docsconz

Are you sure that isn't the 2008 schedule? He did appear in NYC then, but elBulli was already closed for the season. This year's elBulli schedule is different than past years as it is starting and finishing later. I have not seen anything about a 2009 NYC Wine and Food Festival just yet. I know that Starchefs has tried to get him to come to their ICC in September, but he hasn't because of the conflict with the elBulli schedule.

To me, at least, it's just gossip. I don't pay serious attention to it, and would find it surprising if anybody did. Is Alice Waters's reported experience at Per Se really going to influence your decisions on going? ← No, but it feeds people's perception of Ms. Waters unfairly and in this case incorrectly. I don't mind good, juicy gossip, but definitely prefer it to be accurate.

I am surprised to read such vociferous defenses of industrial agriculture from people who I know love quality food. Alice Waters is a personality and person who people may like or not like based upon how she comes off just as is the case with any other person. What I don't understand is how people here can take that and support the mediocrity (at best) of industrial agriculture vs. expanding the availability and affordability of artisanal farming (I also believe that "organic" certification has become essentially devoid of meaning - it is more important to assess the methods used by a farmer than the certification). I understand that it can be difficult for people with low means to afford top quality produce, but I don't understand what seems to be an unwillingness to expand the availability of this food.

Just out of curiosity... If you had first been told that McWilliams was a fellow in the Yale University Program in Agrarian Studies and had a paper such as his Boll Weevils and Bureaucrats: Leland O. Howard and the Transition to Chemical Insecticides in the United States, 1894-1927, which isn't exactly pro-chemical insecticide, before you read his other work, I wonder if your opinion might be different. Why do we give credence to what Jeffrey Steingarten (a lawyer) or Alice Waters (a restaurateur and activist) or Tony Bourdain (a cook) or whoever else has to say about these things when we agree with them, but when it goes against the things we want to believe, then "he's only a historian." Well, yes, I suppose he's "only a historian" -- but he's also a historian whose major field of specialty is the environmental history of the United States, which would certainly include plenty of background on just the things he covered in his article. And in doing this work he has written other things relating to food and agriculture that have been pretty well received among a pretty tough crowd. So... I think it's fair to say that you don't agree with his conclusions or whatever. But it doesn't seem reasonable to attack the basis of everything he says or might say that has a grounding in science on the basis that he's a historian at TX State. Yes, a historian may not have a great knowledge of science and scientific principles. But he just might have. It depends on this historian. I think I have a pretty reasonable "knowledge of science and scientific principles," and I'm not a scientist. I'd say that you have a pretty reasonable "knowledge of science and scientific principles" as well, despite the fact that I'm not sure epidemiology and livestock management (etc.) are big parts of training in anesthesiology. The question, rather, is whether as soneone with a reasonable knowledge of science and scientific principles the conclusions he makes seem like they are reasonably and properly informed by the available evidence. Whether or not we agree with those conclusions is another matter. ← You are misrinterpreting what I said, Sam as did Dave. For Dave, who said that I ignored the study? I was simply clarifying something that needed to be clarified. Criticizing the methodology and the conclusions is hardly ignoring it. I also never said that a historian can not be versed in science. He may or may not be well versed in Science and the scientific method, but not because he is a historian. That is not typically part of the turf. It is reasonable to question his scientific credentials given the flaws in the study. There is a lot of methodology that is simply not clear, especially as relates to controlling for the "free-range" pigs. There is wide variation as to what that means and there was no apparent effort to explain or control for that. One argument I do tend to agree with you on is the food miles one. I buy local when I can for a variety of reasons, including the quality of produce I can get by doing so as well as to help support my local economy. That doesn't mean that I don't by from afar. I think that it is important to support quality agriculture no matter where it happens to be located. All things being equal, however, I prefer to buy in my backyard, which unlike the Farmers markets in urban areas is truly local.

