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Didn’t brine your Thanksgiving turkey? Don’t worry (by Justin Yu)
“You have got to brine it,” said Andrea Van Der Heyden of Van Der Heyden Vineyards as she hulked over my monstrous 28¼-pound Heritage turkey (a beautiful find, as it was feasting on Zinfandel vines the day before). Clearly, Andrea, like many across America during this time of year, was going out of her way Full Article…
The problem with fetishizing pork jowl
Over the course of a road trip across America, I was lucky enough to spend plenty of interstate time with my friend Andrea Armeni. One of the things we discussed at length was the question of in what circumstances the search for culinary authenticity turns farcical. Florence Fabricant, in a recent article, embodies a common Full Article…
Do taste and smell adjectives signal value, or do they create it?
We may disagree about our favorite artists and musicians, but it’s relatively easy to agree that a particular color is blue, or that a particular note is C-sharp. They’re described by wavelengths and frequencies along a clearly defined spectrum. That’s why the technologies of visual and auditory reproduction—photo, video, audio—work so well, relatively speaking. With Full Article…
GQ’s Alan Richman trashes Italian pizza, but makes a glaring mistake
It’s one thing for a food writer to opine about which pizza style is his or her favorite—everybody seems to do it, whether in New York, New Haven, or Naples. But it’s a breathtaking mistake for a seasoned food writer like Alan Richman, in his widely read new GQ evaluation of the top 25 pizzerias in Full Article…
Do you think the Spanish and Italians are drinking wine? They’re really drinking beer
The wine cultures of Spain and Italy are idealized. But much of the time, in real-life situations, their populations—whether it’s old men guzzling at midday or twentysomethings at night—actually favor beer. Wine is still the thing to accompany a family dinner or elaborate restaurant meal in southern Europe, which is why their per-capita wine consumption Full Article…
Do the molecular gastronomists have no clothes?
On culinary televangelism and the Parkerization of cuisine In the introduction to his book La Cocina al Desnudo (roughly “The Kitchen Laid Bare”), the chef Santi Santamaría writes: “one of the greatest challenges faced by today’s chefs is to avoid becoming the court jesters of the snobs and the posh.” One of the highlights of Full Article…
Dog food vs. pâté on Colbert Report
Apparently Stephen Colbert was amused by our paper investigating whether people could taste the difference between pâté and dog food. His conclusion was pretty funny.
Can people distinguish pâté from dog food?
As reported by Jerry Hirsch in today’s LA Times, my latest research article, co-authored with John Bohannon (the “Gonzo Scientist”) of Harvard University and Alexis Herschkowitsch of Fearless Critic Media, discusses the results of a blind tasting that we conducted of five puréed meat-based products. Although 72% of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the Full Article…
Fearless Critic Washington DC Area Restaurant Guide released this week
The Fearless Critic Washington DC Area Restaurant Guide (Fearless Critic Media, 608 pages, paperback, $15.95, distributed by Workman) is now on its way to stores. The book reviews 500 restaurants in the greater DC area, including the Maryland and Virginia suburbs out to the Beltway. You can pre-order the book on amazon.com, which should receive Full Article…