Kevin Alexander Preaches to My Choir

Thrillist writer Kevin Alexander has written a big, intense essay that makes me want to stand up and cheer. It's called "Why the 'Hot New Food Town' Must Die" - and though "die" might be a stretch, I agree with pretty much everything he writes.

It appears that at some point, Alexander was planning to write about Pittsburgh's burgeoning food scene - the city is being hailed all over the place as the next big thing in dining. Instead, he applied what he observed about Pittsburgh - and other places - and wrote about a subject I find fascinating: the sameness of the culinary scenes in smaller cities named as hot new places to eat and the culture that has created that monster. (He admits he's part of that culture.)

He calls it the Good Food Revival Movement - a name that's just about perfect, given the religious zeal that people have adopted when it comes to food.

***

I've been thinking about the similarity between food and religion for quite some time now. In 2009, I wrote my first post about food as the new religion. My starting point was an old Tom Wolfe essay about art being the new opiate of the masses. Food, I suggested, had replaced art. In addition to his use of "revival" to describe the current food climate, Alexander calls food the "social currency" of millennials. We're speaking the same language.

In 2009, I expected that the spotlight would shift away from food and that something new would take its place as the social currency of our time. Maybe it still will. But for now, it looks like food is it.

***

Alexander's other big point, about the sameness of the Good Food Towns - and that they're all based on Portland, in one way or another - is also something I've written about a ton.

My first post on that topic was back in 2006, after my sister's college graduation dinner in Lexington, Virginia. At the time, I bemoaned what seemed to be a lack of regionally-specific dishes and flavors.

A couple years later, as the food world's collective gaze shifted to Charleston and southern flavors reigned supreme, I thought that regionalism was back. (This 2012 post summarizes my shift in thinking.)

If Alexander is correct - and I think he is - regionalism might have slightly returned, but it didn't manifest on a grand scale. He talks about cities "doing a 2007 Portland impression" - instead of digging into their own histories, figuring out their roots, and building unique food identities around what was already theirs.

***

It's a good story - thoughtful and thought-provoking. But, of course, I don't live in Pittsburgh. I live in Baltimore. So I wonder...what does this mean for my city?

People in Baltimore complain sometimes because we've been overlooked, frequently in the past, as a food city. I've had a chip on my own shoulder about it. Why does Cleveland get the love, I asked in this 2008 post. Actually, apparently I couldn't shut up about that in 2008.

But maybe we've been overlooked because we haven't hewed so completely to the Portland 2007 model. Not that we've completely rejected it - there's plenty of charcuterie in town. But one of Alexander's points is that before its revival, Pittsburgh "was a crap food town" without a clear existing identity or even strong ethnic communities.

Without an established culinary sense of self, adopting the Portland model made sense. I'm sure Pittsburgh is home to some great food history and stories, but those things can be tough to dig up. Especially for chefs who want to, you know, make money.

Baltimore, on the other hand, has always had its own thing going. In recent years, we've been peddling the "more than crab cakes" message, but the reality is that we are crab cakes - and steamed crabs and muddy oysters and rockfish and Old Bay. We're more than that, but those things that come from the Chesapeake are at the core of who we are.

This is us. (At my house last summer.)

Plus, those roots have champions. Food innovation here is homegrown. Spike Gjerde has put massive amounts of time and energy into rediscovering and spotlighting the foodways of the Chesapeake region. (Related: Jane Marion's recent profile of him is a great read.)

He's not the only one, either. Winston Blick knows the region's farms and waterways - and the historic flavors that come from them - as well as anybody. Tony Conrad stocks his shop full of fish and crabs and oysters that come straight out of the Bay. And programs like True Blue do what they can to ensure that restaurants and diners stay connected to local products.

Not every restaurant has to be local, local, local, of course. Everybody can't be Woodberry. We also need Bottega and La Cuchara and Charleston and Petit Louis (and everybody else). But the dining community as a whole is better off if it includes places and people devoted to hometown food.

***

Alexander ends his article on a moderately upbeat note, saying that ultimately, raising the food game in smaller cities is a good thing, even if there's not as much individuality as he'd like to see. But he also does a little self-flagellating, reminding himself and other food writers that over-celebrating one particular type of food culture - even if it's good food! - discourages innovation, especially in smaller markets.

Based on all of this, here in Baltimore, I think we should just keep on doing what we're doing. Maybe  I could do a little less "why doesn't anybody in the national press love us" whining. But in the kitchen, on the farms, and on the water, as far as I can tell, we're doing it right.

