Friday, June 19, 2015

Maybe I can give up the Prozac

A Study Says Eating Pickles Could Help You Feel Less Anxious -- Grub Street:

Pickled cucumbers in bowl
Picklebacks for all! Researchers at William & Mary and the University of Maryland say that they found a connection between eating pickled foods and feeling less anxious. The findings, which are being published in the August issue of Psychiatry Research, came after studying the dietary habits of 700 college students — an anxiety-provoking task unto itself — and learning that people partial to things like kimchi and sauerkraut suffered less social anxiety. They report the effect "was strongest amongst people that were high in neuroticism."
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Thursday, June 18, 2015

Jamie's Trattoria Parramatta


Parramatta NSW 2150 Italian - Oliver apparently does the recipes, writyes the Daily Telegraph reviewer, for dishes offered at the restaurants that bear his name — even though they are franchises, owned in Australia by the Pacific Restaurant Group.

RestaurantJamie's Italian Trattoria
Street addressCentenary Place, Church Square
SuburbParramatta
StateNSW
Postcode2150
Phone02 8624 6800
Websitejamieoliver.com/italian/australia/restaurants/sydney-trattoria
StyleItalian
Awards 2014 Fairfax Good Food Guides
Awards Gourmet Guide
The Australian Top 50
Restaurant & Catering Awards
Other Awards
Reviews & Notes"Why does a celebrity chef like Oliver put his name to venues that don’t match his hype or objectives?"
ReviewerElizabeth Merryment - Daily Telegraph 16/6/15 5/10
Reviews & Notes
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Reviews & Notes
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Owner's note

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Ovest


West Footscray VIC 3012 Pizza - High praise as a family friendly place

RestaurantOvest
Street address 572 Barkly Street
SuburbWest Footscray
StateVIC
Postcode3012
Phone03 9687 7766
Websiteovestwest.com.au
StylePizza
Awards 2014 Fairfax Good Food Guides
Awards Gourmet Guide
The Australian Top 50
Restaurant & Catering Awards
Other Awards
Reviews & Notes"While pizza may be the hero at Ovest, the lasagne is worth a visit alone."
ReviewerDan Stock - Herald Sun 28/4/15 13.5/20
Reviews & Notes
Reviewer
Reviews & Notes
Reviewer
Owner's note

Donovans


St Kilda VIC 3182 Contemporary Australian - Back with all its comfortable glory after being shut by fire

RestaurantDonovans
Street address40 Jacka Boulevard
SuburbSt Kilda
StateVIC
Postcode3182
Phone03 9534 8221
Websitedonovanshouse.com.au/
StyleAustralian contrmporary
Awards Fairfax Good Food Guides2016 GFG 1 hat; 2015 GFG GFG 1 hat
Awards Gourmet Guide
The Australian Top 50
Restaurant & Catering AwardsFinalist - Melbourne Contemporary Australian - formal
Other Awards
Reviews & Notes"Sharing and caring — that’s what the Donovans do and why people come. ... I’d forgot what a pleasure it is to eat three actual courses — no “designed to share” malarky here."
ReviewerDan Stock - Herald
Reviews & Notes
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Reviews & Notes
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Owner's note

Cook and Norman


Flinders VIC 3939 Italian = The Herald Sun reviewer reckons the gnocchi is worth driving the 100 kilometres from Melbourne for.

RestaurantCook and Norman Trattoria
Street address52 Cook Street
SuburbFlinders
StateVIC
Postcode3929
Phone03 5989 0119
Websitecookandnorman.com.au
StyleItalian
Awards 2014 Fairfax Good Food Guides
Awards Gourmet Guide
The Australian Top 50
Restaurant & Catering Awards
Other Awards
Reviews & Notes"... there’s some excellent cooking going on in this trattoria."
ReviewerDan Stock - Herald Sun 26/5/15 14/20
Reviews & Notes
Reviewer
Reviews & Notes
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Owner's note

