Brooklyn Delhi’s Simmer Sauces Are as Close as You Can Get to Homemade in a Jar

March 31, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

But before I could love them, I had to undo a lifetime of expectations and anxieties about Indian food

I have rarely shied away from shortcuts when it comes to cooking. I love a jarred pasta sauce, a frozen dumpling, a rotisserie chicken dressed up with some quickly roasted potatoes. At this point those things barely register as shortcuts; they’re just ingredients.

By this logic, I should have had no problem embracing Brooklyn Delhi’s simmer sauces, which turn making Indian curries and stews into a minutes-long process. But I did. While I loved the brand’s achaars and chutneys — things I rarely make — the simmer sauces seemed, I told myself, unnecessary. I knew how to make korma on my own, homemade, the way it should be — a burden I would have never placed on weeknight ravioli. I felt deeply that the sauces, and the curry powder mixes and jars of ginger-garlic paste that my Didu tells me to buy, were not for me. I had more to prove.

It’s not like it’s hard to make Indian food. I will maintain this to anyone who insists there are too many spices, too many unknowns, and yet has no problem using six different flavorings to make a chili. “Indian food” is already too big of a category to deem “easy” or “hard,” a dosa requiring different skills than a biryani or a macher jhol. But if it is hard, it is because cooking is hard. Browning onions, measuring spices, and braising meat takes time and energy, which sometimes you don’t have and sometimes you do have but would rather spend on something else.

Brooklyn Delhi’s sauces, made by chef and author Chitra Agrawal, are as close as you can get to homemade in a jar. They’re vegan concentrates of spices, onions, nut butters, and coconut milk. And while you can use them as-is — dump one jar into a pound of sauteed protein or veggies, let simmer, et voila — Agrawal explicitly encourages you to cook. The sauces are mild, so you can adjust your own spice levels, and on her website Agrawal features recipes like saag paneer using her coconut cashew korma sauce, or butter masala mac and cheese with her tikka masala sauce. They’re just another ingredient.

And yet, I remained reticent. Before I could love the simmer sauces, which I do now, I first had to undo a lifetime of expectations and anxieties I had absorbed about Indian food, and accept where I stood in my own culture.

Every time I write about my mixed-race identity, I stumble into narratives and tropes that don’t quite fit, in an effort to relate. It’s because I worry my truth is not relatable. Having a white mom descended from colonizers who’ve been here for 400 years, and a dad who came here while there were still racist laws that kept most Asians out, at an age when most of his growing up would be done in America, means that the stories of the “second-generation kid” never really applied to me. I didn’t grow up in a traditional Indian home, whatever that means, hiding my short skirts and my lipstick from my exacting parents. In a multicultural city and school, I wasn’t made an outcast for my thick arm hair or my “weird” name. I wasn’t forced to go to temple or masjid instead of being at the movies with friends. I was never expected to be a doctor.

Growing up was hard, but it wasn’t hard because I was Indian. My life didn’t look fundamentally different from that of my peers. Except from other Indians and Indian Americans. Seeing another Indian kid at school made me feel like a dog seeing another dog on TV: I knew we had something in common, then felt immediately apprehensive of that connection. Whereas conversation would flow freely with friends of various other backgrounds, around other Indians, even family, I was stilted and confused. I was expected to know things I didn’t know, relate to experiences I never had. I’d be met with a puzzled or pitiful look when I admitted that something they thought was universal hadn’t happened to me. I’d walk away feeling like this part of me was a transplanted organ, something that for all intents and purposes was mine, but also not really — it could be rejected any day.

I became hyperaware of how doing anything vaguely connected to Indian culture would look to other Indians. Would it look like I was faking it until I made it? Would it seem like I was playing dress-up in things that weren’t mine? Would they believe I belonged?

Cooking, however, eventually became a place where I figured I could prove myself. As a young adult I already spent my time watching the Food Network and reading food media, absorbing that freshly ground black pepper was a must over the pre-ground stuff, that “authenticity” was the be-all and end-all of cuisine. And I just really liked Indian food. Of course I should learn how to make the best, truest versions of it on my own.

So I learned to toast my own spices and stand by the pot and stir onions until my arm hurt. I made my own paneer and garam masala, soaked rice and lentils for idli batter, and never resorted to a premixed spice blend for masala chai. This is how it was done, I thought. And even if I wore the wrong thing to a family function, or couldn’t understand Bangla, or an auntie referred to me as “American,” which of course is true but somehow stung, no one could doubt that I was doing this right.

And yet even then, there was doubt. One day I asked my Didu how to make paratha, and she told me she’s bought it frozen for decades. My cousins expressed surprise that I made dal at home — they’d had too much of it growing up, and preferred takeout of literally any other cuisine. And I realized those spice mixes and simmer sauces in the aisles of the Indian grocery were there for a reason: Everyone else used them. “For Indians in the middle class and below,” it is “just not true” that everyone grinds their own spices or makes everything from scratch, the food blogger My Annoying Opinions writes about curry powders, spiritual cousin to a simmer sauce. “By and large the only urban kitchens in which all/most spices are ground freshly are those of hobbyists, the rich, or ones in homes where free domestic labour is available (usually from women).”

And there I was, the upper-caste hobbyist, caught up in the second-generation anxiety over authenticity, feeling disconnected from my heritage and thinking that the only way to be Indian, to do it right, was to do everything on my own. Despite the fact that every other Indian I know uses simmer sauces and spice mixes. On some level I knew this the whole time, but I justified it by insisting there were different rules. Of course they can take shortcuts and cobble meals together and throw tradition to the wind, I thought, because they’re “really” Indian. I’m not, because I’m only half or I grew up here or I didn’t have the right struggles and cultural touchstones. Using something premade would just confirm what everyone already thought about me: that I’m a fraud.

A few years ago, I went to a dinner Agrawal hosted to celebrate her Brooklyn Delhi simmer sauces being launched on a wider scale. Every dish we were served was made with her products — coconut dal, tofu tikka masala, tomato rajma — and everything tasted at least as good as anything I could make. I wasn’t shocked, per se, but a truth that had been flitting around my ribcage finally settled. Authenticity was a trap. I was putting myself, and my people, into a box, trying to define myself by what I should make and not what I could. I needed to let myself out.

My life has not looked like the lives of most Indian Americans. There’s a lot I haven’t experienced and don’t know. But my identity doesn’t live in cumin seeds and parental disapproval. Trying to let go of the idea that there is some singular way to be Indian has given me an easier time seeing my culture and choices as things I legitimately enjoy about myself. I like the way Indian gold looks on my skin, and the way my Kali tattoo hugs my ribs. I like taking Hindi lessons, texting Didu “Aap kaise hain?” and understanding what she says in response. And I like being able to throw some frozen shrimp and peas and a jar of golden coconut curry in a pot just as much as I like spending an evening rolling out my own roti. Neither makes me more or less of anything. As if they could.

The Modern Nightcap Has Evolved

March 31, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

This Southeast Asian Artist Uses Iconic Pink Doughnut Boxes as a Canvas for Storytelling

March 30, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Every Drink Is Seltzer Now 

March 30, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

The multi-billion dollar seltzer market is totally saturated, and I’m exhausted

Not a day goes by, seemingly, without a beverage company attempting to belatedly horn in on the biggest trend of 2019: hard seltzer. Inspired by the mind-blowing success of White Claw, hard seltzer is now its own multi-billion dollar industry, and the lines that distinguish a trendy hard seltzer as opposed to an outdated old-fashioned wine cooler are growing ever blurrier. Now, seltzer is everywhere, and everything is seltzer.

The most annoying new offender of late is Michelob Ultra Organic Seltzer’s new “essential collection,” which is “made with coconut water at the heart of its ingredients.” Available in flavors like blueberry watermelon and kiwi-lime, the beverages are touted as being low-calorie, totally refreshing, and infused with the flavor of real fruit juice. That all sounds fine, I suppose, but that sure as hell isn’t seltzer. Seltzer is plain water that’s been carbonated and infused with some sort of chemical flavor, not Michelob’s interpretation of a grown-up juice box that will also get you drunk.

