Food fight

If you still haven’t decided between McCain and Obama, here’s just the thing that will probably tip it for you:

As far as we could determine, McCain is a regular-guy diner-out, happy to follow Arizona custom with a Tex-Mex combo platter but also loyal to the modestly adventurous gourmet food available near his ranch north of Phoenix. The Obamas’ favorite spot for a night out in Chicago is the alta cocina Mexican restaurant Topolobampo, said Michelle Obama spokeswoman Katie McCormick Lelyveld.

Chicagoans know Topolobampo as the quieter, slightly classier sister restaurant of Frontera Grill, both owned by award-winning chef Rick Bayless. Sun-Times restaurant critic Pat Bruno has praised its “creativity and quality.”

Sadly, no help for me, as neither candidate was revealed to be a “chili dog for breakfast” kind of guy. So they both have a weakness for Mexican food, huh? Hmmmn.

Hartley and Von

I wrote about restaurants yesterday, mostly chain steakhouses. It shouldn’t go unremarked that the patriarchs of two of Fort Wayne’s most well-known restaurants (and, as it happens, a couple of my favorites) died last week within a couple of days of each other. On Monday, Hartley McLeod died at 81. On Wednesday, Evangelos”Von” Filippou died at 87. Both stories should have been Page 1 news, but they got — well, buried in the obits.

Hartley was a Komet from 1954 to 1958, then went on to be an IHL lineman for years before opening Hartley’s Place in 1983, perhaps the city’s most highly regarded homegrown, high-end restaurant. When my mother was still alive and most of my family still lived in Fort Wayne, we went there once a month, and I never had a bad bite of food there, let alone a bad meal or experience. Hartley’s success is all the more remarkable for its location, in a too-small building with hardly any parking, in the middle of a neighborhood on South Fairfield in the wrong part of town.

Filippou came here from Greece in 1952, after the unpleasantness with the Communists,  and opened Nick’s Rib Bar (later Nick & Von’s) with his partner Nick Stamenis in 1958. What can I say about the Rib Room that I haven’t said before? I’ve spent so many Friday nights there, with my shrimp cocktail and rib basket and fries, helping Sam Filippou, son of Von, plot the secret plans of the Midwest  chapter of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.

I won’t ry to convince you of the delights of the dining experiences of Hartley’s or the Rib Room if you’ve never been to either of them. We all find the places we like for whatever reasons we have. But those two places, like a handful of others, are uniquely Fort Wayne. No other city has a Hartley’s or a Rib Room. They were created by people who came here and liked the place and made it better with their visions and hard work. Praise be for the Steve Gards and the Noelle Reiths who keep hanging in there.

Meat me in the produce aisle

Call PETA – maybe they can help:

Eating high levels of some soy products - including tofu - may raise the risk of memory loss, research suggests.

[. . .]

Soy products are a major alternative protein source to meat for many people in the developing world.

But soy consumption is also on the increase in the west, where it is often promoted as a “superfood”.

Carnivores. Meat. Get it?

Cheese and whine

This is an abomination:

Sometimes a glass of white wine is not enough. Nor is a beer, an iced tea or a lemonade, though heaven knows few things are better than a tart lemonade in a beaded glass on a hot summer’s day. …

we want red wine. And how are we going to drink this red wine?

That’s right, chilled! Cold, cool, brisk, whatever you want to call it, we are going to enjoy this red wine at a temperature that refreshes, restores and revitalizes even the most exhausted soul.

The only good thing to do with a “light-bodied, low-tannin wine” (the kind said to be best for chilling) is . . . well, there is no good thing to do with such a thing. Simple rule of life: white wine chilled, red wine room temperature. We ate at a Mexican restaurant Saturday night, and the only red wine they had was a burgundy (which is too heavy for this shiraz and cabernet drinker), and they served it ice cold. Ick.

And let the cheese you have with your warm, red wine come to room temperature, too. You’re welcome.

