"country" news and stories

In Details magazine, Ed Levine recently laid out a list of the best pizza places in the country at the moment. The criteria for the best pie changes from person to person and city to city, but Ed's criteria - crisp but tender crusts, fresh mozzarella, high-quality tomatoes, and a touch of salt - are standards that every pizza lover can agree on and should expect from their pies. Ed's list includes: PIZZERIA BIANCO, Phoenix, NY

• DI FARA, Brooklyn, NY
• TOTONNO'S, Brooklyn, NY
• UNA PIZZA NAPOLETANA, New York, NY
• FRANK PEPE PIZZERIA NAPOLETANA, New Haven, CT
• SALLY'S APIZZA, New Haven, CT
• AL FORNO, Providence, RI
• PICCO, Boston, MA
• 2 AMYS, Washington, D.C.
• PUNCH NEAPOLITAN PIZZA, St. Paul, MN
• NOSTRANA, Portland, OR
• SERIOUS PIE, Seattle, WA
• MOZZA BAR, Los Angeles, CA
• PIZZERIA PICCO, Larkspur, CA
• PIZZAIOLO, Oakland, CA

There are only two small problems with the list, although the lack of inclusion of The Cheese Board is just my own bias and perhaps should not be counted. The real problem is that , aside from the St Paul pizzeria, the only restaurants listed are on either cost. Now, the South isn't necessarily known for their piazza, but there are plenty of Chicagoans who are willing to, loudly, defend their city's top pizzerias. It could be that the best pizzas are only found towards the country's coasts, or perhaps there just haven't been any volunteers willing to take Ed around to the best that the midwest has to offer to see if it holds up to his standards.

[via the food section]

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I look forward to annual lists like this, Esquire's Best New Restaurants of the Year. Sure, I never go to 99.5 of them (OK, probably more like 100% of them), but I like reading about new places that have opened, what various chefs around the country are doing, and I'm intrigued when there are places around Boston mentioned. I just gotta get off my ass and visit some of them.

This year's list includes two Boston restaurants, Om and Sorellina. Other new spots making the grade including A Voce (NYC), Ecco (Atlanta), Acadiana (Washington, D.C.), Country (NYC), Proof On Main (Louisville, KY), Guy Savoy (Las Vegas), and Cut (Los Angeles), which was also named The Restaurant of the Year. There are also a few other categories, including Chef of the Year, Best New Design, and Four Chefs To Watch.

Take a look at the list and let us know which restaurants you'd add to the list. Make sure you name the city and why it's so good.

A Suffolk town refused to give permission to build a Tesco superstore in their neighborhood in 1997 and, since that time, local businesses and agriculture have flourished. Despite an overall decrease in the number of smaller, independent stores throughout Britain, the number of businesses in town has remained the same and the number of local/regional food suppliers increased from 300 to 370, meeting the demand from local butchers, bakers and greengrocers. The local shops primarily source from local sources, and have not found themselves to be limited in what they can offer their customers. In fact, they have slowly been expanding into more diverse foods and vegetables as suppliers find people to grow them.

Over the past decade, many other store proposals from developers have been turned down and the locals' position gets stronger after each refusal. The hardest part is shaking the mindset that values convenience and sometimes price, over quality and belief. The locals would rather know where their food is coming from, who is selling it to them and that they are supporting quality food in their community, than save a few pennies on carrots from elsewhere in the world at Tesco.

Stores like Waitrose and Marks & Spencer have already put effort into sourcing more local ingredients, which has made customers and local business people alike very happy as well as demonstrating that local foods can be utilized on a larger scale. This is useful to note because it is not possible for the Suffolk strategy to work everywhere; some areas are simply not suited to agricultural purposes. What the Suffolk example does show is that the local food movement can still thrive in a modern environment as long as people are committed to it.

 

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Amanda Hesser noted that she was pleasantly surprised at the way the duality of Geoffrey Zakarian's Town/Country: 150 Recipes for Life Around the Table played out. It sounds like it works a lot better than Tiffani's "dual" menu in the Top Chef Finale. The book features 65 ingredients, each prepared in both a "town" and a "country" manner. Predictably, the "town" preparation is more involved and uses more unusual ingredients, meaning that the dishes are definitely more along the lines of what you would see in a trendy restaurant than at a friend's home. The "country" recipes are decidedly homier, yet still with an undeniable elegance. Chef Geoffrey Zakarian named the book after his two New York restaurants, Town and Country, and the differing styles of the restaurants and the recipes are designed to compliment each other; each pair of recipes shows the versatility of the ingredients by presenting them in two different ways. Hesser, rightly, points out that some of the recipes are not for amateurs, but for the ambitious home chef, this book presents a variety of impressive, delicious options.

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Traveling during spring can be challenging. There are often dramatic shifts in weather, alternating balmy, sunlit skies with freezing snow flurries, not to mention that there is usually a lot of rain. But the rain brings about things that make travel worth it for a foodie, like the first crops of the year for many varieties of seasonal fruits and vegetables. Eating well prepared, seasonal specialties is a treat, especially when so many restaurants serve supermarket fare.

While some restaurants will add a seasonal special or two to their menus, there are a handful of restaurants that specialize in specials. These seasonal restaurants are open for only a few weeks each year. They're not open during the summer tourist season, only when their special ingredients are at their peak in the spring. They can be hard to find, usually known only to the locals in the area, but according to the New York Times, it's worth tracking them down.

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