Chilean wine rides into the Tour de France and other food and drink news

French winemakers threaten to block Tour de France after Chilean wine chosen as sponsor - Winemakers are up in arms about Chile's Bicicleta being sponsor of the race, claiming it is "unacceptable"

Drinks with the girls: Australian women and wine - Beer may be central to Australia’s sense of national identity, but it’s the not the country’s most popular alcoholic beverage: that honour goes to wine. While 37.6% of Australian adults drank beer in any given four-week period last year, 45.1% drank wine. And the primary reason for wine’s dominance over beer? The number of Aussie women who drink it. During 2015, 4.6 million Australian women 18+ (or 49.0% of the adult female population) drank some kind of wine – white, red, sparkling and/or fortified – in an average four weeks, compared to 3.7 million of men (41.2%). White wine, consumed by 69.3% of female wine drinkers over this time period, wins out over red wine (56.3%), sparkling (42.3%) and fortified (9.3%).

A $20 Billion Megaproject's Key Ingredient: The Luxury Food Court: The path to success for massive urban development leads through your stomach - Once upon a time, mall operators depended on retail anchors to attract shoppers. Increasingly, they’re using restaurants to draw foot traffic through their halls.

Herring Headache: The Big Obstacles To Eating Small Fish In California - "People want to eat fish that doesn't have any flavor, and they don't want to deal with bones." Chefs and seafood advocates around the world are trying to change this. Last March, 20 star chefs gathered in Spain to discuss the environmental virtues of eating what many still call "bait fish" and ways to promote these species – including anchovies, sardines, mackerel and herring – as culinary attractions.

How Millennials (Almost) Killed the Wine Cork - A new generation of wine drinkers came of age with screw caps and plastic bottle stoppers, but cork producers are mounting a campaign to win their loyalty

Asia's 50 Best Restaurants

How Kazakhstan Is Becoming The Next Frontier For World-Class Wine - After traveling through the great wine producing regions of Europe, Zeinulla Kakimzhanov had an idea: why not revive wine culture in Kazakhstan? Knowing that his country once had a great wine tradition, he formed a cooperative, pursued investors, and began cultivating 70 hectares of forgotten vineyards near the village of Karakemer, in the Assa Valley just outside of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s most dynamic and populated city. Kakimzhanov called his new winery Arba Wine, and high-end wine began being produced in Kazakhstan once again.

Filling Fino’s shoes at Willunga - Le Mistral has bravely taken up the space occupied for 10 years by revered restaurant Fino at Willunga, but new owners Tarik and Sandrine Maltret are not seeking to replicate it.

How Pompeii brought ancient Roman wine back to life - Made from ancient grape varieties grown in Pompeii, 'Villa dei Misteri' has to be one of the world's most exclusive wines. The grapes are planted in exactly the same position, grown using identical techniques and grow from the same soil the city's wine-makers exploited until Vesuvius buried the city and its inhabitants in AD 79.

Waiting in the street before eating the new fashion

Why the Hottest Restaurants Make Us Wait in the Cold - It's Thursday night in London's Soho and it's not looking good for the hungry. Outside Hoppers, a Sri Lankan café, diners are told there is a wait of as long as two hours for a table. A few doors along Frith Street, customers are standing in Barrafina until seats come free for tapas. A few streets away, people line up in the rain to get into Bao for Taiwanese snacks. Nearby, the casual Venetian bàcaro Polpo is full, too. All are no-reservations restaurants. How did we get to this situation, where many London diners accept (albeit with some grumbling) that they can't just phone up and book a table? And why do some restaurateurs reckon it's acceptable to make us wait? ...

Hoppers has now moved to a queue-management system called Qudini, that allows would-be diners to wander off while they wait for their table. They receive a text when it is ready. This helps eliminate lines outside restaurants and can take the frustration out of queuing.

The baffling reason many millennials don’t eat cereal - On Monday, the New York Times published a story about the breakfast favorite, and the most disconcerting part was this:

Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.

Cereal isn't the only food suffering from a national trend toward laziness. Coffee has suffered a similar fate. Despite talk of a third wave of coffee, which values quality above all else, and basks in artisanal rather than effortless methods of preparation, Americans still covet convenience above all else. 

Republican lawmaker wants to ban welfare recipients from buying steak and lobster

When Beef Is Off Limits, Beaver And Muskrat Make It To Lenten Menu - Many Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays in observance of Lent, the season of penance between Ash Wednesday and Easter. The church has made exceptions — at times, in some places — for aquatic mammals such as beavers, muskrats and capybara. That's good enough for Brenton Brown. "A friend of ours said that the Catholic Church is fine with this for Lent," says Brown, co-owner of Bootleggin' BBQ in St. Louis, which is now serving "humanely trapped" smoked beaver on Fridays during Lent.

Cookbook Explores Recipes From India's Most Famous Slum - 

Setting the French straight about croissants and other food and drink news

Editorial in London's Daily Telegraph

British Retailer’s Straight Croissants Leave Some Bent Out of Shape - LONDON — The croissant, the buttery breakfast pastry, means “crescent” in French. But don’t tell that to the British. Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain and a bellwether of sorts for popular tastes, is dispensing with the traditional curved pastry as of Friday and instead will sell only straight ones. The company offered a decidedly British rationale: It is easier to spread jam on the straight variety. The banishing of the crescent-shaped croissant spurred no shortage of dismay on both sides of the English Channel. “Is this a foretaste of Brexit?” an article in the French newspaper 20 Minutes asked, referring to the possibility that British voters might decide in a referendum to leave the European Union. The newspaper added that it appeared that Tesco’s move was not done “to antagonize the French (well, not solely).”

