Foodie Movie Alert: The Tasting Menu

"Taking place during the final evening of a world-famous Catalan restaurant before it closes forever (read: Ferran Adria’s El Bulli), Roger Gual’s third feature, following the marvelous, co-directed Smoking Room and the less marvelous Remake, interweaves several storylines and inevitably leaves us wanting more of some of them, less of some and none at all of others. Presales have been brisk for a project that has been designed with a broad audience base in mind. Initially uptight and a little pretentious, Menu takes a long time getting its characters onto the table, with a perhaps disproportionate number of Spaniards and Irish, dictated by production considerations, present on the restaurant’s final night. They include insecure doctor Marc (Jan Cornet, most familiar to non-Spaniards for Almodovar's The Skin I Live In) and beautiful, best-selling writer Rachel (Claudia Bassols), separated but meeting again for the meal of a lifetime; the mourning Countess D'Arcy (Fionnula Flanagan); the mysterious Walter Reilly (Stephen Rea), with whom the maitre d’ Max (Spain-based Canadian Andrew Tarbet) becomes increasingly obsessed as the evening wears on; and Isao Kamiyama (Togo Igawa) and Yoshio Takamura (Akihiko Serikawa), potential buyers of the restaurant, accompanied by gauche, motor-mouthed Mina (Marta Torné, the director’s real-life partner). The first hour strives a little too hard for witty chic, and though it hits the mark only occasionally – the comic timing sometimes runs with less than quartz precision -- there is pleasure in watching the tropes of farce being played out in such hushed surroundings, with notes and gifts being passed across tables and reaching the wrong person. After an hour, they all learn that a boat is sinking nearby and rush out to help, allowing the script to make its thudding metaphorical point that sipping cocktails when someone’s drowning is simply not good form. The food, too, is milked for its symbolism. Over the last couple of reels the film shakes off its self-conscious inhibitions and displays some healthy unruliness, and just as we're warming to a group of characters whose indulgences have been not only culinary but emotional, it's all over. Given that the characters are mostly just sketches and that the script doesn’t seem sure about whether to laugh at them or feel for them, the performances are fine. Flanagan and Rea take their time and ham it up deliciously, despite looking a little lost amongst all the frenzied activity: The most haunting image of the entire film, indeed, shows Reilly sitting alone on a railway station platform as dawn comes up. The film is a food fetishist’s delight, with close-ups of hands lovingly chopping and shaping: but the affectation of it all is neatly exposed later as, after the desserts fail to arrive, head chef Mar (Vicenta N'Dongo) ask her team, “Can you make something out of sea water?” Menu's script could have done with a little more such bite.
Emili Guirao’s photography is richly textured, approaching both dim interiors and sunlit exteriors with equal care. Stephen Mckeon's score is pleasantly melodic, but sometimes seems an odd throwback to the '60s, when la-la’s from a female chorus and lush strings signaled sophistication. The film signs off with The Divine Comedy’s wonderful Perfect Love Song, whose three minutes of elegance and wit the film itself has mostly been unable to match. Much of it was shot not in Catalunya, where it is set, but in Ireland. Languages spoken are basically Catalan, Spanish and English.”

SOURCE: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/tasting-menu-film-review-578720

Foodie News: Why The Organic Chicken Crossed The Road

Giant scissors in hand, the chicken crossed Church Street—to get to work grilling some other chickens in the cause of serving healthful food that tastes good. The giant chicken—a prep cook in disguise—cut the ribbon at the grand opening Monday of Chick-Lets Organic Grille at 135 Church St. across from the Green, one of New Haven’s newest restaurants. The restaurant serves chicken wraps, salads, and sandwiches in addition to some specialty items and vegetarian sides. Yesterday, the sides included falafel balls, baked sweet potatoes, roasted potatoes, stuffed delicata squash, and whole-wheat mac-and-cheese. After the ribbon was cut, Mayor Toni Harp ordered a wrap—a spinach wrap with spicy Cajun chicken, cheese, spinach, olives, and Caribbean jerk sauce. She had seen the restaurant before on the way to work—it is only a few hundred feet from the entrance to City Hall—but this was her first meal there. “I like it,” she said of the food. She said she is also excited that the restaurant is getting food from local farms and hiring New Haven residents.

