bourdain vs alice waters, disney eggs, dutch harbor, more fun

Anthony Bourdain Talks Recession Eating - DCist

I'll tell you. Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic. I mean I'm not crazy about our obsession with corn or ethanol and all that, but I'm a little uncomfortable with legislating good eating habits.

Honestly, I kinda feel him here. I'm all for organic eating and healthy food, but there's another holier-then-thou side to the coin that pisses me off just as much as junk food and Mc'D's. I spent a healthy portion of my school years in a hippie school and the constant parental hand wringing over OMG IT'S NOT ORGANIC was so very eye rolling inducing. People will change their food habits if it makes sense to them and if it is affordable - they will not change their habits because a bunch of blissed-out Berkeley residents tell them to. We have to make eating well practical and inexpensive, and to be totally honest, that priority is probably gonna have to hit the backburner for a while until we get the recession figured out and ramen stops looking so attractive. Sometimes life sucks.

Disney Advertising on Eggs

Speaking of creepy food, Disney is now putting character stamps on eggs. Really. I can't think of anything profound to say other then that there's probably some symbolism here that a better English major then me could tease out.

Dutch Harbor Alaska's Hysterical Police Blotter

"A boat comes in with 50 people. You're a bunch of single guys, or your family's back in Seattle -- what do you do for two days in town?" said Police Chief Jamie Sunderland, who ended up in Dutch Harbor after a 10-year career in Army intelligence as a Russian linguist. "You go play some basketball, you shop for some doodads, and then you go to the bar and drink."

Of course, the locals manage to get into their own share of scrapes. Names aren't included in the blotter postings unless someone has been charged with a significant crime. Still, most residents are able to read between the lines. Who was the woman who phoned the police and said her armchair was trying to kill her? That one was easy -- her furniture's always after her. Who was the trawl fisherman arrested for driving while intoxicated after pulling out of the Harbor View Bar's parking lot with a teacup Chihuahua in his lap? Do you have to ask?

"People read this and they think, 'What kind of a place is this?' "Webb said.

Great, funny-ass journalism, LA Times. I gotta read them more often.

Cake Happy: Guava and Passion Fruit Cake

So I know what I want for MY birthday....

food news food news

Half-assed update tonight, I'm rather busy, life is pain.

Socola Chocolates

Scrumptious looking Vietnamese inspired chocolates. They have bacon and durian flavors. I am sold. Socola is the Vietnamese word for chocolate, by the by.

Dungeness Crab Week in San Francisco.

Feburary 19th to March 1st is Dungeness Week in the Bay and I am incredibly pissed I cannot be there. I imagine I could make some sort of low rent variant on chili crabs from the little blue gulf guys we get here, though. Hmm, I believe I have my weekend project.

Restaurants Being Nice Again - NYTimes

And so too does snooty ass eating find its Waterloo: the economy. Soon we will start seeing blue-plate specials at WD-50 and Vong, Thomas Keller shilling MRE's and Bouchon labeled meal bars in the back of Women's Day. As an aside, a 35 dollar prix fixe menu at Vong? I wish I was in New York, even if it is butt-ass cold there.

Daphen Derven joins NOLA Food and Farm Network

Good development, this. We need more dedicated food pros boots on the ground in NOLA. I'm hoping to volunteer with the Edible Schoolyard for my community service project at Tulane next year...great program.

la macarena pupuseria, gourmet peanut butter, steakhouses reopen

La Macarena Pupeseria
8120 Hampson St.
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 862-5252



Pupusas are a common dish in El Salvador: think of a thick corn tortilla, usually stuffed with a variety of delicious feelings. Pupuserias are becoming more and more common in the USA - Sacramento has a healthy collection - and their quesadilla-esque creations are gaining quite a bit of popularity.

La Macarena Pupeseria opened around a month ago in the Riverbend district of New Orleans. The menu has got a healthy collection of pupusas, including a foofoo but tasty sounding sun dried tomato variant, as well as ropa vieja, camarones en salsa, and a good variety of other Latin American dishes. Ceviche, tamales, and guacamole are also on the menu, as well as a few Latin inflected sandwiches. Prices are fairly reasonable for New Orleans - and Tulane students take note, I hear they're offering student discounts.

