Food for Thought

Summer is in full swing. Maybe you've taken a cruise, a roadtrip, a European jaunt or a trip to the beach, but summer would not be complete without a night spent with only a thin layer of nylon separating you from the starry sky and the cool night air... am I right?

No?! Well to be honest, I haven't always felt that way. I am a reluctant camper. If you are too, all you need is a patient (and preferably more camping-experienced) friend or family member and maybe a few books from the library to get you started.

Do you have a "voracious appetite" for reading? Have you ever “devoured” a book? Have you ever had the depraved desire to slather your first-edition F. Scott Fitzgerald classic with whipped cream and chocolate sauce? Do you look forward to resuming that book you put down on the subway with the same hunger that you anticipate that chocolate cake at your favorite restaurant? Does a good dessert make you feel equally comfortable as a good book, like you would want to curl up in bed with either (aside from the crumbs that a dessert might shed, of course)?
 
If you answered “yes” to these questions, then you, like me, are a 

Perhaps you’ve noticed a few more people joining the menu party lately. The . As are our friends from the National Life Insurance Company. We’ve even extended an invite to our canine crew (and their owners) from the Philadelphia Dog Show Association.

If you've transcribed even one menu, you've likely seen her stamp. A blue oval bearing her name, "Buttolph Collection", as graceful as a branding iron over asparagus, Russian caviar, or Boston baked beans.

Miss Frank E. Buttolph stamped nearly every menu she collected for the New York Public Library, twenty-three years worth, amounting to roughly 25,000 menus under her tenure alone.

But who was Miss Buttolph and why did she collect menus?

We've gotten a number of questions over the past week of What's on the Menu? about menus marked as "done." Do we really mean done? As in finished, vetted, archived for posterity? Fear not, we've cleared up this confusion with some new language. What we really meant to say was "under review."

Wow. We're sitting here with our mouths agape, simply overwhelmed --and thrilled! -- by the response to What's on the Menu? We knew you guys liked food, but holy (broiled) mackerel!

We launched WOTM very quietly, just three days ago, and, as of this typing, we have over 22K dishes transcribed! And it's evident, from the emails and tweets we've been receiving, that we have some very enthusiastic participants out there. Thank you!

Saratoga Chips.  Corned Beef Hash.  Large Pot of Oolong Tea. 

Okay, so they’re not included in the works of Shakespeare (as far as I know), but that doesn’t mean these dishes aren't of value to researchers and scholars and the generally curious who read menus in order to learn more about the food served and consumed in restaurants throughout history.

But until now this kind of information (the food!) was difficult - if not impossible - to search in our digitized menu collection.

When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A pint of plain is your only man.

                                  —Flann O'Brien

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
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Currently on display at the St. George Library Center is a photo exhibit by photojournalist Sri Walpola, "A Taste of Home: Cooking Sri Lankan in New York." We sat down with him for a brief interview.

What inspired "A Taste of Home: Cooking Sri Lankan in New York"?

Since my arrival in New York, I started cooking. I started looking for Sri Lankan ingredients first, and then I started cooking with the help of my mother and both my sisters via the telephone because all of them are in Sri Lanka.

Traditional Sri Lankan cuisine is a wondrous mix of tropical produce, freshly pounded spices, and curries cooked slowly in clay pots over an open fire. Flavor comes with spare time and energy — two factors in short supply in the big city. As a result, photojournalist Sri Walpola became interested in how his fellow countrywomen manage to recreate the tastes of home on Staten Island.

The United States Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known more commonly as the Food Stamp Program, provides support to low-income New Yorkers including working families, qualified immigrants, the elderly and the disabled to increase their ability to purchase food. A household must qualify under eligibility rules set by the federal government to enroll in this program.  To determine your eligiblity for this or other goverment assistance programs, click here.

115 East 14th Street. March 1933.
credit: Robert Byrnes Collection of Automat MemorabiliaAsk anyone about the "Big Mac" and immediately one imagines an image of a double hamburger on a sesame seed bun. The golden arches are everywhere.  On Broadway and 42nd Street, New York City boasts one of the largest McDonald's in metropolitan America. 

Say the words "Horn & Hardart," you will probably get a different reaction.  Go back thirty years or more...

Welcome to the wrap-up of our discussion of Kitchen Confidential. We hope that we have inspired you to be adventurous in the kitchen this Thanksgiving holiday [if you happen to be reading this blog from a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving now, then we hope that it has inspired you to be adventurous in the kitchen in general], or at least inspired you to find some tasty reading.

The third course chapter of Kitchen Confidential recounts Tony's series of jobs after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America.  From the fading glory with a view of the Rainbow Room to the Apocalypse Now atmosphere of Works Progress, then later to the slow failures of Tom's and Rick's Cafe, etc. Along with an increasingly fat paycheck, his stories of the various kitchens he worked in include lots of objectionable language and an atmosphere not unlike prison with macho posturing and threats.  He jumped from one restaurant to the next, building up colleagues and industry secrets. During what he calls the 

For as long as I can remember, every Thanksgiving me, my mom, dad, and sister would pile into the family car and drive to my uncle’s house while listening to Arlo Guthrie’s song Alice’s Restaurant. The 18-minute 34-second song tells the story of Guthrie’s arrest on Thanksgiving Day as well as his experience as a draftee reporting to the New York City induction center during the Vietnam War. The song has become as much a part of Thanksgiving to me as turkey and gravy and my uncle's amazing baked clams. Before, during, and after the song my parents always provide a running commentary, interjecting with vignettes about 1960s counter-culture, the draft, and even one 

Welcome back to the Reader’s Den.  This month we are reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential.  Jenny’s post from last week gave us some background on Bourdain.  We are progressing in the book onto the second course now, which outlines “what strange beasts lurk behind the kitchen doors” as well as several don’ts Bourdain has learned from working in the industry for so long.  While he freely admits that good food “is about risk,” he also can’t overlook some truths he’s found out along the way.  Below you'll find some of his anecdotal rules for eating out. 

Welcome back to this month’s Reader’s Den, co-led by Jenny Baum and Ursula Murphy, about Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.

Welcome to this month’s Reader’s Den!  This month we’ll have a discussion co-led by Jenny Baum and Ursula Murphy about Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Please feel free to comment or bring up anything relevant to the book in the comment section.  We'll try to address and facilitate discussion as it comes up. 

Every morsel in The Manga Cookbook is so freaking cute and delicious looking I couldn’t decide what to cook. This kind of copious edible cuteness must be how the Bento box came to be. The bento is a combo of small treats stuffed together attractively in a box or tray. In fact, stuffing the tray is compulsory, as the bento is meant to be portable. If there’s even a little space in the box, contents will shift and the omotenashi (eating with the eyes) will be ruined. In any event, I was compelled to make a variety of adorable things: