I really enjoyed this sneak peek of Anthony Bourdain’s profile of Ferran Adria. For those not in the know, Ferran is the chef and founder of El Bulli in Spain—perhaps the most important food innovator in the world today. For those who read The New York Times Magazine Section he was on the cover a…

Got a trackback this morning from The Gothamist which linked my moderate defense of Amanda Hesser since today was Hesser’s last review as the NYT’s interim critic The review in question is of Masa and already Hesser’s bold gesture–four question marks in lieu of stars (which she invites the incoming restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, to…

Didactic is one of those words that, when people use it, they sound incredibly smart and you feel stupid because even though you’ve looked it up in the dictionary a thousand times you still don’t really know what it means. What does it mean? Let’s look it up now. Didactic: “meant or meaning to instruct.”I…

I would like to present for you now two competing theories of blogging in the face of an overwhelming workload (hence the title). The theories go like this:Theory One: A heavy workload is so demanding that blogging becomes impossible. All the resources one might devote to his or her blog and his or her blog-reading…

Oh beautiful for spacious skies / for Thai food made o.k.Memorial Day is a secular Yom Kippur, a day of mourning without the fasting. We honor those who perished at war by toasting on the beach or by floating in a pool. Memorial Day is a serious holiday.Perhaps most notably, Memorial Day is a day…

Katy makes the best pie you’ll ever taste and here’s the movie that shows how she does it. Nectarines seem a strange filling for a pie, sure, but take my word: they work incredibly well.Incidentally, I’m up now at 3:26 am because halfway through editing the film my computer froze and I had to start…

If this website is the theory of gravity and I’m Isaac Newton, Josh is the apple that fell on my head. He’s the one who pushed me, way back when, to start a food blog. “You really should do it,” he said in October, walking with me through a Chili Festival. “Well,” I said, “we’ll…

Aha! Just as I suspected… The Billion Dollar Myth.

Now that I’m a big star, I’m starting to worry that my visage at restaurants is so recognizable that my ability to evaluate might be compromised. So today I went disguise shopping. I didn’t buy any of these things, but I might…A mustache, perhaps?Redneck teeth?Or, my personal favorite, a mullet?A sound investment for a serious…