Category: Food and Drink
*Library Journal* review of *An Economist Gets Lunch*
Part In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and part Roadfood, this is a culinary coming-out party for Cowen (economics, George Mason Univ.), who up to now has been known for more standard economic works like The Great Stagnation. This latest book combines economic and environmental messages, all written in a highly entertaining and informative style—often with a counterintuitive twist. The real story, though, is the author and his techniques for finding and eating delicious, inexpensive food from all over the world. Thus, we get tips on how to obtain good Chinese food from local, not-so-authentic places; which strip malls are likely to have the best restaurants (who knew they were in strip malls to begin with?); using Google to turn up unexpected restaurant gems; and why places filled with fun, laughing, drinking people often don’t have good food. An entire chapter is devoted to barbecue, and another provides specific suggestions for eating well in numerous countries.
VERDICT A fun and informative book that environmentalists, economists, and (most of all) foodies will enjoy. Recommended for all. [See Prepub Alert, 10/7/11.]—Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH
A possible answer to a common European question (Atomic bread baking at home)
Thus, in 1954, USDA investigators journeyed from Chicago and Washington, D.C., to the shores of the Rock River to select two test groups, each comprising three hundred families “scientifically representative” of a typical American community. Over the next two years, the market researchers would deploy all the techniques of their emerging field on these six hundred families. They tracked bread purchases, devised means of weighing every ounce of bread consumed by the test population, conducted long interviews with housewives, and distributed thousands of questionnaires. Most important, they created a double-blind experiment that asked every member of every family to assess five different white-bread formulas over six weeks. Four years and almost one hundred thousand slices of bread after the project’s conception, a clear portrait of America’s favorite loaf emerged. It was 42.9 percent fluffier than the existing industry standard and 250 percent sweeter.
…In early twentieth-century consumers’ minds, fluffier bread seemed fresher—even if it wasn’t. Squeezable softness had become consumers’ proxy for knowing when their bread had been baked. By the 1920s, market surveys revealed that consumers didn’t necessarily like eating soft bread, but they always bought the softest-feeling loaf. By the 1950s, softness had become an end in itself, and savvy bakery scientists set about engineering ever-fluffier loaves—like USDA No. 1.
That is from Aaron Bobrow-Strain, interesting throughout, I just pre-ordered his new book White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf. For the pointer I thank Michael Rosenwald.
Here is Alex in 2006 on bread in Paris. In the comments I wrote this:
Alex’s response is, as you would expect, right on the mark. But most of the differences in ingredients *can* be traced to underlying economic causes. For reasons of rents, commuting distances, and city design, the French are better situated to consume fresh breads right after consuming them. Cheaper bread alternatives, in the U.S., also stem from economics, although this is a long and complicated story. The best salts come from France, for complex but largely economic and geographic reasons. Non-pasteurization makes French butters better, plus French farm subsidies keep many more small farmers in business. This raises price but also improves quality and shortens supply chains. Freezing foods, including dough, is much cheaper in the United States, again for economic reasons. We have a more dispersed population and longer supply lines, both of which favor freezing, plus we have much cheaper transport.
Again, I would stress that American bread is getting better and French bread is probably getting worse. We are seeing convergence, though I would not expect this to ever be exact.
*An Economist gets Lunch*
I am pleased that Publisher’s Weekly has offered a starred review to my forthcoming book:
Enlightened consumerism, not ideology, is the surest path to tasty and responsible dining, argues this yummy gastronomic treatise. Economist and restaurant critic Cowen (The Great Stagnation) takes readers along as he eats, shops, and cooks in a diversity of spicy settings, including a Nicaraguan tamale stand, the greens aisle at the Great Wall supermarket chain, backwoods barbeque pits, and his own kitchen, where he wrestles with Mexican cuisine. He focuses on how the interplay between creative suppliers and demanding customers produces good, cheap food, an approach that yields offbeat insights into, for example, why the menu item that sounds the least appetizing usually tastes great and why you should never eat in a place filled with beautiful people having a great time (that restaurant’s specialty, he reasons, is the scene, not the food). Cowen also offers a telling contrarian critique of high-minded food orthodoxies that extols agribusiness, debunks the environmental benefits of locavorism, and toasts genetically modified organisms. Cowen writes like your favorite wised-up food maven, folding encyclopedic knowledge and piquant food porn—“the pork was a little chewy but flavorful, and the achiote sauce gave it a tanginess”—into a breezy, conversational style; the result is mouth-watering food for thought.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here. For Barnes & Noble here. For Indiebound.org here.
Why does Arnold Bread have forty different kinds of bread?
100% whole wheat, 12 Grain, 7 Grain, German Dark Wheat, Health Nut, Healthy Multi-grain, Honey Whole Wheat, Oatnut, Country Oat Bran, Country Wheat, Country White, Country Whole Grain White, Healthfull 10 Grain, Healthfull Flax and Fiber, Healthfull Hearty Wheat, Healthy Nutty Grain, Double Fiber, Double Protein, Grains & More Flax and fiber, Triple Health, Dutch Country 100% whole Wheat, Butter Split Top, Extra Fiber, Premium Potato, Premium White, Rye Everything, Rye and Pump, Pumpernickel, Rye Seedless, Melba Thin, Rye with Seeds, Soft Family 100% Whole Wheat, Soft Family Classic White, Soft Family Honey Wheat, Soft Family Whole Grain White, Brick Oven Whole Wheat, Brick Oven Premium White, Premium Italian, Stone Ground, Light 100% Whole Wheat.
