Food and Whining - A modest outlet for a mediocrity-weary diner.

I’ve never quite grasped the allure of grapefruit. Rather, eating the fruit by itself (usually photographed with half a neon-red cherry stuck in the middle to hide the navel-like cross-section of its core.) It was once the very icon of dieting; as if punishing yourself first thing in the morning with bitterness would lead to losing weight. If anything, I’d imagine it makes you crave something sweet which kinda goes against the point. I can count on one hand the number of grapefruit I've purchased in my lifetime; two of those were in the last month. Judy Rogers, the late chef of Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, includes this recipe in her brilliant cookbook. She admits that even the mention of this dish gets the most bizarre responses from her rookie kitchen staff. Still, there are a variety of recipes that befuddle at first but almost haunt with their absurdity. I’ve certainly been surprised before (yogurt pizza dough anyone?) so I had to try it. It’s a little hard to describ...

Few revolutions occur by choice and even fewer are implemented at the optimum time. Such decisions tend to sound as if they sprang forth in a single moment of inspiration. The reality (to which I can attest) is that this kind of change is usually long in coming and even longer in implementing. I can also vouch for the fact that such changes should often happen sooner than they do. If your "gut" tells you something, pay attention. Doing something repeatedly and getting a result is called persistence, but when nothing changes, we call it insanity. Between the two is a very fine line. For years, I've lived and thrived (to varying degrees) in Silicon Valley; arguably among the epicenters of change and progress in the modern world. Like a virus, our expectations of and demands on technology mutate and evolve very quickly. With each generation, current "treatments" for our ills are rendered nearly useless. Technological hardware has become part of our lifestyle,...

In retrospect, maybe April 1st wasn't the best day to notify my friends that I was "giving up meat". It was an announcement met with skepticism, suspicion, and downright fear. (People seem to fear zombies, who consume human flesh, as much as humans who choose not to eat the flesh of other animals.) It's hardly a day to announce anything of a serious nature, but that was exactly the point. I didn't plan on the timing, it just worked out that way.   My friends had always (and only) known me as a devout and fairly boisterous carnivore. The self-justifying mantra of "If the universe didn't want us to eat animals, why did it make them so tasty? ” actually made sense at the time.  Who are we to argue or question Mother Nature? While I've never been one to tuck into a 32-ounce Porterhouse steak (and, frankly, those who do are frightening to me), I've certainly enjoyed my share of animals as a main course or side dish. Odds were good that some unsuspect...

A preference for one thing over another is innate. However, stating a preference – declaring that one type of food, music, or way of thinking is better than another – can be perceived by some as being elitist, arrogant, or as they say in the U.K., “up one’s self”. My parents had what I would call a "modest" kitchen. Dishes were unremarkable and unbreakable melamine or “Corelware”, flatware was modest and no more than three of any utensil matched. Table knives were dull and/or serrated, prep knives looked as if they'd been used to hack through the wilderness somewhere. It all matched the skills and passion my parents had for food. Neither utensils nor owner felt slighted; they were in perfect harmony. While cleaning out my deceased mother’s house, I came across a random but remarkable memento; a single artifact which I think helped uncover my early interest in food and how it’s consumed – a fork. D istinct from the rest, it’s a bit too ornate for my taste but implied...

Dining experiences come in many forms, from the unexpected taco truck at the right late-night hour (usually well past midnight and often dangerously close to dawn) to 3 or 4-star (depending on the measurement) restaurants from name-brand chefs. Taco trucks tend to exceed our expectations because one’s expectations of quality are tempered in the wee hours. But those other places? They come with certain expectations. I spend what some could easily call an unconscionable amount of money on food per year. However, it’s been awhile since I’d spent such an amount on a single meal. The number one slot expense belongs to a meal in Monte Carlo at an Alain Ducasse outpost (Louis XV). It was an unexpected opportunity and I was fine spending what I did knowing it would be unique and likely singular dining experience. Below that, plenty of meals in New York caused me to wince one the bill was tallied along with Hong Kong, Tokyo, and London. Tonight’s meal at Benu took the #2 position. A...

I've always written. In binders and notebooks, on typewriters, and on computers; the latter, for 28 years. And I've always loved food, though I fell in love long before I got to know it well enough. It was probably inevitable that I write about it. My first blog entry about the "Death of the Martini", while a bit peripheral to the topic of food, encompasses why I started writing in the first place - I saw something I didn't like, I wrote that piece, and then began asking questions. Writing it all down gives me a point of reference, a reminder that something in food is broken in some small way. At the end, I ask whether there might be a resurgence in cocktail making and, in the three years since I started FoodandWhining, I have discovered that there is indeed a resurgence, a revolution, a revival of "artisanal cocktails". Mind you, not to the point of being able to order a perfect Sazerac in any bar I enter, but I've been surprised by "secret ...