To be clear, seltzer is not the problem — even boozy seltzer is fine. When White Claw first became a major phenomenon, I was totally hooked. I consumed probably hundreds of those skinny white cans in the years following White Claw’s release and have absolutely no regrets. But now that literally every brand even tangentially related to the booze market is releasing its own line, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.

Michelob’s new coconut water offering isn’t even the only new libation to misappropriate the good name of seltzer this week. Vodka maker Svedka also launched a new seltzer called Svedka Tropics Tea Spritz, which as its name might indicate, blends tea, Svedka vodka, and “natural tropical fruit flavors” into pineapple-guava and orange-mango seltzers that will allegedly deliver a “smooth taste in every vibrant sip.” (Also: Twisted Tea already exists, and it has the decency to call itself “hard iced tea,” a perfectly accurate moniker.) Dos Equis also debuted a new hard seltzer, inspired by the classic Texas cocktail ranch water, in stores nationwide this week. Both of these sound perfectly fine for sipping by the pool, but they’re not seltzer. They’re canned cocktails at best, and the bougier, 2022-friendly version of Boone’s Farm wine at worst.

It’s a silly thing to get worked up about, but the seltzerification of the beverage market isn’t just exhausting, it’s weird. Is it happening because the word “seltzer” just sounds cooler than “malt beverage” or are we genuinely devoted to bringing our national obsession with non-alcoholic seltzers like LaCroix and Spindrift into our alcohol drinking habits? The answer is unclear. What is obvious, though, is that the companies behind these boozy seltzers are trying to find their place in that $5 billion global market, hoping that ingredients with a veneer of health, like coconut water or antioxidants, will set them apart from the dozens of other hard seltzers scrapping for their own piece of the pie.

These days, any drink that is even remotely fizzy is seltzer, at least according to the brands that are responsible for selling it to us; the Saturday Night Live sketch parodying hypothetical hard seltzer flavors such as “men’s jackets” and “desk” feels less and less unrealistic with each new brand launch; and I’m starting to suffer from a serious case of “good old days” syndrome, pining for a time when if someone asked if I wanted a seltzer, they were talking about a boring can of Polar.

How Chef Jean-Georges Developed a New Dish for His Two-Michelin-Starred NYC Restaurant

March 30, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Chef Nyesha Arrington visits legendary chef Jean-Georges to learn how he makes his new swordfish Milanese

On this episode of Plateworthy, chef Nyesha Arrington visits two-Michelin-starred Jean-Georges restaurant in NYC. She joins chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and his executive chef Noah Poses as they develop a new menu item, a swordfish Milanese.

Swordfish has a tendency to become dry if cooked too much, but Poses had the idea to treat it like a veal Milanese. As Vongerichten points out, the meat is very similar to tuna, because it’s a fatty fish, but it looks like pork or veal: “Let’s call it the veal of the ocean,” he says.

They begin by cutting thin slices of swordfish, so as not to make it too thick once the breading is added. The chefs then move on to shallow-frying the breaded swordfish in a pan with grapeseed oil, and once it’s a nice golden-brown color, it’s immediately seasoned with salt, while the oil is hot. This allows the salt to absorb into the fish.

But what takes the breaded swordfish to the next level is Vongerichten’s signature chili ferment sauce, made with jalapeños, orange zest, and salt. Poses points out that while this sauce is not traditional for a Milanese, it gives the fish a nice touch of heat. The jalapeños allow the chefs to control the heat how they want, and the orange zest is added to taste: Vongerichten notes he learned the technique of using zest for flavor while in Japan.

To make the sauce, the chefs combine white wine and brown butter into a heated pan, cooking until it has the color of black coffee. They then add a combination of rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, and parsley for seasoning. The chili ferment is added to this along with chopped parsley, onion, and capers to complete the sauce that will accompany the swordfish.

“We want the first bite to be as exciting as the last bite,” Vongerichten says.

The 38 Essential Calgary Restaurants

March 30, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Where to find chili pork-stuffed chicken wings, birria short rib tacos, shawarma poutine, and pina colada milkshakes in Alberta’s biggest city

The Calgary restaurant scene certainly isn’t what it used to be — and that’s a great thing. Once known as Cowtown for its strong beef industry and carnivorous cuisine, the city’s food and drink community has grown in dynamic ways over the past decade. Chefs have innovated on classic Canadian dishes, like the vindaloo-spiced Caesar cocktail at Moti Mahal and the shawarma-topped poutine at Beirut Street Food, even as stalwarts like River Café and Silver Inn Restaurant continue to deliver for longtime loyalists.

Today there are plenty of reasons for all types of hungry travelers from outside of Western Canada to pay a visit. From a robust Vietnamese food scene, to Top Chef Canada alumni working serious magic with Korean cuisine and fried chicken, to a swank 40th-floor restaurant, here are some great reasons to get excited about Calgary.

Prices per person
$ = Less than 20 CAD (less than 16 USD)
$$ = 20- 40 CAD (16-32 USD)
$$$ = 40 - 70 CAD (32 - 55 USD)
$$$$ = More than 70 CAD (more than 55 USD)

Dan Clapson is The Globe and Mail’s restaurant critic and columnist for the Prairie region. He is also co-owner of Calgary’s The Prairie Emporium as well as the digital media outlet Eat North, a judge for various restaurant award systems, and a regular culinary guest expert on Canadian morning television programs and radio. Clapson’s first cookbook, co-authored by Twyla Campbell, is scheduled to be released in late 2023 through Appetite by Random House.

The Fight for L.A.’s Street Food Vendors

March 30, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Street vending is technically legal in Los Angeles, but vendors say landing a permit is often out of reach

This story was originally published on Civil Eats.

Outside the Big Saver Foods market in the small Los Angeles neighborhood of El Sereno, a cluster of sidewalk vendors wait in the parking lot for hungry customers to finish their shopping and stop by for a pupusa or an agua fresca. Follow the tantalizing scent of smoke and grilled chicken that wafts through the air, and you’ll arrive at Pollos Asado El Jaimito, where vendor Jaimie Trujillo is cooking up whole, spatchcocked birds on his outdoor grill.

Trujillo has been making his living as a street vendor in L.A. for three years, but he has only been setting up at this spot for a couple of months. At his previous location, local authorities sometimes cracked down on him for operating without a vending permit. Once, he even had to run and hide from them, lugging his entire grill full of chickens with him on foot so it wouldn’t be confiscated.

Still, Trujillo hasn’t tried to get a permit, because of the warnings he’s heard from other vendors. “They say it’s very difficult, because you need permission, kitchen licenses, and all these permits,” he says in Spanish.

Trujillo’s situation isn’t an uncommon one for street vendors in L.A., where the practice of selling food outdoors has been strictly regulated since tamaleros from Mexico and Chinese immigrants operating pushcarts became commonplace in the city around the turn of the 20th century.

Even though vending was technically legalized in California in 2018, state public health laws still make it almost impossible for most local vendors to get the permits they need to sell food in the formal economy, requiring extensive (and expensive) cart setups and prohibiting tasks like reheating food or cutting fruit.

Now, some advocates and politicians are pushing to overhaul the state’s outdated food code as part of a long-standing struggle to protect vendors from harassment, fines, and legal troubles. But others worry the proposed regulations don’t prioritize food safety enough to protect consumers.

It’s a battle that has been playing out for years in the many major U.S. cities where vending is either banned or strictly regulated. After street food carts were legalized in Chicago in 2015, advocates had to fight to lower steep licensing fines, and vendors in the city still aren’t allowed to prepare food on their carts or at home. In New York, vendors are pushing to reform a system where they can pay upwards of $20,000 for one of a limited number of permits on the black market.

In L.A., where carts selling chili-topped fruits, pupusas, and tacos can be found on almost every corner, the vendor-led campaign to legalize street food began when a group of women in Boyle Heights started speaking out against vendor harassment in 2008. A decade later, after years of protests and packed city council meetings, both the state and city made vending legal, and L.A. handed out its first vending permit in 2020.