I decided to go for the tropical shrimp salad ($12.95) which was quite good: tasty shrimps on a bed of mixed greens, hearts of palm, cabbage slaw, tomato, and avocado, topped off with a lemony and rather Caesar-esque dressing, as well as a couple of rounds of thick and buttery garlic bread. It's a nice fresh salad and a pretty good value, considering our price-gougin happy locale. I promise to return soon and try the ropa vieja and ceviche: I have been negligent in not doing so sooner. And stuff.

In other news....

PB Loco Flavored Peanut Butters

Asian Curry spice and Cocoa-banana peanut butter anyone? All jest aside, this stuff actually looks kinda promising. Could be an interesting addition if one just wants to throw together a quick Thai meal and needs a break from the endless onslaught of Skippy.

Ice Cream Cupcakes

Ice cream cupcakes sound like an absolutely brilliant idea and I heartily salute the person who came up with this bidness. I happen to love Philly Swirl Italian ice cups and I can only imagine that these will be a winner in the "cheap but alluring" frozen food department. Nom.

Two Classic N.O Steakhouses Sizzling Again

Good to hear that some more restaurants are coming on back from the deluge. Also, that $23 buck filet mignon at Charlie's sounds like a pretty good deal next time I get my steak jones on.

food news and other business: zagats in sacto!

Sacramento Gets Its Own Zagat's Guide

Sacramento should really get over its former reputation as some sort of culinary wasteland. Sacramento does very well for itself for a mid-size city - we've got tons of ethnic and cultural variety, we have fine dining, we've got fun, we've got cutting edge - and perhaps this new Zagat's guide will finally allow us to chill the hell out. I hope I can pick it up soon and see what the Zagat's folks had to say about our hometown heroes. I imagine VERY NICE THINGS.

Asian Dining Rules

I want to buy these in bulk and give them to everyone I know. (The author is from EGullet, who I trust very much.) I love Asian food and would like to share that love with the people I know. However, there is some back information that would behoove people to know before they walk into an Asian restaurant. With just a little bit of simple training, you can come away from an Asian restaurant with a great meal and a Cultural Learnings experience, instead of being stuck with crab rangoon and sesame chicken yet again and again and again. I'll check it out and let you know what I think.

What will The Obama's Eat?

Interesting article on Presidential dining choices.

This is particularly telling: "President Bush was up front: no soup, no salads, no greens and no "wet fish" - a real head scratcher for the White House chef."

""Truthfully, President Bush would have been happy with a peanut butter and honey sandwich, hamburger or grilled cheese sandwich," Scheib said. "

Sounds like a second grader to me. The kind of second grader who is so incredibly stubborn about what he will ingest into his body that he subsists on Kraft Mac N' Cheese exclusively and develops a raging and difficult to treat case of scurvy.

This may be a metaphor for the administration at large.

Calorie Counts At Restaurants Hit The UK

I'm on the fence about required calories counts. On the one hand, I'm uncomfortable with the government inserting its great and omniscient hand into our most basic and essential daily choice: what the hell we're going to eat. I would also be vastly pissed off if it was decided (in the future) that these requirements must apply to small ethnic places or to fine dining establishments - which would be a harsh financial burden and an excellent way to suck all the fun out of eating delicious and butter-ridden cuisine.

On the other hand, the obesity problem in this country is, uh, getting bigger, and a dose of reality at the fast food walk up line cannot always be a bad thing. People are often grossly ignorant of the real calorie counts of fast food choices. Salads at most fast food places, for example, contain hundreds more calories then a basic hamburger - it's all the ranch dressing and croutons and fried Chick O' Bits lumped on there with the nutritious greens. Starbucks is another nutritional minefield: those giant Frappucino things that most of my college-age cohorts subsist on contain a ton of fat and calories. Seeing this in stark relief up on the menu board..well, okay, I can see why.

Via Sweet Juniper: Amazing abandoned zoo photos.

Finally, a post from the beautifully written Sweet Juniper blog about an abandoned Rust Belt zoo, complete with eery and gorgeous photos. Don't miss it.

Leopold reopens!

The Leopold Cafe is up and running again. The sayings are true - you can't stop Mumbai. You can barely arrest it in its tracks. I am certain the terrorist groups fervently checking their Blackberries are just thrilled to hear this news.

Jai Hind, long live India.


Mumbai's Leopold Cafe reopens - Sydney Morning Herald

Leopold's cafe, the first target of the Islamist attacks that killed almost 200 people in Mumbai, became the first to reopen on Sunday as its defiant owner said he "would never let terrorists win".

