The glories of the English table showcased at Fortnum and Mason.

I wonder sometimes why England has such a bad reputation for food. I’ve been going to England for decades, and I’ve only had one or two mediocre meals, and most of the time I’ve eaten splendidly. Sure, nowadays everyone points to the handful of famous venues that are popping up on “best restaurant lists.” Or people will say, “It’s because of the great ethnic eateries.” Yeah, England has those—big time. When I lived in England as a student, I relied heavily on the ethnic restaurants, though mostly because they were fun and cheap. But even before my university days, I’d already learned to love English food. More »

If you said “Wall Street” and “pigs” in the same sentence, people might think you were talking about greed and dirty dealing, or perhaps they would assume it was a socialist comment about capitalism. However, Wall Street has an older association with pigs than these metaphorical ones. In the 1600s, semi-wild pigs were wreaking such havoc in the grain fields and gardens of colonial New Yorkers that a long wall was built on the northern edge of the colony on Manhattan Island, to control the roaming herds. The road that ran along the inside of the wall became, of course, Wall Street. This search for solutions to the “we want pigs, we don’t want pigs” conflict has gone on for a long time. More »

A cartload of plantains in southern India

Bananas do not grow on trees.

I learned this while touring a banana plantation in Western Australia about 20 years ago. They grow on tall herbs. In fact, the banana plant is the world’s largest herb. Mostly water held together with a bit of greenery, bananas are herbs and distant relatives of spices like ginger, turmeric, and cardamom. More »

Mercado de los Abastos in Oaxaca, Mexico

Bread seems like a pretty basic food, sort of an irreducible minimum on which one builds. But bread is actually quite complex, and it was not the first thing people did with cereal grains. For a big chunk of early human history, grains were simply parched on hot stones or pounded to a rough powder and boiled into gruel or paste. (In fact, in many regions, these food forms are still important, from the foofoo of West Africa to the tsampa of Tibet.) Scholars believe that the first time people realized they could put the paste on the hot stones, producing a simple flatbread, was likely the late Stone Age. And just as gruel and paste persist to the present day, so do classic, stone-cooked flatbreads, from Mexican tortillas to Scottish oatcakes to Chinese pancakes. More »

In Boston, some folks consider the proximity of a Dunkin Donuts franchise when purchasing a new home. According to a short New Yorker piece last year, allegiances to a particular store can be measured in the number of steps it takes to reach the front door. More »

Cleveland’s West Side Market

Do you want to know the secret of life?

Shop at your local farmer’s market. Whether its the oceanic bounty of Pike Place in Seattle, the organic and sustainable Midwestern greens at Chicago’s Green City Market, or the iron rich meats at Cleveland’s West Side Market, the secret can be found.

Public markets are the last bastions of family owned and operated businesses, granting individualized service and a celebration of seasonality, community, and craftsmanship. It’s good to go where unripe green tomatoes and oranges aren’t gassed with ethylene, where the rainbow of colors at the market signals produce at its peak, ready to be shared at the communal table. Public markets are celebrations of humanity bringing even the most jaded urbanite closer to the mineral rich soils of the heartland.

Check out our photo slideshow of the West Side Market in Cleveland’s Ohio City Neighborhood founded in 1840. The permanent building profiled in these pictures opened on Halloween in 1912.

I like to bite their heads off first.

When my nose gets near the sweet tang of artificial yellow sugar crystals, my Ozzy Osbourne instinct takes over, and it’s lights out for the PEEPS®. It’s cruel I know, but like Ted Nugent points out in his practical cooking tome, Kill It and Grill It, when there’s an overpopulation, animals face an even crueler fate of starvation. More »

It was a funeral for a friend. Sepia rays pierced the windows and golden tones from gilded chandeliers shone on postcards of the past. Wooden chairs and tables were piled near the old bar like freshly cleared storm debris. Chicago’s 107 year old Berghoff restaurant is now closed.

Two days after the closing, collectors of memorabilia gathered once more under the oaken wainscoting and plaster murals of the 1893 World’s Fair. This time, the gathering was not to dine on schnitzel and hoist steins of lager, but to view the available lots for tomorrow’s auction of restaurant fixtures and photos.

Sullen collectors filed past tables of memorabilia, as if paying last respects at an oaken casket. Some stopped and fingered photos or clutched at old beer bottles as if they were patting their departed loved one on the hand, or pulling at a clutch of rosary beads for one last time. More »

Three words: I love barbecue.

Chicago is in the middle of winter with no hint of summer in sight. One way to bask in the summer sun during the coming frigid months is to eat warm weather food – smoky, slow cooked, spice-infused, melt-in-your-mouth, piles of meat.

Barbecue often gets confused for another warm weather style of cooking, grilling. True barbecue traditionally uses cheap cuts of tough meat, cooked over low indirect heat for long periods of time (8 – 12 hours), accompanied by layers of wood smoke and tons of flavor. And even then, there are different kinds of barbecue across the states. More »