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You are here: Home / Features / Weekly roundup of great reads on food and wine #122

Weekly roundup of great reads on food and wine #122

October 8, 2017 by Ivan Brincat Leave a Comment

NY restaurants – under threat? Des Gunewardena, the chairman of D&D Restaurants (the old Conran group), was in even more ebullient form than usual when I bumped into him recently over lunch in the newly opened second branch of Blacklock in the City of London. His mood, he explained, was primarily due to the fact that he had recently returned from New York. ‘They may have Trump’, he observed, ‘but the city is so confident and positive that they set an example to us all.’ With that, he moved on to enjoy some well-grilled meat with his long-standing lawyer.

José Andrés and World Central Kitchen Have Served 130,000 People in Puerto Rico: José Andrés and team have surpassed the 100,000 meal mark. Over a week since arriving in Puerto Rico to help those affected by Hurricane Maria, Andrés and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen have served a total of 130,000 meals out of mobile kitchens, restaurants, food trucks, and the Coliseo de Puerto Rico, the island’s largest arena — smashing a 100k-meal goal they set earlier this week. According to a statement from World Central Kitchen, the team is expected to start providing 50,000 meals daily from locations across the island, and, Andrés announced on Twitter, they may soon be capable of serving 100,000 people daily.

Vast animal-feed crops to satisfy our meat needs are destroying planet: The ongoing global appetite for meat is having a devastating impact on the environment driven by the production of crop-based feed for animals, a new report has warned.The vast scale of growing crops such as soy to rear chickens, pigs and other animals puts an enormous strain on natural resources leading to the wide-scale loss of land and species, according to the study from the conservation charity WWF.

The Novel Taste of Old Food: IN FOOD, AS IN LIFE, we prize what is young and unsullied by time: tiny wild blueberries that drop off the bush with the slightest tug; a sea urchin pried from a rock and gulped down on the beach; an egg still warm from the nest. We clamor for restaurants where the vegetables on the plate arrive in the kitchen caked in dirt, uprooted from a farm within 100 miles or, better yet, the chef’s backyard. The less interference the better. When ripeness is so exalted, cooking is corruption.

A radical feast: why we need Michelin’s culinary elitism: As the one per cent are called to the pillory by the jeering masses, where do they hide? In the reverent hush of the Araki, perhaps, where a maximum of nine customers line a sushi counter carved from centuries-old cypress near London’s Savile Row. They pay £300 each, excluding drinks, for a set menu that never bends to dietary requirements.

Here’s How Michelin Stars Actually Affect the Restaurant Business: The Michelin guide has long been the defacto authority on the world’s best dining. But as gourmet culture reaches peak mainstream popularity and old culinary hierarchies remain in flux, how does gaining, losing and (gasp) renouncing a star actually affect a restaurant’s business? Historically, receiving a single Michelin star has led to an increase in customers for restaurants. Take chef John Fraser, whose New York restaurant Nix joined the Michelin star rankings this year (and whose website features “Proud new owner of a Michelin star” as a central banner). He said that receiving a Michelin star “has drastically increased business at both Nix and Dovetail.” An added bonus? “With the stars, I do feel now we are able to retain a higher level of staff than before.”

The Belgian festival where the fountains flow with gin: All hail jenever – the precursor to gin that began the British love affair with juniper-infused hooch when it was brought to England by mercenaries from the Low Countries in the 17th century (hence the term “Dutch courage” for a pre-conflict snifter).

How an illegal immigrant pulled off the greatest wine scam in US history: Before Rudy Kurniawan was 30, he had risen to become a kingpin purveyor of wines that were the rarest of the rare. Then, one Friday evening in 2008, he made a mistake that shattered his career. It happened at a wine auction held at Greenwich Village restaurant Cru, a hangout for deep-pocketed winolas (shuttered in 2010). Auctioneer Acker Merrall & Condit’s catalog listed 22 lots of red wine from Domaine Ponsot, a Burgundy producer adored by collectors. Six of those lots were touted as Clos Saint-Denis, one of the 32 greatest Burgundy appellations. They were being offered in vintages 1945 to l971, all mythic vintages in the region. Their estimated prices reached an eye-popping $70,000 per case. All had been consigned from what Kurniawan called his “magic cellar.”

Surviving the Sideways effect: why merlot is making a comeback

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