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September 2007
Ever Eaten Tobacco?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m not talkin’ chewin’ — one of the hottest trends right now is infusing with tobacco. Top Flr pastry chef Taria Camerino serves a dessert she calls boca negra, a dense flourless chocolate cake served with a scoop of ice cream infused with smoky tobacco; at newly opened Room at Twelve, the onion rings have a taste of it.
I’m told by industry leader Antionette Bruno of starchefs.com that Atlanta’s taste for what’s smokin’ is on par with national trends — she’s scene tobacco-infusion in other cities as well.
Is tobacco as a flavor a new lease on life for Philip Morris? Or are we going to end up feeling like we’re licking the inside of an ashtray? Who’s tried these dishes? What did you think? Have you tried tobacco-flavored foods in other cities?
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Who’s Your Favorite Bartender?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The trouble with the world is that everybody in it is three drinks behind.” — Humprey Bogart
Let’s get down to some real business: bartenders. Anyone who drinks — in public, anyway — has a favorite place to drink, and a favorite guy or gal to offer a pour. Good bartenders do more than just make a great drink, of course — they are the shrinks of the service industry, offering insight and intuition with a splash of entertainment. Maybe even some flirtatious fun.
Who’s your favorite in the area? Be sure to mention where they work, too.
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Yum! Let’s eat for charity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Who could say no to a menu that might include braised Berkshire pork, arugula salad, sweet potato ravioli with pork belly, and bread pudding with Georgia apples?
How about a chef’s table at Kevin Rathbun Steak, Floataway Cafe, Shaun’s, Repast, Restaurant Eugene, the Hil, the Farmhouse at Serenbe, Food 101 in Morningside, Watershed, Woodfire Grill, Taurus, Element Gastro Lounge or JCT Kitchen & Bar? Or one of several other top restaurants in Atlanta, Athens and Palmetto?
This weekend, many of Atlanta’s best chefs will cook to support a nonprofit that links farmers with restaurants and consumers who want to buy locally grown produce. Food & Wine Magazine is sponsoring the Grow for Good project, which benefits Farm to Table.
It’s the first in a series of events that also include a country fair in the city on Saturday at 5 Seasons brewery, still under construction in west Midtown but opening for the beer-and-farmer fest, and a Sunday dinner at Summerland Farm, home of Bacchanalia chef/owners Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison.
There’s another high-profile food benefit in town this weekend, Taste America, a James Beard Foundation fundraiser that’s tapping some of the same chefs involved with Grow for Good. Tickets for the various events for the magazine and for Beard range from $50 to $175.
Do you ever go to these types of food fundraisers? If so, what convinces you to go? How much are you willing to pay for tickets?
For more information on the Food & Wine Grow for Good benefit, click here.
For the James Beard Foundation Taste America, click here.
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Why Aren’t There Better Restaurants OTP?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Okay, go ahead and lemme have it: I’m a snob, an ITP snob, a liberal, a food fascist. Why? Because I believe that there is far better dining inside the perimeter than outside the perimeter.
That’s not to say there’s no good dining outside the perimeter — there is. Check out next week’s Fall Dine Guide and you’ll see my picks for the top 50 restaurants in the area — many of which are outside.
But even chef friends who live outside the perimeter tell me it’s barren compared to in-town dining.
Why? Why does inner city dining have more character? Why do the suburbs breed chains and franchises?
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The tastiest chicken wings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two AJC staffers set out to find metro Atlanta’s best chicken wings, writing about their quest for accessAtlanta (click here to read the story).
We’ve told you our favorite spots, now tell us yours. Where do you go to get good, golden, greasy chicken wings?
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Where is the best brewpub?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tell us your favorite brewpub … and we’ll check out a few of our own favorites and report back.
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Alon’s or Star Provisions? Who’s got the Best Cheese Selection?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The cheese course has become a must for most high-end restaurants; even mid-level restaurants offer tastings. Unlike anything else at a restaurant — the gin, the wine list, even the produce — it really shows when a chef doesn’t procure fine cheese.
Cheese guru Raymond Hook will be in town October 14 for a four-course cheese-tasting dinner at Shaun’s featuring Georgia’s own Sweet Grass Dairy’s fine handcrafted cheeses and a wine selection form Motovino Wine Company. A portion of the evening’s proceeds will benefit the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Hook is well-known in the Atlanta foodie scene as the great gourmand of all things ripened, with or without rind.
So what establishment offers the best cheese selection? Alon’s is great, but my pick would be Star Provisions, where I can get my favorite, clochette, when other spots fail me. Who else offers a great selection of cheese? What restaurant has your favorite cheese course?
