The influence of food blogs

A Restaurant Critic on How Blogs Changed Restaurants:

"Thanks to the great digital blog boom, there are no hidden mysteries in the formerly mysterious food world, and everyone knows everything at the same time. Cooks used to have to spend years fighting their way up the ladder of great Darwinian kitchens to attain superstar status; now they just have to come up with a few photogenic stunt dishes, and the zombie hordes will find them. In the old pre-blog days, restaurant critics were like miners, shining our creaky headlamps on discoveries for our rapt readers, but now those of us dinosaurs who still roam the dining landscape are more like carnival barkers, attempting to herd the crowds of informed, unruly diners from one ephemeral attraction to the next."

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My kind of parliament free beer for members

Belgian Parliament Votes to Keep Free Booze In the Break Room | FWx:


... despite concerns from its own ethics committee, the Belgian parliament recently decided to keep a perk its members have enjoyed since the 1990s: free beer and wine. ...

While investigating an incident of poor behavior in parliament – one member calling his colleague by a racial slur – the ethics committee suggested that “stricter rules” surrounding alcohol – specifically, free beer and wine in the coffee room – could improve debate discourse. (Sounds like a bit more than a “coffee” room to me.) “Some MPs tend to become quite unpleasant if they have been drinking,” Danny Pieters, the committee chair, was quoted as saying by Nieuwsblad, adding, “At other workplaces this is no longer the case.”

However, after chatting things over will other party leaders, Chamber President Siegfried Bracke reportedly decided that any alcohol issue was “non-existent,” stating that the committee was basically overstepping its bounds because the aforementioned racial slur incident had nothing to do with free booze. ...

Possibly the most interesting aside to this story, however, is why the Belgian parliament started getting free alcohol in the first place. According to Nieuwsblad, citing parliamentary member Herman De Croo, he said that he introduced free beer and wine when he was Chamber President because too many MPs were going out and getting drunk in the local cafes instead of attending debates. 'via Blog this'

Chocolate Tomatoes?

A Chocolate Candy Aims To Make The World Think About Hunger? : Goats and Soda : NPR:

It is a very attractive truffle.
It's made of the usual ingredients — cocoa butter, sugar, chocolate — with a not-so-typical addition. Thirty grams of dried tomatoes from Nigeria.
And it was served at the World Economic Forum last week in Davos, Switzerland, with a very specific goal in mind: "to raise awareness on food waste and hunger," as stated in a press release.
That's a big job for a bonbon — and it's the reason for the tomatoes.
According to U.N. sources, up to 75 percent of the 1.5 million tons of tomatoes harvested in Nigeria each year are "lost." That can mean a number of things, from rotting in the field to falling off the truck on the way to market.
The Roca brothers, three Spanish chefs who are U.N. goodwill ambassadors, created the chocolate. "We are exploring food preservation techniques, such as the dried tomatoes used in this chocolate that can reduce food waste and create new market opportunities for young farmers," explains Joan Roca, one of the brothers. "Preserving tomatoes is our first goal."

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Spain's 'Robin Hood Restaurant' Charges The Rich And Feeds The Poor

Spain's 'Robin Hood Restaurant' Charges The Rich And Feeds The Poor : The Salt : NPR:

"On a frigid winter night, a man wearing two coats shuffles into a brightly lit brick restaurant in downtown Madrid. Staff greet him warmly; he's been here many times. The maître d' stamps his ID card, and the hungry man selects a table with a red tablecloth, under a big brass chandelier.

The man, Luis Gallardo, is homeless — and so are all the diners, every night, at the city's Robin Hood restaurant.

Its mission is to charge the rich and feed the poor. Paying customers at breakfast and lunch foot the bill for the restaurant to serve dinner to homeless people, free of charge.


It's become Spain's most sought-after lunch reservation.

The restaurant has poached staff from luxury hotels. Celebrity chefs are lining up to cook once a week. For paying clients, the lunch is fully booked through the end of March."



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Bountiful Beach Buffet: Fresh Seaweed Is Making Waves Among Foragers

Bountiful Beach Buffet: Fresh Seaweed Is Making Waves Among Foragers : The Salt : NPR:


Seaweed is high in protein, and contains Vitamin B12, iodine and omega-3 fatty acids. It can be a natural source of MSG, which helps provide a savory umami flavor in dishes. As such, seaweed can flavor soups, thicken sauces, be baked into bread or cakes, or dried and eaten like potato chips. Dennis Judson, who leads seafood foraging classes for Adventure Sports Unlimited, recommends making pickles out of seaweed, particularly bullwhip kelp, which is a long tube with a ball at the end that looks like a whip.

