C-CAP and other parties

February 26

It has been a busy week. Lot's of parties, which doesn't seem normal for a blustery week in late February.

Before I go into detail, though, let's start with the news: A new pastry chef is starting at Aquavit on Monday. Candice Chia, formerly pastry sous chef at Café Boulud, will be executive pastry chef there. And Marcus Jernmark, who last time we heard, was running the kitchen, but hadn’t been promoted yet, is now executive chef.

That’s all according to Aquavit owner Håken Swahn (Marcus Samuelsson’s business partner). He’s the gentleman in the picture at the beginning of his blog entry, standing next to Rita Jammet, a former restaurateur and very proud mother of Nicolas Jammet, partner in the burgeoning Sweetgreen salad and frozen yogurt chain.

I learned all of that on Wednesday at the annual C-CAP benefit. But the week started, as weeks do, on Monday, when D’Artagnan, supplier of foie gras and other goodies, threw a big party at Guastavino to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

I invited my friend Blain Howard, the ultimate combination of video game geek and cool guy. It was interesting to watch him as he talked about video games with Autumn, a friend of Will Blunt of Starchefs.

She asked him what his favorite video game was, and he said Super Mario Bros. 3, and then went into details as to why, and how that was his favorite of old-school games but his favorite new game was Bioshock, which is apparently a really scary one.

And then he really geeked out on all the details and I lost track.

It’s fascinating to see someone who once worked at Abercrombe & Fitch as one of those models/salespeople talk like that. Such poise and confidence while also being so phenomenally dorky. It’s charming.

So we ate ribs and foie gras and cassoulet while drinking wine from Southwestern France and sharing opinions about Caprica.

On Tuesday I went to the launch of Burger King's new batch broiler during lunch and then stayed at work late to finish writing about sourcing obscure ingredients — a story you'll get to enjoy a couple of weeks from now.

Wednesday, as you know, was the always awesome C-CAP fundraiser, which you can read about here (complete with slide show).

The second picture in this blog entry is of John Fraser, executive chef of Dovetail, and Gramercy Tavern pastry chef Nancy Olson. John gave me the scoop on a big, exciting change underway at Dovetail and then asked me not to tell anyone.

So I won’t tell anyone, but be on the look-out for an excellent announcement from John in early March. Second Monday of the month maybe.

Last night was a really fun party at the Astor Center celebrating the 10th anniversary of Gastronomica, where the irrepressible Dave Arnold, director of culinary technology at the International Culinary Center aka The French Culinary Institute, was making cocktails out of local rye whiskey, and also serving up amazing little passion fruit puffs, made by adding a little bit of one of those methylcellulose compounds to passion fruit purée, puffing them up and then freezing them in liquid nitrogen.

Dave said this was an old trick, possibly developed by Sean Brock, but he wasn’t sure, after the gang in molecular gastronomy world realized that things that didn't contain much moisture were easily eaten even right after they'd been frozen with liquid nitrogen.

So he poured liquid nitrogen over the little passion fruit puffs, popped one in his mouth and then blew what looked like smoke out of his nose. Like a dragon.

Of course it was vapor from the liquid nitrogen, but it was awesome.

Pavia Rosati ate her passion fruit puff seductively and elegantly, blowing vapor out of her mouth like she'd just smoked a cigarette and then French-inhaling it again up her nose.

She’s marvelous, that Pavia. She really is.

Opening the Beard Award selection process

February 22

I spoke with James Beard Foundation president Susan Ungaro this afternoon about the fact that so many of the 397 semi-finalists for this year’s chef and restaurant awards are newcomers to the list.

As I mentioned when I reported on the semi-finalists last week, more than half (the actual figure is 53 percent) were on the list last year, too. But considering how many of the same nominees return year after year, that’s pretty good turnover.

Susan explained that the nomination process has been democratized.

Although just about 400 people — past winners and the media — judge the awards, anyone can nominate a chef. That’s been true since 2008, when the awards went all-electronic. That year more than 9,000 people submitted nominations in the 17 chef and restaurant categories. Last year 15,000 people participated in the process, and this year it was more than 21,000.

Then in most categories the awards committee picks the top 20 names, and those are the semifinalists.

An exception is the Rising Star award, which goes to chefs age 30 and younger, so they have a limited window in which to win it. The awards committee takes that into consideration and lets a few more names slip on.

The result is the ungainly-looking list of 26 names you see meandering down the upper right-hand side of this page.

Susan told me one of her goals as president was to try to alleviate the foundation's reputation as an elitist group focused on the East and West Coasts (I'd accuse it more of being New York-centric, actually), and to extend a hand to the masses.

Has she succeeded?

Well, if you look at that list, only one nominee is from New York, but that was true last year (it was Ryan Skeen from Irving Mill, in case you were wondering).

This year’s list has more chefs from cities in the interior* — Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Des Moines, Denver, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Peoria Heights, Ill. There's also a nominee from Hawaii’s smallest major island, Kaua‘i, Colin Hazama from the St. Regis hotel there. I guess that’s off the beaten path in the grand scheme of things.

But he was also a nominee last year. So was Sameh Wadi from Minneapolis. The rest weren’t on last year’s list and the only other interior cities that were represented were Farmington, Pa., Rochester, Minn., and Memphis, Tenn.

Okay, so this year’s list isn’t that much more geographically diverse than last year's. It’s still dominated by coastal cities, but then again, coastal cities are most of the country's major population centers.

I do wonder why Chicago’s not represented, though. Maybe too many great young chefs split the local vote.

*for these purposes I’m going to classify Philadelphia and its suburbs as East Coast, even though it’s technically not, because it is culturally, and the rest of Pennsylvania as interior; and Las Vegas as West Coast; New Orleans is unclassifiable, but since it has always been considered an important food city I'm going to say it's not interior, but I'll go ahead and say Houston is interior. That’s just how I roll. Chicago is always well represented in the awards, although it doesn’t have any rising star nominees this year, unless you count Peoria as a suburb, and I think that’s stretching it a bit.