Insta Data...on Food

Instagram's food data crunching and presentation is just on fire right now. They've created a cool, semi-interactive website focused on "The Food Capitals of Instagram" - the cities where certain frequently photographed foods are hottest.

Since the data is driven by numbers, it's not a huge surprise that large global cities - London, New York, Seoul, Sydney - dominate the discussion. But there are still some intriguing findings.

Like this: apparently right now, 7.5% of all photos of pulled pork originate in...London. That's a higher percentage than come from NYC, which is a whole lot closer to the heart of BBQ country.

That doesn't completely surprise me. After all, when we were in Paris last year, McDonald's was advertising the hell out of a southern sandwich, proving that southern cuisine really had overtaken the Western world.

It's a good lesson, too, in how trends expand and what is truly global. (The answer: pizza. Pizza is truly global.)

I wish the website allowed users to drill down - I'd love to be able to explore regional stats, especially in the US. Right now, you can get a general sense of what's happening and where, but nothing specific.

But still, it's cool. Data + food always makes me happy.

Speaking of Regionalism...

VinePair totally just got me with this map:

Is it totally reliable? No chance. There aren't even any actual sources attached, so even the wine vs. beer attributions are suspect. But still, it's cute. And it made me laugh. And...maps!

Regional Resurgence

Years ago, when I was just a couple years into blogging, I wrote a series of posts (here, here, here, and here) lamenting the promotion of global cuisine and flavors over regional ones. The posts were written between 2006 and 2008, a time when, it seemed, the notion of global cuisine was eclipsing regional foods - and some of those local foods were in danger of disappearing altogether.

By 2008, "local" had become more of a buzzword in food culture, though at the time, it had more to do with producers than with flavors. But even then, there were regional movements bubbling under the surface, especially in the south.

Also in 2008, I linked to a map that focused on disappearing regional foods and the power of food regions as a whole. In 2010, I wrote about how psyched the Woodberry Kitchen staff was after I ordered scrapple at brunch.

And in 2012, I wrote a long post about how the rise of southern cuisine's popularity represented a shift in the local/global preference landscape.

Consider this an addendum to that post, a few years later.Today, it's not just southern cuisine that's on fire - it's anything and everything hyper-regional. It's Southern Foodways Alliance gone national. We've come full...half circle. Done a 180 on the global/local front.

This was cemented, for me, a week or so ago, when I read Bill Addison's Eater roundup of the 38 essential American restaurants. Addison includes Woodberry in the mix - which feels right to me, especially since he groups the restaurant with a handful of other places that best represent "Regional Americana." 

There are several in the south - but not all. The Pacific Northwest and New England both make appearances. Probably the southwest could use more representation (the lack of Arizona on the list is a complaint of many commenters) and the Midwest, with just one Minneapolis restaurant, is definitely underrepresented. 

But still, it's nice to see that in there at all. 

Learning Something New Every Day: Orange Crushes

I spent this past weekend in Dewey with my sister and friends, celebrating my sister's upcoming wedding. The weekend involved many of my sister's favorite things (tax-free shopping, cover bands, oysters, beach time, one actual good night of sleep). Like most trips to Dewey, it also involved orange crushes. Lots of them.

Orange crushes...I'm a fan (and here's a good recipe). Here's a little flashback - from our trip to Duck in 2011:

So here's the crazy thing: I had no idea that crushes are a regional drink. I just assumed that everyone in the country drank them. I mean...they're delicious. Why wouldn't everyone drink them?

But as I discovered this weekend - when none of my sister's friends or Cail had ever heard of them - they're strictly a Maryland/Delaware thing. That realization was surprising - and yes, I'm proud.

Between crushes and crabs, we get all the good summertime stuff, don't we?

Lucky Peach Loves Maryland

Does anyone else read Lucky Peach?

It's David Chang's (of Momofuku fame) quarterly food magazine. My friend Oliver recommended I order it - almost a year ago now - and I'm so glad I did.

While some of the writing is overly Portland-hipster-twee, there's a lot of super high quality reporting. And since Chang is such a well-respected chef in his own right, he has a sort of access to people in the food world that you're just not going to find in other publications.

It's not glossy, like Food and Wine, or full of accessible recipes, like Bon Appetit, or highbrow or serious like Cook's Illustrated or Saveur. I can't imagine any of those publications dedicating a hefty portion of an issue to a Choose Your Own Adventure-style story about tacos. (That story was incredible, BTW.)

But the purpose of this post isn't to extoll the general virtues of the magazine. It's to talk about Maryland.

When Chang and company put together their fourth issue, dubbed "The American Food Issue," they probably didn't realize it, but they were building a loving tribute to my home state.

