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.
If you've ever wanted to learn how to write about food and turn that knowledge into a career, then Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) has introduced just the thing for you. They've created the Center for Food Media, which offers a range of professional development classes dealing with food and media.
The Center for Food Media offers classes on all aspects of food writing (recipes, blogs, restaurant reviews), food history and pop culture, podcasting, and food styling. You can also learn about writing cookbooks and how to deal with agents, and how to be a TV chef. Coming next year will be classes on wine writing and recipe testing. Classes start at $75 (for a one session class), which is a quite reasonable amount to learn some things that should help further your career.
Even before Chowhound became a part of the Chow network, users frequently had problems with deletions. Controversial posts and less than glowing reviews of certain restaurants were deleted without explanation and some users found that their posts were deleted with a high frequency, regardless of the topic. Since the message board is a public forum, it is perfectly appropriate for moderators to remove offensive content, but when non-offensive reviews of "off the table restaurants" and other posts relevant to the website were taken down without explanation, many users grew frustrated. The problems persist with the new Chowhound, leaving many former contributors to head to different, more open minded, websites.
It appears that Eater is one such site because they have just offered to post anything that has been inexplicably removed from the Chowhound site. They are able to do this because the "offending" posts are not removed from the Chowhound feed as quickly as they are from the site, so there is a window of time where it is possible to retrieve the posts. Of course, you will have to contact the staff to let them know if your post was stricken, but it will be interesting to see what types of pieces are selected for removal.
In the Krystal Square Off III World Hamburger Eating Contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee this past weekend, Takeru Kobayashi brought home another championship title by eating 97 hamburgers in 8 minutes. Joey Chestnut came in second, finishing with 91 hamburgers, followed by Patrick Bertoletti in third with 76. All the numbers are up hugely from last year's contest, in which Kobayashi narrowly beat Chestnut with a final total of 67-62 burgers. One other big change from previous years was that the contest was televised on ESPN2, which gives the sport a much wider audience and much more publicity than it enjoyed before.
The contest is known as the "square off" because the burgers that the competitors wolf down are square, but Krystal's burgers hosts the contest because they have been holding eating contests at their stores since the first one opened in 1932. According to company legend, the tradition was set when the second customer challenged the first customer to a head-to-head hamburger showdown.
The folks at Lenny's, er, Denny's, surveyed hundreds of late-night eaters a few months ago. Some of their findings are available at Restaurant News Resource. The survey defined late-night eaters as folks dining out between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. on a weekly or monthly basis.
For the most part, the trends in responses aren't anything too earth-shaking: most of the people surveyed were out for typical American food like burgers and fries. I was a little surprised that only 6 percent said they were out late at night for dessert, however. I'm not totally clear on just who Denny's surveyed, but aside from the Slams and skillets, some folks said they wanted things like fried tofu and goat's milk. To those of you in front of the refrigerator drinking goat's milk from the carton at 3 a.m., you are not alone.
In Japan, one of the hottest stars in competitive eating is Natsuko "Gal" Sone, a cute, bubbly young woman that is known almost as well for her unusual makeup (which includes white eyeliner) as she is for her eating skils. Her nickname comes from her style of dressing in the gyaru or "gal" fashion, with dyed blonde hair. She is one of the relatively few female competitive eaters and seems to be the highest ranked one at the moment, with victories in contests involving seafood, curry and hamburgers, among other things, and for participating in a number of regular eating contests on Japanese TV. Her eating quirk is that she actually seems to be a very picky eater and takes her own container of mayonnaise, her favorite condiment, along when she eats to put on just about everything.
In the clip after the jump, you can see a Japanese television show follow her throughout the day as she consumed 40,000 calories. If, like me, you don't speak Japanese, you'll find the popups on the show very helpful, as they show the measurements (weights, etc) of the foods that she eats and keep track of the calorie count.
The New York Times Dining section, which we cover, in brief, here every week, has been in a bit of a slump lately. The precise reasons for this are probably known only to their staff, but the general consensus is that the formerly popular food section is barely worth reading far too often. But loyal readers may be able to look forward to a turnaround of the section's content, since they have just replaced current editor Kathleen McElroy with food writer Pete Wells.
Pete Wells is a columnist for Food and Wine Magazine and is well known to food bloggers for some rather unkind things me said about them earlier this year, though Food & Wine now has a food blogwatch on their own site. Aside from his little gaffe there, Wells is an excellent writer with plenty to offer to the Dining section. Hopefully the content will step up and give readers the stimulating read that the are looking for, rather than yet another article about how wonderful Greenmarket is.
Doctors in India have quelled the hunger of a man known to eat buckets of rice and curry in a single sitting, the Hindustan Times reports. For the 64-year-old man named Rappai, eating hundreds of idlis (steamed lentil biscuits, left) in competitions was no big deal. He was apparently the bane of all-you-can-eat restaurants in Thrissur and Kerala, where he earned the nickname Theeta or "monstrous eater." Digestive problems seem to have eventually caught up with Rappai, however, and his doctors have told him to cool it. He has agreed, much to the joy of the local restaurant community, says the HT.
A new competitive eating world record was set over the weekend when eater Joey Chestnut out-ate the competition by eating 49 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes. Sonya Thomas and Pat Bertoletti tied for second place with 37 sandwiches each. All three passed the former record of 36.5 sandwiches.
There is a video available here of the event, which was held at the Arena Football Fan Fest in Las Vegas. It is a fascinating sight - if mildly disgusting - for anyone who has never witnessed a professional eating competition. The crown cheers on the eaters while they battle the sandwiches, which an announcer describes as being glue-like. Sonya, who weighs 105 pounds, really has her technique down to a science and Chestnut, in a post match interview, describes how much concentration is needed to compete, given that your body doesn't really want to eat all that grilled cheese.
Food & Wine magazine has announced its list of Best New Chefs of 2006. The 10 chefs come from across the
country--and surprise-- there's even a chef from New Hampshire, the first time a chef from the Granite State has
appeared on the list. The chef is Mary Dumont from the Dunaway Restaurant
at Strawbery Banke. Past chefs chosen in the Best New Chef category include Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud and Nobu
Matsuhisa. Eater has the full
release.
Cathal Armstrong Restaurant Eve, Alexandria, VA
Christopher Lee Striped Bass, Philadelphia, PA
David Chang Momofuku, New York, NY
Douglas Keane Cyrus, Healdsburg, CA
Jason Wilson Crush, Seattle, WA
Jonathan Benno Per Se, New York, NY
Mary Dumont The Dunaway Restaurant at Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, NH
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The folks at Lenny's, er, Denny's, surveyed hundreds of late-night eaters a few months ago. Some of their findings are available at 
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Doctors in India have quelled the hunger of a man known to eat buckets of rice and curry in a single sitting, the Hindustan Times 
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Food & Wine magazine has announced its list of Best New Chefs of 2006. The 10 chefs come from across the
country--and surprise-- there's even a chef from New Hampshire, the first time a chef from the Granite State has
appeared on the list. The chef is Mary Dumont from the 
What Can I Get You Folks? - Server Revenge
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