That is so Offal
Apr 14, 2008 chefs, general food
In this video Chris Cosentino chats about offal and mentions a cookbook he’s been working on for four or five years stating that “nobody has the balls to put it out.”
(a) funny choice of words considering the topic
(b) book publishers are in the business of making money and a book about offal cookery for the American market is still–sorry to say–way ahead of it’s time.
(c) How much of what Cosentino does is to shock people? He seems to relish in freaking people out more and more, and while he’s doing a killer job raising awareness about where meat comes from, and I’m still eager to eat in his restaurant if I find myself in San Francisco, he’s starting to come off a bit condescending towards people that just don’t want to eat the nasty bits.
And how about this shot from Gourmet Magazine about a month back?
Apparently they have gotten a healthy dose of hate mail for this picture and have thrown up a poll on gourmet.com to get a consensus on how people feel about. I would link you to the poll except for the fact that I can no longer find it but, it pretty much boiled down to something along the lines of: “provocative or gross?”
While I don’t think it’s particularly gross it does strike me as being disrespectful in some way because the pig did die so that someone could consume it. It could have been used for something like the porchetta di testa Josh Galliano posted about a while back instead of just going into the dumpster.
I wonder if Saw got any royalty checks for this?
Tags: Chris Cosentino, gourmet magazine, Joshua Galliano, offal
stlbites.com Recipe Exclusive
If you’ve not been paying attention, with three trips in nine days, and probably a dozen so far this year, stlbites has much love for Erato on Main and their entire staff.
But as much as we like the staff it’s Kevin Wilmann’s daily changing menu of whatever looks freshest that keep us addictively trekking back for more; today though we’ll be talking about the one menu that doesn’t change daily.
Doubling as the restaurant’s pastry chef we’ve basically memorized Sous Chef Jon Olson’s dessert menu as he keeps it small almost always having the staples of a chocolate cake with basil ice cream and carrot cake with goat cheese icing.
Mostly this is the result of their kitchen being about the size of my closet. Still, he’s been trying to mix it up recently, and over the weekend served a lemon curd with blackberry tea foam (with I believe preserved lemon rind). The blackberry foam was a subtle flavor to compliment the tartness of the lemon, and while it did need a bit more textural crunch, when asked how he made the curd, he was happy to oblige by sharing the recipe.
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Tags: dessert, Edwardsville, Erato on Main, Jon Olson, Jonathan Olson, Kevin Willmann, Sauce Magazine
Gerard Craft has Risen to the Top
Apr 3, 2008 MO, St. Louis, chefs
Maybe you were wondering why Niche updated their website recently adding that snappy flash intro, and a bunch of new cook and staff bios, and that awesome picture of Gerard and Mathew that says more than words ever could about their friendship and generosity.
Well, wonder no more because while the St. Louis culinary bubble may have been rising overall lately, Gerard Craft has risen to the top having today been named one of the 2008 Food & Wine best new chefs.
Huge congratulations to Gerard and the staff of Niche!
But you know, as overjoyed as I know they must be, it’s a great day for the St. Louis Culinary scene as a whole by raising the nation’s awareness of the St. Louis culinary scene and saying “hey, one of our chefs was good enough to win this thing, so maybe we have a few more you should check out too.” Perhaps you don’t believe this, but there are absolutely people that go out of their way to eat at the restaurants whose kitchens are led by the chefs that win this award.
So chefs, get your game faces on because those same people that come to St. Louis for Niche will undoubtedly see what else is going on around here. And diners…you thought Niche reservations were hard to get before.
Tags: Gerard Craft, Niche
Heads Up: St. Louis Cooking News
Apr 3, 2008 MO, St. Louis, chefs
More national attention for upcoming St. Louis cooks this time by way of another great Joe Bonwich article about Brett Eisen. Eisen a Senior at Parkway Central is traveling to Miami next week where he will be vieing for a Johnson & Wales University National High School Chef of the Year award as one of nine finalists.
Tags: Brett Eisen, Joe Bonwich, Johnson & Wales, Post Dispatch
Thomas Keller on Charlie Rose
Mar 31, 2008 Television, chefs
Does my dad surf the internet too much? Probably, but he did email me this Thomas Keller interview on Charlie Rose last week and I’ll just sum it up with his words “23 minutes…but you’ll want to listen!”
And don’t forget you can stream other food related interviews from the Charlie Rose back catalog as well like
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Tags: charlie rose, thomas keller
Local Cook on Hell’s Kitchen
Mar 31, 2008 Television, chefs
Although it’s the one Ramsey show that actually irritates the hell out of me, Hell’s Kitchen is back upon us tomorrow night and with it a local, Christina Machammer, will be hitting the national airwaves.