Here is more, from William Gadea. The hypothesis:
The motivator here isn’t making the customer happier, it’s the oft-neglected fourth ‘P’ of marketing: placement. Even if the supermarket carries only half the varieties that Arnold offers, all of a sudden they are hogging a big part of the bread aisle. Arnold is the bread that is most likely to be close to your hand.
For the pointer I thank William Gadea.
*Little Serow*
Imagine northeastern Thai street food, Issan style, combined with the quality ingredients and overall standards of fine dining. Right now it’s the best place in DC by a long ways and the best place this area has had in a long time. The tastes are sharp, hot, sour, pungent, musty, and occasionally sweet. The level of heat can be high. You cannot choose your food. Every course was a knockout, only $45 for a seven-course menu, no substitutions. There’s nowhere else like it. It is right next to Komi, and brought to you by the same people. Remarkably, the cook is Greek-American and not Thai. Could it be the best Thai place on the East coast?
Their website and menu is here. Here is a Sietsema review. Don Rockwell says it may be the best new restaurant in the U.S. this year; there is more from Don here. A must. No reservations, so you must show up before opening at 5:30 or wait two hours to get in.
The placebo restaurant
From Peter Seebach, I like this idea very much:
This leads to a concept: A restaurant called Placebo. What do they sell? A 50% discount. Which is to say: The entire menu is framed with everything at about twice the price you’d otherwise expect to pay for it, but then your check gets a 50% discount. So say you have a steak roughly of the same quality as the $13 steaks at the Outback Steakhouse. The menu says $26, your bill when it arrives has a 50% discount. But everything you order feels expensive.
And a bit more:
For extra credit, you could do interviews and arrange waiters to adopt personalities which suit the customers. Someone comes in who likes Good Wholesome Cooking? We can set you up with a waiter who thinks fancy food is ridiculous. Or, we can set you up with a waiter who is a total food snob, and you can have a wonderful meal knowing that the waiter is missing out on Good Wholesome Cooking. Your call.
The basic idea here is… people aren’t going out to eat for the food, they’re going out for the experience. Why not sell the experience as-such as the product? And thanks to some lovely research done on placebos in the 60s or so, we know that in some cases they work even if you know it’s a placebo — they’ve been shown to treat depression effectively even when explained.
Some food notes from Mexico City
My favorite sandwich (ever) is the Hawaiiana, at “Tortas Chapultepec,” turn left out of the front of Hotel Camino Real in Polanco, and it is on the corner at Victor Hugo and Mariano Escobedo. They usually are open by 9:30 and I suspect they close fairly early.
Pujol does wonderful things with vegetables and is perhaps the best fancy place to try; I recommend the Menu de la Tierra.
They have done away with the food stalls at the Zócalo. In Mexico City calorie-counting menus are common and gelato is being replaced by frozen yogurt (!).
Tres Marias is a “food village” right off the highway on the way to Cuernavaca. Look for the place on the southbound side which specializes in green chilaquiles and also chorizo tacos, but in general standards along that strip are remarkably high.
Here is the most important food advice for Mexico.
Overall, Mexico City is becoming a safer city, and compared to four years ago one sees many signs of economic progress.
Feijoada request
That is a request from Gil, it reads “Feijoada.”
I recommend investing in a supply of farinha, also known as manioc flour, it will hold until the ants find it. African, Brazilian, and sometimes Latin groceries sell it. From bottom to top on the plate, the simple recipe is white rice (cooked until it is still slightly moist rather than fully dry), Goya black beans (heated), orange slices (cold), steamed shredded collard greens, and the farinha sprinkled on top. It is one of my favorite vegetarian meals and it shows that the meat in the feijoada is actually the worst part.
You say “The culture that is Brazil,” I say “price discrimination”
Or is it the other way around? From the always-excellent Leonard Monasterio, in turn from Adriano Dutra Teixeira:
Angélica Grill, a all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet (rodízio) in São Paulo, offers a 50% discount for people that went through bariatric surgery. In Portuguese: In English (Google Translation of the page).
My new food account on Twitter
It is mostly “food only,” but a few other things too. Feel free to follow, and please do spread the word if you can. My normal tweeting will continue at @tylercowen as well.
Markets in everything (and proud ye shall be)
Interesting throughout, but let’s cut to the chase:
Advertising our altar bread is a positive thing for Cavanagh Company. We take a lot of pride in putting our family name on a product that will eventually become the body and blood of Jesus.
You can file that under “Very good paragraphs.” How about this one?:
Had production remained the exclusive bailiwick of monastic communities, it is likely that the findings of Vatican II would have prompted some minor changes in Communion-wafer production. Among the guidelines issued by the Church was a directive to “make the bread look more breadlike,” head of production Dan Cavanagh told me. It is a change whose significance may yet be lost on the millions of churchgoers who continue to think of hosts as a form of Styrofoam. Nevertheless, Cavanagh’s more “breadlike” whole-wheat wafer caught on. It became the industry standard, and forced the Poor Clare nuns to follow suit.