Though we've recently gotten some (long overdue) attention for our food scene, for a long time, Maryland has been a culinary afterthought. Oh, everybody knows about the crabs. They're as much a part of the place as The Wire. But what about everything else that makes this a great state for eating?

Well, it's in the magazine - or a lot of it is, anyway.

Like the huge section of the magazine about the movie Diner, Barry Levinson's classic story set in Baltimore. There's admiration, especially from Brian Koppelman, and derision (of sorts) from Bourdain, who discusses the movie - and the role of food in film - with movie critic Elvis Mitchell. David Chang, apparently, loves Diner.

There's an article by Mark Ibold that's all about central Pennsylvanian corn. No, that's not Maryland. But it's close and Ibold's sentiments are familiar. His dedication to local corn? I get it.

In a conversation between the food writers Jonathan Gold (from LA) and Robert Sietsema (NYC), the duo discusses food that's genuinely American. Gold makes the observation that beyond a handful of nationally-recognized items - pies, hamburgers, steak + salad, chili - American food is really regional vs. national. It's an interesting observation - something I've thought (and written) about before. Talking about the regions, Gold says this:

"The cooking of the Atlantic Seaboard is really different than the cooking of the South. There are a few overlaps - Maryland is where they sort of meet in the middle."

In the article, it's a throwaway line - not connected to much else. But it's true, and it makes Maryland, as a culinary destination, even more interesting. (It's also something I've said before.)

Then there's the article by David Simon. It's not even about drugs, or Corners! It's about his dad and it includes little gems like this:

"By the time I was born, my parents had moved to Maryland and the shores of that great protein factory, the Chesapeake Bay."

He admits, too, that he didn't try raw oysters until he was 13 and didn't start picking crabs until 15(!!).

And even though it's not about Maryland, Richard Parks' article about Cambodian doughut-eers in California (and the lack of doughnuts in Cambodia itself) is worth the price of the book. Well-researched and just such an interesting topic - totally new to me.

So thanks, David Chang. Even if you didn't realize you were doing it, this Maryland girl appreciates you noticing that what we eat around here? It's kind of great.

The Local-Global Pendulum Meets Southern Cuisine

A couple weeks ago, my whole family got together at my parents' house to celebrate my dad's birthday. We were talking about food (because what else do you talk about?) when the conversation descended into a  "Who's on first?" style mess. My sister-in-law asked me if I'd ever been to Charleston, commenting that after reading the recent Washington Post article about Woodberry Kitchen, she got the impression that WK is a lot like Husk.

I haven't been to Husk, or to Charleston, but I had read the article and, based on what I've heard about Husk, I told Cail I thought she was right. Then my mom chimed in with a confusing comment about a neighbor who doesn't really care for Charleston because she thinks the food is "too rich" and my brother expressed surprise that I'd never been to Charleston - but I was sure he knew I hadn't been there.

As it turns out, he did know I'd never visited Charleston - the city. Cail and I were talking about the Holy City, while my mom and brother were talking about Cindy Wolf's famously fancy and, yes, rich, restaurant here in Baltimore. (Though I haven't actually been there, either.)

All that talk about Charleston and Husk and low country flavors in Baltimore - topped off by a late-night viewing of Shag - got me thinking. These days, Southern cooking is on quite a pedestal. And Southern flavors are steeped in so much history that it's easy to forget that not so long ago, regional cooking - in the South or anyplace else - wasn't exactly front-page news.

Back in the early days of M&G, I wrote a handful of posts lamenting the demise of regional cuisine (most notably here and here). The first post I wrote was triggered by my sister's college graduation dinner at the Southern Inn in Lexington, Virginia...which, despite its name, was not very southern at all. The dinner was OK, but I was disappointed that it lacked any regional distinction. I could've eaten the same dinner in California, New York, or the Midwest.

I wasn't the only person concerned back then, either. A year after my post,  an essay by Salma Abdelnour called, "The Insidious Rise of Cosmo-Cuisine," appeared in the May 2007 issue of Food & Wine. Abdelnour observed that the best chefs of the day lacked a culinary connection to their hometowns, with menus borrowing from cities all over the world, but not necessarily from their own backyards. That essay got a lot of attention; it also appeared in Best Food Writing 2007.

At that time, eating locally was a hot topic - "locavore" was the OED word of the year for 2007 - but that was more about where to buy ingredients vs. flavor profiles. In those days, the most celebrated food in the world was coming out of Spain (specifically, out of Ferran Adria's head), but it wasn't lauded for its Spanishness so much as its edginess. Technique was king. Top Chef viewers were talking about Hung's knife skills and Blais' wild ideas and careful execution, but not nearly as much about how their backgrounds might have influenced their cooking choices. Local food was on the rise, from a logistical standpoint, but from a creative perspective, we were all thinking global.

