The Knife

You eat who you vote

You might have heard that marketing mavens (read: lunatics) have decided your dining habits have much to say about whether President Bush was a bad idea or a really, really bad idea. However, that New York Times piece did prattle on for a bit, making it hard to keep track. Was it Chips Ahoy for McCain, Fig Newtons for Obama? Does eating at Chick-Fil-A mean you harbor a desire to hug Karl Rove? Never fear; now you, too, may know the culinary secrets of your own heart.

Democrats	Republicans
Cane River country shrimp with garlic, bacon and mushrooms	Trout meuniere
Pepsi	Dr Pepper
Sprite	Bourbon
Gin	Scotch
Vodka	Red wine
Evian	Fiji
Popeye's Fried Chicken	Chick-Fil-A
Earthy, down-home food with lots of juice for sopping	Formal food with structure

Obama	Clinton
Vegan Luna Bar	Luna Bar
Grass-fed beef	Boca Burger
Izze sparkling juice	Odawalla Super Protein
White wine	Lattes
Bear Naked granola	Kashi Go Lean
The Cheesecake Factory	Red Lobster
Ben and Jerry's "Yes Pecan!" ice cream	Fruit-filled cookies
Kettle Chips	Newman's Own Pretzels
Panera	McDonald's

Empirical proof that Tom Colicchio needs to spend more time talking to the chefs in his kitchens and less time talking to the press

“You read Rolling Stone and you don’t see rock stars curse like this,” said the chef Tom Colicchio, the lead judge of “Top Chef.” “And it’s recent, too. It’s something you’ve seen just in the past year.” Mr. Colicchio blames a loosening of standards in the whole of American culture.

-- "Too Much Heat in the Kitchen?" by Pete Wells, April 16 New York Times

Food & Wine gives LA a consolation prize

F&W dissed Los Angeles once again with their Best New Chefs 2008 list (we ain't got any!), but the May 2008 issue does include a consolation prize in the form of the "Food & Wine Go List." Those that made the cut: Bastide, Catch, Comme Ca, Fraiche, The Hungry Cat, Osteria Mozza, Paperfish, R-23 and V-Vinbar at Valentino's as well as Campanile, La Terza and Urasawa.

If more than half your menu is in quotes, you are running a metaphor, not a restaurant.

Please click on the image (or on the Achewood site) for high-resolution enjoyment. Your life will be better for it.

Our Bad: Funny Comic Leads to Betrayal, Auction [Gawker]

FOOD SECTIONAL: In which the New York Times gets it right, and wrong

There's a great audio slide show dedicated to tiki cocktails here.

Again with the cocktails! Only this time, the focus is kind of genius: It's the story of Jeff Berry, a California native (! dammit!) who is utterly geeked out (and apparently, utterly serious) about "elevating the lowly reputation of umbrella drinks to their rightful standing" and is the author of “Sippin' Safari: In Search of the Great "Lost" Tropical Drink Recipes... and the People Behind Them” (from a division of the tiny Slave Labor Graphics Publishing). 

Writer Steven Kurutz calls Berry a "cocktail shamus" and he might deserve the distinction: Did you know that the original tiki master was Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, who renamed himself Donn Beach and, in 1934, opened Don the Beachcomber’s in Hollywood? And was such an obsessive that he wouldn't write down drink recipes, but wrote down the formulas in code? Great stuff, and with an audio slide show to boot.

However, as if to prove that the NYT is also capable of pulling a boner: According to Florence Fabricant, Citrus at Social will open in May. Not so, according to the Social Hollywood rep: They're still aiming for January 15 or thereabouts, the better to coincide with the Oscar season. 

FOOD SECTIONAL: Now pre-cut for your enjoyment

As always, The Knife gives the LA Times' Food section home team advantage.

Oh, dear. Again with the story that's about-New-York -no-it's-LA-OK-it's New York. Interesting topic: Cocktail culture has taken hold to the point that bars are demanding behaviors as sophisticated as the drinks. Betty Hallock cites two examples in LA and more in New York (to the point that I wondered if Death & Co. had opened in LA and why I hadn't heard of it -- sounds like a great place). And her only LA examples were the Doheny (the downtown private club not yet open) and the new Father's Office, owned by Sang "'I'm an asshole; you got a problem with that?" Yoon.