Josh Galliano gave me the heads up saying that “Christina is from St. Louis and used to work with us at An American Place and she is [now] attending the CIA.”
The winner “will earn a coveted senior chef position at Ramsay’s new restaurant, Gordon Ramsay at the London West Hollywood.”
Congratulations to Christina for getting on the program and for putting up with Ramsey on his most ego-boosting program.
Tags: An American Place, Christina Machammer, Gordon Ramsay, Hell's Kitchen, Joshua Galliano
This is my house.
Mar 27, 2008 chefs, general food
So far I think this season of Top Chef is the worst. There are no clear favorites and all the overly-arrogant personalities leave me wondering how they even have the jobs they have because some of their resumes are fairly impressive.
I guess being on TV is just a free pass for being a douchebag.
Do not click on if you have not watched Episode 3.
Tags: richard, rick bayless, stephanie izzard, Top Chef
Anthony Bourdain @ Google
Mar 15, 2008 chefs
You know, maybe Google is poised to take over the world, but maybe that’s also not such a bad thing.
Not only do they have a corporate chef, but they also do incredibly cool things for their employees like
The Authors@Google program brings authors of all stripes to Google for informal talks centering on their recently published books. Through the program, we invite authors to our Mountain View headquarters as well as our New York, Santa Monica, and Ann Arbor offices, where they treat Googlers to readings…
And one of those authors was Anthony Bourdain at Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters last November.
Did anyone know about this? I certainly didn’t.
Tags: anthony bourdain, google
Top Chef 4
Mar 12, 2008 chefs
From the hilariously inappropriate but appealing dressed Padma Lakshmi who acts as the comedic straight-woman as she delivers her product placements as if she was having a normal conversation; to the celebrity chef guests and Tom Colicchio who actually attempt to judge these challenges as if they were everyday situations for a cook to be in; Top Chef and all it’s ridiculousness returns tonight and I can’t wait.
At the end of the day most of these people can cook, and aside from a few of the quick-fire challenges which give an unfair advantage to the long-straw wielding chefs, we mostly get to see good cooks cook decent looking food from scratch…and isn’t that what a television show about food should be Sandra Lee?
With each season the contestants have improved immensely and I think this year will prove to be the most entertaining yet. Though, if history repeats itself they will be getting the winner wrong again as we find ourselves once again in a flop year where deserving winners will succumb to the snarkiest and strangely-haired deserving ones.
- Flip - Howard was the obvious win.
- Flop - Ilan totally robbed Sam…and Marcel for that matter.
- Flip - And last year Hung showed us that yes, being a good cook/chef has nothing to do with being a likable fellow.
- Flop - ???
I could wax on about the quick-fires and take a guess at what this year’s candy machine or supermarket aisle will be, but Michael Nagrant at hungrymag.com has far funnier remarks about possible Chicago quick-fire challenges than I do.
Our major fear is that quick fire challenges will revolve around hackneyed ideas like re-inventing deep dish pizza or the Chicago style hot dog…
Fear not Nagrant because according to the Entertainment Weekly I was reading this morning, not only will we be getting the deep dish pizza challenge in the first episode, but the Top Chef crew will be pulling all the stops in the season opener by giving us an apparently less puffy version of Rocco Dispirito right out of the gate.
I guess that means the BOTOX has settled in.
I’d love to type more in this post on my Dell Precision Workstation which offers both the ultimate performance and reliability before the post is uploaded to Hostgator’s state of the art servers housed in their World-Class facility, but I’ve gotta go…I just spilled something and need to locate my Quilted Quicker Picker Upper Bounty paper towels so I can clean it up and place it into my Glad ForceFlex bags.
Tags: entertainment weekly, hungrymag.com, padma lakshmi, Tom-Colicchio, Top Chef
Chef Blogging
Mar 12, 2008 chefs
In the LA Times today, beneath a picture of Traci des Jardins rocking it out in her kitchen on a Panasonic TOUGHBOOK (which proves she makes more money than me), is an article about chefs and their foray into territory so many have publicly criticized: blogging.
I was surprised by how many of the blogs mentioned I actually read, and it’s nice to see an article talk about the good things that happen when technology is embraced rather than only the negatives of anonymous blogging.
New Media is practically free for anyone, and what these and other chefs have realized, is that putting a familiar face and personality to their business only helps to address the public directly in a personal way while fostering their excitement for the things they’re up to in their restaurants.
The only thing I’d disagree with is the author’s comment that “this revolution is not being indexed” because it’s totally being indexed and most of us call it Google. That’s how I found Line Cook; my favorite industry blog because it’s from a San Francisco cook living in the trenches rather than amazingly well equipped personal chefs with Pacojets in their homes.
So the question is: what if any St. Louis chefs blog? And if you don’t but want to, email me.
