Does Obesity = Hunger
Hunger related problems now occurring in one of the nation’s capitals of obesity, South Bronx, from Sunday’s NYTimes. Expect more to come if the cheapest food remains the most harmful food available. ()
Cheever Bio Wins NBCC Award
Congrats to my dear friend Blake Bailey, whose
bio of John Cheever, won best bio of 2009 from the National Book Critics Circle on Thursday.
I mentioned this bio when it came out. It’s fabulous, highly recommended. Blake also wrote a bio of Richard Yates, which is every bit as good, if not better. I have no doubt his Charles Jackson bio (
which he talks about on the WSJ blog) will be the same, even if
Jackson is all but forgotten. ()
Michael Symon and I At Jo-Beth Legacy Thurs at 7
Michael Symon and I will be at
Joseph-Beth Booksellers at Legacy Thursday from 7 to 9. He no-doubt wants help flogging
that damned book of his. I’ll be out front selling out of my van. If it’s good enough for Bourdain, it’s good enough for me. ()
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Interesting piece Michael. I guess reading this I start to think about the overexposure factor. Rachel Ray has already seen it happen,but on the other hand, branding is a powerful and useful tool. In the end people are more familar with some of the chef’s are because of the Food Network and if they should go to NY or Las Vegas, then people already have a recognition and feel something of a connection to that personality so to speak and therefore make the effort to try their food and that is good. However I have to wonder where does it leave the lesser known chef’s who go in to work day in and day out and produce beautiful and fantastic food? My point is, that, sometimes, SOME celb chef’s become too caught up in the latest thing when it comes to branding and
then, sometimes, the product starts to suffer and they become no different than some chain restauraunts.
The Bruni article is excellent. Celebrity Chefs have become a pompous self-important lot, unfortunately there are enough pompous self-important sheep diners out there to keep the money flowing into their pockets. I guess if you only go for 5 courses at Per Se you may be in danger of missing out on the frozen french fries. http://nymag.com/daily/food/2007/01/in_his_cookbook_bouchon_thomas.html
I love Bruni’s article! Made me wonder why I am desperate of getting into those “esteemed” restaurants where reservations are close to impossible. I’m asking myself now why go through that loss of dignity like the host/hostess making you feel like they are doing you a favor by giving you a reservation. I will still eat at these restaurants but only if I get the reservation times that I want.
Not that I’m asking you to prognosticate … but do you think the whole celebrity chef thing is a bubble (much like housing was) and eventually will ‘burst,’ as the fickle public attention turns to some other thing or some other group to lionize … and chefs return to being merely chefs, and not brands or corporate identities?
Or will it get worse? I can’t imagine it will … there does seem to be an anti-Rachel backlash (though of course, is she considered a chef? The Food Network seems to prefer personalities who can cook a little, rather than chefs who might be telegenic) and I wonder if there will be more backlash?
Ultimately though, it is nice that the ‘chef as celebrity’ thing has at least elevated the public discourse about food, and also really opened a lot of peoples’ eyes about new and different cuisines … even if that celebrity chef is hawking their chicken sandwich for Burger King or their chicken dish at Applebees.
And finally, the elevated discourse about food has also been good for food writers, too! After all, if someone was to call themselves a food writer say 20 or 30 years ago, they’d probably be met with derision, whereas today it’s actually fairly respectable, and someone can make a bit of money doing it!
I read both stories with tremendous interest – Michael’s, because it actually gets into the hard numbers crunching of what proportion of a chef’s income (streams) actually comes from his/her restaurants, as opposed to consultancies, branding or other aspects of his/her PR/merchandising “empire.” And Bruni’s because, cranky or not, he DOES have a legitimate point – I had the same experience with the Ramsay reservation system and, while I do understand a restaurant’s need to turn over the tables, for the money you pay at a restaurant of his caliber’s, a diner shouldn’t be savagely rushed and corraled into the bar if he’s a few minutes over his “allotted” dining time. A lot of times, patrons are at the mercy of the restaurant’s service – and European dining, in particular, such as Ramsay’s light Francophilic fare, does not incline towards the hour-and-a-bit-bolt-your-dinner-down-school of fine dining. (No, I haven’t been herded by the Ramsay minions – yet.)
