Novak Djokovic is a high tennis performer. His 10 grand slam career wins put him equal seventh in the all-time list but he is unlikely to stop here given he is at his peak at the age of 28. He clearly has the two contemporary players Rafael Nadal (14) and record-holder Roger Federer (17) in sight. But why are we mentioning this on a weekly round-up related to food and wine? In an interview (Lunch with FT), Djokovic spoke about how when he was younger he used to be affected by sudden medical emergencies which occasionally forced him to pull out of games altogether. He discovered the problem was related to the food he was eating.
“I had thought I was eating healthily. I didn’t eat junk food, I wasn’t drinking Coca-Cola, no alcohol…I thought about it and realised I had eaten [gluten] every single day. It is in our culture, that we eat bread with everything. So I had over-consumed it a lot…Nowadays, about 50 per cent of what I eat is raw.”
Is ‘food porn’ making us fat? That is the question that is asked in this article in the Guardian. It says a recent review of scientific studies suggest that excessive looking could actually be making us fatter. The argument is that, when we see an attractive image of food, blood rushes to the parts of our brain associated with taste and we experience the desire to eat, even if we are not hungry.
Bo Bech (read our interview with him here) has a habit of re-inventing himself. He is now in the news again after he announced that he has moved to New York to hatch a series of unconventional pop-ups scheduled to begin on November 16. He says he kept sensing the itch that he wanted to do something risky. “I wanted to feel challenged again,” he said. Read what he is going to do here.
Sat Bains, the British chef who announced recently his restaurant would open four days a week said that the restaurant with rooms will lose more than £100,000 by changing this work practice but he was willing to take the risk to ensure staff retention.
Here is a great read about how timing is everything in the kitchen.
This week’s biggest news was probably the announcement that US restaurateur Danny Meyer was removing tipping from his restaurant. The announcement was also covered in the announcement. Read an opinion here.
In Japan, women are normally not allowed to make sushi for a number of reasons. Read (and watch the video) here how one woman is challenging this tradition.
Jancis Robinson has some great tips on how to read a wine list. She argues that even if you happen to know about wine, it make sense to benefit from the advice of those who actually pour these wines regularly — and they are generally dying to share it.
Meanwhile, in France, a survey on wine consumption suggests that people are drinking more wine now than five years ago. In this article in Decanter, we learn that light drinking has increased but overally regular drinking in the country continues to drop.
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