Category: Food and Drink

I'm afraid to give this one much of a subtitle:

I thank John de Palma for the pointer.

Will Wilson blogs:

Seattle’s 5 Spot has a new “Blue Plate Special” promotion, with the daily meal priced like this:

There’s a built-in stop-loss, too. They make a limited number of blue plates each night, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Smokers are three times more likely to kick the habit for at least six months when they are paid up to $750 (£520), a new study has found.

Nearly 900 General Electric workers took part in the test across 85 US sites. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

GE will launch a similar scheme in 2010 for all US employees, believing it will be cost-effective in the long term.

Ben, a loyal MR reader, asks:

What is the preferable type of food to eat when it is produced en masse? I.e., for what type of food does the quality not diminish significantly when it's produced for a buffet? How much worse is Panda Express from "real" Chinese food vs. Fast Food Mexican from "real" Mexican?

Indian food, produced en masse, sits relatively well, especially the non-meat dishes and the ground meats.  It can sit and stew for a long time.  Chinese food, which usually should be cooked at high heat and served immediately, wares about the worst.  Barbecue can do fine, if it is cooked properly to begin with (not usually the case, however).  At Chipotle the carnitas are pretty good and they are cooked sous vide at a distance and then reheated in the restaurant.  But the top prize goes to Korean vegetable dishes, many of which are fermented and pickled in the first place.  Natasha and I catered our wedding party with Korean vegetables (and a bit more, including some cold meats) with no loss of culinary value.

You'll find it here, in html version, and it has more individual revisions than ever before.  The list of my favorite places, for instance, is about half new.  The blog version of the guide you'll find here and it offers updates on a more or less real time basis, while the html version is revised once a year or so.  The html version is useful if you want to print the whole thing out.  Here's one of the new reviews:

What is the best barbecue in Kansas City?  It was once Arthur Bryant's but is that really still the best?  I mean The Best.  Many people — not just me — will benefit from your correct answer to this question.

Choping, it seems, is a practice in Singapore when you reserve a table while you are getting your food at public eating areas.  The problem (or is it one?) arises when there are more groups of patrons than available tables.  Your little tissue marker stands on the table while other people wander around looking for a place to plant their little markers, so they may better eat their laksa.

It seems to me that choping is efficient.  If you can reserve a table by choping, the inefficiency is that you show up to eat earlier, and grab a table earlier, than you would like to.  But once you have a table you don’t have to hurry so much.  If you can’t reserve the table by choping, the inefficiency is that you go to the food stalls without lines.  (The very best food stalls can have lines of half an hour or more.)  Without choping you are less willing to wait in those lines because the good tables are going away.

Choping increases the ease of getting the very best food of Singapore.  And that food is very very good indeed.

Choping may not be efficient elsewhere. 

Addendum: Al Roth comments.

Cocoa futures hit a
23-year high, capping a successful year for the commodity.  Chocolate
has done rather well this year, and not simply because the world has
been fretting about recession and craving comfort food. Constrained
supply coupled with robust demand has helped London cocoa futures rise
by some 71.0% since the end of last year, making cocoa one of the
market’s best performing commodities.  On Wednesday, the day before
millions of people around the world offered boxes of the sweet stuff to
their relatives as Christmas gifts, cocoa futures for May 2009 delivery
hit a 23-year high of £1,820.0($2,545.90) per ton in London(…)

Here is the story and I thank John de Palma for the pointer.  Here are previous installments in the series.

The cult-like fascination with the game has even spawned a World of Warcraft-themed restaurant in China, complete with dishes inspired by the game.

The article has other interesting features, mostly on the value of WoW experience in the job market.  Here is one bit:

…employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft
players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100%
because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not
great, etc.

Good, humorous uses of "etc." are not easy to come by.

Burger King Corp. may have just the thing. The home of the Whopper has launched a new men’s body spray called "Flame." The company describes the spray as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat."

The fragrance is on sale at New York City retailer Ricky’s NYC in stores and online for a limited time for $3.99.

Burger King is marketing the product through a Web site featuring a photo of its King character reclining fireside and naked but for an animal fur strategically placed to not offend.

Here is the article and I thank John de Palma for the pointer.

I have a great many things to be thankful for and will be reflecting on them today. I wish all our readers the very best.

"We just really wanted to shatter the cupcake-pizza dichotomy. It’s just existed for too long."

I am a monist myself.  Here is much more information.  It is also an example of Thomas Schelling’s idea of research by accident:

"[A] lot of our ideas come from just not having the proper materials," Wilder said. "Like the pupzzas came from not being able to find the large tins."