In an effort to follow the advice I post here, I purchased a book I referenced only in passing in my blatantly fluffy piece about making clear ice . "The Frozen Water Trade" by Gavin Weightman is one of those books that opens up a hidden world behind something we take for granted. It's history, entrepreneurship, and struggles against adversity for ice. It covers its collection, distribution, and sale before there were handy machines which would make it in abundance automatically. I think most people under the age of, say, 50 know that ice was sold in blocks but know very little about beyond that. My grandparents referred to their refrigerator as an "ice box" which I assumed to be a holdover from their modest upbringing and scant education. My assumption was that companies manufactured ice in large quantities and distributed blocks regularly to homes with a box in which to hold it. It turns out, the history of gathering and storing ice goes back much further...

I remember watching "Mutual of Omaha's 'Wild Kingdom'" as a child and how it all seemed so cruel and unfair. A lion would stalk an hours-old, baby of some variation of "deer" and when the parent was even the slightest bit inattentive, the lion would storm in and kill the animal, often under the helpless gaze of the parent. The fact that the prey was cute didn't help the matter. (Cuteness seems biologically designed to amplify sympathy.) Why didn't the film crew step in and stop it? How could they just allow such a brutal death? The reality, which I couldn't understand at the time, was that while one cute baby animal died, a few other cute animals (cubs of the lion) would be fed, along with mom. As an ironic bonus, the parent of the sacrificed animal wouldn't be passing such inattentive genes on to the next generation. Lessons about "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection" and "food chain" wouldn'...

Every now and then, we all find ourselves in uncomfortable situations equivalent to someone afraid of water being forced to swim or someone afraid of heights glancing out the window of a tall building. Being cast from our com fort zone can only do us good in the long run even if it makes us cringe in the short term. Sometimes for reasons of adventure, curiosity, or even self-punishment, we launch ourselves into such situations by choice. My own version is two-fold; on one hand, I've lived for nearly 43 years on earth without waking up to an actual, genuine "White Christmas" so raved about in songs and lore. I've been chilly at Christmas, but never truly cold. I've lived in a trailer park or suburban house, most without a chimney further stunting the believability of Santa Claus. This year, I've chosen to spend Christmas in a harsh, alien landscape laden with snow testing my distaste for cold weather. That whiteness comes at th e expense of travel convenience a...

I am unaware of any process in nature more volatile than that of rating a restaurant. The wildly-diverse experiences that wildly-diverse people can have even at the same establishment mimics the sporadic nature of earthquake predictions, snowflake patterns, or the formation of galaxies. To truly gauge a restaurant, all potential reviewers would need to dine on the same night with the same crowd, be cooked for by the same staff, served by the same server, at the same table, have the same tastes, having had the same prior dining experiences; already a staggering number of variables. Another factor, as any professional restaurant reviewer can tell you and most people discover on their own, is that one's impression of a restaurant can change radically even between visits. Chefs make mistakes, servers have “off nights”, moods of diners vary wildly, and what someone is craving should be aligned (ore or less) with the cuisine of the restaurant chosen. If you're in the mood for a stea...

You grab a seat at the bar and, if this is your final destination rather than simply a "stop-over" in the wait for a table, there is often a quick search for a hook under the bar. I'm not even really sure when they came about. I don't have distinct memories of them from a decade ago, but surely they've been around for a while. It was an elusive solution to an obvious problem. Those sometimes-knee-piercing little attachments are wildly-useful tools for storing the various accessories required to survive daily life. For women, it's an obvious purse hanger allowing it to be kept within reach, off the floor, and protected just enough from anyone who might be tempted by its contents, or the bag itself. For men, it's a little less routine. Those bold enough to carry a "man bag" can use the hooks much like one would with a purse. They can also hold umbrellas, a camera, perhaps a small laptop bag or messenger bag, a bike helmet, the occasional hat, jac...

A good cocktail is not simply a spirit cloaked in a Halloween costume, it is formally-dressed and in full makeup ready for its closeup. Regardless of how “cutting-edge” you might consider yourself, everyone gets a touch of nostalgia now and then. It’s a natural human craving for a simpler time when efficiency and profitability didn't trample over quality, when having vegetables for dinner meant having to grow and harvest them first, when communicating with someone far away meant writing a letter, and everything was made by hand because there was simply no other way things could be made. Cocktails have become automated and "dumbed-down" in the form of the ubiquitous "soda gun", pre-mixed high-fructose corn syrup-laden "juices", and cheaper versions of classic ingredients have become the norm. While organic and local food has swept into restaurant kitchens around the globe, their cocktail bars really haven’t kept pace. I can’t tell you the number o...

“Surprisingly, though, taste is not the only consideration. Presentation is the most important thing - garnish, colour, the glass. If the drink pleases the eye, the customer's mouth will start to water. Aroma is the next thing, then taste. We apply these criteria when judging a new cocktail in a competition.” ~ Peter Dolelli, The Savoy Cocktail Book In every high-end bar (and even some of the lower ones), there is one ingredient common to every cocktail they make, an ingredient so subtle, it's downright transparent (or, at least, it should be). Depending on the device that made it, ice can be cloudy with an increasingly dense galaxy of bubbles towards the center, or it can be clear as glass. Achieving that distinction is no simple feat. (More on that in a minute.) First, let's talk about how ice got in cocktails in the first place. The origins of ice in drinks are fairly simple and understandable. Someone discovered that in warmer weather, people preferred (but needed t...