Tasmanian oyster crisis:Vital research into oyster disease threatening the industry in jeopardy

Chinese restaurants in Australia documented for posterity by historians

I dare you to read this and still feel good about tipping

An image that shows how polarized the salt debate has become.

The blotches of red and blue here represent instances where scientists cited  like-minded research; those in green show instances where scientists referred to research that challenges their results.

In a more perfect world, where scientists sought balance in the evidence they reviewed, you would see more green - signs that scientists were considering evidence that is contrary to their beliefs.

As you can see, the image is dominated by red and blue, a sign that scientists are more likely to cite the research that conforms to their outlook. Overall the papers they reviewed were 50 percent more likely to cite reports that drew a similar conclusion than  to cite papers drawing a different conclusion.

Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us. Here’s why.

Is Organic More Nutritious? New Study Adds To The Evidence

'No Place For Discontent': A History Of The Family Dinner In America

Holy Ravioli! Cookbook Reveals The Vatican's Favorite Recipes

The world's best bakers - and they aren't French - At the Coupe du Monde de Boulangerie - the baking world cup in plain English - the victory of a South Korean team of bakers is clearly a snub to the French. No doubt about it. After all, the competition describes itself as the planet's "most prestigious bakery contest", and is held in Paris - the capital of the baguette-eating world. President Hollande himself was there to witness his formerly great baking nation eat humble pie.

Is the American diet too salty? Scientists challenge the longstanding government warning - ... a review of hundreds of papers on the topic indicates that the inability to reach a consensus stems at least partially from the fact that the two groups of scientists operate, in essence, in parallel scientific universes. In one, the scientists write papers about the dangers of our salt consumption, and typically cite other papers that point to the same conclusion. In the other, the scientists write papers dismissing or minimizing the danger, and typically cite papers agreeing with their position. Each side, in other words, steers away from taking into account contrary results. “We found that the published literature bears little imprint of an ongoing controversy, but rather contains two almost distinct and disparate lines of scholarship,” according to the paper from researchers at Columbia University and Boston University, and published by the International Journal of Epidemiology.

What actual ‘caveman’ DNA says about the Paleo movement

Parmesan cheese is not what it seems

Protecting the good name of sushi worldwide - the Japanese government acts

Winemakers lobby pushes back on Senate committee's advice to abolish wine tax rebate - A new Senate report with 12 recommendations for reforming the wine industry has been panned by one of the senators on the committee that authored it, and met with disappointment by winemakers.

Australian grape and wine industry - Report of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs
and Transport References Committee

List of recommendations

• Recommendation 1

The committee recommends that the Government phase out the current
Wine Equalisation Tax (WET) rebate over five years, allocating the savings to a
structural adjustment assistance program for the industry including an annual
grant to genuine cellar door operators to support their continued operation.

• Recommendation 2

The committee recommends that the Government amend labelling
requirements so that wine labels must declare whether wine is produced by an
entity owned or controlled by a major retailer.

• Recommendation 3

The committee recommends that in responding to the Competition Policy
Review’s Final Report, the Government specifically consider commercial
agreements between growers and producers of wine and the major retailers.

• Recommendation 4

The committee recommends Australia Post review its approach to wine
delivery in each Australian state and territory with a view to developing
harmonised agreements across Australia.

• Recommendation 5

The committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government,
through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), work with states and
territories to establish mutual recognition arrangements for responsible service
of alcohol qualifications.

• Recommendation 6

The committee recommends that Government continue to match the grape
research levy and wine grapes levy income collected by the Australian Grape and
Wine Authority.

• Recommendation 7

The committee recommends that Government give further consideration
to the roles of the Australian Grape and Wine Authority and the Australian
Bureau of Statistics in wine industry data collection.

• Recommendation 8

The committee recommends that funding be allocated so that the
production of the Vineyards Census is resumed on an annual basis.

• Recommendation 9

The committee recommends that Government commit to increasing
export demand for Australian wine by considering whether current
opportunities for industry participants to increase exports through the
Australian Grape and Wine Authority and the Export Market Grants
Development Scheme are fully optimised or would benefit from redesign.

• Recommendation 10

The committee recommends that the government significantly increase its
funding to wine export market development.

• Recommendation 11

The committee recommends an independent review of the Australian
Wine Industry Code of Conduct, to report to Government before 30 June 2016.

• Recommendation 12

The committee recommends that if targets for increase uptake of the
Australian Wine Industry Code of Conduct are not met, the Government, in
consultation with representative organisations for growers and winemakers,
reconsider the development of a mandatory code before the end of 2017.

Coles' Extra Reserve Cheddar judged as best overall at 2016 Sydney Royal Cheese Dairy Produce Show

Sorry, Sushi Burrito: Japanese Program Certifies Authentic Cuisine - A new program from the country's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will certify that Japanese restaurants operating outside the country uphold the values of traditional Japanese cuisine, known as washoku. That cuisine is more popular than ever: There are now more than 89,000 Japanese restaurants that operate outside of Japan, up from 55,000 just two years earlier, according to the ministry. ... The program, which will launch soon, doesn't have an official English name just yet. At the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C., it's being referred to as "Japanese Cuisine Skills Certification Guidelines." The voluntary certification system aims to help eliminate mistakes commonly made by overseas chefs — from the mishandling of raw fish, to low hygiene standards, to the ceremonial way in which food should be presented to customers.

