Aspen: Day 1

June 17
I’m in Aspen for the 29th annual Food & Wine magazine Classic. It used to be the classic AT Aspen, but they changed the name a few years ago to make it less pretentious.

I’m not sure it worked, but despite the need to periodically run the gauntlet of celebrity chef groupies to do the networking I’m here to do, it’s a fun event — basically a three-day party, sponsored by many beer, wine and spirits companies, interspersed with cooking demonstrations and panel discussions.

During the kickoff reception on Friday night I ran into Belinda Chang, whom I’d just met during the James Beard Foundation Awards last month. She won the award for best wine service as sommelier of The Modern in New York, and then, her mission accomplished, she quit.

“I’m a sprinter, not a marathon runner,” she told me last night.

I ended up hanging out with her and her friend Justin Warner, who was a captain at The Modern and left to open his own place, Do or Dine, in the decidedly ungentrified Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Justin says his new place is a dive American izakaya, which is to say a bar with great bar food (as opposed to a gastropub, which is a bar with good food that’s not necessarily intended to facilitate drinking).

Do or Dine doesn’t have a liquor license yet, so for now it’s BYO, but Justin, whose beverage people come from PDT and Pegu Club, plans to offer delicious cocktails priced at less than $10.

So that should be fun.

The big post-reception party in Aspen is a barbecue sponsored by Wines from Spain and hosted by José Andrés, but Belinda, Justin and I instead went to Isis, where there also was a barbecue but with fancy American wines and the added appeal — always desirable at Aspen — of not being where the masses were.

It’s probably obvious, but Belinda and Justin are in the picture that accompanies this blog entry.

A Matter of Taste

June 13

Oh shoot! The people at HBO were nice enough to send me a copy of A Matter of Taste, a documentary on Paul Liebrandt that I wanted to watch, and I’m late.

The film airs on HBO tonight (9pm EST), and I'm on the road, visiting family in Denver, while the DVD is sitting on my desk in New York.

So, what can I say? Paul Liebrandt’s a hell of an interesting chef. I’ve always found his food simultaneously weird, delicious and incredibly well-balanced. Most striking: Each component of each dish seems to express itself with intriguing clarity and precision.

The Bouley alumnus had a brief and critically tumultuous tenure some years ago, back in 2000, at Atlas, where then-Times critic William Grimes gave him a glowing three-star review, placing him squarely on the map as one of New York’s most avant-garde chefs. Then a review in Gourmet skewered him, uncharacteristic behavior for that magazine.

At the time, some people wondered if the review had anything to do with the fact that Gourmet’s editor-in-chief, Ruth Reichl, was Grimes’s predecessor.

Liebrandt, who was something like 24 years old, left the restaurant shortly thereafter.

But that’s ancient history.

Liebrandt went on to run the kitchens at a genuine variety of New York City restaurants — Papillon, One Little West 12th (I kid you not), and Gilt — before finding a home partnering with Drew Nieporent at Corton, where he has once again received adulation from critics and customers.

And also a documentary on HBO, airing tonight.

That network was nice enough to provide me with the pictures in this blog entry, which were taken by Sally Rowe.

In the foothills with the food scholars

June 11

Montanans apparently like to put letters on their mountains. That’s what I’m told. The M in the picture is in the city of Missoula, but it stands for Montana — not the state, the university, where I’m attending the joint annual meetings of the Agriculture Food and Human Values Society, the Association for the Study of Food and Society, and the Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition.

There’s a big concrete L on the next mountain over, which might lead you to believe that Montana has alphabetized its mountains, but a server at the reception last night told me that the L stands for Loyola Sacred Heart High School, which also is in Missoula.

There’s a concrete B on one of the Mountains near Butte, she said.

I’m at the conference because I was asked to participate on a panel about possible careers for people with graduate degrees.

I don't actually have a graduate degree, but they wanted a journalist on the panel, I guess so I can tell them how to be a journalist with their graduate degrees, which I don’t really know. But I do have some thoughts on the topic which I’ll share. It should be a good panel.

The first day of the conference was fun. I sat in on four sessions in which people presented papers or updates on their research or similar academic things.

I spent the morning mostly listening to people talk in some way or another about animal welfare, except for one presenter who talked about using sheep to clear “noxious weeds,” which, believe it or not, is a technical term for non-indigenous vegetation that’s a threat to other plants.

Sheep will eat them in some cases, to very good effect, she said.

Three vegetarians, one whose first name was actually Seven, discussed their research into the “caring-killing paradox” that they experienced and researched as student volunteers on a university’s experimental organic pig farm. It was actually a very interesting presentation.

Then some other sociologists discussed, through narrative, the notion of using a narrative approach to develop a greater understanding of the complexities of animal husbandry — in this case once again involving pigs.

A third sociologist in their group was asked if she ate the meat of the pigs once she witnessed them being slaughtered, and she said “yes, but not without gratitude.”

I don’t think anyone was accusing her of ingratitude, but maybe they were. I can’t say for sure.

In the afternoon I watched people present papers mostly on studies of obesity or eating habits, although I also attended one on how the Philippine delicacy balut — unhatched baby ducklings still in their eggs — was being co-opted by the Western media as an extreme food, simplifying it and presenting it out of context.

