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Insights, tips, and restaurant reports from CHOW editors and Chowhound.

Passive-Aggression on a Bun

Good news for people who fear that fast-food workers are spitting in their food—there’s entertaining photographic evidence that sometimes the kitchen staff just write snarky messages on the buns using condiments.

Commenters on the site hosting the photo—passiveaggressivenotes.com—drag things right back into the gutter by speculating on other stuff that could be used, in theory, to spell things out on bread products.

“Now THAT’s special sauce!” writes a commenter in regards to something that you can pretty easily imagine.

Image source: Flickr member Mzelle Biscotte under Creative Commons

Edit Post / Posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

CSPI to Denny’s: “Hold the Damn Salt”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is serving as cocounsel on a class-action lawsuit against the good folks at Denny’s. The grounds for action: salty food.

The salt/blood pressure link is pretty clear. And the Denny’s/salt link is pretty clear, too. Here’s the Huffington Post:

“Consider a double cheeseburger with French fries. Most people know that’s not a health food. At McDonald’s, that meal has about 1,500 mg of sodium—a day’s worth for most of us. Denny’s (bigger) double cheeseburger with fries has 4,130 mg of sodium. That’s 275 percent of the recommended daily limit.

“A full dinner at Denny’s can be even worse. Say you start with a bowl of clam chowder, and move on to a Spicy Buffalo Chicken Melt sandwich and seasoned fries. That meal has 6,700 mg of sodium (along with 1,700 calories).”

The question is, can it seriously be legally actionable to serve oversalted food? One time, probably not. But by the millions of servings? Every year? Gets more arguable.

Image source: Flickr member Ingorrr under Creative Commons

Edit Post / Posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009

New York

Bienvenido a Brooklyn

There isn’t much Oaxacan about Oaxaca, but Brooklyn Chowhounds aren’t really complaining. Most just seem delighted to have a go-to taqueria in a neighborhood short on decent Mexican food. The tacos are “really fantastic,” oolah reports, made with high-quality ingredients and well seasoned. lambretta76 loves the fish and shrimp tacos—“brilliant,” he declares, very fresh and nicely spiced. Fixings are a cut above those at bare-bones taco joints: a great garlicky sauce with the pork, pickled red onions, and first-rate salsas with everything.

Nehna compares Oaxaca to hound hangout Fast and Fresh a few blocks away. lambretta76 ranks it up with Tacos Nuevo Mexico and not far below Matamoros and Tehuitzingo, to name a few board favorites. “Is it the best Mexican in the city? No,” he writes. “Is it the best in the neighborhood? It’s heads and shoulders above the competition.”

Another welcome newcomer, already familiar to New Yorkers from its Manhattan street carts, is Calexico, which went brick-and-mortar last month in the old Schnack space on Union Street. Its Cal-Mex tacos and burritos—carne asada, chicken, chipotle pork—are winning new fans and drawing crowds.

The restaurant serves things the carts do not, including fish tacos, “tofu asada,” Southern-accented grits with pork or shrimp, and an occasional special of beef brisket in poblano cream sauce (tasty and moist, says fruitspam). Look for a longer menu as Calexico finds its land legs.

Oaxaca [Carroll Gardens]
251 Smith Street (between Degraw and Douglass streets), Brooklyn
718-643-9630

Calexico [Carroll Gardens]
122 Union Street (between Columbia and Hicks streets), Brooklyn
718-488-8226

Board Links: Oaxaca on Smith St.
Calexico in Brooklyn

Edit Post / Posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009

New York

Sweet on Squash at Grandaisy

There’s a summery new breakfast sandwich at Grandaisy Bakery: sweet squash-and-walnut jam with butter on a baguette. “Oh lordy it’s tasty,” declares windycity.

Grandaisy Bakery [SoHo]
73 Sullivan Street (between Spring and Broome streets), Manhattan
212-334-9435

Board Link: grandaisy–summer squash jam sandwich

Edit Post / Posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009

New York

Mad Cupcake Scientists at Work

At the far boundary of cupcake science, perhaps a step or two beyond, is the Iona from Robicelli’s. It’s a pear–olive oil cake topped with Danish blue cheese buttercream, candied walnuts, and a drizzle of port reduction. “Unbelievable,” sighs GreenTriangle. “I never thought of putting blue cheese on a cupcake, but it was so good.”

Not just a cupcake laboratory, this mom-and-pop shop in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, is also an upmarket grocery and deli that makes a wide variety of prepared foods. But for GreenTriangle it’s all about the cupcakes. One choice worthy of kings, she suggests, is the Elvis, a banana cupcake crowned with peanut butter buttercream and candied bacon. Other noteworthy flavors include tiramisu, carrot cake frosted with cream cheese, the Butterbeer (vanilla cake, butterscotch buttercream, gold dust), and the lethal-sounding Car Bomb (chocolate-Guinness cake with Jameson ganache, Baileys buttercream, and shaved Valrhona chocolate). The lineup changes often, so call ahead or check online to see what’s coming out of the oven.

Robicelli’s [Bay Ridge]
8511 Third Avenue (near 85th Street), Brooklyn
718-748-6804

Board Link: Advice for Bay Ridge Day Trip?

Edit Post / Posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009

Padma Lakshmi: Comedienne? Seriously?

Apparently failing to seal a deal with either a gnarled tree stump or a butter statue from the Minnesota State Fair, NBC took one more step down the talent ladder, selecting Top Chef spokesmodel Padma Lakshmi as the star of a new food-based sitcom. The show is tentatively titled Holy Crap, How Can We Possibly Make This Work as a Comedy?