But really, the problem here isn't the NY/LA thing -- it's a small item writ large, when it probably would have made a great Restaurant Journal. Nice recipes, though; too bad the slide show didn't work.

Irene S. Virbilia writes what sounds like a well-deserved takedown of Hidden, a new restaurant I've been avoiding: Why would four cuisines in one space work when most restaurants can barely handle one? Or, as she concludes:

It may be all right for a drink, but the confusing concept, lame cooking and general ineptness make Hidden a no-go zone for anybody who cares about food.

What she said.

By contrast, nice to see a rave for a little place on Robertson, Cafe Bella Roma, which could be the new Osteria La Buca (now that OLB has expanded and has a liquor license to call its own).

Cooking videogames and other reasons not to play with your food

If chefs have stalkers, of course they have videogames!

Next summer will see the launch of the "Hell's Kitchen" videogame, just in time for the show's fourth season. The press release talks about engaging fans across multiple platforms (yawn), but I'd like to see the version in which achieving new levels means getting to hear Ramsay's increasingly florid profanities, including some he's invented exclusively for the product.

Newsletter subscribers: click here for the "Cooking Mama" trailer.

"Hell's Kitchen" isn't the first unholy alliance of whisks and joysticks. There's Nintendo's "Cooking Mama Cook Off" and the just-released "Cooking Mama 2: Dinner With Friends." ("Everyone's favorite Mama returns for a second helping, but this time her finicky friends will taste and judge your kitchen creations!"). These share the same producer as "Cake Mania" ("Help Jill upgrade her kitchen with state-of-the-art baking tools while serving her increasingly difficult customers so she can ultimately earn enough money to re-open her grandparents’ shop!"). Similarly disturbing (although with better graphics) is "Chocolatier 2", which starts you off with 50 sacks of cocoa beans.

My question: Sweet Jesus, who is going to play this stuff?

Expensive restaurants? Oh, I thought you meant expensive.

I take it all back, Michelin: Los Angeles doesn't know from expensive.

At Forbes, Pascale Le Draoulec (she of the LA Times' "it's-so-hard-to-get-good-help" article a couple of weeks ago) writes about the world's priciest restaurants, of which LA has a whopping none.

Spending $150 on a meal might seem steep for some.

At Masa, the sushi temple in Manhattan's Time Warner Center, it's merely the cost of canceling your dinner reservation last-minute.

Should you dine, plan to shell out a minimum of $500.

Costly, for sure. But the $400 prix-fixe dinner at Masa is comprised of about 25 courses. That doesn't include tax or the automatic 20% gratuity--kaching! Nor does it cover a beverage. The least expensive sake on the menu is the Otokoyama Momenya. An eight-ounce pour costs $24.

There's also a slide show that features the usual suspects (French Laundry, Joel Robuchon, Alinea, El Bulli) as well as a "modest little steakhouse" in Tokyo, Aragawa, that runs $550 per person. Baffling: The photos include a Montreal place, Toque! There, a seven-course menu is a mere $92, a barrier LA (and a lot of other cities) could crack without breaking a sweat.

World's Priciest Restaurants [Forbes.com]

FOOD SECTIONAL: Fasting before Thanksgiving

Highway robbery, in progress. Credit: Evan Sung/NYT

There's not much to chew on in Food Sectional when everyone's obsessed with Thanksgiving. And while I'm not in the business of comparing recipes, as a former food editor I have a special reserve of sympathy for those forced to come up with new stories on turkeys, side dishes and traditions every damn year.

So here's what we've got: LA Times' Irene S. Virbilia gives two stars to Melrose Bar & Grill (aka Doug Arango's); Frank Bruni doles out a Poor (!) rating to the once-venerable Harry Cipriani:

Over the years the Cipriani restaurant family and its employees have faced charges of sexual harassment, insurance fraud and tax evasion, the last leading to guilty pleas by two family members in July.

But the crime that comes to mind first when I think of the Ciprianis is highway robbery. Based on my recent experience, that’s what happens almost any time Harry Cipriani on Fifth Avenue serves lunch or dinner.

Ka-POW!

At San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Bauer says quality has taken a dive at the once-fab Kuleto's and Tara Duggan writes about the crisis facing San Francisco restaurants: Between the cost of living and waiters making a city-mandated $9.14 an hour, no one can afford to work in the kitchen.