I asked him how it tasted, and he said it was sort of like a gristly hard-boiled egg, except the part that's liquid. You drink that first and it tastes kind of like egg drop soup, he said.

One group of researchers found indications that if you use menu-design techniques commonly used for marketing specific items — putting the items in colored boxes, or placing them at one of several key places on the menu where the eye tends to linger, or by using appealing-sounding jargon (hand-picked, chef's special, etc.) they could get senior citizens to order more healthful items.

Displaying calorie and other nutritional information had no effect, they found.

Another study indicated that chefs live unhealthy lives that lead to overeating and excessive drinking. That seems obvious, but, you know, you do need to quantify these things.

Actually, they’re still analyzing their data and it probably won’t be ready until next year.

I haven’t decided what to attend tomorrow. "Anthropology of Wine" looks promising. So does "From Food System Assessment to Food Policy: Indicators That Make a Difference.”

Ooh, and I might start a fight in this one: “Pursuing Poultry Practicalities: Adaptation and Innovation for Sustainable Eggs and Chickens.”

I think I’ll keep my options open.

Food Writer’s Diary’s returning to the mother ship

May 20

Food Writer’s Diary has a new home at NRN.com. Please visit it, so that your page views can be added to those of Nation’s Restaurant News’ other readers, helping us to impress our bosses with our awesomeness.

If you like RSS feeds, you can get Food Writer’s Diary’s here.

I’ll keep cross-posting here for awhile, and of course my 18 gajillion previous blog entries will stay here. But I think you’ll like this blog’s new home. And while you’re there, you might want to click around and see what else is on offer at NRN.com. I think you’ll particularly like the Food and Beverage section, which has all sorts of information on the latest trends and a whole lot of stories written by yours truly.

While I’m doing this shameless self-promotion, I might as well also point you to our Cool Plates feature, which showcases menu items that catch my eye and that I hope will inspire chefs’ creativity.

Beard Awards: press room or audience?

Well, it could be argued that I should hang up my hat as James Beard Foundation Chef and Restaurant Award predictor. Of the 19 categories that I predicted two months ago, I got four of them right: I predicted that Per Se would win for outstanding service, that Eleven Madison Park would win for outstanding restaurant, that Michael Solomonov would win for best chef in the Mid-Atlantic and that Tony Maws would win for best chef in the northeast.

I got everything else wrong.

But that’s all right. The awards were interesting. Portland, Ore., picked up two awards — for Gabriel Rucker of Le Pigeon, who won Rising Star Chef of the Year, which goes to a promising chef aged 30 years or younger; and for Andy Ricker of Pok Pok, who won for best chef in the Northwest.

For best chef in New York, Gabrielle Hamilton beat out Michael Anthony, April Bloomfield, Wylie Dufresne and Michael White.

Cynics would say that she won because she wrote a book, an argument that would have added weight because the winner for best chef in the Southeast, Andrea Reusing of Lantern in Chapel Hill, N.C., also recently had a book published.

We also saw what I think was the first tie in a chef and restaurant award, between Saipin Chutima of Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas and Tyson Cole of Uchi in Austin, Texas.

I was told that Cole was less than gracious about being part of a tie, but I wouldn't know, because I decided to spend the awards in the press room.

I had a ticket to be part of the audience, and I was told I’d have to choose where to go. I could either sit in the audience for more than three hours while awards were handed out and speeches were made, or I could be in the press room, eating meatballs and cheese and drinking cocktails and Champagne and coffee and talking with my fellow food writers while the awards played on monitors in the rooms.

It didn’t used to be like that. These were my 13th Beard Awards, and I remember when you used to be able to move back and forth between theater and press room whenever you liked, watching the ceremony, running back to the press room to interview chefs, running back to the ceremony.

Ultimately I settled for watching the proceedings from the press room, but over the years that room has taken on a life of its own.

It used to be that only about a couple dozen members of the press cared about the Beard Awards — maybe fewer. The press room was a tranquil place. The video feed broke sometimes, or they'd forget to show us the videos of the humanitarian award winner or the who's who inductees, but it wasn't that big a deal.

Now the press room has maybe a hundred people at its most crowded moments, some socializing, some live-tweeting, many asking me who just won as I scampered back to the press room's entryway, where the loudspeakers were located so I could actually hear the results of the awards over the din of the crowd.

It’s a fun party, but the Beard Awards could be on another planet. And now that the Beard Foundation is live-tweeting the results, we don't really need to be there at all.

Still, should I be hanging out with the collegial group of people in the press room, ranging from reporters from Reuters and the Wall Street Journal to representatives from web sites like Eatocracy and Eater and blogs I’ve never heard of, or should I be sitting in the audience and reporting on the Zeitgeist of the ceremony, getting a grasp on what the leaders of the Fine Dining world are thinking about and understanding with my own eyes and ears how Tyson Cole behaved?

A bunch of people don't go to the awards at all, but show up at the afterparties, of which there are many.

After the awards and the reception that followed it, I started across the street from Lincoln Center, where Daniel Boulud's Bar Boulud has new neighbors, Boulud Sud and Epicerie Boulud, which hosted a raucous celebration for which Boulud opened a Balthazar — that's 12 liters — of 1998 Bordeaux.

