Posted by Ed Levine, January 8, 2008 at 7:00 AM
I love leafing through The Saveur 100. I can spend many fun-filled hours mulling over the magazine's choices. It just made it to my mailbox, and as usual, is filled with mostly thoughtful, surprising choices, with a few puzzlements thrown in for good measure.
My Favorite Thoughtful, Surprising Choices
Number 8: Les Blank, the Bay Area filmmaker who loves food and music in equal measure. Rent or buy Spend It All, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, or A Well-Spent Life. Last year, after a 20-year absence from the scene, he released All in This Tea, in which he follows a tea enthusiast through China.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, May 11, 2007 at 11:32 AM
What is a pie bank? A delicious invention of Saveur's Larry Nighswander. The best news for us pie lovers? The account he set up at Millie's Restaurant is still active, and there are slices (of banana cream pie) yet to be ordered:
"So, if you're ever in Middleport, Ohio, look up Millie's Restaurant; it's at 39239 Bradbury Road; phone (740) 992-7713. If you enjoy banana cream pie, feel free to stop in and order a slice out of our "pie bank."
I'm there.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 17, 2007 at 3:45 PM
Forget seared ahi steaks, mango salsa, and Pacific Rim Cuisine; Kaui Philpotts grew up in a sugar plantation on Maui and knows what real Hawaiian food is:
I ate impromptu picnics of fried shoyu (soy sauce) chicken neatly wrapped in waxed paper and musubi (perfect triangles of seaweed-wrapped white rice, like giant sushi) with my friend Lei on the steps of the VFW Hall in Wailuku after hula class. I ate tripe stew and day-old poi (the steamed and pounded corm of the taro plant), saimin noodles with bright pink fish cake, "plate lunches" of beef stew and chicken cutlets with sticky rice, and the Portuguese fried doughnuts called malasadas. I ate Spam, for heaven's sake, with musubi, eggs, or rice. (Hawaii leads the nation in per capita Spam consumption.) I ate real Hawaiian food—local food, the kind people who live in Hawaii actually eat every day.
This food is more than the pit-roasted pig and coconut pudding of the traditional luau. It's also more than the diet of the early Hawaiians, which was largely based on fish, poi, sweet potatoes, and tropical fruit. Local food is a multicultural style of cooking—one of the original fusion cuisines—much of it derived from the cooking of the immigrant laborers from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Portuguese islands of Madeira and the Azores who came here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to work the sugar cane and pineapple plantations that stretched across the islands. It is modest, down-home food—but full of exotic flavors.
If you'd like to read more about Hawaiian food, my two favorite food blogs from the islands are 'Ono Kine Grindz and Big Island Grinds.
I loved reading this piece and was surprised to find that it was first published in 1994! Someone at Saveur decided they should start posting articles from the depths of their archives onto their website—whomever it was, you are my hero of the day. I'll be pointing to more of their articles as they turn up.
Photograph from Hellochris on Flickr
Posted by Ed Levine, March 26, 2007 at 10:30 AM
Has anyone else noticed how much better Saveur is now that its former editor in chief Coleman Andrews has taken his globetrotting ways to Gourmet? New editor in chief James Oseland is doing a terrific job. The magazine is more readable, more relevant, and just plain fun.
The March issue featured a terrific multifaceted feature on shrimp. Who doesn't love shrimp? The big shrimp section includes great recipes for barbecued shrimp from Tory McPhail of Commander's Palace, shrimp chowder from Sam Hayward from Fore Street in Portland, Maine, and stir-fried shrimp with snow peas from my friend Ed Schoenfeld, AKA "Chop Suey Looey."