One of those New Haven residents is Sherman Atkins, a pot washer and prep cook. He was the man in the chicken suit. He said that about 100 people came in for lunch during the grand opening, compared with the 50 or 60 that the restaurant usually sees during the week. Owner Alberto Giordano said he started the restaurant for many reasons. Prime among them is his desire to bring healthful food to the masses.“There’s such a misconception about food,” Giordano said. “People think healthy food is boring or doesn’t taste good.” His customers challenge this belief. Kathryn Garre-Ayars said she loves the variety of foods – especially the whole-wheat pasta and sweet potatoes; she is president and CEO of the Healthy Eye Alliance, an organization located a few floors up in the same building as the restaurant. And Anne Benowitz, a New Business Development Executive at the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, dubbed the food “fabulous.”

Giordano grew up in the restaurant business. His parents owned restaurants, and he earned his keep washing dishes, cooking, and waiting tables. His interest in healthful food specifically started when he was a teenager. Giordano grew up in Milford, and in high school started to play jai alai, a Spanish sport popular in Connecticut at the turn of the century. Players take turns hurling a ball slightly smaller than a baseball at a wall, and trying to catch and return their opponents’ throws. Giordano noticed a correlation between what he ate and his athletic performance.

“When I was young, like every other teenager, I ate fast food,” Giordano said. It made him feel heavy and sluggish. So he decided to experiment cleaning up his diet. “I was amazed at how much better I felt,” he said. Giordano kept playing jai alai while attending college part-time. He got a degree in manufacturing engineering at Central Connecticut State University, but he didn’t do anything with the schooling. He played amateur jai alai in Orlando and Dania, Florida while in college, and moved on to the professional leagues in Milford in 1989 when he graduated. Giordano said that he made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but he didn’t get more specific.

Giordano knew that a career in jai alai wouldn’t last him his whole life—it’s a physically demanding sport, he said, and professionals often retire young. He sought a career that would support him in his future, so he went into the financial industry. He got certified as a financial adviser and worked for a few different companies. But he didn’t like how people were treated in corporate America. He said big companies fail to care about their employees as people. “At the end of the day, I’m with a big company, and I’m just a number to them,” Giordano said. He said that he has seen many colleagues sacked “as quickly as you can blink an eye” for underperforming after years and years of good service. He is still working at a financial services company, PrimePay, as he gets his restaurant up and running. Giordano said he hopes to treat his employees better. He has nine – two cooks, two managers, and five people who prepare food for customers. Atkins, who wore the chicken suit for two and a half hours Monday, said that Giordano is inspiring and “always on top of his game.”

Giordano came up with the idea for Chick-Lets back in 2009. He shared the idea with his family over a dinner out at Carmine’s, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. “My daughter was on board,” Giordano said. “The rest—‘Are you kidding me?’” But Giordano said his family’s original skepticism has turned into staunch support. Now, he said, they are behind him 100 percent. Chick-lets originally opened in Bridgeport last summer to test out the business concept, said Tyler Gianakos, a manager who owns 25 percent of the company. (Giordano owns the other 75 percent.) Giordano hired Gianakos as an intern in Bridgeport. Chick-Lets still served organic chicken in Bridgeport, Gianakos said, but the clientele there wasn’t that interested in organic food.

“People used to ask for chicken without the organic,” Giordano said. Chick-Lets served some fried foods back then, but Gianakos and Giordano said that type of cuisine wasn’t what they wanted to do. So Chick-Lets moved to New Haven, which Giordano considers a more health-conscious area.  He cut fried foods from the menu—a tour of the kitchen revealed no deep fryers and only two small bottles of cooking oil. Giordano found the 135 Church St. location, the former site of the deli Roly Poly, while walking downtown during a snowstorm in January. He jumped on the opportunity—he made a presentation to the owners of the building, who liked his idea. So he started renovating the space. He had to install more ventilation, plumbing, and electrical systems to support all of the kitchen appliances.

“It was a challenging space,” Giordano said, but he’s grateful for the location. The restaurant sits right next to the federal courthouse and across the street from the New Haven Green. CT Transit stop just a few feet from the door. Despite the location, Chick-Lets isn’t seeing as much business as Giordano would like. Giordano said that the lunchtime line is “out the door,” but the line was well contained in the restaurant on a Tuesday before the grand opening when a reporter stopped by. Giordano said that he is struggling to attract business in the evening. (That block gets less foot traffic then other parts of downtown with more nighttime businesses.) The restaurant stays open until 9 p.m., but after the sun set, there were so few customers that Giordano needed to interrupt an hour-long interview only once.