Fat with facts

Certainly Americans could stand to lose a little weight. One way to aid that cause is for governments to mandate that restaurant menus contain more information on nutrition (California and New York leading the way, natch). That’s legitimate, right? One thing government can do without screwing it up too much is to get information to consumers so they can make informed decisions. But (you knew one was coming, right?):

The belief that more facts will generate wiser decisions is appealing but, at least in the realm of food, yet to be proved. No one seems to have noticed that as nutritional labeling has expanded, so have American waistlines. The federal government first required packaged foods to carry such information in the mid-1970s, and today, we are collectively fatter than we were then.

What does that suggest? Either people don’t notice what’s in the food they buy, or they don’t let the knowledge affect what goes in their mouths.

“You can certainly say that most people certainly don’t understand the food label,” former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford told the 2004 World Obesity Congress. “And it’s not because they can’t understand it, it’s because they don’t care to understand it.”

If people don’t heed the information they already have, they aren’t going to waste effort digesting an additional onslaught of facts.

We don’t, in fact, suffer from a dearth of facts but a surfeit. We are unble to process the information we already have, and putting more of it on our plates will improve neither our appetites nor our digestion.

This has been your periodic libertarian screed. You may now return to suspecting I am a Bush-loving Republican apologist. 

Double shot

Life is good:

Stumped at the café? Go for a mocha.

According to new research, the tasty beverage provides a double-whammy of health benefits: chocolate may slow cancer growth, and java could help you live longer.

I discovered a Starbucks mocha ice cream bar at the market the other day. Awesome. Still waiting for that research on the health benefits of fried food to come in.

We feel your pain

Well, they’re paying attention to what happens in flyover country now, aren’t they?

Raging floodwaters that have swallowed homes, bridges and roads across the Midwest this week now threaten to stunt the region’s economy and raise already heightened food prices.

[. . .]

The Midwest corn crop is already estimated to be 10 percent smaller than last year’s, and further flood damage could cause a domino-down effect, pushing livestock feed prices higher and triggering other cost hikes all the way up the food chain.

Pat Robertson has been strangely silent, so I don’t know what God is punishing us for this time, but at least we get to share the pain. 

Here’s the beef

The Joseph Decuis restaurant in Roanoke gets a nice writeup in the Star for its American version of Kobe beef, for which the restaurant owners keep their own herd of Japanese Wagyu cattle:

What has come to be called American Wagyu is typically a cross between Japanese Wagyu and black or red Angus.

American Wagyu steaks often cost more than $50 a pound; a 6-ounce fillet from Joseph Decuis is more than $40. At the much ballyhooed Kobe Club in New York City, an 8-ounce American Wagyu fillet is $85. A Kobe sampler for two costs $395.

Yikes. Throw in a good bottle of wine, and we’re talking real money. I’ve never had Kobe beef, but I may have to try it at least once. I love a good steak, and the difference between the Choice you can get at the supermarket and the Prime that’s served in good restaurants is worth paying extra for. Here’s where to order your own if you want to have Prime at home.

A rough patch

 The overreaction continues:

McDonald’s Corp, the world’s biggest restaurant chain, has pulled raw sliced tomatoes from its sandwiches and has no immediate plans to bring them back.

There goes my Big N’ Tasty. Never mind that only a few types of tomatoes from a few areas are suspect; let’s just get rid of all of them of all types from every state in the union from all restaurants and supermarkets.

Oh, well, natural fear reaction, I suppose.

There are two great fresh-vegetable culinary experiences — corn that is thrown into a pot of boiling water immediately on being picked, and a tomato that is yanked from the vine and immediately bitten into. Thanks to my rural upbringing and my occasional attempts at backyard gardening, I’ve been able to experience both. The boiling water pretty much took care of any possible contamination of the corn. Thank God I never had any cows wandering through my tomato patches.

Give me a break

Yeah, and they taste worse, too:

McDonald’s french fries are now trans-fat-free in all its restaurants in the United States and Canada, the fast-food restaurant chain said Thursday.