There’s a big difference between that and a party of two who linger for three hours at the height of dinner rush with only a half-drunk glass of water on the table, and Bruni does speak for those among us who have been rather autocratically dictated to and emotionally manhandled by overzealous waitstaff and clock-watching chef/owners – even in time-crunched New York. As for the set tasting menus? Well, that’s anothing thing – it should be at the chef’s discretion, and diners should acquaint themselves with how a menu is structured before they make reservations. But if you have an a la carte menu and a patron orders something that a member of the waitstaff doesn’t think “goes” with the rest of the meal – well, no. I don’t think they should be denied it. Even if the chef thinks he’s doing them a favor. Please. I’m an adult. I’ll take the responsibility for my own palate.
Both good reads. While I can understand Bruni’s frustration, his tone bugs me. Maybe it’s because I’m such a chef groupie, I don’t know. Being new to the world of fine dining, I’m all for tasting menus, for letting the chef say, “Here, try this” and give me his or her best. It’s a terrific way for me to try new things and learn what I like. Same with wine pairings – my wine tastes are pretty narrow, so I’m perfectly happy to accept recs from my server. So far, it’s never failed me.
Again, though, that’s just me, and it’s a different perspective from his. I’m well aware that I’m a n00b. *G*
i was a little uneasy about the bruni story too, but probably for different reasons. i like bruni and his work and he definitely has a point, but on the other hand, i want to say stop whining. don’t go there, if the restaurant is obnoxious. put the pretentious waiter in his or her place. no one can make you feel insecure without your own consent. diners need to be more demanding, in a thoughtful and gracious way.
i agree with franks bristling at the treatment you get from hosts/hostesses. snotty behavior is not acceptable and they should be squashed like bugs.
but not with the 4:30 or 10:30 reso times; some restaurants really are busy.
as far as dinner goes, i always ask for what i want. and if a server says chef wants you to eat it that way, well, that’s usually why i’m there for, to see how a chef wants it. and i don’t have a problem with their calling the chef chef, because that’s the vernacular in restaurants, before the restaurant opens for service and after.
as far as the celb chef generally, yes, some can get a little bit pleased with themselves, but not the ones who are really good. as far as chefs being artists, they aren’t and any chef who thinks of himself as an artist is walking down the wrong road.
and yes there is likely to be a correction, as with any cultural phenomenon that’s a little out of line. (food arts asked me to weigh in on the subject and i will in the march issue.)
bottom line is, can a chef create and maintain a profitable and good business? if he can, he succeeds, if he can’t, no amount of celebrity can save him.
…gotta go take bourdain to get a manicure–i believe he got his hands dirty at the steel mill yesterday. talk about the wages of celebrity.
I agree with you to an extent. Bruni should ask for and get what he wants and shouldn’t go to places that have requirements that he doesn’t like. If I don’t feel like dressing up, I won’t go to a dressy restaurant and then whine about being made to dress up or the chef pushing his preferred style of clothing design on me, you know?
I have to say that eating most of my meals in Cleveland and on a relatively modest budget, I have yet to encounter a restaurant that’s nice enough that the servers make any wine pairing suggestions, let alone informed ones, or know how the chef suggests things be consumed. Most recently a waiter was fumbling with a sonoma area pinot noir bottle and pretending he knew about wine, telling me how this was from a sonoma winery south of San Fran. *sigh*
Be careful in the snow machine out there.
Oh, absolutely. If you’re treated poorly at a restaurant, in any fashion, I definitely believe in making your displeasure known. I can see his point, but the tone was kind of…well, like you said, whiny. It’s kind of like whining about the mean girls in high school, but still letting them get under your skin all the same. I’d rather point and laugh at the self-satisfaction and then get on with life.
Maybe I’m just annoyed that he kind of slagged on some of my favorite chefs. *G* Like I said, total chef groupie here. But I honestly don’t see the kind of pretension he was angry about in Ramsay or Keller or Batali. In their FOH staff? I can’t say, as I’ve never eaten in any of their restaurants. But in the chefs themselves, I don’t see it.
Bourdain’s getting a manicure? Please, please take pictures. Please. I will pay you cash money, even if I have to sell my husband’s truck.
rockandroller, I still treaure the memory of the time a bunch of us went to Olive Garden and the server told us the Zinfandel had flavors of strawberry and vanilla in it “because they put strawberries and vanilla in the barrels while they’re fermenting it!” I don’t know if she had actually been taught that, or if she inferred it through some miscommunication during her training. Either way, we were polite and did not giggle until we left the restaurant.