Starting a business isn’t easy, and Giordano said that he doesn’t expect to start making money for about a year. “We have break-even numbers,” Giordano said. “Some days we’re close to them, and some days we’re really off.” He knows that this is a huge risk for him and his family. “I literally dumped every single dime of my retirement money into this concept,” Giordano said. He runs the risk of getting fired from his job at PrimePay for underperformance—he had to take a bit of time off from his day job to get Chick-Lets up and running—and he also runs the risk of Chick-Lets not turning a profit.

Giordano said he expects his profit margins to be small. “Organic’s expensive,” he said. “I’m paying top dollar.” He buys the vegetables from vendors at the local farmers markets in Wooster Square and on the New Haven Green. The chicken comes from a Connecticut organic farm, but he declined to provide more details citing agreements with his supplier. Every day, Giordano wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and is in the restaurant within the hour. He said that he doesn’t get to sleep until 2 in the morning. He spends a few hours every day doing conference calls for PrimePay.

“My dream is to get this up and running to the point where I can leave corporate America,” Giordano said. Eventually, Giordano hopes to franchise Chick-Lets. He said he wants to open five locations in Connecticut, with each restaurant built within the local community – buying from local farms and supporting the local economy. “I don’t know if it’s possible,” Giordano said. “But we’re going to give it a try.”

SOURCE: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/why_did_the_chicken_cross_church_street/

The pro’s and con’s of coffee

I simply adore coffee. Before I even had tasted my first cup, I had fallen in love with the smell of my father brewing it. After I tried it, my interest only grew. One of my early jobs was at a coffeehouse called Zuzu’s (for those who can remember that far back, it was where The Russell now operates) and before I could work on the floor, I had to take an intensive training course on the coffee growing regions, roasting process, and every other aspect that you can imagine about this little bean.

After all is said and done, who doesn’t love a good cup of coffee? There is just something so “addicting” about it! Then you start to read the news. And news, like religion, can be used to justify any point of view, making the benign subject of your morning beverage into somewhat of a controversial issue. Some pro’s: contains antioxidants, may protect your brain in your older age, contributes to a lower risk for type 2 diabetes, lower risk of liver disease, lower risk of depression and suicide and might even help you to live longer. Now for the pro’s: can cause anxiety and problems with sleeping, and here’s the shocker, can be addicting (!?). So maybe you want to read more: http://authoritynutrition.com/coffee-good-or-bad/ or maybe you are interested in some alternative beverages that will satisfy you in the same way.

Hot Maca: A few tablespoons of maca powder blended in a cup of warm (note: if you add to HOT liquid, then it loses its benefits) almond or coconut milk, with a dollop of raw honey and cinnamon could give you the lift you need in the morning. Maca has adrenal boosting properties, reduces stress, is rich in vitamin B vitamins, C, and E. It provides plenty of calcium, zinc, iron, magnesium, phosphorous and amino acids, promote sexual function of both men and women, relieves menstrual issues and menopause, balances your mood, clear acne and blemishes and assists in general health.

Dandelion Herbal Coffee Blend: Roasted dandelion, chicory root and maca combined together can give you the taste you crave, but in a different package. Dandelion rich source of beta-carotene that our bodies convert into vitamin A. It's also rich in vitamin C, fiber, potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium, zinc, phosphorus, B complex vitamins, trace minerals, organic sodium, and even vitamin D as well as containing more protein than spinach. Chicory root supports digestive functions and the liver, high in antioxidants and toxic to harmful organisms.

Matcha Green Tea: These are nutrient-rich young leaves picked from the tips of shade-grown Camellia sinensis plants. They are high in antioxidants, loaded with catechin, helps you to relax, boosts memory, increased endurance, burns calories, detoxifies the body, strengthens immune system and lowers cholesterol levels. Plus, it’s all the rage these days.

Or, if you want to stick with your standby cup of joe, I wouldn’t blame you. However, I might suggest a small tweak to your morning routine. Go organic and fair trade. It’s better for your body, the coffee farmer, and the world. And try to trade in your traditional coffee brewer (which boils the grounds and makes your coffee taste bitter) for a french press, aeropress, or chemex and experience the real flavor of coffee. And NEVER, add sugar to a good cup!

