Last Monday, I threw on my suit and tie and made my way over to Chelsea Piers for the sixth annual “A Second Helping of Life,” a benefit to fight cancer for Share. The food was great; I got to meet a ton of famous chefs; the benefit raised a good amount of money.
From L to R: Rebecca Charles, Patricia Williams, Kim Rothrock, Patti Jackson
From L to R: Amanda Freitag, Alex Guarnaschelli
I’ve read the New York Times Dining Section for years. I’ve been attracted by the photography, design, and writing, and it’s still one of my favorite sections to read each week. I was thrilled when they renamed the section “Dining In/Dining Out,” and enjoyed the revitalized design and writing. I still talk with friends about some of the famous writers of that section, like R.W. Apple. I’ve stashed the Dining Sections for years, and occasionally I like to pull them out and check out the yellowing photos and stories.
I remember when the section was a minimum of 12 pages and chock full of both full page display advertisements and classifieds. But I’ve started to notice a shift. Late October in 2008, the New York Times quietly renamed the section back to the simpler “Dining” name. And gradually the section has become slimmer and slimmer–in the past few months the section has not exceeded eight pages.
One metric of a newspaper’s health is the ratio of advertisements to editorial content. An important aspect to consider is that the time of the year does matter–newspapers typically have fewer advertisements in the mid-summer. However, a healthy section will typically have almost a 50% split between advertising and editorial content. It is not uncommon for the size of any periodical to be controlled by the number of advertisements.
This week’s Dining section appeared to be an all time low for the number of advertisements. The back page of the section has two advertisements from New York Times properties: one from about.com and one from The New York Times Store. These advertisements are probably not revenue-producing. Inside, there was a single classified column-inch from Le Perigord, a classic French restaurant in New York City. I’ve seen this advertisement for at least five years; I’m a bit curious if it has run in the Times for the entire 45-years that Le Perigord has been open.
Inside the rest of the section was single column-inch display advertisement for California olive oil, and a two column by three inch advertisement for sommelier training in Umbria, Italy. And a couple of more house advertisements for the New York Times related ventures.
And that’s it.
To sum up, this week’s New York Times Dining section has eight pages, eight column inches of advertising, and a bit over a page of house ads.
I don’t know how long the Times will choose to continue this section with that amount of advertising. And this is not a one-time occurrence. I cannot remember the last time there was a paid advertisement on the back page of the Dining section. And the only time in the past few months that the Dining section has exceeded three full pages of advertisments was a few weeks ago. The “official marketing, tourism and partnership organization” of New York City, NYC & Co., ran a double-truck advertisement for New York Restaurant Week. (A double-truck advertisement is two full facing pages, typically on a single sheet of paper.) I don’t consider their advertising efforts a good barometer of a newspaper’s health.
I think a publisher should think long and hard about the financial viability of a section when the majority of advertising is from other branches of their company and government-sponsored entities. I enjoy the Dining section of the New York Times, but I can’t understand how it is working as a business venture. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Times uses the departure of Frank Bruni as the main critic as an impetus for reworking the section.
[I know I’ve written on this topic before, but I think it’s an interesting barometer of the health of a newspaper.]
Last month, I wrote about seeing Sam Calagione talk at Google. His talk has been posted on YouTube. I quite enjoyed the talk: Authors@Google: Sam Calagione.
You can hear my question and his response at 46:06.
Yesterday’s New York Times Dining In/Dining Out section, aka the food section, had eight pages. Excluding advertisements by and for the New York Times, there was a single full page display advertisement and two small display classified advertisements. If that doesn’t make the Times management a little nervous, I don’t know what does.
In other New York Times Dining News, Kim Severson and Julia Moskin had dueling dinner parties to see who could cook the best meal. Frank Bruni, the restaurant critic for the Times was the judge. Unfortunately, in a non-critical piece, he ultimately weaseled. Unsurprisingly, it’s more difficult to criticize people you know and work with than it is to visit restaurants anonymously and potentially destroy their livelihoods with your critiques.
I returned from San Francisco last week. I’ve been to the Bay Area almost four of the past eight weeks; I’m getting to know my new coworkers at Google. While Google is based in Mountain View, I prefer to stay in San Francisco. It’s reminiscent of home.