WOW, Chef’s who are no longer subservient yes men….the nerve! As for celeb. places, They are in a category with chains as far as my thinking goes, I don’t go to either.
“i like bruni and his work and he definitely has a point, but on the other hand, i want to say stop whining. don’t go there, if the restaurant is obnoxious.”
Isn’t it his job to go there and report on what he thinks of it? He has gone to these places and thinks they are getting out of control and pretentious. How is that being whiny?
Wow, this piece only makes me resent Rachael Ray more: Who knew mediocrity pays so well?
i probably didn’t put it as well as i might have. this is franks job and he’s doing this all the time, he’s working really hard, i would think that he’s getting a lot more of the treatment he writes about than any “normal” diners. maybe it feels exaggerated? maybe what made me uneasy is that we’re the ones who are putting the chefs in these positions, and now we’re complaining about it. maybe that’s it. i think frank even suggests this.
I think I see what you’re getting at, and I do think that in some cases people (chefs and otherwise) start believing their own hype. (Anne Rice is an excellent example.) Honestly, I think the main reason Bruni’s article bugged me was that several of the people he named don’t, to me, seem to be susceptible to the pretentiousness that’s so frustrated him. Granted, I don’t know any of those chefs, but when I see them working on TV or read things they’ve written, their passion for food and their drive to do their very best is what comes through to me.
I do think the “celebrity chef” phenomenon is unique in that so many of these people who are now celebrities had no idea this could even happen to them. If someone is an actor, for example, or a musician, fame is always a possibility, and often a goal. Someone who cooks for a living, up until very recently (and please correct me if I’m wrong), wouldn’t have even remotely expected to be thrust into the spotlight. There have always been famous cooks and chefs, of course, but never in the numbers that we have them now, and not in ways that were so accessible to the general public (cable TV, books, Internet, etc.) We even have a chef-based reality show – actually, two that I know of: Top Chef here in the States and Master Chef in the UK. That’s a long way from Julia Child on PBS.
All this is a really long-winded way of saying I agree that we do put chefs into these positions where they’re in high demand and in the spotlight. How many of us can say that we, too, wouldn’t be susceptible to falling in love with our own image?
Now, for a host/ess or a waitperson to start having an attitude because they *work* for a famous chef is ridiculous. Customer service is just that, serving the customer, and if you can’t handle that it’s time to move into a new line of work.
sorcha, the strawberries and vanilla comment is priceless. I laughed out loud at that one.
of course, if anything really did bother us that much, we’d take our money elsewhere. but it doesn’t, and often times we’re hungry so we stay and eat.
love your article by the way on the earning statistics of the celebrity chef. But Rachel Ray being untouchable …I ask this “How did it come to this?!”
I think Frank Bruno is venting following a succession of bad hair days but we all know he is telling the truth. And some of us, at least, saw it coming as soon as we understood that if many American chefs were going to achieve the status that the aspiration of their talent was begging for, they were going to have to follow the French model of professional culinary artistry and chef behavior.
At the CIA we taught them about Auguste Escoffier and how even though his cooking and management skills were unimpeachable his greatest accomplishment was a book (Le Guide Culinaire) and, if not for that, almost no one would remember him. We also spent a lot of time describing the behavior of great chefs like Fernand Point who dressed and behaved more like a celebrity than an artisan, and who’s ego was surely only slightly smaller than his girth.
In order to explain to my students how some French chefs inculcated the idea of their place in society to their clients, I used to tell the following story told to me by a fellow traveler during a stay at Ch. D’Audrieu in Normandy.
This fellow and his wife had made reservations at a 3 star restaurant in Brittany. When they arrived they were surprised to find the dining room empty and no one to greet them. The tables were all set with flowers, the windows open, and the place looked ready to rock, but there was not a soul in sight.
Then they heard a noise coming from a courtyard adjacent to the dining room. When they went out to investigate they found that it was filled with other guests, one of whom told them that they were waiting for the chef to come out and lead them into the dining room.
After a few minutes of waiting out comes the chef, followed by the maitre’d hotel, sommelier and wait staff. Then all of the guest lined up behind them and they all march into the dining room like a freaking papal procession.
Now I had no way of knowing whether or not the story was apochryphal, but I told it just the same because I believed then, and I believe now, that it contains an essential truth about how the French haute cuisine establishment thinks about it self: as a link between a cosmic mystery and man.
Oh my goodness, I almost blush when I think about the hay I made out of Alain Chapel’s statement that at the end of the day the only thing he wanted out of his work was “truth” (verite).