“The general population really got behind it, because people love their vendors. And it made no sense for them to be cited,” says Carla De Paz, an organizer with Community Power Collective, which currently works with about 2,500 vendors in L.A.

She says that aside from being a critical source of income for those who need alternative options for work — such as seniors, single moms, undocumented individuals, or formerly incarcerated people — vendors are an irreplaceable part of in L.A.’s communities.

“Vendors provide affordable, healthy foods in neighborhoods that sometimes lack resources like grocery stores,” says De Paz. “They also activate space — there are a lot of streets in our neighborhoods that would otherwise be empty and lonely at night.”

David McNew/Getty Images

Technically Legal, But Cost-Prohibitive

Years after the vending program’s launch, however, only 204 of the estimated 10,000 vendors that occupy L.A.’s sidewalks have received permits, according to the Department of Public Works.

A 2021 report from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Public Counsel asserted that one of the major reasons permit numbers have remained so low is the inability of vendors to acquire county public health licenses, which are a prerequisite. To obtain a license, vending operations have to comply with the rules for “mobile food facilities” laid out in California’s Retail Food Code.

Written before street vending was legalized, the state code is tailored toward food trucks and catering operations and requires that vendors have things like a three-basin sink, 20 gallons of water on hand at all times, and mechanical exhaust ventilation over hot cooking equipment. It also prohibits tasks like cutting fruit and reheating and hot-holding most foods — essentially banning vendors who sell items like tacos and fresh fruit out of carts.

An example of a compliant, made-to-order taco cart laid out in the report is nearly 17 feet long and is estimated to weigh about 1,200 to 1,800 pounds — if built to code, it would likely block the entire sidewalk.

“Right now, we have a public policy that says vending is legal, and we want to encourage sidewalk vending,” says report co-author Doug Smith, an attorney for Public Counsel. “But we still apply these food safety rules that are either impossible to comply with because the resulting equipment would be larger than the sidewalk itself and too heavy to push, or it’s prohibitively expensive.”

As a result, many vendors choose to operate without permits, which can put them at risk of harassment by public officials. In L.A., there have been reports of vendors receiving substantial fines, having their equipment confiscated and thrown away, and facing crackdowns by police or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers that intimidate those who are undocumented.

In recent years, multiple well-known vending hubs — including the enormously popular Avenue 26 Night Market in Lincoln Heights, the Guatemalan Night Market in Westlake, and Cudahy’s Patata Street Market — have been shut down without warning, forcing vendors to disperse to other locations around the city where it might be more difficult for customers to find them.

Merlin Averado, a street vendor who sells hot dogs in Hollywood, says she has received multiple fines ranging between $100 and $500 for unpermitted vending, and has also had several carts confiscated. Each time it happens, she has to spend about $500 dollars to have another cart custom made. “We do everything on our own, and [the carts] are not inspected by the health department, because there is no cart that exists for the sidewalk yet,” she says in Spanish.

The cost of replacing equipment, on top of fines from the health department, can add up quickly for street vendors, who earn an average of $15,000 per year, according to the UCLA–Public Counsel report. Averado, who sits on Community Power Collective’s vendor leadership committee, has been helping to organize the vendors in her Hollywood community for years. She says being able to get her hot dog cart licensed would remove a huge source of stress from her life.

“I would no longer work with that fear of the police or the Bureau of Street Services, wondering if they will give me a ticket,” she says.

The Push to Update the Food Code

In January, a coalition of nonprofits and activist groups — including Community Power Collective, Public Counsel, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, and others — launched the California Street Vendor campaign to demand an update to the food code. In early February, California Senator Lena Gonzalez introduced SB 972, which aims to create more specific rules for street vendors by introducing a new “compact mobile food facility” category to the code.

The bill, which addresses many of the concerns posed by advocates, would allow compact facilities to cut fruit, keep food warm, and reheat cooked food, among other things. Vendors would also be exempted from needing certain food safety certifications, and would be able to take advantage of California’s “cottage food” laws, which allow food to be prepared in inspected home kitchens (or, potentially, in approved community spaces like churches).

The bill removes hefty equipment requirements like the three-basin sink, replacing it with a more modest one-basin sink and a spare stash of clean utensils. It also allows the health department to pre-approve plans for standardized or mass-produced mobile facilities, so that vendors won’t have to submit cart plans for approval. So far, only one “legal” hot food vending cart — a tamale cart that costs about $7,500 — has been approved by the Department of Public Health.

Significantly, the bill would also remove all criminal penalties for violating the food code, allowing only for administrative fines.

Agustin Paullier/AFP via Getty Images

Food Safety Requirements

Not everyone has confidence that the proposed bill will be good for public health. Roger A. Clemens, a professor at University of Southern California’s Regulatory Science Program, says it should be rewritten to include more requirements around labeling, sanitation, and food safety.

“You’re supposed to be trained and certified so you go through the understanding of sanitation practices. Nothing like that is indicated in this bill,” he says.

It’s true that the bill would exempt vendors from the requirement to have a certified food manager on staff, although supporters note that they would still be required to acquire a food handler’s card — the standard food safety credential required of restaurant employees. This is similar to the requirements for small food facilities that operate at fairs, swap meets, and farmers’ markets. Vendors would also be required to follow the rules put in place by their local health departments. In an emailed statement, Gonzalez said she believes this would ultimately promote greater food safety and improve public health by making vending easier to regulate.

“By reducing the barriers to obtain a permit, more sidewalk vendors will participate in a local permitting process that incorporates food safety education and sanitation control,” says Gonzalez. If that happens, she adds, “public health agencies will have significantly greater ability to educate vendors and offer corrective measures to cart designs and standard operating procedures that will increase the overall health and safety of the sidewalk food vending industry.”

Diana Winters, deputy director at the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA School of Law, says it’s also important to look at public health from a broader perspective.

“Allowing the sidewalk vendors to be permitted and regulated may provide the public with access to fresh cooked, minimally processed, fresh foods, which they may not have otherwise,” says Winters. In neighborhoods that lack grocery stores and have a higher concentration of fast food businesses, such foods could make people healthier overall.

If SB 972 does get passed, it likely won’t be the end of the struggle for street vendors and their advocates in L.A. and beyond — many vendors will still face challenges such as language accessibility issues during the permitting process, economic barriers to obtaining approved equipment, and continued harassment by community members or other business owners, which have become increasingly common throughout the city.

But Community Power Collective’s Carla De Paz says it’s important to preserve this important staple of L.A. culture. “A lot of the vendors we work with were cooks in their hometowns outside of the U.S., and they bring those traditions with them. It’s cultural wisdom,” she says. “It really showcases the cultural diversity of L.A. and other cities.”

Meanwhile, the vendors at Pollos Asado El Jaimito say that while getting a permit would be great, they remain confident in the quality and safety of their food, regardless of that legal element.

“Our food is delicious, and at the same time, you don’t know what you’re eating in a restaurant either,” says employee Miranda Trujillo. “Out here, we’re doing it in front of the people — we’re not hiding behind a wall.”

“It’s better than [the chain restaurant] El Pollo Loco,” adds Jaimie Trujillo, with a smile.

• The Fight for LA’s Street Food Vendors [Civil Eats]

LA Times Lands a New Food Editor Two Years After Meehan Fallout

March 29, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Lawsuit Alleges a Portland-Area Red Robin Employee Put Semen in a Customer’s Salad

March 29, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

We Have to Talk About the Food in ‘Atlanta’

March 29, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Assembling Ikea’s Future — Through Food

March 29, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Will a vegetarian-leaning menu and rooftop terrace take Ikea from a furniture store to a full-on lifestyle brand?

