Bastianich grew up in a restaurant family in Queens, back in the days when a plate of spaghetti and meatballs could pass as Italian cooking. He cut his teeth working in his parent’s restaurant, doing his homework in the back, and absorbing the business from his father, a self-proclaimed “restaurant man”. It was during these years that he learned every facet of the small business, from washing dishes, to sitting in the back of his father’s truck where he was “practically waterboarded with bloody chicken juice”.

From here the book meanders a bit, beginning with his parents opening Felidia restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, his education at Boston College, and a brief stint as an investment manager on Wall Street. From there he took his year-end bonus, and headed to Italy to learn about the food, eating and working his way through restaurants and vineyards.

“I was tasting flavors that would last a lifetime. Flavors I would bring with me into everything that worked later, like what ‘real’ grilled calamari tasted like. You have to burn it just right, until there are freckles of black blistered char. It was sweet – caramelized and tender, and doused in this angry, bitter olive oil, laced with unbelievably stinky garlic, and hit with chopped parsley, and shot into outer space with this lemon that was so sweet and tart, it made you screw up your face. “

When Bastianich returned to New York, he met Mario Batali. The two decided to open a restaurant together, and Babbo was Born.

Bastianich was more of a restaurant traditionalist, and at first working with Batali panicked him. When they were opening the restaurant they got a quick education on each other’s personalities. “… he was coming up with these beef cheek ravioli, and the calamari Sicilian lifeguard style. There was no f’ing Sicilian lifeguards. He was just like, “hey, how do you suppose a Sicilian lifeguard would make calamari?” And then he did it. I didn’t quite know what to make of it all; I was panicked, because right in the moment of pressure, and being out in the public eye, I was kind of reverting, to what I knew, which was traditional Italian food. Mario was spinning that food and tradition into something new. He was right of course, and it launched our complete revolution of ideas. We never accepted anything just because that was the way it was done.”

From there the book chronicles the close partnership between Joe and Mario and their adventures in both Italy and the U.S. as they opened a long list of restaurants. As their empire expanded economy of scale played into everything they do. When they needed a good house wine, Joe went to Italy and opened two wineries. When they couldn’t find enough good fish to supply the restaurants, they became a fish wholesaler, even selling to competitors. Olive oil? Italian tomatoes? They now own shipping containers to bring the products they buy directly from Italy into the United States. Even the gasoline for their vehicles is made from the waste oil of their restaurants.

Focusing mostly on the front of the house, Restaurant Man is an unapologetic accounting of the highs and lows of Joe and Mario’s experiences as their empire continued to grow. The philosophy of each restaurant is detailed from concept to opening and beyond, replete with stories about Mario, restaurant employees and their customers.

The f’bomb is dropped constantly, and his writing style is brash, not hesitating to criticize people they met along the way, other vendors, and even employees. It is far from politically correct, Bastianich has some scores to settle – “And then you have a withering douche-bag like Pinot Longo. For five minutes about a thousand years ago, he was able to convince New York that he was some kind of a Tuscan cook. But frankly, I think he was always full of shit.” Of Le Cirque, “When I think of who ate there, it’s Barbara Walters, Walter Cronkite, Nixon and Kissinger — his customers are all dead or dying. Le Cirque never appealed to a younger audience, it never evolved to accommodate the next generation of restaurant-goers. It was always dominated by Sirio, and he never let his kids perform in the center ring.” The latter was especially interesting to me, as I had just finished watching “Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven”, which left me with some strong opinions too. He also blows the doors off of restaurant secrets – Desserts are almost pure profit, no bottle of wine costs more than five dollars to make, and some restaurants dilute expensive Parmesan cheese with other, cheaper varieties.

Bastianich also has a self-congratulatory tone that gets annoying at times but it is difficult to dismiss because he’s such a successful businessman. I suppose that being overly confident is one of the ingredients needed to make such an entrepreneur, but at times it gets tiresome.

