Trevor Corson, the author of "The Story of Sushi," says to step away from the chopsticks -- the proper way to eat sushi is with your fingers.
Joaquin Baca of the Brooklyn Star only serves up food he likes to eat -- including the Americana classic green bean casserole, updated with homemade mushroom soup and onion rings.
White House chef Sam Kass stirs pots and policy. When he's not preparing meals for the first family, he gathers with senior policy advisers to figure out how to improve the health of the country's children.
First Lady Michelle Obama makes a cameo on the Jan. 3 episode of "Iron Chef America" to raise awareness for the Healthy Kids Initiative -- and revealing that the secret ingredient is anything from the White House garden.
From Momofuku to Marco Canora, the roundup of this season's best new cookbooks is sure to take readers on an "edible adventure."
Sam Sifton's latest reviews Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecôte, the Parisian import to Midtown that relies on "the simplicity of salad, steak and fries, heavy on the salt and butter, rich as a cardiologist," and waitresses in what resemble French maid outfits.
The Minimalist, Mark Bittman, takes meatball madness to the Middle East with lamb, cumin, mint and bulgur.
Nostalgic for wine from their Vienna upbringing, Carlo Huber and Paul Darcy made it their mission to bring Viennese wines and wine culture to the United States.
Saltie, a tiny sandwich shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, serves up sandwiches "the Earl would approve."
Despite smoking bans at restaurants in cities across the country, the restaurant matchbook is experiencing a "fragile renaissance" of sorts, the New York Times reports.
"When a state or municipality imposes a ban, we see a hesitation in reordering and a fall-off in new business," Mark Nackman, the owner and president of AdMatch, an importer based in New York City told the Times. "Then the volumes start to creep back up, so that within a year or so we see some resurgence in statewide sales. Matches have universal appeal, and that's the mystery -- that one little package could resonate with familiarity, maybe beauty and a feeling of value."
It helps that they're highly collectible. Do you have a matchbook collection or have a favorite matchbook from your dining travels? Spill it in the comments.
How does a man with a price tag on his head -- or at least his face -- keep from having his photo snapped by fellow partygoers or folks out for a hefty reward? Former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni explains the art of ducking the spotlight in this Skype video from Salon's Kerry Lauerman.
Frank Bruni (left) and interviewer John Berman. Photo: ABC News "Nightline."
Restaurant devotees tuning into Wednesday night's edition of ABC News "Nightline," slavering for juicy tidbits from the upcoming tell-all penned by departing New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni were treated to an intimate portrait of ... uh, the poignant tale of ... OK, the dude wants to sell some books. This was his infomercial.
It's hard to blame the guy. For the past five years, the admitted former bulimic who once sported a 42-inch waistband was the most fear-inducing eater in all of New York's five boroughs, his deft, often hilarious and scathing reviews packing the power to loft or condemn restaurants' fates -- around 270 of them during his tenure at the Times -- despite his intensely conflicted relationship with food and the constant pressure to maintain anonymity by means of unflattering wigs, stick-on facial hair and fake reservation names he'd sometimes forget upon arrival at the host's stand.
In his first network interview since taking on this trencherman's task in 2004, Bruni -- publicly revealing his face on video for the first time to a national audience -- talked about his lifelong battle with overeating and the extreme, often unsuccessful measures he took to combat his epic binges.
"I believe that food that rhymes is almost always better than food that doesn't rhyme, don't you?" he says in the outtake released to the press, in which he calls a reporter "namby-pamby" for ordering a soft-serve ice cream cone instead of his own adventurous "South of the Border" choice.
Who knows if new national critic Sam Sifton will have Bruni's talent with one-liners, but we do know that, after reading this morning's (very accurate) description of the dinner review process, we will miss him: About a woman who "fumed" if her steak arrived at the table already cut, he writes, "People are as strange about eating as they are about love. They want what they want."
Perhaps our favorite description, though, is of those who just don't eat. One friend demanded that they order a fatty porterhouse with fries, and then "She commenced such frantic knife and fork movements that a veritable cloud of dust rose around her -- I was reminded of a Road Runner cartoon. When the dust settled 15 minutes later, I took a close look at her plate, and almost nothing was missing. The food had just been reconstituted and rearranged, a Picasso of its former self."
If this is the stuff of his new memoir, we'll be reading it.