I couldn’t decide: Beet hummus with cilantro, or lentils and cream cheese with chives? The toppings couldn’t be more different, but which would pair better with stewed mushrooms and tomatoes? It was early fall around sunset, still warm enough to eat outside a little longer, but a sudden breeze forced me to make a decision for my handbröd, a palm-sized roll stuffed with cheese or vegetables and with my choice of toppings. I went with the lentils and cream cheese, paid — 3.50 euros ($4.06) with the optional topping — and ripped off a corner. The pastry was tender and buttery, the filling still warm, a nice counterpoint to the cool, creamy topping. The biggest surprise, however, were the chives; I didn’t expect to get fresh herbs in a dish from Ikea.

When Ikea opened its Vienna location in the fall, the handbröd was the featured dish of the company’s newest food concept, an entirely vegetarian snack bar called Toppen located on the building’s rooftop terrace. This location counts among the compact city stores Ikea has been testing out in recent years that, in contrast to its sprawling suburban stores, forgo the maze of a showroom and the warehouse in order to be located in urban centers — this one is on top of Westbahnhof, one of the busiest underground stations in the city — and thus have fewer products available in the store.

Even before a pandemic forced nearly all aspects of our lives online, many brick-and-mortar stores have been searching for ways to lure customers into their physical locations. More than any other existing Ikea city store, the Vienna location seems to be doing this with food, most of it vegetarian. In addition to the standard Swedish restaurant (think meatballs) and bistro (think hot dogs and cinnamon rolls) found in all Ikeas, as well as a cafe serving coffee and cake, Ikea Vienna Westbahnhof has Toppen sitting on the building’s rooftop terrace, a novelty in and of itself.

The restaurant is accessible even when the furniture isn’t, staying open on Sundays, which is otherwise respected across Austria as a day of rest for businesses. On the FAQ page for the new location, there’s a section dedicated to food-related questions, and one of them asks whether Ikea’s food is available for delivery. The answer: not yet, though maybe in the future.

Operating a restaurant is never a sure business move, especially since, as the past two years have shown, in-person dining is basically always another airborne pandemic away from closure. But with this new location, the world’s largest furniture retailer seems to be asking: Can Ikea survive by doing just that?

One does not necessarily go to eat at Ikea to be blown away by the freshest local specialties. In fact, one generally doesn’t eat at a chain restaurant if they want to be surprised at all. We eat at those places because they’re convenient and consistent and usually cheap, and for those reasons good. But at the new Vienna Westbahnhof Ikea, food is asking to be taken more seriously — and it’s taking up more space, in the physical store as well as in the marketing.

This new compact city store, which strongly emphasizes its accessibility and environmental consciousness — there is no parking lot, encouraging customers to travel by foot, bike, or public transportation and to order larger items to be delivered the next day — also offered an opportunity for Ikea to pilot a new menu focused on a few buzzwords: health, sustainability, and freshness. Ads and posters in subway stations across the city, near the store’s entrance, and in the store itself show a few artfully plated meatballs — or are they plant balls? — on a clean white plate, with colorful accoutrements of fresh vegetables and those herbs again, letting you know that the restaurant is, in fact, open on Sunday until 4 p.m.

What these buzzwords mean practically, among other things, is that there are no French fries on the menu — they’re usually ubiquitous at other Ikea restaurants, available on the side with most entrees — and that there’s more than just the classic beef meatballs. There are vegan replacement-meat “plant balls,” which debuted across Ikea locations last year, as well as veggie balls and chicken balls, both of which were introduced in 2015. You can get your choice of balls with the classic sides of mashed potatoes and lingonberries, or you can get your veggie balls in split pea soup, or your plant balls served on top of a quinoa salad with cauliflower and a yogurt-feta dip, or your chicken balls in a ginger-teriyaki sauce on a bed of noodles.

“We are slowly transforming our complete food business to meet the customer’s healthy demands [and] also to be a more responsible retailer,” said market manager Johanna Cederlöf. “We believe that changing our food range in the longer term is not [only] good for our customers but also good for us and good for the business as well.”

That’s the goal of all of this anyway, isn’t it: to get customers to linger in physical stores in hopes that they’ll spend more money there. It’s the reason why Barnes & Noble started selling $26 entrees in Barnes & Noble Kitchen in a handful of its stores in 2016, why Urban Outfitters started working with celebrity chefs to open restaurants in its locations a few years before that. “Experiential retail” was seen as the way to compete amid the online shopping boom, though it was not necessarily a successful one. B&N Kitchens only ever had a handful of outposts and since the pandemic, only four are left. The UO crossovers were short-lived, and corporate instead created a new branch of its business for the few restaurant brands that remain.

On the other hand, Ikea had already been offering experiential retail — or, as Ikea Vienna Westbahnhof food manager Kit Wai Kan called it, “a complete shopping experience” — for decades. Founder Ingvar Kamprad opened the first Ikea store in Älmhult, Sweden, in 1953; the first Ikea restaurant opened there in 1960. And the company is transparent about the reason on its website: “[Kamprad] realises that hungry customers buy less. Or as we often say, it’s tough to do business on an empty stomach.” Whatever Kamprad’s intention, Ikea is now practically synonymous with Swedish meatballs.

Over 60 years later, they’re extremely self-aware about the reputation of Ikea food, even while trying to shift customers’ expectations of what “Ikea food” can be. The handbröd, the small stuffed bread roll served at the Toppen snack bar, was discontinued this year after a disappointing performance and poor customer feedback, according to marketing leader Sandra Bamberger. Eaters at Ikea want something more familiar, said Bamberger, so they’re planning on replacing the handbröd with more recognizable paninis and a plant-based burger, which is still being developed.

With a few exceptions, Ikea has struck a winning balance between retail and dining, so now it’s looking for other in-store-only experiences to attract customers, from design help to rooftop terraces. The greater foot traffic Ikea’s city stores experience helps boost “the awareness and notoriety of [the] Ikea brand,” wrote Maria Bertoch, a food service industry analyst at market research firm NPD, in an email. (Ikea is one of NPD’s clients.)

That brand recognition hasn’t translated into a standalone restaurant yet, though it’s an idea the company has toyed with before. A few years ago, the company found about 30 percent of Ikea shoppers go to the store just for the food, though food sales only accounted for five percent of Ikea’s $39.34 billion revenue in 2019. But five percent of $39.34 billion is still nearly $2 billion, which would make Ikea’s restaurants a bigger food chain than Wendy’s.

One of the first things a friend told me after she visited the new Ikea was that the rooftop would make a pretty good location for a first date. There’s a nice view, plus a bar operated by the hostel that occupies the top two floors of the building. So I decided to go on a date to Ikea. You know, for journalistic purposes.

We took the elevator straight up from outside to the seventh floor, to the rooftop, passing the furniture entirely. Rows of picnic tables in the middle, near the bar and the Toppen snack bar, alternated with dozens of potted trees, softening an atmosphere that otherwise included lots of metallic and sharp edges, mechanical things that were probably important but not particularly hygge. But all that faded before the real reason to come: a pretty spectacular view of Vienna, rooftops sprawling to the east, south, and west, before it hit the mountains. Interestingly, with the exception of Schloss Schönbrunn, the parts of Vienna that are visible from the rooftop aren’t the touristy landmarks the city is known for. The store’s building feels integrated into the landscape, into the city. It feels like a place to which Viennese people would actually go and want to spend time.

I did see plenty of people spending time doing non-shopping things while I was there, especially on the rooftop terrace. A non-exhaustive list includes: studying and working on laptops using the store’s free WiFi, Instagram photoshoots, and even yoga. I also saw a group of people drinking beers they had bought elsewhere, a phenomenon that roaming security guards are supposedly meant to prevent (Ikea doesn’t get any revenue from the bar; Cederlöf said Ikea isn’t trying to get into the alcohol business). Up there, it’s easy to forget you’re on top of a furniture store.

Niklas Stadler / Ikea

The food itself, though, tasted like it came from Ikea. The teriyaki sauce on the chicken meatballs was watered-down and the handbröd with vegetables, chives aside, tasted almost exactly like a pizza Hot Pocket. The plant balls make a suitable alternative to beef, especially when covered in gravy, but they’re tougher, clearly lacking the fat that make the classics juicy even when they’ve been sitting in a serving tray for hours. For the price — 5 euros ($5.80) for eight meatballs, 6.50 euros ($7.54) for 12 — they were good. The real standout, however, was a bag of pickled mushroom-flavored potato chips (0.80 euros, or $0.93) I got on a whim while waiting for the handbröd. Their flavor was reminiscent of salt & vinegar chips, with an extra depth thanks to the addition of dried porcini powder.