Restaurant Man serves as an education to anyone wanting to enter the restaurant business. Along the way it talks about managing employees and vendors, staging a scene by letting in just the right mix of customers, and the need to have a balance between making art and making a living. “Most people who open restaurants will fail, because they lack the fundamental understanding of restaurant math. Either they think they’re superstar cooks or they think they’re superstar hosts. They do it for ego, and they don’t realize that without making money it’s nothing but bullshit,” writes Bastianich. “If you think you’re some sort of glorified dinner host or some artistic cook, you’re not going to last a week.”

Overall, I liked the book. If you are in or going into the restaurant business, read it. Most people interested in food or restaurants in general will enjoy it too.

Restaurant Man by Joe Bastianich.

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

Mother’s Day brunch at Bluehour in Portland, Oregon, kicks off with a basket of pastries plus artisanal coffee, Bellini or mimosa. The prix-fixe affair continues with a choice of appetizers such as quiche or sweet pea soup, and a main course from options like soft scrambled eggs with lobster or brioche french toast with caramelized banana-hazelnut compote.

Ever since the ex Spago chef de cuisine took over, I’ve been hearing good things. For the uninitiated, they are at 250 NW 13th Ave in the Pearl District – 226-3394.

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

Each survey result will get its own post on the site. The 2011 survey questions received well over one million page views, so your votes can make a difference to your favorite restaurant’s bottom line! Once we have 1000 people take the survey, we’ll announce the results.

To reward you for completing the full survey, incentive prizes donated by great local businesses will be randomly awarded to participants who have answered at least 25 questions:

Here are this year’s sponsors:

• Cork Wineshop – a prize pack consisting of bottle of house wine, a $20 gift certificate and two Friday Night Flights tasting coupons.
• Ristretto Roasters – a full spectrum of their offerings (6 single origin coffees and the blends). $50 gift certificate
• NorthwestFoodandwineguide.com – Wineopoly Game, 2 nice red wine glasses, two nice bottles of wine and a box of chocolates
• Anne Amie Vineyards – 2 tickets to their July 26th Pre-IPNC Counter Culture event – value $150
• Storyteller Wine Company – 2 $50 gift certificates
• Coppia Restaurant – 2 $50 gift certificates
• Tapalaya Restaurant – 2 $50 gift certificates
• Boedecker Cellars – wine tasting and a cellar tour for four people OR an afternoon as a Cellar Rat for 2. Work in the winery cleaning barrels, racking wine and other glamorous cellar tasks. Finish the day with a glass of wine and light supper in the cellar. Value $200.

If any other businesses want to donate incentive prizes, let me know – I’m happy to work with you! It is good exposure for your business.

Click here to take the survey!

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

Here is the press release -

Located on NE Broadway, in the former space of Thatch Tiki Bar, Hale Pele will offer a list of classic exotic cocktails made with the finest ingredients and craft methods, as well as a list of “New Wave Tropicals”, featuring modern spirits & liqueurs. Paired with these world class drinks will be an all new robust contemporary food menu.

For over a decade, Hale Pele owner Blair Reynolds has been passionate about tropical cocktails. Founder of locally made B.G.Reynolds’ Hand-Crafted Syrups, Blair Reynolds has created specialty tiki menus for bars in the Pacific Northwest, and lectured at Tales of the Cocktail, Portland Cocktail Camp, and the Great American Distillers Festival. Blair has contributed to several cocktail books, and served as an expert for Imbibe Magazine.

As a long-standing member and officer in the Oregon Bartenders Guild, Blair will bring a commitment to the consistency of the cocktails, using the freshest and highest quality ingredients and spirits available. “Too long has the word tiki been associated with bright red and pink drinks tasting of artificial coconut. Bringing in my years of research and study, I hope to serve Portland the best of tropical drinks both past and present,” says Reynolds.