Here.Bloggers and others were quick to note: Five days after publication of McWilliams's piece, the Times appended this editors note: McWilliams responded, admitting he "may have erred" on the seropathogen issue, on The Atlantic. IMO, he lacks the credentials to discuss with any authority the matters cited upthread. To bring this back OT, how can anyone who claims with the straightest of faces that "locavores are endangering the future of food" be taken seriously? ← It was nice of you to include the link to McWilliams' response, since your characterization of it lacks the context necessary to understand it. I suggest that anyone truly interested in sustainability read the whole thing, but here are a few high points: Peer review exists to illuminate and eliminate bias, including that which might be introduced by funding influences. Peer review is certainly better than non-peer review, but that doesn't mean that it is infallible. Poor articles and studies make it past peer review all the time for many reasons. All journals tend to serve particular audiences and specific journals, prestigious or not, tend to follow the viewpoint of its editor. That particular journal likely is likely to focus on the issues of industrial agriculture with a bias towards that sector. That is how the scientists who are involved with a journal like that make their living. The article may or may not be valid, but its presence in a journal like that does not necessarily validate it just by being in the journal. McWilliams then goes on to link to summaries by Ohio State University, which expresses the problem is a way that is almost identical to how McWilliams put it, and New Scientist, which distinguished between the presence of antibodies and seropositivity, but also pointed out that antibodies are "telltale signs of infection." Antibodies are a tell tale sign of exposure not of infection. Healthy animals, like healthy humans with well functioning immune systems likely carry many antigens without necessarily having had clinical infections. The presence of an antigen or a pathogen is more indicative of a clinical infection. I would expect healthy, foraging animals to have antibodies. The biggest concern aside from humaneness with factory farming has been the development of antibiotic resistance as well as acting as an incubator for epidemics like bird or swine flu. To date, no one has refuted the findings of the report, which -- it should be pointed out -- McWilliams simply brought to a wider audience. He didn't write the report; he used it as evidence to point out that agriculture is a human invention that is flawed by definition. Dismissing McWilliams because he's a history professor (and New York Times columnist who knows no one in the pork industry) overlooks the important idea that the history of the world can be written as a tale of agriculture. Just to take the US as an example, Columbus was looking for spices; the prime directive of the Jamestown colony was to send food back home; once the New England colonies were established, they set about exporting crops. The slave triangle relied on sugar, molasses and tobacco for the New-to-Old World leg. More recently, as Steven alluded to earlier, we (though perhaps we didn't know it then) decided in the 1930s that California would produce most of the nation's fruits and vegetables by diverting water from hundreds of miles away -- a continuing ecological rape that locavores conveniently ignore. ← Being a history professor affords some advantages, but a knowledge of science and scientific principles is not necessarily one of them. What a history professor should be able to offer is perspective. I'm not sure that he does.

Why not? Gossip is fine if the information is valid, but people can be adversely and unfairly affected.

And he may have been especially happy it was Alice Waters, for some strange reason. ← That the person was purported to be Alice Waters was the whole story. The glee that Feedbag exhibited was above and beyond the other reports that I read, which I found particularly "annoying" especially since it wasn't true. Alice Waters did dine in Chicago and did dine at Alinea, an event that Chef Achatz anticipated with some concern on Twitter, saying that "We have cooked for Ferran, TK, DB and JG. But Alice comes tomorrow and has me the most uptight of all. I really want her to like it." To Ruth Reichl, he responded on Twitter, "not scared,but an odd "want to please your parents" by not being a doctor like them, type of feeling.Respect collides w/ defense." I asked him via email, how it went. His response, "It went very well." Waters may not be liked or respected by all, but she certainly was no monster at Alinea. I have met and conversed with her in the past and found her to be quite charming.