What Celina Tio’s up to these days

February 22

The last time, I mentioned Celina Tio, she was planning on opening a restaurant called Julia(n) in Charlotte, N.C.

Well, plans for that fell through awhile back — something to do with a disagreement with the landlord, if memory serves — and it turns out that she’s back in Kansas City and is the proud chef and owner of Julian (sans parenthesis — as a general rule, it’s a good idea when you’re thinking of putting parentheses in your restaurant’s name to think again).

Celina’s billing the food as refined but comforting food made with local, seasonal ingredients, which is to say  that she’s doing what most other fine-dining chefs in the country are doing.

I don’t mean that in a bad way, in fact, I mean that in a good way. It makes sense to respond to the Zeitgeist, after all, doesn’t it?

The full menu’s on the restaurant’s web site, but it includes things like lobster shepherds pie, cassoulet, short ribs with gratin potatoes and Brussels sprouts, a cheeseburger — you get the idea.

There are also "popcorn sweetbreads" for appetizers, and a lobster salad with grapefruit, fennel and argan oil.

Who knew argan oil would get so popular?

Beard Awards season begins

February 18

The James Beard Foundation has released its long list of semifinalists for the James Beard Foundation Awards, following a tradition started two years ago when Josh Ozersky let the list leak when he was the grand poobah of Grub Street. Before then, just the finalists were announced.

This year, that will happen on March 22, and the winners will be awarded in an exceedingly long black tie ceremony at Avery Fisher Hall on May 3.

In the meantime, two rounds of voting are underway. First, starting today, judges will narrow down each category to five (or occasionally six) finalists, who will then be voted on by that same group of judges. The winner will have the opportunity to capitalize on the publicity. It’s generally very good for a chef to win a Beard Award. It doesn’t make him or her a better chef, but it can generate considerable publicity and revenue if the chefs play their cards right.

The nominees are already pretty well-known, at least in their markets, and quite often the same people are nominated year after year – although from what I’ve perused so far of the long list this year, there are quite a few new names, which is refreshing.

Mostly the Beard Awards are a feel-good popularity contest and a chance for the fine dining world to throw a series of big, fun parties. There’s nothing wrong with that.

And I consider two of the awards to be rather important: best new restaurant, and rising star.

The Rising Star award goes to a chef aged 30 or younger and can be a real career-maker. Past winners include Marcus Samuelsson, Andrew Carmellini, Grant Achatz, Chris Lee, Corey Lee, David Chang, Gavin Kaysen and, most recently, Nate Appelman. It’s a good award to win.

And best new restaurant, well, you only have one shot at it, and that alone makes it interesting.

Voting is done by former winners and food writers like me. But I’d like to give you a chance to vote, too.

So my new poll, as you can see in the upper right hand corner of this page, is your chance to make your pick for Rising Star chef of 2010.

Will this vote count in the actual selection process?

No, it will not.

Will it at least influence how I vote?

Again, no.

But it should be fun anyway, and it will give whichever chef wins a chance to promote himself or herself as the Food Writer’s Diary Rising Star Chef. It might not be as prestigious as the Beard Awards, although really, it depends on how you spin it.

And isn’t that true of any award?

Emilia-Romagna and Sicily

February 16

Emilia-Romagna and Sicily tied in this blog's latest poll, which asked readers to pick their favorite Italian region for food.

You can read the full results at nrn.com.

Cocktail news from Pranna

February 12

So much to write about, so little time.

For now I’ll just mention some news I learned last night at a sort of networking party thrown by the New York City Hospitality Group, formed by a dozen people with different types of expertise in the foodservice and lodging industries who want to network with others. It’s a good idea.

They threw a party at Pranna, at which publicist Andrew Freeman spoke briefly but entertainingly and intelligently about foodservice trends.

The party was in Pranna’s basement, and we ate fried and stuffed things and naan, and I drank red wine.

Pranna has a serious Asian-oriented cocktail list intended to go with the cuisine from South Asia (that's the Indian subcontinent) and Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia etc.)

But bar manager Eric Greczel says they plan to mix it up downstairs, which Pranna’s owners have told him to turn into a proper high-end cocktail bar, with drinks that take five minutes to make, rather than the 90 seconds they have at the busy bars upstairs.

So keep your eyes open for that.

Bocuse d’Or USA

February 7

I’m going to sleep soon, but first, in case you really need to know who won the Bocuse d'Or USA competition and don’t follow me on Twitter but can’t wait until it’s up on the Nation's Restaurant News web site later this morning, I’ll go ahead and tell you it's James Kent from Eleven Madison Park.

I saved the good pictures for NRN.com, because I know where my bread is buttered, but this is an outtake, of (from the right), Eleven Madison Park executive chef Daniel Humm, Bocuse d’Or USA champion and today’s king of the world James Kent, EMP general manager Will Guidara (or as people in the chain restaurant biz say, “Frank's boy”) and Tom Allan, who like James Kent is one of EMP’s sous chefs, but James played captain in this competition, so he's the winner. Tom will accompany him to Lyon in January of next year to represent the stars and stripes there.

Tonight, everyone in this picture is probably getting drunk.

Rome on the Hudson

February 5

Maialino is probably the hottest Roman restaurant in New York City right now. It can’t help it; it’s a Danny Meyer restaurant and New Yorkers love Danny Meyer.

But there’s a lot of Roman food out there.

Lupa’s full name is Lupa Osteria Romana.

Sandro Fioriti, currently of Sandro’s on the Upper East Side, has been dishing up carciofi alla giudia and any number of carbonara and amatriciana dishes for the better part of 25 years, and, well, Florence Fabricant recently gave a rundown of Roman restaurants in the Times.

That makes Roman the trendiest Italian regional cuisine in New York at the moment, but there’s a poll on the right side of this screen asking you what your favorite Italian region is for food. Go ahead — pick one. (Rome’s in Lazio, by the way).