Hale Pele will also include the great décor you’d expect from a world-class tiki bar, with interactive features, dancing waters, and other wonders from exotic isles. “I’m inspired by the unique décor of tiki bars from times past, and want to bring a bit of the novel fantasy of that bygone era into an exotic, yet welcoming environment. There is a story behind the setting, some of which will be revealed and some hidden. But beware of uncovering the mystery, lest you incur the wrath of Pele!”

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

I’ve heard from Fivespice -

Hello, I am the GM of Fivespice Tim Mattera. I guess we can all have dreams like that to hire line cooks and Sous Chef with that kind of experience, but I can assure you that we did not post that ad, but we can always need a good line cook.

From Craigslist:

Five Spice Seafood and Wine bar hiring BOH (Lake Oswego)

Sous Chef

Candidates must have a minimum of five years experience in serious fine dining. Two years Michelin star restaurant experience is a plus for an easy transition into our day to day production. Culinary degree is also a great plus, but not necessary. Experience in assisting with inventory control, ordering, all forms of butchery, charcuterie and you must be highly organized and clean. The menus will be changing very frequently once we hit our stride so there is a lot of room for creativity and experimentation. We have one sous chef in place and will grow to a three to four sous operation. We will be executing a blend of modern and classic cooking techniques. This is a very serious position in a serious restaurant. 

Line Cook

We need serious line cooks with fine dining background; fine dining being – a restaurant with a three star rating or higher or Michelin stars. If you don’t have these experiences do not apply. There is opportunity to contribute to menu development as you will be the chef of your station under the guidance of the Chef and Sous

Goodness. I don’t even know what to say. Good luck?

Emphasis mine.

Five Spice Seafood and Wine bar hiring BOH (Lake Oswego)

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

Category 1: American-Style Wheat Beer, 23 Entries
Gold: Wagon Box Wheat, Black Tooth Brewing Co., Sheridan, WY
Silver: 1919 choc beer, choc Beer Co., Krebs, OK
Bronze: DD Blonde, Hop Valley Brewing Co., Springfield, OR

Category 8: Coffee Beer, 56 Entries
Gold: Bacon and Eggs Breakfast Coffee Imperial Porter, Pizza Port Ocean Beach, San Diego, CA
Silver: Drunken Elf Stout, Columbia River Brewing Co., Portland, OR
Bronze: Coffee Stout, Rock Bottom Arlington, Arlington, VA

Category 15: Indigenous Beer, 26 Entries
Gold: Got Beer, BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery – Tacoma, Huntington Beach, CA
Silver: Hqt, 21st-Amendment Brewery, San Francisco, CA
Bronze: Oyster Stout, Upright Brewing Co., Portland, OR

Category 18: American-Style Sour Ale, 14 Entries
Gold: Ching Ching, Bend Brewing Co., Bend, OR
Silver: Mattina Rossa, Allagash Brewing Co., Portland, ME
Bronze: Supplication, Russian River Brewing Co., Santa Rosa, CA

Category 19: American-Style Brett Ale, 28 Entries
Gold: Peche ‘n Brett, Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, Hood River, OR
Silver: Peche, AC Golden Brewing Co., Golden, CO
Bronze: Wild Wild Brett Rouge, Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project, Fort Collins, CO

Category 56: French- & Belgian-Style Saison, 44 Entries
Gold: Carnevale, The Lost Abbey, San Marcos, CA
Silver: Saison Station 55, Hopfenstark Brewery, L’Assomption, Canada
Bronze: Urban Farmhouse Ale, The Commons Brewery, Portland, OR

Category 66: English-Style Summer Ale, 32 Entries
Gold: Cross of Gold: Revolution Brewing, Chicago, IL
Silver: Stone & Wood Pacific Ale, Stone & Wood Brewing Co., Byron Bay, Australia
Bronze: Mother Lode Golden Ale, Laurelwood Brewing Co., Portland, OR