>> For all my kvetching about the LA Times (and there's probably more to come: It's Food Sectional day!), I am flat-out jealous of this inspired photo gallery that discusses and ranks the celebrity food donations for the strike thus far. What do churros say about CAA? "You business is our concern. Your weight is not." And the granola bars and Capri Sun from APA? "Things are slower in the literary department than usual and that they think of writers as fourth graders."

Celebrity food on the picket line [LAT]

Michelin Guides have reached Los Angeles. Hooray.

As Los Angeles Times and Eater LA and every other LA-minded food blog has told you by now, Michelin screwed up big time. By virtue of a tech glitch, LA's list of starred restaurants went (briefly) live Friday instead of Monday at noon. Major whoops, but not necessarily surprising; I seem to remember back when Michelin paid a press visit here this spring, they didn't even have plans for a website.

While it's a heckuva PR blunder, I'm having a hard time working up much righteous indignation -- or delight -- as to who was and wasn't starred. Not because the winners aren't deserving; I don't think anyone could look at the list and point to a bad or even mediocre restaurant. And not because they got everything right, at least not in The World According To The Knife. It's that... well, what's the point?

Michelin declared 18 area restaurants star-worthy. Fifteen got one ("very good restaurant in its category") and three received two ("excellent cooking and worth a detour"). Judging by Michelin's choices, I'd suggest a subhead: Very Good Restaurants that are Very Fancy and/or Very Expensive. (The official Michelin tagline: "How To Find Perfect.") As such, the guide is of limited use and, for me, appeal.

The idea that VGRVFVEs are the only restaurants worthy of attention is more than silly; it's a depressing way to look at any culinary scene. And with all due respect to Jonathan Gold, I'm not even making an argument for including the CounterIntelligentsia in such a list, but being quite this exclusionary is a weird way to look at any food world.

That said, I'm not at all surprised that LA doesn't have a three-star restaurant. So far, Michelin has deemed only six in America as worthy of the title: French Laundry in Yountville, CA, Joel Robuchon in Las Vegas and four in NYC: Alain Ducasse, Jean-Georges, Le Bernadin and Per Se. All of them are run by chefs generally acknowledged as far and away among the best in the world and, so far, LA doesn't seem interested in supporting that kind of talent.

Before you disagree, a question: How many locals and visitors do you know willing to pay $250 per per person for a tasting-menu dinner, wine not included, on anything like a regular basis? Not how many people can afford it  -- we've got that covered-- but how many would do it?

WGA Strike: You can stop the writing, but not the drinking

Is anyone benefiting from the WGA strike? Sure! Eater LA says the bars are packed. However, the LA Times says their caffeine-shilling brethren have begun to experience a world of hurt:

"There is so much misinformation about the strike rules that is generating nervousness," said John Gary, a screenwriter who was the only person typing away at the Coffee Table in Silver Lake. Not far away at Intelligentsia, a coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard, only two laptops were in sight, neither of them belonging to movie or TV writers.

Colin Mahoney, the manager of Intelligentsia, confirmed that he was "seeing fewer people in here working."

True, there is the work-coffee connection. However, there's another one: in a time of crisis, booze trumps lattes.

Writers' Strike Fallout: Cafes Empty, Bars Packed [Eater LA]
Strike empties L.A. writers' havens [LAT]

FOOD SECTIONAL: Michel Richard Air-Kisses L.A., the real Sneaky Chef and Maybe a 100-Point Bargain

You mean there's a world beyond the WGA strike? In this week's Food Sectional: Los Angeles Times hails the (sorta) return of Michel Richard, New York Times profiles the Dana Giacchetto of chefs and San Francisco Chronicle tells us about getting restaurant-lounges right, slowing down Slow Food Nation and a case of 1990 Chateau Latour up for the bidding. All after the jump.

(Photo credits, from left: Carlos Chavez/Los Angeles Times, Stuart Isett/The New York Times, Liz Hafalia for the San Francisco Chronicle)

Food Sectional: Silvertali wins, Bobby Flay confesses, Michelin chefs bolt

Los Angeles still loves Osteria Mozza and hates its waiters, the New York Times comes up with a new high holy day and San Francisco gives humility a good name. All that and more in this week's edition of the Food Sectional.

Food Sectional: OH MY GOD.