Way to ruin one of life’s small pleasures.

Food fight!

I eat too much or eat the wrong things or both, and the predictable results come about Naturally, it’s the government’s fault, not mine:

The problem at first was that the problem was ignored: For almost two decades, young people in the United States got fatter and fatter — ate more, sat more — and nobody seemed to notice. Not parents or schools, not medical groups or the government.

But since the alarm was finally sounded in the late 1990s, the problem has been the country’s reaction: a fragmented, inchoate response that critics say has suffered particularly from inadequate direction and dollars at the federal level.

“The sense of this as a national health priority just doesn’t come through,” said Jeffrey P. Koplan of Emory University, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chairman of the Institute of Medicine’s 2004 study of childhood obesity. The top recommendation of that seminal report was for the government to convene a high-level, interdepartmental task force to guide a coordinated response. No such body has been assembled.

Contrast that with the offensive mounted in European countries: France mandated health warnings on televised food ads. Spanish officials reached agreement with industry leaders on tighter product labeling and marketing as well as reducing fat, salt and sugar in processed foods.

Stop me before I make another bad choice! Come on, folks, let’s get back to taking responsibility for our own lives.

Too many fried French

Mon dieu!

PARIS, May 19 (Reuters) - France is considering a ban on happy hours in bars and on the sale of bottles of vodka and other strong liquor in nightclubs as part of efforts to curb binge drinking among young people, an official said on Monday.

“Enlightened” Americans have said we should follow the French example of exposing young people to responsible drinking — a little red wine with dinner, joining papa for a before-bed brandy — so as to prevent them from abusing alcohol. Guess that isn’t working out too well.

Phony baloney

Those gourmet hamburgers in the Red Robin commercials always looked good — until I found out they cost $10 each. That’s insane, I think — I’ll stick with the Thickburger. Now, there’s this:

Chef James Locascio, of Rittenhouse Square’s Barclay Prime, created Philadelphia’s “haute” cheesesteak, an upscale version of the sandwich that includes butter poached lobster and shaved truffles.

“It’s every ingredient you want to try in a lifetime in one,” said Locascio.

Still, that kind of lavishness doesn’t come cheap. For one cheesesteak, expect to pay $100. That is nearly 15 times more than the original.

“We made sure we had the best beef we could find, the best lobster and the right cheese,” explains Locascio.

If it’s delivered right to my front door by a naked Elisha Cuthbert, maybe I’ll go as high as $50. And what in the world are truffles and “butter poached lobster” doing on an honest American sandwich like the cheesesteak anyway? Yes, I’ll have a bologna and cheese, please, and could you make the cheese camembert?

Meat me in the garden

A member of another misunerstood and put-upon minority (only 10 million Americans out of more than 300 million) asks for our understanding:

Please don’t try to convince us that being vegetarian is somehow wrong. If you’re concerned for my health, that’s very nice, though you can rest assured that I’m in shipshape. If you want to have an amiable tête-à-tête about vegetarianism, that’s great. But if you insist on being the aggressive blowhard who takes meatlessness as a personal insult and rails about what fools we all are, you’re only going to persuade me that you’re a dickhead. When someone says he’s Catholic, you probably don’t start the stump speech about how God is a lie created to enslave the ignorant masses, and it’s equally offensive to berate an herbivore. I know you think we’re crazy. That’s neat. But seeing as I’ve endured the hassle of being a vegetarian for several years now, perhaps I’ve given this a little thought.

Actually, I’m not all that unsympathetic. Most of the neoPuritans’ efforts to get sin out of the world — smoking bans, anti-drinking campaigns, anti-sex and -gambling screeds — will fail. It’s part of human nature to succumb to human weakness. But I think vegetarinaism will be the norm somewhere in the human future (and this comes from a dedicated prime-rib loving, pork-chop chomping fiend). There is something fundamentally creepy about surviving by eating (in the words of the admirable vegetarian and musician Arlo Guthrie) “the burnt, dead flesh of other animals.” As scientists and nutritionists get more adept at producing better-tasting and equally nutritious meat substitutes, the number of vegetarians will continue to grow.