Sources suggest that the program will revolve around a hapless production crew and baffled professional actors, who have to jointly confront the titanic challenge of creating a sitcom starring a woman with no discernible affect, acting ability, or sense of humor.

No, seriously, NBC has picked up a Padma Lakshmi sitcom, and they might be calling it Single Serving. You mull the implications.

As Variety points out, tackling food themes in scripted television hasn’t gone all that well in the past. The Emeril show was a dud in 2001, and Kitchen Confidential, based on Anthony Bourdain’s memoir, didn’t last long either.

Edit Post / Posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009

Low-Calorie “Volcanic” Chocolate … But How Does It Taste?

Swiss scientists working for chocolatier Barry Callebaut have apparently invented a high-melting-temperature “Vulcano”-branded chocolate bar with 90 percent fewer calories, reports Spiegel Online.

Sounds fine on paper, but details are awfully sketchy at this point: Is it 90 percent fewer calories by weight, or are we just talking by volume? (If the latter, the airy, bubble-filled texture seems to explain a lot of the “low calorie” nature of the stuff, as air is calorie free.) Also an interesting question: How does the stuff measure up to normal, non-air-puffed, nonvolcanic chocolate in terms of taste?

Edit Post / Posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009

Greenpeace Calls Out “Traitor” Joe’s

Trader Joe’s is an easy store to have a love-hate relationship with. It’s full of food, yet it seems impossible to pick up everything you need to cook a real meal there. And all the plastic packaging on the produce is really annoying and wasteful. But wait, you can get a bottle of Bulleit Bourbon for 20 bucks. And those peanut-butter-filled pretzel things are pretty awesome when you have the munchies. And the cheese is a sweet deal. Organic milk too.

But Greenpeace looks to be in the hater camp with the launch of its microsite Traitor Joe’s. The group’s beef? It says that its surveys found the grocer selling “15 of the 22 red list seafoods” like Chilean sea bass and orange roughy. But while the site is heavy on flash animations of fish singing,
Greenpeace doesn’t present much information to substantiate its accusations other than this pdf file, which doesn’t provide much concrete evidence. Ultimately, it looks like Greenpeace is pushing for the grocery chain to implement an official sustainable seafood policy, provide info to help customers make sustainable seafood choices, and stop allegedly stocking the “red list” seafood.

TJ’s press office emailed CHOW its response to Greenpeace’s allegations. Jon Basalone (the EVP of marketing and merchandising for the company), says that “Trader Joe’s does not participate in any surveys. As a result, information gets gleaned from sources outside of Trader Joe’s, and this can lead to inaccurate reporting. ... The Greenpeace report details that Trader Joe’s sells a certain number of items on their ‘Red List.’ But several of the items that they call out are NOT for sale in our stores. We do NOT sell Chilean Sea Bass, Monkfish, Ocean Quahog or Redfish in any of our stores.” Basalone says that TJ’s will further efforts to improve sustainability by using the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “science-based and research-backed” Seafood Watch recommendations to help the store with seafood purchasing decisions.

Ultimately, isn’t it a little unfair to cast all the blame on a grocer for making unsustainable choices? If a store stocks unsustainable seafood, isn’t it because customers are buying and eating it? It’s a responsibility that both consumers and retailers should share.

Edit Post / Posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009

San Francisco Bay Area

Berkeley Bowl’s New Eatery

Berkeley Bowl has finally opened its long-awaited café in its “west” location, with sandwiches, salads, and grill and rotisserie items for the conscientious grocery shopper. rworange checked out the scene.

The menu changes daily, but gourmet-pedigreed offerings include herbed goat cheese with avocado, shaved celery root, heirloom tomatoes, pesto, and upland watercress on multigrain bread; olive-oil-poached shrimp with heirloom tomato salad; and a line-caught-tuna sandwich. All sandwiches come with house-made salt-and-pepper potato chips; there are also onion rings and hand-cut frites.

Hot sandwiches are available as well, such as wood-fired turkey, beer-steamed Aidells or Columbus sausage, and a Cubano with Columbus pork loin, rosemary ham, and Swiss cheese. rworange had a grilled cheese with sharp cheddar, Havarti, and Gruyère on herbed focaccia, and found it appropriately gooey and tasty.

Wood-fired ovens produce roasted chicken and turkey, pizza, and roasted mussels or littleneck clams with garlic and chorizo. There’s also barbecue: ribs, brisket, Louisiana hot links, baked beans, and greens.

Sandwiches run $4.95 to $7.25, 9-inch pizzas are $6.25 to $7.25, barbecue plates start at $8.99, and wines by the glass are $5. It’s early days yet at this place—wine is being served in plastic cups.

Cafe W Rotisserie & Grill [East Bay]
920 Heinz Avenue, Berkeley
510-898-9555

Board Link: Berkeley Bowl’s Cafe W Rotisserie and Grill–BBQ brisket, wood-fired pizza, gelato, frites and wine

Edit Post / Posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009

San Francisco Bay Area

Fits in a Roll, Fun to Hold

With Show Dogs, a new place owned by the Foreign Cinema crew, you now have the option of grabbing a quick lamb merguez sausage with fig chutney, Dijon mustard, and arugula before seeing a show or going shopping in Union Square. “Excellent gourmet dogs and beer on tap,” declares Lori SF. “I am already thinking about going back.”

slew enjoyed the duck sausage with kimchee and pasilla chile sauce, and also the barbecue fries: “like eating the french fries version of BBQ potato chips.” The corn dog, though, was lacking, with a soggy, flavorless crust.

Show Dogs [Civic Center]
1020 Market Street, San Francisco
415-558-9560

Board Links: Show Dogs?
Showdogs- Gourmet Hot Dogs

Edit Post / Posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009

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