There I ran into my friend Jennifer Watson, a devoted customer of Daniel’s, but also a devoted customer of The Modern, whose wine director Belinda Chang won the award for Outstanding Wine Service. So we went there next and drank Champagne while I spoke with the writers, chefs and publicists in town for the festivities.

We then took a quick swing by Eleven Madison Park and then on to ABC Kitchen before stopping in The Spotted Pig for a Pimm's Cup and commiserated with the family of Dahlia Narvaez, pastry chef of Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles, who didn’t win the award for best pastry chef. Instead, that award went to Angela Pinkerton of Eleven Madison Park, which also won the award for Outstanding Restaurant.

I think conversation got philosophical, and Jennifer wanted a hamburger, but The Spotted Pig's kitchen had closed, and so we ended the evening, as food-oriented evenings often end, at Blue Ribbon, where I spoke with Christopher Hastings, chef of Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Ala., who had lost the award for best chef in the South to Stephen Stryjiewski of Cochon in New Orleans, about the merits of setting up a foundation for the Bocuse d’Or.

Chris Hastings was with Gavin Kaysen, you see, who quite apart from being chef of Cafe Boulud represented the U.S. in the Bocuse d'Or some years back.

But soon Jennifer and I got a table and so instead of continuing the conversation, we had fried chicken.

Then we shared a taxi, which dropped me off in the office before taking her home, and then I wrote this blog entry.

And now I'm going home, too.

Good night.

Chefs’ Night Out, 2011

May 9

What can I say? Chefs are in town for the Beard Awards, last night many of them went to Chelsea Market, some of whose merchants handed out free food, and we ate, drank and were merry.

Well, there are a couple more things to say.

This year’s Chefs Night Out was much more of a James Beard Foundation-sponsored event than in previous years. As far as I could tell, Bon Appétit has stopped any sponsorship of it, which makes sense since they were holding an event on Saturday in Las Vegas. Instead, Gilt, the Food Network and the Cooking Channel were listed as sponsors, and Gilt threw the afterparty, which was also in Chelsea Market, but a different part.

Servers at the various food stations were wearing James Beard Foundation T-shirts with the word “Eat” printed vertically on them — clearly a move at more aggressive branding on the part of the foundation. Good for them, I say.

I took some pictures, which are available for your viewing pleasure at nrn.com.

Incident at the CIA

May 6

Did you know that if you cut your finger at the CIA, it’s an incident?

I don't mean the Central Intelligence Agency. Obviously if you cut your finger there it would be an incident. I mean the Culinary Institute of America, where practically everyone is wielding knives, and a lot of them don’t have much experience doing it.

I figured I’d just grab a band-aid, apply it to my left index finger and get back to work.

But no. I had to sit there with a paper towel wrapped around my finger while a security officer named James came and applied first aid.

“Apply pressure and hold the finger over your head to control the bleeding,” an administrator told me. She seemed concerned that I would bleed out.

All I had done was bring the knife down hard enough on my left index’s fingernail to break it and draw a little blood. I hadn't severed anything. I’d cut myself worse when I was in culinary school. Since that was in France in the 1980s, my chef-instructor wondered why I had stopped chopping apples.

“Because I’m getting blood in them,” I said.

Chef Pétrof agreed that I could wash my finger and apply a bandage to it if I wanted to. Which I did and then finished chopping my apples.

I think I was making a charlotte aux pommes, but I don’t really remember. It was 1986.

Last weekend I was at the CIA's Greystone campus in St. Helena, Calif., for the inaugural Pork Summit.

That event replaces the Taste of Elegance, a the finals of a national competition among chefs to make delicious pork dishes.

In the past, winners of regional competitions would be flown to the semi-finals for a second round of competition, and then the top eight performers in that contest would have to get back into the kitchen to do it again.

Members of the trade press like me were invited to hang out, meet the chefs and learn more about pork.

I guess the National Pork Board decided that it was the hanging out, meeting and learning that was valuable, because they got rid of the national competition. Instead they flew all the regional winners to the Napa Valley for a demonstration on how to butcher half a pig, followed by cooking demonstrations by celebrity chefs.

The next day we were all split into teams to butcher and cook half a pig.

I’m not sure why they decided to have the journalists cook, too, but hey, I'm a team player. I’m no chef, but I do cook, and I'm good at fetching spices and whatnot. I was happy to be a helper.

Our team leader was Philadelphia chef and restaurateur José Garces, who, as you probably know, is also a star of Iron Chef America. He seemed like a good choice for team captain.

“Are you comfortable in a kitchen?” he asked everyone on the team, which included several chefs who won regional competitions, but also me and Plate editor Chandra Ram, both of whom had been to culinary school.

Michigan-based chef Steven Grostick, who was a butcher before he became a chef, volunteered to handle breaking down the pig half.

“I’m a food writer,” I said, and volunteered to fetch things and be a prep cook and slave as they saw fit.

So the next day, José handed me lists of spices and ingredients to fetch. He had me put eggs in the immersion circulator and track down a terrine mold for him to put his scrapple in.

Then he asked: “How are your knife skills?”

Compared to what? I thought. Because, you know, they’re better than my 11-year-old nephew’s but I would presume considerably worse than an Iron Chef’s.

I shrugged and tried to indicate as much trepidation as I could when I said they were okay.

