Blog
My first – and last – pizza made with mozzarella from British buffaloes
My new discovery at the Islington Farmers' Market this past Sunday was organic British mozzarella di bufala from Higher Alham Farm, Shepton Mallet, Somerset. The suggestion of buffalo mozzarella from Cheddar cheese country appealed to me. Hadn't Chris Arnot written...
My burger doneness color strip
Looking at them now these almost look more like Mark Rothko paintings than hamburgers.
When is a cappuccino like a blueberry muffin?
Before returning to London from New York I sent this Tweet from El Beit coffee bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (map): If there's any doubt the character of a Ethiopia Sidamo can cut through milk, El Beit's blueberry muffin of a cappuccino ends it. A few minutes later I...
Does anyone know what rare is anymore?
When I ordered my bespoke burger rare at the Santa Monica  (California) location of The Counter, my waitress asked, "Do you know what rare is?" Odd question, I thought, to be asking a native English speaker fluent in basic menu vocabulary. I nodded yes, missing my...
A siphon coffee at LAMILL COFFEE in 4 minutes & 15 images
The world’s best New York pastrami is still not in New York
How much heat did I, a native New Yorker and food critic for the hometown Daily News, take for insisting that the pastrami at the LA delicatessen Langer's was superior to anything in New York? Â My sanity, as much as my judgment, was called into question when LA Times...
Spared the disgrace of a cow’s milk cappuccino
Caffe Luxxe pulls some of LA's best espresso shots and, situated amid the casual-chic shops of Santa Monica's moneyed Montana Ave, it also pulls in a sizable share of holistic mommies and bohemian millionaires.  There were in fact no empty tables for my brother Roy,...
Cold olive oil spread
By freezing and then partially thawing extra virgin olive oil, three-star chef Gérard Passédat of Le Petit Nice in Marseille transforms EVOO into a soft but very much solid topping that can be used like table butter. You can spread it over toast, cut it into cubes to...
Bistro steak with Béarnaise sauce
Parisian bistro chefs invariably prefer the sizzling sear of a frypan to that of a charcoal or wood-fired grill for their steaks. They're after the reddish sheen mastered by chef Thierry Laurent at the marvelous Le Bistrot Paul Bert. To ensure your steaks have that...
Eau de café – the next big thing in designer perfumes?
The coffee craze and the ensuing demand for coffee ice creams, brandies and sodas have caught the attention of International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), the fragrance house which developed the scents for such perfumes as Prada, Lancôme Trésor and Calvin Klein...