Jackets Required?

One blogger wonders whether restaurant dress codes are a thing of the past.

Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet, is grappling with the idea of requiring formal attire at restaurants. On one hand, he believes that “a dress code sets a mood and a tone; it makes an evening special.” But on the other hand, he doesn’t have a problem with the people wearing hats and sneakers at David Chang’s Ssäm Bar or Marco Canora’s Hearth in Manhattan’s East Village—he doesn’t even mind that the some of the servers at nearby Prune “aren’t even wearing bras.” After much deliberation, Roberts says:

I think dress codes are silly and outmoded. I want everyone, regardless of dress, to have access to the world’s greatest dishes. I want you to try the milk chocolate caramel egg at Le Bernardin and I want you to be able to do so without having to buy a suit. For the price of a suit, you can buy two lunches at Le Bernardin.

Well, actually, Le Bernardin doesn’t require an expensive suit—my husband had no trouble getting served in a navy jacket and brown pants that were both purchased at the Gap—but the AG does make a good point: So far, the younger generation of respected New York City chefs doesn’t seem interested in the old guard’s jacket requirements. Roberts wonders if the restaurant dress codes will eventually fade into the past:

Maybe in 20 years the Daniels and Per Ses will look a lot more like the Ssam Bars and Prunes? And if that happens, what will we have lost? What will we have gained?

Posted by Kara Zuaro | Monday, June 2, 2008 at 8:33am | 2 comments
Tagged with: adam roberts, amateur gourmet, jackets required, dress codes, restaurants, david chang, ssam bar, marco canora, hearth, manhattan, east village, prune, le bernardin, daniel, per se

Spam: It's Not Just for Your In-box Anymore

Why are Spam sales are rising?

Lately we’ve spent a lot of Grinder bandwidth documenting the rapid increase in food prices. But we hadn’t guessed that price-wary shoppers were being driven to Spam (the processed meat, not the unsolicited emails regarding priapic enhancement): The Associated Press reports that over the last 12 weeks, sales of Monty Python’s favorite canned meat have risen more than 10 percent. The AP claims that “consumers are turning more to lunch meats and other lower-cost foods to extend their already stretched food budgets.”

BloggingStocks says this is more evidence that Americans are going on a “recession diet.” But I’m not buying it. The same AP story also reports that Hormel Foods, Spam’s manufacturer, launched new national advertising in January; the company itself credits the increase to that campaign and new products like Spam Singles, the loneliest of all lonely foods. And even the AP reporter can’t find enough man-in-the-street quotes to justify the story’s thesis: By the end, she’s reduced to quoting a customer who’s buying not Spam, but every college dorm’s low-budget standby, ramen. That’s not much of a trend story, though.

Posted by Nicholas Day | Monday, June 2, 2008 at 10:34am | 1 comment
Tagged with: spam, food prices, shopping, associated press, processed meat

Oh, Woe the Banana

Fungus systematically attacks banana plantations, renders crop inedible.

The banana in the lunchbox of the future may not be the same soft, yellow fruit we all ate as children. A fungus is destroying the banana as we know it, and there is no cure. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Bananas are dying. The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it turns bananas brick-red and inedible.

The situation is made worse by lack of crop diversity. The banana we know today is called the Cavendish; it replaced the Gros Michel, which was destroyed by the same Panama disease in the 1950s. The Cavendish was considered a reasonable replacement (think: banana 2.0), and the cycle repeated itself: large monocrop plantations (along with some nasty political maneuvering—they don’t call ’em banana republics for nothing). Now the Cavendish is at risk.

According to the article, “There are bananas we could adopt as Banana 3.0—but they are so different to the bananas that we know now that they feel like a totally different and far less appetizing fruit.”

The best shot we have at Banana 3.0 is the Goldfinger, sometimes called “the acid banana.”

Smoothies and banana bread may never be the same.

Posted by Tea Austen Weaver | Monday, June 2, 2008 at 12:34pm | 2 comments
Tagged with: banana of the future, panama disease, bananas, monocrops, seattle post-intelligencer

Famine Brought to You by Global Warming

A major new report on the effects of climate change on American agriculture.

In a pigs-can-fly moment, the Department of Agriculture (DOA), together with other federal agencies and university scientists, has released a major, peer-reviewed report on what climate change means for the U.S. environment. The report, which surveys 1,000 previous studies on the subject, takes a particularly extensive look at the consequences for farming. It isn’t lengthy because of all the good news: In short, summed up by an excellent story in the San Diego Union-Tribune, over the next half century we can expect more crop failures, more weeds, more livestock deaths, more insect damage, more drought, and less effective herbicides. Who’s excited?

Although higher temperatures generally boost plant growth, even that turns out to be problematic. According to a DOA scientist quoted by the Des Moines Register, “The fast growth can stunt the plants and harm them during critical periods, such as pollination.” Corn yields are likely to drop, since the crop is currently grown near the top of its temperature range. Oh, and there’s this: Because the planet’s already warming, these changes are likely regardless of any emissions reductions that are made.