What in the hellfire was Regina Schrambling thinking with "You too -- yes, you! -- can be a food blogger: Cooking up a delicious blog is much easier than you might think." (Or as the LA Times' metatags put it, as I discovered while cutting and pasting, "FoodFake: In just a few hours, a new food blog was cooked up and launched as a demo using templates.")

Getting into the cyber-kitchen used to take money, for every step from registering a domain name to contracting with a server to host a website. It also required expertise worthy of molecular gastronomy -- five years ago, I had to pay a designer who could write HTML code. Now anyone looking to unleash his inner A.J. Liebling can sign up for a free blogging program and start typing.

Reggie! Stop it, please! You're better than this! Aren't you? (That goes double for the Food section's editors.) Of course anyone can be a food blogger -- anyone can be any kind of blogger and by now, most people are. We can also create our own radio stations on Last.fm or Pandora.com, add random comments to the most carefully researched articles and Google How To Build A Nuclear Bomb. The internet is a powerful and occasionally scary place, although not so much that there was any point to you creating an anonymous (!) blog with a name like FoodFake.

You feel a need to weigh in on the food blogosphere? Understandable; there's a lot going on. How about the ways in which these armies of food bloggers attract traffic? How they're trying to find more sophisticated techniques, even editorial strategies, to find readers? Or advertisers? The burnout factor, when the demands to maintain the blog threaten to outweight the passion for food that got you started in the first place? To fight the spread that creeps into a life made of eating and blogging, maybe there's a movement of food bloggers who type while on exercise bikes. (God, I hope that's not true.)

But. This. Is. Not. A. Story. This is embarassing. For once, I'm glad that the LA Times' Food section published a blogging article that managed not to mention a single Los Angeles food blogger.

(Ahem. More Food Sectional to come.)

FISEHATAK! MABUHAY! BUDMO! An outfit known as the Alternative Whisky Academy has assembled a most thoughtful website, one that will tell you how to say "Cheers!" in almost any language. [Props to periapetic Pacific Dining Car sommelier Jonathan Mitchell for the link.]

How to say cheers in different countries [Alternative Whisky Academy]

The newest cooking trend: Celebrity chef backlash

Aren't Canadians supposed to be the nice ones? From Susan Schwartz, writer for Montreal newspaper The Gazette:

...Today, a coffee table book like "My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals" (Bloomsbury, $49.95) creates all kinds of buzz and gets spreads in magazines and newspapers all over North America, even though it's in large measure a pretentious and banal work, to my mind, one full of contrived photographs of chefs - including one, incidentally, of  (Anthony) Bourdain, nude, holding a strategically placed bone.

Today, a guy like Bourdain, who by his own admission did not have a particularly distinguished career in the kitchen in the many years he spent in one, fills a place like the 600-seat Corona Theatre at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday when theatre companies can't fill subscriptions. It amazes me.

Each person there had bought a copy of "No Reservations," Bourdain's eighth and latest book, from Bon Appétit Cookbooks, which organized the event; they turned up at the Corona to pick it up and to listen, rapt, as he answered questions from Bon Appétit co-owner Jonathan Cheung on everything from molecular gastronomy to restaurant bloggers. Then most of them queued, patiently, to go up onto the stage, for Bourdain to sign their books.

I'm sure the book will do well. So will Bourdain's. But there are way better books out there, books in which chefs write thoughtfully about what they do, about food and cooking - books like How I Learned to Cook (Bloomsbury, $17.95, 2007), a fine anthology edited by Kimberly Witherspoon with contributions from the likes of Marcella Hazan and David Chang, or Becoming a Chef (John Wiley & Sons, $35.99, 2003) by Andrew Dornenberg and Karen Page. It features recipes, too.

I believe people care about what they eat, that many of us feel strongly about the magic of being in the kitchen. I just don't get what people think they'll learn from celebrity chefs.

Get past the essence du pruny schoolmarm that infuses her piece and she has a point. For many people, good food is now the same thing as celebrity cheffiness and great cooking is Top Chef. And, as usual, it's America's fault. The French had haute cuisine for centuries and produced not a single reality show. We get our hands on it and, Voila! Chefs have groupies.

This is geek heaven: That's Harvey Pekar meeting Anthony Bourdain, with Michael Ruhlman in the background. Art by Gary Dumm, Pekar's frequent partner in crime. You can see the whole series at Bourdain's No Reservations site.

