Blogs

BY OWEN MORRIS

DLC is the man behind the popular KC Lunch Spots blog. In addition to delivering timely news, DLC frequently eats lunch at local, off-the-beaten path-restaurants and then tells about his experiences there. He's also resilient, taking pictures of his fridge with his camera phone after his normal camera broke.

DLC on the main part of the fridge: I've been really into bison lately, it makes great burgers, meatballs and kebab-type thingies. And it is lower in fat than beef. Look for it in the frozen foods section! Top right are these pickled peppers from the Brookside Market olive bar. They are pungently sweet, briny and spicy at the same time. Unbelievably awesome. My significant other is really great at pickling herself and you can see some of the fine results in ball jars on the bottom right. Other leftovers like pasta salad. I make perhaps the finest pasta salad ever.

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BY OWEN MORRIS

I drove down 39th Street yesterday and was mildly surprised (in a good way) by a couple of the new businesses there.

First, I stopped by Javanaut, a coffee shop in the space previously occupied by Crave at 615 W. 39th Street. The entire space was much cleaner and airy than I remember Crave ever being. Barista Mike Valverde recommended a "London Fog" which is Earl Grey Tea, steamed milk and vanilla. He was quite proud of some of the unique blends Javanaut offers, including specialty coffees from Mexico and Vietnam. In addition to a wide-range of coffee drinks, Javanaut also serves Italian sodas and a limited supply of bakery items.

A block down from Javanaut, on the northeast corner of 39th and Bell, I was pleased to see work on the restaurant that used to be Mama's 39th Street Diner. While there's construction paper blocking any view of the inside, signs promise a place called Thai Garden. I called the number listed on the sign but got no response; it's been that way for more than a month, according to a discussion forum I found on the place.

If you have any news about restaurant openings or closings please e-mail them to me at owen.morris@pitch.com

BY OWEN MORRIS

A harrowing weekend driving experience with the point being that driving around the Power and Light District after midnight ain't too fun...or safe. (M. Toast Hivemind)

Much like Paris Hilton, rose wines were once seen as trashy but are now gaining approval of mainstream critics. Unlike Paris Hilton, rose wine's good graces will probably last. (Portfolio)

What was Wal-Mart to do when critics got mad that it's produce was not locally grown? Why just change the definition of the words "locally grown." (NPR)

Never complain about not getting a fortune cookie at a fancy Chinese restaurant. For the fact is that they do not exist in China...that is until now. (NYT)

BY OWEN MORRIS

Ooooohhhh yeah! When I think of Denny's, I think emo bands like All-American Rejects and Taking Back Sunday combining forces with the hard-partying Eagles of Death Metal and making one delicious omelet. At least that is my dream.

Starting at 10 tonight my dream finally comes true. That's when Denny's restaurants across America start serving aDenny's Rockstar Menu to beleaguered and/or drunk late-night guests.

The musical groups may not be memorable but the food is, with names like "Taking Back Bacon Burger Fries," developed by those culinary wizards Taking Back Sunday, and the "Plain White Shake" by Plain White Ts. The other two musical dishes on the menu tonight are "The All-American S.O.S." by the All-American Rejects and "Heart On A Plate" by Eagles of Death Metal.

If you happen to be at a Denny's in the near future, and order one of these things let me know how it tastes. Assuming, of course, that you survive the sheer rocking it gives your mouth.

BY OWEN MORRIS

I'm taking advanced culinary classes at Johnson County Community College, and plan to journal about each week's experience here.

The first thing you learn about serious cooking is that it uses a lot of pointless French words. For instance, what any normal American would call a melon-baller, I am now told by my textbook (Le Courdon Bleu Professional Cooking Sixth Edition) is actually to be referred to as a parisiennes. The proliferation of langue française is supposedly due to the overwhelming influence French cooking has on modern techniques. But listening to chefs you realize the real reason the language has survived is that it creates a subculture in which chefs can identify each other.

There’s another, bigger benefit as well. Previously, as a layperson I might have made chicken noodle soup but no more! My chicken noodle soup is now consommé printaniere. Better to raise eyebrows (and menu prices) that much more.

An actually useful French phrase is mise en place, which was the basis of my advanced culinary class last night. The literal translation "to put in place." The real-world translation is, "getting your shit together ahead of time."

To that end, the class spent 90 minutes listening to a lecture on making sure to prep in advance, proper holding after preparation and the utter importance of blanching to save vegetables’ color and extend their shelve life by days. Some other important lessons useful to at-home cooks: keeping parsley stems in water and under plastic wrap will extend their shelf life from a couple of days to a month; make sure the steel you use to sharpen the knife is as long or longer than the knife itself.

