Category: Food and Drink

Chicken tikka masala

Robin Cook announced chicken tikka masala as the new national dish of Great Britain.  Food critics immediately responded by condemning it as a British invention.  Chicken tikka masala, they sneered, was not a shining example of British multiculturalism but a demonstration of the British facility for reducing all foreign foods to their most unappetizing and inedible forms.  Rathar than the inspired invention of an enterprising Indian chef, this offensive dish was dismissed as the result of an ignorant customer’s complaint that his chicken tikka was too dry.  When the chef whipped together a can of Campbell’s tomato soup, some cream, and a few spices to provide a gravy for the offending chicken, he produced a mongrel dish of which, to their shame, Britons now eat at least 18 tons a week.

That is from Lizzie Collingham’s Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, an excellent look at the history of Indian food, and especially the Persian origins of many Indian dishes.

Unholy Water

The EclecticEconomist alerts us to a story in the Onion CBC News:

The United Church of Canada may ask its members to stop buying bottled water.

The
request is part of a resolution against the privatization of water
supplies that has been put before delegates at the church’s general
council this week in Thunder Bay….

"We’re against the commodification, the privatization is another way to say it, of water anyway, anywhere," [said a church leader.]

If the United Church cares about children they should reconsider their opposition.  Privatized water saves lives.  From my post, Water of Life:

…In the 1990s Argentina embarked
on one of the largest privatization campaigns in the world, including
the privatization of local water
companies covering approximately 30 percent of the country’s
municipalities.
Using the variation in ownership of water provision across time and
space generated
by the privatization process, we find that child mortality fell 8
percent in
the areas that privatized their water services and that the effect was
largest (26 percent) in the poorest areas….

That is the abstract to a very important paper, Water for Life: The Impact of the Privatization of Water Services on Child Mortality, by Sebastian Galiani, Paul Gertler and Ernesto Schargrodsky in the February 2005 issue of the JPE.  (free working paper version).

It’s not every day I get to try a new cuisine…

Surinamese.  As far as I can tell, it is a mix of Indonesian, Chinese, Creole, and Indian ideas.  Tasty and cheap, but don’t expect to be startled.  Although I could have been fooled, my "Nasi Goreng met Saty" would have tasted worse, had I thought it was Indonesian.  In Amsterdam, by the outdoor bazaar, there is a street with at least fifteen Surinamese restaurants…

Those Michelin Stars Translate as Dollar Signs

Here is my latest New York Times column, on the economics of fine dining and The Society for Quantitative Gastronomy.  It is fitting that I am now in Lyon.  Excerpt:

Receiving a Michelin star increases prices in a Parisian restaurant
by 20 percent, controlling for measures of quality, décor and location.
Michelin-starred restaurants in fancy hotels, or in areas with other
Michelin-starred restaurants, also have higher prices, again adjusting
for quality. Diners are paying more to eat in fine or prestigious
surroundings, whether or not the food is better. One gastronomy expert,
speaking in Le Nouvel Observateur, noted, “Gaining a Michelin star
ensures that your banker will be kind to you.”

For those who hold
the food as their main concern, the researchers offer a way forward.
Dr. Verardi and Dr. Gergaud have built an index for overpriced and
underpriced restaurants, relative to their food. They use the Zagat
Survey to Parisian restaurants – whose popularity rankings are
generated by diners’ reports, not critics – to provide an independent
measure of customer satisfaction, which is then compared with price.

There is also a new Journal of Wine Economics, see the column for more information.  Here is Dubner, on the same.

The Nutty Professor

Here’s an amazing piece of the life of Timothy Leary from the NYTimes book review of Timothy Leary: A Biography.

…he finally went to jail, and was likely to be kept there for years
before he would be considered for parole. Characteristically, he
compared himself to "Christ . . . harassed by Pilate and Herod." In a
twist that could have occurred only in 1970, a consortium of drug
dealers paid the Weather Underground to spring Leary from the
California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo – he pulled himself along a
telephone cable over the fence, then was picked up by a car – and
transport him to Algeria. He duly issued a press statement written in
the voice of the Weathermen, the money line of which was: "To shoot a
genocidal robot policeman in the defense of life is a sacred act."

But
when he and his wife, Rosemary, arrived in Algiers, they found
themselves wards of the exiled Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver,
who was probably smarter than Leary, possibly crazier, and had little
use for him. As Leary acknowledged, rather shrewdly: "It was a new
experience for me to be dependent on a strong, variable, sexually
restless, charismatic leader who was insanely erratic. I usually played
that role myself."

Markets in everything, alas no more

The Chinese government has banned restaurants from serving food on the bodies of naked women.  The practice was condemned as a violation of common decency by the commerce department.  …The practice of eating sushi off naked or nearly-naked women has long been popular with a certain clientele in Japan.

Here is the full story, and thanks to Yan Li for the pointer.  And if you wish to read about a truly unusual Chinese market, try this one.

Bordeaux bleg

Next week I am headed to Bordeaux for the inaugural meeting of the Society for Quantitative Gastronomy.  How will they react to hearing I am not (yet?) much of a wine drinker?  They will be talking of Michelin stars and the econometrics of wine prices; I will be harping on Texas barbecue, Sichuan peppercorns, and why Hyderabad has the best Biryani. 

Your suggestions for Bordeaux, wine or otherwise, would be most welcome.  I might have a free day or two for a side trip as well.

China fact of the day

China is the world’s greatest consumer of dog meat, eating as many as 20 million dogs a year.

…in Beijing, Dog restaurateur Wang Qiming says business is good.

"There are many who eat dogs. Before, young people didn’t, but now they do."

…Restaurants claim that the boom in dog ownership in China hasn’t caused a decline in the eating of dogs.

Chef Zhang Jinxiong says business has never been better.  "Dog meat is a good dish. If everyone misses the opportunity to eat it, in the future they may regret it." [TC: Huh?]

So this is China in 2006, the Year of the Dog: a nation at once embracing the canine as a pet, a way to make money, and as food.

And perhaps, as can only be happening in China, all are booming at the same time.

Here is the story, and thanks to Yan Li for the pointer.

Addendum: MeganinVietnam offers another report, not for the squeamish.