Some of it is better than satire:
…the company maintains a fully-automated production process where employees are forbidden from laying their hands on the wafers. “I feel pretty strongly that the host should not be touched,” Dan said. His view makes it easier to comply with legal guidelines for industrial food production, but it also gives the company something to market. “Our wafers are untouched by human hands,” boasts one promotional brochure. “That gets my dander up,” a Sister in Clyde told the Chicago Tribune: The Sisters’ touch gives what other businesses would call “added value.”
And what if you have coelic disease? Every paragraph in this story is fascinating. I thank Paul Hsieh for the pointer.
Markets in everything the culture that is Scot
In 1907, Ernest Shackleton and crew set out on the ship Nimrod to visit Antarctica and, they hoped, the South Pole. The good news was, the entire party survived the trip, thanks in part to the Rare Old Highland Whisky they brought to the frozen continent. But the expedition was forced to evacuate in 1909, some 100 miles short of the Pole they sought. And, as winter ice encroached and the men hurried home, they left behind three cases of the choice whisky.
In 2007, just about a century later, the whisky was found, intact, at the expedition’s hut at Cape Royds in Antarctica.
The stuff was made by Mackinlay & Co at the Glen Mhor distillery in 1896 or thereabouts. Mackinlay hasn’t been an active brand for a while now, but the current owner of the Mackinlay name, Whyte and Mackay, obtained a few of the precious bottles and set out to do what any right-thinking Scot would do: first, taste the whisky; and second, attempt to analyze and re-create it. The result, a product called Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky, is, as of this writing, buyable in stores.
The article is here, and the pointer is from Jodi Ettenberg, who serves up her favorite longreads of 2011 here.
Mexico City bleg
Where should we eat? I’ve been there at least ten times, so if you’re recommending anything other than food, it should either be very recent or very obscure.
Claims about potato chips
You may be surprised to learn that potato chips are a health food; almost all chips (expensive or not) emphasized the healthiness of their products by using phrases like “low fat”, “healthier”, “no cholesterol”, or “lowest sodium level”. But these health-related claims
occur on expensive chips 6 times as often as on inexpensive chips (6 times per bag versus once per bag). This difference in health language is not, as far as we can tell, due to actual differences in the chips. No chips in our sample contain trans fats, but only 2 out of the 6 inexpensive chips talk about it. By contrast, every one of the 6 expensive chips mentions the lack of trans fats.
Expensive chips also turn out to be much more natural. Phrases such as “natural”, “real”, or “nothing artificial” are 2.5 times more likely to be mentioned on expensive bags (7 times on each expensive bag but under 3 times on each inexpensive bag).
Another way to differentiate is to use negative markers, words like “never”, “not”, or “no”
(“never fried”, “we don’t wash out the natural potato flavor”, “no wiping your greasy chip hand on your jeans”). Negation emphasizes bad qualities that a chip does not have, subtly suggesting that other brands have this bad quality. To get a more fine-grained analysis, we also regressed the number of negative words against the price. We found that a bag of potato chips costs 4 cents more per ounce for every additional negative word on the bag.
Finally, expensive chips are 5 times more likely to distinguish themselves from other chips, using comparative phrases like “less fat than other leading brands”, “best in America”, “in a class of their own”. or “a crunchy bite you won’t find in any other chip”. Where text on the inexpensive chips focuses on the chips themselves, ads for expensive chips emphasize their differences from “lesser” chips.
…Mentions of tradition occurred more than twice as often on inexpensive chips. Our linear regression showed that every time a family or an American locale is mentioned, the price per ounce of the chips drops 10 cents. The inexpensive chips thus represent a model of authenticity rooted in family traditions and family-run companies, and set in regional locations throughout America.
That is from Dan Jurafsky. His blog, on food and language, is interesting throughout.
The value of infrastructure
I liked the title of this one: “Hopping Mad: Uganda Power Cuts Hit Grasshopper Harvest,” excerpt:
“Every evening I first pray for there to be power — and then I pray that the grasshoppers will come,” Turyamugumya told AFP.
Stripped of their wings and fried with onions, grasshoppers are a delicacy in Uganda’s central region — gobbled up by the handful and washed down with beer in bars around Kampala.
This time of year should be peak season for the insect catchers but Turyamugumya — who uses bright lights to attract the flying insects before disorientating them with smoke and trapping them in disused oil drums — says that business is tough.
“The problem has been power, it is on and off. Like last night, the whole night it was off,” Turyamugumya, 33, says.
From bakeries to beauticians to building firms, small businesses across Uganda have been struggling to cope with worsening power cuts in recent months.
…Power problems mean that the price he pays for grasshoppers at the market has gone up — and that means insect-loving bar-goers are having to pay more for the snacks. The price for the smallest bag has doubled to around $0.45 (34 euro cents).
For the pointer I thank Daniel Lippman.