Posted by Nicholas Day | Monday, June 2, 2008 at 2:15pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: agriculture, climate change, farming, department of agriculture, green, environment

Your New, Unimproved Dairy Farm

Breaking news from Britain: Letting cows eat grass is a good idea.

In a shocking development, researchers at Newcastle University in Britain have found that—wait for it—cattle that graze produce milk that’s healthier than cattle given industrial feed. Specifically, milk from the “al fresco diet,” as the Independent termed it, had significantly more omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin E, and conjugated linoleic acid.

The study got fairly big play, largely in the British papers, but honestly, kids: Do we really have to pretend to be surprised by this? Can’t we treat it as a given that we’re better off letting cows do what they’re designed to do?

Posted by Nicholas Day | Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 8:23am | 0 comments
Tagged with: cows, dairy, milk, grazing, agriculture, newcastle university, vitamins, green, organic

Best "On a Stick" Food Ever!

Summer’s hottest food or artery-destroying nightmare?

French fry–coated bacon on a stick. Enjoy!

Posted by Miriam Wolf | Monday, June 2, 2008 at 4:44pm | 1 comment
Tagged with: french fries, bacon, on a stick

Rebirth of a Sandwich Cookie

Hydrox comes back for a limited time.

Once upon a time there were chocolate sandwich cookies that didn’t start and end with an o. (Wait, there still are, but that’s beside the point.) These mystical cookies came from a company cheerily named Sunshine and were reputed to blow Oreos out of the water, taste-wise. In addition, way back when, they were kosher, whereas their competition used lard in its filling.

Those cookies were Hydrox, their name a cunning play on hydrogen and oxygen, despite that they were not watery at all. But Sunshine Biscuits was acquired by Keebler in the 1990s, and by 2003, Hydrox cookies were no longer being manufactured, much to the dismay of many.

But good news is on the horizon. Kellogg (which itself acquired Keebler in 2001—hooray for conglomeratization!) has announced that it will bring back Hydrox for a limited time. Let the hoarding begin!

Posted by Miriam Wolf | Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 10:12am | 4 comments
Tagged with: hydrox, oreo, keebler, kellogg, cookie, sandwich cookie, oreos, droxies

Supermarket Olive Oils Suck

Cook’s Illustrated tries a bunch of grocery-store olive oils, and spits most of them out.

Good extra-virgin olive oil goes straight to your head like champagne. Sweet, pungent, peppery, grassy, and lemony all at once, it makes almost anything delicious.

And then there’s the crap I buy at Trader Joe’s. Yeah, I knew the cheap stuff wasn’t as good as the oil available in staggeringly expensive five-liter tins at the specialty Italian store, but who has the time to truck all the way across town just for one thing?

I might be making the time, however, after reading Cook’s Illustrated’s July/August taste-testing of supermarket olive oils (story not available online, sorry). Testers tried 10 of the top-selling extra-virgin brands widely available in grocery stores, and were pretty much disgusted by all but three of them. The tasting notes are a scream: “I can’t imagine what is in here, but they have a nerve calling it EVOO,” says one feisty writer about Goya. Star was described as “spicy, but in a motor oil kind of way.” Other selections were “soapy,” “menthol—think Vicks VapoRub,” “unpleasant, dirty,” and even had “kitty litter smells” and the fragrance of “a set of sweaty hockey pads.”

So if I’m not buying DaVinci, what to buy? Chowhounds have some recommendations on good, cheap olive oil.

Now, next thing to worry about: Is the oil in those pricey tins really what it says it is?

Posted by Joyce Slaton | Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 12:44pm | 1 comment
Tagged with: olive oil, cook's illustrated, cooks illustrated, extra virgin olive oil, taste test

Vintage Pringles

A 1973 commercial sheds some light on the snack food’s adult past.

Serious Eats’ assemblage of vintage Pringles commercials gave me some serious flashback whiplash: The “Totally ’80s Pringles Spot” used to run incessantly during Saturday-morning cartoon commercial breaks when I was a kid. Come to think of it, I haven’t eaten a Pringles chip since I was a kid, either; I guess I’m out of marketing range.

Serious Eats’ post, put together in tribute to Fredric Baur, inventor of the snack food’s innovative tube packaging, includes this 1973 introduction to the “newfangled” product, featuring the “girls” of the Tuesday bridge club. The commercial seems to indicate that Pringles were intended to be an adult food before they became cartoon-commercial kids’ fare. It’s a revealing glimpse into an era when novelty reigned and hairdos were really done:

The painfully cheesy Brad Pitt spot in the Serious Eats post is also worth a click. It appears that Pitt may have been on the forefront of the chest-waxing trend.

