Category: Food and Drink

The forward march of science continues:

Considering the similarity of its ingredients, canned dog food could be a suitable and inexpensive substitute for pâté or processed blended meat products such as Spam or liverwurst. However, the social stigma associated with the human consumption of pet food makes an unbiased comparison challenging. To prevent bias, Newman's Own dog food was prepared with a food processor to have the texture and appearance of a liver mousse. In a double-blind test, subjects were presented with five unlabeled blended meat products, one of which was the prepared dog food. After ranking the samples on the basis of taste, subjects were challenged to identify which of the five was dog food. Although 72% of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste (Newell and MacFarlane multiple comparison, P<0.05), subjects were not better than random at correctly identifying the dog food.

The title of the paper is, appropriately: Can
People Distinguish Pâté from Dog Food?

Kevin Burke, a loyal MR reader, asks me:

Are dining policemen a good sign that the restaurant/takeout place you've chosen is a good place to get quick, cheap food?

Arguments in favor:
1) cops patrol a specific beat, which means they'll eat most of their meals in one area

2) police work naturally entails lots of downtime, some of which, I imagine, cops spend discussing where to eat or what they just ate;

3) as frequent diners, cops will remember and avoid places that gave them or a patrol mate food poisoning (although I developed this theory in a "B" grade restaurant in LA)

Against:
1) Cops' dining preferences may simply mirror the public's, in which case it wouldn't be a very reliable signal.

My take: I have to vote against the cops, if only because I don't see them at the places I frequent.  Maybe the problem is the least common denominator effect, namely that the cops won't go to places that disgust or turn off some members of the group.  I once (asking for directions) entered a Maryland Dunkin' Donuts and lo and behold, the cliche seemed to be true as the place was full of cops.  Maybe cops require sugary foods to regulate their moods.

A related problem is that, as far as I can tell, not so many Asian immigrants become cops.  When it comes to the United States, apart from the wealthy, they are the people most likely to be eating good food.

What do you all think about this question?

Here is Grant Achatz, now blogging:

Each guest at a table gets a card with four rows of six words. The rows
are defined by characteristics. In the example below, from left to
right: Row one is flavor, two is texture, three is emotionally driven,
and four is temperature. As a group, the diners have to select one word
from each category or row. Once the group has made a decision, they
turn in their choices to the waiter. The waiter hands the choices to
the kitchen, where we create a dish based on the guests' four choices.
Soon after, the result of their choice–their exercise in limited free
will–is served. Or will be.

As Arnold Kling has noted, I am interested in the issue of the efficient delegation of choice.  So very often the theatrical presentation of "the feeling of being in control" conflicts with the efficient delegation of choice.  If I ran a restaurant I would be embarassed by this practice, not proud of it.

It seems that the mere presence of a salad on a fast food menu makes people more likely to order french fries.

Here is more.

Who said the Europeans don't believe in fiscal stimulus?:

The cost of a long lunch in a French bistro should become
significantly cheaper after Paris won a seven-year battle with the
European Union to allow it to slash the value-added tax on meals.

But
how to pay the unpalatable €3.25bn ($4.2bn) bill taxpayers are being
stuck with is prompting a debate over just what price to extract from
the French restaurant industry.

France savoured victory last week
when it finally won German approval for President Nicolas Sarkozy's
plan to cut VAT on restaurant meals from 19.6 per cent to the EU
minimum of 5.5 per cent.

The article is interesting throughout.  Here are previous installments in the series.

North Korean edition, of course, and now it is pizza:

It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the
technology to launch a project very dear to its leader's heart – the
nation's first "authentic" Italian pizzeria…

Last year a delegation of local chefs was sent by Kim to Naples and
Rome to learn the proper Italian techniques after their homegrown
efforts to mimic Italian cuisine were found by Kim to contain "errors".

In
the late 1990s Kim brought a team of Italian pizza chefs to North Korea
to instruct his army officers how to make pizza, a luxury which is now
being offered to a tiny elite able to afford such luxuries in a country
that cannot feed many of its 24 million inhabitants.

Despite the
food shortages high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese are
being imported to ensure the perfect pizza is created every time.

"Our
people should be also allowed to enjoy the world-famous food," the
manager of the Pyongyang eatery quoted Kim as saying, according to the
Tokyo-based Choson Sinbo newspaper.