And then something shifted.

Today, El Bulli is no more and the Top Chef judges have seen waves of regionally-focused cheftestants. The Southern Inn, which inspired my first post on the subject, touts fried chicken and country ham all over its menu. And Charleston's Husk, described on its own website as "a celebration of Southern ingredients," is widely considered the country's best restaurant.

What happened? Something natural and cyclical, I think - though I don't know that we're experiencing a resurgence of American regionalism so much as a burst of interest in Southern flavors in particular. Here on M&G, the first mention of Charleston - which seems to be at the heart of this Southern food revival - was in April of 2009, when I wrote about Elle Decor's profile of the city.

In July of that year, the Baltimore episode of No Reservations aired and one of the show's (few) bright spots was Bourdain's smart identification of Baltimore's southern culinary roots, on display via lake trout and pit beef.

In November 2009, I considered pimento cheese super trendy and the following month, I sang praises for Kevin Gillespie's mission to cook food that "has a sense of place" (that place being, of course, the South). A rise in Southern flavor profiles was one of my predictions for 2010. By May 2011, when Garden & Gun (which launched in April 2007) won the National Magazine Award, the Southern revival was so firmly in place on a national level, the magazine could launch a semi-regular blog all about finding the South in New York City.

A few days after my father's birthday dinner, Alicia gave me a magazine her parents picked up on a recent trip to Charleston (Alicia's dad, Big G, is a Citadel alum). The magazine, called The Local Palate, bills itself as covering "food culture of the South," though it's mostly about food in Charleston vs. the region as a whole. Either way, its mere existence goes to show that regionalism is alive and well, at least in certain pockets of the country. The cover refers to "The Second Coming of Southern Cuisine" and on the inside, one of the most intriguing pieces, "Southern Revival" by architectural historian W. Barksdale Maynard, carries the lofty subtitle, "Living in the Golden Age of Southern Cuisine."

I can't find the article anywhere online (the rest of the issue is here) and that's really a shame because Maynard does an excellent job tracking the peaks and valleys of popularity experienced by Southern cuisine. His conclusion is that, "the long decline is over: traditional Dixie cuisine is back," and he quotes revered Southern food historian/champion John T. Edge, poo-pooing those who fret that the South has grown less "Southern" thanks to homogenization and Northern migration. Edge insists, "That concern is cyclical and maybe even permanent, this notion that Southern food is in peril." In other words, every generation worries, but the world keeps on spinning.

I suppose I should take those words to heart, too. After all, it was only five or six years ago that I was dramatically mourning regional cooking. And look where we are now: regional cooking, in the South at least, has risen again.

Brunch at Woodberry Kitchen (with Scrapple!)

Yesterday morning, I met my high school girl friends (Suzanne, Alison and Mandy) for brunch at Woodberry Kitchen. It was slightly cursed at the start - at some point during the morning, a warehouse in the vicinity of the restaurant caught on fire and the fire department shut down a ton of roads in the neighborhood. Including the road right in front of the restaurant, where they ran a huge firehose that ended up springing a full-on geyser of a leak.

Once we got there, though, things looked up considerably. Everything was, as usual, pretty fantastic. Mandy and Alison, the vegetarians, had the winter vegetables over gravy, which they both liked a lot. Suzanne had pear crepes that looked fantastic, and I had goat cheese ricotta pancakes with honey and a side of scrapple.

My pancakes were great - I didn't even put butter on them and they were light and fluffy and moist. Loved them with honey. And the scrapple was, of course, amazing. Amazing and conversation-starting.

At the end of the meal, our waiter said to me, "Can I ask you something sort of presumptuous?" We all looked at him like, "WHAT exactly?" So I said yes and he asked when I started eating scrapple. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't it.

So I told him that I'd eaten it all my life and he nodded, saying that most people who order scrapple have been. He asked where I grew up and I told him that, too, and he mentioned that it seems to be an Eastern Shore thing. We talked a little about the Apple Scrapple festival in Bridgeville, DE - he suggested I go - and, after Mandy asked, what scrapple is made of ("it's kind of like pate, but fried," he said). On my way out, he gave me a "go scrapple" thumbs up.

Then I ran into one of the hosts in the ladies' room, where she asked me what I ate and we had nearly the very same questions about the scrapple.