Given Pringles’ reconstructed nature and aura of novelty science, it seems amazing that they haven’t been co-opted by those fun-loving molecular gastronomists. Chowhound C. Thi Nguyen did find them being used as a dim sum element back in 2006, with Peking duck and a green apple salad.

Pringles can inventor Baur passed away on May 4. He was so proud of his invention that he requested that part of his cremated remains be buried in a Pringles can.

Others have found that the cans excel as a package for shipping cookies.

R.I.P., Fredric Baur.

Posted by Traci Vogel | Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 2:23pm | 1 comment
Tagged with: pringles, fredric baur, commercial, brad pitt, serious eats, '80s, molecular gastronomy

The Colonel Concedes in Canada

KFC Canada agrees to improved chicken welfare after five years of protests.

The Colonel may be from Kentucky, but he’s making strides in Canada. KFC Canada has promised to buy chicken from suppliers with improved animal welfare—less crowding, a phase-out of growth hormones, more humane slaughter techniques—and to add a vegan fake “chicken” item to its menu.

According to Canada’s CBC News, the move comes in response to five years of protests led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), including “12,000 protests at KFC restaurants and outside the homes of company senior executives.” Celebrities have gotten involved: Paul McCartney, the Dalai Lama, and Chrissie Hynde. “It’s going to drastically reduce the suffering of chickens in slaughterhouses and also … improve the living conditions for animals while they’re on the farm,” said Matt Prescott, PETA’s assistant director of corporate affairs.

KFC Canada is owned by a different company than KFC outlets in the United States and other countries. The campaign continues in those countries. “All we want is for KFC worldwide to do what KFC Canada has done,” said Prescott.

Posted by Tea Austen Weaver | Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 3:09pm | 2 comments
Tagged with: kentucky fried chicken, peta, kfc canada, paul mccartney, dalai lama, chrissie hynde, kentucky fried cruelty, kfc, chickens, animal welfare

British Diet Coke Drinkers Now Benzoate-Free

Coca-Cola removes controversial additive, but only in Britain.

There are people who seek out Mexican Coke—made from real sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup. British Diet Coke may be next on the need-to-find list, as the Coca-Cola company recently announced it would remove the preservative sodium benzoate—linked in studies to cell damage and hyperactivity in children—but only in its products made for Britain, where the aforementioned studies took place. The additive will remain in regular Coke as well as other sodas made by the company.

Sodium benzoate is a naturally occurring substance, found in several fruits, used to help preserve soft drinks. It has been approved as safe by the UK Food Standards Agency. The Coca-Cola company has said it is removing the additive in response to consumer demand for more “natural” products.

Coke is not alone in its desire to be more natural (ahem). According to the FoodNavigator.com article, “Major supermarkets, including Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, pledged to remove artificial additives from their private label soft drinks last summer, following the furore” over the two British studies.

Posted by Tea Austen Weaver | Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 8:47am | 0 comments
Tagged with: coca-cola, sodium benzoate, british coke, diet coke, soda, additives, preservatives

Good News Department

Fast food doesn’t make you fat. And it’s organic, to boot.

I blame those Freakonomics guys. If it weren’t for them we wouldn’t be so interested in oddball economics papers, like the one explored in Condé Nast Portfolio that states that “Fast Food Doesn’t Make You Fat.” O RLY?

The two economists who wrote it investigated obesity rates of people living closest to highways (with their large concentrations of fast-food restaurants) and those living 5 to 10 miles away. They found “no difference in the number of overweight, normal, and underweight people in the two areas, suggesting that access to restaurants was not making people fatter.” Instead, they found that people who eat the larger portions of food offered in restaurants for one meal often compensate by consuming fewer calories over the rest of the day. Well, that explains it then.

Meanwhile, Organic to Go, a Seattle-based chain that offers healthy, organic fare for the grab ’n’ go lifestyle, is exanding into Washington DC, according to a piece in the Washington Post. The article notes that the expansion is part of an overall greening of quick-serve restaurants in line with people’s desires to “eat out more healthfully.” Chipotle, is, of course, the granddaddy of all the “healthy” fast-food chains; despite its 1,000-calorie burritos, it’s the country’s largest buyer of naturally raised meats.

Let the fast-food feasting begin.

Posted by Miriam Wolf | Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 4:36pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: fast food, freakonomics, washington post, chipotle, organic to go, conde nast portfolio

Hot Commodity: Restaurant Grease

On the West Coast, theft of used cooking oil is on the rise.

On the West Coast, the theft of used cooking oil is on the rise. The New York Times reports that a bandit was caught in Northern California with 2,500 gallons of used fryer grease stashed in his truck. “Fryer grease has become gold,” restaurant owner Nick Damianidis told the Times. “And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away.” But the used oil that was once seen as a waste product isn’t getting treated like trash anymore. In fact, it’s priced at almost $2.50 a gallon:

The grease is traded on the booming commodities market. Its value has increased in recent months to historic highs, driven by the even higher prices of gas and ethanol, making it an ever more popular form of biodiesel to fuel cars and trucks.