Lost Heaven


Melbourne CBD VIC 3000 - Chinese

RestaurantLost Heaven
Street addressLevel 2, 206 Bourke Street
SuburbMelbourne CBD
StateVIC
Postcode3000
Phone03 9650 2188
Websitelostheaven.com.au
StyleChinese - Sichuan
Awards 2014 Fairfax Good Food Guides
Awards Gourmet Guide
The Australian Top 50
Restaurant & Catering Awards
Other Awards
Reviews & Notes"... a meal that ... showed a decidedly deft hand on the numbing heat that is the cornerstone of the second-most famous style of Chinese cooking."
ReviewerDan Stock - Herald Sun 2/6/15 13.5/20
Reviews & Notes
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Reviews & Notes
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Owner's note

The Roving Marrow


Carlton VIC 3053 - Modern Australian

RestaurantThe Roving Marrow
Street address418 Lygon Street
SuburbCarlton
StateVIC
Postcode3053
Phone03 9347 7419
Websitetheastorcarlton.com.au/
StyleModern Australian
Awards Fairfax Good Food Guides2016 GFG 1 hat
Awards Gourmet Guide
The Australian Top 50
Restaurant & Catering Awards
Other Awards
Reviews & Notes"... a trolley laden with all manner of bites will be quick to trundle by, with bigger dishes ordered off a traditional menu. ... There’s clever elegance to these dishes... The trolley might be the gimmick to get you through the door, but it’s the rest of the sophisticated package that will have you rolling back in."
ReviewerDan Stock - Herald Sun 9/6/15 15/20
Reviews & Notes"If the yum cha concept sounds like a gamble, it’s a calculated one. Two sittings see a trolley loaded with a limited number of tweezer- driven small plates that know no geographical bounds."
ReviewerGemima Cody - The Age 9/6/15 15/20
Reviews & Notes
Reviewer
Owner's note

Choose your reviewer and take your choice

The Melbourne Age announced the 40th birthday of the Flower Drum with the description "Australia's best Chinese restaurant." The Gourmet Traveller Guide for 2015 previewed the event with the words "Four decades is a long time in this fine dining caper, yet Flower Drum remains as essential as ever. It's the little things that make this veteran not just our top Cantonese restaurant but a standard setter in all sorts of other ways." The inaugural edition of Gault&Millau Australia chimed in recently extolling how "the menu is brimming with top-class Cantonese dishes, each of which emphasises quality produce" and went on to describe them as "Chef Lui's fabulous dishes..."
Then just as the birthday celebrations were getting into this cheerful swing of praise, along for dinner came the Herald Sun's Dan Stock.
Reviewer Stock booked a table, he wrote, with dressup-for-dinner delight — for a Thursday night as weekends are booked solid a month out — and looked forward to what he’d recently heard was still Australia’s best Chinese restaurant.
Upon arrival we were ushered into a crotchety lift that wheezed its way to the second floor. I’d imagine that once added a frisson of glamour to a meal here, but when I left 2 ½ hours later I felt it a fitting leitmotiv for an experience that was at best underwhelming with no role to play today, save as a museum.
It’s a step back in time, from the room with its shouty Chinoisere to the show plates and waiters in ill-fitting bow ties and too large vests upon which name tags are worn. Those waiters will fiddle and fuss with your food table-side, silver serving everything in the misguided notion that’s a show anyone still wants to watch.
Ah, the food. While there were a couple of definite hits — a meaty scallop siu mai; an excellent piece of eye fillet, slices of crunchy-coated wagyu — most was memorable for being eminently forgettable.
And his harsh conclusion?
Flower Drum is so far from world class it’s an insult to our best restaurants that it’s still mentioned in the same breath. It’s trading on — and charging for — the goodwill of decades of made memories. If you have happy memories of a meal here, my advice would be to treasure them. But don’t try to relive them.

Flower Drum

[flowerdrum.jpg]

Melbourne CBD 3000 Chinese - A long-time inclusion in most best restaurant lists.