Foodie News: A Start-up Has Invented Veggie Burgers That ‘Bleed’

I am all for new food inventions. But this?!

A biochemist named Patrick Brown has come up with yet another alternative strategy to produce entirely meatless hamburgers that look and taste very much like meat. That's one above, looking sufficiently burgerlike; it's even got that pristine medium-rare thing going on. Patties now being made by Brown's Impossible Foods are suffused with something called heme, it turns out, a molecule that comes from the roots of nitrogen-fixing plants but has the iron-tinged character of hemoglobin. "I remember this is what it felt like to get punched in the face," Brown tells the Wall Street Journal, relating the instant he realized that the vegan substance could be used to simulate the role most traditionally played by blood in a bloody rare hamburger. Now Impossible Foods has $75 million in venture capital, including cash from Bill Gates and Google Ventures.

The latest high-tech approach is one of three paths for the veggie burger. There are cheffed-up versions like Brooks Headley's Superiority Burger, more hippie-esque approaches like this guy's fully-funded kale burger, and then all the lab forays in a third category. The focus of start-ups like Beyond Meat and Hampton Creek Foods has been on replicating the texture of meat, sinewy muscle fiber and all; Modern Meadow, which is pioneering 3-D-printed meat and leather at its Brooklyn Army Terminal headquarters, closed on $10 million in Series A funding.

These companies produce everything from synthetic eggs made of pea protein to soy-plumped pseudo chicken breasts using perhaps thousands of proprietary techniques, but meanwhile, the industry seems to be closing in on the veggie burger, which remains something of the grail for our collective vegetarian future. At $20 a patty, the Impossible Foods burger may be the closest yet we've come to replicating In-N-Out, so it seems natural it's attracted such ambitious amounts in funding. Why grow the cow from stem cells in a petri dish to make a $325,000 burger, after all, when you can make one with plant blood for $20?

Foodie News: something new to try this fall

If Japan Is Eating Fried Maple Leaves, Why Aren't We?

We're all about snack time in the U.S., where chips, candy bars and trail mix normally reign supreme. But people in Japan are taking snacking to a whole new level -- by eating leaves.

To be fair -- these aren't just any leaves. According to Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku, the leaf snack is called "momiji" or "momiji tempura" and gets its name from theJapanese Maple tree with the same moniker. The maple/momiji leaves are usually found (and fried!) in Minoh City, Osaka, Japan.

"Momiji" can be eaten all year long, and the practice has supposedly been around for almost a thousand years. The maple leaves themselves aren't supposed to taste like much, which makes sense because they're usually preserved in salt barrels for about a year, and then fried in a sweet batter.

Deep-fried leaves sound much more like state fair food instead of a Japanese snack, but there are some good recipes available (we like this Maple Leaf, Pumpkin and Fig Tempura twist) if you want to try and make momiji tempura at home.

SOURCE: Huffington Post

Life on the beach in Colombia is a feast

An afternoon at the beach in Colombia is a real foodie experience. One of my most memorable was when my boyfriend took me to Playa Blanca. As soon as we arrived, he selected some fresh fish for us to be prepared for our lunch while we went snorkeling. After an hour or so, a platter of fried fish, coconut rice, salad, and fried plantains arrived. No paper plates or plastic silverware to deal with either.

As if this wasn’t enough, we continued to splurge. Vendors make their way across the sand offering massages, jewelry, and tropical drinks. But we were more interested in ones hawking food. Dessert included freshly cut mango pieces, and then an array of homemade confectionaries, carried in a large bowl skillfully balanced on top of a woman’s head. 

Delicious fritters of coconut, sesame seed brittle, or a spongy coconut and yuca cake were some of the ones we tried. Each one was tastier than the last. Although I could eat the yuca all day long. Lastly, we also tried oysters! This was my second time trying these little morsels and I would now say I am a fan. One of the vendors came to sit down beside us and then got busy opening the shells to hand to us. 

One after another, they came. Lime juice was squeezed and hot sauce added. By the end of the day, I was quite full, warm from the sun, and feeling like I had been treated like a queen. This is the only way to go to the beach. Now, I am forever spoiled.