Repealing a misguided California law that temporarily banned the use of gloveless hands to form sushi.

It’s Not a Health Hazard to Have Sushi Made With Bare Hands, It’s a Necessity - from The Smithsonian

A California food safety law that was put into effect at the beginning of the year effectively silenced the hands of sushi chefs by requiring food workers to wear gloves while handling “ready-to-eat” food. Pending approval by the California State Senate, this provision of the law will be repealed, eliciting a big sigh of relief from sushi chefs and sushi aficionados alike. The law, which was intended to prevent the spread of foodborne illnesses, caused great disruption in sushi chefs’ routines. It changed the way they held their knives, filleted their fish, and prepared each piece of fish. Many of the chefs at the Los Angeles sushi restaurants I used to frequent felt as if they had lost their voice, for it was through their hands that they communicated with their fish, and ultimately, their hungry and loyal customers. Even the sushi chefs in Tokyo, the city I now call my home, were saddened by this news.

Tea times are coming

Move over coffee. Tea is making a comeback.

Here are a few signs I've noticed over the last few days of the new cafe competition.

From The New York Times earlier this week:

According to Kimberly Orlic, 44, the owner of A New Leaf tea emporium in Garden City, which opened in September 2012, tea awareness is on the rise.
“I think the bubble of tea growth has yet to hit us,” she said. “Even in the supermarkets, the tea selections are growing. You don’t just see Red Rose and Lipton anymore.”

From today's Chicago Tribune

And from the BBC this month:

Hard to believe for a country supposedly devoted to the cult of coffee, but today French blends are the toast of tea cognoscenti from Nanjing to New York.
Backed by multi-million-euro advertising, the Paris-based Kusmi tea is a staple of airport duty-frees, and with its new flagship store on the Champs-Elysees has seen turnover multiply by six in the last few years.
Other historic brands like Mariage Freres and Dammann are also fast expanding, selling online and opening stores across the globe.
And inside France a sudden fashion for tea has swept the middle classes. Specialist tea salons are spreading, in Paris and beyond. People take classes to learn how to taste and to serve. Literally hundreds of varieties and blends are now available for sale.

Denmark wins the world's best restaurant title with Melbourne's Attica high up the list

Goodness knows how you can judge such a contest but for what it is worth the Danish restaurant Noma has regained its title as The S.Pellegrino World’s Best Restaurant. The judges declared that Noma chef-owner René Redzepi is recognised for his highly original, sometimes visceral version of new Nordic cuisine. Having been on the list for nine years Redzepi won the best restaurant award in 2010, 2011 and 2012 before Spain’s El Celler de Can Roca had its moment of glory last year.
The food of the restored champion is described as striving to reflect the Danish landscape and culture
with signature dishes such as ‘Blackcurrant Berries and Roses’.

Redzepi’s meticulous attention to detail, innovative approach to foraging and experimentation with fermentation – all driven by passion and a relentless curiosity - has once again brought his restaurant to the pinnacle. 

Attica in Melbourne takes the title of Best Restaurant in Australasia, sponsored by Acqua
Panna, for the second year running, coming in at No.32.

Led by Ben Shewry, the cuisine is unique, imaginative, innovative and nature-led in its execution. Believing a chef should express himself through his cooking, Shewry takes his own experiences and memories, often from childhood, and portrays them through several dishes on Attica’s tasting menu. The result is a playful yet humble reminder of all that Mother Nature has to offer. 

An Australian chef did finish higher up the list with The Ledbury in London's Notting Hill where chef Brett Graham presides advancing three places to finish tenth.

Sydney's Quay restaurant was ranked as the world's 60th best.

How the list is compiled 

The list is created from the votes of The Diners Club® World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, 

an influential group of over 900 international leaders in the restaurant industry. The 

Academy comprises 26 separate regions around the world, each of which has 36 members, 

including a chairperson, and each member can cast seven votes. Of those seven, at least 

three votes must recognise restaurants outside of the academy member’s own region. 

The panel in each region is made up of food writers and critics, chefs, restaurateurs and 

highly regarded ‘gastronomes’. Voters list their choices in order of preference, based on their 

best restaurant experiences of the previous 18 months. There is no pre-determined check-list 

of criteria. 

Another old wine scandal?

I am a drinker not a hoarder and have never been into the cellaring business. Thus it is I look with a little bemusement at stories about purchasers of old wine vintages feeling cheated. What's the point of having a hundred year old bottle that you paid thousands for? No one in their right mind would think it was going to be better to drink than something ten percent of the age. Not that the rich mugs with money ever intend to find out. To them old vintages are a trophy to be displayed not drunk. They might not deserve being conned but don't get much sympathy from me.
The latest potential scandal involves an Atlanta real estate developer Julian LeCraw who has sued the Antique Wine Company for selling him some very expensive bottles of what he he claims to be counterfeit wine. One of these, priced at $100,000 and said to be the world's most expensive white wine, was a 1787 vintage of Château d'Yquem. The Daily Meal website reports that LeCraw,a fine wine collector, claims to have bought numerous bottles of wine from the Antique Wine Company, a well-known international distributor of wine based in England, including this one. Each of the 13 wines LeCraw has purchased from Stephen Williams, CEO of the Antique Wine Company, has been analyzed in a wine report by expert Maureen Downey.