After a quick overview on stocks, it was off to the kitchen to make some that will last us for the rest of the semester and practice good mise en place.

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BY OWEN MORRIS

Who better to comment on the closing of a lunch spot than Kansas City's Lunch Spot blogger. (Kansas City Lunch Spots)

Those dandelion weeds in your driveway may be the cash crop you've been looking for. (You know, since you stopped growing that one cash crop in your basement.) The Japanese are paying high rates for dandelions, which they turn into a drink. *Note- The Chef Michael Smith mentioned in this story is not the same Chef Michael Smith here in town. (Globe and Mail)

Scientists are finally close to figuring out what started killing all the honey bees two years ago. And no, it was not a Pooh Bear. (AP Food Technology)

Did you know you can use your used coffee grounds to remove scratches, repel ants, shine your hair and make a living will for you? I made the last one up but will all the other stuff this website promises that coffee grounds can do I wouldn't be that surprised. (Life Hackery)

By CHARLES FERRUZZA

My friend Bob knew there was trouble when he walked into the restaurant formerly known as the Trolley Inn at 11400 East Truman Road and saw a fancy espresso machine where the old grill used to be.

“I went in for a cheeseburger,” Bob mourned, “and the new owner doesn’t serve cheeseburgers or anything deep-fried anymore. It’s a soup place!”

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BY OWEN MORRIS

To call Doug Frost the wine expert of Kansas City is an understatement. He's one of three people in the world (the world!) to hold the two most prestigious titles in wine — Master Sommelier and Master of Wine. He travels extensively educating people and restaurants on wine through lectures, consultations and judging. I caught up with him at the Broadway Cafe and asked him what he eats when no one is watching.

The nature of my job and my life is nothing but guilty pleasures so there's no short list for me. But for shitty food, I'm a popcorn and chardonnay kind of guy. Everybody in my realm bitches about chardonnay ... which I think is complete and utter bullshit. Just because they're bored with it doesn't mean everyone else is bored with it.

As for popcorn. It’s a total guilty pleasure. I love it and try not to eat it very often because if you leave it in front of me, I'll completely go nuts and chug, like, a huge container of it. I’ll just buy some popcorn at the store, put it in pan, put some olive oil in there and fry that bad-boy up. I never put butter on it, but you’ve got to put salt on it.

Ever since I was about two years old popcorn has always been the shit to me … Maybe three-years-old? I'm not sure when I was first allowed popcorn but I definitely did that face of "ooohhh that's good." Never liked candy. Never liked cakes. Never liked any of that stuff but popcorn was [taking imaginary huge bucket of popcorn to face] woooolf.

I'll drink anything with popcorn. It's good with red wine. It's good with white wine, whatever. But it's really good with chardonnay (and champagne). Get a big ol chunk of jarlsberg cheese, some popcorn, a bottle of chardonnay and there's absolutely no brain-cells injured at all because I'm completely mindless at that point.

In terms of really guilty pleasures. Really oaky chardonnay, fucked-up oaky chardonnay. Kendall-Jackson? What's wrong with that? I know I'm not supposed to like that but I do like it. Their proprietors-reserve chardonnay is delicious. Gallo? Kiss my ass. I love it. It's good wine.

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BY OWEN MORRIS

I don't want to be the first to label the Democratic veep a flip-flopper but let's just say there's some inconsistencies in Joe Biden's food talk.

Is his favorite food pasta like he claims to the Chicago Tribune or is homemade pot pie like he tells a New Hampshire Web site?

More controversy too! In a time when American unemployment is rising, Biden has claimed that he will not hire an American chef in the White House. From the Dallas Morning News.

When he [Biden] arrived, he made one of the more unusual campaign promises I've ever heard, pledging that, if elected president, he'd name an Italian chef for the White House to ensure he could always indulge in his favorite food.

In Biden's defense, he does makes a mean oatmeal raisin cookie. He's also nice to quasi-baristas, or at least one coffee guy named Richard Atnit in Delaware who works at the coffee stand in the train station Biden frequents. They're chummy enough friends that Biden refers to him as Rich. Atnit in return refers to Biden as "Senator."

Finally and most interestingly, Biden claims never to have touched a drop of alcohol in his life! In a presidential race of firsts, I can't believe no one's mentioned there's an Irish-Catholic teetotaler. Talk about progress.