One of the places I ate in San Francisco the first time I visited this year was Incanto, Chris Cosentino‘s shrine to offal meats. My friends and I had a fine time at his Noe Valley restaurant. This past visit I stopped by Boccalone, Cosentino’s meat shop in the San Francisco Ferry Building. I purchased a brown sugar and fennel salame. While I had some of it in San Francisco, I brought the rest of it to my friend Phil and Karen’s house. (Happy Birthday Karen!) The salame is chewy and has a strong fennel flavor. The sugar helps balance the strong flavors of the cure and fennel.
Today, I was reading Chris Cosentino’s blog post about receiving a letter from anti-foie gras folks. He and his business partner, Mark Pastore, discussed the letter, and Mark wrote a thoughtful note on the foie gras debate on the Incanto web site. It’s well written, and I agree with the gist of the letter.
If you get out to San Francisco, I recommend checking out Incanto and Boccalone. The folks that work at both restaurants are passionate about the food they make and serve, and it shines in the flavor of the food and experience of dining and shopping.
When I visited Seattle in December, I was lucky to be able to take a tour of Theo Chocolate, an artisanal chocolate maker in the Fremont neighborhood. The previous time I visited Seattle, I had tried to go with my godson and his family, but we were unable to get tickets.
There is a waiting room and retail area in the front of the chocolate factory. In this image, Samuel, my godson, and Jen, my godson’s mother hang out in the front of the store.
The front room offers samples of all of their chocolate bars. Samuel enjoyed having chocolate as we waited for the tour to start. Everyone must wear a hairnet on the factory floor.
There are frequently people who reserve a space on the tour and don’t show up; Dan, Roan, and Audryn were able to join us at the last second.
Theo uses fair-trade and organic chocolate beans to make their chocolate. They produce confections from the bean to the bar. It’s fairly uncommon for a confectioner to make chocolate from the beginning to the end–most vendors focus either on making chocolate or on making confections. My understanding is that even Jacques Torres, perhaps the best confectioner in New York City, uses couverture for his bon-bons despite producing his own chocolate bars from beans.
Theo regularly visits their cacao manufacturers to make sure that they are adhering to fair-trade and organic standards.
The staff at Theo take quality control seriously. While it’s always important to have strong quality control, it’s especially important at Theo since they produce such small batches of chocolate. In the photo, you can see the device that is used to split the cacao beans in half and inspect the contents. Beans that do not make the cut for Theo but are still good enough to be used for larger production lines may be sold to other chocolate manufacturers.
What was striking to me about the factory floor at Theo was that it was actually a factory with heavy manufacturing equipment. While roasting the cacao bean may seem similar to roasting a coffee bean, the process is very different. As distinct from coffee beans, the cacao bean will be processed much more than just a simple roast and grind. Impressively, the factory floor and equipment were spotless. I almost thought there would be a secret door where the “real” grimy, noisy factory was kept. But the one I saw was clearly not for show.
While bars are produced using another machine, the individual bon-bons (or truffles) may be produced by hand. There is another room beyond the factory store where people work to temper the chocolate and create bon-bons.
Everyone had a great time at Theo Chocolates. This photo of Andrew, Samuel’s father; Jen; and Samuel was taken just outside of the factory.
I left Seattle the day after the chocolate factory tour; I had a great time there. It gets damp in Seattle, and the dew clings to the leaves of a sage plant in front of Samuel’s house in the morning.
I read quite a few food blogs (see the list next to my blog on the right). Recently, I noted that one blog I was reading was plugging Anthony Bourdain’s show, No Reservations, on a regular basis. The descriptions were always written in the first person, but then I noticed in the comments that the author stated he was simply publishing exactly what he received from the producers of the show. I had a hunch and decided to do a quick search for some key phrases, like “rides in a tri-shaw.”
Some of the bloggers I noticed quoted the blurb from the producers as a true quote, others ran the blurb as their own post, and others created their own copy but used supplied phrases. If you have time, check out some of the posts to see what I mean:
I think finding posts like this illustrates how carefully one needs to read what people write. You never know if someone is merely republishing a press release, or even worse, regurgitating a press release without citing the original sources. I would be more inclined to watch the show if I thought people were giving passionate, true opinions.
Ironically, I’m pushing up the search rankings and readership of these blogs by linking to them.