On the dot of midday Farzad Jehani and his brother Farhang pulled up the shutters of the 137-year-old cafe, where 10 people died on Wednesday when Islamist extremists launched attacks that shook India's commercial capital to its core.

As customers and media poured into the cafe, on one of Mumbai's main shopping thoroughfares, staff wearing red polo shirts burst into applause and one man led a cheer of "God bless India".


I remember those red polo shirts! All my best to the cafe's owners for showing such a delightful unwillingness to bow to the demands of the world's batshit insane contingent. May they have many more years of serving beer to stoned tourists. They deserve it.

Mumbai residents try to return to routines - Los Angeles Times

"Farzad Jehani, the cafe's owner, sat down for a chat between cellphone calls and a steady stream of greetings.

"The support people have given us, we never expected such an outpouring. It's really unbelievable," said Jehani, who lost two staff members in the hail of bullets. "Our city will come back. But when are we going to put our foot down? We've seen attacks in 1993, 2006 and now 2008."

In the neighborhood around the Jewish center, where six hostages died, including an American rabbi and his wife, food vendors were back in place, most of the small costume jewelry and clothing shops had reopened and foot traffic was picking up. There were also tourists in droves."



Flowers for the Taj - NYTimes - Anosh Irani

"On Saturday, when the siege ended, I stepped outside our gates and took a taxi to the Taj. The driver let me off nearby at the Regal Cinema and I walked toward the Leopold Cafe. The smell of disinfectant was overpowering. The cafe was closed, but through the shutters I noticed that two ceiling fans were on. There was a flier on the outside wall with “Good News” written on it, an advertisement for plumbing and carpentry.

The makeshift stores selling old gramophones were empty. A store called R. Dadavji’s Ladies and Gents Under Garments was open. Florists also were open because a tragedy like this always means business. But everything else was closed. I came in view of the Taj’s entrance and the spot where my grandfather’s black Fiat was always parked. There was a police barricade flanked by fire engines. The hotel’s windows had been smashed, like teeth that had suddenly gone missing. Above, crows circled.

I thought of all the weekends when I would come to the Taj bookstore with my grandfather. I thought of how for so many years he bejeweled the hotel’s rooms with flowers. Today, I thought, his store would be closed. The last thing he would have wanted would be to use his flowers to decorate the dead."

Beautiful editorial. Go read it.

more from the maximum city: social media comes of age

Mumbai Attack Coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media - ZDNet.com

"Sadly, the people writing about how cool it is that people are live tweeting the events in Mumbai are missing a huge point. What’s happening now — and what is happening in Mumbai — is bigger than all of us. It’s bigger than communicating via Twitter. It’s bigger than just reading blogs. This is where social media grows up.

Social media is providing the ability to report and take in unfiltered news in a more direct way than ever before possible and we’re doing it on a mass scale. It’s no longer just a toy for early adopters and Internet nerds; it’s taking its place as an influencer far beyond technology. There is, however, a downside: there’s very little way to know what is true and what is rumor. As fellow ZDNet-er Michael Krigsman said to me the night, “we’re trading off potential accuracy for immediacy.”

He’s right. On one hand, social media shows the wisdom of crowds while at the same time demonstrates the reactionary failures of the crowd."

Social media is ready for prime time. This is it: the game is on, we have arrived. Get on the bus now. We're going to be handling, processing, and watching horrific events like the Mumbai attacks in very different ways from here on out. This is not just for geeks and weirdos and the highly educated: this is for everyone.







'Terrorists had plan to blow up Taj' - The Times of India

"NEW DELHI: Times Now reports suggest that terrorist who was caught alive had confessed to investigating agencies that they had a plan to blow up
the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai.

The terrorists had enough explosives to blow up the Taj hotel.

Sources have told the TV channel that they wanted to reduce the life-size building of Taj hotel to rubble. They also believed to have told about their plan to replicate a ‘JW Marriot’, happened at Islamabad, to the Mumbai hotel.

In a sense to destroy the symbol of financial strength of the country and send shock-waves all across the globe, the terrorists wanted to do a 9/11 in India. "

Symbolism is everything in these overt terror attacks. Again, I can't help drawing the 9/11 connection: that too was a primarily symbolic attack, intended to hit the USA right where it lived. Of course, I doubt the terrorists motivation in this situation was to cut India "down to size" somehow - we just don't know yet. I'm damn well waiting.