The date went well, in part because being on a date at Ikea was an automatic icebreaker. After trying the handbröd on the roof, my date and I went back inside to the restaurant on the fourth floor, where we had to show proof of vaccination to enter, a rule across the country that is consistently enforced. During the day the restaurant is airy and bright due to all-white everything and floor-to-ceiling windows, offering a view that, though not as impressive as that from the roof, would still allow a real restaurant to charge twice as much for their dishes. When the sun goes down and the overhead lights come on, however, it’s easier to realize that the dining room with exclusively Ikea furniture is, indeed, inside of an Ikea. My date courteously shelled out the 5 euros for my order of plant balls, and I said I would pay next time.

I thought I was going to manage to visit the store without being tempted to buy anything. But as we went through the store to leave, right in front of the exit, I saw the one thing I kept forgetting I needed in my apartment: a microwave cover. I grabbed one without looking at the price (it ended up being 2 euros, or $2.32), and then, since I was going to have to check out anyway, I grabbed a bag of pickled mushroom potato chips for the road.

I wasn’t the only one who thought going to Ikea would make a good, cheap date. I saw a handful of other pairs that evening, some young couples, as well as families and solo diners. I also encountered a group of university students who said they came here to study, because Ikea is probably the only place in town to get a croissant and hot chocolate for less than 2 euros, including a free refill.

Keeping the prices low is important to Ikea, because it all goes back to creating “a better everyday life” for as many people as possible, said the store’s managers. As food manager Wai Kan explained, rather than seeking to just satisfy hunger, the M.O. nowadays is to serve food that fits a particular worldview, and Ikea is adapting to that worldview. “If we look at the food development [over] the years, from physical need, it has been changed much more [into] a philosophy or lifestyle,” said Wai Kan.

The guiding principle of what Ikea is selling is what the company calls “democratic design.” It’s a phrase that comes up frequently in the company’s marketing and in my conversation with Wai Kan and Cederlöf (a PR representative was also present during our call). According to Ikea’s website, what that means when it comes to furniture is creating a balance between form, function, quality, sustainability, and affordability. To me, part of the goal of city stores seems to be to apply the principle of “democratic design” to the Ikea brand beyond its furniture, by bringing Ikea physically closer to the people and therefore more integrated into their lives.

But who exactly are “they”? Presumably, it’s people who want to see their furniture before buying it, but who can’t transport it themselves. It’s people who want to go to Ikea without the usual hassle of going to Ikea: taking a whole day to drive out of the city and navigate the showroom and warehouse aisles searching for the few items you came in for. For Ikea Vienna Westbahnhof in particular it is, of course, first and foremost the Viennese, those environmentally conscious and frugal urbanites who value a coffee or beer break almost as much as they do fresh air and being outside.

What all of those have in common is physically going to Ikea, which means it cannot necessarily be for everyone. Though Ikea’s CEO said a few years ago that the company was modernizing its online ordering process and “investing like never before in digital,” that didn’t seem to happen before the coronavirus pandemic hit, leaving many customers frustrated and spawning a Reddit thread of experiences with Ikea’s delivery service, or, in many cases, its failure to deliver. In 2019, Ikea captured only six percent of the online furniture market share, way behind direct-to-consumer natives like Overstock and Wayfair. These compact city locations do little to address those underlying weaknesses — meaning, in many ways, the company is still falling behind in a changing world.

“[I] see these city stores as real places of experimentation” for the customer, said analyst Bertoch. They’re also experimental for Ikea itself, but the experiment is whether business strategies of yore can still work in an increasingly online world — indeed, if the trend toward e-commerce can be stopped or even reversed, and if so, how. In the case of Ikea specifically, the experiment is pushing customer’s notions of what a furniture company can and should do. Maybe, if it can deliver food in the future, it doesn’t need to deliver furniture.

To that point, while revenue is obviously always top of mind for a business, Cederlöf knows shoppers spend on average less than half as long in Ikea’s city stores compared to the suburban warehouses. But she’s okay with that, because one time you might come in for a bookshelf, then stay for lunch, or vice versa. Or maybe you’ll come without the intention of buying anything at all, just because you enjoy the view.

Emily Cohen is a writer and reporter based in Vienna.

An Umami-Packed Recipe for Smashed Potatoes With Roasted-Seaweed Sour Cream Dip

March 29, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

In Eric Kim’s Korean American, roasted potatoes and creamy dip come together to create a sleeper hit

When Eric Kim develops recipes, he thinks about which ones would make a great single. “I used to be a musician and I used to want to be the next Michelle Branch,” he says. Kim moved to New York when he was 18 to become a pop star, and while that career didn’t quite work out — he’s now a cooking writer for the New York Times — he still found a way to channel those pop music instincts into his debut cookbook, Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home. “Black sesame cake, that’s a great one. Gochugaru shrimp and grits, also great. These potatoes? I just really thought these potatoes would win,” he says, almost as if he’s a judge on American Idol. “I know deep down and my testers know that this is one of our favorite dishes.”

Along with being a sleeper hit in his cookbook, Kim’s recipe for smashed potatoes and roasted-seaweed sour cream dip was a favorite in his household during the coronavirus pandemic. Like many people, Kim moved back home in the pandemic’s early days, living with his mother, Jean. She taught him to cook Korean food, something he had eaten a lot of at home but didn’t have a ton of experience cooking himself. “I wrote two pieces where I sort of reported my mother’s recipes,” Kim says. “It was a kimchi fried rice and then it was a dak-bokkeum-tang — it’s a chicken and potato stew. Both stories kind of navigate the writing down of your mother’s recipes. I think those two pieces were a nice litmus test, knowing that there’s something rich here.”

That year at home — when his family gathered to watch the Harry Potter films and snack on smashed potatoes and sour cream dip — motivated Kim’s decision to write Korean American. “I think what’s really lovely about the book is it’s not just that I’m writing down her recipes, I’m also developing my own based off the inspiration of our memories,” he says. “I think one way that is helpful to look at this is the Korean part is my mom and the American part is me, but in the end, the Korean American part is both of us.”

While sour cream dip might feel decidedly American, Kim forgoes the usual packet of dried dip mix and instead includes gim seaweed, rice vinegar, and sesame oil to make a mashup of the two cultures. “You end up with this very surprising flavorful dip that tastes very Korean to me,” he says. “Anything with sesame oil tastes really Korean to me.” There is even a Korean word to describe the transcendent flavor of sesame oil: gosohae. “I love this word that is so specifically tied to sesame. I just think it’s really beautiful and it shows how important that pantry ingredient is in Korean cuisine,” Kim says. It’s so important to Korean cuisine and Kim’s cookbook that he’s got an idea for his next career move. “I have this nutty theory in mind that if I were to just partner with a chemist maybe they could isolate gosohae and prove that its a sixth taste or something,” he says. “A future project.”

Smashed Potatoes with Roasted-Seaweed Sour Cream Dip Recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients:

For the smashed potatoes:

1½ pounds fingerling potatoes
¼ cup olive oil, plus more as needed
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the sour cream dip:

8 ounces sour cream (about 1 cup)
2 (5-gram) packets gim
1 large garlic clove, finely grated
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil, plus more to taste
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
1 teaspoon sugar
2 large scallions, thinly sliced on the diagonal

Instructions:

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Step 2: Make the potatoes: Lay the potatoes on a sheet pan in a single layer and roast dry (without oil or salt!) until soft enough to smash, about 30 minutes.

Step 3: Remove the pan from the oven and, using the flat bottom of a drinking glass, press on each potato to smash them slightly. Drizzle the potatoes with the olive oil, sprinkle with the garlic powder, and season with salt and pepper. Use a spatula to toss everything together so the smashed potato pieces are well seasoned.