That was good enough for him, and he had me chop mushrooms and julienne onions.

It was interesting to watch José manage everyone. He seemed aware of the need to respect the skills of the other chefs, with whom he spoke with great diplomacy but generally left alone, and he also gave me increasingly challenging tasks, as though he were automatically training me.

I mean, they didn't get too challenging, but I did graduate from chopping mushrooms and onions to finely chopping parsley and chives. I think that’s a little bit harder.

At any rate, it was while I was chopping chives that I managed to smash the fingernail on my right index finger and cause an incident.

Seriously, I thought I just needed to wrap the thing up and keep chopping, but James the security guy rubbed it with an antiseptic ointment and applied one of those fingertip band-aids to my finger — really expertly, I might add; it covered everything perfectly. Then he gave me what he called a “finger cot,” a sort of (non-lubricated) condom for my finger, to keep me from bleeding into the chives. I give him a business card so he could spell my name right in the incident report that he’d have to file.

I apologized to José for the delay in finishing my chive chopping, grabbed some parsley from the walk-in, washed it off and chopped it up.

He had no interest in the fact that I'd chopped up my finger, and I appreciated that.

It made me feel like a grown-up.

CEOs at Soul Daddy

May 4

Did you know that a cabal of restaurant CEOs get together several times a year to scheme and plot?

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly true. They don’t really plot. They get together and talk about the restaurant businesses and visit restaurants in different cities.

And I guess I wouldn’t call them a cabal. “Some guys” is probably more accurate.

But I don’t really know. Which Wich chief executive Jeff Sinelli just told me about them. They’re in New York now, and Jeff asked me to join some of them at Soul Daddy, the winner of America’s Next Great Restaurant, for a quick bite.

So I went to the South Street Seaport and met Abe Ng, president, CEO and chief sushi officer (so says his business card) of Sushi Maki in Miami, and David Goronkin, who doesn’t have a business card because he’s between jobs. He used to be the boss at Bennigan’s, and on June 1 he starts as CEO of Real Mex Restaurants, which operate the Chevys, El Torito and Acapulco chains.

We picked at the food, and then Jeff asked for a manager and quizzed him about the restaurant.

I didn't have to do anything. I just sat there and sampled the wild rice salad while Jeff interviewed the guy.

It turns out that America’s Next Great Restaurant was filmed last year, and the winner, Jamawn Woods, didn’t know he won until it was announced on Sunday. But in the meantime, Steve Ells and the other investors in this next great restaurant got to work hiring staff and securing real estate and generally making the restaurant happen in three places at once — Los Angeles, New York and Minneapolis.

That they kept the restaurant’s identity under wraps all that time is amazing.

The manager confirmed that the New York restaurant was packed on its first two days of business. But it was pretty quiet when I met the CEOs there at 5:10 on its third day of business. It was a crappy, rainy day, which might have had something to do with it.

The food is supposed to be soul food that's good for you.

We tried the ribs and the chicken and the pulled pork sandwich, the black-eyed pea salad and the wild rice salad and the sweet potato salad and the cabbage slaw. We had a cornbread waffle and some cheese grits.

The manager told us that the menu items were developed based merely on their names, which the investment partners gave to their development team in Denver.

And I don’t like to badmouth a place, so I’ll say I liked the waffles and the cheese grits. The rest of it tasted like it was good for you.

It would be harsh to say it’s soul food without soul, but, well, I guess I just did.

Jeff, Abe and David had dinner plans with Drew Nieporent, who was going to show them Tribeca Grill, Nobu and Centrico, so that was probably fun.

A new Rickshaw’s coming to town

May 4

I just got off the phone with Rickshaw Dumpling Bar owner Kenny Lao, who’s opening his second location in Manhattan next week.

Or maybe it's his sixth location. It kind of depends on how you look at it. 

The new restaurant is at 459 Lexington Avenue. That's the northwest corner of Lexington and 45th.

“We're aiming to open early next week,” Kenny said. That's when the butcher paper you see in the picture will come off of the windows.

He already has one brick-and-mortar store on 23rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, and he also has a fleet of four food trucks.

It was what he learned from his food trucks that told him where to open his next restaurant. 

“We realized with our trucks that there was a large base of customers here in Midtown who loved us. We responded to how well the trucks do parking around here, as well as to requests from customers, and we started looking for a new location.”

Kenny’s optimistic about the restaurant’s prospects.

“We think it’s going to be fantasmo,” he said.

That would be an improvement over the last store he opened, on Eighth Street, near NYU. It failed to thrive and closed after the economy went south.

The health inspector has been by, the permits are in place, but Kenny’s still trying to figure out his new magnetic menu board, which you can see in the picture. He says keeping all of those letters in a straight line is a lot harder than it looks.

The denizens of Midtown East have gotten familiar with Rickshaw's classic pork, chicken Thai basil and edamame dumplings, but at the new shop they’ll have the whole gamut to choose from, including Peking duck, kimchi beef, Szechuan chicken, and mustard green veggie dumplings, along with steamed buns, three salads instead of the single one that's available at the trucks, a bunch of sides and four different noodle soups.

Some new items are being added with the new opening, too, including warm sesame noodles.

Those are made from fresh Shanghai noodles and what Kenny calls “a really creamy sesame paste sauce with scallions and cucumbers.” 