So there you go: follow the French model and you end up serving up and eating a lot of stuff you may never have expected to be part of the dining experience (art, vanity, snobbery, aspiration to cosmic truth).
Sometimes I like to toss in a few French haute cuisine cultural croûtons into my consommé but when I eat out, I usually prefer Italian food.
BobbyD,that story just killed me – papal processional!
While I am surprised that Frank Bruni would let a server cow him by refusing to bring him his desired app, I have to add that I didn’t think his tone so much whiny as mildly cranky – about right for a New York food critic (!) The Brit food crits, however, are the ones that really amaze me – they read like gossip columnists or 21st century Pepys, and everyone knows exactly what they look like.
Talking about mildly cranky New Yorkers: Michael, I hope you’ve got AB restored to his fully metrosexual glory after his (one would assume) very studly trip to the steel mill. What is it with you and NR? This is the second episode you two have shot together, and he needed a manicure in the middle of both of them! Does Cleveland have its own Frankie the File? (!!)
Chefs are artists?
Now comes zee part of Sprockets vair vee dine.
I’m not crazy about Rachael Ray as a personality, but if she can get more people out of the drive-thrus and into their own kitchens, then more power to her.
i guess the thing that bothers me most is that the media created a false ideal of the chef–who woke at 4 to go to the fish market, etc., slaved all day and personally cooked the patrons dinner, then it gets mad when the false ideal is shown to be false–there are actually a lot of people cooking back there. The media calls them rock stars and celebrities, and then gets annoyed when they start acting like rock stars and celebrities.
So on the one hand, bruni’s right and it’s criticism long over due. on the other hand, who’s really to blame? the chef? no. that’s why the piece made me uneasy.
Enjoyed both articles a great deal. Being new to this business I can only comment on what I’ve learned so far.
I could literally talk for hours about this topic – it’ll be tough to boil it down to something short and concise.
The Food Business is a strange business. Cooking skills are only a part of what it takes to be considered great. The rest is all about being able to draw attention to yourself and essentially “mesmerize” the public.
Now, the general public – not having gone though any formal culinary training – doesn’t know what it is that chefs are trying to be good at – nor do they generally care. They will take it on any authority that yes, this is a good chef – because they don’t have any other way of knowing. So, even if its the chef him or herself who’s presenting themselves as a “good” chef – that’s the same as the truth. Chefs are authoritative figures…even when they’re talking about themselves. Of course, what that lacks is objectivity – but how is the general public going to know what it is that chefs consider good, amongst themselves?? They rely on chefs and restaurants to tell them that. If the chef or the restaurant or the book or the t.v. show is reviewing themselves as truly great – who’s going to present the real review with how they really rate?
There is a gap sometimes, between what the general public sees as good, and what culinary people see as good. We’re all still answering to our culinary instructors while the general public is using a different set of standards. And are we really so sure that what that 6 foot 90 shaved-headed guy with all the tatt’s and piercings and the “Chef Instructor” on his jacket was really right?
What we do is cater (pun intended) to the public. We locate what they want and we give it to them. If that differs too dramatically from what we like ourselves and/or were taught, we dislike what the public wants. If they want 9 course degustation menus at $250 a person – we provide it. If they want all you can eat bargain sushi – the chef who does it will make bank. If they want t.v. shows with untrained hosts lowering the bar to a half an inch off the floor – they applaud that because its better than a frozen dinner or fast food when they get home from a hard day at work. If they all went through culinary school they’d have an innate fear and repulsion to that – because that’s what we’re taught is bad in school.
The industry is fickle because what people are in the mood for is fickle.
You can only hope that some day during your culinary career, what it is that you like and are good at, will suddenly become fashionable, and propel you to superstar status.
It is in no way a real reflection or your actual abilities.
Ok – sorry for the long post
.
The media are really good at creating false ideals of just about everything, aren’t they? People like having romantic ideals to cling to, and the media make money by building up and perpetuating those ideals. A good example is Bourdain’s ongoing complaint about how you never see who does so much of the real kitchen work. It’s because middle-class white America would have a hard time idealizing tattooed Latino immigrants, and if they’re not buying into romantic ideals, the media don’t make any money.
I think that there is no question that the trinity of the media-chefs-public is to blame for some of the grotesque behavior described by Mr. Bruni and others.