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Are Chefs Spreading Themselves Too Thin?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With the news that chef Richard Blais of Midtown’s Element is branching out — heading up the food concept at nearby nightclub Halo and opening another spot, Elevation, in not-so-nearby Kennesaw, it seems that chefs might, ahem, have too much on their plates.
Rathbun has done it successfully three times, Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison are so good at it they should give lessons. Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene has a second spot opening this fall. Hugh Acheson just opened his second restaurant, The National, in Athens. Opening a second (or third) restaurant may be profitable, but let’s face it — it stretches limits, too. The key is having an excellent, reliable staff to be you when you can’t be you.
What Atlanta chefs do you think are the most successful at opening second (or third) locations?
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The Top Ten Things You Should Eat Before You Die
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I was thumbing through “Glamour” magazine this morning over my usual bowl of shredded wheat (was that Scarlett Johansson’s face I just smeared with milk? Oh, too bad). I know, I know — but every girl’s gotta have her smutty mag fix every now and then — my point is the find of a listing of “15 beauty thrills to try in this lifetime,” from gravity-defying heels (highly recommended) to custom makeup (a must).
It got me thinking what foods I wouldn’t want to live without — or things I still need to try before I die. So with a nod to “Glamour,” here are my top ten.
- Raw oysters. Yes, I know the subject is verboten in Atlanta right now, but nothing can stop me from eating (properly) chilled oysters dipped in a tart mignonette, then smeared into cocktail sauce.
- Dark chocolate, particularly Belgian Cote d’Or.
- Tamales, especially from La Oaxaquena Taqueria in Jonesboro.
- The soft-cooked egg at Seeger’s, a farm egg custard in the shell (last devoured with a smidge of maple and dabs of trout caviar). The restaurant may be closed, but I can still dream.
- York Peppermint Patties. 160 calories, 3 grams of fat. Hello.
- The sliced brioche at the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead — it’s like eating yeast-raised butter.
- Tierra’s tres leches cake. It should come with a warning label.
- Popcorn (sans butter) with peanut M & Ms scattered into the bag.
- The house-made pickle plate (especially the okra) at Five & Ten in Athens.
- The Chinese vegetable dumplings in the frozen section at Super H Mart.
What’s on your list?
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Do you agree with Barbara Kingsolver’s push for eating locally?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barbara Kingsolver and her husband, Steven Hopp, talked at Emory University on Thursday night about their new book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.”
If you’re not familiar with the book, it’s a nonfiction account of spending a year eating food grown just on their farm in southwestern Virginia, or bought from nearby farmers. They keep an enormous garden, harvest fruit from an old orchard and, even though they had been vegetarians, raise animals for food, too. You can read more about it, and hear Kingsolver’s thoughts, in an article that appeared earlier this week in the AJC.
More than 1,000 people filled Glenn Memorial for the talk, some with questions about how they could eat with a greater awareness of how their choices impacted the Earth. Earlier in the evening, Kingsolver presented the choice between conventional, large-scale agriculture and smaller, local, sustainable farms in starker terms:
“We can choose to eat with those who are killing the land, or with those who are making it alive and beautiful.”
Do you agree with her assessment? Have you changed what you eat because of concern about the environment or for other reasons?
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Who’s Your Favorite Pastry Chef?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I just got a copy of pastry chef Elizabeth Falkner’s new book, “Demolition Desserts” and it’s chock full of dynamo recipes and desserts from her pastry shop and restaurant, Citizen Cake, in San Francisco. Like Falkner, the book is inventive and transcendent of the norm, breaking down the classics and reconstructing them in a way that makes them fun, appealing, and delicious.
There are only a handful a pastry chefs in Atlanta of this caliber: Kathryn King of Aria, Jonathan St. Hillaire of the Concentrics Restaurant group, The talented folks behind The Chocolate Bar in Decatur, Joel Antunes of Joel and Shaun Doty of Shaun’s (and he isn’t technically a pastry chef).
Who else would you put on the list? Who’s the pastry chef in Atlanta?
Falkner’s book is “Demolition Desserts” (Ten Speed Press, $35, publishes October 2007).
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Can store-bought sweet tea taste like homemade?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Many of us have tried tea in a can or bottle that claims to be ” just like homemade.” But is it truly possible to mass-produce a sweet tea whose tastes even approaches that of home-brewed? Give us your opinion.
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Where Do You Sip Sake?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sake, and sake cocktails, have become a hot topic of late. But before the onset of sushi’s popularity, sake was merely background noise at the local Japanese steak house.