Were this true, it would change the playing field here. It might even justify some of the hectoring we hear from Team Waters. But it's only true in a very limited sense. Again: That same statement (from McWilliams, who has been attacked ad hominem but not refuted, because most of what he says is irrefutable) has several related variants, e.g., we can't feed the world with heritage breeds, etc. -- not unless we implement authoritarian structures and force people to be mostly vegetarian. It's true that industrial agriculture has some unfair advantages in terms of subsidies and ability to externalize some costs. But when it comes down to it, no matter how much heritage-breed product we buy, it's mathematically impossible for it to compete seriously on price with the industrial product. Quite simply, if an animal takes twice as long to reach maturity, it's going to cost more. Even if other cost savings occur (like perhaps the heritage breed is more disease resistant, or has better mothering skills) they're not going to offset that. A good example would be Murray's. I think Murray's has achieved just about all the benefits of scale that a conscientious local farming operation can achieve. It's a fairly big operation, yet raises Certified Humane chicken without antibiotics etc. You see a whole lot of Murray's chicken around the New York area. I like Murray's and support Murray's. I think Murray's chicken tastes better. But Murray's chicken costs very nearly twice as much as the industrial chicken next to it on the rack. Maybe with an increase in scale and a change in agricultural policy we could get the differential down from 100% to, what? 80? 75 percent? Whatever the exact numbers, industrial mass agriculture is going to produce cheaper food. In addition, can operations like Murray's be extrapolated to provide all our food of every kind? What those of us who think Alice Waters is wrong (to be clear, some find her annoying, some find her wrong, some find her both) are saying is: no. The argument "the more people that support quality, artisanal farms and farming the cheaper their products will become" only works up to a point, because at some point without the efficiency of industrial agriculture we'd run out of space, resources, etc., or we'd need to become a mostly vegetarian society, not to mention a vegetarian society where 45% of the population works on farms. ← steven, your arguments are certainly true for the near term, but what Ms. Waters and others argue is that there are many hidden costs in industrial agriculture that are rarely accounted for but should be, such as the cost of pollution produced and land ruined for future use. I am as much a carnivore as anyone, but large scale industrial agriculture or even Ms. Waters preferred agricultural approach is not likely to be sustainable without major paradigm shifts or population adjustments. The former is likely to destroy the earth in the process of trying to feed the masses, while the latter is unlikely to sustain the masses for the reasons that you mention.

What Ozersky actually did was to pick up a story that another blog had reported. He assumed the other blog's story was true and then commented upon it. The other blog later retracted...and so did Ozersky. ← Still shoddy journalism. He was very quick to believe ill of someone and was salivating all over it.

It's too late for me to get into this argument, especially as it relates to Ms. Waters. One point I would like to make is that the more people that support quality, artisanal farms and farming the cheaper their products will become as these farms then get to benefit from what is good about scale. The more people that are able to sell their heritage breeds, the greater the market will be to sell to them. The other side of the pricing issue is that these farms and big agribusiness are not playing on the same field. big agribusiness gets a lot of support from the federal government involving pricing subsidies and supports that simply aren't there for the smaller, artisanal farmers. Don't even talk about "organics", a term that has been largely co-opted by larger agricultural entities since smaller farmers can rarely afford the high cost of organic certification despite the fact that the approach of many is ,ore pure in that regard than many a "certified" organic farm. Perhaps not everyone can afford to buy quality farmers market produce at this time. That doesn't mean that this isn't a laudable goal and that we as a society shouldn't strive to bring wholesome, quality foods to all. One way for that to happen is for those who can afford to buy these food items to actually do so. Not only are they likely to get superior product, they will also contribute to the ability of others less fortunate to ultimately do the same. As for the issue of "sustainability", there are clearly agricultural practices that are not "sustainable" and weaken the earth's ability to produce and there are clearly agricultural practices that allow for continued productivity. No practice will be sustainable, however, so long as human population increases and we continue to over-run our resources. The question becomes, how long before a particular system falls apart. If we all do what we can, the time for falling apart will perhaps be delayed maybe even allowing time for other solutions.