Not too long ago I had lunch at one of New York's newer Roman places, Sora Lella. Sora’s slang for Signora, or madam, and Lella was the nickname for Elena Trabalza, the original chef of the original restaurant, on Isola Tiberina, a little island in the Tiber River in Rome.

I went to the New York branch with the restaurant's publicist, which is a good thing, because the restaurant was closed for lunch that day and its owners don’t speak a whole lot of English, except for the chef, Fabio, who, you know, had to be in the kitchen making lunch.

I understand a fair number of Italian food words, but not much else.

Sora Lella’s owners are a nice group, all family members, who said they decided to finally open in New York after visitors from Gotham to their restaurant in Rome had been bugging them to do so for years. They opened their doors in far western SoHo (Spring St., between Hudson and Renwich streets) about nine months ago.

Their business partner, who owns the building, told me about how many new residences and businesses were being established in the area, something I'd been hearing about the neighborhood since Dani opened four years ago two blocks away from where Sora Lella is now. Dani failed to thrive and closed a scant two years after it opened, but a bunch of restaurants have opened around there since then, like 508 — at 508 Greenwich St., a block and a half away.

The owners of both Sora Lella and 508 say they’re doing well and enjoy good followings from local denizens, including the celebrities who live not too far away.

When I had dinner at 508 recently, Thom Filicia, the interior design guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, was at the bar, so that’s something.

At Sora Lella, Fabio’s family entertained me and poured me glasses of Roman wine while the chef served me his grandmother's polpettine, which the menu translate”s as “Nonna Lella’s Sliders.”
Nonna means grandmother, and polpettine are actually meatballs. But I guess "sliders” are slightly more trendy than meatballs — although maybe not, according to my friend Andrew Knowlton who I just saw on TV a little while ago declaring meatballs the food of 2010.

I’m afraid I don’t know what show he said that on, because I don’t watch morning TV programs that invite people like Andrew to talk about food, but a tiny clip of it was replayed either on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, and I saw it there.

Back at Sora Lella, I also had classic gnocchi all'Amatriciana and braised oxtail with pine nuts, among other things.

The Trabalzas have embraced their restaurant’s new American location, and even are offering a Super Bowl menu this Sunday.

Here it is, for $65 (not including tax or tip), including all the beer and wine you can get down your neck (house wine, of course):

Classic Caesar Salad

Polppettine della Nonna Lella
Beef “sliders”, Breaded, Deep Fried and Topped with Tomato Sauce.

Fried Calamari with a Spicy Tomato dipping Sauce

Supplí
Bite-size Roman Riceballs

Pizza
Our Pizza is Stuffed with a Choice of the Following:
Broccoli and Sausage; Classic Margherita; Eggplant and Zucchini

Bruschette
Topped with Lardo, Liver Mousse, Classic Tomato, Artichoke

Mixed Cured Olives

Not for NRN readers

February 1

Nation’s Restaurant News, the magazine of which this blog is part, is intended for, and mostly read by, people who own or manage restaurants or are in some way involved in buying or selling things for restaurants.

A lot of food writers read it, too, and many of your favorite consumer magazines and newspapers subscribe and copy liberally from it.

Some NRN readers also read this blog, but a lot of people who read this don’t read NRN (and, as the lackluster number of responses to my poll on MUFSO illustrate, they're not interested in big chain restaurant conventions). They are simply food enthusiasts or restaurant scene voyeurs and the sort of people who might be interested in the casting call announcement I just received, which I will paste below, exclamation marks and all.

Restaurant operators and former operators are not invited.

Thank you for your attention.

OPEN CASTING CALL

Food Network and the producers of The Next Food Network Star are looking for two person teams for a new competition series!

Have you always dreamed of running your own restaurant? Does your wife, husband, brother, sister, mother, partner or friend share that dream?

Do you make restaurant quality meals at home and want to show that you can take it to the next level? Are you a pro in the kitchen while your teammate is a star in the front of the house? Are you ready to prove that you have what it takes to run a restaurant? If so, we want to meet you!

NEW YORK CASTING CALL INFORMATION

Date: Friday, February 12, 2010
Time: 10am – 3pm
Location: Professor Thoms
219 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10003
*Please go to www.24hourrestaurantbattle.com to download two applications (one for you, one for your partner). Please bring completed applications along with recent photos to the casting call.*

WHO SHOULD APPLY:
Two person teams with pre-existing relationships: Husband & wife, ex-husband & wife, father & daughter, mother & son, newlyweds, brothers, sisters, twins, cousins, best friends, etc.

The Skills to Run a Restaurant: Applicants may have no restaurant experience, a ton of experience, or some combination of the two. One member of the team will be the chef and run the kitchen, and the other will run the “front of the house,” so all we ask is that you have the skills to, as a team, actually run a restaurant.

Personality that Pops: Are you and your teammate charismatic and outgoing? We’re looking for lots of energy and charm!

*Please don’t apply if you already own your own restaurant or have previously owned a restaurant.

• If you have any questions, please contact us at casting24NY@gmail.com
• Applicants must (a) be a US citizen or permanent legal resident with the unrestricted ability to work in the U.S. and (b) be at least 18 years of age.

On eating contests

January 29

My old Jewish youth group chapter, Judge Saul Pinchick AZA 6, in Denver, has a Facebook fan page.

That’s not surprising.

Its profile picture is a shot of the members of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity from the movie Animal House, which either shows a certain continuity of culture from when I was in AZA 6, or simply illustrates what a seminal work (the second definition) that film was in creating the vision of a society to which so many fraternal organizations aspire.

When I was president of that chapter, we had a social event called The Food Olympics, that was a series of eating competitions. Being a Jewish youth group, we would say the Hebrew blessing appropriate for the food that we were about to try to eat more of faster than our fraternal brothers. Instead of firing a gun, or shouting "go," or counting down from 3, to signal the start of the competition we would say "amen."

The regional adviser at the time suggested that perhaps we were being sacrilegious — actually, she said it outright and wasn’t very nice about it — and in retrospect she had a point.

But it still won an award at the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization international convention as the best social function of the year.