Y'know what? That's fine. More than, actually. Now that these people have heard of molecular gastronomy, maybe some of them will visit WD50 next time they're in New York. Or they'll have the courage to spend $50 on a tiny truffle and shave it over risotto. Or Hamburger Helper. Or not. But it's fun! So is listening to Bourdain! Or watching wannabe chefs vibrate under Tom Colicchio's cue-ball gaze! And it beats the hell out of being a Prissy Little Bitch, which is the risk you run by taking food Way Too Seriously. 

Robert Parker, meet Kitty Kelley

Does this look like the face of a woman you'd want writing your expose'?

That's Hanna Agostini, otherwise known as the former assistant of Robert Parker, and the name of her book is "Anatomie d'un mythe." Uh-oh.

"Robert Parker, Anatomy of a Myth -- Parker and Bordeaux Drink and Clink Glasses" as a hoped-for English translation might be called, was released in France yesterday and immediately met legal fire over Agostini's suggestion that high-profile Bordeaux winemaker Alain Reynaud asked Parker to be a godfather in order to curry his favor. Reynaud asked for the offending paragraphs to be deleted and first printing to be destroyed; the court said no.

So what's in her book that's so gawdawful?

Agostini, who spent eight years as Parker's translator and assistant, says:

* Parker is thick with wine consultant Michel Rolland and they push the guides toward the fruit-forward wines American prefer.

* He recommends wines he's never tasted.

* His annual guides have a lot of cut and paste and not a lot of updating.

* He advocates critics' independence but dedicates books to friends in the wine world.

The story's all over the news feeds and wine writers are already responding with something less than outrage. Personally, I don't think much about him beyond occasional annoyance at his ubiquitous Parker scores, but the wine writers appear to be even more sanguine. According to Agence France Presse:

Wine taster, and critic for Britain's Wine and Spirit magazine, Gavin Quinney, tempered the criticism.

[snip]

"Merchants quote him all the time because he is so quotable. And the 100 point system really works for consumers," Quinney said at the launch.

"Plus, most of the time, I have to say, he is right about the wines."

Chateau owner loses court battle over Parker book [Decanter.com]
"Emperor of Wine" Parker picked apart in new book [AFP/Yahoo News]
The Emperor of Wine and the attack over a question of taste [Times Online]
"Robert Parker Anatomie d'un Mythe - Parker Deguste et Bordeaux Trinque" [Amazon.com/France]

A reader responds: Alton Brown is not Rachael Ray, dammit!

Yesterday I wrote about Alton Brown signing with William Morris. clf commented:

Your post, if I'm reading it right, is way off base. You may have written about the agenting and celebritizing of chefs way back when, but really, those comments are irrelevant to Alton Brown. Brown is not and never has been a chef (though he's a food expert). He may be a "star" but he's certainly not just on-camera talent. Brown produces his own show (as in line produces) and other Food Network shows (in which he does not star). He's been a player (in the business sense of the word) for a long time. (He has a degree in drama and began his career as a DP.) It makes sense that he would need representation. (He's also authored several well-written, copy heavy, science-driven cookbooks.) This is NOT like signing some new, pretty cheffie face.

Hi, clf. I hear what you're saying: Brown is definitely not a "typical" celebrity chef. He's really a cooking teacher and, as the Tenpercentaries piece points out, he is "the creator, writer, producer, director and host of the hit Food Network show 'Good Eats.' " And he's not the pretty face of, say, Rocco DiSpirito. (One of People's 50 Sexiest for 2002! Today, not so much!) However, agents wanting to represent Brown (he's had an agent for a while; he left CAA for William Morris) has nothing to do with his drama background or his history as a DP; the agencies' desires are very much a product of the celebrity chef culture.

The old article wasn't so much about agents flocking to goofy food people (by my definition) like Sandra "Semi-Homemade" Lee or Rachael Ray, but that agents had begun to view the food world as a very significant new revenue stream. And that they are, more than ever. In fact, the Brown deal even represents something of a Hollywood rite of passage:

1. Become superstar.
2. Sign with CAA.
3. Leave CAA when you realize they live to serve superstars.

Your analysis of Brown is dead on: He's very talented across a number of areas, he's a workhorse and he's passionate about what he does. But is he Julia Roberts with a spatula, Rachael Ray with an extra X chromosome? Nope. WMA will probably be a better fit for him because that agency has built up a strong roster of food and cooking clients who make real money even if none of them are the next Rachael Ray. (Also a WMA client; she signed with them long before she became a media conglomerate. And because that's what she is now, I promise you CAA has already tried to poach her away.)

