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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