Wednesday Wade-Through (6/20/07)

Today’s Wednesday and that means the nation’s papers published their food sections, so it’s time for me to wade through them and all the food blogs to share with you the tastiest bits. Those of you who read my piece a few days ago in defense of food blogs might find that hypocritical–“Didn’t he say that mainstream media was dying? Why is he wading through it?”–but if that’s what you took from my piece, you misunderstood me. There will always be a place for both newspaper food sections and food blogs–it’s just that food blogs are becoming more and more relevant. And doing this wade-through proves the point: as you may have noticed in previous weeks (and perhaps today), only one or two links are from newspapers and the rest are from food blogs. Let’s see what happens. A’wading we go!

(1) The NYT’s Peeter Meehan profiles pastry chefs who are striking it out on their own. I’ve eaten at “Room 4 Dessert” several times and think it’s a fun place. I’m not sure if there’s really a demand though, for all these dessert-only destinations. Only time will tell!

(2) Dana Bowen’s piece Old McDonald Now Has a Book Contract starts with a gripping image: a farmer driving his tractor in a feather boa and “putting on a bumblebee suit and breaking into interpretive dance between rows of organic vegetables.” Makes me want to be a farmer.

(3) This is a leap, but Mika–the might-be-gay European pop sensation–just released his new video, “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)” which I will embed here:

I have to say: I love that video. Isn’t that refreshing to see a music video telling bigger women to love their bodies? And the women dancing with him at the start are gorgeous. I suppose that’s one thing gay men can do for heterosexual women: remind them that there’s a lot more to them than their bodies. Which is probably why I’m constantly trying to get my female friends to eat more. I want to fatten them all up so I can shoot a music video like this one day. [via Towleroad]

(4) Meg and Jason have me so excited to see Ratatouille that I may just buy a rat and let it run around my kitchen as entertainment until the movie’s released. Or I could just wait a week.

(5) Eater has a funny piece on bad P.R. e-mails and they mention one that, to me, is the funniest P.R. e-mail I ever received: “[redacted] Invite You To Celebrate the Launch of the Recently FDA Approved HAIRMAX LASER COMB.” I couldn’t believe that one when I read it. They wanted me to go to an uptown restaurant for the release of a laser comb. Now if it were a laser brush, then maybe I would’ve gone.

(6) Eater also has the scoop on the latest tiff between Keith McNally and Frank Bruni, the former outraged that the latter only one-starred his newest venture, Morandi. His latest tirade accuses Bruni of favoritism because he mentioned the Esca book in his review of Esca (the restaurant) and that book is co-written by my friend Ed Levine who, McNally points out, is also friends–or at least acquaintances–with Bruni. Did you follow all that? Neither did I. But somebody needs to tap McNally on the shoulder and tell him this kind of press is not good press for Morandi. It comes across as sour grapes; and not just sour grapes, bitter grapes too. It makes me not want to patronize him. And, actually, I had a sandwich at the Balthazar bakery the other day that was just ok–the ham and cheese panini. And those cartons the salads are in at the front look like airport food. But I’ll cut him some slack because the banana doughnut I also had (hey, I was hungry) was pretty excellent.

(7) I like that Mr. Cutlets (Josh Ozersky, of NYMag) leaves messages for Adam Kuban about the best burgers in New York and that Adam posts the messages on his blog. This week Josh calls the burger at Borough Food & Drink one of the top four burgers in New York. Wow–better check that out.

(8) When chefs marry chefs by Amy Scattergood in The L.A. Times. Wonder what a chef-chef wedding cake looks like?

(9) Francis Lam confirms (on the Gourmet blog) that the toasted marshmallow shake at Stand is the best thing there (a point I made myself just a few weeks back.) It’s the one on the left:

(10) My friend Ricky, who co-sang the Falafel song last week, is the Nutrition expert in this Elastic Waist video: Are You Out To Lunch? If you can guess how many calories are in what you’re eating, they’ll buy you lunch. I think I’d pay them not to make me think about calories while I’m eating!

And that, my friends, is this Wednesday’s Wednesday wade-through. Have a terrific day.