Time to catch up on stories that have caught my eye. First, selections from a few press releases:
Mi Mero Mole has reopened. As you may or may not know, their refrigerator died, and a weekend’s worth of food went with them. Owner Nick Zukin has some choice words for Saturn, the refrigerator company; unusual because he never says what he thinks. Yes, that was a joke. Losing the profits from a weekend is pretty difficult for a small restaurant, so stop by and pick up some dinner.
McMinville has a new restaurant: Walnut City Kitchen. Partners Scott Cunningham and Chef Jesse Kincheloe have opened the doors at 2580 Stratus Avenue. You may know Jessee from Community Plate. From the PR, they have an “approachable menu featuring some of the same farmers and area producers that supply Community Plate. The Short Rib Sandwich with red onion marmalade and the McK Ranch 1/3 lb. Burger with fried shallots and pickled green tomatoes are popular with lunch guests. The dinner menu includes a Cider Braised Bone-in Pork Chop with sweet potato and Brussels sprout hash and a Foraged Mushroom Pasta dressed with sage and cream. Lunch items are $12 or less and most dinner plates top out at $18.” Stratus is just outside of downtown, where the bypass, E Salmon River hwy and NE 3rd all come together.
Olympic Provisions is continuing their tradition of “Salamigram” for Valentine’s Day, featuring six of their meats in bouquet form. As they say, “perhaps more important, The Tumblers will deliver the bouquet and perform an original song titled ‘Love is Where the Meat Is”. Be still my heart. If someone was to send me one, I’d consider us married.
Pok Pok has announced “Playoff Platters” which consist of six Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings, fresh herbs, cucumbers and cu cai pickled veggies. They are food obsessed, they are like crack. Football. Wings. I want to write a poem.
On to other news:
KFC China is in trouble in China for using chicken from Chinese suppliers which had “unapproved levels of antibiotics”. Fun fact, China is their biggest market. Some are calling for them to be thrown out of the country. Yum has apologized for inspection shortcomings and lack of transparency
When the Chinese are up in arms about something in their food, it raises my eyebrows; they’ll eat things that I’d take a shortcut down a dark alley to get away from. Fun fact number two: my first food job was while I was in high school, at a KFC (at that time called Kentucky Fried Chicken. I quit after two weeks, and… let’s just say I still wouldn’t consider eating at one. Shudder. More about KFC China here.
Two large food media sites are shutting down. Conde Nast is killing their Gourmet Live iPad publication, and the Washington Post is doing the same with its food blog, All We Can Eat. The Death of Gourmet Live is not a huge surprise; they closing of their magazine was a huge hit to the brand, and though some magazines are doing quite well on the Apple platform, some have started to shutter. As I see it, the biggest issue is how saturated the market has become. I used to subscribe to lots of food feeds, but got tired of seeing the same stories over and over, so have pared it down to two. I was thinking about the topic this morning, and came to the conclusion that the reason the traffic on this site is still growing, is because I don’t have a boss or worry about whose feelings I’ll hurt. No BS, I can say whatever I feel, and love me or hate me, I think readers like that.
Bartenders (cough – mixologists), tell me if this is true. According to a study in US insight analyst Restaurant Sciences, Scotch drinkers are the stingiest tippers, while “Those sipping on bourbon gave the highest tips, a whopping 22.69% of their bill, with drinkers of blended whiskey (22.67%), cider (22.2%), gin (21.6%) and vodka (21.2%) close behind. Drinkers of liqueurs (19.6%) and rum (19.8%) were found to tip the lowest percentage of their bill.
However Scotch drinkers, who had the highest average bill totals of any other patron at US$69.14, gave a relatively low tip of just 20.1%.” More here.
True?
From ScienceDaily, researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Oxford have demonstrated that hot chocolate tastes better in an orange or cream-colored cup than a white or red one.
“Researchers conducted an experiment in which 57 participants had to evaluate samples of hot chocolate served in four different types of plastic cup. They were the same size but of different colours: white, cream, red and orange with white on the inside.
Published in the Journal of Sensory Studies, the results reveal that the flavour of chocolate served in orange or cream coloured cups was better for the tasting volunteers.
However, the sweetness (not the flavour of the cocoa) and the aroma (the smell) where hardly influenced by the colour of the cup, despite the participants mentioning that the chocolate was slightly sweeter and more aromatic in a cream coloured cup.”
Another study showed that brown packaging on coffee tends to make people think of stronger flavor and aroma, whereas reds seem to accentuate this sensation, and blues and yellows make the drink seem softer.
I’ve got to wonder if this is something a coffeehouse should consider.
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