Up against the wall, plant killer!

No, this is not a joke:

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” is enough to short circuit the brain.

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.”

And you thought radical environmentalism had gone about as far as it could. It’s OK to make fun of them, but these people are as serious as can be and have more supporters than we probably want to think about.

Our sins are multiplying

Told you so:

WINDSOR, N.J. (CBS) ― The sputtering economy has caused an increase in prices of many staples including gasoline, rice, ice cream, even beer. Now some lawmakers in New Jersey are considering taking food taxes a step further and install a proverbial “sin” tax on fast food.

Yes, the idea of marking up your favorite fast food burger or pack of fries is actually being tossed around, and it’s not settling well with many residents.

Fast food, high style

If you go to a McDonald’s in Britain, your server may be dressed better than you are (one of the new uniforms is worn by the woman on the left):

Uniforms at McDonald’s have been given an overhaul by a designer better known for glamorous dresses worn by celebrities.

Bruce Oldfield, who boasts Catherine Zeta Jones, Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and Jemima Khan among his client list, has created a range for the fast food giant’s 67,000 UK staff.

The collection includes a black and mocha polo shirt, black cargo-style trousers, a black and mocha baseball cap and black belt and apron.

When I worked at Mickey D’s — high school, first job after the theater usher’s gig — the uniform was white shirt and the funny paper hat. It was a big deal when I got to change from the white hat to the red one — “assistant manager” while still in my teens, and a whole 15 cents an hour more. The manager there tried to talk me into getting in on the ground floor of that owner-operator thing. “Are you kidding?” I told him. “I’m going to go into newspapers and do something with my life.” If only . . .

King Corn

For the “government is the problem, not the solution” file:

An enormous share of the grain crop is now devoted to energy production. How much? A new World Bank report states that “almost all of the increase in global maize production from 2004 to 2007 (the period when grain prices rose sharply) went for biofuels production in the U.S.” Go back and read that sentence a second time. It is stunning.

With the world population growing, and incomes rising, increased food production is necessary to maintain an acceptable level of basic human welfare. Since 2004, corn production available to individual consumers hasn’t budged.

Suck it up, “basic human welfare” fans. We need your food to fuel our illusion that we are creating energy independence and saving the planet.

Recipegate

Cindy MCain has become the latest person to embarrass a presidential campaign. Evidently, she submitted a “family” recipe to a newspaper that actually turned out to be lifted from the Food Network:

This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network’s site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain’s campaign site.

On a section of McCain’s site called “Cindy’s Recipes,” you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading “McCain Family Recipe.” Ms. Handel quickly realized that some of the “McCain Family Recipes,” were in fact, word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.

She stole a passion fruit mousse recipe, for goodness sake. If she’s gonna get in on this “I can out-small-town you” contest (USA Today headline: “The search for commoner in chief”), she’d better be stealing a meat loaf recipe, and it should be from Good Housekeeping or the Fanny Farmer Cookbook. As scandals go, this one isn’t much. It just seems so . . . tawdry, especially part where a low-level intern (one of them again) gets blamed.

The correct way to steal a recipe is to cut it out (or print it out) and have it in a cluttered mess with other recipes in your kitchen. Over the years, as you use it, you make a small change here and there until eventually the recipe is truly yours. My best example of this is a recipe for Mongolian Beef that I cut out of a newspaper — just your basic stir fry of beef and green onions with soy sauce and garlic and ginger. Over the years, I’ve added some carrot slices (for crunch), a few drops of sesame oil (powerful stuff) and honey and red pepper flakes and . . .

Recipes are like folk songs — they’re supposed to be borrowed and adapted.

