed with fried dough and struggling through the hilly terrain, it probably feels like it lasts forever. The 30-mile ride is set up like a regular one-day classic, with the minor difference that riders are given the chance to scarf doughnuts at two checkpoints along the way. Each doughnut consumed knocks five minutes off a rider's time, so it behooves riders to gorge, but they must not throw up.

"I don't think I'll make my goal. It's tough to hold it back now," Steve Striker told The Telegraph, of Alton, IL. It seemed incredible that people would do this race at all, but then it turned out the serious competitors pack in 20 to 30 doughnuts during the race. That would, honestly, kill us. Check out this trailer for the documentary, and, if you think you're tough enough, think about signing up for next year's race. It could be your chance for greatness.

Cyclists test their legs — and stomachs — at annual Tour de Donut [The Telegraph]
Tour De France [Official Site]

• Boston coffee shops get hip to this "local foods" trend they've been hearing so much about. [MP: Boston]

• We're very excited to welcome new Chicago editor Helen Rosner to the MenuPages family! She's been rocking it on the Chi-town blog all week. [MP: Chicago]

• Lions and pythons and black bears (oh my!) are for dinner in Philly. [MP: Philadelphia]

• Vodka cocktails and excellent produce? Yes, please! [MP: San Francisco]

• Mango-based bartering reigns supreme at one Miami restaurant! [MP: South Florida]

Remember when your mom first learned to use the internet and she sent you e-mails every day with links and jokes and whatnot in them? totally annoying, right? But sometimes you chuckle at the jokes, right? Good, because here are a bunch of waiter joke links for a lazy Friday:

• You may not eat soup ever again [Coldmud]

• A whole bunch of waiter jokes that barely leave the realm of the popsicle stick [Workjoke]

• The New Yorker's given quite a bit of cartoon ink to the subject [Cartoonbank]

• Finally, the Muppets take on that fly in the soup:

Happy Friday!

Now that there's a new Batman movie out and all, how about we go retro with a look back at McDonalds' Batman Happy Meals from 1992?

McDonalds' Batman Happy Meals [YouTube]

This is how one's world gets expanded when one reads Coldmud: First, who knew that New Zealanders traditionally eat fruitcake at weddings? Not us. Second, turns out fruitcake is, not surprisingly, going out of style, in favor of (get your mind ready to be blown) cheese cake. No, not cheesecake, cheese cake. Look:

That there is a wedding cake made out of cheese. Isn't that beautiful? Don't you want one? See, the problem with wedding cakes in general is that they come at the end of the meal. After you've had several glasses of champagne, maybe danced a turn or two, and just generally partied down a bit, do you really want a big, sugary chunk of cake and icing? Or fruitcake? No, you do not. You want sustenance, and something to accompany that third glass of bubbly. Go, cheese!

The trend is taking hold outside New Zealand as well, especially in the UK, but the Kiwis probably have the most to gain from it, considering their traditional alternative: fruitcake. It makes you wonder.

Cheese takes the cake at weddings [Dominion Post]

[Photo: via gromgull/flickr]

This is easily the saddest thing I've read today:

"I think that in 20 years chocolate will be like caviar," says John Mason, executive director and founder of the Ghana-based Nature Conservation Research Council (NCRC).

"It will become so rare and so expensive that the average Joe just won't be able to afford it."

The reason for the worry? Cacao is a rainforest plant that likes shade and biodiversity, but it's grown as a monoculture in lots of sun, which drains the soil of any nutrients and halves the lifespan of the trees. So then farmers have to clear more rainforest to plant more cacao. They're running out of usable space in West Africa, where most of the world's supply of cacao is grown, and the yields are down quite a bit. This might not only deprive us of chocolate, but it could also wreak havoc on the economies of some of these cacao-producing nations.

There is some good news. It appears farmers and environmentalists have realized they have common goals and are beginning to work together. Cadbury is currently working with 60 farms in Ghana, according to the CNN article, to figure out how to do this sustainably.