He’s also adding a cucumber wakame salad and herbaceous Vietnamese spring rolls — not the fried kind, the other kind — with a peanut dipping sauce.

Poll results: fries should be replaced on kids menus

April 19

The bulk of this blog's poll takers — 67 percent — think French fries should be replaced on kids' menus, and a solid plurality — 42 percent — would do the same thing with adults' menus.


That’s not to say fries should be banned, just that they shouldn’t be the default option. Why not live it up with some artichoke or mango from time to time?


Twenty-eight people voted in the poll, which really isn’t terrible, but it’s not great, either, so my next poll is a poll on what sort of polls you’d like to participate in on this blog.


You can view the results of the most recent poll below:

SHOULD RESTAURANTS REPLACE FRIES WITH OTHER VEGETABLES OR FRUIT ON KIDS' MENUS?

Yes	7 (25%)
Yes, and on adults' menus, too	12 (42%)
No	4 (14%)
I don’t care	3 (10%)
Maybe	2 (7%)

Votes: 28


[April 28 update: never mind — clearly you’d like to leave the poll choices up to me.]
I LIKE POLLS ON THIS BLOG THAT ARE ABOUT...

My personal taste	1 (16%)
Beard Award nominees	0 (0%)
predicting trends	3 (50%)
Social or health issues	2 (33%)
I want to read your blog, not take polls	0 (0%)

Votes so far: 6
Poll closed 

Biryani and mangoes in Hyderabad

April 14

On the left is a picture of what biryani is supposed to look like, so I'm told. I took it with my cell phone, so it's not of the best quality, but according to the menu at Paradise restaurant in Hyderabad, the grains of rice in a biryani should all be separate — no sticking together.

Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state, claims to be the birthplace of biryani, and the best place to eat it. And Paradise, by several accounts, is as good a place as any to get it. So while the franchisors on the trade mission were having their late morning speed dates, I hired a driver to help me find mangoes and to take me to Paradise.

When I worked in Thailand, a place with very fine mangoes as far as I and the Thais are concerned, my Indian colleagues would snigger and laugh at the local fruits, declaring them to be inadequate shadows of real Indian mangoes.

My pre-trip research indicated that mangoes were in season now in India, and although the people of Mumbai told me it was a bit early for the prized fruits yet, they agreed that I might have better luck in Hyderabad, farther south.

The Hyderabadis laughed at me — about as politely as you can laugh at someone, but they laughed — and suggested I wait a couple of weeks before trying mangoes.

I pointed out to them that I was in India now and would not be in a couple of weeks, and suggested that perhaps with Indian mangoes being so good, even those that were not at the peak of season might possibly be the best I’d ever tasted, and they agreed that that might be so.

So I had my driver take me to the fruit market. To see what we could find.

There weren’t a lot of mangoes, but there were some, and after wandering around for awhile the driver recommended a stand to me, and I bought a kilo of mangoes for 40 rupees — about a dollar.

They had the great floral aroma of a good mango and the promise of a complex and nuanced flavor that I would expect from an excellent piece of fruit.

Delighted with my purchase, I headed to Paradise for lunch and had mutton biryani.

What can I say? All the Biryani I’d had in the past was basically rice pilaf with meat in it, and so was this. The distinguishing characteristics were very long-grained basmati rice that didn't stick together and a strong but not overpowering cardamom aroma. This being Andhra Pradesh, which claims to be the state with the spiciest food (although I’m told that some people in Tamil Nadu would beg to differ), there was also plenty of chile in the rice.

It was tasty. I suppose it might have been the most delicious biryani I'd ever had. I don't know. It was hardly worth a trip to Hyderabad to eat, but since I was there already I was glad for the experience, and to have a benchmark for what is considered great biryani.

Back at the hotel, I had the staff peel and slice my mangoes for me, which they did with alacrity.

And let me tell you, they were terrible. The flesh had the right orange color, glistening sheen and slippery texture of a good mango, but it was soulless and sour, and I was sorely disappointed.

Speed dating in India

April 11

“Did you see that guy’s watch? That thing’s worth $300,000,” Jeff Sinelli, founder of the Which Wich? sandwich chain told me after a couple of potential franchisees left his table.

I hadn’t seen the watch, but I’d noticed his stylish cufflinks made out of string.

We had both observed his and his partner’s complete lack of a sense of humor.

What do you expect from financiers whose pride and joy seemed to be a distribution network for PVC pipes?

I’m in India, covering a trade mission organized by the United States Commerce Department’s Commercial Service. This particular mission is focused on franchisors, mostly restaurant companies, looking for Indian partners.

The mission is centered around what are essentially speed dates. They’re meetings between the franchisors and potential franchisees to do a combination of pitching themselves and getting acquainted with one another — almost exactly like first dates, really.

I’ve been sitting in on some of the meetings to see what they’re like — the pictures in this blog entry show you what they look like. 

What I’ve seen so far indicates that finding business partners through blind dating — even with dates who have been vetted by the Commercial Service — is about as tough and almost as grueling as finding a love match that way. I’m not sure what the equivalent of a one-night stand would be in this case, but please let me know if you can think of one.