Is a pizza at Pizza Hut fast food? It takes 20 minutes. It doesn't take 20 minutes to cook a White Manna burger. How many minutes does it take? Five or six? What is the number of minutes it needs to take before food crosses from fast to not fast? Does it count if some of those minutes are spent waiting on line, waiting behind other cars at the drive-thru, waiting because the griddle is too small so it takes 20 minutes before anyone can even start cooking your food? When Hardee's releases a new burger and there are hour-long lines to get one, is it no longer fast food? Is an omelet fast food? Are the thousand other things that cook in a minute fast food? Does the term "fast food" contain self-descriptive answers to these questions? ← It is not just the speed of cooking or preparation, it is also how it is eaten. I wrote that ff is designed to be served and eaten quickly. If I am going to a fast food restaurant I don't expect to have to wait and get annoyed when I do, although there may be certain times that I might expect to wait. I also expect that when I get my food, that I won't linger over it and that I will eat it quickly because time is an important component. That doesn't necessarily mean that fast food is necessarily bad food, though much of it happens to be. If an omelet is made on an assembly line situation to be pumped out quickly and the person is there for a quick meal, then, yes, it is fast food. If it is made with care and eaten with just as much care then it is not fast food, even though it might still be a quick meal. In either case the omelet may be tasty and nutritious or not, however, I believe that it is more likely to be tasty and considered to be so in the latter situation.

I don't understand the difficulty with defining fast food. It is entirely self-descriptive. It is food that is designed to be served and eaten quickly. That is why waiting 20 minutes for a burger at White manna disqualifies it as fast food. A fast food restaurant is one that serves food that is designed to be served and eaten quickly with minimum waiting and often though not necessarily with a minimum of frills, which is why Spanish style tapas qualify. Fast food has developed a negative reputation, often deserved, but not always. Spanish tapas are fast food that defy the negative reputation (generally). Fuddrucker's may grind their meat on-premises, but never having eaten at one, I don't know if they are fast food or not based upon the various criteria proposed here. I also like Tino27's definition.

Before this topic, I would have agreed, but it is no more fast food than having a burger at a diner or a regular sit-down restaurant. The fact that patrons generally have to sit and wait for their food and that for the most part it is served and eaten at a bar counter makes the difference. Granted it straddles the line, but I think it crosses just out of the fast food realm. I wouldn't go there if I was in a hurry. I go there to savor the burger and enjoy the surroundings and ambiance for what they are. We may have to agree to disagree on this.

White Manna is wonderful at what they do, but is anything but fast. I agree that White Castle sucks by comparison. White Castle has a very different service structure. White Manna is much more like a diner than a typical ff restaurant.

I don't doubt this, and it makes sense in a way. I don't know if I noticed McDonalds in Rome but they wouldn't surprise me. But here I was in Bologna, where I went basically for the food, and where in two days I ate the best food in my life, and there was a McDonalds in the middle of the city. Not that Bologna is that small, and it has a significant student population, but still, to me, it amounted to a sacrilege. ← I think the genesis of Slow Food in Italy was because of the intent to open a McDonald's, right near the Spanish Steps. McDonald's in Bologna is unsurprising due to the number of students there. ← You are correct about the genesis of Slow Food.

An example of a hamburger that really doesn't qualify in my mind as ff is White Manna. While they do take-out, it is not a place to go and expect to out the door quickly. Half the fun is sitting at the little diner counter and soaking up the ambience. This is an example of what I meant earlier by "attitude". The food could easily be done as ff, but it isn't nor is it really expected to be.

I don't get the "outside the US" part of that statement. The tapas trend is quite strong in the US. Tapas aren't as widely available or as good outside of Spain as in Spain, but there are plenty of tapas, not to mention tapas-like small-plates menus with non-Spanish influences. Whether those constitute fast food is another question. In general, the whole US/non-US distinction seems specious to me. Yes, the US is the home of mega-corporate junk fast food. But this kind of food is now popular in most every nation where the people can afford to eat it, and the big growth areas are outside the US. ← While I applaud the growing popularity of Spanish tapas in the US, it is a very different phenomenon in Spain, where restaurants tend to specialize in a few dishes that are truly fast food, but really, really good fast food. In the US, while the style is similar, the service model is quite different with tapas joints being more small plate sit down restaurants. I stand by the distinction. As for US, non-US I was simply pointing out a specific form of quality fast food outside the US, not arguing about the relative quality of US ff. I think that you are mixing discussion between posters. I agree that outside of the major chains of which I am not particularly fond, there happens to be a lot of quality ff in the US. Philly cheesesteaks and NY pizza slices as prime examples.

