Entries tagged with 'Europe'
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"The menu fit in perfectly with my ideal of old-fashioned romantic trains." [Flickr: takaki] You know how you’re supposed to book your ticket in advance when vacationing? Way in advance? To pay less? I have a terrible confession—I wait. Well, I wait, on purpose, when I am traveling from London to Paris. [Other photographs: Kerry Saretsky] I wait, just long enough, because I play a game with myself. At a certain point on the Eurostar, the lowest fare tickets will soar in price but the leisure class stays the same, quite low in fact—only a couple of pounds more than the economy. That’s when I buy. Because, truth be told, of the food. I suppose being born in the 1980s...
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Photograph from neoterra on Flickr Leave it to the French to spend their hard-earned tax dollars sponsoring wine and cheese parties here in the U.S and around the world. Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the French government, along with a handful of wine and cheese producers, is spending over $2 million to sponsor these parties in order to "show that French cuisine can be relaxed." If you want a chance to have the French pay you to throw a party, head on over to the contest form at houseparty.com. One thousand winners will get a 15 percent discount on certain French wines and receive a free gift when ordering French cheeses from specified websites. Okay, so...
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I've always had a fascination with the way some people obsess with the notion of matching wine with food. During one memorable discussion long ago, I was told that lobster and wine don't really go together because the claws and tail call for different wines. Not everybody thinks this way and several recent meals in Italy's Piedmont region seemed to prove the point. Cooking bollito misto. As so often happens in places where there's a long and historic wine tradition, the Piemontese don't really bother with wine matching at all. Instead, they choose a bottle—often one that brings up fond memories—and drink it with everything. This attitude was on proud display at a food festival in the small Alpine...
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Black-hooved Iberico pigs in Spain. Photograph from Shoes on Wires on Flickr About a year ago, Iberico hams, the most gourmet of Spanish piggies, were first sold in the United States. They arrived with black hooves on—a symbol of Spanish hospitality and a guarantee of Iberico authenticity. Now after a USDA ruling effective January 2009, all hams will arrive "pata negra sin pata" (without the telltale black hoof). To make it worse, the ruling added a punitive 100 percent tariff on all bone-in Iberico hams, which will double the price of any delivered after March 2009. So one of these ridiculously expensive (and seriously delicious) $1,400 hams will now set you back $2,800. Talk about starting the year off...
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Photographs from mpreis.com Believe it or not, that's a supermarket at top. It's one of the handful of Austria-based MPREIS stores. More at Cool Hunting....
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Photograph by roboppy on Flickr. Aggressive olive farming techniques for cheap, mass-produced olive oil now means extreme water shortages in Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. Farms that produce the low-priced oils are driving out the small olive farmers who produce the quality goods—and are also leading to other "serious environmental problems" such as soil erosion. Inappropriate weed-control and soil control, combined with the inherently high risk of erosion in many olive-farming areas, is leading to desertification on a wide scale in some of the main producing regions. If these irresponsible farming methods continue, we might be demanding for butter instead of olive oil at our favorite restaurants....
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When it comes to finding local food treasures, ask for a taste of the product or dish that the proprietors are most proud of—what's most traditional, what's made with the best local ingredients. At
Pasticceria Battisti, my question was answered with a slice of their signature cake,
pan frutto.
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My visit to Torino last month would not have been complete without a stop at Eataly, the grand and glorious emporium dedicated to the finest foods and gastronomic traditions of Italy. A short taxi ride from the center of the city brought me to the more working-class area of town where Eataly sits, framed by views of the Alps.
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Said a document release Friday by the European Food Safety Agency: “It is very unlikely that any difference exists in terms of food safety between food products originating from clones and their progeny compared with those derived from conventionally bred animals."...
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The French hate McDonald's. The notion of "fast food" clashes with their belief that meals should be long and leisurely; that they should be cooked carefully, with prized ingredients. It couldn't be further from the notion of terroir. But mostly they hate it because it is as shamefully hip-packed and loud-talking as those god-awful Americans, and Americans don't know how to eat. Have you heard this before? Did you believe it? Well, then you might want to sit down for this one: In the first half of this year, combined sales at the chain's 6,400 European restaurants rose 15 percent, to $4.1 billion, compared with a 6 percent increase in the United States, where McDonald's has 13,800 restaurants and where...
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