Alton Brown signs with William Morris; lunch at Craft to follow

Food Network star Alton "Good Eats" Brown has signed with the William Morris Agency for representation, as they say, "in all areas." (He's also going to be the guest programmer for Turner Classic Movies Nov. 11.)

I wrote about the agenting and celebritzing of chefs for Variety in 2003; it's a little bizarre to see a nascent trend in full bloom four years later. It's also amusing to look back at what didn't happen:

"The Restaurant" was "a shark-jumping moment," said Anthony Bourdain, author of the bestselling memoir "Kitchen Confidential" and executive chef at New York's Les Halles.

Although Bourdain was a guest on one "Restaurant" episode, "I felt somehow unclean afterward," he said. "And the irony is DiSpirito is easily one of the most talented chefs in New York. My fear is that show will blow it for all of us. 'Dude, this chef thing is so over.' "

Cooks on Tour in Hollywood [Variety]
Tenpercentaries [Variety]

FOOD SECTIONAL: LA gives NY service the pimp hand, NY admits it doesn't have everything and San Francisco gets its stars

It's Wednesday, a veritable onslaught of ink-stained culinary goodness. The Knife reads the big three and finds the chef from "Big Night," an article from the critic who held the seat now occupied by Restaurant Girl and the New York Times admitting that its restaurants don't do everything well. Read on!

Open Letter to Michael Bauer, Restaurant Critic of the San Francisco Chronicle

Dear Mr. Bauer,

We've never met, so I have no right to ask a favor. Nevertheless, I'd like to make a carefully considered request:

Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, please stop writing about Los Angeles restaurants.

It's not like you don't have plenty to do. San Francisco and its environs have an amazing food and restaurant culture, one that, yes, outstrips our own. We know.

However, each time you write about Los Angeles restaurants it's like a glimpse inside a Bizarroworld, a place I don't recognize and makes me feel a little queasy. And there's no reason for that. Like I said, you're busy and you only get the chance to visit us every decade or so.

I know you got it in the ear after your LA review this summer and I won't belabor that point. But yesterday you blogged about the Los Angeles Times' review of Craft, which, you observe:

"detailed how the restaurant is not only good, but has already become the power lunch spot."

Jumpin' Jehosaphat, Mr. Bauer. While I might take issue with how good Craft is, you make it sound like that question lies at the heart of the restaurant's status. Or that its power lunchiness was ever in question.

I'm far from the first to notice this, but Craft's LA (re)creation as a power dining spot was done with laboratory precision. And while Tom Colicchio is an accomplished chef,  nothing short of salmonella could have stopped Craft's ascension. Colicchio and Craft were invited here by the partners at CAA (next door -- did you notice?). It's designed for their care and feeding. Its closest competitors are within a mall's food court. I won't even bother with the whole Top Chef thing.

You then go on to say that one S. Irene Virbila paragraph

"has been been gnawing at me ever since: 'The fact that Colicchio has landed here with such a serious restaurant means L.A. is finally coming of age as a restaurant scene. Until now, Las Vegas has lured the top chefs from around the country. Wouldn't it be sweet if Los Angeles siphoned off some of that talent and turned out to be the next place for chefs from everywhere to strut their stuff?' "

Yeah, that one gnaws at me, too -- the idea that Virbilia sees Craft as the beacon that indicates we're leaving culinary adolescence. ("Are You There, God? It's Me, Tom Colicchio.") I still have plenty of issues with LA's dining immaturity, but if you want beacons I'd point to the burgeoning local mini-empires of David and Michelle Myers, Suzanne Goin and David Lentz, Neal Fraser or Michael Cimarusti.

However, even after your recent visit to Los Angeles, you're willing to look toward the same beacon as Virbilia (and you haven't even eaten there!), which takes you to your next point:

"I'm not so sure luring chefs to Los Angeles (or in our case, San Francisco) is such a good thing. I love going to Las Vegas, but the problem I have with many of those restaurants is that they feel like clones of the originals. Las Vegas is such a blank canvas that the restaurants have no culture from which to draw, and therefore very little soul. Luring chefs from other cities doesn't feel like a coming of age. The best restaurants are like mirrors. They not only spotlight the chefs' talents but they also reflect and draw inspiration from what's around them. I don't think you get that when a chef opens bicoastal branches, no matter how wonderfully executed the food may be."