"I cut it into strips, like little donuts," says Judson. "Then I put it in jars and pickle it. Then I put the pickles in Bloody Marys. They're delicious."

Seaweeds are algae, not plants. They're divided into three types: red, green and brown. (Kelp is a type of seaweed.) Like plants, seaweed uses photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy. While they can be harvested all year, they're usually at the height of growth in spring and summer. They often grow rapidly, as much as two feet a day.

Because of this, most seaweed can withstand ethical foraging. The important thing is to only take the leaf-like blades and leave the hold-fast — essentially, the roots of the seaweed — intact so it can keep producing.

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Great whites: with vines it's questions of time

Great whites: burgundy 2015: Jancis Robinson in the Financial Times

" It is generally agreed that, although the first few harvests may be particularly successful while crop levels are relatively low, the quality of the wine they produce increases as vines age. This may be partly because yields decline, so what remains is more concentrated, but older vines’ well-established root systems are also much better at withstanding the increasing problem of drought (young vines suffered water stress in Burgundy in 2015 — especially in Saint-Aubin). 

Every vigneron likes to boast how old their vines are, and many a label all over the world carries the (unregulated) claim of Old Vines, Vieilles Vignes, Viñas Viejas, Vinhas Velhas or Alte Reben. But with really old vines, yields can fall to seriously uneconomic levels, and the vines themselves are sometimes so fragile that they are easily susceptible to fatal damage in the vineyard. Yet, replanting is a long and expensive process.

Ideally the vineyard is left fallow for a few years and then, once replanted, it will be at least 10 or 12 years before the vines are mature enough to produce even half-decent wine."



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The World's First Celebrity Chef

Marie-Antoine Careme Was The World's First Celebrity Chef : The Salt : NPR: "The bustling Paris streets were rutted and caked in thick mud, but there was always a breathtaking sight to behold in the shop windows of Patisserie de la Rue de la Paix. By 1814, people crowded outside the bakery, straining for a glimpse of the latest confection created by the young chef who worked inside.

His name was Marie-Antoine Carême, and he had appeared, one day, almost out of nowhere. But in his short lifetime, which ended exactly 184 years ago today, he would forever revolutionize French haute cuisine, write bestselling cookbooks and conjure up extravagant, magical feasts for royals and dignitaries."

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Some wise thoughts on the horrors of restaurant design from an old colleague

Robert Hogg on his Facebook page is worth repeating to another audience.

The price of a presidential cocktail

The cheapest cocktail at Donald Trump's new D.C. hotel is $24 https://t.co/wCsgcfr3Pj

— Grub Street (@grubstreet) January 7, 2017

A depressing forecast for independent restaurateurs

Why America's Restaurant Industry Is in a Bubble About to Burst - Thrillist:


The American restaurant business is a bubble, and that bubble is bursting. I've arrived at this conclusion after spending a year traveling around the country and talking to chefs, restaurant owners, and other industry folk for this series. In part one, I talked about how the Good Food Revival Movement™ created colonies of similar, hip restaurants in cities all over the country. In the series' second story, I discussed how a shortage of cooks -- driven by a combination of the restaurant bubble, shifts in immigration, and a surge of millennials -- is permanently altering the way a restaurant's back of the house has to operate in order to survive.
This, the final story, is simple: I want you to understand why America's Golden Age of Restaurants is coming to an end.

Across the nation, restaurants like AQ -- chef-driven, ambitious, fine-casual dining spaces that straddle the gap between neighborhood fixtures and destinations -- are the ones closing their doors most quickly, mainly for a reason above: labor costs. And it's happening everywhere -- research firm NPD Group reported that in 2016 the number of independent restaurants in the US dropped 3%, while chains increased, and said the majority of those independent restaurants closing were sit-down. The reasons the costs are going up are complicated, involving a mix of laws and taxes and other inherently unsexy things.

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How has arestaurant "no tips" policy worked out?

After Experimentations, Where Are We On No-Tipping Restaurant Policies? : NPR:

Ailsa Chang talks with restaurateur Danny Meyers about how a no-tipping policy at Union Square Hospitality Group's restaurants, which include Gramercy Tavern and The Modern, has fared a year in.
"CHANG: Well, what about complaints about higher menu prices? Are there customers who are confused about why those prices seem way higher than they used to be?