"Born Round," the new Frank Bruni memoir. Photo: Amazon.com.
Mark your calendars, fans of "Garlic and Sapphires" and other food critic memoirs. Frank Bruni, the outgoing critic at the New York Times and the man behind the upcoming memoir "Born Round," will be blabbing to the press -- ABC News' "Nightline," to be exact -- about his history with food, including a childhood eating disorder this coming Wednesday night at 11:35 EST.
Choice quotes from a press release reveal that Bruni was on the Atkins diet at age 8 -- "Mom bought it in hardcover ... I remember leafing through it and learning about ketones and ketosis and you know, having no idea what that meant, I was 8 years old, but I thought, 'Oooh that's profound stuff. If I can get into this ketosis thing I'll be home free. I'll be skinny.' " Even later, in college, "I threw up a lot of my meals. Whenever I would eat a meal that would get out of hand, I would throw it up." Now Bruni has an incredible workout routine and -- perhaps most astonishing to those of us who write about food for a living -- is the same weight as when he started his gig five years ago.
We know we'll be watching, and we'll post our deepest thoughts about the interview online the next day.
For healthy ways to stay slim, check out our sister site, thatsfit.com.
Those perplexed by this season's tomato blight, aka "late blight", or simply wondering why the heck the price of the beloved ruby-hued edibles has gone through the roof of late would do well to read this piece by chef/ restaurateur/ locavore Dan Barber in Sunday's New York Times.
Barber reveals that Stone Barns, the farm that is part of his restaurant north of New York City lost half its tomatoes in the span of only three days due to the "pernicious" blight sweeping the northeast. Many organic farmers have been forced to spray using pesticides, losing their organic certifications in the process.
Evidently the spring's wet weather has proved a "four-star hotel" for late blight. Americans looking to save money this year -- seven million more of us investigated home gardening this year -- unknowingly bought starter plants infected with blight from large industrial stores. Ironically, this helped create the problem, as tiny "Trojan horse" vines popped up on windowsills and in cages along the eastern seaboard.
BoingBoing finds a great Snopes article about Van Halen trashing a concert venue after finding forbidden brown M&M's in the backstage area. Apparently David Lee Roth used the candies as a litmus test of a venue.
"First let me introduce myself. I'm Craig Claiborne, and this is Julia Child." Photo: Scanned from A Feast Made for Laughter
"And to tell the truth, I was bored with restaurant criticism. At times I didn't give a damn if all the restaurants in Manhattan were shoved into the East River and perished. Had they all served nightingale tongues on toast and heavenly manna and mead, there is just so much that the tongue can savor, so much that the human body (and spirit) can accept, and then it resists. Toward the end of my days as restaurant critic, I found myself increasingly indulging in drink, the better to endure another evening of dining out. I had become a desperate man with a frustrating job to perform." -- from 'A Feast Made for Laughter' by Craig Claiborne, New York Times Dining editor and restaurant critic, 1982
While there have thus far been no reports of departing New York Times restaurant critic and newly-minted memoirist Frank Bruni tipsily pressing ham against the windows of the Second Avenue Deli, rolling members of the Cipriani family for spare change and Bellini drippings, or skulking through the catacombs at Ninja New York, randomly alarming the goofily hooded servers, it's not as if he's going silently into that last bite.
We reported back in May, along with the rest of the food blogosphere, that Frank Bruni, dining critic for the New York Times, was departing his beat as perhaps the most powerful journalist in the national restaurant scene.
Blogs like Eater, Grub Street and Gawker covered the departure obsessively, and their sadness at the departure of the man some called the Brunz -- or when feeling particularly tender, "King Brunz" -- was palpable.
Now Sam Sifton has stepped into the spotlight and, as editor Bill Keller's memo notes, up to the treadmill. (Bruni wrote about his rigorous workout routine for Men's Vogue). Food writers are already apoplectic about the newcomer: Eater has given the casual "Sifty" a shot, whereas Gawker is far more interested in finding a proper costume for the not-at-all-anonymous Sifton, who has long been the Gray Lady's Culture Editor. No doubt the suggestions of Gawker commenters, which range from Harry Potter to Lenny Dykstra to Anna Wintour, will prove helpful to the new critic.