BY OWEN MORRIS

The Columbia Tribune is doing a cool feature about eating your way across the state of Missouri. (Columbia Tribune)

It's a good sign that a Farmer's Market has gone bad and gotten too full of itself when it starts charging $7.99 for regular tomatoes. That's ridiculous and even the New Yorker complains. (New Yorker)

Toilet-themed restaurant, condom-themed restaurant, fake-cannibal themed restaurant. Just three of the fifteen strangest themed restaurants in the world. (Web Urbanist)

A while back some attentive people noticed Hershey Kisses no longer advertised "milk chocolate" on the package. That's because Hershey changed the ingredients of the Kisses from chocolate to oil and (surprise) they're not the only company changing ingredients to try to boost profits. General Mills and McCormick Spices are also guilty. (WSJ)

BY OWEN MORRIS

True North proudly advertises that they use 100 percent American-grown, all-natural nuts and that these aren't just typical Planters' mixed nuts. As one of its press releases put it, "By elevating the 'simple nut' into three unique nut snacks – nut clusters, nut crisps and nut crunches – each True North variety offers consumers a different snacking experience fit for a wide range of occasions."

I'm not sure how many different occasions call for nuts (I mainly just steal them off co-workers' desks) but if True North thinks there's a niche for its upscale nuts, that's fine. To this end, True North has an expensive advertising campaign to back up its message. The packaging looks very professional, the Web site is top-notch and frankly, the peanut-clusters do look tasty. So where does the Frito-Lay owned company go wrong?

Maybe it's just my juvenile mind but the word I'm hearing at the end of this advertisement is probably not the word the copywriters had in mind. The word I'm hearing makes the ad much more ... memorable.

Along with the Sunny-D packaging, I'm beginning to think there a trend of subliminal phallic advertisements just on the horizon.

By OWEN MORRIS

Sammy Loren visiting Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Recently, an aspiring filmmaker (and a former little-league baseball teammate) named Aaron Lindenbaum e-mailed me to say he was producing a documentary on sandwiches and whether I knew any places he should visit in Kansas City. It piqued my interest since I have a great love of sandwiches. I wrote Lindenbaum back and he, along with the film's director, Sammy Loren, met me for coffee -- sadly, not sandwiches.

Lindenbaum says the doc is called Sandwiched in America. "We want to look at the sandwich through the lens of American entrepreneurial innovation: Where has the sandwich gone, where is it going ... how sandwiches fulfilled a substance need back in the day and now how it's become marketed. And now, with cutting-edge sandwiches, restaurants are pushing the boundaries. We have visited restaurants in middle America starting with Pittsburgh and ending here in Kansas City."

Lindenbaum and Loren, friends for more than ten years, came up with the idea when they were living on opposites sides of the country. "We'd always be calling each other about different sandwiches we made," Loren says. "Aaron needed to drive back from New York to Kansas City and I had just got back from India and so we said, let's just go into the belly of the beast and do a film on sandwiches."

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BY OWEN MORRIS

What happens when one of Kansas City's best known food bloggers meets up with Kansas City's best known drink blogger? Why a damn good blog post of course. (KC Beer Blog)

I knew Big Brother would eventually screen my face in public places for directed advertisements, I just never expected Dunkin' Donuts to be the first one to do it. (WSJ)

A preview of a book on how technology is changing the way we cook. Of course, in keeping with high technology it will also be available in pdf form. (Huffington Post)

I keep track of inflation not through any fancy-schamcy economic formula but based on what the price of a candy bar costs. I guess some other people do too in what is called the Hershey Bar index. The point being that the index is about to rise. Hershey is raising its prices and so is its biggest competitor Mars. (Time)

By CHARLES FERRUZZA

The new movie Bottle Shock is based on the real-life story of a former real estate attorney Jim Barrett (played in the film by Bill Pullman) who sacrifices his life savings to open a California vineyard. Much closer to home is the story of retired firefighter Bill Crow, who dreamed of having his own restaurant. Four days ago, Crow threw open the doors to the Cook Shack Café, a breakfast-and-lunch diner at 8950 Wornall.

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BY OWEN MORRIS

Lindsay Weiss of Overland Park is one of twelve finalists for Cooking Light's Ultimate Reader Recipe Contest. Cooking Light, which bills itself as the "world's largest food and healthy lifestyle magazine," chose Weiss' dessert recipe of roasted banana bars with browned butter pecan frosting.

If this sounds vaguely familiar that's because Cooking Light's sister magazine, Southern Living, chose Weiss as the winner of its sixth annual cook-off this past December for her original recipe, roasted banana ice cream with warm peanut butter sauce. "My family thinks it's so funny both recipes feature bananas ... we were a little worried the first recipe was a one-hit wonder," Weiss told me.

When I asked Weiss if these were family recipes, she started laughing and admitted that she hadn't even tried making the banana bars with browned butter pecan frosting until she submitted the recipe.

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