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Photos from a meal at L’Enclume in the UK, where chef Simon Rogan is practicing molecular gastronomy at a high level. “I don’t think there’s a more exciting meal than this anywhere in the whole world, even [at El Bulli]. This was 24 flawless brilliant courses by a chef who is not just ‘at the top of his game’, but somewhere out in front of his rivals.” More photos and information at L’Enclume’s web site.
In accordance with David Chang’s wishes, I’m not really talking about this but I will briefly direct your attention to the following: Momofuku Noodle Bar is moving to a bigger location down the street and a new restaurant called Momofuku Ko, presumably with less seats, will take its place, making for a total of three Momofuku restaurants within a 2 block area.
Diacetyl, a chemical used in artificial butter flavor, has been linked to “popcorn workers lung” after several instances of lung disease at microwave popcorn factories. “Even less is known about the health effects of eating diacetyl in butter-flavored popcorn, or breathing the fumes after the bag is microwaved.”
Threadless is selling tshirts with a pie chart of pies on it.
Out to dinner with friends: split the check evenly or not? “I find if you don’t split it evenly, and everyone pays ‘what they owe’ many people will pay much less than they owe, forgetting tax and tip. Then they avert their eyes while the generous ones pony up the extra bucks.”
Turns out that the story about the Chinese manufacturing fake eggs out of chemicals is itself fake. A reader contacted the founder of ispub.com, the site that originally ran the article, and he says they yanked the article and replaced the editor who accepted the story. (thx, jeff)
Are the Chinese manufacturing fake chicken eggs and passing them off as real? “Although the faked eggs looked practically the same as real ones, the consumer smelled chemicals when cooking the eggs. The egg yolk dispersed quickly when it was mixed with the egg white, and the colour was pale. No flavour could be tasted after cooking. According to the officials of the National Bureau of Industry and Commerce, the faked eggs were made from chemicals.” (via cyn-c)
Update: Turns out the story is a fake. (thx, jeff)
Costco is selling Mexican Coke made with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, at least in the San Francisco area. “Costco has conformed to CA and U.S. rules, such as CRV (the sort-of deposit you pay for the bottle) and ‘nutrition’ labeling, so everything appears to be nice and legal.” (via serious eats)
An online Condiment Packet Museum. Exhibits include ketchup, relish, honey, and jam.
A man buys a bag of Cape Cod potato chips containing a few chips and a whole potato. Correspondence with the company and hilarity ensues.
There’s no permalink, but if you go to the Disney home page, they’re playing 9 minutes of Ratatouille, the new Pixar movie. There’s two clips…one takes place pretty close to the start of the movie and the other a bit later.
Update: For those of you outside of the US, here’s the YouTube version of the 9-minute Ratatouille clip.
Update: A more permanent and higher quality version is up on the Apple site.
Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch.
One meal at Per Se has as many calories as 4.5 Big Macs, about a whopping 2400 calories. (via eater)
Bread is dangerous. Here are some frightening stats: “More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread” and “Bread is made from a substance called ‘dough.’ It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!”
Michael Pollan blasts the current US farm bill, saying that all the subsudies for corn, soy, wheat, etc. drive down the price of unhealthy foods relative to healthful foods like carrots, making the bil responsible for the obesity and over-nutrition of the country’s population, especially the poor. “A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced with what its surgeon general has called ‘an epidemic’ of obesity would at the same time be in the business of subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup. But such is the perversity of the farm bill: the nation’s agricultural policies operate at cross-purposes with its public-health objectives.”
In praise of Wonder Bread and other pseudo-food delicacies. I have a weakness for white bread, Kraft singles, Hellmann’s, and Snickers bars, among other things.
The Fat Duck, one of molecular gastronomy’s main outposts, recently offered a course complete with its own soundtrack served up on iPods shuffle. “Heston Blumenthal, the chef, said he wanted to experiment with using sound to enhance a dining experience. Hence the iPod, playing the soothing sound of the sea breeze and waves gently caressing the seashore.”
Children 8-12 years old view an average of 21 TV commercials for food. 2-7 year-olds view about 12 ads per day. (via 3qd)
Comparison between food pictured in fast food advertising and how the food looks when you actually get it from the restaurant. The Whopper is particularly beauty and the beast.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these. Here are some updates on some of the topics, links, ideas, posts, people, etc. that have appeared on kottke.org recently:
Two counterexamples to the assertion that cities != organisms or ecosystems: cancer and coral reefs. (thx, neville and david)
In pointing to the story about Ken Thompson’s C compiler back door, I forgot to note that the backdoor was theoretical, not real. But it could have easily been implemented, which was Thompson’s whole point. A transcript of his original talk is available on the ACM web site. (thx, eric)
ChangeThis has a “manifesto” by Nassim Taleb about his black swan idea. But reader Jean-Paul says that Taleb’s idea is not that new or unique. In particular, he mentions Alain Badiou’s Being and Event, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze. (thx, paul & jean-paul)
When I linked The Onion’s ‘Most E-Mailed’ List Tearing New York Times’ Newsroom Apart, I said “I’d rather read a real article on the effect the most popular lists have on the decisions made by the editorial staff at the Times, the New Yorker, and other such publications”. American Journalism Review published one such story last summer, as did the Chicago Tribune’s Hypertext blog and the LA Times (abstract only). (thx, gene & adam)
Related to Kate Spicer’s attempt to slim down to a size zero in 6 weeks: Female Body Shape in the 20th Century. (thx, energy fiend)
Got the following query from a reader:
are those twitter updates on your blog updated automatically when you update your twitter? if so, how did you do it?