I try to travel to Seattle at least once per year. There are at least a dozen or more friends of mine who ended up in Seattle for one reason or another, and it’s always a pleasure to see them. I’m always amazed by how quickly time passes–until I just did the math right now, I didn’t realize that I’ve known many of my Seattle friends for almost twenty years!
I flew to Seattle from Las Vegas for $80 on Virgin America. It’s unclear to me how Virgin America is making money. The flight was terrific, but it was also only half full. I had to switch planes in San Francisco, but I didn’t mind. I enjoy Virgin America’s flights.
I visited Seattle well before their terrible winter storms that shut down most of the city–if anything, it was unseasonably warm, pleasant, and dry. Seattle rarely has the torrential downpours of the northeast, but it frequently is covered by a gray, steady misty drizzle of rain that manages to float underneath any rain coat or umbrella. Which is why many Seattle residents never carry an umbrella.
One of the places I visited in Seattle was the Zig Zag Café. Several folks had recommended I go there, including Jim Meehan from PDT and Eryn Reece formerly with Bar Milano. The Zig Zag Café is located on the hill between the Public Market and Elliott Bay, just next door to a taqueria and downstairs from where the Spanish Table used to be. (Hey, if you know the shops near Pike Place Market, it’s a perfectly good description.) Jim specifically told me to be on the look out for Murray Stenson, an award-winning friendly and talented bartender. He wasn’t there the first evening I visited, so I spent some time chatting with one of the other bartenders who worked there and Kacy Fitch, one of the owners. It’s an elegant dimly lit bar with a tremendous selection of liquors, beers, and cocktails. There are many tables, but it’s a popular spot and fills up quickly. The staff is warm, friendly, and unpretentious.
Of course, I had to visit the Zig Zag Café a second time to see Murray. It was worth the second trip out there. Even though the place was packed, Murray took the time to say hello and recommend some other good restaurants in the area. I was walking around the waterfront area before going to Zig Zag, and I saw one of the most spectacular sunsets I had ever seen in Seattle. Friends of mine who were out agreed that it was a rare sight.
While I was in the Pike Place Market, I stopped by World Spice Merchants. World Spice Merchants has been featured on television shows like Alton Brown’s Good Eats. They have a very large selection of teas and spices; in addition to their retail and mail-order businesses, they also supply restaurants around the Seattle area. I feel that the folks there are more knowledgeable and passionate than the folks who work at a typical Penzey’s retail outfit. And that’s saying a lot: the folks at Penzey’s are smart and dedicated.
From a food perspective, no trip to Seattle would be complete without a trip to Salumi next to Pioneer Square. Salumi is a salumeria, a place where meats are cured and salamis are made. The store is divided into several parts: in the front of the store is a very small seating area, followed by a sandwich line and cashier, then a small seating area and a small kitchen. Beyond that there is another intimate dining room. Finally, the curing rooms are beyond the final door.
Salumi was opened by Armandino Batali after retiring from Boeing where he was an engineer. Last year, Armandino turned over the shop to his daughter, Gina Batali, and son-in-law, Brian D’Amato.
One of the best features of visiting Salumi is purchasing sandwiches from the counter. Most of the sandwiches are served on a nice white rich and not-overly tough sandwich roll with a variety of spreads and sauces. The tongue sandwich is one of the best sandwiches there: it’s served with slow-cooked soft onions and two spreads. (I believe one was a garlic spread, and one was a pesto spread.) I also had sliced fresh mozzarella. It was one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had.
There’s more photos to come from my trip to Seattle.
A site devoted to West Virginia hot dogs has created a map describing which of their hot dogs include coleslaw as a standard topping on the hot dog. As they write, “While the vast majority of West Virginians prefer hot dogs topped with coleslaw, it is not a standard topping at hot dog joints everywhere in West Virginia. The food culture of our state is diverse and influenced by many factors such as predominate ethnicities and a melding with cultures of surrounding states.This mapping project attempts to document this diversity.”
Awesome. We need more hot dog based maps.
[Link via Strange Maps.]
In other news, I am back from Mountain View and San Francisco. I now behind posting photos by two months.
Very interesting and amusing video of Grant Achatz cooking a turkey sous vide at Nickkokonas‘s house.
(YouTube also has high resolution versions; change the resolution from YouTube’s page: Part 1, Part 2)
[Link from Serious Eats.]