I agree that bicostal restaurants are tricky, although my colleague Phil Gallo, just back from the CMJ, described a meal at Per Se as evidence that it's the best restaurant in the country. (Thomas Keller may be the exception that proves the rule.) And I buy the restaurant-as-mirror metaphor.

But because we are not defined by Tom Colicchio (or, for that matter, Mario Batali), Los Angeles is not a hall of mirrors. And we're not the blank canvas that is Vegas. Any celebrity chef who comes to Los Angeles (or in your case, San Francisco) has the opportunity to create something exciting and significant because of what those cities have to offer. And as long as these itinerant chefs don't serve to define a city (as in Vegas), bring 'em on. More the merrier (as long as they don't want to open a restaurant-lounge, in which case I shoot to kill).

But please: Either commit to more frequent visits (without a local critic as translator -- really, the languages are almost identical) or leave us be. 

Your pal,

Dana Harris
The Knife

This is sex as food: JustOnePlate.com

Tuna au poivre, Sona. Photo by Max Wanger, courtesy JustOnePlate.com

Today marks the launch of LA's sexiest restaurant site: JustOnePlate.com. The lovechild of Neil Kohan, Max Wanger and Margaux Elliott, it has a simple premise: Go to the best restaurants, ask their chefs to give one recipe, take pictures of same and get the chefs to answer 10 questions. Add some very sleek design and photography. That's it.

Current profiles include Fraiche, Grace, Sona and Ludobites (Breadbar). Says Kohan:

We're hoping to update weekly, but it depends on how responsive chefs are and how flexible their schedules are. This is a side project for now. We each have jobs in the film/television/magazine industries, respectively.

Here's hoping you don't keep your day job.

Jessica Seinfeld's "Deceptively (ick) Delicious": Plagarism, or just good marketing?

Remember The Sneaky Chef? Missy Chase Lapine, "The Sneaky Chef" author I lambasted for getting Daniel Boulud to connect ideas like "spinach" and "brownies"? Well, now I feel totally sorry for her because Jessica "Deceptively Delicious" Seinfeld has blatantly ripped her off and, thanks to her good looks, public profile and Very Rich Husband, will almost certainly get away with it.

If you need to catch up on the backstory, USA Today sums it up nicely this morning. The fracas got going more than a week ago, after Seinfeld appeared on Oprah. Unsurprisingly, her publishers at HarperCollins watched the printing presses hit warp speed shortly thereafter and the press acted as if Lapine's book -- released last spring through Running Press, with an identical concept -- didn't exist. And to their mind, it didn't; "The Sneaky Chef" has sold about 150,000 copies to date, a pretty terrific number for a cookbook but not enough to register on the cultural radar.

To me, the most fascinating element of the story isn't Did Seinfeld Know? (Of course she did. She didn't write "Deceptively Delicious" at Yaddo) or Did She Steal? (probably not outright, but Lapine's proposal was out for more than a year before Seinfeld's book was published and it's ridiculous to think that she didn't have the chance to look at it.)

The real story here is, in the age of celebrity chefs, what it takes to become a cookbook author. Lapine (publisher of Eating Well magazine, is working with Beech-Nut baby foods) submitted her proposal to HarperCollins twice. Seinfeld (no writing or food background, known as a fashion plate and celebrity wife) submits her proposal two months after Lapine's was rejected and finds success.

Better book? Not bloody likely. Better marketing opportunity? Hell, yes. While Lapine is easy on the eyes, Seinfeld is younger, sexier, has a husband with a big movie coming out next month and -- most of all -- will fit into the cookbook category that gets the most shelf space at Borders Books: Famous Chefs and Restaurants.

As a Jezebel commenter said this morning, "All this about a cookbook that teaches you how to make you kids hate you by lying to them about why their favorite foods taste so awful."

The Food Snob's Dictionary is here! The Food Snob's Dictionary is here!

Publication days are happy ones, particularly when they involve The World's Second Best Accidental Food Writer, David Kamp. (First place goes to Anthony Bourdain, although after four books, two TV shows and a bunch of mystery novels, he's sort of an editor emeritus; it's been years since he's seen the dark side of a restaurant kitchen.)