Step 4: Return to the oven and bake until crispy, about 30 minutes longer.

Step 5: Meanwhile, as the potatoes roast, make the sour cream dip: In a food processor, blitz the sour cream, gim, garlic, vinegar, sesame oil, salt, pepper, and sugar until smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.

Step 6: To serve, slather a large platter with the sour cream dip and arrange the crispy smashed potatoes over it. Messily scatter the scallions over the top and serve immediately.

Reprinted with permission from Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home by Eric Kim, copyright © 2021. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Photography copyright: Jenny Huang © 2022.

The Mixologist Has Nine Lives

March 28, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Why Aren’t There Frilly Paper Hats on All My Drumsticks?

March 28, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

It’s time to bring back manchettes

Everything old is always new again in the food world. We’re drinking espresso martinis and eating baked Alaska. We’re dining under Tiffany lamps and hitching up our flare low-rise jeans before taking a flash photo of the bar nuts at Bemelmans. So if the retro and the slightly cringe is chic, then riddle me this: Why on earth aren’t I being served every piece of bone-in meat with an adorable little paper hat on it? Who must I slay to be presented with a drumstick fit for a king?

I first became enraged by what I was missing when friends posted photos of themselves on honeymoon in Austria, where they were served fried chicken adorned with manchettes, or the little paper frills traditionally attached to the exposed bones of a piece of cooked meat. These frills have the practical use of keeping meat grease off your hands while you carve and eat your dinner, and honestly, now is the perfect time to start using them. I’m a big proponent of eating with your hands, but COVID is still happening, and sometimes you want an extra layer of protection. Or you’ve just slathered your hands in sanitizer and want to avoid accidentally tasting the bitter sting of rubbing alcohol as you lick your fingers.

Practicality is enough to embrace the tradition, but the main thing about manchettes is they also make it look like your food is wearing a little chef’s hat or a paper crown, which is adorable. And not adorable like those dumplings meant to look like pigs, but like you’re Wile E. Coyote drooling over your imagined ideal of roast roadrunner. A roast bird or crown of lamb adorned with manchettes is food that should be served under a silver cloche on a white tablecloth while a string quartet plays in the background. It’s food that comes topped with a too-delicate curl of parsley, or on a doily. Anything cute and exorbitant and unnecessary.

I could make this about how, as the pandemic straggles along and bill after bill targets the most basic needs of the most vulnerable, so many of us have cut our lives down to what feels absolutely necessary, and we should embrace joy and silliness and all that. And yes that’s true enough. But really, I just think manchettes look funny and I’m shocked chefs with campier sensibilities haven’t picked them up yet — or for that matter, home chefs getting back into the dinner party game. What are you waiting for? Probably for paper costs to go down (right now manchettes are about $5 for 8), but I’ll be here when they do!

The $9 Jar Scraper That Does It All

March 28, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

I bought the Tovolo jar scraper to empty massive Skippy containers — but it can do so much more

It took me more than 20 years to figure out how to properly empty all the peanut butter out of a jar. Things I tried, fruitlessly: Poking at the bottom edges with a butter knife. Sticking my entire hand in the jar (much more of it gets on your knuckles than your fingers). Using a piece of fluffy white bread to wipe down the sides.

It wasn’t until a friend raved about the Tovolo all-silicone jar scraper that I realized the answer to my problems could be solved with $9. I’ve never been a big fan of single-use kitchen tools, deeming it wasteful to spend money on an item that can only do one thing. But at some point, when you’ve done something unsuccessfully too many times, a drastic change is necessary.

The jar scraper, at its core, is very similar to a silicone spatula. But all the ways that it’s different make it incredibly useful for the very specific purpose of getting as much peanut butter as possible out of the jar.

For starters, the silicone material is sturdy enough to scrape sides, but there is a slight amount of flexibility for maneuvering around edges and corners. The handle is long enough that it can actually reach the bottom of those massive Skippy jars that for some reason are only sold outside of New York City. And because the entire scraper is made of silicone — unlike those spatulas with a wooden handle — it’s easy to get all the peanut butter off once it’s on the scraper, which also doubles as a spreader.

And it was only after I found myself reaching for this scraper again and again that I realized its possibilities are infinite. I’ve used it to clean homemade whipped cream out of a bowl, gotten enough batter for an extra mini muffin, and emptied all kinds of jarred sauces, salsas, yogurt, and cream cheese. If it’s a food that doesn’t come out of its container cleanly, it’s a job for my jar scraper. Most recently, I used it to transfer pureed squash into an ice cube tray. It’s clean, it’s efficient, and best of all, leads to just a tiny bit less food waste.

The way I look at it now, I spent $9 on a very important life lesson: With the right attitude and a little bit of creativity, a single-use tool has the potential to do so much more.

The 15 Best Paris Boulangeries

March 28, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Where to get your traditional boules, baguettes, and brioche, plus sustainable sourdough and the perfect miche for jambon sandwiches, in the bread capital of the world

In Paris, bread is an art form and everyone has opinions about the best artists. There’s a boulangerie — or a bread bakery — on practically every corner in the City of Lights, and about as many kinds of bread to choose from: classic, crusty golden baguettes; pain de seigle rye loaves; and buttery, flaky brioche. Many bread bakers adhere to old-school traditions, making loaves that look and feel like peasant breads of yore, while others are decidedly new-school, making everything from American-style sourdough to babkas and focaccias.

Buying baguettes for a dinner party? Go ahead and tear off the nez — the nose, or pointy end — of the baguette on your way over. It’s French tradition that the baguette buyer is allowed to take a little reward.

What’s the Deal with All the Mentions of Organic Foods in ‘Spencer’?

March 26, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

In the Kristen Stewart semi-biopic of Princess Diana, one of Prince Charles’s longtime obsessions gets its day in the sun

Before the Princess Diana sort-of-biopic Spencer released in late 2021, there were very few questions left to be asked about the much-beloved Princess of Wales. Despite the insistence of podcasts, books, musicals, and documentaries — many of them released in the past five years — that no wait there is more to learn about one of pop culture’s most publicly exposed women, pretty much all we’ll ever get to know about the Peoples’ Princess is already out there, even and especially the fact that she liked to wear bike shorts and sweatshirts.

Kristen Stewart films tend to inspire intrigue, though, due to the fact that Kristen Stewart is in them, and while Spencer was less a historical artifact than a psychological phantasmagoria, there seemed to be new addition to the canon of Diana that caught many American audiences — largely watching Spencer to blindly critique Kristen Stewart’s British accent — off guard.

Why were there so many repeated mentions of organic foods?

Another question you might have is “Why is anyone writing about Spencer now, so many months after the film came out?” And the answer is that the Academy Awards are this Sunday and Kristen Stewart is nominated for Best Actress. Now back to organic vegetables.

Much of the movie takes place in and around the kitchen of the queen’s Sandrigham House, where the royal family is spending the 1991 Christmas holiday. The deliberate focus is on Diana’s eating disorder, and the coldheartedness with which the royal family treats her (about that and everything else). She finds friendship in her royal dresser and the kitchen’s head chef, Darren McGrady, who throughout the movie barks wartime platitudes at his kitchen staff and lists all the delicious things the royal family will be eating for dinner.

“Organic carrots. Please be careful which box we take the carrots from because he will bloody check,” McGrady says to the staff, the “he” here being Prince Charles. “Parsnips — again, organic. Finally, a selection of sweet and savory organic biscuits. Organic biscuits from..?”

“Highgrove, chef,” the staff responds.

For a common consumer, especially in America, the word “organic” feels like it only became a popular part of the food lexicon in the past ten or fifteen years. The facts back that up: According to a paper published by the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford, between 2001 and 2011, global farmland dedicated to organic farming multiplied by 2.3. While he can’t be held entirely responsible for that worldwide development, Prince Charles was one of the early adopters of organic farming. You bet your ass he was going to check those carrots.

