You don’t have to be Jerry Seinfeld to be afraid of chefs who don’t wash their hands. Bad personal hygiene is dangerous — and all too prevalent in our restaurants. And that’s one way you get food poisoning.I was recently dining at the bar of one of my favorite Mexican…
Sure, the recipes inside are solidly good, even inspired. But the name, The Wicca Cookbook, is enough to choke on.Forget about “eye of newt” and “toil and trouble”: If it’s a Shakespearean cliché, a book reviewer has beat you to it. Of course, some didn’t make it past the cover…
I’m toying with the idea of planting corn in my backyard, then infecting it with the fungus Ustilago maydis. If all goes well, the kernels will be coated with a greenish-white covering, then turn silver-gray before rupturing to reveal huitlacoche, a black corn fungus that is a delicacy in Mexican…
Since the beginning of time, or at least harking back to the days when the earliest life forms washed ashore gasping for coffee, we have answered the call of caffeine.Since we are no longer content to merely brew the stuff ourselves at home, coffee houses have become the hangout of…
Christie’s Cabaret claims to have “the most amazing lunch in town,” and the fact is, it probably does. Topnotch sandwiches. Chicken wings that are nothing short of perfect. The best blue cheese dressing you’ll find anywhere.And lots of made-up, stripped-down girls who, for $10, will straddle your legs and let…
At first glance, you think that the mercado (marketplace) in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, is just like any other in Mexico, with rows of colorful fruits and vegetables, cheese purveyors and one food stall after another. Then you are captured by the array of brightly dressed women. One in particular catches my…
Does it sometimes seem that, no matter the restaurant, you always get poor service? Even when diners nearby are getting the royal treatment? It could be true. You may not be aware of it, but you could be sending signals to your server that you won’t be tipping well when…
Ethel McGill, who makes wonderful food, is not afraid to say so. In general, she tells it like it is.”This here is Texas sheet cake,” she might say, and you should believe it, although she will later explain that “it’s what you folks call a brownie.” When you have tried…
It is the ultimate cold-weather comfort food, a baked turnover filled with meat, onions and potatoes. The humble Cornish pasty (pronounced “pass-tee”) was brought to Arizona and the rest of the New World by immigrant miners from Cornwall, that Celtic land of tin mines and fishing villages in Britain’s extreme…
Lewis Bottomly is not given to exaggeration.”I’ve met some very good chefs,” he says, and indeed he has: among them, Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. But when Bottomly goes on to describe himself as “not so much a chef as a technician,” his talent for understatement takes him too far…
On a busy evening before the holidays, I entered Houston’s without a reservation. There was an uneasy feeling in my stomach as I approached the exquisite creature standing behind the podium. She was looking down; her hair was like a Pantene commercial, her skin like porcelain, and I could have…
It looks like a cooking class, and it smells like one. But this is not a cooking class. And Tanya Ferguson, who is wearing an apron and slicing carrots, is not a cook.”There are three things that come with most kitchens that I think are not necessary,” Ferguson says, as…
I’m a longtime restaurant person. I’ve been the dishwasher, the head waiter and the manager. I consider myself a good evaluator of service.My passion is dining out at all types of restaurants. I don’t look for the Mary Elaine’s touches when I eat at Carlsbad Tavern. Each level of restaurant…
As a child growing up in China, Sonia Tang remembers one of her favorite after-school snacks was a bowl of yam balls topped with shaved ice and sweetened cream.Now, as owner of Taiwan Express, Tang has found a new market for her old childhood treat. These days, though, the balls…
For astrologer Dana Haynes, timing is everything. “Astrology is all about cycles,” she says, “and everything works with timing.”So Haynes, who has a comedian’s knack for it, has selected a Thursday evening two weeks after Thanksgiving, when Christmas lights are up and seasonal shopping is well under way, to suggest…
In every office, there are those upbeat team players who love getting into the holiday spirit. They wear theme sweaters, festoon their offices with garland and candy canes and play Christmas music on portable CD players. It’s usually one of these do-gooders who spearheads the annual office holiday potluck. After…
My Italian husband balks at food that isn’t red or green. When I brought him to his first Polish Christmas Eve supper, he looked at our food and grimaced: “Everything is brown!”We surveyed the landscape of our table — a sable sea of black mushroom soup steaming in Grandmom’s tureen,…