In any case, "The Food Snob's Dictionary" is the unholy love child of Kamp's twin obsessions: pop-culture lexicons of "aspirational satire" and the rise of America's food(ie) culture, which he documented brilliantly in "The United States of Arugula" (which, in paperback, has a fabulous new tagline: "The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution").

Kamp's FSD, like his dictionaries that came before it (Rock Snob's, Film Snob's), is dedicated to celebrating and righteously tweaking the cultural obsessive. In this case, it's:

"Part groupie, part aesthete, part stark raving loon, the Food Snob is someone who has taken the amateur epicure’s admirable zeal for eating and cooking well to hollandaise-curdling extremes. He wears Bastad chef’s clogs even though he works in publishing or property law. He owns an $8,000 gas range with six burners and a griddle. He’s collected the cookbooks not only of James Beard’s first-tier protégés, Marion Cunningham and Barbrara Kafka, but also of the all-but-forgotten second-tierers John Clancy, Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, and Maurice Moore-Betty. He makes his own stocks, has taken a night course in mycology so that he may forage his own mushrooms, casually alludes to the “sugar work” he performed in the course of whipping up his famous homemade Christmas confectionery, and bakes rustic sourdough loaves daily from the pain au levain starter he’s had going since 1996."

Be still, my heart.

Food snobbery explained [Snobsite.com]
Snobbery rules [Salon]
The Food Snob's Dictionary [Amazon.com]

The best-looking restaurant in L.A.: Now, with photos

As mentioned, the American Institute of Architects wants your vote for the most handsome restaurant in (mostly) Los Angeles. I've created a photo gallery to enhance your consideration and to take advantage of the fact that this is a fine collection of snapshots. As you may have noticed, I'm not much of a photographer.

All 14 nominated establishments are represented; to vote, visit the site and click on the photo(s) of your favorite(s).

Mirror, mirror: Vote for the prettiest restaurant in L.A.

The Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects is preparing to select the winners of the Restaurant Design Awards. (Among the jurors: Nancy Silverton.)

However, you and me and everyone else we know are also empowered to select the People's Choice award. Choose your favorite in each category: restaurant, cafe/bar and lounge/nightclub. (At left: The extraordinary strip-mall resident that is Lou.)

The awards -- juried and public -- will be announced at the 3rd annual Restaurant Design Awards Oct. 25, to be held at Poliform, the chic and wildly expensive Italian furniture store on Beverly Blvd. Red wine, presumably, will not be served.

Ray Liotta honey: Condiment as oxymoron

From the company that gave you Jerry Seinfeld on a zip line, DreamWorks is using this to promote "Bee Movie."

The animatronic Liotta looks like he's selling Raid. No one wants to touch what's inside that jar. Anne Thompson is the unfortunate exception; her jar cracked and leaked all over her desk.

The best from today's LA Times' Food Section

Table at 7? L.A. begs to differ Leslie Brenner calls out restaurants for their bogus oh-we're way-too-busy-to-take you-at 7-how about-9 -pm booking techniques. Restaurant managers are mushmouthed with excuses, except for Fraiche co-owner Thierry Perez: "Most managers don't care because they're only managers... the managers in Los Angeles are, I'm sorry to say, not very good." Himself excepted, of course. Sympathies to Tanzore, which must feel like Charlie Brown: It was photographed for the LAT... to show an empty restaurant.

When chefs part ways, who gets custody of the recipes? Anyone who wants them. They're almost impossible to copyright.

Angelini Osteria gets 1 1/2 stars. And when the wines from Roussillion sound this good, why in the world is Virbila's Quick Swirl a baby Brunello?

Foam-rubber French bread never tasted so good

For food bloggers, this is more than a good idea; it's the law.

This tasty yet ergonomic wrist rest is available from the What On Earth catalog. (via BoingBoing, which also launched BoingBoingTV today. Congrats, Xeni  & Co.!)

Florence Henderson, greaseless childhood icon

I go through extra virgin olive oil by the tanker, but would Mario Batali sing to me about "Wessonality"? I think not.

Wesson Oil has posted its old commercials on its website. I have very fond memories of the one where the housewife slices crusts off a loaf of bread and fries a giant crouton. Not sure what it proved, but it always seemed weirdly comforting.