 

Waiting to inhale

My birth state takes a courageous stand against modernism:

FRANKFORT, Ky. — The state that claims to produce the world’s best bourbon has banned at least one way to consume it: vaporized for easy inhalation.

Gov. Steve Beshear signed a bill on Tuesday prohibiting the sale, purchase or use of alcohol vaporizers, which are devices that resemble asthma inhalers but produce intoxicating fumes.

“These devices have generated considerable concern from the law enforcement and medical communities due to the increased potential for extreme alcohol impairment or consuming alcohol in deadly concentrations,” Beshear told advocates who gathered in the Kentucky Capitol for the signing ceremony.

“Claims” to produce the world’s best bourbon? Come on, AP, give back the bribe Tennessee paid you. Without getting into the legal or philosophical implications of the law, let me just say that it makes a great del of aesthetic sense. Unless your idea is to just get hammered as quickly as possible, liquor should be sipped. Inhaled, for Pete’s sake?

Here, for those of discerning taste, is the perfect mint julep: Make a syrup by boiling two cups of sugar and two cupts of water for five minutes. Refrigerate overnight in a covered container with some crushed fresh mint. To make the drink, mix a tablespoon of syrup with two ounces of bourbon and crushed ice. Then — this is the most important step — dump it into the nearest flower pot and pour yourself a B&B. You will kill a plant that no longer needs to be watered and discover the reason liquor was discovered.

I was on vacation in Kentucky once and asked a liquor store clerk if he had B&B. “I got the beer,” he said, “but what’s the other B?” Well, hell, bourbon, unless you’re Hillary Clinton.

It’s Miller time

Oh, come on:

For more than 100 college presidents and athletic directors, beer and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament don’t mix.

The college leaders — among them the top officials at Harvard, Abilene Christian and Georgia State — wrote a letter to NCAA President Myles Brand on Wednesday calling beer advertising “embarrassingly prominent” during tournament broadcasts. They asked the organization to reconsider its policies on alcohol advertising.

Sports plus beer ads; what a shock. If the college presidents and athletic directors want to talk about something that’s “embarrassingly prominent,” how about near-professional sports teams that have become the tail wagging the college dog. Oh, wait, this just in: Eric Gordon is going pro after just a year at Indiana Univeristy.

Happy 75th, Near Beer

Those of you who are of a certain age (near mine) and who grew up here may remember being underage but able to drive over to Ohio for the exotic experience of drinking 3.2 beer. You could drink a six-pack and never feel a buzz, but we were young and drunk on the idea of getting drunk, so we “felt” the effects of that Near Beer. Kids of later generations probably did the same thing with wine coolers, the wusses.

But is it possible that 3.2 beer saved the country? FDR was elected by promising many things, one of which was the end of Prohibition. Repealing the Prohibition amendment would be a lengthy process, so Roosevelt asked Congress to ease the country back into intemperance with the legalization of beer. The 18th Amendement had banned “alcoholic” beverages, which were defined as anything containing 5 percent or more of alcohol, so 3.2 beer was a nifty loophole:

Congress heeded the call. On March 22, FDR signed a bill legalizing 3.2% beer. Within two days, brewers in Milwaukee had hired 600 workers. Beer makers in New York announced plans to spend $22 million refurbishing their dilapidated plants. Detroit automakers scrambled to supply brewers and their wholesalers with $15 million in new cars and trucks. In the 48 hours after the beer taps opened April 7, brewers paid $10 million in federal, state and municipal taxes ($155 million in today’s dollars).

Beer alone would not undo the economic disaster or heal the nation’s spiritual malaise. But at a moment of despair, FDR’s words and actions inspired Americans to believe the country could steer a new course. Over the next few months, the president proposed, Congress approved and millions cooperated in implementing a host of innovative (and untested) projects designed to prime the economic pump and get people back to work.