I think it won in large part because I filled out the application using all the typographical bells and whistles that were available on my family's new MacIntosh 128k computer. It being 1983, unusual shadowed fonts were novelties that likely impressed the judges.

So I was delighted to receive the press release below a few minutes ago — so delighted that I thought I’d write a blog entry about it.

Because Jeff Ackerman was also in AZA 6 at the same time I was.

He didn’t participate in the Food Olympics as he was already Grand Aleph Mazkir (AZA language for international secretary) and didn’t fiddle much with our little chapter activities.

But still, well, I’ll let the press release speak for itself (except to point out that Chair 5 is also the name of a ski lift in Vail, and to note that Jeff graduated from Boston College in 1990):

Qdoba Mexican Grill Spices Up Hockey Beanpot

With Sixth Annual Rice & Bean Pot Burrito-Eating Contest

Local College Students Vie for Coveted Chowing Crown in Preliminary Rounds; Final Showdown Benefits Kevin Youkilis Hits for Kids Foundation

BOSTON – (January 29, 2010) – Winter is heating up thanks to Qdoba Mexican Grill’s spicy sixth annual Rice & Bean Pot Burrito-Eating Contest, scheduled to sate appetites at the Paradise Rock Club on February 10.

In celebration of Boston’s real Winter Classic, the venerable Beanpot College Hockey Tournament, Qdoba Mexican Grill will give students from Boston College, Boston University, Harvard University and Northeastern University the chance to demonstrate their speed — and appetites — as they battle for the coveted Rice & Bean Pot championship title. The high-stakes competition consists of four teams of four students from the Beanpot schools facing off in a speed-eating showdown for ultimate bragging rights and a trip for four to Mexico.

“We’re thrilled to unite our loyal Qdoba customers, sports enthusiasts, local musicians, and hockey fans alike to enjoy a fun-filled night celebrating one of Boston’s most beloved traditions, the Beanpot,” said Jeff Ackerman, President and CEO of local Qdoba franchise Chair 5. “We are overjoyed this year to support our partner Kevin Youkilis and his Hits for Kids Foundation, as we strongly believe in its mission and goals for the youth of Greater Boston and beyond.”

To advance to the final round, teams must win their preliminary round, held on or near their respective campuses on the following days:

Tuesday, February 2, 7 p.m. - Boston College Preliminary Round, Conte Forum (Gate C), Boston College Campus

Wednesday, February 3, 7 p.m. - Northeastern University Preliminary Round, Qdoba Mexican Grill, 393 Huntington Avenue

Thursday, February 4, 7 p.m. - Boston University Preliminary Round, Qdoba Mexican Grill, 961 Commonwealth Avenue

Saturday, February 6, 7 p.m. - Harvard University Preliminary Round, Qdoba Mexican Grill, 1280 Massachusetts Avenue

Teams of four students may register at www.riceandbeanpot.com or by emailing matt@chair5.com with the names, phone numbers, and email addresses for all team members. The first 25 teams to register will compete in the preliminary competition round.

Tickets for the Rice & Bean Pot finals may be purchased for $10 in advance at www.riceandbeanpot.com or by calling the Paradise Rock Club box office at 617-562-8820. Tickets purchased at the door cost $12.

Proceeds from the event will benefit the Kevin Youkilis Hits for Kids Foundation, a charitable organization focused on raising support and awareness for the health, advocacy, safety and well-being of children.

The Rice & Bean Pot also features Qdoba’s Beanpot Battle of the Bands, with bands from BC, BU, Harvard, and Northeastern — all voted into the battle by their respective classmates. Local band Bad Rabbits will headline the event with their soulful dance blend, while WAAF-FM’s morning-show host Greg Hill will serve as the evening’s host.

As part of Qdoba’s support of Kevin Youkilis Hits for Kids Foundation, the fast casual restaurant will offer the baseball star’s personally designed “Youk Burrito,” a chicken queso burrito with a choice of fajita or grilled vegetables, at all Qdoba locations in Massachusetts. A portion of the proceeds from every Youk Burrito will benefit Youkilis’ foundation.

“I’m honored and grateful that Hits for Kids is this year’s Rice & Bean Pot beneficiary,” said Youkilis. "I am personally a huge fan of Qdoba and am thrilled that the restaurant has chosen to support our charity, not only with the Youk Burrito but with this year’s Rice & Bean Pot.”

It goes on for a bit more, but you get the idea.

Johnny Rockets, what not to say to a sports legend, and how many Twitter followers everybody has

January 21

Thanks a lot, Twitter followers.

A week ago I tweeted the following: “Introducing Joe Theismann tonight at launch of Johnny Rockets Sports Lounge on UES. Was told to ask him about punting. Good idea, right?”

Did anyone warn me? Did anyone point out that the football legend, on one bad day in his mostly extraordinary career, famously kicked a punt of approximately one yard and that to bring it up, as countless others no-doubt do all the time, would be rude?

No, they did not.

One follower, InsideFandB, basically said “hey, that guy took my pen,” but otherwise, my approximately 1,600 followers — and you know who you are — were silent. Not a word of warning that I might hurt the feelings of a man whose feelings don’t deserve to be hurt and who, although now 60 years old, could easily fold me up into a pretzel and toss me out of the nearest window without breaking a sweat.

Chris Matthews was the one who suggested I bring up the punt. Not that Chris Matthews, wine writer Chris Matthews, who contributes to the New York Law Journal, among other publications, and is husband of food writer Kathryn Matthews. They’re a lovely couple.

We were at the 15th anniversary party of i Trulli, standing around, eating gnocchi and cavatelli and whatnot.

I met the restaurant’s executive chef, Patti Jackson. A pastry chef by training (most recently at Alto under Scott Conant, so not that recently), she told me about how she struggled to make perfect orecchiette — the little flat, round pasta with a name that literally means “small ears.” She was working meticulously, as pastry chefs do, to perfect each and every piece, and she was fretting about her inability to do so to the Italian woman who was teaching her, who finally said, “just shut up and make the pasta!”