RestaurantFlower Drum
Street address17 Market Lane
SuburbMelbourne CBD
StateVIC
Postcode3000
Phone03 9662 3655
Websiteflower-drum.com
StyleChinese
Awards Fairfax Good Food Guides2016 GFG 2 hats; 2015 GFG 3 hats
Awards Gourmet Guide2 stars
The Australian Top 50
Restaurant & Catering Awards
Other Awards3 hats Gault&Millau 2015
Reviews & Notes"Four decades is a long time in this fine dining caper, yet Flower Drum remains as essential as ever. It's the little things that make this veteran not just our top Cantonese restaurant but a standard setter in all sorts of other ways."
ReviewerGourmet 2015 Restaurant Guide
Reviews & Notes"The menu is brimming with top-class Cantonese dishes, each of which emphasises quality produce. ... Chef Lui's fabulous dishes..."
ReviewerGault&Millau 2015 15/20
Reviews & Notes"Flower Drum is so far from world class it’s an insult to our best restaurants that it’s still mentioned in the same breath. It’s trading on — and charging for — the goodwill of decades of made memories."
ReviewerDan Stock Herald Sun 16/6/2015 10/20
Owner's note
Earlier reviews and awards:
Reviews: The Age Good Food Guide 2010 - For fans of its straight up Cantonese it's a byword for superb produce ... For its detractors , it sticks to a fault to the tried and true ...
Awards - The Age Good Food Guide: Two hats
Crikey readers Award 2009 Best Fine Dining Restaurant, Melbourne

Monday, June 15, 2015

A professor of religion looks at diet books

Diet Books GIF

How 'Diet Gurus' Hook Us With Religion Veiled In Science - NPR
Flip through today's bestselling diet books and you won't see any references to religion. From Paleo to vegan to raw, nutrition gurus package their advice as sound, settled science. It doesn't matter whether meat is blamed for colon cancer or grains are called out as fattening poison — there's no shortage of citations and technical terms (tertiary amines, gliadin, ketogenesis) to back up the claims.
But as a scholar of religion, it's become increasingly clear to me that when it comes to fad diets, science is often just a veneer. Peel it away and you find timeless myths and superstitions, used to reinforce narratives of good and evil that give meaning to people's lives and the illusion of control over their well-being.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Negative urgency and eating all that ice cream

Why you shouldn’t blame yourself for binge eating - The Washington Post:

"Most people tend to react similarly to depression. When they feel down, they lose interest in doing things and enjoying them. The tendency is so prevalent that lack of interest—in people, outings, and even food—is recognized as one of the five clinical signs of depression. "When people are feeling depressed, they end up withdrawing, becoming more internal, becoming more lethargic," said Kelly Klump, who teaches psychology at Michigan State University.

But there also exists a subset of people who tend to exhibit a different reaction. For these people, depression breeds high levels of impulsivity. They do things they wouldn't otherwise do.

Like opening a pint of ice cream, and polishing it off.

That psychological quirk — the tendency to become more impulsive when feeling less content — is often referred to as "negative urgency." And negative urgency is actually considered by some experts to be a specific biological trait in people, just like alcoholism has been found to be the extension of specific biological impulses.

As a result, people who exhibit negative urgency, turning to binge eating when they're depressed, are not merely demonstrating a lack of willpower or an ordinary mood swing. They're engaging in a biologically driven behavior."



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The impact on fast food companies of consumers asking for fresher, healthier cuisine

Subway is cutting fake colors and flavors. That won’t make it any healthier. - The Washington Post:

"Subway, the world-dominating "Eat Fresh" mega-deli struggling with sinking sales, said Thursday it plans to drop all artificial colors, flavors and preservatives from its American menus by 2017.

The most ubiquitous food chain on the planet, which serves nearly 2,800 sandwiches every minute, is only the latest food giant to sacrifice some man-made additives in hopes of winning back American eaters, who profess tastes for fresher, healthier cuisine.

The move will make anti-chemical crusaders, like the "Food Babe," overjoyed. But it probably won't make you, or their business, any healthier.

The chain is cutting artificial flavors and caramel coloring from its new roast beef recipe that involves roasting beef "with increased levels of garlic and pepper." Vinegar will replace propionic acid, a preservative in its turkey. Banana peppers will be given their fluorescent sheen with turmeric, often used in Indian curries, instead of Yellow No. 5."



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