AFP: Terror, Disbelief, Shock: Witnesses tell of Mumbai horror

"South African security guard Faisul Nagel was having dinner with colleagues at a Taj restaurant when the assault began. They barricaded the restaurant and moved everyone into the kitchen.

"We basically put the lights off in the restaurant just to create an element of surprise. And we armed ourselves with kitchen knives and meat cleavers," he told AFP by phone.

They ended up helping around 120 people escape -- including a 90-year-old woman who had to be carried in her chair down 25 flights of stairs.

When guests finally escaped, they could hardly believe their eyes.

"Outside in the foyer of this beautiful hotel, (it) was just like in a fog with all the smoke," retired judge Paul Guest told Australian radio. "There was blood all over the floor and bits of bodies."



Taxi Meant To Blow Up Domestic Airport - India Today

"Shortly before the terrorists moved into their targets in South Mumbai, a black and yellow taxi, with three passengers and enough ammunition to bring down a dome, sped in the direction of the airport. Instead of taking a slip road that would have taken the passengers straight to the airport, the driver took the flyover which bypassed the airport, only to get stuck at a red light.

At rush hour, the lights stayed red for long, at which the passengers berated the driver and asked him to cut the traffic lights. The driver moved on, but the wait turned out to be a minute or two too long. The car exploded. All that was found was a severed head and parts of three human legs. Had the terrorists' plans of coinciding a blast at the airport with the attacks on the Taj and Oberoi hotels succeeded, the death toll of 26/11 would have been much bigger than it already is. "

It's always horrifying to tease out the threads of a disaster like this one and determine where things could have gone much much worse. I do think this is one case where Mumbai's horrible nightmare clusterfuck traffic came in VERY VERY HANDY.

Mumbai Attack Coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media - ZDNet.com

"Sadly, the people writing about how cool it is that people are live tweeting the events in Mumbai are missing a huge point. What’s happening now — and what is happening in Mumbai — is bigger than all of us. It’s bigger than communicating via Twitter. It’s bigger than just reading blogs. This is where social media grows up.

Social media is providing the ability to report and take in unfiltered news in a more direct way than ever before possible and we’re doing it on a mass scale. It’s no longer just a toy for early adopters and Internet nerds; it’s taking its place as an influencer far beyond technology. There is, however, a downside: there’s very little way to know what is true and what is rumor. As fellow ZDNet-er Michael Krigsman said to me the night, “we’re trading off potential accuracy for immediacy.”

He’s right. On one hand, social media shows the wisdom of crowds while at the same time demonstrates the reactionary failures of the crowd."

Social media is ready for prime time. This is it: the game is on, we have arrived. Get on the bus now. We're going to be handling, processing, and watching horrific events like the Mumbai attacks in very different ways from here on out. This is not just for geeks and weirdos and the highly educated: this is for everyone.

Cafe Leopold: News and Memories

I suppose I'm fixating on this backpackers haunt because 1. I've hung out there and 2. it's very representative of backpackers haunt all over the world, from California to Beijing to Bombay. It's the kind of place where weirdos, degenerates, and the merely frightened hang out, and the fact that it was selected specifically as a target gives me and I imagine many other lily-white foreign tourists a bit of pause. I'm not pretending Leopold is noble or anything, but it is symbolic.


From the BBC live feed of events:

1500 Farzed Jehani, who owns the popular backpacker haunt, the Leopold Café, told the BBC how it was stormed by gunmen. "Two people from the outside... started firing into the premises," he says. "For a minute it was like firecrackers, but they realised very soon that it wasn't - it was bullets flying. A grenade was thrown into the restaurant which, yes, blew [up]... Two of my waiters died. There was around five or six tourist bodies lying on the floor, as well as five or six Indian people who were lying on the floor, dead."

Unimaginable. I know exactly how that place looked on a regular Wednesday night and can't place crazed gunmen in the picture.

Cafe Leopold's: Where it All Began - India Today

"One of the places where Shantaram was distributed and sold on its release was at Leo's in 2005. From unsavoury elements, both Indian and foreign, to young students looking for a good time to regulars that have haunted the place for nearly half a decade you could find all kinds of people enjoying the onion stew on any day of the week at Leo's.

It's a pity that Robert's favourite haunt became the location for the first attack by the terrorist. The casual and friendly atmosphere of the cafe will be a thing of the past for a while, and with foreign embassies being what they are with their warning to their citizens, travelers from across the seas will take some time before they start flocking to their favourite haunt again!"