The paper, which is often
seen as a mouthpiece for the communist regime, added the restaurant had
proved to be a major hit after it opened in the capital Pyongyang in
December.

"I've learned through TV and books that pizza and
spaghetti are among the world's famous dishes, but this is the first
time that I've tasted it," Jung Un-Suk, 42, told the newspaper, "They
have unique flavours," she said.

The news that Kim's dream of
making genuine Italian food available in the capital has been realised
comes as North Korea threatens to test-launch a rocket which the US
believes is capable of striking America.

I thank Leonard Monasterio for the pointer.

The Inuit people of Alaska have a distinct version of ice cream. It's not creamy
ice cream as we know it, but a concoction made from
reindeer fat or tallow, seal oil, freshly fallen snow or water, fresh berries, and sometimes ground fish. Air is
whipped in by hand so that it slowly cools into foam.
They call this Arctic treat akutaq, aqutuk, ackutuk, or
Eskimo ice cream. Akutaq is a Yupik word that means mix
them together.

Here is the link.  Nowadays Crisco Oil often substitutes for animal fat.

Here is a picture of Eskimo ice cream.

The original tip is from 1001 Foods You Must Taste Before You Die, an excellent book for reading or browsing.

They are both about economic growth.  One is here and the story involves a sari and the Taj Mahal.

The other is here, from Taiwan ("China fact of the day"?), and the markets in everything version as well.  Excerpt:

The reasonably priced food includes curries, pasta, fried chicken and
Mongolian hot pot, as well as elaborate shaved-ice desserts with names
like "diarrhea with dried droppings" (chocolate), "bloody poop"
(strawberry) and "green dysentery" (kiwi). Despite the disturbing
descriptions, the desserts were great. But after seeing curry drip down
a mini-toilet, I may never have that sauce again.

Do read the whole thing, but the bottom line is this:

Every customer sits on a stylish acrylic toilet (lid down) designed
with images of roses, seashells or Renaissance paintings. Everyone
dines at a glass table with a sink underneath. The servers bring your
meal atop a mini toilet bowl (quite convenient, as it brings the food
closer to your mouth), you sip drinks from your own plastic urinal (a
souvenir), and soft-swirl ice cream arrives for dessert atop a dish
shaped like a squat toilet. 

I thank Chug and Kurt for the pointers.

Pork brains in milk gravy (canned).

I thank Yves Smith for the pointer.  Yves also points us to a rare cheetah captured on camera.

It is Little Seoul, mostly in Annandale, spilling over into West Alexandria.  The number of innovative Korean restaurants continues to increase and they are usually crowded.  I love the new place devoted to the many forms of Korean porridge. Seoul Gool Dae Gee Honey Pig on Columbia Pike has the best decor (and the pork neck) around.  TodamSoonDooBoo (also known as Tofu House, next to the Giant, straddling 236 and Columbia Pike) has dumpling soup and tofu.  The two branches of Shilla Bakery and Le Matin de Paris give Virginia a cafe scene.  Much of my eating out is now Korean or in the new Vietnamese places in the Western Saigon interior branch of the Eden Center; either that or Ray's Hell-Burger, Hong Kong Palace, Thai X-ing, or the now-reopened Nava Thai, right next door to the shuttered old branch. 

Annandale used to be a nice appendage to the peak places to eat.  Now it's the epicenter, the main culinary show, and also the coolest place to hang out.

Addendum: Here is a good article, which mentions Korean food as the next trend to come.  Let's hope not.

The Kaufmann Foundation brought together many bloggers and many servings of Kansas City barbecue.  (Isn't America a great country?  I met Mark Thoma for the first time and tomorrow we talk about blogging and the future of the world.)  Then we voted, using Borda Point Count.  Tim Kane tells me:

Oklahoma Joe's
wins handily.  Arthur Bryant's loses handily.  Others are close. 
(Hmmm … looks like a normal).

The article opens in this manner:

On Bondadagur, or Husband's Day, the menfolk of Iceland
are spoiled by their wives and girlfriends, who serve them with
traditional delicacies such as ram's testicles and sheep's head jelly,
a recipe for which is handily included in the latest online edition of
Iceland Review, alongside the latest bulletins on the economic meltdown.

It is interesting throughout.