"food,foodanddrink" news and stories

By now, most Jewish people are deep into their Seder dinners, as the first night of Passover began at Sundown today. However, I'm not Jewish so I don't get to enjoy the ceremonial storytelling and delicious Seder feast tonight.

Much of the story of Passover is about suffering, so I feel sort of sacrilegous in thinking that haroset is delicious. Haroset has its place on the Seder plate, representing the mortar that the Israelis used for building when they were kept as slaves in Egypt. Haroset can be made in many different ways, but the most basic recipe is made from apples, nuts, and sweet wine.

I finally finished reading the last half of the last chapter of Ruth Reichl's memoir of being the restaurant critic for the New York Times, Garlic and Sapphires. Let's not get into why, despite the book being very light, fast, and easy to read, it took me a good six months from the time I started to finish it. I have moved on to my next late-night read, The Devil's Picnic by Taras Grescoe, which couldn't be a more drastic 180 degrees in style than a book could be.

The book is basically a one year trip with the author in search of "forbidden fruit" - those fruits that are highly sought after but difficult to obtain, and oftentimes deadly either because they are physically harmful, or they're illegal in the countries where they are found. Grescoe tries everything from 186-proof Norwegian moonshine, to poppy-seed crackers that are banned as "narcotics" in Singapore, to bull's testicles stewed in garlic and gravy. Basically, this guy is like a coked-up Tony Bourdain.

I've just started the book and so far, love it. I hope I make it out alive.

There's a lot of buzz about comfort food right now - macaroni and cheese, chicken soup, meatloaf, and doughnuts - things that you crave when you need a little bit of TLC whether it's from a bad day, being sick, or just hungover. The buzz has gotten me thinking about things that are the exact opposite of comfort foods. Does that mean uncomfortable foods? Nah, uncomfortable foods are things like still-wiggling octopus tentacles and scorpions. I was thinking more along the lines of the last thing I want to eat when I need some TLC (but that's not to say that live octopus isn't one of those last things).

1. Salad - Salad really is the opposite of every comfort food I know. It's cold. It's light. It's a little too healthy. Even when it has two cups of oily, fatty, sugary dressing on it, a salad still has all those healthy vegetables with vitamins and minerals, which are probably really good to have when sick. I don't care. I don't want vitamins. At least not from a salad. (And not from a vitamin either.)
2. Sushi - It's raw and it's cold. Sushi is not warm and comforting, and I don't want to cuddle up with it. It reminds me of when I wanted a puppy when I was little and my parents bought me a goldfish instead.   
3. Fresh fruit - "I'm depressed," shouldn't be followed with, "Aw, here, honey, have an apple." That's not right. If the apple is drowning in hot sticky caramel and wrapped in a flaky pastry, maybe I'll feel better. But a fresh apple? See #1, salad. 
4. Wine - When I'm hungover, the last thing I want to drink is wine. Some say that the best way to cure a hangover is with more alcohol, which I totally agree with. That's why I say, "bring me a bloody mary!" not wine.
5. Cookies - This is weird, I know. It's probably only me. In fact, I think I really might be the only one who doesn't want to eat a cookie when I'm sick. When I'm sane, happy, and healthy, I love cookies of every kind, even *ahem* store-bought ones. But if I'm hungover or sick, a cookie sounds dry, like it will take too much effort to chew and swallow. I don't mind the fat and sugar though, which is probaby why a piece of tres leches cake sounds great.

More news about the Irvine-based burger chain, In N Out Burger came out today. Company director Richard Boyd has been accused of fraud and embezzlement. The lawsuit against Boyd claims that he hired construction firms to build In n Out burger facilities without bids from competing vendors, then diverted construction crews to his private property to do work.

This information comes after news earlier this week about Boyd suing Lynsi Martinez  and other top company executives for trying to force out In n Out's president and founder, Esther L. Snyder, in an attempt to overthrow existing power and install new managers who would support Martinez's desire to expand the burger chain. Sounds like someone is trying to get back at someone.

Esther Snyder and her husband Harry opened the first In n Out burger location n 1948. Martinez, Snyder's grand-daughter, is the sole heir.

Whatever happens, I just think In n Out needs to come clean about their "secret menu."

If you live in LA (not "if you are from" LA because I don't know a single person "from" LA), or know anything about this odd city at all, then you know that LA's downtown shuts down into a veritable ghost-town after 5 PM. Or 6 PM if you're an attorney.

So it makes me wonder how restaurants like the Too Hot Tamales' pan-Latin restaurant, Ciudad, do for dinner. We've talked about Ciudad's sister restaurant in Santa Monica, Border Grill. I had lunch at Ciudad the other day for the first time, but I wasn't sure that I'd be willing to drive there for dinner. Having dinner at Ciudad means driving through ridiculous rush hour traffic along the I-10 freeway in the early evening.