The would-be franchisors, being Americans working in foodservice, would talk about having “passion” for the business. The potential franchisees — real estate agents, retailers, PVC pipe distributors with lots of money of unknown origin — would blink once or twice and stare back blankly.

But you never know. The McDonald’s executive in charge of western and southern India comes from the lubricant business, so maybe Mr. Fancy Watch will be the man behind Which Wich? India.

Personally, I liked the owner of The Devil’s Workshop, a bakery chain with the slogan “Food you hate to love.”

After the speed dates, we all went to the Residence of the American Consul General for a reception, and I learned that India is by far the world’s largest consumer of whisky. So after a glass of perfectly acceptable red wine I switched to nice single malts and chatted with Subway franchisees and politicians, commercial attachés and Assistant Commerce Secretary Nicole Lamb-Hale, who is on the trip with us.

Marketing consultant Jagdeep Kapoor explained to me the challenges of presenting the right message in India. He pointed out that standing in line to order food is insulting to many middle class Indians, because it seems like begging. Besides, they’re accustomed to having servants and like to be waited on.

But then for other middle class Indians, who studied in the United States, American fast food gives them a sense of nostalgia and they want to stand in line for it (“They feel like they’re in New York”) and then get exactly the same food that they would have in the U.S.

Others want food that reminds them of their mother’s home cooking, so it should taste completely Indian.

I asked Kapoor how you could do all of that with one brand while maintaining a single identity.

“Give the people what they want,” he said, which didn’t really answer the question, but it is indeed what a restaurant should do.

He also said that Indians love bossing people around, so that the model at Subway, or any chain where your food is assembled in front of you, appeals to them because they can tell the restaurant worker exactly how they want their food to be made.

Indeed, that seems to appeal to everyone.

Food Writer’s Diary readers don’t like to vote for Beard Award nominees

Okay, okay, I get it. You don’t want to vote for Beard Award nominees.

In the Rising Star category, which is really the only career-maker, a total of six people voted, one for each nominee, except for Momofuku Milk Bar's, Christina Tosi, who got two.

Given the geographical diversity of this category, it is hard to believe that many people are familiar enough with all of the chefs’ work to vote with authority, so let’s try something new:

A number of chain restaurants have been responding to pressure — from customers, government, public health advocates, what have you — to make kids' meals more healthful.

Some, notably IHOP, have swapped out fries as the automatic side dish and instead serve fruit or vegetables, with fries made available on request.

How do you feel about that?

Please vote in the poll, and feel free to comment below if you like.

Thank you.

For the record, the results of the last poll.

Aaron London, Ubuntu	1 (16%)
Thomas McNaughton, Fire + Water	1 (16%)
Gabriel Rucker, Le Pigeon	1 (16%)
Christina Tosi, Momofuku Milk Bar	2 (33%)
Sue Zemanick, Gautreau’s

Food Writer’s Diary readers pick Girl & The Goat as best new restaurant

March 28

Despite a mid-week rally in favor of Torrisi after Grub Street alerted New Yorkers that the Nolita hot spot was losing in my poll for best new restaurant, Girl & The Goat in Chicago still won handily.

Granted, only 26 people voted, but 30 percent of them picked chef Stephanie Izard’s Chicago eatery. Benu in San Francisco came in second.

Next, I’d like you to vote on your choice of Rising Star Chef from among the Beard Award finalists. Please click on a name in the poll to your right, or feel free to make comments below.

Results from the last poll:

WHICH BEARD NOMINEE FOR BEST NEW RESTAURANT WOULD YOU VOTE FOR?

ABC Kitchen: 5 (19%)
Benu: 6 (23%)
Girl & The Goat: 8 (30%)
Menton: 2 (7%)
Torrisi: 5 (19%)

Untitled: first look

March 23

Danny Meyer’s new restaurant at the Whitney museum, called Untitled, had a soft opening today, sort of.

“Soft is a malleable word today,” Richard Coraine, president of new business for Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group told me at 2:40 pm. "Because it was busy. Still is.”

I would have swung by the place myself, but I’m woefully behind in my work and shouldn’t even be writing a blog entry today. Call me a rebel.

Untitled wasn’t supposed to open softly this week. It was supposed to just open. But not all of the furniture has arrived yet (the picture illustrating this blog entry is a rendering from designer David Rockwell).

“We had everybody trained and ready to go. Just because we didn’t have furniture, it didn’t make sense to hold up the opening.” So this is a “sneak peak week” at the restaurant, with a limited menu and about 50 seats instead of 85.

Coraine said the missing banquettes actually gives the restaurant the opportunity to "take a few baby steps” and let the staff find their legs while seating is still limited.

Breakfast business was good: “A lot of eggs, a lot of pancakes, and a lot of people came for Stumptown coffee.” At lunch they sold a lot of hamburgers.

So, business as usual in Danny Meyer Land.

One of the highlights of the place as far as I’m concerned is the custom-made soda which they’re serving out of kegs.

Local boyfriend/girlfriend team Brooklyn Soda Works is providing root beer and apple-ginger soda. Coraine said the team makes the soda in their kitchen at home. “The cool thing about them is there’s no syrups. The ingredients are either steeped or macerated. The root beer is made from roots that they foraged,” he said.

The restaurant’s executive chef, Chris Bradley, gave me a rundown of what he had planned a couple of weeks ago. You can read that interview here.