...

Biodiesel is derived by processing vegetable oil or animal fat with alcohol. It is increasingly available around the country, but it is expensive. With the right kind of conversion kit (easily found on the Internet) anyone can turn discarded cooking oil into a usable engine fuel that can burn on its own, or as a cheap additive to regular diesel.

Just a few years ago, any hippie with a biodiesel conversion kit could get as much used cooking grease as he wanted simply by asking his local joints nicely. And in 2006, CNNMoney.com said, “Gas is expensive. Old vegetable cooking oil from restaurants is free.” The article went on to quote a very valid prediction from Patrick Kuhn of Charlotte Moving Truck Rentals, who started converting his trucks to biodiesel that year: “With $3 diesel, I don’t think it will take long before someone realizes ‘hey, there’s money to be made in this.’”

Posted by Kara Zuaro | Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 10:28am | 0 comments
Tagged with: pacific northwest, new york times, northern california, nick damianidis, oil, cooking grease, biodiesel, bio-diesel, green, cnnmoney, biodiesel conversion kit, cooking oil

Cheeseography 101

Maps don’t have to be made with paper and ink. Sometimes cheese will do the trick.

The blog Strange Maps now boasts “A Cheese Map of Canada,” a collection of marbled cheese bits cut and broken into shapes resembling those of Canada’s various provinces and islands.

How good is it? Uh, well, not very good at all, as it turns out. Nice idea, however. And it has inspired a far more finely crafted cheese map of Wisconsin, just as soon as I can lay my hands on some Colby-Jack.

Posted by James Norton | Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 12:21pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: maps, cheese, cheese map of canada, strange maps

A Bivalve Tragedy of Epic Proportions

The Washington Post sings a funeral dirge for the Chesapeake Bay oyster.

East Coast oyster-lovers, despair: A $58 million campaign to save the Chesapeake Bay oyster population has left the area with fewer oysters than before the campaign’s start. The Washington Post reports that the 14-year-old federal- and state-level effort has failed on a scale that “stands out.”

The ramifications of the failure, unfortunately, go well beyond the price and availability of oysters at the Old Ebbitt Grill. Chesapeake Bay oysters are the bedrock of a marine ecosystem that lies in ruins; in the same way that a coral reef provides shelter, food, and a general sense of community to a bunch of critters ranging from tiny hermit crabs up to giant sharks, oyster beds have long anchored coastal life along the Eastern Seaboard.

But now?

‘You’re talking about sort of a lunar landscape here,’ [University of Maryland professor Kennedy] Paynter said. He was looking at video of a neighboring area, buried in silt and only lightly seeded with oysters. After heavy harvests and diseases and dirt washing off farm fields and suburban lawns, this is what’s left of many reefs.

One of the oyster program’s big problems, writes the Post, is that most of the bivalves it grew were then harvested by commercial fishermen. For more of this kind of thing and a bleak look at future prospects, read the article.

Posted by James Norton | Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 2:22pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: oysters, chesapeake bay, conservation, the washington post

Oranges No Longer Rate as Fast Food

Time-crunched Brits are throwing oranges onto the compost heap of too-slow foods.

What happens when you give people shorter and shorter lunch breaks? Britain is finding out that oranges—and their cumbersome peels—are one of the first casualties.

The Daily Mail reports on the fall of the orange:

[W]ith the average worker spending only 15 minutes on their lunch break, they are shunning oranges because they are too time-consuming to peel and eat.

By contrast the smaller citrus fruits such as clementines and tangerines, which are far more manageable, are enjoying a surge in popularity.

Naturally, the comments section manages to crack wise:

Maybe this is why there are now so many miserable people–not eating oranges has removed their zest for life…

Posted by James Norton | Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 9:23am | 0 comments
Tagged with: oranges, fast food, daily mail, clementines

Stop That ... Um, Gardener?

Guerrilla gardening takes off its mask.

Guerrilla gardening—planting flowers, fruits, vegetables, insert-seed-here on abandoned or neglected patches of ground—gets lengthy feature treatment in a couple of Left Coast newspapers. In the Los Angeles Times, there’s even a (hilariously ecohip) photo primer on how to make seed bombs (for surreptitious planting). This is guerrilla gardening’s moment: Richard Reynolds, the London founder of the movement, has a just-out book, On Guerrilla Gardening, and so do the folks behind the blog Homegrown Evolution, The Urban Homestead.

As the Times reports, the smallest plots yield impressive returns. A couple of friends recently raised “a farmers market worth of crops—corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, watermelon, cucumber and more—in a guerrilla dig at a large planter bed in front of an office building on Bundy Drive in West Los Angeles.” But once they’d planted produce for the winter—“garlic, potatoes, radishes, carrots, lettuce, onions and more”—the property’s owner, after “leaving a cease and desist letter, rototilled the whole plot.”