Hold Your Nose And Take A Bite: The Odd Appeal Of A South Korean Fish Dish - Most South Koreans shake their head at eating hongeo. This fermented skate dish has a sharp, pungent aroma ... After about a month of incubating in its own urine, the hongeo – smelling thoroughly of ammonia — is served as a platter of sashimi in a presentation known as samhap, which translates as "harmonious trinity." This combination consists of hongeo, bossam (boiled pork belly) and old kimchi, a combination known to counter the wretched odor — if not mask the flavor altogether.

There are good reasons why airport food is so bad

Ranking the world's chefs and other food and drink news

'Chasing An Ideal,' World-Class Chefs Find Themselves Under Extreme Pressure

Is there such a thing as 'the world's best chef'? - Last week the death of chef Benoit Violier was widely reported - and in many headlines he was hailed as the "world's best chef", his restaurant as "the best in the world". But there is no agreement on how to rank chefs and restaurants and the award of "best" titles is a matter of hot dispute.

How the rankings work
World's 50 Best:
Poll of 972 experts: 1/3 food writers, 1/3 restaurateurs and 1/3 "well-travelled gourmets"
Each expert casts seven votes, for places they have visited within the past 18 months
At least three votes must be for restaurants outside their own geographical region
Michelin Guide:
Secret inspectors hired by Michelin, who usually have culinary school or a hotel college education, plus more than five years' experience in the restaurant industry as a manager or a chef
Separate guides are released for different countries or regions
Inspectors grade every restaurant they visit and award Michelin stars to a select few
La Liste:
Reviews are gathered from more than 200 publications and turned into scores
Top chefs rate the reliability of the reviews in each publication, allowing the scores to be weighted
Online customer reviews are integrated and an algorithm calculates a final score

Police Seize 9,000 Bottles of Fake Champagne - Italian police have seized 9,000 bottles of counterfeit Moët & Chandon Champagne, worth up to $392,000, in a workshop near Padova in Italy. The seizure, announced this week, happened at the end of last year when financial police were investigating a separate business and found a bottle of Moët & Chandon without a serial number on the label. Alongside the sparkling wine, police discovered a machine to wrap the bottles with Moët & Chandon packaging, and a further 40,000 fabricated Moët & Chandon labels.

What this scathing exchange between top scientists reveals about what nutritionists actually know - The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the federal government’s influential advice compendium, took more than a year to compile. It cites hundreds of scientific papers. It is built on the recommendations of an expert panel. The book shapes what millions of people eat. Yet ever since it was published last month, a very public, very caustic spat has been waged among experts over the quality of the science behind the recommendations and the extent to which any of the advice can be trusted.

Why a top food poisoning expert won’t ever eat these foods

America’s favorite coffee trend may be coming to an end - Several years ago, coffee pods seemed invincible. Sales of the single-serve cups were skyrocketing, more than tripling in the United States between 2011 and 2013. Sales of coffee pod machines were soaring, too, growing from 1.8 million units to 11.6 million between 2008 and 2013, according to data from market research firm Euromonitor. Today, however, things aren't looking quite so rosy for coffee in its most convenient form.

So you think a kale salad is healthy? A note on a McDonald's version plus some other food and drink news

Healthy fast food? McDonald's kale salad has more calories than a Double Big Mac - In a quest to reinvent its image, McDonald's is on a health kick. But some of its nutrient-enhanced meals are actually comparable to junk food, say some health experts. One of McDonald's new kale salads has more calories, fat, and sodium than a Double Big Mac.

Battle of the burgers: how does Carl’s Jr stack up?

SA winemaker adds sparkling twist to mead - Local mead pioneer Maxwell Wines has just released a refreshing new twist on its fermented honey brews with ready-to-drink sparkling mead.

Degustation Laconic - The language of menus: This style – Degustation Laconic, we’ll call it – is a style embraced by many chefs serving adventurous food today: the menus at Australia’s most expensive restaurants are, for the most part, an aggressively preposition-free zone.

Chinese-American Chefs Start a Culinary Conversation With the Past - Most of these chefs have never been to China and have no Chinese culinary training, so they are learning as they go, synthesizing the values of the kitchens they know (organic, seasonal, soigné) with Chinese elements they do not.

'Forked' Rates Restaurants On How They Treat Their Workers - Saru Jayaraman may be restaurant obsessed, but don't call her a foodie. She's the founding director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a national organization that advocates for better wages and working conditions for restaurant workers. She's also published several studies in legal and policy journals as director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California-Berkeley.

WTF Happened to Golden Rice? - The short answer is that the plant breeders have yet to concoct varieties of it that work as well in the field as existing rice strains. This is made all the more challenging in the face of debates over genetically modified crops and eternal disputes about how they should be regulated.

Getting them addicted to a Chinese hot pot and other food and drink news

Poppy seasoning scandals expose malpractice - A string of restaurants discovered using poppy capsules for seasoning have exposed a shocking practice in China’s food industry. On Wednesday, authorities busted a noodle restaurant for adding the potentially-addictive poppy capsule into mutton noodles in Yulin City, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, according to the local Huashang Newspaper. The latest case comes just one week after 35 restaurants and snack bars nationwide were investigated for adding poppy capsules or other illegal ingredients to food. ... It has been an “open secret” in the Chinese food industry that poppy-derived powder is used as a “secret ingredient” at some small restaurants in dishes or hotpots to improve the taste and lure customers to come back for more. China bans the use of the poppy capsules in food because long-term consumption of poppy capsules can lead to addiction.

