"CraigLaban" news and stories

• What's better during these hot days of summer than a popsicle? Well, how about a popsicle with alcohol in it! Strictly for adults, they have low alcohol content and cool you down quickly.
• At $.69 an ear, Mirai isn't bargain corn. However, it is sweet, crisp and delicious, bringing back memories of the corn of yesteryear.
• In the Market Basket, we've got Australian olive oil, crisp bread and tasty turkey burgers.
• At this time when tomatoes are perfect, use them as the staring component in a bread salad.
• In Table Talk, Michael Klein dishes on a new brewpub in Mt. Airy, a white tablecloth restaurant in Fishtown and Capogiro moves to University City.
• Looking for ways to use of leftover take-out rice, Joe Yonan elevates his fried rice.
• In the Cheese of the Month column, Craig LaBan features Cypress Grove's Fog Lights.

One of the things I've always wished for was to live someplace (be it apartment building or neighborhood) where I really knew my neighbors. I'd love to have people in close proximity with whom I could have dinner, or drop by with a baking project gone right. Unfortunately, I've yet to find that.

Craig LaBan, the restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer lives on a close, friendly block (just like the one I would like to find for myself). In yesterday's food section, he writes about how his family has teamed up with two other families on the street to take turns cooking dinner once a week. It started because they all had kids on the same swim team and would arrive home on Monday nights exhausted and with nothing on the stove. They determined that each week, one family would make enough for all three, so that the parents would get a break from cooking two out of every three weeks.

The project has had benefits beyond simply providing dinner. It has exposed their kids to a variety of foods that are not typically found in their home kitchens and has brought the families even closer together. While they don't eat the meal together (I imagine no one has room for three families to sit down to dinner together), they all acknowledge that they shared meal experience has made them less like neighbors and more like family.

Source

Back in July, I wrote a post about how Craig LaBan, the food critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, was being sued by a local restaurant for libel. They claimed that he had incorrectly identified a cut of meat in an article, thus giving them a negative review that they hadn't deserved. The real big brouhaha about the whole thing was the fact that if the case when to trial, LaBan's secret identity would revealed, making it impossible for him to do his job effectively, as he would then always receive special service from the restaurants in question.

Well, LaBan's days of anonymity are now over, not because of the lawsuit, but thanks to Philadelphia Magazine who ran a picture of his face along with an article about the case in their September issue (as far as I can see, the picture is not available online). Folks have been buzzing about this decision, especially since Philly Mag editor Larry Platt has for years respected LaBan's choice to keep his appearance concealed. For further discussion about this latest installment in restaurant critic outing, check out Philafoodie's recent post.