Restaurant magazine released its list of World’s Best 50 restaurants today and there’s a lot of attention focused on the top. For the third year in a row Noma in Copenhagen was No. 1, a remarkable achievement for chef René Redzepi. But my attention was drawn to No. 98, Berkeley’s own Chez Panisse, back...
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The popular Sam Wo restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown may not have served its last supper after all. The restaurant is a Chinatown staple famous for serving up solid Cantonese fare as well as being the stomping grounds of the late Edsel Ford Fung, a no-filter kind of guy who would sometimes insult customers...
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Big news out of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Inside Scoop section reports that owner David Ho confirms the place is closing down after service Friday. Even if you’ve never been to San Francisco or its Chinatown, you may have heard of this tiny restaurant sandwiched into a sliver of a building. It’s...
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I am loving a story that is developing today in the world of food criticism. It began when Grand Forks Herald columnist Marilyn Hagerty reviewed the new Olive Garden that has just opened in town. The article is headlined, ”THE EATBEAT: Long-awaited Olive Garden receives warm welcome,” and I take away two things from...
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Fast-food franchise managers have shown a little fast thinking in San Francisco’s Happy Meal toy ban brouhaha. Starting this month, restaurants are banned from putting toy giveaways in kids’ meals that don’t meet nutritional standards. So, no more Happy Meals with a cheap plastic toy in them right? Not exactly. Local McDonald’s franchises no...
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The food revolution met Occupy Wall Street over the weekend when about 30 people protested outside the The French Laundry in Yountville. Napa County Sheriff’s Sgt. Doug Wilkinson told the Napa Valley Register that a SWAT team was called in case they were needed for crowd control. But, in fact, the Friday night protest, believed...
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The new Michelin star ratings for San Francisco Bay area restaurants came out today and in a sign of the times the first word to the dining public came via Twitter. Guide officials decided to notify chefs before making an official announcement, which meant the news trickled out by way of 140-character blurbs...
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Interesting story in the New York Times today about a study showing that beer can help marathoners recover after their exertions … providing the beer is nonalcoholic. As a longtime fan of no-alcohol beer (sorry, wine world, sometimes only a frosty one will do) I was particularly interested in these findings. I am not...
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Like cooking? Like winter? Really, really like winter? I may have just the job for you. NANA Services, which manages operations and food services at the McMurdo research station in Antarctica has posted a job opening for a chef. Evidently researchers are interested in the science of gastronomy along with astrophysics, medicine, etc. The...
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Prince Charles is visiting the U.S. this week, largely to promote his cause of environmental sustainability. Which got me to thinking of the adventures Charles and I have had together over the years. True, he was blissfully unaware of my existence then and now. But that doesn’t make them any less special. Right? Right....
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