Was it ever a largely positive descriptor? I'm not old enough to remember the early uses of the term in the 1950s and 1960s, but when I was a kid in the 1970s it was certainly not a positive descriptor among my peers' parents -- even though at the time most fast food was pretty tasty, as opposed to now. I searched for New York Times mentions in the 1950s and 1960s and they all seemed pretty neutral. There was no "gee whiz, isn't this futuristic fast-food stuff great! It's so much better than home-cooked food!" The reputation of fast food probably hit a low with the publication of Fast Food Nation, but as an overall trend I wonder if fast food hasn't of late been fighting back against its bad reputation. The whole fast-casual segment, where you have billions of dollars invested in the proposition that it's possible to have high-quality fast food, seems to be a statement that fast food can be good food. There have always been countless examples of good, fast food. Of course having a discussion about fast food's reputation presupposes meaningful agreement about what the term means. I don't think such agreement exists. ← One attempt to give at least some fast food a positive connotation is Ferran Adria's Fast Good in Madrid, though that hasn't met with much critical success. The name itself implies that fast food has a generally bad reputation.

An example of often wonderful fast food outside of the US are Spanish tapas. Of course as with any kind of food, the quality may vary widely, though it is difficult to find truly bad tapas in Spain. They are often reasonably nutritious too.

Congratulations to Chef Achatz and his team for moving up to #10 in Restaurant Magazine's Top 50 Restaurants in the world list! They were ranked #2 in the US after Per Se, though ahead of TFL.

While it shouldn't have any bearing, I still think that it probably will. So much of this list is about buzz. What makes the list somewhat plausible is that many, maybe even most of the restaurants that make it are deserving and arguably belong on the list. What makes the list something of a travesty is the poor execution when it comes to rating restaurants in Asia and japan. C'mon, Bukhara in Delhi is probably not even the best restaurant in Delhi let alone Asia. Granted it fell out of the top 50 last year. I suspect that you are right about the Scandinavians. I think that you will see some shuffling in the US with Alinea rising and Charlie Trotter falling. It will be interesting to see if any of the bistronomic restaurants will make the list. Momfuku Ssam Bar probably stands the greatest chance because of all the hype it has received. I wouldn't be surprised to see Bras and Gordon Ramsey fall as well. Bras because of many reports of slippage and GR because he seems to have taken a massive pr beating over the past year. We'll see. ← I was right about Alinea, Trotter and Ramsey but wrong about Bras. I was also right about Ssam Bar. Le Chataubriand is another bistronomic restaurant to make the list. Spain rules with 40% of the top ten and three of the top five! Osteria Francescana, a personal favorite, the top Italian as a new entry! The Scandinavians have clearly arrived. Interesting list.

Ssam Bar at #31, but no Ko? ← Ko is too new. Notice also no Corton. IMO that clearly belongs there. I have eaten at 10 of the top 15 and Corton is at that level. No Charlie Trotter on the list either. Congratulations to Ferran Adria and the elBulli team. There really is no place like it. Congratulations to all of the restaurants on the list!

I think it is all about attitude - attitude of the restaurant and the diner. Some burgers are designed to be served and eaten rapidly, while others are not. The size and construction of the burger are key elements. A burger difficult to pick up and eat is not likely to be a ff burger. A burger made with care, thought and time is not likely to be a ff burger.

No doubt there are numerous subdivisions of fast food that have their specific usefulness as terms, though I disagree that the term fast food is "unhelpful." It may not be useful from the point of view of a marketer, but it is still a useful philosophical descriptor and generalization tool.

That's all restaurant food...largely prepared ahead of time with final assembly and delivery taking a very short amount of time. ← Not really, Mitch. The difference is that most restaurant food is finished to order and served to a customer at a table by service personnel. FF may be made to order but served to a waiting customer without dedicated service personnel. The food may or may not be eaten at a table. Another important difference of ff is that it is not just made quickly, but eaten quickly. That may or may not be true of burgers, though most are made for rapid consumption. Those that require knife and fork probably don't qualify as ff.