The article is highly encouraging for gardeners who are working on public land, though. And the Seattle Post-Intelligencer spotlights a push there for legislation that would permit residents to grow vegetables in roadside or median plots. And “[s]ome Seattle officials are pushing for a citywide inventory of public land that could be used to grow food, potentially including parks, land under power lines or even future reservoir caps.”

Posted by Nicholas Day | Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 1:55pm | 4 comments
Tagged with: urban agricuture, los angeles, seattle, gardening, green, guerrilla gardening, los angeles times, seattle post-intelligencer

The Art of Cappuccino Foam

Sexy ladies, koalas, skulls, and other coffee-cup apparitions.

In New York City’s Via Quadronno, the face of a sexy lady appeared in a cup of cappuccino, and at Seattle’s Victrola Coffee and Art a gentle-looking lion peered out from a mocha latte. These are among many ephemeral works of art that have been drawn in the foam atop espresso drinks.

In Japan, cappuccino foam is used to sketch out teddy bears, dolphins, koalas, and even Doraemon, the Japanese cartoon character. The Blork Blog, which posted a photo of a cappuccino topped with a skull from Montreal’s Caffè ArtJava, writes:

When I saw the face in the coffee I couldn’t help but think they ought to put a Jesus face in there some time. Imagine the publicity!

If you’ve got an espresso maker and would like to try this at home (whether you’re drawing religious figures or abstract designs in your foamed milk), WikiHow offers a latte art how-to.

Posted by Kara Zuaro | Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 4:24pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: via quadronno, victrola, cappuccino, latte, coffee, espresso, latte art, blork blog, caffe artjava, cappuccino art, wikihow

Bug Appétit!

Grasshoppers for dinner again?

“Hey,” I said to a friend. “There’s an article in Time Magazine about eating, like, bugs.”

“Dude,” she said. “Maybe this food thing has run its course.”

I mean, right? Would I have bet, a few years ago, that Time would run a story that included the words “white chocolate and waxworm cookies”? No.

It’s actually a terrific story, surprising and smart and timely. Your topic sentence: “With the global livestock sector responsible for 18% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions and grain prices reaching record highs, cheap, environmentally low-impact insects could be the food of the future—provided we can stomach them.” That’s not a minor consideration: As Time points out, “In the U.S., we’re more accustomed to exterminating insects than to eating them.” But according to a study by Mexican scientists, as the Independent reports, insects are eaten, and often enthusiastically, in 113 countries. In Thailand, after pesticides failed to stop a plague of locusts, “the government urged its people to eat them, and distributed recipes. The plague stopped. Now villagers plant corn specifically to attract them, so that they can be caught and sold.”

Also, bonus word for the day: entomophagy, the scientific term for eating insects. As in, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation held a conference earlier this year on entomophagy. Bonus faux-word for the day: microlivestock, the term preferred by Ohio State scientists for insects. As in, there’s a herd of microlivestock in the bathroom.

Posted by Nicholas Day | Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 11:16am | 0 comments
Tagged with: entomophagy, insects, bugs, green, environment, agriculture, fao, time magazine, eating insects

Bad Bulgogi

South Koreans take to the street to protest American beef imports.

After only 100 days in office, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak, who was elected to the office by the highest margin of victory ever, has seen his approval numbers plummet below 20 percent because of a single striking issue: He agreed to let American beef from cows older than 30 months into South Korea. It’s sort of shocking to see how scared South Koreans are of our cows, and how unconcerned Americans are. I’d wager that the safety of our beef isn’t a campaign topic here before November.

In April, before a Camp David summit with President Bush, Lee agreed to lift the ban on beef from older cows, which was imposed after a mad cow scare. (U.S. beef was banned entirely for three years after 2003, and until April South Korea still only allowed in boneless beef; the new pact lets in all cuts.) Lee was apparently oblivious to how this was polling: South Koreans were outraged by the decision and took to the streets, holding candlelight vigils and massive rallies in Seoul’s center—38,000 people this past Saturday. According to the Guardian, many South Koreans are terrified:

Rumours have circulated over the internet in this highly digitally connected country. There were stories that cheap US beef was destined for schoolchildren or that people could die by tasting just 3 grams of older US beef, stoking a collective hysteria that the government has been helpless to stop.

Now Lee’s finally backing away from his commitment: He’s asked the U.S. to voluntarily block beef that’s older than 30 months. The South Korean appetite for beef is huge—at $850 million, the third-largest market for American exporters—so Lee’s getting his way, at least partially. Leading beef companies have agreed to temporarily “add labels showing whether their beef came from animals over or under 30 months of age in a bid to help ease concerns among South Koreans.”