All of that made me wonder - when did my scrapple-eating start? I've eaten it for as long as I can remember and I order it all the time at diners. I called my dad last night and asked him why we eat scrapple. He confirmed that my mom doesn't eat it, but said that he doesn't think he ate it growing up - he started sometime later, but he can't remember exactly when.

I sometimes think of the mid-Atlantic as lacking a whole lot of regional foods or flavors. Yes, we've got crabs, but that usually seems like about it, and one food does not a region make. Then I remember that foods I've eaten for my whole life - like scrapple - are actually regional specialties. And when you put together all those regional specialties, you end up with an actual regional cuisine, not just a bunch of one-offs.

[I did not actually take that photo. It's from City Paper and was taken by Christopher Myers.]

Bourdain: Turns Out, I'm Still Bitter

Mmm...blue crabs. Nuclear blue crabs from the Hudson.

Last night, as we wrapped up the newest episode of No Reservations, in which Tony travels up the Hudson River, I realized something: I am not going to get over Bourdain's shabby treatment of Baltimore. It's permanently colored the way I watch his show.

Apparently Bourdain doesn't care what people in Baltimore think of him, anyway. Last night, while picking crabs with a couple of old-timers from a Hudson River town that's inconveniently nestled next to a nuclear power plant, he took the opportunity to mention that the crabs were better than anything in Baltimore and that they should be anyway, since New York is, of course, better than Maryland.

You know, I like New York and I like a lot of New Yorkers. But that attitude? Annoying and unjustified.

Plus, the crabs were totally underseasoned. And Bourdain didn't even really know how to pick them, even though he used to live here.

My issues with the episode didn't start and stop with the Bmore references, either. While I like Michael Ruhlman and everything looked pretty, I wasn't that impressed with the food.

I'm sure the food served in CIA instructor Chef Pardus' backyard tasted good, but I was sort of put off by watching a bunch of displaced Manhattanites eating banh mi - and I was definitely put off by Pardus' 10-going-on-40 daughter, who apparently has never heard the words, "Don't use that tone of voice." I'm sure she's a smart little girl, but, um, a tad insufferable? I got the impression that every adult in her presence has praised her for being adorable and funny. To me, though, precocious does not equal adorable.

(Now I feel mean for criticizing a 10 year old, especially when it's really her parents' fault.)

The final scene got to me, too. Bourdain had dinner with Bill Murray, who I love, at a restaurant near New Paltz. Walking into the restaurant, Bourdain mentioned that as a general rule, the quality of the food at a restaurant is inversely proportional to the quality of the view. I agree - and considering how much time I've spent eating out in Annapolis, I know what I'm talking about.

Bourdain insisted that the food at this restaurant defied that rule. I'm sure it did. But it still wasn't interesting enough to warrant a spot on the show. No groundbreaking creativity, no unique local flavors - just your standard fare upscale cuisine (which I started complaining about back in 2006). It looked to me like the real draw of the restaurant was that the owner's friends with Bill Murray. I get that he's a big star and everything, but isn't No Reservations supposed to be above that sort of thing?

The show did have some bright spots, though. The salty dog marina bar looked great, the sausage-making guy was inspiring, and I loved the sailing scenes. In fact, I think somebody on the Severn needs to get on that floating food cart thing. (Anchor in between the bridges - you'd be out of the way and you'd get traffic from all parts of the river.)

Overall, though, the episode disappointed me in tiny ways along the way and it didn't hang together as a whole - the overriding theme was weak. The Hudson River might be a beautiful, fantastic place to eat. But that show didn't really sell it to this Maryland girl.

[Photo credit: Travel Channel]

Mmm...Ketchup (and other stuff)

From Lileks.

For some reason, I always thought that the Heinz "57" referred to herbs and spices or the number of ingredients in the ketchup. I can't find a current list of products because they vary so much from region to region, but I bet there are more than 57 these days. Just not in every state.

Which, I think, suggests something good about the state of the food industry - that they customize and regionalize so local flavors and preferences are preserved. Then again, the differences might mostly be in marketing and they might be economically-driven, not forced by taste preferences. But who knows, besides the Heinz marketing team?

Artsy Wednesday: Radical Cartography

Last week, Apartment Therapy linked to the kind of site where I can lose hours and hours of my day. Radical Cartography is the brainchild of Harvard grad student Bill Rankin. AT honed right in on some of the prettier, older maps, like these maps of the Mississippi River from 1944 - and they are definitely worth a look.

But from a research geek perspective, I was more interested in some of the maps that Rankin and his friends created themselves. I'm still batting around food mapping ideas, and I found a lot of inspiration here. For example...

The density of the Hispanic population throughout the US - this has surely impacted food choices and offerings, right?