Anyway, I told Chris and Kathryn that I would be introducing Joe Theismann at the opening of Johnny Rockets’ new sports lounge, Chris made the punting remark — obviously joking — and I thought I’d see if my Twitter followers cared about me.

I learned that they don’t.

Theismann seemed like a nice guy, though. He shook my hand and I asked him about his restaurant career, which started in 1975, when he was in the second year of his football career, as the Washington Redskins’ third-string quarterback.

Restaurateurs in Alexandria, Va., were looking for someone to lend his name to their restaurant and Theismann threw his hat in the ring. They asked why they should use his name when he was virtually a nobody. He told them it couldn’t get any worse.

Of course, he became a football legend, and the restaurant was a success. Theismann sold out of it in 1990, but a couple of years ago he came back into the restaurant business as a member of Johnny Rockets' board of directors.

The PR people at the burger chain had asked me to use my negligible star power (remember my 1,600 Twitter followers? Yeah well Frank Bruni as of this writing has 4,657, “Amateur Gourmet” Adam Roberts has nearly 6,000 and Tyler Florence has 182,429) to introduce Mr. Theismann, who used his considerable star power to introduce John Fowler, the proud father of Bryanna and McKenna Fowler, as the new president and chief executive of Johnny Rockets.

Joe Theismann does not appear to have a Twitter account, but I reckon that he has more star power even than Tyler Florence anyway.

John Fowler a big sports fan. He was in New York on a sort of media tour, talking to journalists like me, appearing on Bloomberg TV, meeting people at Time magazine.

I’m told that the Time meeting was a particular thrill for him because he was in the same offices as Sports Illustrated, a magazine of which he has every copy since he started reading it at age 12.

John’s such a big sports fan that when news of the sports lounge reached his friends, they told him that it had his fingerprints all over it.

John pointed out to them, however, that he’d only been CEO for a few days, which is not enough time to conceive of and execute a new restaurant concept.

Basically, it’s a regular Johnny Rockets on the ground floor, and then upstairs is a full bar, typical bar snacks like nachos and spring rolls and cheese sticks, a lounge area and a bunch of giant TVs.

The opening party seemed to be a success. A bunch of franchisees were there, and a bit of media. I had a fairly long chat with lawyer Andy Freedman, who with his wife, lawyer Jill Freedman, does the blog Wined and Dined and has 1,245 Twitter followers, as he snacked on cheeseburgers and such. He wondered if the Upper East Side really needed another sports bar.

It’s a fair question, and one to which I suspect Johnny Rockets Sports Lounge will find the answer.

bad day for flip fans

January 20

Cocktail doyenne Audrey Saunders says her Pegu Club was visited by the health department last night and, well, this is what she told her Facebook "friends":

"Everything was fine until the inspector looked on our menu, saw the Earl Grey MarTEAni, and told us that ... even with the warning we have printed on our menu about raw eggs, using raw eggs is a violation ... and that we have to switch to pasteurized eggs in our cocktails."

No-doubt the American Egg Board, egg producers' promotional body, would support the move, because they support anything that helps prevent food poisoning from eggs (wouldn't you? I mean you don't want people getting sick from your product), but in fact only one in about 20,000 eggs contains salmonella, according to the AEB.

I tell ya, eggs get a bad rap. They're not likely to raise your blood cholesterol either. From what I understand, the biggest contributing factor to blood cholesterol is genetics, and after that it's saturated fat. Eggs have a lot of dietary cholesterol, but not much saturated fat, and, counter-intuitive as it may seem, dietary cholesterol doesn't contribute to blood cholesterol.

In fact, egg yolks are really good for you. They contain all sorts of good micronutrients, including folate, Vitamins B6, B12, A and E, a bit of D and all sorts of carotenoids, which are good for your eyes, like carrots are.

Egg whites are pretty much protein.

Korean!

January 19

It’s official: Korean will be the next big ethnic cuisine in America, at least according to the 33 readers of this blog who were good enough to respond to my poll on the topic, eight of whom picked Korean.
Seven picked Indian and, well, you can see the results yourself below.
I asked about Roman cuisine because we've seen a little trendlet of Roman happening here in New York, as Florence Fabricant reported in The New York Times last week. I asked about Scandinavian because that was advocated by my friend Jody Eddy of Art Culinaire. She’s been on a big Iceland kick lately. Technically, last time I checked, Iceland wasn’t part of Scandinavia, but it’s close enough. I mean, they’re practically Vikings up there.
I think it’s interesting that regional Italian got no (0) votes. I’d be curious to know what the three people who said the next cuisine would be one I didn’t list think the next cuisine will be. If you’re one of those people, or even if you’re not, feel free, by all means, to comment below.

My next poll is in honor of the fact that we’re in the planning stages of our next MUFSO conference and, as always, we’re looking for feedback.

What will be the next big “ethnic” food to emerge in the United States?

Indian: 7 (21%)

Korean: 8 (24%)

West African: 3 (9%)

Roman: 1 (3%)

not Roman, but some other regional Italian: 0 (0%)

Scandinavian: 3 (9%)

Regional Mexican: 1 (3%)

Malaysian/Indonesian: 1 (3%)

Vietnamese: 1 (3%)

Regional American : 1 (3%)

An ethnic cuisine you didn’t have the good sense to list: 3 (9%)

Ethnic fads are done; it’s all about local, seasonal ingredients now: 4 (12%)

ironic kitsch for the masses

January 13

Rock of Ages is not a good show. You might enjoy it, especially if you like those songs from the mid-1980s that currently are most popular in karaoke bars, but it’s not a quality production. A paper-thin plot ties together a medley of songs performed with medium gusto, often choreographed by someone who didn’t seem to be listening to the lyrics (an ensemble performance of Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” — “Here I go again on my own/Goin’ down the only road I've ever known/ Like a drifter I was born to walk alone” — excuse me?), ending, lest there be any doubt that the soundtrack was thrown together to strike a chord with the lowest common denominator in pop culture, with Journey's "Don't Stop Believin',” which is enjoying new popularity, as you probably know, because it was the last thing heard in the final episode of The Sopranos.

