On the Blogs

Restaurants + Babies = Rules

by the Editors at TheStir, Posted Nov 11th 2010 @ 1:00PM

Baby crying at a restaurant Photo: Getty Images

If dining out with your baby has left you wondering if the kids will be in high school before you can enjoy a peaceful restaurant meal, check out the advice from our friends at TheStir. They've laid down five rules that will help you decide where, when, and how to make an away-from-home meal with kids a lot less stressful. For one, don't decide to try the latest four-star chef's place with your pride and joy in tow. Of course you want to expose your children to great cooking at an early age, but maybe baby doesn't want to sit through a seven-course tasting menu. If he could actually do that it might be a matter for the Guinness Book of Records. Visit TheStir for more great tips.

Filed under: On the Blogs, Restaurants

Boston Beer Gets Bubbly

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by the Editors at YumSugar, Posted Nov 10th 2010 @ 4:00PM

Photo Courtesy of Samuel Adams

Although venerable French Champagne maker Veuve Clicquot may not be quaking in its boots, the Boston Beer Company (maker of Samuel Adams beers) has collaborated with German brewery Weihenstephan to create Infinium, an ale they hope will compete with the traditional bubbly market. It's packaged in what looks like a sparkling-wine bottle, but is a beer still a beer, despite the pretty trappings? Visit YumSugar to get the full story.

Filed under: On the Blogs

Chefs vs. Bloggers: The Battle Heats Up

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by Robert Sietsema, Posted Nov 9th 2010 @ 3:00PM

Screen Grab: Guardian UK

It used to be fairly common for restaurant reviewers to receive notes penned by chefs after a review came out. If the review was favorable, the handwritten missive would be polite and congratulatory. If the review was negative, sometimes the chef -- perhaps oblivious to his posterity -- might unleash invective.

Later, of course, the pen dried up in favor of email as the medium of choice for irate chefs to write to critics, and the practice has continued. In my work with the Village Voice, I personally have received angry emails from chefs, though polite thank-yous still predominate. The waters have further been muddied by the ascendance of blogs as a medium of review, and the rough-hewn quality of criticism they often exhibit. Many chefs have commented, both in public and in private, of their distaste for blog reviews, which often occur just days after a restaurant opens for business, and are hence deemed unfair by the chefs.

Restaurateurs and chefs have decided to fight back. New York chef David Chang banned food photography in his restaurants, in an apparent attempt to keep bloggers from taking pictures of food and posting them with reviews. In a 2008 roundtable discussion conducted by the Chicago Tribune, chefs Graham Bowles and Bill Kim expressed irritation at instantaneous reviews of their restaurants that appeared on foodie websites like Yelp and MenuPages, igniting a debate in the Windy City that continues today.

Filed under: On the Blogs, Restaurants, Chefs

Deep-Fried Turkey: Is It Worth the Hassle?

COMMENTS 2

by Slashfood Editor, Posted Nov 2nd 2010 @ 12:00PM

Deep fried turkey for Thanksgiving Photo: eviloars, Flickr

If you've considered abandoning the roaster for a deep-fryer in order to put a turkey on your table, pay a visit to the fellows at the Serious Eats Food Lab. They take you through an illustrated deep-frying how-to, and skewer a few notions (such as the one that fried turkey meat is more moist) about dipping your bird in a big vat of oil. Join the experiment, thermodynamics and all.

Filed under: Science, On the Blogs

What a Ham! And a Meaty Halloween Centerpiece

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by Slashfood Editor, Posted Oct 29th 2010 @ 12:00PM

meat face Photo: Dot D, Flickr

How can a bunch of cold cuts and a few hard-cooked eggs turn into something so gruesome? OK, the Lady Gaga meat dress was pretty awful. One of our deliciously deranged editors pulled out the gelatinous stops to create this horribly fun Halloween-themed head out of ham, for an eye-popping holiday centerpiece. It's so bizarre we just had to give it a replay, along with a DIY guide. Head's up! (Ok, ok, but how could we resist that line?)