Thinking historically, I wonder how the creation of the National Road influenced regional cuisine. The families that traveled the road, did they leave bits of their histories behind? Can we still see their influence today?

This little series of simple maps might have resonated the most with me. Rankin and two of his colleagues created their own "personal maps" of cities. This one, of Philadelphia, shows Rankin's movements around the city, how he gets around, and what he does. Overlay a bunch of additional people's maps on top of this one and you have a really interesting study of city use.

Trendy Monday: Places to Watch

The May Food & Wine arrived the other day and, with it, a "go list" - the world's best food cities plus 20 "rising star" restaurants in the food world. For anybody paying close attention to global food trends, there aren't a ton of surprises, but it's interesting reading anyway.

The "best" food cities are mostly what you'd expect: Tokyo, Barcelona, New York, London and Copenhagen. The most interesting inclusion on that list is Copenhagen, which the magazine calls an "avant-garde stronghold." That's very F&W of them. I'm trying to imagine what #5 would be on, say, Bon Appetit's list. Something in Italy, maybe? Shanghai?

The rising star restaurant list provides a little more geographic diversity, with spots in Hong Kon, Lima, Dublin, Buenos Aires and Melbourne. Oddly enough, Momofuku Ko is included on that list. I guess I have a hard time thinking of a restaurant that's gotten that much ink as a "rising star."

But that also might just be because I read a lot about newish restaurants?

(As an aside, this is my 800th post on M&G. I've been writing for just over 3 1/2 years and writing every weekday (minus a couple of days last fall when I was in the Bahamas) for almost a year and a half. Wordy, huh?)

Dictionary Friday: Soup

soup
Theoretically, a soup can be any combination of vegetables, meat or fish cooked in a liquid. It may be thick (like GUMBO), thin (such as a CONSOMMÉ), smooth (like a BISQUE) or chunky (CHOWDER or BOUILLABAISSE). Though most soups are hot, some like VICHYSSOISE and many FRUIT SOUPS are served cold. Soups are often garnished with flavor enhancers such as CROUTONS, grated or cubed cheese or sour cream. They can be served as a first course or as a meal, in which case they're often accompanied by a sandwich or salad. See also AVGO-LEMONO; BILLY BI; BIRD'S NEST; BORSCHT; BOURRIDE; CALDO VERDE; CALLALOO; CAUDIÈRE; CHLODNIK; COCK-A-LEEKIE; COTRIADE; COULIS; CUSH; DASHI; DUBARRY; FRUIT SOUP; GARBURE; GAZPACHO; MENUDO; MINESTRA; MOCK TURTLE; MULLIGATAWNY; OZONI; PANADA; PEPPER POT; PISTOU; POSOLE; RIBOLLITA; SCOTCH BROTH; SHE-CRAB SOUP; SIZZLING RICE SOUP; WON TON SOUP.
© Copyright Barron's Educational Services, Inc. 1995 based on THE FOOD LOVER'S COMPANION, 2nd edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst.

Also, what we have been eating all week. Monday and Tuesday: onion soup. Last night (and tonight): crab soup. My freezer is full of cauliflower soup and leftover chicken stock. It's been a very autumnal few weeks at the Pollard house.

But speaking of the crab soup, it really is great. I use my mom's recipe, which is adapted from Julia Child's, and basically involves making a simple vegetable soup (with bouillon cubes, even, instead of actual stock) then ramping it up with crab and Old Bay. It's filling and healthy and really tastes great.

Of course, that might be partly because I add six times more Old Bay than Julia recommends.

Trendy Monday: China's Drinking Wine

I'm a little late with this "trend", definitely. After all, the Beijing Olympics ended last night, and that was almost definitely the catalyst behind the two articles I read last night about the wine market in China. The articles - one by Mike Steinberger in Slate and the other by Lettie Teague in Food & Wine - cover a lot of the same territory, though they're certainly not identical. (I should also mention that they're probably my two favorite wine writers, so I'm biased to start.)

The gist of the beginning of both articles: China is a huge potential market for wine sales. It's rapidly growing, Hong Kong is already a hotbed of wine collection, and there are just so, so many people.

From there, though, the articles diverge, since they come from different perspectives. Steinberger writes as a wine fan himself. He's worried that Chinese collectors will inflate the prices of Bourdeaux and Burgundies, making the already expensive and limited quantities of great French wines even less available to francophile-oenophiles like himself. He also writes about the domestic wine industry in China and his (admittedly selfish) hope that it succeeds. Apparently there are at least some areas of China that are ideal for producing wine, and there has been some Western investment in those areas - good news for all.