A couple of weeks ago, I added my Twitter updates and recent music (via last.fm) into the front page flow (they’re not in the RSS feed, for now). Check out the front page and scroll down a bit if you want to check them out. The Twitter post is updated three times a week (MWF) and includes my previous four Twitter posts. I use cron to grab the RSS file from Twitter, some PHP to get the recent posts, and some more PHP to stick it into the flow. The last.fm post works much the same way, although it’s only updated once a week and needs a splash of something to liven it up a bit.
The guy who played Spaulding in Caddyshack is a real estate broker in the Boston area. (thx, ivan)
Two reading recommendations regarding the Jonestown documentary: a story by Tim Cahill in A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg and Seductive Poison by former People’s Temple member Deborah Layton. (thx, garret and andrea)
In case someone in the back didn’t hear it, this map is not from Dungeons and Dragons but from Zork/Dungeon. (via a surprising amount of people in a short period of time)
When reading about how low NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions are relative to the rest of the US, keep in mind the area surrounding NYC (kottke.org link). “Think of Manhattan as a place which outsources its pollution, simply because land there is so valuable.” (thx, bob)
NPR did a report on the Nickelback potential self-plagiarism. (thx, roman)
After posting about the web site for Miranda July’s new book, several people reminded me that Jeff Bridges’ site has a similar lo-fi, hand-drawn, narrative-driven feel.
In the wake of linking to the IMDB page for Back to the Future trivia, several people reminded me of the Back to the Future timeline, which I linked to back in December. A true Wikipedia gem.
I’m ashamed to say I’m still hooked on DesktopTD. The problem is that the creator of the game keeps updating the damn thing, adding new challenges just as you’ve finally convinced yourself that you’ve wrung all of the stimulation out of the game. As Robin notes, it’s a brilliant strategy, the continual incremental sequel. Version 1.21 introduced a 10K gold fun mode…you get 10,000 gold pieces at the beginning to build a maze. Try building one where you can send all 50 levels at the same time and not lose any lives. Fun, indeed.
Regarding the low wattage color palette, reader Jonathan notes that you should use that palette in conjunction with a print stylesheet that optimizes the colors for printing so that you’re not wasting a lot of ink on those dark background colors. He also sent along an OS X trick I’d never seen before: to invert the colors on your monitor, press ctrl-option-cmd-8. (thx, jonathan)
Dorothea Lange’s iconic Migrant Mother photograph was modified for publication…a thumb was removed from the lower right hand corner of the photo. Joerg Colberg wonders if that case could inform our opinions about more recent cases of photo alteration.
In reviewing all of this, the following seem related in an interesting way: Nickelback’s self-plagiarism, continual incremental sequels, digital photo alteration, Tarantino and Rodriquez’s Grindhouse, and the recent appropriation of SimpleBits’ logo by LogoMaid.
Some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the embodied energy of bottled water: “the cost to produce and deliver a bottle of imported water is $0.22, leaving $1.28 per bottle profit for the manufacturer and the retail store”.
Crushpad lets you make your own wine from the comfort of your own home. “Crushpad offers a web-based system called MyCrushpad that allows you to monitor and manage your wine remotely.You’ll be able to create your winemaking plan online, see pictures of your grapes while they’re still on the vine, access the dozens of statistics (like sugar, acids, fermentation temperatures, etc.) our winemakers use to make decisions about handling the fruit. You’ll be able to check on your wine at every stage from the vineyard to the barrel to the bottle no matter where you are.”
Kate Spicer writes about her experience with an extreme diet in an attempt to drop to size zero in six weeks. “The next day I get up and run for an hour and feel really fat. The truth is, the more weight I lose, the fatter I feel and the more I want to lose weight. I lie in bed in the mornings feeling my hipbones and wanting to feel them more. I want them to jut out.” A documentary featuring Spicer and other female journalists is showing on Channel 4 in the UK on April 22. Spicer previously ran the 150-mile, seven-day Marathon des Sables across the Sahara in 2006.
Update: UK singer and TV presenter Louise Redknapp recently went on a similar diet for another TV program. (thx, leanne)
A list of possible Red Sox-inspired wines. Matsusake, Two-Buck ‘Tek, Coco Cristal, and Big Papinot Noir all sound delicious.
Loving article about the little-known transcontinental burrito tunnel linking San Francisco and NYC. “By the time they reach Cleveland the burritos are fully heated through and traveling uphill at about twice the speed of sound.” (via seriouseats)
In the high stakes game of making restaurant reservations in NYC, restaurants and their patrons are engaged in attempting to outflank one another in vying for tables at prime times. “I have a well-connected friend in the entertainment industry, and I often say I am calling from his office in order to score a weekend reservation at a crowded restaurant. If NYC restaurants are going to play the game this way, we have no choice but to play along with them.”
I love YouTube. This is a video clip of a chef pulling noodle dough, doubling it over 12 times until the noodles are unbelievably fine. The clip is from a 1987 PBS science show that I watched once when I was 14[1] and I’ve remembered it ever since as one of the simplest, coolest, and most concrete illustrations of mathematics I’ve ever seen. (via seriouseats)
[1] Ooh, watching science shows on PBS at 14….how popular was I in school?
Chicago chef Homaro Cantu talks a bit more about his plans for edible advertising. “You open up a magazine, there’s a small plastic thing in there, and you rip it open. It looks like a cheeseburger, tastes like a cheeseburger, it’s made from all organic ingredients.” The ads will also be allergen-free and may contain a bit of fluoride to help keep your teeth clean. (via seriouseats)
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