Category 67: Classic English-Style Pale Ale, 33 Entries
Gold: Annadel Pale Ale, Third Street Aleworks, Santa Rosa, CA
Silver: Summit Extra Pale Ale, Summit Brewing Co., St. Paul, MN
Bronze: Caldera Ashland Amber, Caldera Brewing Co., Ashland, OR

Category 71: Scottish-Style Ale, 26 Entries
Gold: MacPelican’s Scottish Style Ale, Pelican Pub & Brewery, Pacific City, OR
Silver: Redhawk Ale, Rockyard Brewing Co., Castle Rock, CO
Bronze: Beltaine Scottish Ale, Shoreline Brewery, Michigan City, IN

Category 77: Oatmeal Stout, 49 Entries
Gold: Naked Oat Stout, Rock Bottom College Park, Indianapolis, IN
Silver: Stumblers Stout, Columbia River Brewing Co., Portland, OR
Bronze: Alaskan Oatmeal Stout, Alaskan Brewing Co., Juneau, AK

Category 81: Barley Wine-Style Ale, 62 Entries
Gold: Stormwatcher’s Winterfest, Pelican Pub & Brewery, Pacific City, OR
Silver: Barley’s Wine, La Cumbre Brewing Co., Albuquerque, NM
Bronze: AleSmith Old Numbskull, AleSmith Brewing Co., San Diego, CA

Category 83: Classic Irish-Style Dry Stout, 30 Entries
Gold: Blarney Sisters Dry Irish Stout, Third Street Aleworks, Santa Rosa, CA
Silver: Ring of Dingle, Sun King Brewing Co., Indianapolis, IN
Bronze: Breakside Dry Stout, Breakside Brewery, Portland, OR

Congratulations to all the winners!

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

In May and December of 2011, Oceana staff and supporters collected 119 seafood samples from grocery stores, restaurants and sushi venues in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The targeted species included those that were found to be mislabeled in previous studies as well as those with regional significance such as wild salmon, Dover or other regional soles, red snapper, yellowtail and white tuna.

Among the report’s other key findings include:

• Fraud was detected in 11 out of 18 different types of fish purchased.
• Every single fish sold with the word “snapper” in the label (34 out of 34) was mislabeled, according to federal guidelines.
• Nearly nine out of every ten sushi samples was mislabeled.
• Eight out of nine sushi samples labeled as “white tuna” were actually escolar, a species that carries a health warning for it purgative effects.

You can read a .pdf of the report here.

Another entrant in the flood of Mexican restaurants has been announced. According to Portland Monthly, Kelly Myers, previously Nostrana’s chef de cuisine, will be the chef at Xico – 3715 SE Divison. Look for a walk-up window in mid-July, and a dining room in August. The emphasis will be on making everything by hand with fresh ingredients. Big surprise. Lots more details here.

Researchers at Washington State University have discovered that a garlic compound is 100 times more effective than two commonly used antibiotics at fighting the source of food-borne illnesses. From Eurekalert.org,

The discovery opens the door to new treatments for raw and processed meats and food preparation surfaces.

“This work is very exciting to me because it shows that this compound has the potential to reduce disease-causing bacteria in the environment and in our food supply,” says Dr. Xiaonan Lu, a postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper.

“This is the first step in developing or thinking about new intervention strategies,” says Michael Konkel, a co-author who has been researching Campylobacter jejuni for 25 years.

“Campylobacter“, says Konkel, “is simply the most common bacterial cause of food-borne illness in the United States and probably the world.” Some 2.4 million Americans are affected every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with symptoms including diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and fever. The bacteria are also responsible for triggering nearly one-third of the cases of a rare paralyzing disorder known as Guillain-Barré syndrome.

More information here.

OregonLive reports that Yaw’s Top Notch burgers is coming back.