Clockwise from top left: French copper pate mold circa 1870, potato steamer c. 1950, poacher for turbot fish c. 1960, Earthenware tripiere pot c. 1920, terracotta toupin for simmering stews and soups from c. 1940.Courtesy of The Culinary Institute of America

The Curious Cookware Of A Williams-Sonoma Founder Lands In A Museum - When Chuck Williams, the founder of Williams-Sonoma, died in December at the age of 100, he left behind a vast collection of culinary artifacts. It included everything from a copper pig mold (for serving suckling pig), terrines adorned with rabbit heads and pastry equipment from the early 1900s. Some of the items filled his San Francisco residence. Others were in storage. Now, Williams' estate has gifted the nearly 4,000 piece collection to the Culinary Institute of America. Many of the pieces will be permanently displayed at a new culinary arts museum named in Williams' honor in Napa Valley, Calif.

llustrated recipes for lomo saltado, a Peruvian beef and potato stir fry, that is typical in coastal Ecuador and northern Peru.

'Mi Comida Latina': A Hand-Drawn Guide To Latin Cuisines - Flip through the pages of Mi Comida Latina and you may quickly fall under its spell. The pages of this cookbook beckon with vibrant watercolor illustrations and recipes written in the kind of delicate hand lettering that make us mourn penmanship as a dying art. The end result combines the charm of a children's book, the promise of a tasty meal and the intimacy of a journal.

Can ‘Frankengrapes’ save California wine?  - The drought gets a lot of attention, but there’s a greater threat looming over California’s grapevines. Pierce’s Disease, caused by a single bacterium that’s carried by insects called sharpshooters, essentially forces a vine to desiccate itself by blocking its water-conducting tissue. Few diseases can kill a grapevine so swiftly.

La Tour d’Argent, Paris Dining Temple, to Auction Furnishings and More -  La Tour d’Argent, a Parisian shrine to the art of fine dining that traces its roots to the 16th century, is selling off tableware, furnishings and cooking implements as it seeks to reinvent itself for the 21st century.

Crazy For Jerky: An Ancient Trail Food Finds New Fans

No French lunch without wine for an Iranian president and other food and drink news and views

Hollande-Rouhani lunch scrapped after Elysée Palace 'refused to remove wine from menu' - France, unlike Italy, has reportedly refused to take wine off the table for Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, meaning he will lunch alone during his historic trip to Paris – the first for an Iranian leader in 17 years. As anger mounted in Rome on Wednesday over a decision to cover up nude statues with large white panels so as not to offend Mr Rouhani, the French have already made it clear that no such cultural concessions would be made regarding its cherished gastronomy. In Rome, alcohol was not served at an official dinner held in Mr Rouhani’s honour – a standard Italian diplomatic gesture for visiting Muslim dignitaries. But in Paris, an originally planned lunch at the Elysée Palace with François Hollande was dropped because the French refused to cede to the Iranian presidency's demand for halal meat to be served and for the wine to be left off the table, citing “republican traditions”.

Why Tokyo is the World’s Best Food City

Chile overtook France as top wine exporter to Japan in 2015

The Wine Trend No One's Talking About (Yet): An Insider's View - Lower Alcohol Wines for Boomers

Everything You Need to Know About the Wine World's Next Big Thing - the organically farmed, unfiltered, low-to-no-sulfur natural wine movement. 

 
Aldi joins new push to stock alcohol in supermarkets - The debate to stock alcohol in supermarkets has started to bubble again as Aldi joins the push to sell liquor in its soon-to-be-opened South Australian stores.

Meet The Most Pampered Vegetables In America - There's a small corner of the restaurant world where food is art and the plate is just as exquisite as the mouthful. In this world, chefs are constantly looking for new creative materials for the next stunning presentation. The tiny community of farmers who grow vegetables for the elite chefs prize creativity, too, not just in what they grow but in how they grow it. They're seeking perfection, in vegetable form and flavor, like this tiny cucumber that looks like a watermelon — called a cucamelon. The Chef's Garden is a specialty vegetable farm in Huron, Ohio, about an hour west of Cleveland. It's a family farm, where three generations of the Jones family work side by side with about 175 employees. It's a place where vegetables are scrupulously selected and then painstakingly coaxed from the ground.

Israeli veganism takes root in land of milk and honey - Veganism has become so prominent in Israel that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has started catering to followers in its ranks by offering vegan-friendly ration packs, non-leather boots and wool-less berets.

World's Oldest Tea Discovered In An Ancient Chinese Emperor's Tomb

First US vegan 'butcher' shop open in Minneapolis

Almonds Are Getting Cheaper, But Here's the Catch - The wholesale price for almonds—the one paid by supermarkets to stock their bulk bins, or by processors to make their trail mixes—has fallen from a high of $4.70 last August down to $2.60

Is nothing sacred any more in France? Bistros facing quick death and other food and drink news

My instant translator tells me: France has lost hundreds of thousands of cafes since the 1960s, especially in the villages. Initiatives are multiplying to save these drinking places.

Is France facing the quick death of its sacred bistros? - The bistro - one of the most culturally recognizable things in France - is dying out, a new study suggests. ... There were a grand total of 34,669 bistros in France in 2014 - which absolutely pales in comparison with the 600,000 cafe-bars that existed in France at the beginning of the 1960s The stats come courtesy of pollsters Ifop and were published by Le Parisien newspaper on Wednesday. The researchers found that these 35,000 bars are spread across a total of 10,619 towns and villages - meaning that there are 26,045 towns and villages in France that are officially a "no-bistro zone", according to the paper's calculations. Things have got so dire in some rural areas that the inhabitants of one in three villages have not only lost a bistro or café in their own village, but also in the villages around them.The finger of blame for the huge number of closures was pointed at the smoking ban, the exodus from the French countryside towards the cities, and the rising cost of drinks.