With the revolution of authentic Japanese food in the United States, comes the love of sake. Sake is mistakenly referred to as rice wine outside Japan, but this fermented rice drink actually resembles beer more than wine, since it is made from grain with many fermentations (wine is made from fruit with a single fermentation).
There are two basic types, futsū-shu (“normal”) and tokutei meishōshu (“special”), with many varieties that fall under these two basic categories. I like the sake list at Taka in Buckhead for its variety. Where do you like to sip sake?
If you’d like to learn more about sake, Silk restaurant in Midtown is having a sake dinner on September 26. It will be a multi-course dinner featuring dishes to be paired with either a sake cocktail, cold sake or hot sake. Sake master Takehiko Kobari will give a special presentation. The event is $85 per person, not including tip and taxes. 7 p.m. Silk, 919 Peachtree Street, 678)-705-8888, www.silkrestaurant.com
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Where’s the Best Brunswick Stew?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Did it originate in Brunswick County, Va., or Brunswick, Ga.? Nobody really knows. And the recipes vary as quickly as the miles between those two places’ competing claims. Did it start with squirrel meat? Most likely. Some folks say rabbit.
For sure, it’s tomato with a mess of other goodies such as lima beans, corn, pork, chicken or — in some parts, beef. Some folks even put potatoes in B-stew (egads!).
Most of us grew up on it, and I can remember watching my grandfather and father stir it up in a huge black cauldron for our yearly family reunion on the 4th of July. We don’t make it at home as much as we used to — instead, we grab a bowl at our favorite BBQ joint. So let’s have it, Atlanta. Who’s got the best bowl of Brunswick Stew?
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Do You Dine Organic?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve written previously about the way certain terms, such as “heirloom” and “organic” are bandied about on menus these days. And I sometimes question the validity of their use. Just because a menu says the tomatoes are organic — should we believe they are? There are no regulations for restaurants to adhere to any truth in menu writing. If you know something is organic, are you more likely to order it? Unlike at the grocery store, organics don’t always cost significantly more when eaten at a restaurant, so if not, why not? Do you think there should be regulations for truth-in-menu writing? How would we enforce such regulations?
Meanwhile, Georgia Organics is holding a benefit celebration of Georgia’s organic farms on October 6 from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. at Whippoorwill Hollow Organic Farm in Covington. Benefits support the development of emerging organic farmers across the state. There will be chef demonstrations, entertainment and educational sessions all day — all for only $10 per person, and kids under 12 are free. For more information go to fieldofgreensgeorgia.org/. Whippoorwill Hollow Organic Farm is located at 3905 Highway 138, Covington.
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Where Are the Best Bagels?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I made my weekly stop into Belly this morning to get a cappuccino and rosemary bagel with egg to go. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I LOVE Belly bagels. But even I admit that these doughy balls of yeasty wonder are not the real deal — they’re more like dense bread.
Chewy bagels, dense but light with a soda crust, are hard to find in the South. There are, among others, obvious reasons for this: Eastern Europeans and Jewish immigrants settled more in the Northeast than in this part of the country. We also have softer flours in the South, which makes for great biscuits, but not great yeast-raised doughs. It’s also more humid in this part of the country, which can reek havoc with bread making.
I’d love to get a list of some great bagel bakers — which bakeries are the best?
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Foodservice Safety: Does The Line Cook Need Gloves?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After reports this week (from cracker jack food reporter Elizabeth Lee of the AJC) of the death of a woman due to the consumption of eating raw oysters at a local restaurant, everyone is suddenly focusing on food safety.
Food safety isn’t something we should be reactive about; it’s a proactive issue. Preventing the spread of germs and bacteria through safety measures like HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) are imperative for food handlers. Two very critical areas are handwashing and the proper temperature control of food — the temperature food is held at before and after cooking (two areas the south side Spondivits, where the oysters the woman ate have been traced to, did not score well on).
As a former chef, I’m a big believer that vigorous handwashing with soap in hot water (you know, where you wash until you’ve sung through the ABCs song) is one of the best ways to prevent foodbourne illness and illness in general. But nowadays, food handlers wear rubber gloves to prevent the spread of bacteria.
Then they take out the trash and smoke a cigarette with their gloves still on. I also believe that gloves actually deter food handlers from proper hand washing. A glove (or finger glove) should be worn only when a food handler has an injury (and an open injury should bench the worker until it heals). What’s your take on rubber or latex gloves? Does wearing them make for better food safety?
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Do restaurant inspection scores influence where you eat?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When you walk into a restaurant and see a low score on a health inspection report, does it change your plans to eat there?
If so, what score do you look for?
Do you check the previous inspection score listed on health forms, and does that affect your decision?
