Category: Food and Drink
The new Michelin winners
The Michelin dining guide will upgrade three restaurants, all in France, to three-star status. One three-star restaurant will be demoted to two stars. The Michelin three-star designation is the highest a restaurant can obtain, right now there are only twenty-seven three-star restaurants in the world.
Perhaps it is no accident that only three stars are used for the world’s most rigorous restaurant system (Gault-Milleau, in contrast, has a scale up to twenty). The smaller the number of stars, the harder it is to inflate the standard. If the scale has one hundred steps, no one can really tell if a “73” restaurant is pushed up to a “75” rating by mistake. Ratings inflation can slip in over time. But everyone knows if a restaurant is elevated to three-star status by mistake.
Michelin precommits to quality rankings and takes great care to preserve its name as a restaurant “gold standard.” It is commonly believed that the number of three-star restaurants in France is capped, in fact it has remained close to twenty-one since the mid-1930s. Furthermore it is harder to get back a third star once you have lost it, than to win it in the first place, see the first link for more information.
French cooking may be suffering under excess taxes and labor market regulation, but French food criticism is alive and well, in this case under corporate auspices and subsidy. The Red Guide does not make money on its own terms, but rather serves to advertise the parent company and burnish its image. It is a classic instance of the private production of public goods.
So the next time that Roger Ebert gives a movie either a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down,” this is a signal that he is offering a truly important evaluation.
Food for thought
“A medical examiner’s report on the death of diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins suggests that he had a history of heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension…at his death Dr. Atkins [a six-footer] weighed 258 pounds…”
From today’s Wall Street Journal. I’ll agree we can’t draw firm inferences here, but there is always Bayesian updating.
“I’d like the genetically modified organic food, please”
It turns out that much of the organic food in the U.K. has genetically modified components, usually soya:
Transgenic soya was found in ten of 25 organic or health food products tested by Mark Partridge and Denis Murphy, biotechnology researchers at the University of Glamorgan in Pontypridd, Wales. Eight of the ten were labelled either as ‘organic’, which should indicate the absence of transgenic ingredients under Soil Association rules, or explicitly as ‘GM-free’.
My take: Who cares? But the study does show just how arbitrary categories and labeling distinctions can be. “It’s all made out of matter,” I am fond of saying.
Protectionism hurts fine dining
My biggest personal complaint with U.S. trade policy concerns non-pasteurized cheese. Read Fred Foldvary:
Few Americans know what really good cheese tastes like, because the U.S. government bans tasty handmade cheese made from untreated milk. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibits the sale of cheese made with raw milk, which has not been aged for 60 days. If the raw-milk cheese is from France, voila, its sale is prohibited in the USA no matter how long it has been aged.
The danger of eating raw-milk cheese is similar to that of eating raw oysters, yet the latter is legal in the US. Those with higher risk of infection, such as pregnant women, should not eat raw-milk cheese, raw oysters and steak, and other foods that can harbor microbes that cause diseases. But Europeans have been eating raw-milk cheeses since ancient times, evidently with little ill effect. European cheese makers are generally careful to keep the milk uncontaminated, which minimizes the risk.
Now I have a new grudge: the ban on Szechuan peppercorns.
Since 1968, the federal government has banned the import of Sichuan peppercorns, which are the dried berries of the prickly ash shrub. The Agriculture Department did not really enforce the ban until two years ago, and its effort is expected to dry up supplies soon. Some chefs and retailers say that they are unable to find the peppercorns, which are often an ingredient of five-spice powder, a common Chinese seasoning. Others say they are selling what was stockpiled before the enforcement effort began.
The details are a bit complicated, but if you can believe the NYT, there is no good reason for the ban other than excessively broad bureaucratic classifications (a related item endangers citrus crops).
You can’t cook Sichuan food without huajiao,” said Wang Dinggeng, the chef at Grand Sichuan International on Second Avenue. “You can’t get that special ma la flavor,” he said of the peppercorns’ numbing (ma) and burning (la) effects.
Tragic, I say, tragic. By the way, if you ever visit my university, make sure you eat at the Szechuan restaurant China Star, in Fairfax, on Rt.236. Get the house specials, before it is too late.
The culture that is French
Concern over France’s diminishing importance in world cuisine has prompted the government to create a gourmet university, which it yesterday promised will be nothing less than the “Harvard for the art of French cooking”.