In Search of Japan’s Hidden Culinary Revolution - From Tokyo to Kanazawa in this food-obsessed nation,

sampling the culinary wizardry of a new wave of creative chefs.

Italy's mysterious hallucinogenic drink - The subject of local legends, this mysterious ruby-coloured cocktail is known for its high alcohol content, obscure ingredients and hallucinogenic effects: Tamango, prepared with a mix of African plants and roots, gets its red colour from roselle leaves (a species of hibiscus), which, according to Di Lorenzo, prompts a sense of euphoria and a desire to dance.

Germans cheer 500th anniversary of beer purity law, but some craft brewers feel restricted

Reviewers, smaller cornettos, opium poppies as a food additive and other news and views

Trend that strikes at the heart of the restaurant business - Chefs who drop à la carte rebrand themselves as artist-performers whose work we pay to experience

A Conversation With Pete Wells - The New York Times’ restaurant critic on puncturing pretension in fine dining, the rise of foodie-ism, and why nothing tastes better than Oreos.

Q. Do you think you write too often about restaurants that are out of reach?

A. You know, I think about it. On the one hand, yes, a lot of these places we’re talking about are very small and not many people can get in, and some of them only do one seating a night or two seatings a night, or they’re open three or four days a week, and I do wonder about how many people they’re actually serving. On the other hand, the very places where the food is extremely creative and thought-out and a lot of care is taken, they do represent the higher end of refinement. There’s a little bit of tension there about wanting to write about places that regular people can actually go to and feel like I’m covering, for lack of a better word, advances in the field.

US fine wine sales to rise in 2016 as overall market shrinks – forecast

China finds restaurants using opium poppies in food - Thirty-five restaurants across China have been found illegally using opium poppies as a seasoning, officials have revealed. ... Poppy powder, which contains low amounts of opiates, is banned as a food additive in China. However, restaurants have previously been caught using it.

A Cooking Class Where New Immigrants Learn The Recipe For English - On a recent Wednesday afternoon, 20 recent immigrants and refugees to the United States streamed into a shiny commercial-size kitchen on the fourth floor of the Free Library of Philadelphia's central branch. They were here to partake in the library's take on teaching English as a second language. The program, dubbed Edible Alphabet, is run through the library and Nationalities Service Center, an organization that helps settle refugees when they arrive in Philadelphia. By offering English instruction in the form of a cooking lesson, organizers hope to provide a familiar setting for the students — who hail from over 10 different countries — to connect to each other.

Magnum and Cornetto ice creams to shrink - Unilever said the move was to help consumers "make healthier choices." From the spring, "single serving" portions will contain no more than 250 calories.

Eating for life: Live Well challenges restaurants, helps patrons - People say they want to eat better and live heathier, but how can they when restaurants are high-calorie dens of temptation? Fatty entrees, huge portions, endless drink refills — you know the gut-bulging feeling. The Live Well Restaurant program of the Allegheny County Health Department has an alternative — places where consumers are offered good-for-you meals, nutrition information and options that make for healthy choices. On Thursday the department rolled out the first five restaurants that will be able to display the Live Well sticker.

Investors toast Treasury Wine's earnings

The art of restaurant reviewing and other food and drink news

'Times' Restaurant Critic Dishes On Guy Fieri And The Art Of Reviewing - Pete Wells, restaurant critic for The New York Times on beginning his very critical review of one of New York City's most expensive restaurants, Per Se, by describing the poor service as "the slow creep of mediocrity":

There is often with restaurant reviews in particular, I think, this kind of impulse to be deferential and bow down to the greatness of the restaurant and the greatness of the chef, and then with great regret to say, "And yet, all is not as it should be in the kingdom," and I didn't want to do any of that. I just think that we show an awful lot of deference to chefs in our culture and maybe not enough deference to customers, and I wanted this review to come out and say, "Yes, this is a very respected chef, but are the people at the table being respected in the same way?"

Note: read more about Per Se and the death of fine dining at The end of fine dining and other food and drink news

Diet Foods Are Tanking. So The Diet Industry Is Now Selling 'Health'

Hillary Clinton's Elixir: Can A Hot Pepper A Day Boost Immunity? - If you're a chili head, you may have more in common with Hillary Clinton than you knew. Turns out, the presidential hopeful has a serious jalapeno habit. She told All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro it started back in 1992, when it was her husband, Bill Clinton, who was running for the White House. "I read an article about the special immune-boosting characteristics of hot peppers and I thought, well, that's interesting because, you know, campaigning is pretty demanding," Clinton told NPR. Now, Clinton says she eats a fresh, hot pepper every day and it's "maybe ... one of the reasons I'm so healthy, and I have so much stamina and endurance." So, hot peppers as a health elixir? "It's not an entirely crazy idea," says John Hayes, who teaches food science at Penn State University. "It's certainly possible that some of the compounds found in chili peppers could be protective of health," Hayes tells us.