The famous Yaw’s hamburger with toasted buns and gravy fries, Green River soft drinks, thick milkshakes, homemade mayonnaise, relish, pickles, berry tarts and pies; and the car-hop service and Tootsie Roll cop, made Yaw’s Top Notch a destination location for Portlanders; people sometimes waiting more than an hour to get a seat.

Yaw said he is bringing all the old family recipes to this venture. “They were done with the old ribbon and ink typewriter; some of them are still handwritten from way back when, but we got them all on computer now.” He said he feels fortunate they have been able to come up with all the products that made their hamburgers unique.

At its peak in the seventies, Yaw’s had four locations in the metro area; including a Yaw’s Ham Bur-Beef location on Halsey, current home of King’s Omelets.

You can read the complete article in midcountymemo.com here.

Eater has the story on Morso, Kenny Giambalvo’s new café, which has opened in the old Pearl District Mio Gelato space. You may remember Kenny from such ventures as Balvo, the short-lived restaurant that is now 23Hoyt, and as the previous chef de cuisine at Bluehour. It’s located at 25 N.W. 11th. More details here.

McDonalds has released a joint statement with the Humane Society of the United States, saying they will be requiring its U.S. pork suppliers to outline their plans to phase out the use of sow gestation stalls.

“McDonald’s believes gestation stalls are not a sustainable production system for the future. There are alternatives that we think are better for the welfare of sows,”said Dan Gorsky, senior vice president of McDonald’s North America Supply Chain Management. “McDonald’s wants to see the end of sow confinement in gestation stalls in our supply chain. We are beginning an assessment with our U.S. suppliers to determine how to build on the work already underway to reach that goal. In May, after receiving our suppliers’ plans, we’ll share results from the assessment and our next steps.”

“The HSUS has been a long-time advocate for ending the use of gestation crates, and McDonald’s announcement is important and promising,” said Wayne Pacelle, The HSUS’ president and CEO. “All animals deserve humane treatment, including farm animals, and it’s just wrong to immobilize animals for their whole lives in crates barely larger than their bodies.”

These efforts are supported by Dr. Temple Grandin, of the movie Temple Grandin. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

It should be noted that the crates have already been banned in Florida, Arizona and California, and are being phased out in Maine and Oregon.

Between 60 and 70 percent of sows are kept in crates during pregnancy in the United States,^[10] each pregnancy lasting four months, with an average of 2.5 litters every year.^[11] Sows, which can weigh 600 pounds (270 kg),^[12] spend most of their three or four years of adult life in crates,^[12] giving birth to between five and eight litters. As the sows grow larger, they no longer fit in the crates, and must sleep on their chests, unable to turn, until they are slaughtered.^[5] The crates are usually placed side by side in rows of 20 sows per row and 100 rows per shed, the floors of the crates slatted to allow excrement to fall into a pit below. (Wikipedia.org)

According to their latest newsletter, Kenny & Zuke’s bagels will be available at all seven Portland area Whole Foods stores.  Some will also be carrying their rye bread and rugelach. Wholesale pastrami is still in the works.

I thought this idea was brilliant, but apparently not many other people do. A Texas group is trying to fund a smartphone app called “Haiku Review”. Their idea is a direct response to the increasingly long (and clueless) reviews being written on Yelp. The app restricts reviews to a single haiku, which, as you know from our recent contest, restricts you to 17 syllables. Think of it as restaurant reviews on Twitter – short, creative and to the point. Unfortunately, their attempt to raise money on Kickstarter to fund development only came up with a tiny percentage of the amount needed.

Remember, a Haiku is a seventeen syllable poem in three phrases with 5, 7 and 5 syllables. An example:

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

Try writing a restaurant review following that format in the comments. It’s easier than you might think.

I’m pretty open to trying new things, but “roadkill” is not one of them.

From NPR’s The Salt -

For a lot of hunters, eating roadkill is no big deal if it’s picked up within a few hours of the accident and it’s not too hot outside. “A good deer roadkill does not stay long beside the road around here … Nothing like fresh, free, venison,” writes a commenter from Georgia on a recent piece on roadkill in Car and Driver.