The university will open in October in Reims, in the heart of Champagne country, and admit 70 French and 30 foreign students in its first year, according to Renaud Dutreil, minister for small business and consumption.
And why is French haute cuisine in crisis?
The suicide of Bernard Loiseau, France’s best-known three-star chef, drew attention to the difficulties the best restaurants experience in reconciling innovative menus and silver service with the commercial realities of high wages and massive fixed costs.
Mr Loiseau’s suicide coincided with widespread frustration at international criticism claiming that French chefs have failed to move on from nouvelle cuisine and have fallen far behind Spanish, Italian, American and even British rivals.
… many restaurateurs have been frustrated by the government’s failure to lower VAT on sit-down meals.
The election pledge by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, prime minister, to reduce the rate to 5.5 per cent from the current 19.6 per cent is facing German opposition in Brussels.
Did you get that right? London is now a more interesting dining spot than Paris. The core problems involve an overregulated French labor market and excessively high French taxes. Here is the full story.
On a related note, it is now the case that 35 percent of all French movies are shot outside of France, most commonly in the Czech Republic. French filmmakers are asking their government to set up a specially subsidized studio complex, to restore French cinematic competitiveness. It is time we start realizing that government regulations involve an aesthetic price, not just an economic burden.
Addendum: Here is additional commentary on relative French culinary decline, with useful links.
Do only smokers benefit from moderate drinking?
Richard Ippolito says yes:
This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Survey to measure the effects of alcohol on the incidence of morbidity and death. The study is able to reproduce the implied benefits of engaging in moderate levels of alcohol consumption, even after controlling for a large number of independent variables not usually available in health data sets. In fact, the controls work in the direction of supporting the benefits of engaging in even higher dose levels than conventionally recommended. It turns out, however, that smokers and quitters enjoy most of the benefits of unusually high alcohol consumption. Non-smokers evince modest benefits that are completely captured at very low dose levels. In general, the results suggest that studies of alcohol intake on health need to pay more attention to the characteristics of users. It may be that alcohol is especially beneficial for populations that are deficient in their health for other reasons like smoking or poor eating, whereas populations who follow good diets and do not smoke benefit very little from alcohol use.
Smokers should drink even more than we had thought, or quit smoking. Non-smokers won’t benefit much from drinking. Thanks to Newmark’s Door, one of the most useful yet underrated blogs, for the pointer.
The forward march of culinary diversity
OK, this is interesting: Chicago may soon be home to the first haggis factory in the US:
“There are lots of Scots living in the States, and Scottish food is becoming increasingly popular, so I think the market is definitely big enough to make haggis a success in the U.S.,” Ken Stahly, owner of Stahly Quality Foods told the Evening Telegraph and Post in Scotland. “Chicago is an ideal base, because its geographical location is an ideal gateway to the U.S. and Canadian marketplace.”
Not to mention our extensive set of folkways that involve eating various and sundry pieces of meat and offal ground into bit and stuffed into organs, yum. Actually, I love bratwurst, don’t get me wrong, but … even on Burns Day and even in Scotland I can’t bring myself to eat haggis. I’ll stick with Lagavulin, thank you very much.
Interestingly, the company says that they will market a vegetarian haggis in the US market (!).
The material is from Lynne Kiesling, here is the original article. I’ll bet against the commercial success of the idea, in part because I suspect that high quality haggis is not made in a “factory.” Nonetheless American dining options continue to increase, the northern Virginia suburbs now have real Szechuan restaurants, fried duck’s blood and that sort of thing. As for the haggis I will pass.
Dreaming
I love restaurant dining, as much for the anticipation of culinary bedazzlement as the actuality. To me, the best part of any meal is opening the menu. At that point, anything is possible; nothing’s been overcooked, underseasoned, or otherwise ruined in the kitchen.
From Leslie Brenner’s American Appetite: The Coming of Age of a Cuisine.
The life of a food taster
…professional-eater salaries run the gamut. Since most work in food science or product development, those who taste for a living can be entry-level employees earning between $30,000 and $60,000 or senior execs raking in six figures, according to industry insiders.
In any case, many live the good life in terms of what they get to try, like trained wine drinkers or Godiva’s [products].
