Here’s my response in Version Originale…

World capital? That’s loaded question.

Twenty years – even 10 – ago, the question was bandied about for fun but we already knew the answer, but now, just using the places I know well, it’s a legitimate debate. Barcelona combines an unquenchable curiosity and solid base to keep themselves on cuisine’s front edge. Sicily combines incredible raw ingredients with solid value and New York could win on sheer numbers yet it is Paris’ equal in quality and exponentially more diverse. India is a time machine whose cuisine never ages.

Plus, in Paris, coffee is awful and the beer second rate. It’s also pricey. That said, you forget all problems instantly when the former butcher who can hold four bottles of wine in one hand and owns Le Severo puts a côte de boeuf aged 40 days under your nose. You forget it when Pierre Gagnaire boils down a great vat of red wine to make a tiny component of a sauce. You forget it when Laetitia at Le Bistro Paul Bert greets you with a smile, seats you at your favorite table and gifts you with a glass of wine and when it comes to choosing a bottle of wine doesn’t foist something you can’t afford on you. You forget it when three bottles, two glasses of Calvados and one conversation into a meal, you realize with a start that it’s 5 a.m. and you’ve been at the table for nine hours.

Undeniable world champ? Not anymore. However, the French exception still reigns. Let’s call Paris first among equals.

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Whether they have been around for a while, or are new spots simply conjuring an older ethos, a handful of diners across North America are shaking things up, putting smarter, better food on the Formica while keeping prices within reach.

... read the rest here in The Daily.

More than a century later, the wine’s history would bubble over into a controversy involving one of America’s richest MCs — a tale that began with some serious bling and ended with a boycott.

Cristal is arguably the most desirable bottle of champagne in the world, a pure status symbol. It’s what economists call a Veblen good — something like a Rolls-Royce or a Hermès Birkin bag, whose desirability increases with its price. That kind of exclusivity was exactly what Alexander II had in mind.

... read the rest here in The Daily.

My therapy, however, would be the liquid kind — I’d be carbonating cocktails at home.

... read the rest here on WIRED.com.

“When they ask me ‘What’s the first thing I should do?’. I say ‘Have children’,” Foti told AFP, as he strolled among the thick, knotted vines of his own property on Mount Etna’s northern slope.

The son and grandson of Sicilian winemakers, Foti believes that getting the Italian island to shine requires a long-term commitment. His teenage son is at his side to oversee the harvest, learning just as he once did.

“Many winemakers are not thinking of the future,” says Foti. “If you’re thinking about money right now, you’re not thinking about terroir and what’s good for the vineyard.”

... read the rest here with AFP.

Chef Michael Solomonov opened the Philadelphia hot spot in mid-October. The budding restaurateur also opened a sandwich joint, Percy Street Barbecue, in early November, a satellite of the South Street original he opened two years ago. (For good measure, he had his first kid, David, in August.) Solomonov, 33, also owns Zahav, a three-year-old, high-end Israeli street food restaurant. Every venue, whether takeout or sit-down, is tops in its class.

... read the rest here in The Daily.

Along with descriptions of new products like Xanté Pear Liqueur — headline: “Not A Sex Toy!” — Morgenthaler uses his blog as a platform to announce what he’s doing at the bar in Clyde Common, a Portland restaurant. The drinks and styles he writes about tend to become cocktail-world trends.

... read the rest here in The Daily.

Located in the spot recently vacated by the ill-fated Breuckelen restaurant at 268 Clinton St. - next to the lovely Ted & Honey Café - Raij says the cuisine will be “Spanish food seen through its Moorish and Jewish roots.”

The food will be a mix of small plates and shareable larger dishes.

“The basis will be home cooking, not the traditional ‘meat, starch, veg,’” says Raij.

Who’ll be running the line? “We will, for now,” she says.

Somewhere in there, Raij will also be having a baby.

“We did our last opening like that,” she jokes.

Why change now?

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I first met chef Scott Jaeger at the Bocuse d’Or — a sort of international “Iron Chef Live!” before “Iron Chef” existed, hosted by French living-legend chef Paul Bocuse in Lyon. Here, Jaeger, representing Canada in 2007 in front of legions of fans wearing JAEGER hockey shirts, was in his ideal culinary milieu, with his French-influenced competition-style technical cuisine — food that is incredibly precise and time consuming.

Jaeger found his style in his travels, in the kitchens of London, France, Austria and Switzerland. He could have set up shop in any major city in the world, but in 1988 he returned to Vancouver, where he’d lived since the age of 15, and opened the Pear Tree restaurant in the suburb of Burnaby. Despite Canada’s then-status as a culinary outlier, and his home city’s reluctance to adopt the relative pomp and circumstance of the cuisine he loved, the ingredients were there and he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

“A West Coast suit is jeans, a sport coat and nice leather shoes. People have tried and failed to run fine dining establishments here because they were seen as pompous,” he said. “Vancouver doesn’t do the big city dining where you go for a cocktail, then somewhere else for dinner, then the theater and a drink afterward. Here, dinner is the show.”

Perhaps that is why Jaeger sees the Vancouver dining scene as incredibly competitive.

“If you’re at a price point, the other restaurants in your category hold you to it,” he said. “At $30 a plate, it’s assumed you’re sourcing local, fresh and using the highest quality of ingredients. If not, diners will call you out on it because they have a lot of options.”

On that note, Jaeger sends me out to get the lay of the land. I go to see his former sous chef, Lee Cooper, at L’Abattoir, now considered one of Canada’s top restaurants.

... read the rest here in The Daily.