Still, it’s a fun show. You spend a couple of hours watching attractive, talented people sing and dance on stage, and I had a good time watching it with Johnny Rockets’ new president and chief executive, John Fuller.

John loves Rock of Ages. This was his second time seeing it. “It’s like Broadway for Dummies,” he says.

He has a point. It’s not like the performers are taking themselves seriously, and to emulate a stadium concert from the 1980s they hand out tiny flashlight-like things that light up when you push a button, simulating in a Broadway sort of way the lighters that people would use at those shows.

And they sell beer — Corona Light or Coors Light — so through the course of the performance I had four Coors Lights.

It’s sort of ironic kitsch for the masses.

John, who was just promoted from chief financial officer to CEO, is the opposite of pretentious. He’s 6'6" but he usually flies economy class to help control costs, and he says his biggest personal thrill since getting his promotion was the reaction of his daughters, 12-year-old Bryanna and 10-year-old McKenna, when he told them. They were tremendously excited and told him how proud they were.

After the show, John, two of his colleagues and I went next door to the Glass House Tavern, and so did much of the cast, so John had his picture taken with some of them, and got to hang out with his favorite performer, Mitchell Jarvis, who plays Lonny, the show's narrator, and who John referred to astutely as “that Jack Black guy.”

I decided to let my snobby side out and drank an Irish single malt whiskey I'd never heard of. John had Amstel Light.

philosophy

January 8

The biggest self-deceptions are that life has a “meaning” and that each of us is unique.

That’s a favorite quotation of my friend Kenyon Phillips from one of his idols, David Byrne (his other big idol, musically, at least, is Brian Eno).

Perhaps that quotation sounds bleak to you, but it’s not really. If life has no set meaning then we can imbue it with whatever meaning we like. We can point our own moral compass, seek our own destiny, live life as we think we should. That’s wonderful.

Not that Kenyon’s incapable of being bleak. He’s a warm, thoughtful, good-natured guy, but he has a pronounced dark side, and the lyrics to his music are full of pain and aggression and reflections on destructive, often masochistic relationships. He gets a kick out of that.

Philosophy was in order last night, as we were eating in what is possibly New York City’s most philosophical restaurant, Rouge Tomate.

The New York venue is Rouge Tomate’s second location. The first one was opened in Brussels in 2001 by Emmanuel Verstraeten, founded on a principle he made up called Sanitas Per Escam — which is Latin, no less, for “health through eating.”

From the web site (scroll down if you get bored):

SPE® is an innovative approach toward nutrition, transcending the idea of balanced eating to offer optimal nutrition that maintains, protects and strengthens the body.
In order to offer optimal nutrition, the SPE® approach revolves around three key elements:
Sourcing: selecting ingredients seasonally, locally, and with a focus on nutritional characteristics.
Preparation: using specific cooking techniques that preserve the integrity and nutritional qualities of the ingredients.
Enhancement: optimizing nutritional value by the synergy of product combination and menu diversity.

Okay, so it’s sourcing local, seasonal products and preparing dishes from them that keep nutrition in mind.

That’s nice. It’s kind of taken for granted in the cuisines of China, Japan and much of South Asia and Southeast Asia, so I don’t know that it’s particularly innovative.

I get skeptical any time someone tells me they’re doing something innovative. And the more words they use to describe what’s innovative about what they’re doing, the less innovative it usually is.

Still, it’s nice.

However, it’s worth noting that flavor and taste aren’t mentioned in the restaurant’s principles. Maybe Mr. Verstraeten thought it went without saying that the food should taste good, although anyone who has been subjected to “health food” knows that it shouldn’t go without saying, that for decades Americans claiming to proffer food that was good for you were so smug about its healthful qualities that they seemed uninterested in making it tasty.

I’d heard only good things about Rouge Tomate since it opened in October of 2008, though.

I’ve also had good interviews with Rainlove Lampariello (Rainlove, I know!), who’s in charge of the restaurant’s beverage program, and I’ve always enjoyed the work of its chef, Jeremy Bearman, whose food I last had when he was at Lark Creek Steak in San Francisco.

So it made sense for Kenyon and me to check the place out.

[update: it turns out that Rainlove’s not with Rouge Tomate anymore. Taking up the slack at the moment is executive sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier, a very nice woman from the Loire region — which is where France’s most popular restaurant wines come from — who recently places third in the Best Sommelier of France competition; that’s the best a woman has ever done in that contest].

Kenyon’s a teatotalling vegetarian, so I like to take him to restaurants with strong non-alcoholic beverage programs and an emphasis on good produce. Those restaurants should be able to put their best feet forward with him.

Kenyon and I spoke of many things as we ate — I ate his amuse-bouche of salmon tartare and avocado, and the scallop mid-course that Jeremy sent out for us — such as Avatar, and Kenyon’s favorite parts of the Marquis de Sade.

And this is what we ate and drank:

Green Tornado: Green juice (tarragon, spinach, basil, butter lettuce and fennel), mint and lemon juice

French Daisy: Gin, bitters, lemon juice and huckleberry syrup topped with sparkling wine

Chickpea hummus with sweet peppers, house-cured olives and flatbread crisps
Peekytoe crab and celery root panna cotta with grapefruit, marcona almond and feuille de brique
2008 Nikolaihof “Hefeabzug” biodynamic Grüner Veltliner (Wachau, Austria)

House-made fettuccine with wild mushrooms, sunchoke, celery root, chervil and crispy onions
Alaskan black cod with winter bean stew, prosciutto, lacinato kale and Provençal oil
2006 Michel Lafarge “Raisins Dorés” biodynamic Bourgogne Aligoté (Burgundy, France)

Blood orange with pomegranate, black sesame and bourbon vanilla ice cream (although it seemed more like a semifreddo to me)
bittersweet mi-cuit: banana, molten chocolate cake and coffee ice cream

cardamom chai
La Colombe Brazilian Bourbon Rainforest Alliance-certified French press coffee

It’s street food, stupid

January 7

Thank you for participating in my latest poll, which I think garnered some interesting results.