But if I apply Occam’s Razor and slice off a bit of the fat from the argument, it looks like the burden of guilt lies with those chefs and their employees who mistreat their customers with rude behavior such as
-high pressure upselling
-pressuring early departure to turn tables
-over-marketing (e.g. the books in the lobby cited by Bruni)
-making reservations so exclusive that a client has to “beg” for a date
Of course, viewed from the perpetrators’ perspectives all of these behaviors are perfectly legitimate -and even expected- in a capitalist system, but they are still rude and, I should add, in complete contradistinction to the spirit of the hospitality business.
Perfectly put, Bob – nice razor-wielding . . . as one would expect from a culinary institute graduate!
for the record, bob del grosso was a professor at the CIA. i wrote about him briefly in making of a chef and the class he taught, intro to gastronomy. he was a trained paleontologist who gave it up to become a chef, and then went on to teach well the intellectual side of cooking.
He’s a chef and a mind i admire and i’m grateful for his comments here.
Thanks Claudia! But as Michael wrote I was never a student at the CIA, I only taught there. And, you know, there’s a big difference between those of us who worked there and the mere students, like Michael and Tony Bourdain, who paid us to teach them.
See, the latter group is way more successful!
And thanks for the compliment Michael. Believe me, I need ‘em!
Bob, you make good points. I think when we get to the level of chefliness (is that a word? *G*) that we’re talking about here, the focus shifts from “hospitality” and “customer service” to the food experience itself and thus to the chef who creates it. It’s a difficult balance, I think. Obviously, people wouldn’t put up with divaness from the guy who makes the steaks at Applebee’s, but they tend to be more tolerant of the guy who’s got Michelin stars and a three-month waiting list. Should we? That’s the question. I guess it depends on your own personal tolerance for that sort of behavior.
Bob, you make good points. I think when we get to the level of chefliness (is that a word? *G*) that we’re talking about here, the focus shifts from “hospitality” and “customer service” to the food experience itself and thus to the chef who creates it. It’s a difficult balance, I think. Obviously, people wouldn’t put up with divaness from the guy who makes the steaks at Applebee’s, but they tend to be more tolerant of the guy who’s got Michelin stars and a three-month waiting list. Should we? That’s the question. I guess it depends on your own personal tolerance for that sort of behavior.
Sorcha
“Should we put up with it[diva behavior]?”
Nah, it’s gross. Me, I have zero tolerance for people who are great at what they do and need to remind us of it at every bend in the stream. I’m not religious, but I think that whoever is was who first wrote “pride goeth before the fall” may as well have been god, because it’s as true as truth is. That writ, I’m not so sure that what Bruni was writing about qualifies as “diva behavior.” Rather it smacks more of overweening greed, callous disregard of the feelings of customers and blatant self-referral and promotion. No, wait a minute, that’s diva behavior! LOL
By the way, in an earlier comment I may have given a dunning impression of someone who, on balance, I really admire, Fernand Point -a guy who really did have a n ego as big as his talent but who
also seemed to understand that his first obligation as a chef was to his clients and not vice versa.
I worked with someone who apprenticed under Point and who told me all about how his boss would scream at the brigade, whack at them with whatever was at hand and bowl them over like ten pins as he walked down the line. But according to Claude, and many published accounts, when it came to his clients Point was a mensch who embodied the soul of hospitality. A regular pineapple disguised as a 300 pound cuisnier.
Long Live Fernand Point and every other restaurateur who understands that the her first professional obligation is to not betray the trust of the people she feeds!
Pax Vobiscum
So often it comes down to the bottom line, doesn’t it? If a place that’s in high demand has one table available on Friday night, it’s dollars to doughnuts (mm, doughnuts) that it’s going to go to the customer who can give the restaurant the best publicity/prestige/what have you. It’s as if the restaurant is choosing the customer instead of the other way ’round.
Point sounds like the kind of chef who makes for good reading as well as good eating. I’ll have to dig around and see if I can’t find anything by/about him.
Pardon me, Bob – I’m sorry, I had a mental bubble and was thinking about our fellow blogger, Skawt – my bad! Apologies! (Then, of course, there’s always keeping straight which blogger one is reading on which blog, which is why I’ve taken to clipboarding certain blogs or quotes.)
But the admiration of your blogged points remains intact (!)
(Skawt, no flaming, please – I’m not through the morning cappuccino yet and therefore cannot be held liable for any errors, omissions or general mental malaise until the caffeine trickles into the veins.) Oy . . .