Some states like Florida and Tennessee have laws that allow hunters or would-be scavengers to take roadkill home. Sometimes it’s a favor to transportation officials who say 300,000 accidents a year are caused by animal-vehicle collisions, according to a 2008 report by the Federal Highway Administration.

But before serving any animal — be it deer or raccoon — on a plate, it’s important to know how to check the blood, hair, and eyes of the animal for signs that the meat is safe enough to eat, as Steven Rinella, host of the Travel Channel show The Wild Within,demonstrates in this video. Some wild animals are susceptible to disease, and experts say the risk of foodborne illness with roadkill is no different than that from hunting wild game.

If anyone was ever to open a roadkill restaurant, I have a feeling it would be in Portland.

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

Revere House Menu, Boston MA 1851-1859. Mock Turtle soup anyone?

The menu collection originated through the energetic efforts of Miss Frank E. Buttolph (1850-1924), a somewhat mysterious and passionate figure, whose mission in life was to collect menus. In 1899, she offered to donate her existing collection to the Library — and to keep collecting on the Library’s behalf. Presciently, director Dr. John Shaw Billings accepted her offer and for the next quarter century Miss Buttolph continued to add to the collection. Her principal method of acquisition was to write to every restaurant she could think of, soliciting menus. When letters failed, she often marched into a restaurant and pleaded her case in person. She also placed advertisements in trade publications like The Caterer and The Hotel Gazette, but just as often, published news of her collection prompted outright contributions of specimens from around the world. Three times between 1904 and 1909, The New York Times wrote about her and the collection, noting once that “she frankly avers that she does not care two pins for the food lists on her menus, but their historic interest means everything.” Miss Buttolph added to the collection of more than 25,000 menus until her death in 1924. The collection has continued to grow through additional gifts of graphic, gastronomic, topical or sociological interest, especially but not exclusively New York-related.

This, of course, sent me on a day long expedition, digging through the NYPL collection, and then on to the LA Public Library, Alice Statler Library, and the Cornell School of Hotel Administration Library collections.

I think menu history is important, if only to show and learn from time past. So many dishes have come and gone, many just because they have gone out of style. If I was a chef, I’d be browsing them from time to time looking for ideas. In the meantime, for those who always wondered what it is, here’s a recipe for Mock Turtle Soup, courtesy Wikipedia.

Mock turtle soup is an English soup that was created in the mid-18th century as a cheaper imitation of green turtle soup.^[1] It often uses brains and organ meatssuch as calf’s head or a calf’s foot^[2] to duplicate the texture and flavour of the original’s turtle meat.

Mrs. Fowle’s Mock Turtle Soup,:^[3] ”Take a large calf’s head. Scald off the hair. Boil it until the horn is tender, then cut it into slices about the size of your finger, with as little lean as possible. Have ready three pints of good mutton or veal broth, put in it half a pint of Madeira wine, half a teaspoonful of thyme, pepper, a large onion, and the peel of a lemon chop’t very small. A ¼ of a pint of oysters chop’t very small, and their liquor; a little salt, the juice of two large onions, some sweet herbs, and the brains chop’t. Stand all these together for about an hour, and send it up to the table with the forcemeat balls made small and the yolks of hard eggs.”

Mock turtle soup is the basis for the character of the Mock Turtle in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the joke being that Mock Turtle Soup is supposedly made from Mock Turtles.

You’ll thank me for the above when you see it on local menus.

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

to err is human
and to forgive is divine
I served red with fish

Honorable mention to Amber:

Wine filled our glasses,
Lingered on your lips, so I
Drank too much of both.

Dave – please email me your contact information so that we can arrange to get the tickets to you.