I asked what you expected to be the driving factors influencing trends in 2010, and I let you pick more than one response. So from 24 respondents I got 38 answers.

Most people ticked the economy, not surprisingly. But the next highest-scoring category was street foods. I wonder if that’s really a big trend or if the chefs who read this blog were simply really jazzed about the Culinary Institute of America’s recent World’s of Flavor conference, which covered the topic of street food.

I guess we’ll find out as the year unfolds.

Only four respondents ticked “flavor,” perhaps because it sounded vague or silly or obvious.

But according to research my colleagues and I either did or reported on for our upcoming January 11 “Forecasts & Trends” issue of Nation’s Restaurant News, the most important driving factor for customers deciding what to eat isn’t nutrition profile or convenience or even price, and it’s certainly not environmental concerns. It’s how the food tastes.

Indeed, long-term studies of consumer attitudes with regard to food indicate that flavor is more of a factor now than it was just a few years ago.

You can find the full results of my Food Writer's Diary poll below. For all the goodies in our Forecasts & Trends issue, you’re going to have to wait until Monday, and even then, I’m pretty sure some of the info will only be available to subscribers.

If you’re in the unfortunate position of not being an NRN subscriber, you can remedy that situation by clicking here.

The poll results are below, and a new poll is on your right. Enjoy it, and feel free to write in comments below.

Thank you.

What will be the driving factors influencing trends in 2010

The economy: 15 (62%)

Health concerns: 4 (16%)

Environmental concerns: 5 (20%)

Flavor: 4 (16%)

Trendy ethnic foods: 2 (8%)

Street foods: 7 (29%)

Pork belly: 1 (4%)

not fusion

January 7

Does anybody talk about fusion cuisine anymore? I’m pretty sure they don’t. I think it has gone the way of Continental cuisine.

But Susan Rike wasn’t taking any chances last night as she hosted a press dinner for a new client of hers, Favela Cubana.

The seven-month-old restaurant on the garden side of LaGuardia Place between Bleecker and West 3rd, right next to Rhong Tiam, serves Cuban food and Brazilian food, "but not fusion," Susan said as many as 150 times last night.

So Cuban ropa vieja sits right above Brazilian picanha ná chapa on the menu, but there's no picanha vieja, no mofongo feijoada.

That's not to say chef Oscar Santana — a French-trained chef from Mexico City — doesn't add his own flourishes. Of course he does. He's a chef.

His boss is Marco Britti, an Italian, from Naples, whose background is in drumming. He was Marc Anthony’s drummer, he was the drummer for Jennifer Lopez' album Rebirth, and he’s currently the drummer in a band called Shadows Lie.

Given the popularity of Italian and Mexican food in the United States, you might wonder why Britti and Santana would commit themselves to cuisines that, like all “ethnic” cuisines except for Chinese, are less popular than Italian and Mexican.

Britti kind of shrugged when I asked him that, but, well, a person has to follow his dreams.

Even though people don’t talk about fusion cuisine anymore, they do cook it. I mean, really, all cuisine is fusion. No culture is so isolated that it doesn't have dialogue, as the anthropologists say, with other cultures. All cuisines evolve, and in the melting pot of New York there’s no reason why practitioners of one cuisine can’t learn from practitioners of others.

Besides, you can’t be 100 percent “authentic,” whatever that means, anywhere other than where a dish originated. Basil in the United States tastes different from Italian basil, for example, so a caprese salad here can’t be completely "authentic." I’m sure passion fruit in Brasil has a zing that it doesn’t have here. That’s just the way it goes.

Many chefs still cook fusion food proudly, even though they don’t call it that anymore. I'm thinking of Anita Lo's chicken and Thai basil dumplings at Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, or Chris Cheung’s liquid foie gras bao or crispy short rib gold coins with truffle-sriracha foam at China 1.

Fusion food shouldn’t be feared, only bad fusion food should be, and, really, that’s true of food generally, isn’t it?

Anyway, this is what we ate and drank at Favela Cubana:

bolinho de bacalhau (salt cod croquettes)
fish empanadas
orange-basil mojitos

Cuban dishes:
Ropa vieja (braised beef with olives, onions and peppers)
Picadillo Habana (ground turkey, onions, peppers, garlic, cumin, paprika, olives)
black beans and rice

Brazilian dishes
Camarão a balana (sautéed shrimp with roasted peppers, onions and tomatoes)
Bacalhau (more salt cod, this time sautéed and served with black olives, mashed potatoes and tomatoes)
yellow rice and coconut milk sauce

2008 Bodegas Lurton Torrontes (Argentina)
2008 Barco Viejo Merlot (Chile)

Panna cotta de maracuja (that’s Portuguese for passion fruit)
Flan (topped by Oscar with caramelized sugar)

Copacabana: Cachaça, passion fruit, lemon juice and chile flakes

Free lunch

December 29

It turns out that I have one more blog entry to make this year, to let you know about a free lunch tomorrow at Rhong Tiam East, formerly known as Kurve. That's 87 2nd Ave., at the northwest corner of 5th St.

Chef-owner Andy Yang is promoting his rendang. That's actually an Indonesian dish, but Andy tells me it's made in Thailand, too, where it's called panang neua toon. It's a rich, dark brown curry that should be appropriate for the blustery cold day that Wednesday the 30th promises to be.

Andy's using his grandmother's recipe and serving it with either flat wide noodles called sen yai or the Thai version of ramen, called ba mee.

Rendang is traditionally made with beef, but Andy's serving it with either beef of chicken. As I said, it's free tomorrow, from noon to 3. Every day after that it's $4.95.

trying for a better decade

December 23

I have a feeling I’m not going to have much to report to you for the rest of the year. I’m lying low for Christmas and still waiting to see what materializes for New Year's Eve.