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Tap, Bottled or With Bubbles?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Woodfire Grill is now serving filtered tap water to cut down on the unneeded waste of fuel and resources. Chef Michael Tuohy says he still has a supply of sparkling water to work through, but is looking for a solution to offering a sparkling filtered tap water, too.
Our consumption of bottled water — at home and in restaurants — is not exactly eco-friendly. Obviously, drinking tap water at a restaurant, filtered or not, is the greenest way to go. But what of sparkling water? Many people prefer it to still, especially when eating.
Tuohy is on the forefront of this problem in Atlanta (but then, he’s always been one of our greenest, buy-local-eat-local chefs). Do you drink tap water when you’re at a restaurant? Do you prefer bottled? If a restaurant offered filtered tap water, would you consider drinking it if you don’t already? Would you drink filtered sparkling tap water?
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Where’s the Best Bathroom?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With the closing and remodeling of Joel, this million-dollar baby of a restaurant will lose one of its greatest treasures — its restrooms.
Okay, I can’t vouch for the men’s room, but I could live in ladies’ room at Joel — a gorgeous marble sink (that could easily double as bath tub, n’est pas?), fresh linens, sublime, individual stalls and lots of room for makeup touch ups. I’m sure the staff wouldn’t mind if I ordered in (I’d love to curl up with a good book and a serving of mango Pavlova).
Frankly, Atlanta restaurants have a knack for what’s noble, or at the least, different, when it comes to restaurant bathrooms. Bob Amick’s restaurants have always pushed the envelope when it comes to design, and every new concept from Luckie Food Lounge to JCT Kitchen sports something interesting in WC department. But next to Joel, only Nan can come close to this mirror-room majesty. Where’s your favorite bathroom in Atlanta’s restaurants? What about other cities?
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Ice Cream is Social
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At my mother’s for dinner last night, she had made a batch of homemade peach ice cream using the recipe from the James Beard Cookbook. It called for two cups of whole milk and two cups of heavy cream, and my mother uses a combination of sugar and sugar substitute (Splenda) since my father was diagnosed with diabetes last year.
She was very upset with the result: it was — if this is possible — too creamy for her. She grew up during the Depression in the dust bowl of East Texas, and creamy ice cream was a rarity I’m sure. She usually makes ice cream with canned milk instead of cream, but I imagine my influence as a pastry chef is beginning to pressure her into using more traditionally conventional ingredients (sometimes, anyway — she’s pretty stubborn being a Texan and all).
Sometimes the way you’re used to is better than the “right” way. I hear it all the time from readers, who’ll write to let me know that the spoon bread at Watershed is just too moist and rich — not like the crumbly cornbread of their childhood. Or that the vegetables at JCT kitchen just haven’t been cooked long enough. These folks are looking for what they might have at home. Who cooks like home to you? My pick: Rexall Grill in Duluth.
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Spicing up cantaloupe
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Riverview Farms, which supplies the Mellow Bellies co-op I’ve joined, has provided a steady supply of melons throughout the summer: yellow Spanish melons, cantaloupes and, this past week, an impossibly sweet, juicy watermelon that we brought to a dinner honoring my nephew for achieving his Eagle Scout rank.
As delicious as the cantaloupes were, though, after a while we were looking for alternatives to just eating them out of hand. I’ve been reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” and spotted an appealing recipe for melon salsa that we tried with grilled organic Berkshire pork chops from Riverview. Yum. Best of all, we could prepare it almost entirely with local ingredients. (The cantaloupe is also nice wrapped with a basil leaf and a slice of prosciutto, served on a toothpick.)
Look for an interview with Barbara Kingsolver in Sunday Living on Sept. 16.
Do you have a favorite recipe for cantaloupe or watermelon to share?
Here’s the melon salsa.
1 medium cantaloupe 1 red bell pepper 1 small jalapeno pepper 1/2 medium red onion 1/4 cup fresh mint leaves 1-2 tablespoons honey 2 teaspoons white vinegar
Dice melons and peppers into 1/4-inch cubes. Finely mince onion and mint. Toss with honey and vinegar, allow to sit at least one hour before serving over grilled chicken breast, pork chop or fish.
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Do You Trust Chefs’ Cookbooks More than Homecooks?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alice Waters, the grand dame of American cuisine and one of our greatest visionaries, has a new cookbook coming out this October, “The Art of Simple Food.”
It’s the most comprehensive of Waters’ cookbooks by far, with a section on setting up your pantry, what equipment to buy and menu-planning lessons that even include picnics and packed lunches.
Waters also gives primers on breadmaking and her four essential sauces (an interesting choice of vinaigrette, salsa verde, aioli and compound butter, which she calls “herb butter”).