Oh, and see that poll above and to your right, about which Beard Award nominee you’d pick for best new restaurant? Go ahead and vote on that.

Beard Handicapping 2011

March 21

The nominations for the James Beard Foundation Chef and Restaurant Awards were announced today.

So were nominations for cookbooks, journalism and broadcast media, but I don’t cover those and so I don’t care much.

Even the chef and restaurant awards are kind of, well, I mean it’s great for all the chefs and restaurateurs to come to New York and celebrate, and it’s even better that they get to publicize their nomination and maybe drum up more business, but so many nominees return each year that there are never any great surprises. These will be the 13th Beard Awards that I cover, and they have all started to blur together. 

Then again, why would there be surprises? The nominees tend to be talented chefs and restaurants that many people in their communities love, which is why they get nominated.

So I’m not saying that the awards necessarily need to be done differently. They are what they are; winners should use them for whatever they’re worth and those who don’t win shouldn’t take them too seriously.

This will be my fifth year predicting the winners, and I must say that I’m getting better at it. I guessed seven out 19 winners my first two years, then I bumped it up to eight, and last year I guessed nine winners. That’s practically half, almost.

My approach to these predictions is based on the idea that these awards don’t go to the best chef — I mean, “best chef”? What does that even mean?

They tend to go to those whose names are most easily recognized by the judges, who are food writers and past winners.

My predictions do not in anyway indicate who I would like to win. For the sake of propriety, I will keep that to myself.

And now onto my predictions.

Rising Star Chef of the Year:

I think Christina Tosi will benefit from the name of Momofuku, which introduced Asian food to many New Yorkers who had, it seemed, not bothered to walk a mile south of the East Village to Chinatown or two miles northwest to Koreatown.

Aaron London, Ubuntu, Napa, Calif.

Thomas McNaughton, flour + water, San Francisco

Gabriel Rucker, Le Pigeon, Portland, Ore.

Christina Tosi, Momofuku Milk Bar, NYC

Sue Zemanick, Gautreau’s, New Orleans

Best New Restaurant:

Torrisi’s the darling of New York gastroscenti at the moment, and although it’s possible that it and ABC Kitchen will split the New York vote and the award will go to Benu, whose chef Corey Lee won the Rising Star award a few years ago and who still shines in the glory of the Thomas Keller empire as The French Laundry’s former chef, I don’t think it will.

ABC Kitchen, New York City

Benu, San Francisco

Girl & the Goat, Chicago

Menton, Boston

Torrisi Italian Specialties, New York City

Outstanding Restaurateur:

The judges, feeling bad that they dissed Jean-Georges Vongerichten by not voting for his ABC Kitchen as best new restaurant, will give this award to his business partner, Phil Suarez.

Bruce Bromberg and Eric Bromberg, Blue Ribbon Restaurants, New York City

Tom Douglas, Tom Douglas Restaurants, Seattle

Pat Kuleto, Pat Kuleto Restaurant Development & Management Company, San Francisco

Richard Melman, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, Chicago

Phil Suarez, Suarez Restaurant Grou, New York City

Outstanding Restaurant:

This one’s always a crap shoot, but if in doubt, pick the restaurant with the most famous owner. That would be Danny Meyer of Eleven Madison Park.

Blue Hill, New York City

Boulevard, San Francisco

Eleven Madison Park, New York City

Highlands Bar and Grill, Birmingham, Ala.

Vetri, Philadelphia

Outstanding Chef:

Paul Kahan is new to this category, and it usually takes a few years for a chef to win. Everyone loves José Andrés, but we’re in kind of a post-molecular gastronomy mood at the moment. I think this one’s a toss-up between Gary Danko and Suzanne Goin. I think I’ll pick the one with the homier reputation.

José Andrés, mini bar by José Andrés, Washington, D.C.

Gary Danko, Restaurant Gary Danko, San Francisco

Suzanne Goin, Lucques, Los Angeles

Paul Kahan, Blackbird, Chicago

Charles Phan, The Slanted Door, San Francisco 

Outstanding Pastry Chef:

Can Eleven Madison Park possibly win two awards? Well, yes, it can, but Mindy Segal’s the only chef in this category who also was nominated last year. I think that’s a sign

Joanne Chang, Flour Bakery + Café, Boston

Patrick Fahy, Blackbird, Chicago

Dahlia Narvaez, Osteria Mozza, Los Angeles

Angela Pinkerton, Eleven Madison Park, New York City

Mindy Segal, Mindy’s HotChocolate Restaurant and Dessert Bar, Chicago

Outstanding Service:

Emeril’s famous, but in my world I think Thomas Keller’s even more so.

Canlis, Seattle

Emeril’s, New Orleans

La Grenouille, New York City

Per Se,  New York City

Topolobampo, Chicago

Outstanding Wine Service:

San Francisco’s got to win something big, and Bay Area judges are used to voting for A16, whose Nate Appleman was named Rising Star Chef a couple of years ago. Appleman’s consulting for Chipotle now, but that’s his journey, not A16’s.