MEYER: Well, what we decided to do with our program, which we call hospitality included, is that we would give you one price on the menu. So if your chicken costs $28 on the menu, that's the cost. That's going to cover the linen, the flowers, the cook, the reservationist, the server, the wine director, the rent. There's not an additional line on your bill for gratuity. And so it is a jolt when you first see it. But we've not, to my knowledge, lost any guests. As a matter of fact, what we've gotten over this past year is an overwhelmingly strong thumbs-up chorus from our guests.

CHANG: I was going to ask you, have profits been affected at all?

MEYER: Well we've seen an initial dip in every restaurant. And then as our managers learn to operate under a new economy, they tend to come back up."

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We got drunk and invented America

A Survival Guide To Colonial Cocktails (So You Don't Die Drinking Them) : The Salt : NPR:

"Colonists, transplanted to a New World, were faced with the task of re-creating old recipes, often with unfamiliar new ingredients. Alcohol was a godsend in the Old World, sipped by adults and children alike. In the New World, imbibing called for experimentation. There was plenty of trial and error, and, in Grasse's view, an unexpected recipe for democracy.

"Before democracy, there were spirits, and from spirits we created taverns," writes Grasse in the book, "and it was in those taverns that we laid out the blueprint for a new kind of country. ... In other words, we got drunk and invented America.""



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A vegan version of the Atkins diet scores well

A Plant-Friendly Atkins Diet Gets High Marks On List Of 2017's Best Diets : The Salt : NPR:

"If you're looking for a diet plan that suits your lifestyle, a new list of rankings from U.S. News & World Report has you covered.

 Most dieters are familiar with commercial plans such as Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig — both of which continue to make the magazine's list for top diets. But a range of options offer fresh approaches, including the MIND diet, the Eco-Atkins diet (a plant-based, Atkins-style diet) and the Ornish diet — which is ranked top for heart health.

The annual rankings list includes 38 different diets, all of which have been evaluated by a panel of doctors, nutritionists and other health professionals.

"Each profile is an exhaustive look at what it's like to be on each plan," says Angela Haupt, assistant managing editor for health at U.S. News.

The diets are ranked in categories, from "easiest diets to follow" to "best diets overall" to "fastest weight loss.""



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One for the international jetsetters - the absolute best new restaurants in NYC

The Absolute Best New Restaurants in NYC: From New York magazine

In accordance with postmodern journalistic custom we have been forced, more or less at gunpoint, to number our favorite restaurants from one to ten, although as every seasoned restaurantgoer knows, that order could easily change depending on all sorts of factors, including the season, the time of day, what we’re planning on eating for dinner in four hours, how much change is in our pocket, and what wonderful delicacy we consumed for lunch yesterday.

The Absolute Best

1. Le Coucou
138 Lafayette St., at Howard St.; 212-271-4252"

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Visiting Tokyo? Getting a table at one of the most fashionable small restaurants just got easier

Trip to Tokyo? Ex-Goldman Trader Sells Secret, Top Dining Access - From Bloomberg

Getting into Japan’s top eateries is no easy task, especially for those who don’t know the language. Many places are hard to find out about because they rely on word-of-mouth and are tucked away on backstreets. With few tables in small spaces, the most coveted among them fill up fast. Visitors who use hotel concierges to seek a reservation often find out that a place is locked up for months.
Yamada, 38, offers a way around. Tableall secures the reservations by paying the restaurant in advance for a set-menu feast, then charges customers 3,000 yen ($26) per seat on top of the meal’s price. Diners incur charges if they cancel close to the booking date. ...
Tableall currently offers spots at 11 eateries in Tokyo. They include Kasumicho Suetomi, which has kaiseki course meals from 34,000 yen per person including the booking fee, and the Michelin-starred Tempura Motoyoshi, with offerings starting at 20,000 yen each. Seats are grouped as a package of two, but solo diners and larger groups can make special requests. The English-language website provides detailed photographs and information on the dishes and tableware they’re served on, biographies of the chefs, and precise map locations.

Common sense about sparkling wine - buy the Tasmanian

Champagne versus prosecco or sparkling wine: Choosing a good bottle is all in the bubbles — Quartz:



I have become a proud Tasmanian again. This Christmas and New Year I have eschewed champagne and delighted in the sparkling wines of my old home state. Mass produced champagnes of the major houses like Veuve and Moet and Mumm can not compete either in quality or price with the Tasmanian offerings.

This comment by an American wine writer gives the commonsense view:

Sparkling wine’s tiny and delightful pockets of air do not come from special bubble farms on the French countryside. ...There’s no reason you can’t make just as good of sparkling wine in other parts of the world,” says Robin Goldstein, a wine critic, behavioral economist, and the author of The Wine Trials.

I could not agree more.


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