Looking through it’s pages, it dawned on me that the culinary world — and subsequently cookbooks — has changed dramatically since our first grand dame, Julia Child, burst onto the scene in 1961 with “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”
Unlike Waters, Child was never a professional chef, though she studied at Cordon Bleu in Paris. In Child’s earliest days, she was an icon for the American housewife, and changed the way home cooks cooked forever.
Nowadays, it’s almost unheard of for a chef with a successful restaurant to not produce at least one cookbook. It’s all part of the package. Yet Child never owned a restaurant or — from a technical standpoint anyway — cooked professionally. Should we trust chefs’ cookbooks more than “homecooks?” Or does it really depend on the person, not the profession?
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New Italian Restaurant in Brookhaven
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Valenza, a cozy Italian eatery, opened Aug. 20 in the spot that was M!X, from the same owners, Michel and Tonya Arnette, who also own Brookhaven success story Haven. Named after the city in Italy’s Piedmont region, the menu is appropriately Northern Italian, with fresh-cut and stuffed pastas, risotto and polenta as well as braised meats and house-cured salami.
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Tierra Time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rarely have I experienced the homey, down-to-earth goodness of the cuisines of South and Central America better than at Tierra in Ansley Park.
To celebrate Central America’s independence from Spain, this astonishing restaurant will offer three-course prix fixe menus for $25 per person next week from September 11 - 15.
Do you have a love of all things Latin? If so, where are your favorite Central and South American restaurants?
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Let Them Eat Cookies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It was impossible to resist. After sitting at my desk for the better part of an hour I finally had to give into it. It was the peanut butter aroma that finally got to me.
The Reese’s Cup peanut butter cookies at Flying Biscuit never disappoint me. In fact, I find them addictive. They possess an irresistible combination of what I feel is the perfect cookie: soft centered, moist, a little chewy, with chunks of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups throughout, and loads of peanut flavor. They beg for a glass of milk. Once I start, I can’t stop.
Where’s your favorite cookie? What kind and why?
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Where is the best … ethnic restaurant on Buford Highway?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WE WANT TO KNOW: What’s your favorite ethnic restaurant on Buford Highway?
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Why is it so hard to find Georgia produce in supermarkets?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Eating locally and with the seasons sounds appealing, but if you shop at conventional supermarkets, it’s challenging to say the least.
Over the weekend, I stopped at a farm stand in north Georgia with an abundance of produce: Several varieties of freshly dug potatoes, eggplant, corn and bell peppers, along with dozens of other temptations.
I didn’t get any peppers that day, but decided to pick up one last night, when we were back in Atlanta, to add to my kids’ lunches. At the first supermarket chain I tried, the bell peppers came from British Columbia. At the second, they were imported from Holland. Prices were nearly as high as they are in winter, about $3.50 a pound. A couple of years ago, at least one of those stores was selling Florida or Georgia peppers, at perhaps $1.50 a pound during summer.
Why, when red bell peppers are so abundant, are grocery stores importing them from so far away? Why does this happen with so many other foods, too, like the California peaches I spotted last night that were so oversized they looked like navel oranges?
When you shop, do you look for locally grown foods? If you don’t find it, do you talk to a store manager about what you’d like to see?
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Top Ten Signs a Restaurant Will be BAD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before he left for San Francisco and subsequently, Dallas, former Creative Loafing dining critic Bill Addison and I used to have a lot of fun dining out together. One of our favorite topics of the table: Tell-tale signs that a restaurant will be bad.
I noticed that Lessley Anderson, a senior editor at chow.com, recently posted her top ten signs on the website. My favorite of hers? The menu is under a piece of plexiglass laid on the table. Admittedly, one of mine and Addison’s as well.
Here are mine, in David Letterman order: 10. The salt shaker has rice in it to keep the grains from sticking together. 9. It’s not a fast food restaurant, yet there are ketchup bottles on the table. 8. The menu is under a piece of glass or plexiglass laid on the table. 7. Table tents of any sort. 6. Table tents of any sort that have crusted bits of food on them. 5. The bathrooms are filthy (I mean dirty — not just ugly. Just because a joint has an ugly bathroom doesn’t make it dirty). 4. The hostess has to ask you three times what your party’s name is. 3. The menu punches terms such as “locally grown” and “heirloom,” but the look of the place screams “hot house from British Columbia” and “got it from Sysco.” 2. The wait staff’s uniforms are dirty, and they chew gum. 1. You catch a kitchen staffer by the garbage cans smoking a cigarette while wearing latex gloves.
What are * yours* ?
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