In 1985, six full years prior to the Christmas dinner where Stewart’s Diana eats a bowl full of pearls (in movie alone, we hope), Charles converted his Duchy House farm on his Highgrove Estate to all organic growing methods, sparking controversy and disdain from the British public, press, and farmers who believed he was a backwards-ass Luddite. (His declaration that he spoke to his plants was torn apart by tabloids.) Over two decades later, when organic farming and foods became more available and a more popular eco-conscious choice, Charles was given his time in the sun to say “I told you so” to all his early doubters:

“Hundreds of varieties have been lost,” Reuters reported in 2007 about an interview that ran on the BBC. “...wonderful things that our forefathers took enormous trouble to develop, which in many cases are resistant to all sorts of prevalent diseases.

“Which is why I’ve been going on for all these years — to a chorus of ridicule — about the importance of protecting and preserving rare native breeds of cattle, sheep, pig and chicken.

“And sure enough, now, surprise surprise, they’re beginning to come back. But the craziness of what we’ve done to this world — lunacy.”

It’s not exactly clear why it was so important to give shine to Charles’s preoccupation with organic foods in a movie in which he was not the focus (perhaps to demonstrate another food pressure that Diana grappled with). But it does reveal one more thing about who Princess Diana was dealing with during their marriage: someone who was extremely right about something — then loved to act sanctimonious about it. That’s something universally relatable, whether you’re a princess or pauper.

At NYC’s Saga, Chef James Kent’s Tasting Menu Features Seven Courses and Inspiration from His Heritage

March 26, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

His braised short rib Moroccan tagine is an ode to his father

Saga, which opened last August, is one of New York’s most creative fine dining restaurants. Sitting on the 63rd floor of a skyscraper in the city’s Financial District, chef James Kent and his team put together a seven-course tasting menu that includes a citrus salad, black bass, porcini custard, and a Moroccan tagine.

That last dish is quite personal to Kent, whose full name is Jamal James Kent. He views the dish as a way for him to connect with his Moroccan heritage through his food.

“The first time I ever used James, I put ‘J. James Kent’ on my resume. It was the summer after 9/11, New York was this crazy place,” says Kent. “I just wanted to get a job and I thought that I would have issues.”

Kent grew up in an Islamic household, with his Arabic-speaking father growing up in Tangiers, and feels as if he’s been hiding behind his first name his whole life.

“I have the ability to tell authentic stories that are my own. I don’t need to hide behind things anymore, I try not to,” says Kent. “And that means cooking food that’s important to me.”

For the last course of the meal, he wants to represent his father’s culture.

The tagine is served using braised short ribs that are made in a kitchen at Crown Shy, Kent’s first restaurant in the same building as Saga.

At Crown Shy, the rib is served as a medium roasted cut, but at Saga, it’s treated as a secondary cut for the entree. From the grill, the ribs are put in plastic bags and placed into a water bath for 48 hours.

The meat may appear overcooked when it’s removed from the bath, but when Kent cuts it open, it reveals a medium-cooked interior. The meat is portioned for Crown Shy and some will get served at Saga.

The tagine is served with m’semen bread, a traditional Moroccan flatbread, braised short rib, and pressed yogurt with black truffle puree.

“I feel like when that hits the table, you can’t not be happy,” says Kent.

The Long Island Iced Tea Is Having a Moment

March 25, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

How an Oscars Viewing Party Expert Creates His Iconic Pun-Filled Food Spread

March 25, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Power of the Hot Dog, West Sliders Story, and Drive My Carbonara are just a few dishes that could show up at comedian Demi Adejuyigbe’s annual Academy Awards watch party 

Is it just me or do the Oscars feel less relevant every year? Maybe it’s the death of the monoculture, or the Academy needing to be dragged kicking and screaming out of its white past, or it’s too long, and then the Academy thinks the solution is cutting certain awards from air instead of the dull hosts. In a time when so many people are suffering physically, mentally, and financially, the celebrity adulation is grosser than ever. But despite these mounting problems, who doesn’t love an Oscars viewing party?

Unlike the Super Bowl, with queso and hot wings and varied dips, there is no culturally agreed upon menu for an Oscars party. But over the past few years, a small trend has emerged, led in part by comedian Demi Adejuyigbe, who you may know from his September 21st videos or his work on The Good Place. At his annual viewing party, Adejuyigbe serves dishes with punny names names inspired by the year’s nominated movies. There are dishes like “We Live In A Salsa-ety” (Joker) or “Mound of Kettle (Corn)” (Sound of Metal). These lowbrow brilliant spreads usually go viral, and now every year fans attempt their own groaners.

For Adejuyigbe, coming up with a list of Oscars-related food puns is an exercise in creativity, and something that gets guests riffing and engaging with each other. Mostly it’s just fun — why serve pasta when you could serve “Drive My Car-Bonara?” Or actual licorice pizza? (On second thought, please don’t do that.) Before this year’s Academy Awards, which airs Sunday, March 27, I talked to Adejuyigbe about the art of party hosting, punmanship, and why the best puns are the long ones that make everyone mad. Obvious caveat: The COVID-19 pandemic continues, so please take this party-planning advice with a grain of salt — and several PCR and antigen tests.

Eater: What’s your general opinion of the Oscars?

Demi Adejuyigbe: I love the Oscars. I think when I say that, people always feel like I’m standing up for it as a perfect institution and I’m absolutely not. It’s really just more that I love it as an event. I feel like it used to be such a performative thing and that was always so cool to me as a kid. Because it just felt like, “Oh, it’s this very old institution that is deciding what movies deserve credit every year,” but then also they have like, Hugh Jackman doing a weird song and dance number.

I see it kind of like the Super Bowl where it’s like, I’m not always into the teams that made it to the playoffs. I’m just really more there for the camaraderie and celebration of a sport that I love. And I don’t think it’s like an objective measure of what is the good movie or whatever. I’m just like, “It’s nice to see movies celebrated in many forms.”

When did you start throwing your own Oscars viewing party, and when did you start coming up with your food puns?

I feel like I’ve done them for probably the last five or six years, and the food puns have always been a part of it. It just felt like an easy thing to do. I’m not good at getting to see my friends one-on-one. So the Oscars has always been a time where it’s like, “I don’t have a birthday party. I just have an Oscars party. This is when everyone comes to see me and we catch up and then we just have a thing to focus on.” And the snack pun is just another fun thing to do.

Walk me through the process of how you plan both the snack spread and then puns to match. How does this work?

I wish that I could say it was based on what’s recommended to eat at a party, but it’s really more like I make a plain text list of every movie that is nominated that would be recognizable by name. So it often means a lot of the shorts and documentaries aren’t on there. But if I immediately see a good pun in one of them, I keep it on there. Then I just try to make puns off of that list that are food related. Or if I’ve seen the movie, and there’s some iconography that’s very easy to use for food. The year Call Me By Your Name was nominated. I was just like, “Well, peach is all over that movie. So let’s do a peach ring thing or something,” or like with Parasite and the ramdon. But it’s usually just me making a big list and then going, “Okay, what’s the food that can be associated with this?”

What’s the best you’ve come up with?

I always really like the ones that are just a huge stretch. Because I think it’s just a lot... It feels like it’s just so much work, but it’s also so much more fun. I think two years ago I did Taika Iced-Tea-Tea, and also the same year I did, for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was “Wine Sip on a Type Of Alcohollywood.” I really love a painful-level pun.

I cannot imagine looking at the phrase Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and being like, “I know what I can put in here.”

I find one and then I’m just sort of like, “Oh, I see two now.” And just be like, “Okay. Now how many can I just shove into this one phrase?” And the longer the movie, the easier it is to just be like, “What’s just the worst possible stretch.”

Were there any that you were really proud of that nobody understood?

This wasn’t one that no one got, but it was one that people would be like, “What?” Because I think it wasn’t as big a movie as I expected it to be. But for A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, a friend made a cake and I made a little placard that said “A beautiful cake and the flavor’s good.” I just felt like everyone’s like, “What’s this supposed to be?” And I was like, “It’s the movie.”