Teague's article takes a different tack, as it's also something of a profile of Alessia Antinori, export manager for her family's Marchesi Antinori, the Italian winemaker. Antinori spends a lot of time in both China and India, cultivating the markets and introducing Italian wine. In fact, in some places, it almost sounds like she's introducing wine altogether. Regardless of her customers' knowledge, Antinori obviously sees a ton of potential in the Chinese market (less so in India, where taxes make imported wines prohibitively expensive).

One of the things I found most interesting in the Antinori article was that she's my age. And wow is her life different from mine. Teague addresses that difference, too, specifically noting that Antinori wants to have kids one day. I guess you can't get around that question when you're talking to a woman in her early 30's who travels for months at a time? Still, if I was a different kind of writer and thinker, I'm pretty sure I would be offended at the seemingly out of the blue inclusion of that piece of information. Fortunately, I'm not that kind of writer or thinker, and Teague really just answered a question I was thinking.

So there it is: China and wine, in the news. I wonder, now, if we'll continue to hear a lot about this, or if the subject will die with the closing ceremonies.

Artsy Wednesday: Enric Rovira Chocolate

Yesterday, Cooper and I watched Monday night's Bourdain, in which our hero visits Spain. What an amazing episode. This whole season's been pretty stellar - I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite - but this was a real foodies' espisode. At the start, Bourdain even mentions that food bloggers are going to freak out over this trip.

And I did.

The whole show was pretty intense, and between Cooper and I, we'd read more than a little about pretty much every single chef featured. I very nearly got online to order some of the canned seafood Bourdain tried at the Espinaler Bodega...until I realized it was going to cost about $300 a can (I'll stick with my beloved grocery store smoked oysters, thanks). Honestly, the care, skill and creativity demonstrated by the chefs actually caused my eyes to well up a little bit. Everything was just so impressive.

Overall, the show was a great illustration of how old and new layer together, and how tradition and innovation and technology and intuition can come together to create something amazing. Sometimes the time and place and circumstances are just right, and everything adds up to much more than the sum of the parts. That's the Spain I saw in this episode.

I could write for days about each of the places Bourdain visited, but since it's Wednesday, and Wednesday is "artsy", I'll keep it simple. The picture below (snagged from the Travel Channel website) is a chocolate egg created by Enric Rovira. Each egg is painstakingly molded, then slightly melted by the sun until a small hole forms. At that point, the egg is rushed inside to set, then airbrushed with a combination of chocolate and cocoa butter to create a matte finish.

Talking about the chocolate, Bourdain referenced the undulating, naturalist, art nouveau architecture of Gaudi, and I totally see that. I was actually also reminded of certain Brancusi sculptures. All around, the chocolate sculptures were amazing and I would totally buy one, if only they were available in the US.

This is before the hole has completely broken through and the final finish has been sprayed on. The end result is slightly lighter in color, and not nearly as shiny - with a hole where the indentation is.

The combination of the exact construction of the initial egg and the totally organic, traditional element of the sun melting the chocolate create a final product that evokes the larger story of what's happening in Spanish cuisine today.

Bourdain was right. This food blogger, at least, is freaking out about this episode.

Dictionary Friday (also Artsy): Graffiti

graf·fi·ti
1. pl. of graffito.
2. (used with a plural verb) markings, as initials, slogans, or drawings, written, spray-painted, or sketched on a sidewalk, wall of a building or public restroom, or the like: These graffiti are evidence of the neighborhood's decline.
3. (used with a singular verb) such markings as a whole or as constituting a particular group: Not much graffiti appears around here these days.

Ann Althouse is in LA this week, posting tons of pictures. Last night, she juxtaposed some pictures of Venice Beach graffiti with pictures she took in NYC last semester. She asks what the differences in style say about the differences between the two cities. As one of the commenters points out, it's not entirely a fair comparison, as the Venice Beach graffiti was legal, so the artists had more time to complete it and polish it up than NYC artists (vandals?) would. That said, the differences between the two are so obvious and totally reinforce the perceptions I have of both cities: NYC is edgy and harsh and actually cutting edge, while LA is all about polish and style and is generally bright and optimistic.

Of course, based on those descriptions, I should prefer LA to New York. But I don't. At all.

Anyway, the post got me thinking: are there stylistic differences in the food cultures within the two cities? Beyond, say, LA tacquerias vs. NYC hot dogs or whatever.

I haven't spent enough time in either city's restaurants to be able to answer that question, I don't think. Even though I've read a lot about both cities' food scenes, I've never really been paying attention to differences and similarities. I might start now, though.