And on the disease-fighting front, Mars is collaborating with the USDA and IBM on a $10 million project that will attempt to sequence the genome of the cacao plant, in order to develop varieties that are resistant to diseases like the fungus that recently devastated Brazil's cacao crop.

Chocolate's bitter sweet relationship with the rainforest [CNN]
Safeguarding the World's Chocolate Supply [NPR]

Photo: icyshard/flickr

So is the guy a bigot, or just an asshole?

Something about this article in the San Francisco Chronicle about an ambiguously homophobic comment by a doorman struck the same chord as the ongoing debate in the New York food publications over dress code. Both discussions seem so open-ended and fruitless that the temptation is to say, "go to that establishment or don't go there but shut up about it."

But that's not how problems get solved. "You don't like that the back of the bus, Ms. Parks? Well, I don't like hearing about it, so just walk." No, that doesn't work at all. Nor is it really analogous, but you get the point. So let's get into it a little.

To summarize, the San Francisco issue was with a gay man dressed in an outfit he described as, "totally faggy" who was told by a bouncer at an "edgy and popular bar" that, "Obviously this is not your kind of place." Writer Chris Colin wonders weather the bouncer was being homophobic or just gruff, and asks, "as a society, how do we disentangle generic rudeness from bigotry?"

Meanwhile, a debate has been simmering in the comments boards of New York Times critic Frank Bruni's blog and Adam Roberts' Amateur Gourmet site over the appropriateness of dress codes in restaurants. Roberts contends that dress codes are outdated relics (my words, not his), while Bruni makes the case that a restaurant has the right to control its ambiance by controlling what people wear.

Continue reading "Bigotry Vs. Rudeness Vs. Dress Codes" »

On one hand, any visit to New York's 2nd Avenue Deli is elevated from good to heart-stoppingly great via the free bowl of gribbenes, a.k.a. chicken skin fried in chicken fat, that's plonked down on our table when we sit down. So it stands to reason that if the fried skin of the humble chicken is spectacular, then the fried skin of the magical, wonderful pig will be transcendent. On the other hand, they make footballs from the stuff.

Speaking of sports. Our favorite farm league team, the Brooklyn Cyclones, has decided that the relationship between the pig and baseball needs to move beyond the Denny's Grand Slam, and are coming down squarely on the side of Pork Rinds Are Awesome with their upcoming themed evening: A Salute To The Pork Rind, sponsored by Utz brand pork rinds.

The salute will involve plenty of pork rind-related activities:

One of the between-inning contests will also feature two fans diving into a pool of pork rinds for a hidden treasure, and another will see contestants toss pork rinds at a target.

You've got to pre-register to participate in the pork rind contest, so if you find yourself planning to be in Coney Island next Monday, drop a line to Ricky Viola. Willy Wonka, eat your heart out.

[Photo: pig made of pork rinds, via Brooklyn Cyclones]

How do you demonstrate your commitment to solving world hunger? Do you attempt to eat enough in one sitting to feed a third world family for a couple days? If you're a leader of a G8 country attending that summit on the Japanese Island of Hokkaido, the answer is, "maybe yes."

As they put on their serious faces and sat to discuss the growing global food crisis, the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized democracies (that's Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), were served a total of 24 courses — six for lunch and 18 for dinner — that included such staples of the working poor as, "milk-fed lamb flavored with herbs and mustard and roast lamb with crepes and black truffle." Good, solid, peasant food to put them in touch with the pressing issues of the day.

Or not. Here, have a look at the menu:

The feast, according to the UK's Daily Mail, drew its share of ire from critics:

Dominic Nutt, of the charity Save the Children, did not approve.

'It is deeply hypocritical that they should be lavishing course after course on world leaders when there is a food crisis and millions cannot afford a decent meal,' he said.

'If the G8 wants to betray the hopes of a generation of children, it is going the right way about it. The food crisis is an emergency and the G8 must treat it as that.'