I rarely plan in advance for New Year's Eve, because that inevitably raises expectations and usually results in disappointment. Last minute invitations generally find their way to me around December 28, and if they don't, well, I’m happy to spend the holiday quietly at home, avoiding the amateurs who crowd the restaurants and bars that night — people who don’t go out much and don’t know how to drink properly or, really, behave in public generally. You see them in restaurants on Valentine’s Day, too.

The last time I tried to make plans in advance for New Year’s Eve was in 1999, because, you know, that was kind of a big deal, it being the end of the millennium and all (I know, technically the millennium ended in December of 2000, but you know what I mean).

I failed. My friends, turned off by all the hype, were mostly planning quiet affairs at home. So I made myself prime rib with Yorkshire pudding and asparagus and planned to enjoy myself that way, when I got phone calls from two friends, separately, who had suddenly popped up in the city, and, after I finished my dinner, I ended up party hopping with them. They were Thomas Crampton, who if memory serves was working for The International Herald Tribune and doing a stint at a sister publication called The New York Times, and Craig Stuart, who at the time was in business school at Yale and dating Susan Kim, who is now Susan Kim-Stuart, and Craig is a vice president at Wells Fargo Bank. I’m so proud.

It was a good evening.

If you’re old enough, you’ll remember that New Year's Eve of 1999 was a big bust for the hospitality industry, which had, for the most part, jacked up prices in anticipation of revelers feeling obligated to pull out the stops for this once-in-a-lifetime celebration opportunity.

Well, the American public quietly and non-confrontationally rebelled. Instead of doing what was expected, like they do on most Valentine’s Days and New Year's Eves, they said, “Screw you, we are not paying $1,000 per person for dinner,” and stayed home.

I’d never seen a consumer rebellion like that before, and I haven’t seen one since.

Some restaurant operators I spoke to afterwards blamed all the hype about Y2K (remember that?) for people staying home, but I think they were just fed up with the obvious greed of the restaurants, hotels and bars where they otherwise would have celebrated. It was just too much.

That was ten years ago, and since then, well, I, personally, have had a great decade, but from 9/11 to the economic collapse and every lousy piece of garbage in between — war, hurricanes, tsunamis — so far the 21st Century has been lousy.

And here’s something weird: We have yet to pick a name for this decade. I think we all figured that some name would emerge. The leading candidate seems to be “the aughts,” or possibly “the naughts,” although both of those seem so early 20th Century. “The naughties” has been suggested, and “the oughties,” and we'll see if either one of those takes.

The TV show Futurama refers to this period, broadly, as The Stupid Ages, and, frankly, that works for me.

Let's hope the teens are better.

Latkes and Bones

December 13

[update June 2, 2011: a new latke recipe can be found at the bottom of this entry]

I’m sort of on vacation in Denver (sort of, because I’m also working on stories on chili and on likely food trends in 2010, and keeping my blog up to date).

I like to travel between Thanksgiving and Christmas, because it’s a lot easier than traveling during those holidays. Technically, I’m also here, visiting family, during Chanukah, so I made latkes for the first time in about 15 years.

Latkes are the traditional Chanukah food of East European Jews. They're potato pancakes, preferably fried in a lot of oil.

Because Chanukah is the celebration of the Jews’ successful guerrilla war against the forces of the Seleucids, who inherited a big chunk of the Middle East from Alexander the Great. A military victory is not considered a suitable reason for a religious holiday, so instead we celebrate what seems to me to be a very minor miracle involving oil (sanctified oil used to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple) that lasted a lot longer than expected.

Chanukah is often called the festival of lights, but as a food person I like to think of it as the festival of oil.

The best latkes I’ve ever had were technically platski, which is what Poles call them. I had them at Lomzynianka in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint.

I e-mailed the restaurant, asking how they made them, but I didn’t hear back, so I used the recipe I’ve been using since I was probably 12 years old, which I learned from Bobbie Towbin around then.

It’s very simple.

In a food processor, purée together one peeled white or yellow onion for every two large potatoes. Season with salt. Spoon into hot oil and fry. Serve with applesauce and sour cream.

This time I drained the mixture first. The latkes were nice and crispy, but they weren’t fantastic. I think they need work.

I think next time I might spread the purée on wax paper or parchment paper, freeze it in sheets and then slice it into latke-sized pieces for better consistency in shape and thickness, and ease in dropping them into hot oil.

I haven’t eaten out much on this trip, although I did go to Bones with my old friend Ben Weinberg. Bones is the nickname of chef Frank Bonanno, who also owns Mizuna, Luca D’Itlaia and Osteria Marco.

Bones is an Asian-ish place, focusing on noodles. I think I’d place it in that not-yet-defined restaurant category of fast-fine: Top-notch food, reasonably priced in a setting that lets you get in and out quickly. Some trend spotters see that type of dining as the future of fine dining in America (not that white tablecloth restaurants will go away, but there will be fewer of them).

What we ate and drank:

black cod tempura
steamed pork belly buns
udon with slow-cooked pork shoulder from Salmon Creek Farms, topped with a poached egg
ba mee with roasted spaghetti squash, mustard greens and horseradish mascarpone cream
2008 Infinite Monkey Riesling (Denver)
I also got an order of escargot pot stickers to take home to Mom.

[update, June 2, 2011, below]:

I got an e-mail from Bobbie Towbin awhile back, who said my recipe was incomplete and inaccurate.
I have finally pasted her full recipe below.
I have no recollection of ever following this recipe as a kid when we made latkes with Bobbie in Hebrew school, but maybe she secretly slipped in some of the ingredients. More likely, I wasn't paying attention:

2 very large potatoes

1/3 medium yellow onion

2 eggs

salt and pepper to taste (be generous)

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp sugar

Chop 1 potato in Cuisinart medium fine with 1 egg and onion.

Put second potato through Cuisinart grater

Mix all together with seasoning

Heat oil and drop mixture from mixing spoon into frying pan.

Fry until brown and crisp.

Don't drain the potatoes until they become too watery at the  

end, you lose too much of the potato starch if you drain them initially.