“I’m not crazy about Rachael Ray as a personality, but if she can get more people out of the drive-thrus and into their own kitchens, then more power to her.”
I hear you, but even so, I would much rather watch Giada De Laurentiis or even the Barefoot Contessa. I find Ray SO completely annoying that it’s hard to get past that to see the possible benefits.
Rachel Ray is not a chef. She’s a cook. She has a good TV personality and she is clearly enthusiastic about food, but she’d be nothing without a staff and/or a real chef at her back. Witness the episode of “Iron Chef” with her and Giada — Mario carried her through the entire battle. That she “won” was much more his doing than hers.
Lux, I try to see the bright side of things. It’s a matter of survival….
So if Rachael Ray has to exist, that’s the only way to think of her…being better than a McD’s burger, and even then it’s a battle.
You know, every time someone asks me what I think of Rachael Ray, I simply reply, “I don’t.”
Claudia:
Actually, I was at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. Like Bob, many of the teachers there learned their trade without the benefit of a school. I had not worked in the industry (still haven’t) when I enrolled, but I at least did pay attention to legitimate chefs and cooks. And I had been cooking since I was a kid, learning from my mother and grandmother.
By the way, you may have noticed my absence from the blog for the past month. I was busy having my gall bladder removed and recovering from it. And the last thing I wanted to do was discuss food when I was prohibited from having any fat AT ALL.
I’m pretty much recovered now and can have anything I want (although by choice I still have a reduced fat and sugar diet).
Glad to see you back, Skawt, and hope you’re able to fully enjoy your food again.
I just found your site, and I’m likin’ it so much! Also LOVE “Charcuterie”…prominent on my shelf. Thank you for writing it.
BOURDAIN: He is articulate, humorous, en pointe, interesting and a fowlmouthed arrogant that looks like his physical-self always needs a bath. His joy of sharing his inordinate over consumption of “whatever” is tiresome – he just may die of DEBAUCHERY. I will probably buy more of his books at discount. BUT, I don’t discount him as he really is a talented chronicler. He was actually cooking the times I ate at Les Halles – it looks like him too, scruffy and smoke stained!
PIG FAT! Whenever I need pig fat, I go to 99 Ranch Market (check the internet for locations) or Chinatown, you’ll always find pork belly and back fat there. At The Ferry Plaza Market (San Francisco) you can buy The Best Pork at Prather Family Farms.One summer I ate the sweetest pork as it was fed organic watermelon from a local farmer plus other organic veggies.
PACHEL RAY: At first I liked her, maybe it was because I only watched her when I got manicures.
Then, she began to aggravate me when she “ATE” at her “”FOURTY DOLLAR A DAY MEALS”. She is
A FRAUD! How can anyone one swoon over one tiny bite AND have all that eye ball rolling stuff going on? If I were the restaurateur, I’d be p.o.’ed because she didn’t eat the food.
PAULA DEEN: I don’t look at her like some weird old lady, I look at her like she doesn’t know what great food taste is. One day, AT THE MANICURIST’S, I watched her make a corned beef dinner. The idea made me hungry and I bought the requsite canned corned beef and then realized why I don’t eat it – it is ghastly. So, she was never on the list of Manicurist Shows.
THE OTHER WHITE MEAT: I remember someone likening breast meat to carboard and I have to agree that it doesn’t set me afire! I prefer thigh meat over that cardboard white meat, it is tasty and juicy and know I know it pounds well for stuffing. How sad that we have been brainwashed into believing that white meat is supreme. Breast meat was always purchased when I demo’ed my products at The Fancy Food Show as I always had people questioning me about it. Most of all, I loved it when I cooked pork and people just loved it, even Jews, they pretended not to hear me say it was “Pork”. Pork shoulder is fab and I will serve it to a Homeless Group of 120 in a few weeks because it tastes great and will be fork tender! I loved Mark Bittman’s recipe for chard stuffed chicken thighs – a little cheese, cream cheese mixed with parmesan would be a great addition.
RUHLMAN: I am glad that I discovered your blog! I don’t know Bruni enough to have a view yet. But, you are an interesting and exciting read – thanks! I will sign-up for your posts.
FOOD: Aren’t we lucky to live where there is an abundance of food. Now we just have to know how to fix it better – I know how. It is definitely here to stay and so will celeb chefs, over-wrought food and tiresome TV chef personalities.
I don’t now how I found your blog. – Thanks it is a great Blog!