"london" news and stories

Wolfgang Puck is about to take on Europe with his first restaurant on the continent, a Cut steakhouse opening in April or May in London's Mayfair section. Puck's fourth Cut (joining others in Beverly Hills, Las Vegas and Singapore) will be an 80-seat restaurant located on the ground floor of the Dorchester Group's newest luxury hotel 45 Park Lane, opening in 2011.

And the menu? "It's going to have more seafood," Puck told Slashfood. "The seafood is really great over there. And in the winter we'll have game birds -- grouse, woodcock, and all that stuff."

Puck's company is managing the new Cut. "It's easier for everyone that way," he said. The hotel fronts the capital, but doesn't have to run the business. "It's better for them," the Austrian-born chef said. "These hotels are not great at running restaurants. We are." (Among the Dorchester Group's properties are the Bel-Air, in L.A., The New York Palace, and Paris hotels Le Meurice and Plaza Athénée, as well as London's The Dorchester).

Puck, who has lived in Los Angeles since 1975, was in New York this week to promote a new line of canned soups and stocks, half of which are gluten free and organic. From Vegas to tinned soups to pheasant under glass . . . welcome to Wolfgang's World.

For one lucky person in London, the 9 to 5 grind is about to be a thing of the past. Spitalfields Market, a collection of covered shops and dining venues just outside of London, has resurrected an age-old job, and they're taking applicants. The position? Beer taster.

Reps for the market call it simply, "the best job in the world." The employee would essentially stop at venues throughout the market and taste test the beers for quality. It's a role that's been around almost as long as the market itself -- almost 400 years. (King Charles I of England first gave permission for fish, poultry and produce to be sold on the site in 1638.)

AOL Health Editor Katherine Steinberg submitted the photo above for inclusion in the Midnight Sausage series, but we thought it was worthy of a post all its own.

"As I was wandering the streets of London foraging for food, I came across something even more foreign to me than the British slang -- the hot dog hamburger, or the 'express special'. It was so strange that I had to take a picture. I'm not sure what about this makes it faster than your average meal, but I do know that it comes with fries. But don't get too excited, judging by the recent price dip, it won't be popping up in your local deli anytime soon."

Has anyone seen or sampled this frankenfood in London or elsewhere? We'd love a first-hand account.

[via Katherine Steinberg's Flickr]

I still look down on box wine as cheap and presumably bad. Bordeaux wine in what amounts to juice boxes? I just don't know how I feel about that.

However I feel about it, juice box wine is coming. Called Tandem, it'll be introduced in London soon, but there's no word on if we'll see it here in the US. Apparently French wine makers don't like the downward trend in wine consumption. This is an attempt to get "young urbanites" to drink more wine. A spokesman for Tandem says that this is the ideal way to have a bit of wine with lunch, especially if you eat at your work desk.

The wine juice box even has a special straw to ensure that you get a full taste experience. The sensory straw, as it's called, has four holes in it so that the wine is dispersed throughout your mouth. I'm not sure how well that'll work, but, as it's been pointed out by traditionalists, you still can't see or smell the wine before you drink it, which are both important aspects of drinking wine. Do you think this product will take off? Would you buy it?

If you are a chocoholic, then London would have been the place for you to be earlier this week. Thorntons, a British chocolate company, spent three months planning the world's first chocolate billboard. Ten massive chocolate bunnies, 72 giant chocolate eggs, and 128 panels made of pure chocolate were used to construct the 14.5 x 9.5 ft billboard, which the company had planned as being the first-ever interactive Easter creation on this kind of scale. Interactive, indeed - people passing by were invited to literally dig in and help themselves to the pieces of chocolate.

The structure took a team of 10 people 300 hours to construct, yet the public devoured it within just three hours.

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