Beer made us believe again! OK, it’s a little over the top, but interesting. What will be the next Prohbition lesson we learn? No, not marijuana — that was never part of the national psyche. I give you, as the economy starts to melT down, John McCain and Barack Obama, both struggling (whIch means ready to relapse at any moment) ex-smokers.

Cheap whine

Of all the ostentatious consumers out there — “Look at the car I’m driving and the clothes I’m wearing, you pitiful, no-taste slobs!” — wine snobs are the most annoying. So make a note of this to use as ammunition the test time some pretentious, cheese-nibbling, Cabernet-sipping buffoon starts prattling on:

 In a world without price tags or labels, which wines would rule? Food writer Robin Goldstein offers an answer in “The Wine Trials,” a new book based on a blind taste test of 540 wines, priced between $1.50 and $150. Goldstein’s 500 volunteer tasters, a group that included experts and everyday drinkers, sipped more than 6,000 glasses of wine and recorded their impressions on a simple scale of bad, OK, good and great. Their results might rattle a few wine snobs, but the average oenophile can rejoice: 100 wines under $15 consistently outperformed their upscale cousins.

For instance, after the initial ratings were turned into numbers (1 for “bad,” 4 for “great”), a $9.99 bottle of Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut outscored a $150 bottle of Dom Perignon, while Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon, known as “Two-Buck Chuck,” bested the $55 version from Stags’ Leap Artemis. Several box wines, much derided in some circles, also cracked the top 100. This is what happens when you “get past the jargon and pomposity of wine writing,” says Goldstein. “People shouldn’t have to apologize for serving cheap wine.”

Boy, that’ll sure save on dinner parties, eh? Just keep around a few empty bottles that once held the high-priced stuff. Every time we have company, just dump in the Gallo or the Ripple, and our guests will rave about our wine-selection smarts.

Blurring the lines

Most of us in the press and the blogosphere — including me — were pretty tough on Jack Trudeau when the story broke about his apparent hosting of a drinking party for his child’s graduation. Here’s a different point of view:

The best evidence shows that teaching kids to drink responsibly is better than shutting them off entirely from it,” he told me. “You want to introduce your kids to it, and get across the point that that this is to be enjoyed but not abused.”

He said that the most dangerous day of a young person’s life is the 21st birthday, when legality is celebrated all too fervently. Introducing wine as a part of a meal, he said, was a significant protection against bingeing behavior.

That’s something to think about — giving a young person an occasional sip of wine with dinner is a little different from hosting a party at which he and all his friends drink to get (at least) a buzz on. And it is true that for most other potentially dangerous things — driving a car, shooting a gun — there seems to be consensus that the best thing to do is introduce young people to the activity gradually so as to teach them responsible and appropriate use.

Alcohol is little different, though. The line between responsible use and abuse can be a tricky one — its position not exactly known until it is crossed. Young people are not very good with lines anyway, and whenever I hear of adults wanting to help blur them even further, I cringe.   

Kicking the bucket

If this isn’t blasphemy, then I don’t understand the concept of sacred:

What in the name of Colonel Harland Sanders is going on at KFC? The chain built by his secret recipe for fried chicken is about to give equal billing to — gulp — grilled chicken.

Kentucky Fried Chicken customers will be greeted eventually by lighted “Now Grilling” signs, starting in coming weeks in select U.S. cities.

Storefront signs will be altered to promote the new product — called Kentucky Grilled Chicken. Even the brand’s ubiquitous chicken buckets will get a makeover, though they will still feature the iconic founder Sanders.

Doug Hasselo, KFC’s chief food innovation officer, says, “This is transformational for our brand.”

Louisville-based KFC, a subsidiary of Yum Brands Inc., hopes grilled chicken will lure back health-conscious consumers who dropped fried chicken from their diets, or cut back on indulging.

KGC? Col. Sanders is surely rolling over in his grave. Why does “health conscious” mean every menu has to be healthy? A steady diet of fried chicken (or anything, for that matter) would not be the best idea, but having it available for the occasional indulgence doesn’t seem to much to ask.