Shadowy Cafe Frequented by Westerners a Natural Target - Sydney Morning Herald


"Leopold's has long been a tourist destination because of its authenticity. For years its reputation and its art deco signage have lured travellers into the bustling, slightly tattered interior. Travellers have described visiting it as an "event". Like the Coliseum Cafe in Kuala Lumpur or Fishawy in Cairo, its down-at-heel charms have made it an international landmark."

"Authentic" is stretching it (shadowy is not) but the joint was certainly a Colaba fixture. (I hope it is not a "was".)

Also this:

"Leopold's was also the setting for much of the action in Shantaram, the novel by the Australian author Gregory David Roberts, and based loosely on his years on the run in India after fleeing Australia following his conviction on drug and armed robbery charges.

The Leopold's in Shantaram resembles a modern-day Rick's Cafe Americain from Casablanca, filled with shadowy types exchanging forged passports or doing drug deals."

Guess I need to read Shantaram now. Everyone seemed to be hauling that monster around Mumbai this April. The book vendors set up shop all along the street Leopold's was on, hawking slightly over-priced counterfeits to all comers. Wish I sprang for it.

David Coker tells how he stared down a Mumbai terrorist - Herald Sun

"As diners at Mumbai's Leopold Cafe were gunned down in front of them, an injured Mr Coker, 23, scooped up Kate Anstee, 24, as she was trying to crawl to safety and carried her to a taxi.

"When they got out of the restaurant he said he had Katie in his arms and he walked out through this debris of broken glass to see a man standing with an AK-47," David's father John Coker said from Townsville.

"He said, 'I'll never forget his face. He looked at me, Dad, and he didn't shoot us."


Finally, a fascinating and non terrorism linked article on Mumbai's Iranian cafe's from the Asia Times.


"Iranian cafes are century-old landmarks in India's financial capital and perhaps Asia's oldest surviving genre of restaurants. Their bun maska (crusty buns split and spread with butter), kari (fluffy) biscuits, custard pies, puddings and paani kum chai (thick milky tea) are as much part of cosmopolitan Mumbai as cheesecakes in New York or croissants on the sidewalk cafes in Paris. "

"Some remaining Iranian cafes, such as Cafe Mundegar and the more internationally famous Leopold Cafe in Colaba, transformed themselves into airy pubs that are now favorite watering holes for Western tourists in Mumbai. As with classic Iranian cafe tradition, the restaurants occupy the corner of a building and have two entrances: one never bumps into an entering or exiting customer."

great post from Anand Giridharadas

I really enjoyed this snippet from Anand Giridharadas, who writes for the International Herald Tribune. You can read the whole thing and other excellent updates on the Mumbai situation at The Lede blog.

"Anyone, anywhere who has lived in Mumbai was gasping at the sight of a burning Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel. That is because it is not your average hotel.

It is not another Sheraton or Hilton in the business district of another world city. It is the aorta through which anything glamorous, sentimental, confidential or profitable passes in Mumbai. Its major role is to serve its guests, who come from around the world and elsewhere in India. But it also serves the local city in a way that few hotels in the world could claim to do.

If a momentous infidelity is being committed on a given night, or a billion-dollar business deal being inked, or a recklessly brilliant idea being hatched, there is a fair chance it is being committed,
inked, hatched at the Taj. Mumbaikars who can afford it have their most romantic meals at its Wasabi restaurant, accept marriage proposals in its Sea Lounge, land job offers in its coffee shop.
Non-guests are forbidden to use the pool. But so many Mumbaikars enterprisingly bring a towel, furnish a fake room number and dip into its manmade lagoon.

It stands across from the Gateway of India. Those who would not dream of paying $3 – a decent daily wage – for one of its fresh-lime sodas sit outside the hotel, leaning against the stone wall on the sea. They take in the scene; they admire the finely dressed people breezing in and out. They know that it is not their time for the Taj now, but, should a fortune bless them, it is in the Taj they will spend it.

Few other hotels of the world could say they were built out of spite.

Legend has it that J.R.D. Tata, a nineteenth-century industrialist, was once turned away from a hotel in British-era Mumbai because he happened to be Indian. He decided, in a strange kind of revenge, to
build the best hotel in the country, outfitted with German elevators, French bathtubs and other refinements from all around the world.

The hotel became, for many Indians, a symbol of the overthrow of the indignities of the colonial age. And it became a symbol of the best that could be had in a city paved with dreams."