The Audacious Korean-American Chef Who Mastered 'Mission Chinese Food'

Good bye to the a la carte menu and other food and drink news

Michelin-starred restaurants axe a al carte menus to reduce waste - A number of Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK have decided to take a la carte options off their menus in an effort to reduce waste. French chef Stephane Borie of Michelin-starred Wales restaurant, The Checkers along with fellow French chef Claude Bosi of London’s two-starred fine diner Hibiscus, have both decided to trade in their a la carte offerings in favour of set menus. Speaking with the Financial Times, Borie says that the move to a set menu could see wastage at his restaurant reduced by up to 50 percent. “It is difficult to evaluate, but we’re hoping to halve our food waste,” says Borie. “With a la carte we never wanted to run out of anything, so we’d cook a little bit of everything. [This way] we’re choosing for people what they’re going to have, so we control the waste.” Editor of the UK Michelin guide, Rebecca Burr says that she’s witnessed a decline of a la carte dining over the last few years, adding that diners in the fine dining space often prefer tasting menus as they can offer a once-in-a-lifetime type of experience.

Aztec Gold: Watch The History And Science Of Popcorn

From Candy To Juleps, Persians Left Imprint On Many Edible Delights

Almond prices crushed by demand slump and bumper harvest - After several years of defying gravity, almond prices have been crushed. The market for standard almonds, which hit a record high of $4.70 a pound last August, has almost halved to $2.60 as the market was taken by surprise by a larger than expected harvest last year.

Thou Shalt Not Toss Food: Enlisting Religious Groups To Fight Waste

How mutton flaps are killing Tonga

Sydney restaurants seek workers for $10 an hour

The end of fine dining and other food and drink news

At Thomas Keller’s Per Se, Slips and Stumbles - Dinner or lunch at this grand, hermetic, self-regarding, ungenerous restaurant brings a protracted march of many dishes. In 2004, the year Per Se opened, the price for nine courses was $150 before tax and tip; last week, it went up to $325, with service included. ...

The kitchen could improve the bacon-wrapped cylinder of quail simply by not placing it on top of a dismal green pulp of cooked romaine lettuce, crunchy and mushy at once. Draining off the gluey, oily liquid would have helped a mushroom potpie from turning into a swampy mess. I don’t know what could have saved limp, dispiriting yam dumplings, but it definitely wasn’t a lukewarm matsutake mushroom bouillon as murky and appealing as bong water.
It’s a bit of a mystery what pickled carrots, peanuts and a date wrapped in a soft crepe were supposed to do for a slab of Dorset cheese from Consider Bardwell Farm, but a good first step would have been allowing the washed-rind cow’s milk cheese to warm up to a buttery softness; served cold, it was rubbery and flavorless.
Even canonic dishes could be mangled. One time the sabayon in “oysters and pearls” had broken and separated, so fat pooled above the tapioca.

Mr. Keller wrote in “The French Laundry Cookbook” that poaching lobster in butter “cooks it so slowly and gently that the flesh remains exquisitely tender — so tender some people think it’s not completely cooked.” There was little danger of anyone’s making that mistake on two occasions when the lobster was intransigently chewy: gristle of the sea. The first time, it was served with a sugary Meyer lemon marmalade and a grainy chestnut purée that tasted like peanut butter to which something terrible had been done. Subsequently, it was paired with a slick of cold oatmeal.

The Times’ Brutal Per Se Review Is Another Nail in the Coffin of Fine Dining - People have spent years predicting the death of fine dining in New York.This week's unsparing review of Per Se in the Times, in which critic Pete Wells cut the restaurant down from four stars to two in unprecedented fashion, may have finally killed it. At the very least, the write-up will help to further convince people that a certain style of fine dining — extended, Michelin-geared tasting marathons in luxury rooms with an army of service staff constantly circling the tables — is a relic of the past.

From the UNESCO website

The wine legend who helped put Burgundy on the world map - Aubert de Villaine, the French winemaker whose prestigious Romanee-Conti is one of the world's most expensive wines has helped put the vineyards of his beloved Burgundy on the global map of cultural landmarks. De Villaine, a reserved 76-year-old, took up the mantle to get the Burgundy region's unique wine-growing tradition onto the UNESCO World Heritage list. That effort succeeded in July and led to his being named a 2016 "man of the year" by the monthly French Wine Review.

The Real Problem With Lunch - School meals reflect a society's true food culture, as well as its regard for its children.

Eating chickens bred to eat, grow and die very fast, and sometimes in poor circumstances

Poultry excuses - Feel like chicken tonight? Plenty do. It’s the world’s most consumed meat. In the US alone they eat nine billion birds a year. Chicken’s cheap. Fast growing. Religiously neutral, crossing multiple cultural boundaries. Chicken provides a blank canvas for myriad cuisines. ... But please, please, don’t kid yourself about what you’re eating when you go to these sorts of modish ­places (and I intend to soon). You’re eating chicken produced in lousy conditions. ... You’re eating chickens bred to eat, grow and die very fast, and sometimes in poor circumstances.
Death to small bars - In all seriousness, licensed establishments operating in our midst are serving up martinis in Heinz tins and drams of whisky in syringes.

Heartbreaking Yelp Review Says It’s Just Nice To Eat A Meal Around Other People https://t.co/k5DwokCBS6 pic.twitter.com/ephIuZqaWP

— The Onion (@TheOnion) January 15, 2016

2016: The Year of the Bowl? - There are plenty of innovative new dining trends to get excited about in 2016—high-octane cocktails, vegetables pickled in Kool-Aid, desserts made with bee pollen. But the dark-horse candidate of this year's trend forecast is a slightly more traditional item: the bowl. According to the Wall Street Journal, the use of bowls among American diners is on the rise. The tableware company Fiesta reported a 17 percent jump in bowl sales last year, which account for a third of the company's overall business. “People are eating from them, not serving from them,” Rich Brinkman, VP of sales and marketing at The Homer Laughlin China Co., which owns Fiesta, told the WSJ.