Posted by Nicholas Day | Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 5:22pm | 3 comments
Tagged with: south korea, beef, beef imports, mad cow, guardian, 30 months, lee myung-bak, international herald tribune

All Alicia Keyed Up

Does the noise in restaurants have anything to do with what genre of music’s being played?

Lately, my boyfriend and I have been ordering out from our favorite local restaurant. It’s not that we love eating at home so much, but because the restaurant, which recently moved to a new space about a block from the old one, has become intolerably loud.

They’ve tried to compensate: There are acoustic tiles installed on the ceiling, and part of the front wall now sports a heavy velvet curtain. Alas, none of this helps; it’s still as loud as a drunken fraternity party in there. When I phone our order in these days, I still have to shout over the phone to get the hostess to hear me, but at least I don’t have to spend all of dinnertime doing so.

In what is rapidly becoming a newspaper chestnut, the San Francisco Chronicle has published one of those “restaurants are way too loud” diatribes that satisfy a deep, angry itch in my psyche. There’s not a whole lot of new territory in this piece—reasons for louder restaurants include minimalist décor; restaurateurs think noise indicates a successful restaurant; the world is a louder place in general—but it does make the interesting point that some noise levels may be more perception than fact. In other words, it may be the genre of the music that’s the problem, not its volume:

‘A restaurant might not seem so loud to me if they’re blaring Frank Sinatra on the stereo,’ says Robert Sweetow, director of audiology and professor of otolaryngology at UC San Francisco. ‘But if it’s Alicia Keys played at the same level, it could very well become earsplitting.’

What do you think: Is this code for “get off my lawn, whippersnappers,” or is there some merit to the Sinatra-versus-Keys theory?

Posted by Traci Vogel | Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 12:50pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: restaurant noise, noisy, noise levels, frank sinatra, san francisco chronicle, alicia keys

Then, After Skinning the 18 Guinea Pigs With a Melon Baller...

The New York Times ponders the following question: At what point do—or should—home chefs give up on a wonky recipe?

The New York Times, an East Coast newspaper known for writing a food trend story now and again, pulls off a rare triumph this week by putting together a piece that rings loud, clear, “I’ve totally been there!” bells among its readers. The story is about recipe deal breakers, or steps so labor-intensive or otherwise ridiculous that they make the home cook throw up his or her hands in disgust. (Chowhound is abuzz, although folks do seem needlessly obsessed with the “cook with raisins” deal breaker.)

The piece is chockablock with solid examples, but one paragraph in particular hits the nail squarely on the head:

Recipes that involve absurdly local or obscure ingredients are also problematic. Paula Wolfert, in one recipe, requires 48 tender young grapevine leaves, freshly picked. Diane Kennedy, in her recipe for the Mexican sausage moronga, calls for two quarts of pig’s blood. ‘If you do not kill your own pig,’ she advises, ‘order it through your butcher.’

The story looks at rational concerns (recipes that call for glove boning, “a way to turn a bird inside out to bone it without cutting into the skin”), borderline concerns (not ever wanting to “work quickly”), and concerns bred from bad personal experiences (“I won’t cook pies.”)

All in all, it seems that the recipe deal breaker is a gray and fuzzy line. One person’s “heat the onions until they caramelize” is another person’s “glove bone the ostrich making sure not to remove or damage the eyeballs,” after all…

Posted by James Norton | Friday, June 6, 2008 at 6:30am | 0 comments
Tagged with: recipes, the new york times, recipe deal-breakers, fussy recipes, unnecessary steps

Disposable and Essential: 100 Years of Dixie

Saveur provides one of the most interesting pieces of writing about Dixie cups … ever.

Nearly 2,000 different Dixie cups—from every decade of the 20th Century—are included in the collection of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Saveur’s “Fare” section provides a fascinating (if tantalizingly brief and print-edition only, sorry) overview of the archive’s contents, which range from the Spartan (a pure white number from the early ’20s) to the patriotic (a 1941 edition sporting an American fighter plane) to the practical (a cup sporting Constructivist gears and the slogan: “Use Your Brains, a Machine Doesn’t Have Any.”)

The piece also gets into the obscure origins of the cup: It was inspired by a fear of the “tin dipper,” the communal cup chained to water fountains in schools, train stations and railway cars. The company’s first big break? The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which spurred demand for its Health Kup.

Posted by James Norton | Friday, June 6, 2008 at 2:48pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: saveur, dixie cups, lafayette college

Ruffling Feathers

Slate explores the less pastoral side of backyard chickens.

It seems like everybody and his pet chicken is interested in keeping a hen or two in his backyard, ’cause, you know, we need the eggs.

But what happens when your hens stop laying eggs—or when you just get tired of an ovo-lacto diet and start looking for some flesh-based protein? L. E. Leone (who, I have it on good authority, has been obsessed by chickens for a very long time: keeping them, raising them, and especially eating them) explores the less pastoral side of urban farming in “There Will Be Chicken Blood” in Slate.