But others, like taster Ann Hollingsworth, have tested somewhat less sumptuous foods – in her case, hotdogs and other meats for industry giants like McDonald’s and Sara Lee.
The workload sounds especially appealing:
Generally, tasters are only used for about an hour a day total – often only for a few minutes at a time.
“You can’t just sit down there for four or five hours at a time,” said Caporaso, who has run panels for companies like Baskin-Robbins, Pfizer (when it had a food division), Nestle Carnation and Lipton. “You get fatigued.” [This reminds me of similar arguments I have heard about teaching!]
To preserve her palate (and her stomach), Koen generally only tastes three different pieces of chocolate a day, usually when the company is developing a new product. She also samples competitors’ chocolates.
In some unusual instances Koen will have to taste 50 chocolate pieces a day: “After all that decadence, she usually takes a week-long respite from chocolate eating.”
Just one kind of taster does not suffice:
Food and beverage companies need two kinds of tasters before their products hit the market.
The professionals are either outside contractors or internal food scientists, chefs and product developers trained to analyze flavor intensity, sweetness or bitterness, texture and product consistency. In-house tasters are often used because of convenience, their experience with that food and company secrecy. But they can become biased, which is why some businesses call on outsiders to do some tasting.
Consumer tasters are members of the general public who evaluate whether they love or hate a product, after the professionals have fine-tuned the formula.
There is also such a thing as a super-taster [N.B. I consider myself an unpaid super-taster!]:
…a “super taster” [has] a particularly discerning palate. Super tasters have between twice and four times as many tastebuds on their tongues as the average person and are picky eaters, according to Caporaso.
“Sometimes the super tasters are a detriment because they’re picking up these little nuances in the product that the average consumer can’t detect,” he said.
Life as a supertaster can be especially tough. One individual was told he had the talent of a supertaster, but he declined to pursue the profession. He said he could not stand the idea of having to taste so many random foods, rather than just eating what he likes. Some tasters have had to sample birth control pills and dog food. Here is the full story.
The economics of cheese
Free trade is not only good for prosperity, it is also good for fine food shopping. Here are some pithy comments on a recent book on the history of Camembert cheese:
Fifty years ago, or even twenty-five, it was very hard, if not impossible, to get cru Camembert – or gold seal balsamic vinegar, or single-estate Tuscan extra virgin olive oil, or jambon de Bayonne, or Ortiz salt-packed Spanish anchovies, or Niçoise olives – if you didn’t live in a world metropolis or in the regions near where they were produced. Now they are all widely available. Thanks to the Internet, Fedex, the food-writers (and their globalised publishing firms), the once-local has become global.
Nor is it just the distant local that has a place in the markets; preferences for the local local are now better catered for than at any time in the recent past: farmers’ markets flourish as never before in both Britain and America; the role of the “forager” – searching out the quality produce of local farmers for top restaurants – has become institutionalised; the formerly resistant Californian wine industry is rediscovering the power of place as against the manipulations of the scientific winemaker; the cheese plates at better American eateries feature increasingly convincing Sonoma County goat cheeses and one of the finest semi-soft goat cheeses in the world, the Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog; the Slow Food movement gathers strength throughout the world and reinforces the revival of the local and the seasonal.
Here is the full book review, from The London Review of Books, the piece is interesting throughout. Here is an earlier post on the corporate origins of Maytag cheese in the United States. Here is a post on using radar to improve the quality of wine.
The bottom line: When I first started going to Europe, in the early 1980s, I was amazed at the quality of the foodstuffs, but America is catching up rapidly. The next steps: lower price supports for dairy products, lower duties on foreign cheese, and free importation of non-pasteurized cheeses, the opposite of what Hillary Clinton wants.
Quotation of the day
…the GM [genetically modified] food controversy is a feature of societies for which food is not a life-and-death issue. In India, where people literally starve to death…up to 60 percent of fruit grown in hill regions rots before it reaches market. Just imagine the potential good of a technology that delays ripening, like the one used to create the Flavr-Savr tomato. The most important role of GM foods may lie in the salvation they offer developing regions, where surging birthrates and the pressure to produce on the limited available arable land lead to an overuse of pesticides and herbicides with devastating effects upon both the environment and the farmers applying them; where nutritional deficiencies are a way of life and, too often, of death; and where the destruction of one crop by a pest can be a literal death sentence for farmers and their families…The opposition to GM foods is largley a sociopolitical movement whose arguments, though couched in the language of science, are typically unscientific.
