One of the two or three best Bolivian places around and more consistent than most. Right now this is perhaps my favorite Silpancho. The chef is from Santa Cruz, which doesn’t seem to make a huge difference, but it is a slight variation on the Cochabamba emphasis in all the other places. They still have mostly Cochabamba dishes, though some of the other meats and small bready dishes are more in the Argentinean direction. Beware: it can fill up and get crowded on weekends, leading to waits, so go fairly early. It is also slightly “nicer” than most area Bolivian restaurants, yet without feeling sterile or overdone. So this one I can definitely recommend.

Which raises a delicate question: Having already eclipsed Paris in Michelin stars, could Tokyo chefs one day eclipse the French at their own cuisine?

I put the question to pastry chef Sugino, who trained in France and is one of only four Japanese members of the prestigious Relais Desserts, an association of the world’s top pastry makers who meet regularly to exchange ideas.

Choosing his words carefully, he notes that pastry shops in France are having difficulty finding young people willing to put in the time and effort required to learn the craft. He also says that even top French patisseries are now taking shortcuts — by using stabilizers in their desserts, for instance.

“They are losing the basics,” Sugino says. “It is possible that, 10 or 20 years from now, the French will have lost the art of pastry but that it will live on in Tokyo, in Japan.”

Here is more.

Originally posted on Marginal Revolution – click to see comments and suggestions.

Genoa is one of the best food venues in Italy, as is Liguria more generally. It is also one of the best places in Europe for vegetarian dining. Maximize the number of tarts and vegetable tarts you eat, skip hotel breakfast and look for small places with morning snacks, preferably baked goods, and treat them as the equal of cooked dishes. Forget about meat altogether.

1. Antica Sciamadda, 14-16 Via San Giorgio, arrive at the 11:30 opening and keep on buying the tarts and farinata as they are freshly baked and put out on the counter. There is a vaguely Arabic feel to the dishes, and there is an excellent video of the place here. There are many excellent “sciamadda” in Genoa and they lie somewhere between a food stall and a very small restaurant, so do not count on them being open for dinner.

2. Trattoria alle Due Torri, Salita del Prione 53, near the Columbus house. Order pasta and focaccia, this is some of the best spaghetti I’ve had, and the pansotti (ravioli in walnut sauce) is notable.

3. La Rina, superb seafood restaurant, don’t focus on the main courses.

There are relatively few tourists in town, although the most common group — by far — is Russians. From Bologna, here is a post about flunking out of Gelato University.

Originally posted on Marginal Revolution – click to see comments and suggestions.

Hookah, but lots of Lebanese food too, including all the classics and also a variety of sandwiches. Consistently good, this is one of the best in the area for Middle Eastern. It has maybe my favorite hummus around. You also have the very best views of Baileys Crossroads when you look out the window. I didn’t expect much when I walked in here, as it looks like neither a “nice restaurant” nor the right kind of “mom and pop,” but I can give this place quite a good recommendation.

The premise of this book is that cooking — defined broadly enough to take in the whole spectrum of techniques people have devised for transforming the raw stuff of nature into nutritious and appealing things for us to eat and rink — is one of the most interesting and worthwhile things we do.

This is a highly thoughtful book, and I enjoyed the lengthy discussion of fermentation and fermented foods. My favorite puzzle posed is the question of why fermented foods are so frequently matters of acquired taste across cultures. Yet overall the book is missing a sharpness of argumentation or novelty of perspective which I look for in works of this kind. You can order the book here. Here is a useful Laura Miller review of the book. Here is a NYT review. Here is Mark Bittman coverage. Here is an excerpt from the book.

Originally posted on Marginal Revolution – click to see comments and suggestions.

When author Anita Stewart first heard about the Canadian government’s new food truck parked in Mexico City, she laughed so hard she cried. The new Canada-branded, taxpayer-funded venture, which kicked off its three-week pilot project last week, is serving up a Mexican-ized version of poutine, using Oaxaca cheese instead of curds. Also on the menu are Alberta beef tourtière, and maple-glazed Albacore tuna.

The truck is trying to draw attention to Canadian products such as McCain French fries, and promote the ‘Canada Brand’ in Mexico.

Here is more, via @RGrier88. By the way, I enjoyed this paragraph:

“Some of our initial research in Mexico to support the Canada Brand found that only 35% of Mexicans were able to associate Canada to a particular food product, with fish and maple syrup being the most cited,” Patrick Girard, a spokesperson for Agriculture Canada, wrote in an email Wednesday to the Post.

That said, whenever I travel to Canada, I feel I am entering quite a distinct food culture (city by city), it simply is a little hard to define upfront.

Originally posted on Marginal Revolution – click to see comments and suggestions.