Filed under: On the Blogs, Holidays, Entertaining

Dawn of the Undead Chefs

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by Slashfood Editor, Posted Oct 28th 2010 @ 5:00PM

Zombie Chef Photo: Getty Images

Zombies fans, imagine this: What if the undead were not just everyday Joes and Janes, as they are in Dawn of the Dead or the new TV series (based on the comic) "The Walking Dead." No, these man-eating creatures would have names like Alton and Martha, and even Julia, and let's just say they would not use their knife skills for the power of good, as they do on food TV. The Denver "Westword" blog imagines it all too well with a riff on "The Seven Celebrity Chefs Who Would Make Great Zombies."

Filed under: On the Blogs, Chefs

Witch's Brew and a Black Widow: Halloween's Top Cocktails

COMMENTS 1

by Slashfood Editor, Posted Oct 28th 2010 @ 3:00PM

Halloween cocktail witch cauldron Photo: turtlemom4bacon, Flickr

Is the scarier thing about a cocktail called the Brain Hemorrhage that it looks like exploded gray matter or that it combines peach schnapps, Baileys and grenadine? It's already giving us a Halloween hangover. The Huffington Post editors have brought together some of the best (which also translates as the ghastliest) Halloween cocktails from around the blogs, and link up to the original recipes. And, yes, there is a bloody Martini for all the "Twilight" vamps out there.

Filed under: On the Blogs, Holidays, Drinks

Top-Selling Candy From Around the World

COMMENTS 2

by the Editors at YumSugar, Posted Oct 28th 2010 @ 12:00PM

Foreign candy for Halloween Photo: The Shifted Librarian, Flickr

Are trick-or-treaters in a candy rut? Year after year, kids come home with bags full of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Twizzlers, and M & M's. Isn't it time to switch things up? The editors over at YumSugar have rounded up the top-selling candies from around the world -- from Bounty to ToffeeCrisp to a Yorkie bar (but what's with the Yorkie's "It's Not For Girls!" slogan?). This Halloween, bust out and get your hands on some of these delicious international treats.

Top-Selling Candy From Around the World

Filed under: On the Blogs, Holidays

Revenge of the Witches

COMMENTS 99

by Joshua M. Bernstein, Posted Oct 27th 2010 @ 5:00PM

Witch's Wit Label Photo: The Lost Abbey

Since it's so close to Halloween, it makes sense that the witches are in revenge mode. But over a beer?

Recently, Wiccan astrologist and "healer" Vicki Noble was strolling through a beer aisle when she stumbled upon a bottle of Lost Abbey Witch's Wit. She had no issue with the wheat beer, spiced with grapefruit zest, orange peel and coriander. Instead, the illustrated label enflamed her: It featured a witch being burned at the stake.

Aghast, Noble headed home and shot off an irate email. "Can you imagine them showing a black person being lynched or a Jewish person going to the oven?" she wrote to her email list. "Such images are simply not tolerated in our society anymore (thank the Goddess) and this one should not be, either."

In these knee-jerk times, what came next should be no surprise: complaints flooded the brewery, accusing Port Brewing Company (Lost Abbey is a division) of "inspiring violence against women. . . . We have been compared to the violence in Darfur," brewery spokesman Sage Osterfeld told The New York Times.

Filed under: On the Blogs, Drinks

World's Wackiest Vending Machines

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by Jason Best, Posted Oct 27th 2010 @ 2:00PM

Ramen Vending Machines Photo: YouTube

How to explain the rather dull and predictable options when it comes to vending machines in America compared with the rest of the world? Why can't we get on-demand ramen, as the Japanese do. Or, even if we wanted one, a Chinese hairy crab? Sure, as Slashfood reported in May, there are Maine lobsters out there in a machine somewhere, but in the U.S. these aren't exactly around every corner, as they are in many other countries.

Vending machines in America: They're pretty much everywhere you don't want to be. Airports. Hospital waiting rooms. Down a long, fluorescent-lit hall in your office at ten o'clock at night as you curse your boss for another late night and try to cobble together dinner from a bag of chips, some powdered donuts and a Coke. Which is what makes the Village Voice's compilation of "10 Wild and Crazy Food Vending Machines" from around the world so refreshing, from a Chinese contraption that allows you to try to catch your own live hairy crab with a robotic claw to the Dutch automat that serves up croquettes.

Filed under: On the Blogs, Fast Food