Cocktail bitters, those tiny, paper-wrapped bottles filled with a liquid so intense that most cocktails only require a dash or two, are the bartender’s equivalent of the iron that turns a rumpled outfit into a crisp-pressed suit.

When a cocktail is missing a certain something, salvation is often just a few drops away. But beware, add too much and your sublime cocktail will be undrinkable.

Now, boutique bitters are springing up across the United States and Canada and craft bartenders looking for ways to transform an old-fashioned gin cocktail or a sour are fueling demand.

... read the rest here with AFP.

I score a seat at eight of them — four on Saturday from 1 a.m. to 5 p.m. and four more in the same time slot on Sunday, with a few hours on Saturday night to run home, take a shower and lament the dark circles beneath my eyes. Along with my camera gear and notebooks, I bring a Dopp kit and extra pressed shirts. On site, I take frequent catnaps in a back office set up for event staff and journalists, a space that rapidly takes on a locker room smell.

... read the rest here in The Daily.

ME:
Hi! Heading to maine w family for the afternoon. Got any snack/clam shack recs between Kittery and Ogunquit? Thanks!

This is a sort of abuse of a perk of the trade on my part, particularly when you note my timing. Yet within an hour I had a response…

HILARY:
Bob’s Clam Hut, Route 1, Kittery, tops a lot of lists of the best fried clams. If you’re craving Jamaican fare, there’s a funky takeout spot on the inland side of Route 1, in Cape Neddick, north of York. Flo’s Steamed Dogs have a legacy of their own (written about in both Gourmet and Saveur). It’s also on Route 1 in Cape Neddick (ocean side, look for a reddish-brown roadside shack, open to 3 and not a minute later). Brown’s Ice Cream, Nubble Rd, York, is wonderful, and if you want an old timey experience, stop by the Goldenrod in York Beach (makes taffy, fudge, ice cream). No culinary traveler should miss Stonewall Kitchen just off 95 on Route 1 in York (heading north, exit just before toll). In Ogunquit, Bread and Roses bakery always has wonderful treats.

We try as much as we can - Bob’s is the bomb (see photo), the Jamaican joint was closed, Flo’s was fantastic (they serve Moxie!), and Bread and Roses’ coffee (Carpe Diem) does the trick in spades.

ME:
My word, have I not even written back to say thanks? I’m such a dog. One last question - turns out we’re coming up for a lobstah story Monday & Tuesday (post hurricane, I hope!) any Freeport-area places to stay?
Grazie!
Joe

HILARY:
Grin! Freeport, you can’t beat the Harraseeket Inn (http://www.harraseeketinn.com, it’s close to everything—steps from Bean’s, outlets, shops, restaurants, and it has the best dining in Freeport (okay, new chef since I last went, so can’t guarantee that, but innkeepers are committed to excellence and have deep Maine roots.

Other good spots in Freeport: Mediterranean Grill, Azure Cafe.
H.

All this lady does is throw strikes! Follow Maine’s self-proclaimed Travel Maven on Facebook.

Thank you, Hilary!

Something of a media darling, M. Wells is/was also a gastronomic UFO housed in a diner: they do what they wanted to, which is pretty admirable in my book. It received incredible raves and, since I’ve been there, one blazing, bizarre review whose subject matter I’m not touching with a ten-foot pole.

Since then, the restaurant has apparently been forced out of their Long Island City location by their landlord and, at this point, there are only rumors about it resurfacing.

When we arrive, François promises to share some of his Caesar salad with smoked herring but it disappears before I point my fork in his direction. I try ‘Bacalao Magasin’ a veritable bath of olive oil that poaches, heats or finishes carrots, shrimp, beans, peas and salt cod in a great terracotta bowl.

For our ‘Big Dish’ – menu choices here are divided into ‘big’ and ‘small’ – we try the ‘BibiM Wells,’ a seafood riff on the Korean dish, which is something of a bunt that could have been a home run with more thought given to the play of texture that make the original so good.

The night we’re there, I wish we were with a much larger group to try the big dishes, where much of the creativity appears to lie – BBQ short ribs, lamb saddle with za’atar, tahini and pomegranate molasses, chicken wonton pot-au-feu – but get a sense of the bigger game the chefs seem to be after with an escargot and bone marrow pasta dish with shallots and a red wine ‘purée’ – the mollusk cousin to octopus and bone marrow pasta. M. Wells’ snails are served right in the bone, two forms of slippery goodness bathing in the wine sauce, covered with crunchy, garlicky breadcrumbs.

What is (“What was”?) most interesting at M. Wells is the idea factory the place became. Francois and I get talking about it - in Paris, you’d wonder about the chef’s motives, what they want to accomplish and, often, what their next step will be. Here, creation seems to be the whole point – there is no next step.

Brouhaha aside (please) it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

I thought of him later when, sitting at a wooden picnic table in New Hampshire, friends brought lobster plucked from Maine’s Casco Bay that morning. We steamed it in a lobster pot and served it in a great pile in the middle of the table. Then, accompanied by nothing but bowls of melted butter, we began our attack.

I popped the tail off, pushed the flesh out, noted the slight hint of translucence, and sank my teeth in, and one bite was all I needed. The flesh was just firm, the butter ran down my chin and Neptune re-emerged for his kiss. Despite a lifetime appreciation for Homard americanus, this was without question the best lobster I’d ever eaten. So good, in fact, I had two and vowed to head up to Maine to speak with a chef and a lobsterman to get their takes on achieving this level of perfection.

... read the rest here in The Daily.

Welcome to Southern Sicily, where you have to nose around and keep your ear to the ground to find its trove of great restaurants often hidden away in unlikely locations behind unpromising facades. Here, four finds that will have you licking your chops.

... read the rest here in Private Clubs Magazine.