How well do you know your favorite cookhouse contraptions? See if you can guess today’s gadget and check back next week for the answer, and to see if you’ve won a most-awesome prize. Here are a few shots at this week’s trickster, add yours to the comment box below: -…
Run! Run for your lives! The flaming ball at the center of our solar system has crashed in the center of the parking lot of Vincent’s on Camelback! We’re doomed! Oh, wait, never mind. It’s just an orange Lamborghini driven by a recession-proof rich dude in search of an overpriced…
If TV has taught us anything about Beverly Hills, it’s that it’s full of super-rich, catty a-holes who are beautiful, own Chihuahuas, and are anti-Clampett. For once, can’t somebody tell these folks where they can stick their Chanel? Hey, maybe someone on Food Network’s new scripted reality show, Private Chefs…
Roll credits. FoodLab 2010: Hard Cooking with a Vengeance. FoodLab 2010: Revenge of the French. FoodLab 2010: Molecular Gastrology Boogaloo, whatever you want to call it, this flick is finally finished, or is it? Plot summary: Beautiful, young, innocent girl (hey, it’s my movie), struggles through the horrors of molecular…
Aqua-massagers. Perfumania. Glamour Shots. People-watching. A freakin’ carousel in the food court. What better place to set up a fast-food eatery featuring festival fare than in the Arizona Mills Mall? In this week’s Fry Girl review, I’m cruisin’, circus-style, through the gala grub of Festival Foods. The first, and only,…
Check the scene: A music festival in Tennessee 25 years ago. Chicagoan Rich Hollerbach meets Philadelphian Tony Scalia. They know big cities, and they know big-city food that packs a punch. Rich has downed dozens of Chicago dogs, and Tony’s chowed enough cheese steaks to fill the Liberty Bell. Cue…
Atomic Comics has been hosting anime events since Straw Hat Luffy was in short pants. “We don’t just run the event — for us, it’s personal,” says Aaron Forrester, assistant store manager at the Atomic Comics Chandler Superstore, panel member for costume creation at Phoenix Comicon, and outfitter of his…
“I’d toss a coin. Heads, I’d skin him alive.” Yikes. That’s some pretty hardcore stuff. The film, 44 Inch Chest, promises more dark brutality that is somehow so entertaining in cinema. From the writers of Sexy Beast and by first-time director Malcolm Venville, the movie stars Ray Winstone as a…
Who says you have to wait until the sun goes down to have a good time? “I’m later than I thought,” the tall, white-haired, white-mustached man apologizes to Tana and I as he jumps out of his pickup in the back parking lot of The Recovery Room. It’s a little…
How well do you know your favorite cookhouse contraptions? See if you can guess today’s gadget and check back next week for the answer, and to see if you’ve won a most-awesome prize. Here are a few shots at this week’s trickster, add yours to the comment box below: -…
In the end, we get what’s coming to us. Let’s hope it’s sweet. Ah, spring mornings. Who doesn’t love to wake to the sounds of birds singing, see the sun peeping through the bedroom window (Hello, Mr. Sun!), skip breakfast to take a leisurely walk under bright, blue skies. What?…
Ding! Ding! Ding! America, thanks to Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (the best reality show on TV right now) we now have a winner for the Glad-I-Don’t-Live-in-This Hellhole award: Huntington, West Virginia! Great job, Huntington! What’s your secret? Children who don’t know how to cut food with a knife and can’t…
Molecular gastronomy. Please. The process was more like a cruel joke. Mixing food with chemicals? Impossible to find ingredients? Extra money for supplies? Outcomes resembling the back end of the digestive process versus the front? And, of course, the invasive metric system. The pranksters? The Frenchies at Cuisine Innovation, makers…
The shameful bronze. The withering yellow ribbon. Third place sucks. What’s the number-three U.S. burger chain supposed to do, what with Burger King’s Steakhouse and McDonald’s Angus burgers all up in its freckle-faced grill? Dig the scene on Wall Street last May: Wall Street Analysts: Listen, you redheaded freak, you’re…
Quick. Name a radical feminist from China. Huh? That’s what San Francisco-based independent filmmaker Rae Chang thought when she discovered China’s first feminist, Qiu Jin. Thinking that more people should know about this “Chinese Joan of Arc” and her remarkable life, Chang quit her day job, joined forces with husband…
Hey, kids! Your idea of family fun is probably scarfing rubbery pizza, spiraling from a soda sugar rush, and accidentally slugging Chuck E. Cheese in the crotch. But for moms and dads (and the rest of us) looking for more substance and less schlock, the Phoenix Sister Cities WorldFEST 2010…
Can you feel it? The grill smoke burning your eyes? The grease stinging your fingers? The pound, pound, pounding of the patties? There’s a war going on out there, people. A burger war. And poor Wendy’s has been taking on some heavy fire lately what with Burger King’s Steakhouse and…
Who says you have to wait until the sun goes down to have a good time? “Whaddya makin’ for breakfast?” my day drinking pals Ronda and Tana and I ask Todd, the morning barkeep at My Ole Man’s in Glendale. “Anything you want,” he answers. “You’re the Italian-American Jersey boy,”…
How well do you know your favorite cookhouse contraptions? See if you can guess today’s gadget and check back next week for the answer, and to see if you’ve won a most-awesome prize. Here are a few shots at this week’s trickster, add yours to the comment box below: -…
In the end, we get what’s coming to us. Let’s hope it’s sweet. Ah, spring. That time of year when the axis of the Earth increases its tilt toward the sun and the length of daylight rapidly increases for the relevant hemisphere. Or: Pretty flowers! Pretty flowers! And with the…
Wow, being asked to join a major network like NBC must be quite an honor. Imagine being in the same category with respected show hosts like Jay Leno and Regis and Kelly. Looks like the Food Network’s own cutting-board jumping/Mortimoro offending chef, Bobby Flay, is going to take the leap…
Molecular gastronomy. Sure, it sounded interesting at first: Buy a kit, make some fun stuff using chemicals and food. The brochure even said, “Easily Get Started…” – easily! Soon, ingredients were impossible to find, an invasive measurement system reared its ugly head, additional money was needed for supplies, recipes couldn’t…
