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I think this rather an important topic to think about considering the high price both ecologically and health-wise we pay for our homogeneous diets.

Andy Griffin, found on Edible San Francisco

Times have changed. Americas political culture has embraced multiculturalism, yet goat meat has yet to break into the mainstream. Why? Partly because of language. We eat beef, not cow. We eat pork, not pig. Wed eat horsemeat if it was called pumpkin pie. Having a name for a meat thats different from the name of the animal it came from gives squeamish consumers a chance to forget that theyre eating a creature. Some producers call goat meat cabrito others call it capretto, and still others call it chevon. I asked Mark Pastore, the owner of Incanto Restaurant in Noe Valley, about the challenges of writing a menu that features goat meat. Incanto is an Italian restaurant that puts a sophisticated spin on a rustic, seasonal cuisine. Pastore means shepherd in Italian, so Mark is almost fated to serve goat. He had a smile on his face when he answered. “You want to sell me tender, young, locally grown goats? How do you think its going to look if I have Ôneighborhood kid on the menu?”

From SFGate

Associated with the southern Italian island of Capri, a famed vacation spot for the moneyed set, insalata caprese requires five ingredients, and five only: tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil and salt. Full stop. Vinegar, especially balsamic vinegar, doesn’t belong.

“You could put me on record as saying that (vinegar) is the most nontraditional thing, and I see it all the time and I cringe,” says Nate Appleman, chef of A16 in San Francisco.

Found on Wired.com

His team is using nuclear magnetic resonance to analyze carrot-based soup stocks and studying why green beans change color when cooked. But he says that the next big idea he wants to tackle is the role that love — of the cook for the diners, the diners for the cook, and of everyone for each other — plays in determining tastes. “Cooking for someone is a way of telling them, ‘I love you.’ This has to be understood, of course,” This says before pausing for a second. “But first, I do my job with the carrots.”

from MSN Money

“A lot of poor, transient people work in restaurants,” says Peter Francis, a co-author of industry exposé “How to Burn Down the House.” “They’re not giving up the $100 they’d make in a shift because they’re sick.”

Ands when you consider Bourdain reveals it’s even a point of pride among chefs to work sick…

a strange dim sum review from TimesOnline

So soon has it come to this: food that has been airlifted can’t, shan’t, won’t be considered organic. So, if you want a climatically ethical life, don’t nosh anything fresh from abroad.On the other hand, I expect those of you who want to live proper will also continue to fight ceaselessly for the cancellation of Third World debt and the tearing down of EU trade barriers that so cruelly penalise African agrarian economies, to allow them to sell their surplus cash crops freely to us. Except, of course, that they’ll have to deliver them by bike.

found in The New York Times

“I’m not sure it’s possible to behave with much dignity around seven glistening pounds of pork butt, but on a recent night at Momofuku Ssam Bar, five friends and I weren’t even encouraged to try.”

from sfweekly.com

Former admissions representatives at CCA say they preyed on students’ dreams of becoming celebrity chefs and glossed over the painful economic realities of the industry

From SFGate.com

Insiders refer to him as “the guy who knows how to get things.” They frequent his store — hidden away on the fifth floor of an unmarked building off Union Square — to check out the high-tech wares he’s amassed from all over the world.

These insiders include some of the Bay Area’s best known chefs. The guy they’re referring to is Jing Tio, owner of Le Sanctuaire — a new specialized culinary store in San Francisco — who has made it his life’s mission to seek out the most interesting and cutting-edge kitchen goods, from sous-vide chamber vacuum sealers to ingredients like gelling agents and black cubeb peppercorns.

From the Times (London): About a cooking course in Provence led by a Michelin-starred chef.

My Dad, the French chef

From SFGate

Compiling the Top 100 restaurants is like working a puzzle. Everything needs to fit together — varied locations, types of cuisines and price ranges. The challenge comes in finding places in all these categories that meet The Chronicle’s standards. Whether they’re in Los Gatos, San Anselmo, Oakland or San Francisco, whether you pay $150 for a meal or only $15, the restaurants have to be places where you’d want to spend your money, and return to again.