“The Downey Report explains why each bottle of fake wine is not what it purports to be," the complaint states. "For instance, on some of the bottles that are supposedly centuries old, the labels were printed by computer. Others show excess glue around the labels which could not have been used by the châteaux. Other indicia of counterfeiting relates to the corks, the capsules, the sediment inside the bottle, the shape and color of the bottle, and the color of the liquid in the bottle, among other things."
The Antique Wine Company has responded to these claims with evidence that allegedly proves that the wines are genuine. "This evidence includes extensive information provided at the time of the sales to show the authenticity of the wines and subsequent documents verifying the original information," a representative of the company told The Daily Meal. "The Antique Wine Company, since its inception in 1989, has supplied hundreds of bottles of highly valuable wine to customers around the world. Ensuring the authenticity of these wines is paramount and they maintain extensive records proving traceability from the suppliers to the company and beyond including documents from chateaux and producers."
The defendant is asking for $3 million in damages in the case, which was filed in Atlanta on April 17.

Those of you interested in such shenanigans will find fuller detail on the website of Jancis Robertson

Gin revives with some new flavours

Gin Craze Returns to London With Small, Domestic Batches - Bloomberg:

Craft distillers like Sipsmith, Hendrick’s, and Sacred Spirits -- produced in a north London living room -- are changing all of that, inspiring even mass-market brands like Diageo Plc (DGE)’s Gordon’s gin to tweak their formulas. The domestic production revival brings the drink full circle from the 1700s, when a rash of homemade brews made it the favorite tipple of the city’s poor and earned it the nickname “mother’s ruin.”

Gin is always created from a juniper berry base and then distilled with a mix of ingredients such as citrus peel and coriander; newbies have won notice by experimenting with other botanical hints. Hart uses frankincense and cardamom for Sacred, while Hendrick’s, in its trademark stout bottle, relies on cucumber and Bulgarian rose.

'via Blog this'

Labelling of products with genetically modified organisms

Bracing For A Battle, Vermont Passes GMO Labeling Bill : The Salt : NPR:

'via Blog this'

The Green Mountain State is poised to become the first to require food companies to label products containing genetically modified ingredients.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin tweeted he will sign a bill state lawmakers passed Wednesday mandating that foods with GMOs be labeled as having been produced with "genetic engineering." The bill would also make it illegal for foods with GMOs to be labeled "all natural" or "natural."

While Maine and Connecticut have already passed GMO labeling bills, those bills contain clauses that keep them from going into effect until surrounding states pass similar rules. Vermont's bill would go into effect on July 1, 2016.

For the past few years, consumer advocates have been ratcheting up the pressure on states and the federal government to require labeling, arguing that information about GMOs is essential if we're to make informed decisions about what food to buy.

Meanwhile, the food industry has resisted the idea of labeling, arguing that GMOs are safe and that labeling costs would be passed onto consumers.

... Foods containing GMO ingredients are common in the U.S. Some 90 percent of America's corn and soybeans are genetically modified, and egg, milk and meat producers feed their animals with those crops. But they are not required to be labeled because the FDA says they do not raise safety issues.

Once a rather niche issue, there are signs now that concerns about GMOs have gone mainstream: Federal lawmakers are weighing in.

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., recently introduced a bill that would create a federal voluntary GMO labeling plan, but it would also outlaw state rules like Vermont's that require GMO labels.

Foodies madness - know your steak's name and number

Time for a new section on this blog - a food writing equivalent to Private Eye's Pseuds Corner.

The opening offering is by Chris Johns writing in the Canadian Globe and Mail:

Jose Gordon approaches the 2,500-kilogram ox gently. The animal eyes him warily but without fear and eventually the famed Spanish chef gets right up beside the great beast and gives him a good scratch between the horns. For some time afterward the ox follows him around the pasture like a puppy.
Gordon has brought me here, to the village of Jimenez de Jamuz in Spain, to introduce me to the animals that will become what is widely considered to be the finest, most tenderly raised and carefully documented meat in the world.
The chef travels all over Spain looking for mature, working oxen that he brings back to his farm in the Castile-Leon region where they live out their final days in relative luxury. He doesn’t pick just any ox, however.
“The animal must have a good spirit,” Gordon explains through an interpreter. “The farmer who raised it must also have a kind personality. The animals need quiet and something nice to look at.”
When it comes time to slaughter, Gordon stays with the animals ensuring they remain calm until the very end. The heads of particularly impressive oxen are mounted above the entrance to the 100-year-old wine cave where he ages much of his meat for as much as 90 days. There probably isn’a chef in the world who knows more about the meat that he serves.
The desire to know more about what we consume isn’t just limited to eccentric chefs in remote corners of Spain, however, and the desire to understand the provenance of our food is now something of an obsession.
In a famous sketch from the satirical TV show, Portlandia, a couple of post-hipster diners in a restaurant gently grill the server on the finer points of the chicken on the menu. It is a “heritage breed, woodland-raised chicken that’s been fed a diet of sheep’s milk and hazelnuts,” she assures them, adding, “His name was Colin.”
While maybe not offering to name your meal, one Toronto chef would like to offer his guests a similar level of knowledge. Danny McCallum, a chef at Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse, is at work on a pilot project with the Ontario farm, Van Groningen Meats, that will give diners an unprecedented look at the life of their steak.
“Right now as a chef I can look up each individual tag number that Van Groningen sends me and I can see who a cow’s parents were,” McCallum explains. “I can see its phenotypic appearance, so I know its dad was Angus and its mom was Hereford. I can find out what characteristics that particular animal had, when it was born, did it look more like its mom or more like its dad. I know its birth date, I know its carcass weight, pretty much everything about the animal even as far down as its nose print and its hide colour.”
McCallum’s information is displayed on little more than an Excel spread sheet now, but he plans to make the information a little more appealing. “We’re working on QR codes that people can scan with their phones and pull up all of the information and an actual picture of the animal,” he says. “I picture it kind of like a hockey card.”
This chef will be able to trace the meat from pasture to plate, giving customers the confidence that they’re eating the highest quality, humanely raised beef.