From James Watson’s recent DNA The Secret of Life, p.160, the book is also a good introductory read on DNA issues more generally.
By the way, here is a picture of aquarium fish, they are genetically modified to glow in the dark, thanks to Chris Mooney for the link and commentary.
Corporations and cheeses
Have you ever wondered why they call it Maytag cheese? As in the people who make the dishwashers and washing machines? There is in fact a close connection:
Maytag Blue
Nestled in among the rolling hills of central Iowa is the Maytag appliance factory. Down the road and around the corner is the Maytag Dairy, which produces Maytag Blue cheese, among other, lesser-known cheeses. Yes, the two are related. Fritz Maytag, son of the founder of the Maytag washing machine company, decided he wanted to make his own entrepreneurial mark on the world. Shortly before World War II, he began working with scientists at Iowa State University to begin making a great American blue cheese, modeled after those of Europe. The result was one of the first American farmstead cheeses of superior quality. The dairy is now independent of the appliance company and collects milk from a local dairy cooperative, rather than raising its own cows. Maytag cheese makers, however, are still hand making the same cheese that they created in the 1930’s. Maytag Blue’s popularity has taken off with the growing interest in American farmstead cheeses, and this wonderful, tangy blue cheese is now featured on menus across the country. Its wonderful flavor, moist yet crumbly texture, and lemony finish make Maytag one of the world’s great blue cheeses.
By the way, here is a good recipe for Maytag Blue, or just spread it on apples.
A neat story, no? Sadly, it all ends in subsidy. Here is a libertarian critique of government price support programs for dairy products:
In 1995 alone, wrote Kevin McNew in a Policy Analysis for the Cato Institute (December 1, 1999), taxpayers shelled out $8 billion to dairy farmers through various federal price-support programs…[According to James Bovard] “For the cost of the dairy program, each American family could have bought its own dairy cow.”
Little did I know that some of these subsidies go to the same people who make household appliances, I can’t possibly imagine any good reason for this.
Caviar facts
1. Venetian trading ships first brought caviar to Europe from the Black Sea in the fourteenth century.
2. Caviar remained obscure for another three hundred years. Shakespeare, in his Hamlet, even used the word caviar to refer to something unknown and obscure, Hamlet complains that this play was “caviare to the general.”
3. Galileo was an early fan of caviar.
4. Rabelais, in his tale of Pantegruel, refers to caviar as something ridiculous.
5. Many stocks of sturgeon around the world were exhausted through overfishing and “tragedy of the commons.” Russia has remained the world’s major source of caviar in part through accident. The chaos of WWI, the Bolshevik revolution, and the monopolies and inefficiencies of communism all helped prevent overfishing and preserve sturgeon stocks at critical points in time. This must be counted as one of the economic successes of the Soviet regime.
6. The sturgeon is now an endangered species and caviar movements are tightly regulated. A caviar smuggler can receive up to $20,000 for the contents of a single suitcase, those contents will sell “on the street” for as much as $100,000.
7. The future of caviar lies in fish farming and privately owned sturgeons.
These facts are all from Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World’s Most Coveted Delicacy, by Inga Saffron, an excellent book, or you can download it for $10.
Food safety tips for turkey
Read here, courtesy of the U.S. government, they give you cooking tips as well. We don’t know how many Americans die each year from food poisoning, here is a good article on differing estimates, and their unreliability, but in any case don’t be one of them.
Oenophiles love global warming?
According to a report in Scientific American:
Gregory Jones of Southern Oregon University and his colleagues analyzed data from 27 of the top wine-producing regions worldwide from the last 50 years… The scientists studied Sotheby’s vintage rating…and compared the trends to climate records. Overall, they found an average temperature increase of two degrees Celsius for the wine regions and higher vintage ratings for their products. “There were no negative impacts,” Jones notes.
Armchair economics makes me suspicious. The “top wine-producing regions” should be located in places where the weather is optimal for grape growing. If higher temperatures are better, why weren’t the top wine regions located further to the South to begin with? Higher temperatures could make previously inhospitable areas good for wine-making and even raise wine quality on net but the best regions ought to be made worse by climate change. I suspect the authors did not control well for other factors that are improving wine.