• 1. Wine filled our glasses,…(29%, 23 Votes)
• 2. Pour, shuck, sip then slurp… (1%, 1 Votes)
• 3. today it rains hard… (1%, 1 Votes)
• 4. Red raspberries pop…(1%, 1 Votes)
• 5. I make chicken soup…(3%, 2 Votes)
• 6. Can’t pronounce this cheese!… (5%, 4 Votes)
• 7. to err is human… (53%, 41 Votes)
• 8. Hug this tree for luck…(7%, 5 Votes)

The judges are all over the place on their favorite haiku this year, so I’m throwing it out to you. If you could take the time to look over the top haiku below and vote in the poll on the right side of the page, I would appreciate it. One vote per person, please! Voting will end on Sunday evening.

The winner will receive two general-admission tickets for the event on Tuesday May 8th (a $170 value). Tickets will be mailed to winner before the event.

“Taste of the Nation Portland will raise critical funds needed to support Share Our Strength’s efforts to end childhood hunger in Oregon and across the nation.” You can read more information about the event at www.portlandtaste.org. If you planning to attend, you might want to read our “Taste of the Nation: a Battle Plan” here.

1. Amber says:
Wine filled our glasses,
Lingered on your lips, so I
Drank too much of both.

2. Tom says:
Pour, shuck, sip then slurp
Bubbles, oysters; what a pair
Life without a care

3. Dave says:
today it rains hard
tomorrow there will be sun
pinot noir comes soon

4. Calabrese says:
Red raspberries pop
Fragrant tartness into lips
Open for their kiss

5. Frieda Lighthouse says:
I make chicken soup
Memories of grandmother
Recalling her smile

6. Amber Says:
Can’t pronounce this cheese!
Cow or sheep? Quick – Google it!
Here comes our waiter!

7. Dave says:
to err is human
and to forgive is divine
I served red with fish

8. Brian Wilbur says:
Hug this tree for luck
Says my son before we rake.
Glorious truffles.

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.

Forbes.com just wrote a long expose of the Kobe beef issue pointing out that you cannot buy Kobe beef in this country. Period. Like Champagne – only the wine from a specific region in France should use that name – real Kobe beef must come from the Hyogo prefecture of Japan, and it is tightly controlled. Even if this was not true, because of foot and mouth disease in Japan, it is illegal to import or even hand carry any Japanese beef.

From Forbes -

No matter how much you have spent, how fancy a steakhouse you went to, or which of the many celebrity chefs who regularly feature “Kobe beef” on their menus you believed, you were duped. I’m really sorry to have to be the one telling you this, but no matter how much you would like to believe you have tasted it, if it wasn’t in Asia you almost certainly have never had Japan’s famous Kobe beef.

… All the myths about cows getting massages and drinking beer while listening to classical music are just that, myths, but nonetheless real Kobe beef is produced under some of the world’s strictest legal food standards, whereas “domestic Kobe” beef production, along with that in Australia and South America, is as regulated as the Wild West. In Japan, to be Kobe requires a pure lineage of Tajima-gyu breed cattle (not any old Japanese breed crossbred with American cattle as is the norm here). The animal must also have been born in Hyogo prefecture and thus raised on the local grasses and water and terroir its entire life. It must be a bull or virgin cow, and it takes considerably longer to raise a Tajima-gyu for consumption than most other breeds, adding to the cost. It must be processed in a Hyogo slaughterhouse – none of which export to the US – and then pass a strict government grading exam. There are only 3000 head of certified Kobe Beef cattle in the world, and none are outside Japan. The process is so strict that when the beef is sold, either in stores or restaurants, it must carry the 10-digit identification number so customers know what particular Tajima-gyu cow it came from.

Just for your future reference, Wagyu is also a scam: there is no such thing as a “Wagyu” breed of cattle in Japan.

The 4-part Forbes piece is interesting and very thorough. You can read it here.

This original post is by Food Dude, and it came from Portland Oregon Food and Drink.