Consumer Advisory Warning

The Worst Pizza I’ve Ever Tried to Eat
Last night I had pizza that was so bad that I could not believe how bad it was. There was nothing redeeming about, nothing. The sauce was sweet and thin, the cheese was typical pizza shop quality mozzarella (tasteless and rubbery) but the kicker was the crust.
One [...]

Critic’s Notebook – The Cult of the Artisanal Pizza – NYTimes.com

Recently they have tried to convince us that hamburgers are worthy of endless permutations, concomitant criticism and marketing buzz. Now it looks like the hipsters of the restaurant establishment are gearing up to turn pizza into an “it” food. Yawn. What is going to be next, hot dogs or salad perhaps?
Of course I [...]

Coffee roasting made dope or fly

If you have a hard time believing that there is anything fly or dope, about roasting coffee this promotional video for Doma Cofee Roasting Company, might just change your mind. Doma Coffee Roasting Company is owned and operated by Terry Patano, who, even though I’ve never met him, I regard as something of [...]

3 cents on the Kuma dollar

by Mike Pardus
I’m not even going to try to recall the avalanche of plates that consumed us on Saturday night. Suffice it to say that King has his chops DOWN. All of the basics are solid – braised things are meltingly tender, fried things hot and crisp, reductions unctuous and powerfully flavored, dressings and dips [...]

Me, a gavone?

Call me whatever you like, but I don’t think you can call me a gavone unless one day of virtual filter feeding in New York City is enough to make me a glutton. Wow, did I ever eat and drink a lot last Saturday during a gastronomic ramble through NYC’s Chinatown and Little [...]

In Case You Were Wondering

I despise the term “foodie” as it applies to people who, like me, center their lives around food and cooking. Because it ends with the diminutive suffix “ie,” foodie trivializes a habit of mind and craft that very many of us take seriously enough to try to earn our living by it. Foodie [...]

Bread Heads

These are religious (Buddhist) icons but still, don’t you think you could totally nail Ruhlman’s BLT challenge with one of these? I’d pry open a mouth, stuff the bacon lettuce and tomato in there, maybe pipe some mayo…
The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Bad Game

Padma Lakshmi, game show referee

For once I will not mince words and say exactly how I feel about television shows that present cooking as a competitive sport: I hate them, they suck.

Top Chef, Iron Chef, The Next Iron Chef can all metaphorically burn in Hell’s Kitchen and their ashes scattered across [...]

Like F-ing Natural Artisan Mumbo Jumbo

It may be only children and pedants who believe that once a word is coded into more than one dictionary its meaning becomes fixed and immutable. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Consider the “f-word” which can mean virtually anything depending upon the context in which it is used. The word “like” is equally [...]

Vintage TV: David Susskind and Six NY Restaurateurs

Watch five once-famous restaurateurs and Sirio Maccione talk about what is takes to make a great restaurant. You will notice that none of them are chefs and recall that it was not that long ago that chefs became the principal public representatives of the restaurant business. Before chefs, it was the “suits” who ruled the [...]