An article in Tuesday's New York Times titled "With This Burger, I Thee Wed" chronicles an (economy-fueled) trend away from lavish, over-the-top weddings and towards the seating of guests comfortably in a backyard. Whether the yard belongs to a family member or is an old, rented-out estate, the fare being served at these weddings is reminiscent of a backyard barbecue: comfort food with simple flavors that aren't complicated or pretentious.
While I agree that the backyard reception is becoming trendy -- across class lines -- I think it started before the economy took a turn for the worse. Some of my favorite wedding blogs, such as Style Me Pretty, a go-to for many brides (especially DIY brides), have been stressing the importance of having a wedding that truly reflects the couple's personality.
A shiny, fancy affair may still be the Cinderella dream of many, but for others, it's a dream transformed into something lower-key. In the eyes of many, the more comfortable the wedding, the more fun is to be had.
Frank Bruni is leaving the New York Times dining section. And food bloggers are freaking out.
In a world where restaurants live or die by the awarding of Bruni's stars, blogs like Eater declare this no less than an "Apocalypse." Bruni will be turning his attention to his new memoir come August, and will be a writer at large for the New York Times Magazine.
Now the hunt (and speculation) begins to locate a food critic with the ability to carry Bruni's swagger: Ryan Sutton at Bloomberg, one of the few fairly anonymous critics left in town? Perhaps the L.A. Times' S. Irene Virbila is waiting by her phone, since the Times has pulled from our rival city to the west (a la Ruth Reichl) in the past. Grub Street wonders if (gasp) a blogger will be chosen. And does anonymity, so hard to preserve in the Internet era, matter any more to Pete Wells, the dining editor at the Times?
Perhaps the most curious quote in Bill Keller's announcement is that Bruni "will be turning in his restaurant-critic credentials." Uh, could someone get us a copy of those? Is there, like, a laminated round of foie gras passed from critic to critic? Frank, just drop us a line and let us know.
On one of the first gorgeous Saturdays of the spring, did Brooklyn foodies run to the park for picnic lunches or line the bars for springy cocktails?
Sure, some of 'em did. But 3,000 others, according to organizers, crammed the multicolored '70s-esque hallways of John Jay High School, aka P.S. 321, for a day of workshops, eats, panels and vendors called the Brooklyn Food Conference, promoting what a bright-yellow pamphlet trumpeted as "Local Action for Global Change."
Food world celebs roaming the halls included chef Dan Barber, speaker and TV host Anna Lappé and author-activist Raj Patel (whose classroom was so stuffed a volunteer had to turn fans away). Some attendees, all of whom attended for free, were a bit starry-eyed over certain sustainably-minded speakers. About Patel, local CSA organizer Meredith Modzelewski sighed, "I'm in love with him now." Find out more and see photos after the jump.
"Twecipes¹" are the moment's micro-obsession and we ♥ the New York Times' Dining staff -- certainly active and useful Twitizens² themselves -- for flying into the eye of the storm in conjunction with today's profile of Twitter's marquee recipe condenser Maureen Evans, aka @cookbook. Still, must all prose now be condensed for optimal Tweetability³? Yup, it's been an addictively (though ADD) good time watching the 140-or-fewer-character Challenge responses stream into #nytrc⁴:
Perhaps it's terribly 2008 to think this way, but there's a near visceral joy in the reading of Melissa Clark's Stuffed Artichokes with Lemon Zest, Rosemary and Garlic recipe in its original form. The title alone (55 characters) vividly evokes the action and sensory experience of crafting, then savoring this dish in a way that spare, if technically correct Tweets can not. It makes for excellent editorial muscle flexing -- like a digital lipogram -- and it's an efficient way to circulate links, but we can't help but hope that Nigel Slater and his ilk of culinary poets never sign up for an @ handle.
1. Twecipe: 140 character recipe 2. Twitizen: Participant in the Twitter community 3. Tweetable: Expressible in a 140 character Tweet, or Twitter message 4. # : Hashtags are added in front of terms to make Tweets including them more easily searchable.
The folks over at Grist, an environmental watchdog blog, have taken Mark Bittman -- a cook and food writer for The New York Times whose work boasts a huge, passionate following including the Grist blogger himself -- to task for listing red snapper, a fish many consider endangered, in one of his recipes. A fascinating conversation follows in the comments section including a response from Bittman (aka The Minimalist) himself. Check it out -- but maybe not over a fish dinner, as you may lose your appetite.
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