There’s a part of me that likes to kill. When I do what I do with a hatchet and a chicken, I feel like crap, and I feel like God. I feel alive and in love and closer than ever to death.

It’s heady stuff, but Leone has a clear-eyed view of the dispatching of poultry for reasons both selfish (gotta eat) and altruistic (putting sick or hurt animals down). Her meditation on doing what needs to be done—whether you’re raising chickens for pets or meat—adds a level of philosophical understanding and real-world grittiness to the ongoing debate around ethical eating.

Posted by Miriam Wolf | Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 2:50pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: chickens, slate, poultry, backyard poultry, urban farming, slaughter, le leone, ethical eating

A Tiny Bite of Israel

Gastronomica presents a moving little glimpse into an old man’s kitchen in Tel Aviv.

Ah, Gastronomica: Home to some of the most pompous, obscure, and aggravating writing in the world of food, but also home to some of the most interesting, well-researched, and poetic. And the two clumps are not necessarily mutually exclusive, of course.

Falling squarely and exclusively into camp #2 is Yossi Gutmann’s beautiful photo essay (not available online, sorry) in this quarter’s edition of the magazine, entitled “My Father’s Kitchen, Tel Aviv.”

It opens simply:

My father is ninety-four. He lives alone in a four-room apartment that once held twelve people. For seven decades his shop, where he still works full-time repairing watches, has been across the street.

Simple, clear, declarative sentences drive this exploration of a kitchen where “nothing ever disappears,” including the “residue of the tape meant to protect the family against the Italian bombing of Tel Aviv in 1942.”

Who even knew there was an Italian bombing of Tel Aviv in 1942?

A brief meditation on simple food and Spartan living, Guttman’s essay and photos are surprisingly stirring and—unto themselves—justify the purchase price of the magazine. Well played, Gastronomica. Well played.

Posted by James Norton | Friday, June 6, 2008 at 1:29pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: tel aviv, israel, gastronomica

Pineapple for Everybody!

Learn how to grow your own.

I don’t know about you, but my attempts at sprouting new life from kitchen scraps consists of a few slimy avocado pits stuck with toothpicks and suspended in water back when I was a kid. Did they sprout? A couple, yes. Did I ever eat an avocado I had grown myself? Not on your life.

But now Instructables offers a step-by-step guide on how to plant and grow your own pineapple using the bristly top part of the fruit. Pineapples can be grown in your backyard, or in a pot if you happen to live in a climate that won’t permit year-round outdoor cultivation. The photos look clear, the instructions easy, the payoff a treat. For the effort of a few minutes digging in the backyard, you could be enjoying fresh-off-your-own-stalk pineapple forever more.

The only catch is that it takes two to three years for a pineapple plant to mature and begin producing fruit. Better hope you don’t have to move in the interim, leaving all hope of fresh pineapple behind.

Posted by Tea Austen Weaver | Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 4:18pm | 0 comments
Tagged with: how to grow your own pineapple, instructables, sprouting avocado pits, pineapple

What's For Breakfast?

A New York magazine piece deconstructs the first meal of the day.

New York magazine has an issue out dedicated to breakfast, including a breakfast manifesto, entitled “How I Learned to [Heart] Breakfast (or at Least What to Eat for It),” that goes down like a wholegrain wheat biscuit. Breakfast is integral to mental function and weight maintenance; it’s the “power broker of repasts,” the article says. And yet we’re confused about what we should be eating: so confused that a quarter of us skip it altogether.

The article tries to remedy that confusion by gathering the evidence. The best breakfast, it concludes, is comprised of foods that rate low on the glycemic index (scroll down for definition). “The more processed the food, the higher its GI; the higher a food’s fiber content, the lower its GI,” is the gist of it. “Breakfast, in other words, should be a high-fiber affair. This means vegetables and fruits (but not juices—the fiber is in the pulp and skin) and whole grains.”

So, ditch the muffins and bagels, the cereals that are “sugary and fiberless,” and reach for fruits, vegetables, non-instant oatmeal, whole-grain breads, low-fat dairy, and eggs.

The fun part of the article, however, is the the accompanying poll of what 60 random people had for breakfast. I’m not sure why I found this so fascinating, there’s just something innocently voyeuristic about reading the answers, which range from “Slice of cheese pizza, a Coke,” to “A bagel with cream cheese, lemon tea,” to “Organic café au lait, organic banana, a glass of Bud Lite, a multivitamin.” There’s a whole little Hemingwayesque story (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”) in that last one.

When Chowhounds posted their breakfasts in a thread in April, they tended to be more mouthwatering.

As for me, this morning I had two slices of raisin pecan rice bread, generously slathered with butter, and a cup of coffee with cream.