A16, San Francisco, Shelley Lindgren

Blackberry Farm Walland, Tenn., Andy Chabot

Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder, Colo. Bobby Stuckey

Picasso at Bellagio, Las Vegas Robert Smith

The Modern, New York City, Belinda Chang

Outstanding Wine & Spirits Professional:

So many ways to go with this one. The Beard Foundation is trying to shake its New York-centric reputation. In fact, it announced the list of nominees at a press conference in Portland, Ore., this year. It was a classy move, but still, if you wonder which city is going to take an award, it’s probably going to be New York.

Sam Calagione, Dogfish head Craft Brewery, Milton, Del.

Merry Edwards, Merry Edwards Winery, Sebastopol, Calif.

Paul Grieco, Hearth and Terroir, New York City

Rajat Parr, Mina Group, San Francisco

Julian P. Van Winkle III, Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery, Louisville, Ky.

Best Chef: Great Lakes:

Perennial favorites like Zingerman’s tend to linger as nominees, but they don’t win very often. I’m going to guess that Chicago will follow the lead of their new Michelin guide, which gave two stars to Avenues.

Michael Carlson, Schwa, Chicago

Curtis Duffy, Avenues, at the Peninsula, chicago

Bruce Sherman, North Pond, Chicago

Paul Virant, Vie, Western Springs, Ill.

Alex Young, Zingerman’s Roadhouse, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic:

You know what? Philadelphia’s a really great food city.

Cathal Armstrong, Restaurant Eve, Alexandria, Va.

Johnny Monis, Komi, Washington, D.C.

Peter Pastan, Obellisk, Washington, D.C.

Maricel Presilla, Cucharamama, Hoboken, N.J.

Michael Solomonov, Zahav, Philadelphia

Best Chef: Midwest:

I think the Midwesterners are going to vote classically this year, and that means a vote for L’Etoile.

Justin Aprahamian, Sanford, Milwaukee

Isaac Becker, 112 Eatery, Minneapolis

Colby Garrelts, Bluestem, Kansas City, Mo.

Tory Miller, L’Etoile, Madison, Wis.

Lenny Russo, Heartland, St. Paul, Minn

Best Chef: New York City

New York has an incredibly dynamic restaurant scene, and yet April Bloomfield’s the only newcomer on this list. With all due respect to the very deserving nominees here, that says something bad about something, but I’m not sure what.

That said, as much as food writers love April Bloomfield, I think they like Michael White even more.

Michael Anthony, Gramercy Tavern

April Bloomfield, The Spotted Pig

Wylie Dufresne, WD-50

Gabrielle Hamilton, Prune

Michael White, Marea

Best Chef: Northeast:

Tony Maws is the only returning nominee on this list and so I’ll follow the same logic I did picking outstanding pastry chef.

Tim Cushman, o ya, Boston

Krista Kern Desjarlais, Bresca, Portland, Maine.

Gerry Hayden, The North Fork Table & Inn, Southold, N.Y.

Matt Jennings, La Laiterie, Providence, R.I.

Tony Maws, Craigie on Main, Cambridge, Mass.

Eric Warnstedt, Hen of the Wood, Waterbury, Vt.

Best Chef: Northwest:

This list shows me that I need to get to the Pacific Northwest more often, because I am, quite frankly, at a loss as to who to predict. But I have to pick someone, so, congratulations in advance to Cathy Whims.

Matt Dillon, Sitka & Spruce, Seattle

Christopher Israel, Grüner, Portland, Ore.

Andy Ricker, Pok Pok, Portland, Ore.

Ethan Stowell, Staple & Fancy Mercantile, Seattle

Cathy Whims, Nostrana, Portland, Ore.

Best Chef: Pacific:

I’ve heard many good things about Daniel Patterson, and that means that judges in the Bay Area have, too.

Michael Cimarusti, Providence, Los Angeles

Christopher Kostow, The Restaurant at Meadowood, St. Helena, Calif.

Daniel Patterson, Coi, San Francico

Richard Reddington, Redd, Yountville, Calif.

Michael Tusk, Quince, San Francisco

Best Chef: South:

The Brennans are possibly the most respected restaurant family in the entire country, and this list indicates that New Orleans still is enjoying a post-Katrina bump. 

Zach Bell, Café Boulud, Palm Beach, Fla.

John Harris, Lilette, New Orleans

Christopher Hastings, Hot and Hot Fish Club, Birmingham, Ala.

Tory McPhail, Commander’s Palace, New Orleans

Stephen Stryjewski, Cochon, New Orleans

Best Chef: Southeast:

Bigger cities have more judges.

Hugh Acheson, Five and Ten, Athens, Ga.

Craig Deihl, Cypress, Charleston, S.C.

John Fleer, Canyon Kitchen at Lonesome Valley, Cashiers, N.C.

Linton Hopkins, Restaurant Eugene, Atlanta

Edward Lee, 610 Magnolia, Louisville, Ky.

Andrea Reusing, Lantern, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Best Chef: Southwest:

Remember what I said about the Southeast? It’s true of the Southwest, too.

Bruce Auden, Biga on the Banks, San Antonio, Texas

Bryan Caswell, Reef, Houston

Saipin Chutima, Lotus of Siam, Las Vegas

Tyson Cole, Uchi, Austin, Texas

Ryan Hardy, Montagne at the Little Nell, Aspen, Colo.

And that concludes my predictions. 

Please feel free to share your own observations in the comment section below.