Added artsy thought: a graffit-themed dinner party would be kind of cool, wouldn't it? I'm pretty sure it would justify some squeeze-bottle sauces.

Crabs! (Restaurant Review: Mickey's Family Crab House in Bethany Beach, DE)

Is there any better way to cap off a week at the beach than with a crab feast? Doubtful. And if there is, I'm not even sure I want to try it.

After a week of beach and games and theme nights and a day of kids' rides at Rehoboth, we spent our final night in Bethany blessedly without kids (I love babysitters!), busily trying to eat our weight in blue crab. Initially, Friday was to be "Greek Night" (aka Toga Party) but as the week wore on, we all realized we could really use a night to ourselves. Also, we wanted crabs. It was late June, and I hadn't had a single crab all season.

We chose Mickey's Family Crab House, right on route 1 in Bethany, mostly for its proximity to our house. Not much driving, plus we wouldn't waste any precious childless time with a commute. Fortunately, we'd also heard some good things about the place from miscellaneous sources. Still, it's a crab house, not a five-star dining experience. We knew what to expect: paper-covered tables, pitchers of beer and a whole lot of Old Bay.

And that's what we got. Mickey's is as crab housey as crab houses get. Loudish, crowded, picnic tables, cheap beer and a brassy, hon-ish matriarch in charge of it all (but no, she's not Mickey). We all ordered all-you-can-eat, which was a very reasonable $38 per person, and also included corn. Because we can't help ourselves, we also ordered clams, hush puppies and crab dip. (We came close to also ordering their special oysters, but I can't bring myself to eat oysters in June. It's just...wrong.)

It was good, too. The first batch of crabs wasn't fantastic - they were a little on the dry side and maybe had been sitting for too long, and the corn was pretty horrifically overcooked, but that's not the main attraction. The second two batches of crabs were excellent - hot and steamy and perfectly seasoned (not too much, not too little). The crabs were surprisingly heavy, too, especially for all-you-can-eat.

The hush puppies and crab dip and clams were all pretty excellent, too, though we didn't really need any of them. Also, the pina coladas we had for dessert might have come straight out of a drink machine, but they were icy and tasted like pina colada ice cream, and I can't find any fault with that.

Our service was friendly and more than prompt, and really, we just had a great time. Also, Mike and Cooper and I (the Maryland natives) were all impressed by everybody else's enthusiasm. It's rare, I think, that six non-Maryland natives are so willing to get all-you-can-eat - and to really eat. Granted, at least half the crew has been living in Maryland since freshman year in college, but still.

A couple of pictures:

Kyle and Mary eating crabs...in lobster bibs

Jen and me (and a little bit of Mike, mid-word), waiting for crabs. See how I wore orange to mask the anticipated mess? Smart.

Unrelated to crabs, but aren't Dixon and his little ladyfriend Maddy so cute and happy?

Photos courtesy of Alicia and her iPhone, Mary and her camera and...me.

Old Bay and Butter: They Make Everything Better

I just ate a leftover piece of corn on the cob, topped with butter and Old Bay. Now I am eating cantaloupe. It's on the same plate the corn was on, so it's also drenched in butter and Old Bay (though a little less so than the corn).

And it tastes so good.

Researchy and Trendy: Around the World Food Photos

My friend Jason (DC Jason) just sent me a link to this ridiculously cool photo essay on Time.com. Sixteen families from all over the world were photographed with all the food they eat in one week, just sitting there around them. The essay also includes notes about the families' favorite meals and how much they spend on food in one week. It's pulled from the book Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio.

This is kind of similar to my random idea about a coffee table book with interior shots of people's refrigerators. It's also very similar to certain (very cool) research I've worked on in the past.

It's well worth a look.

Also, WOW I spend a lot of money on food.

Quotable Tuesday: Crabby

If Baltimoreans have a Holy Grail, I once said in a review, it would be the perfect crab house. - Elizabeth Large

It's Crab Week on the EL blog and, not surprisingly, everybody's full of opinions.

As for me, if I'm having crabs, I'd just rather not go out. I like my own crab cakes better than most restaurants, and the best crabs I've had in the past few years were ones that our friend Clancy caught in the Severn, then steamed at his parents' house.

When we go to the beach in a few weeks, we'll have crabs again. In true hunter-gatherer spirit, the boys will all go crabbing with Gary-Down-the-Boatyard (so named because that's how he introduces himself on the phone: "Hi, this is Gary-Down-the-Boatyard. Is Cooper there?"), then we'll steam the crabs back at home. It's a perfect end-of-vacation dinner.

I am so ready to go to the beach.