Posted by Traci Vogel | Friday, June 6, 2008 at 11:39am | 1 comment
Tagged with: breakfast, glycemic index, new york magazine, poll

Slow Food and Hip Hop: The Odd Couple?

Gnarls Barkley is scheduled to headline Slow Food Rocks.

The organizers of Slow Food Nation ’08, a giant celebration of the pleasures of artisanal food slated for Labor Day weekend in San Francisco, have chosen a headliner for Slow Food Rocks, the two-day outdoor music festival component of the event: Gnarls Barkley. Does that make them crazy?

Doubtful. Although the ticket prices ($59 for general admission) may reignite last year’s war of words between Slow Food and some Ferry Plaza Farmers Market vendors over charges of elitism, the beautiful setting (Fort Mason’s verdant Great Meadow) and Slow Food–approved food vendors should make for a delicious day.

Other musicians slated for the lineup include The New Pornographers, Ozomatli, and the only food-named group so far G. Love & Special Sauce. Tickets go on sale June 10.

Posted by Miriam Wolf | Friday, June 6, 2008 at 9:11am | 2 comments
Tagged with: slow food, slow food nation, crazy, gnarls barkley, rock, hip hop

Leftover Lovers

A new cookbook offers a strict kitchen regimen that retools previously cooked food.

Word of Mouth blogger Susan Smillie is obsessed with leftovers, but she’s got a beef with the new cookbook, The Kitchen Revolution, which focuses on refashioning yesterday’s dinner. As a review of the cookbook in the UK Guardian explains:

The idea is that you do one weekly shop and cook a big meal from scratch on Night One (perhaps it’s Sunday dinner). The next two evenings, you have leftovers, but excitingly done—not just bubble and squeak; the fourth night, there is a seasonal recipe that is generally pretty quick; on night five you prepare a feast using stuff from your larder; and on the sixth night, you make double quantities of something and freeze half of it. On the seventh night you eat something you made from the week before —the book provides 52 weeks’ worth of dinners.

As someone who loves planning as much as leftovers, this completely appeals to me. When I was starting out as a single girl in the city, I’d hit the supermarket once a week to pick up a bag of beans and just enough extra ingredients to respice and repackage them throughout the week—they’d usually be served in a burrito, over rice, molded into bean burgers, as a bean soup, and finally, over nachos on Friday night.

My grocery budget has increased over the years (so I no longer live on beans alone), but I’ve hit a major snag in my once-a-week food shopping routine: My husband’s appetite is ruled by cravings. He often throws a wrench in my well-orchestrated weekly menus by begging for, say, jerk chicken on the night I’d been planning on black bean salmon and edamame purée.

If it were up to my better half, we’d do all our cooking on the fly, based on the leftovers in the fridge and what we picked up on the way home from work. But does anyone else share the regimented cooking style favored by the authors of The Kitchen Revolution (and me)?

Posted by Kara Zuaro | Friday, June 6, 2008 at 5:28pm | 3 comments
Tagged with: leftovers, cooking, word of mouth, susan smillie, kitchen revolution, guardian, beans

Expanding the Limits of Shelf Life

Use-by dates on food: iron-clad law or mere suggestion?

Use-by dates on food: iron-clad law or mere suggestion? I admit that when I had a toddler in the house, I was a bit paranoid about making sure she didn’t eat any perishables (like dairy) past their use-by dates. Now that she’s older, I’ve loosened up and go by smell, look, and taste when judging whether to eat superannuated foodstuffs. In fact, just the other day, I purchased an expired pack of cheese at Grocery Outlet for the amazing price of 33 cents. (Hey, we all have to economize these days.)

British writer and TV presenter Jonathan Maitland was inspired not by cheapness, but by food waste (which has been getting a lot of press in the UK) to take the “‘Best Before’ Challenge,” during which he spent two weeks eating various foods that were past their use-by dates. He chronicles his experiences in the Daily Mail.

He starts slow, with eggs just a day past their expiration dates, but soon ramps things up, eating items like four-days-expired sausages and nine-day-old moussaka without any physical harm (not even a tummy ache, let alone a day of driving the porcelain bus). Between diary entries, he writes about the environmental impact of food waste, interviews a “freegan” (a vegan who “lives off food that supermarkets throw out”), and gives basic food-safety tips for using expired foods (e.g., wash your hands, cook thoroughly).

The money shot comes 13 days in, when Maitland eats a slice of bread covered with green mold:

Enter some Hovis brown bread, three-and-a-half weeks past its Best Before date. Except it isn’t brown. It is mottled green. And smells of socks. I toast it and smother it in butter and marmalade. It is crunchy and tastes just like toast should, although during one mouthful I detect a hint of pepper.

Impressive? Yes. Revolting? Surely.

Posted by Miriam Wolf | Monday, June 9, 2008 at 9:30am | 0 comments
Tagged with: use-by dates, daily mail, food waste, expired food, grocery outlet, jonathan maitland