11 Park got a new chef (Daniel Humm) and a whole new feel to

22 Out 11 Park got a new chef (Daniel Humm) and a whole new feel to

LiveBlogging Day 1 of the Professional Foodwriters Symposium at the Greenbrier

Canada Goose Outlet It’s 4 days of intensive seminars on all aspects of the business of writing about food. On the first day, for example, we’ll answer the question “What are the Big cheap Canada Goose Food Blog Stories This Year?” watch Symposium attendee Roger Sherman’s film The Restaurateur, discuss “A Sense of Place and Palate,” and study “Cookbooks, Past, Present and Future,” Canada Goose Outlet

Canada Goose Online After a very pleasant ride aboard the Amtrak Cardinal from Chicago I am here for a week universeinsync.com of celebrating and commiserating (and of course lots of eating and drinking). I’ll interesting be posting food, good quotes from panelists, interesting canada goose black friday sale blogs from the bloggers who are here, and so on. Please bear with the typos and the lack of links, which are hallmarks of a liveblog. I’ll fix and add as I can. Canada Goose Online

uk canada goose outlet Further discussion of Gourmet’s shuttering and the impact of the iPod are sure to ensue, along with the closing of a NY kosher butchery and the launching of Canal Press. More as I hear it. uk canada goose outlet

OK! We’re back from a great lunch of 3 kinds of BBQ, and (get this) a milk shake bar yum. Now we’re are enjoying a screening of Symposium attendee Roger Sherman’s film, The Restaurateur

Kirsty Melville says the coming generations will be well beyond the dislike of cooking from a screen as opposed to a cookbook page, in fact many already are

canada goose black friday sale Kirsty points out that food writing is becoming, to a much greater extent, about politics as much or more than recipes. canadian goose jacket Also laments the recent cooking shows that are getting further and further from being about food and more about entertainment, about the drama and backstabbing of “reality” show kitchens. Dorothy agrees and thinks celebrity chefs and TV food porn distances people from food as they become frustrated about not being able to cook at home the stuff they see on the shows. Fer Crissakes Williams Sonoma s selling home foamers to people who can’t roast a beet. canada goose black friday sale

Kirsty Melville: “A great food blog is a marvelous thing, but there are so many bad food blogs that aren’t worth the paper they’re not printed on.”

buy canada goose jacket The discussion turns to restaurant reviews, and how the bar has dropped to where we can canada goose store write real reviews of any canada goose outlet ol’ taco truck. Its no longer about the white linen restaurant. And it’s interesting that bad restaurants can be reviewed in stylish, interesting, entertaining ways. buy canada goose jacket

canada goose coats Dorothy returns canada goose clearance to the idea that so many people can’t cook, even people who know and love food, can analyze and dissect any food from the French Laundry to the local burrito joint, but wouldnt have the slightest idea how to prepare their own dinner at home. canada goose coats

canada goose coats on sale The panel was asked to comment on the food review sites, and the consensus on it is that everybody’s a critic, but not everyone should be. The sites can be useful, but you need to know how canada goose clearance sale to weed out the cranks the folks who got bad service because they deserved it or that simply don’t know anything about food. canada goose coats on sale

Kirsty calls for a return to simplicity in the wake of being inundated with nutritional information. “Just eat food.” And save money by eating less (but better) meat. Conversation has turned to canada goose whether one can eat well on a budget (I insist you can, see my article from last year on KFC’s propaganda saying you can’t).

buy canada goose jacket cheap We then begin discussing the Canada Goose Parka impact of subsidies, and why cheap food is so cheap, and how the more investigative reporting types among us need to dig deep into the billions of dollars the likes of Monsanto is getting from subsidies while the real farmers they peddle to are barely scraping by. buy canada goose jacket cheap

canada goose clearance sale Next there came a call for a return to Home Ec in the schools old school type Home Ec, with actual cooking, not choosing between Betty Canada Goose Outlet Crocker or Duncan Hines. A Berkeley resident touts that there it is not just about the Edible Schoolyard but all over their school system. canada goose clearance sale

Elissa points out that sadly we can’t all live in Berkeley. How do people who don’t have the access that they have in the “People’s Republic of Berkeley” eat with seasons, locally and healthfully?

And we wrap for lunch here. more in an hour or two.

We’re now watching symposium attendee canada goose coats on sale Roger Sherman’s film The Restaurateur, About legendary NYC restaurateur Danny Meyer and his attempts to canada goose coats open two restaurants, Tabla and 11 Madison Park

As a lifelong restaurant professional, despite never approaching the caliber of the folks in this film, I can certainly identify with the trials these folks are enduring. Deadlines, menu design, air canada goose deals conditioning that doesn’t work, contractors who break promises, “key buy canada goose jacket guy at the building department is on vacation next week,” staffing dearths and on and on.

uk canada goose They point out what folks don’t consider about launching a restaurant, that you often have large amounts of people on staff for sometimes months before you open so lots of payroll with no income. But Meyer says “We’re building these restaurants for buy canada goose jacket cheap keeps.” uk canada goose

Canada Goose Coats On Sale Despite all that though I do dearly love the feel of a restaurant that’s a week or so short of opening. Maybe it comes from my younger days, in high school or college when I fancied myself an actor on the stage. That caramel thick tension right before a big opening, the smell of dust and paint and new stainless steel and the smell of protective oil burning off the new iron on the new stoves few things in life are so enrapturing. Canada Goose Coats On Sale

canada goose store The film does a fine job of capturing the drama, the joy, the pain of launching a restaurant, and even if you’re building a place that’s not Canada Goose sale going to be the equal of Meyer’s places or was never mean to be, those thrills and pressures are the same. canada goose store

canada goose factory sale For the record, in 30 years in the biz, I have never seen a restaurant open on it’s original target date. canada goose factory sale

Canada Goose online The Restaurateur suddenly jumps ten years, from opening in 1999 to where they are in 2009, and the impact that a single restaurant review can have in a place like NYC. 11 Park got a new chef (Daniel Humm) and a whole new feel to the menu. Interesting from a cinematic point of view because the viewer doesn’t expect the story to go past some glorious opening night. Instead you see a true evolution and even people who have never worked in a restaurant can get a firm grasp of what it’s like and how, while it might share this or that with many other occupations, there is really nothing quite like it. Canada Goose online

canada goose uk black friday Another New York chef, Charlie Palmer, put it best when he said, “I’m a cook. It’s a simple, direct profession. I prepare a dish, I send it out to the guest, I see the results immediately. On a busy Saturday night when the juices are really flowing I get to score a touchdown minute canada goose uk black friday.