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Food Wednesday: Two weeks in one
By Ann | December 3, 2008
Welcome to another edition of Food Wednesday, our weekly round-up of (some) French food media. This week features not one, but two weeks worth of news as last week we were in Aveyron celebrating Thanksgiving and strolling among Didier’s terraced grape vines (see photo above).
Alors, what did we miss last week? Le Fig had a round-up of industry hot spots — in other words, the watering holes where the folks who toil away in fashion, publishing, the media, and finance go to break bread and make deals. It’s no surprise that Le Costes is popular among the fashion set (239 rue St-Honoré, 1ème, tel: 01 42 44 50 25), or that Hemingway’s old haunt Closerie des Lilas still draws the literati (171 bd Montparnasse, 6ème, tel: 01 40 51 34 50). Click here for the full list.
In this week’s Le Fig, the rather humdrum theme continues with a round-up of 10 new gourmet boutiques, none of which seem particularly interesting except perhaps Première Pression Provence, “An olive-y symphony orchestrated by Olivier Baussan around the theme of Provence and its extra-virgin olive oil. Some twenty types of olive oil… all sold in 250 ml Inox cans for optimal conservation (between 6.50€ - 8€) and selected according to the olive’s maturation — green, ripe or black.”
In other (English) news, the NY Observer has an interesting profile on Mark Bittman, author of the current cookbook under review on this blog, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. (The review of which has, I must admit, come to a rather screeching halt).
According to this article in the NYT, New York magazine’s grande-dame restaurant critic, Gael Greene, has been sacked and she’s really not happy about it.
Finally, this article says that American obesity might be caused by the “health halo” — meaning when food is labelled fat-free or trans-fat free many feel they have a free license to pig out. It turns out portion size really does matter. Who knew?
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2 Responses to “Food Wednesday: Two weeks in one”
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December 4th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Portion size is one of the most egregious contributors to overeating in the USA. Popular eating spots are usually known for their gargantuan portion sizes and people tend to gravitate to these food-troughs for the huge servings. One suggestion to combat this excess in US restaurants is to request the kitchen to split the order and brown bag half of the entree even before serving. Large portion size is not usually an issue in Europe.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Thanks, Dad. Well, I was kind of joking about the importance of portion size. But it’s interesting you mention European portion size — if you read the article, you’ll see the author conducted his own little study, asking Americans vs. Europeans to guess the calorie content of an Applebee’s salad and Coke, vs. the same meal plus 2 transfat free (labelled) crackers. All the Americans guessed that the meal WITH the crackers would have less calories — maybe because of the transfat free label? All the Europeans guessed correctly that the meal with out the crackers would have fewer calories!