In 2005, at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, world leaders promised to increase global aid by £25billion a year by 2010 and raise aid to Africa, the world's poorest continent, by £12.5billion. But the bloc of rich nations is only 14 per cent of the way towards hitting its target.

Of course it's unrealistic to expect world leaders at a high-powered international conference to snack on grilled cheese and baked potatoes, but the already maligned rich-guys' club isn't going to win friends by rubbing the world's face in its sumptuous meal. We're going to see no small amount of schadenfreude when and if the United States has to accept foreign aid from someplace like Venezuela. Oh wait...

G8 Summit [Official Site]
Summit that's hard to swallow - world leaders enjoy 18-course banquet as they discuss how to solve global food crisis [Daily Mail]
CITGO's Low Cost Heating Oil Program [CITGO]

Avoiding any "best thing since..." jokes will be hard on this, the 80th anniversary of the invention of the bread slicer. One of the most significant advances in the development of the sandwich, Otto Rohwedder's historic creation followed on the heels (sorry) of the pop-up toaster, which debuted in 1926.

Rohwedder deserves accolades not just for inventing a really useful thing, but for his apparently tireless pursuit of lunchtime convenience. Even after a fire destroyed his original blueprints, he did not loaf, but persevered and finally came out with an improved model that wrapped what it sliced.

By making possible such sandwiches as the club, the grilled cheese and the tuna melt, Rohwedder definitely sealed his place among the upper crust of American inventors. A toast is definitely in order!

The Best Thing Since, Well, Turns 80 Today [Serious Eats]
Inventor Of The Week: Otto Rohwedder [MIT]
History Of Sandwiches [What's Cooking America]

[Photo: Black forest rye bread via Dan4th/flickr]

A recent court case in England might not debunk every urban legend about Pringles, but it is revealing about the "potato" chip in the iconic can: turns out Pringles don't count as "crisps" in Britain because they are made from less than 50 percent potatoes.

While suspected by most reasonable people to be the case, the ingredient revelation came as evidence in a recent British tax law case in which Pringles owner Proctor and Gamble argued that its product should be exempt from the so-called Value Added Tax normally applied to potato chips (crisps, as they call them there) because, according to the Times Online,

Pringles have a potato content of about 42 per cent. “As a result, this appeal is allowed because regular Pringles are not, on the facts found, ‘made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch’ within the legal requirement and are exempt from VAT,” [Mr Justice Warren] said.

Fry and Fry Again [About.com]
Pringles are not chips in England [Slashfood]
Crunch decision goes against taxmen as court rules a Pringle is not a crisp [Times Online]
Pringles Potato Crisps [Amazon]

[Photo: Pringles German Sausage flavor. There was doubt these are not an actual potato product? Via Jetalone/flickr]

Tomorrow is the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. The gambling odds are in and Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi will both be there. Local media is all about it.

But we were curious about what other competitive eating contests are out there.

• New York's San Gennaro fair holds an annual cannoli eating contest.

• In Philadelphia, the Wing Bowl is an annual tradition.

• The Illinois State Fair hosts an annual horseshoe sandwich eating contest.

• Fast food chain Krystal hosts an annual hamburger eating contest.

• Rocco's Pizza in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn hosts an annual pizza eating contest. Something tell us New York likes these.

• And appropriately for July 4th, an apple pie eating contest is held each year in Murphysboro, Illinois.

Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest [Wikipedia]

We have just about 24 hours before Takeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut compete to put the nation off its food for the rest of its collective birthday in the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. Until then, however, what better way to celebrate our independence and day off from work than with a local favorite hot dog?

Our great nation boasts regional takes on many classic foods, and hot dogs are no exception. From half-smokes in Washington, DC to the weird monster known as the Chicago dog, a foot of pressed meat scraps on a bun doesn't say anything about a person's identity more than in the U.S. With that in mind, have a look at this little collection of photos from MenuPages cities around the country. Then go pick up a frank!

Chicago has one of the most recognizable dogs, if only for its unlikely construction and Technicolor toppings [via Benimoto/flickr]:

More after the jump!

