Small Bites: Cooking it old school, growing your own mushrooms and tracking down your next meal on your iPhone

Two new USA Character Approved Blog posts and a brand new iPhone app that lets you track food trucks in real time.

We’re always on the lookout for the next cool kitchen tool—for our own kitchen and to report here. So it was a refreshing change to stumble upon Jacob Bromwell, the oldest housewares company in America. How old? When they opened their doors in Cincinnati in 1819, our nation’s constitution was a mere 30 years old. Strategically situated on the Ohio River, many of the tools for they made for kitchens, fireplaces and campfires headed west or down the Mississippi. Continue reading “Small Bites: Cooking it old school, growing your own mushrooms and tracking down your next meal on your iPhone” →

Small bites: “Best chef memoir ever” and serious wine without all the seriousness

Gabrielle Hamilton’s best selling Blood, Bones & Butter and a San Francisco wine bar that makes serious wine, well, fun are the subjects of a pair of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.

I first heard about Gabrielle Hamilton when I read about a bacon marmalade sandwich she serves at her New York City restaurant, Prune. Armed with only the vaguest description of the sandwich in a back issue of New York magazine, I made my own version. And I decided if mine was that good, I definitely had to get to Prune to try the real deal. I haven’t, of course. And now, with the huge success of her new memoir, getting in Hamilton’s already wildly popular East Village bistro will be that much harder. Continue reading “Small bites: “Best chef memoir ever” and serious wine without all the seriousness” →

Six cool new things for the kitchen from the International Home + Housewares Show 2011

Okay, I’ll admit it. The first cool thing about attending the world’s biggest marketplace of home and housewares stuff is getting to wander around it with an Internet Media pass slung around your neck. This was the third year Marion and I have done it and it was just as exciting as the first year.

Some 60,000 people attend the show at Chicago’s McCormick Place every year. Many are buyers, running the gamut from boutique owners to lead buyers for major chains. And while some of them are talking price points and delivery times, some, like us, are looking for what’s cool and new. Here are six things that caught our eye this year. Continue reading “Six cool new things for the kitchen from the International Home + Housewares Show 2011” →

Chicago chef Grant Achatz honored at USA Network’s Character Approved Awards

The 2011 Character Approved Awards will recognize 12 cultural trailblazers for innovation and contributions in their fields in a one-hour documentary that premieres Tuesday, March 8, at 11/10c. Grant Achatz will be honored for his groundbreaking molecular gastronomy.

In the space of a week last year, two different friends told me they’d just eaten the best meals of their lives. Both were speaking of dinner at Grant Achatz’s Chicago restaurant, Alinea. So it was no surprise that USA Network chose Achatz as a recipient of one of their Character Approved Awards.

Achatz is at the forefront of molecular gastronomy, a movement that is turning the kitchen into a lab, using scientific tools and techniques and changing the very idea of high-end dining. As USA Network’s Character Approved website reports, “With incredible imagination and whimsy, Grant Achatz re-envisions the way we experience food.” Continue reading “Chicago chef Grant Achatz honored at USA Network’s Character Approved Awards” →

What Happens When: A restaurant experiment with a built-in expiration date

What happens when… That tantalizing question is the basis for an exciting temporary restaurant experiment in New York City. It’s also the name of the restaurant. What Happens When will be open for nine months and will completely transform its menu, its look and even its sound once a month. At the end of nine months, the building housing the SoHo restaurant will be torn down.

Opening even one restaurant is incredibly hard work, with tons of risk involved. What would possess someone to attempt nine restaurants in nine months in the same space? Continue reading “What Happens When: A restaurant experiment with a built-in expiration date” →

Small bites: Drinking greener and finding umami in a tube

Recycling your wine corks and capturing that elusive fifth taste are the subjects of a pair of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.

We recycle as much as possible. We dutifully save aluminum and tin cans, plastic milk jugs, all manner of paper and more wine bottles than I’m comfortable admitting to and haul them all off to a recycling center. But one thing we’d been routinely tossing until Marion figured out they would compost was wine corks. Now it turns out they’re also recyclable. And if that sounds a little trivial, consider this—every year, around 13 billion of them are produced. Continue reading “Small bites: Drinking greener and finding umami in a tube” →

Harlem enjoys a restaurant renaissance

This week, the USA Character Approved Blog honors Black History Month with a series of posts celebrating African-American history, culture and contributions in many fields. For my post, I took a look at a restaurant renaissance going on in Harlem.

The Great Migration in the early 20th century brought an influx of African-Americans to Harlem from the South. This set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming of African-American culture that resonated not only through the New York neighborhood, but across America. Harlem’s new residents also brought their rich history of Southern cuisine with them. Continue reading “Harlem enjoys a restaurant renaissance” →

Small Bites: Bring-your-own-pan lasagna in Brooklyn and some tasty Chicago food events

In my latest USA Character Approved Blog post, Brooklyn restaurant Brucie offers BYOP lasagna service. And in Chicago, a Valentine’s weekend pastry market, frank talk about the birds and the bees and Provenance turns five.

In New York, even restaurant chefs have tiny kitchens at home. A recent New York Times article reported as much. Still, even with minuscule kitchens and more than 20,000 restaurants to choose from, New Yorkers don’t want to eat out every night. If you live in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood, now you can have the best of both worlds—home cooked lasagna without cooking at home.

Brucie, a friendly Italian-American restaurant and market, offers bring-your-own-pan Lasagna Service. Drop off a lasagna pan and pick it up filled with one of three lasagnas. Continue reading “Small Bites: Bring-your-own-pan lasagna in Brooklyn and some tasty Chicago food events” →

Chicago’s Longman & Eagle: A 21st century update for ye olde inn

In the eighth grade, my class went on a field trip to New Salem, Illinois, the reconstructed village where a young Abraham Lincoln lived for a while. It was here he had worked in a store and famously walked miles to return three cents to a customer he had accidentally overcharged. It was here he had been postmaster. But the building that made the biggest impression on me was the Rutledge Tavern.

Our tour guide conjured up images of stagecoaches pulling up outside and disgorging tired, dusty passengers. In the tavern, they would be fed a meal cooked in the fireplace and served something stronger than the sodas we eighth graders were able to buy Continue reading “Chicago’s Longman & Eagle: A 21st century update for ye olde inn” →

Love apples? No green thumb? Rent a tree

Urban gardening is all the rage these days. So is urban farming. I think the difference between the two is that urban farming legally requires chickens or bees, but I could be wrong. But as cool as it all sounds (people in Brooklyn do it!), I’m just not cut out to be an urban farmer. I don’t have the yard space, the green thumb or the bib overalls for it. Well, or the inclination, for that matter.

For people like me, there are places like Earth First Farms. They’ll rent you an apple tree in their orchard, do all the work and ship you the fruits of their labor. Continue reading “Love apples? No green thumb? Rent a tree” →