Online music videos 'expose teens to smoking and drinking' - Online music videos are heavily exposing teenagers to positive depictions of smoking and drinking alcohol, research suggests. Such portrayals posed a "significant health hazard that requires appropriate regulatory control", researchers said. YouTube videos of songs in the top 40 singles chart were examined by the University of Nottingham study. The British Board of Film Classification started putting age ratings on online pop videos last year. The research, in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, said girls between the ages of 13 and 15 were the most exposed to cigarettes and alcohol in videos.

The birth and boom of the baby carrot and other food and drink news

Baby carrots are not baby carrots - The smooth, snack-sized tubes that have come to define carrot consumption in the United States are something different. They're milled, sculpted from the rough, soiled, mangled things we call carrots, and they serve as an example, though perhaps not a terribly grave one, of how disconnected we have all become from the production of our food.

Restaurants Counter Outside Cakes With Cakeage Fees

The Best Italian Wine Comes From… New Zealand? - You don’t have to go to the source to drink world-class Sangiovese or Montepulciano. Turns out, some of the finest Italian wine is made in Middle-earth.

How an Israeli Chef's Cauliflower Recipe Took Over the World - Roasted whole cauliflower seems to be everywhere today, but the dish's origins can be traced to an Israeli celebrity chef and a Shabbat dinner a long time ago.


Could campaigns like Dry January do more harm than good? - Lack of evidence that such campaigns work and don’t have unintended consequences, concerns Ian Hamilton. But Ian Gilmore thinks they are likely to help people at least reflect on their drinking.

The Secret Sex Lives of Crop Plants - What distinguishes food crops from other plants has nothing to do with taste, nutrition, or whether they contain poisons. The plants we eat are atypical because of their particularly dull sex lives.

An end to tipping, a battle of the yogurts and other food and drink news and views

Australian wine lobby slams study into higher taxes on cheap alcohol - The peak body for winemakers has slammed a Monash University study that found higher taxes on cheap alcohol could be key to reducing consumption. ... A key finding of the study was that a 'minimum unit price' was a more effective tool in reducing consumption than taxing each standard drink. The authors said policies that increase the cost of the cheapest alcohol, which is often wine and cider, were an effective way to reduce consumption, without unfairly impacting low income consumers. But the Winemakers Federation of Australia has rejected the study's findings, arguing that raising the price of cheap wine would simply shift problem drinkers to other alcoholic beverages or illicit substances. It said cask wine, one of the lowest taxed alcoholic products, was more likely to be consumed by elderly people on fixed incomes, while full strength beer was the most abused category for young drinkers.

Farewell to a favourite Greek eatery - One of the oldest restaurants in Adelaide's East End, Rundle Street’s Eros Ouzeri, closed its doors last week after 20 years of operation. Landlord Steve Maras, whose company Maras Group owns a strip of commercial property along the southern side of Rundle Street from East Terrace to Union Street including Ebeneezer Place, says the Eros Ouzeri premises went up for lease yesterday. “We want to ensure that this news is seen as having no bearing or relevance to Eros Kafe, which continues to run as a successful family business,” Maras says.

Chobani’s controversial new ad campaign - Last week, Chobani aired a cheeky new television spot that pits Simply 100, the Greek yogurt maker's new low-calorie offering, against the competition. The commercial opens with a woman lounging on a poolside chair. She reaches for a cup of Dannon Greek yogurt, reads its ingredients, and then promptly throws it into the garbage. In the background, the voice of a narrator calmly explains what's going on: "Dannon Light & Fit Greek actually uses artificial sweeteners like sucralose. Sucralose—why? That stuff has chlorine in it."

Another new video takes aim at Yoplait's low-calorie offering, alarming consumers that it has potassium sorbate. "That stuff is used to kill bugs," it exclaims.

How This Guy Convinced the Jacksonville Jaguars to Buy His Fish-Oil Cookies

Tom Douglas going straight to $15/hour, adding 20% service charge at 3 restaurants - The end of tipping is nigh at Tom Douglas Restaurants, Seattle’s largest upscale restaurant group. Douglas announced that a 20 percent service charge will replace gratuities at Dahlia Lounge, Palace Kitchen and The Carlile Room as of Feb. 1. His other full-service restaurants are expected to follow by the end of March, as the change is “closely reviewed.” The entirety of the 20 percent service charge “will be redistributed to our team through wages, commissions and benefits,” Douglas said in a news release. Among the goals of the change, he said, is to “provide greater compensation equity for front of house and back of house.” (The company said it based the 20 percent figure on average customer tips over the past three years.)

Harry F. Mariani, Who Introduced Americans to Lambrusco, Dies at 78 - Harry F. Mariani, who with his brother made a fortune introducing Americans to Italian wines, first through the chilled, sparkling sweet red Riunite promoted with a ubiquitous slogan, died on Tuesday in Huntington, N.Y. He was 78. Harry and his brother, John, imported their first 100 cases of Riunite Lambrusco, produced by an Italian cooperative in the Emilia-Romagna region, in 1967. Banfi, the sole importer, promoted the wine with the slogan “Riunite on ice, that’s nice.”