Continue reading "Hot Dogs All Over The Place!" »

We were always taught to be wary of eating foods laced with mayonnaise on hot summer days for fear of eating something contaminated with excessive bacteria. But that fear really only applied to homemade mayonnaise (which, we highly recommend making, by the way — just not for a picnic); the preservatives in commercial mayo keep bacteria at bay. In fact, it seems to retard bacterial growth:

One prominent study published in The Journal of Food Protection found, for example, that in the presence of commercial mayonnaise, the growth of salmonella and staphylococcus bacteria in contaminated chicken and ham salad either slowed or stopped altogether. As the amount of mayonnaise increased, the rate of growth decreased. When temperatures rose to those of a hot summer day, the growth increased, but not as much as in samples that did not contain mayonnaise.

The Claim: Mayonnaise Can Increase Risk of Food Poisoning [New York Times]

Photo: SevenCubed/flickr

In Jay Rayner's recently published The Man Who Ate The World, the Observer food critic's diary of a tour through the world's most notable (and particularly, most expensive) restaurants, the author recounts an incident where a Japan-based chef was charged with stealing the dishes of a Washington D.C. restaurant. The accusation surfaced on eGullet, which has subsequently chronicled other instances of culinary plagiarism, usually involving molecular gastronomy.

Continue reading "Edible Secrets: Food Plagiarism In The Era Of Molecular Gastronomy" »

So this funny little item came across Chow's Grinder that seemed so off the wall at first, but on a second thought, it seems it not only might work, but sort of already does: Apparently public councils in Britain have hit upon a scheme to reduce sodium intake in the public: cut the number of holes in salt shakers from 17 to five. From the Daily Mail:

Research has suggested that slashing the holes from the traditional 17 to five could cut the amount people sprinkle on their food by more than half.

And so at least six councils have ordered five-hole shakers – at taxpayers’ expense – and begun giving them away to chip shops and takeaways in their areas.

Leading the way has been Gateshead Council, which spent 15 days researching the subject of salty takeaways before declaring the new five-hole cellars the solution.

Officers collected information from businesses, obtained samples of fish and chips, measured salt content and ‘carried out experiments to determine how the problem of excessive salt being dispensed could be overcome by design’.

They decided that the five-hole pots would reduce the amount of salt being used by more than 60 per cent yet give a ‘visually acceptable sprinkling’ that would satisfy the customer.

Continue reading "A Salty Scheme" »

The samples were beyond excellent, but in the end, what we found most notable about the Fancy Food Show was the glimpse it provided into the American pysche. Take the picture above: busts of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain carved by the good folks at Sabra Hummus. Are they not terrifying? After the jump...well, in the words of Liz Phair: "Check out America, you're looking at it babe."

Continue reading "Hummus Rodham Clinton And Other Oddities At The Fancy Food Show" »

This might be as official as it gets: In its report, The State Of American Cuisine, published today, the James Beard Foundation found that Americans see burgers as the most iconic food of this great land. The patties beat out barbecue, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and apple pie, in that order.

Of 298 Americans surveyed by the foundation in 2007, 90.8 believed there is an iconic, national food. Of those, 44.4 percent identified it as burgers. But participants also identified the words "region" or "regional" as most defining American cuisine.

Ironically, burgers are anything but regional, at least within the United States. They are the opposite. They are ubiquitous. Every city or region in the country has a local cuisine, and none of it is burgers. Yet all those cities and regions have a local place that does the "best burger ever," at least according to the locals, and does it differently from everywhere else. A paragraph within the white paper addresses this contradiction:

Even as survey respondents touted the diverse influences of American food, from its native products to its immigrant imports, they chose as typically American dishes those which function as neutral canvas for whatever palette one chooses to personalize it.

The State Of American Cuisine [James Beard Foundation]
James Beard Foundation [Official Site]
The Hamburger is the 'Most American' of Foods [A Hamburger Today]

[Photo: A burger from LA's Pie and Burger via jslander/flickr]