[Adejuyigbe followed up our call with an email: “As soon as I hung up, I found the ones from two years ago and remembered that no one understood ‘Vegyn Chelly,’ which was a vegan chili pun for Megyn Kelly (Bombshell) and ‘I Lost My Barbecue,’ a pun on I Lost My Body.”]

This year, are there any titles that you’re thinking lend themselves particularly well to certain snacks?

I feel like for some of the movies, there’s things in the movies that are inherently good to adapt. Something Irish for Belfast, or a king cake for King Richard. I feel like it’s the kind of thing where it’s not so much off the top of my head, it’s about sitting down and making a list and being like, “Okay, now what’s an even more insane idea for this.”

Every year during the Oscars, I’ll see people tagging you on Twitter about their own snack spreads and the puns they’ve come up with. Does it surprise you that other people have taken this and run with it?

It mostly surprised me that they credit me because I didn’t invent puns. I think the last two years I just published an exhaustive list of puns that you can use. Whenever I do something like that, it’s more a creative exercise and being like, “How many of these can I list?” Because then when I do my own foods, I’m like, “I don’t want to use any of those. I want to do all new ones.” And so I think last year, a lot of people just tagged me being like, “Hey, I did one from your list!” which is always fun.

What do you think makes for a good Oscars viewing party?

People have to be there for the same reason. A lot of times people will go to a viewing party and just be like, “Oh, we’re just hanging out. We don’t care about the thing.” And it’s like, no, you should care about it a little bit, but care about it in the same way. If you’re going to a viewing party where everyone’s really invested, don’t be going there thinking like, “Oh, we’re just going to hang out. I’m just going to talk over it.” I just think being on the same page about what you’re there for is probably the key to me.

This interview was lightly edited for clarity.

The Best Sheet Pan Recipes, According to Eater Editors

March 25, 2022 Admin 0 Comments

Perfect for weeknights, unfussy sheet pan recipes are great go-tos when you only want to wash one dish

On weeknights, or in advance of spontaneous dinner parties, or during those times when cooking just feels like a slog, there is nothing quite like a sheet pan. The flattened versions of one-pot recipes, sheet pan recipes are often as easy as they are quick, and though no one likes to scrub a sheet pan after dinner, tin foil and parchment make that task a little easier. Here are six Eater editors’ recipes for broiler-friendly, oven-dependent, delicious sheet pan recipes for any occasion.

Sheet-Pan Gnocchi With Mushrooms and Spinach

Ali Slagle, NYT Cooking

Sure, everyone got into sheet pan cooking earlier in the pandemic, but call me a late bloomer: Over the last few months, a lack of time, combined with a complete lack of will to do lots of dishes at the end of the night and a reinvestment in home cooking over takeout, has compelled me to seek out weekly sheet pan recipes. This sheet pan gnocchi recipe hits all the right notes for me. They key is to not overthink it. Roasting shelf-stable gnocchi (one of the ultimate premade ingredients) seems like it shouldn’t work, and New York Times commenters have noted this with some skepticism, questioning whether it should be boiled first. But rest assured, the gnocchi comes out of the package as stuck-together pellets of flavorless, dry dough and emerges like magic from the oven toothsomely crisp on the outside and warm and pillowy on the inside. The recipe also avoids another common sheet-pan recipe pitfall: It doesn’t treat all the ingredients with the same cook times and temperatures. Instead, the gnocchi and mushrooms go in first, with the spinach added in the last few minutes. That means that the fungi come out caramelized under piles of wilted-to-slightly-baked spinach topped with a zingy horseradish and honey mustard. — Brenna Houck, cities manager

Sheet Pan Chicken Meatballs with Tomatoes and Chickpeas

Claire Saffitz, Bon Appétit

I keep returning to this recipe because — as a single person — it doubles as my ideal batch-cooking scenario for the week. If a dish calls for a few chicken breasts or salmon fillets, I end up bored of eating dried poultry by the end of the week, or grossed out by the thought of keeping cooked seafood in the fridge for a few days. These harissa-spiked meatballs, which never get too dry, offer the versatility I’m looking for in a throw-it-in-the-oven recipe. They go as well with a bowl of whichever grains I decide to cook up as they do a pita I’ll warm up over my gas stove. They’re a time-saver that offers plenty of flavor (thanks to the salty feta and juicy tomatoes), which seems like the point of any great sheet pan recipe. — Bao Ong, Eater New York editor

Green Goddess Salmon With Potatoes and Snap Peas

Sarah Copeland, NYT Cooking

Listen. I love green goddess dressing and any excuse to use it. It’s just the way I am. The combination of fresh herbs, tangy yogurt, salty anchovies, and so much garlic (like most home cooks, I throw in a few more bulbs than recommended) makes for one of the world’s best dressings for just about anything. In this recipe for sheet pan salmon, potatoes, snap peas, and cucumbers, green goddess is right at home. This is one of those preparations that is remarkably fast, easy, and worth it, not only for the crispy salmon and the dressing on top, but for the combination of warm potatoes and snappy green vegetables that make up a slightly unconventional salad. These particular ingredients are best in spring and summer, but don’t doubt the power of green goddess to liven up winter root vegetable substitutes, if snap peas and new potatoes are out of season. — Dayna Evans, staff writer and Eater Philly editor

Baked Crispy Chicken Thighs

The Modern Proper

Making crispy chicken in an oven typically involves some kind of short-cut crust and suspending disbelief — panko, crushed cereal flakes, or a cakey layer of flour are all par for the course. But the Modern Proper’s crispy oven-baked chicken thighs require none of the magical thinking or imitation fried skin; instead, you need a frothy egg wash. I tried this recipe on a night I wanted nothing but sheet pan simplicity. It calls for the oven to be cranked to 450, which warms the kitchen as you dust bone-in, skin-on thighs with flaky kosher salt, black pepper (I use Trader Joe’s rainbow peppercorns for flair), and paprika. After lining a sheet pan with a piece of foil and propping a cooling rack over it, you lay the thighs skin-side-up and brush them with whipped egg whites. That’s kind of it — lower the oven’s temperature to a still-balmy 425 and bake the chicken for 30 minutes. The proof of concept is scraping a knife against skin so crispy it could have been starch-battered and deep-fried. I ate the batch in one night. — Nicole Adlman, cities manager

Maple and Miso Sheet-Pan Salmon With Green Beans

Colu Henry, NYT Cooking

This is the recipe that converted me from frying to baking fish, meeting my requirements for both flavor and ease. I had assumed baked fish would be blander than fried, but that’s not a problem when you coat the fish with the power couple of miso and maple. Piling the green beans and the salmon together on the sheet pan also makes this recipe as quick as frying, without that aftertaste of existential fear I get when fish threatens to stick to a frying pan. I appreciate that the recipe is flexible for brown or white miso. My only note would be to scale back the maple syrup; even with my sweet tooth I found the flavor a bit heavy in the recipe as written. — Nick Mancall-Bitel, associate editor

Sheet-Pan Bibimbap

Eric Kim, NYT Cooking

Many are the nights when I’ve looked in the refrigerator, assessed the situation, and put whatever I can find on a sheet pan to be cooked all at once. This, along with a love of bibimbap and a frequent supply of leftover rice, made me naturally gravitate toward this recipe. Along with being an excellent vehicle for leftover rice (and sundry vegetables), it’s an object lesson in balance and simplicity. You just put some mushrooms, sliced sweet potato, and kale on a sheet pan, roast them up, and then break a few eggs onto another sheet pan with some cooked rice. By the time the eggs are cooked, the rice is nice and crispy. This is also one of those recipes that’s highly customizable — while the combination of kale, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms is a winner, you can swap them out for other vegetables you may have on hand (just adjust the cook times accordingly), and you can use various seasonings, too. While Kim recommends topping the bibimbap with a bit of gochujang, someone in the recipe’s comments section provided a quick recipe for a very delicious gochujang-based sauce that I use instead. Again: simple and customizable! As weeknight cooking should be. — Rebecca Flint Marx, senior editor

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