Make the Michelin Guide and pay double the rent plus other food and drink news

Charming art inspired from everyday food objects

The 'Michelin curse' comes to Hong Kong - Winning recognition in the annual Michelin Guide is one of the most sought-after honours in the restaurant business. But in Hong Kong, a city plagued by high rents, the accolade may bring unexpected challenges. Just ask the owner of Kai Kai Dessert, which specialises in classic Cantonese desserts like steamed egg pudding, red bean soup with lotus seed, and papaya and white fungus soup. Chiu Wai Yip, 58, told BBC News that just weeks after winning the Michelin honour in November, the shop's landlord more than doubled the rent from HK$100,000 ($12,900; £8,800) to HK$220,000 ($28,378; £19,400) a month. What's more, the landlord wanted to halve the amount of space the eatery currently occupies.

The great British curry crisis - The high-street staple is under threat. Can a new generation of entrepreneurs save the nation’s tandoori?

Campbell Soup Switches Sides In The GMO Labeling Fight - This week ... for perhaps the first time, a major combatant switched sides on one hotly contested question: whether the government should require labels on genetically modified ingredients in food. The Campbell Soup Co., after years of staunch opposition to mandatory labels, now says that it "will advocate for federal legislation that would require all foods and beverages regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to be clearly and simply labeled for GMOs."

Eat-in areas on the rise in Japan’s convenience stores and supermarkets - In the quest for next-level service, convenience stores and supermarkets are increasingly keen to experiment with “eat-in” lounge areas. Some are even setting up adjacent cafes where the same clerks who handle convenience store customers also serve coffee and cake. Eat-in areas allow customers to consume their purchases without leaving the premises. ... The Circle K group, for example, runs 13 K’s Cafe establishments, many of which are located next to their stores nationwide, [company spokesman] Shinozaki said. They aim to accommodate customers in a manner fundamentally different from eat-in areas, which cater primarily to customers in need of space for a quick meal. K’s Cafe, he said, offers a more leisurely break. The cafes sport elaborate interior designs featuring “Japanese-style modernity” in a bid to carve out a following among women in their 30s and 40s, he said.

Cheap Wine Sucks: A Manifesto

This is where you'll find the best food in Italy - The Michelin Guide for Italy 2016 has been released, awarding 334 Italian eateries a coveted star rating. And the best city to eat in Italy might surprise you... It's only the fourth largest urban economy in Italy, after Milan Rome and Turin. But as the birthplace of pizza, it perhaps shouldn't be too much of a surprise that to learn that Naples was the region awarded most Michelin stars in the 2016 Italy Michelin Guide.

The big wine lie and other food and drink news

The big wine lie - Behind the picturesque rows of grapevines at vineyards around the world, winemakers are bending the truth. It's not the sort of thing most wine drinkers would have noticed, because it's happening behind the scenes, before bottles are shipped out, and it's tough to tell by taste. But it's hard to imagine anyone would appreciate it. Many winemakers have been a little loose with the information shared on their labels. Not with the region, vineyard, year and varietal, which people — both expert and not — look to when buying wine, but with the alcohol content, which they have been misreporting on bottles for decades. The percentages reported on bottles aren't the precise measurements consumers likely believe them to be. A number of factors, including tastes, expectations, associations, rating systems and even international tax laws appear to be nudging winemakers to round the alcoholic kick of their respective wines up or down a notch on labels in ways that might make the bottles more attractive to prospective drinkers. And the problem is widespread.

A cast-iron teapot in Tokyo’s kitchenware district - About half way along Kappabashi-dori, in the heart of Tokyo’s kitchenware district, there’s a beautiful shop named Kama Asa that is devoted to the sale of cast ironware. It may come as a surprise to the Western kitchen-goods shopper because in many countries the production of cast iron is all but dead. Though you might find a few pieces in the odd shop, you certainly wouldn’t find a store devoted entirely to the craft. The use of cast-iron kitchen goods (despite its known qualities and health benefits) has almost evaporated in Europe, apart from the occasional casserole or frying pan. You would also struggle to find a factory still producing anything in cast iron in Europe, while in Japan — especially Iwate Prefecture — there are several. One obvious reason for the survival of cast-ironware here is the tea tradition and the enduring popularity of cast-iron teapots. But even so, it’s a measure of the strength of Japanese craft that Kama Asa — now more than a century old — not only exists, but appears to be doing well in a world of Nespresso convenience.

Red wine is bad for you, say experts - Government experts dismiss supposed health benefits of wine and are set to rewrite the rule book on alcohol consumption
They're thirsty for deals but millennials won't sacrifice taste or quality in their alcoholic beverages - Millennials are a key demographic for the alcoholic beverage market, both because of how big the group is as well as how much it may purchase going forward. And as a result, the battle within the alcoholic beverage industry has begun to win over this group’s hearts, minds and wallets. Tastes within the group, however, vary when it comes to alcoholic beverage preference. For example, Millennials 21-34 represent about one-fourth of adults 21 and over, but they account for 35% of U.S. beer consumption and 32% of spirit consumption. Comparatively, they represent only 20% of wine consumption.

New Dietary Guidelines Crack Down On Sugar. But Red Meat Gets A Pass

We don’t know what to eat - The government wants to have it both ways. On Thursday morning, federal officials released long-awaited dietary guidelines for the first time in five years. The recommendations are meant to inform Americans about what they should and shouldn't eat. But the message is pretty confusing. When they tell you what to eat, they speak directly, naming foods that are easy to identify. When they tell you what to avoid, they speak opaquely, referring to nutrients that are hard to grasp. In some places, they remove older warnings about certain foods. In others, they add new ones about the same foods. In other words, they still say not to eat them. All together, the guidelines risk leaving a public as unsure about what they should and shouldn't be eating as before.

In 'Heirloom Harvest,' Old-School Portraits Of Vegetable Treasures