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“… the three hipster-geeks started squirming and making frat-house jokes. “Dude, you need to eat that!” one said to another, picking a lard caramel off the counter. Godby’s palate favors salt, booze and meat. Each day he scoops 10 to 12 of his hundred-plus ice cream flavors, favorites including Jesus Juice (red wine and Coke) and Boccalone Prosciutto. Godby also produces novelties in the what might be called the nose-to-tail dessert paradigm: duck-fat pecan pies, foie-gras ginger-snap ice cream sandwiches, treats that incorporate odd animal parts. On occasion, next to the register (cash only), he sets out a glass-covered cake stand filled with brownies. Nobody buys them. As Godby, in his uniform of long green shorts, blue apron and white Chuck Taylors, explains, ‘I can’t sell cupcakes to save my life.’” “… Gourmet cupcakes are evil. Not just bad, over-hyped, or unhealthy — evil. Here’s why. A cupcake is a miniature cake. Cakes are for special occasions and celebrations: birthdays, anniversaries, and weddings. We eat cake at times that have meaning and purpose. Times when it is natural to want to feast and indulge. Mama Rose, my lovely grandmother, always made a stunningly delicious angel food cake with coconut shavings on our birthdays. It was out of the ordinary, and it signified and enhanced the greater meaning of our celebration (comfort food). Enter the cupcake. A mini-cake in a little cup. Not only is the cupcake a physically smaller version of a cake, but it also requires less psychological justification to eat it. It’s cake’s casual cousin, and it can be eaten just for fun. The very act of eating a cupcake can be the cause of the mini-celebration. Rather than having a special occasion that merits indulgence (birthdays, weddings), the act of indulgence is the cause for celebration. And here’s the kicker. There used to be a stigma to eating cake on ordinary days. And there still is, to some extent. Few people go around eating cake on a regular basis. Nice cakes are too big, too expensive, too luxurious. The challenge that the cheap, standard grocery-store cupcakes always faced is that they were too cheap, too standard, too inexpensive. They weren’t special enough — conscience and the last vestiges of social stigma could outweigh enjoyment. But when gourmet cupcake makers fancied cupcakes up a bit and started charging $3.25 a pop, it provided that little excuse: ‘Now THIS is a special cupcake.’ And eating this gourmet cupcake is a special occasion. It’s all backwards. Evil, thy name is comfort food.” 
:Ces petites merveilles ont été confectionnées par le Chef pâtissier Philippe Andrieu. Il réinterprète la recette du célèbre cup cake à travers cette mini collection tout en couleur et en saveur (citron meringué, rose framboise, chocolat orange, pistache griotte et cassis violette) mais en ajoutant la touche raffinée de La Durée. (5.50€ le cup cake)” (via Des cupcakes chez la Maison La Durée. « Paperoddbird’s Blog) 
“Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries that the United States is in conflict with.”
July 18th, 2010 | 22 notes | Permalink
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“Rethink the way we consume coffee and present solutions that strive to reduce paper cup waste. We are not looking for just another reusable cup design. Think beyond just the vessel for carrying coffee, and develop a way to cause behavior change at a massive scale.” (via Redesigning the Coffee Cup) “Mark Bittman takes aim at a particular peeve of mine: people’s wildly inconsistent attitudes towards processed food. I’ve met plenty of folks who’ll lament all the “processed crap” people feed to their kids and then pull out some vegetarian bacon or sausage. That stuff, of course, is processed, too. Even tofu is heavily processed. It’s a process with a long pedigree (Han Dynasty, if Wikipedia is to be believed), but as anyone who’s ever seen a soybean knows, it sure doesn’t grow out of the ground looking for feeling like that. The broader problem, though, is that it’s really not a good idea to develop fake critiques in order to justify your dislike of specific foods. One of the really difficult things about getting people to eat better is convincing them that it’s not just a way for others to impose class-based lifestyle preferences on one another. But when you’re down on processed foods that are sold in Giant but all about the processed stuff you can buy at Whole Foods, that’s what comes through.” Croissants (via vincenttalleu) mysocialimpact: “What will they think of next? Ron Shaich, the former CEO of Panera Bread has come up with a novel concept that bridges the divide between philanthropy and the food service industry, that of the “non-profit restaurant.” Shaich has transformed a St. Louis restaurant into the Saint Louis Bread Company Cares Cafe. Customers are given receipts with the amount their order is worth, but in lieu of actually paying for food, they are referred to a donation box. If customers can’t donate monetarily, they are asked to give their time. Shaich sees this as the Next Big Thing in restaurantdom: “My hope is that we can eventually do this in every community where there’s a Panera,” he says. Not everyone, however, has bought into the scheme’s greatness. Marian Salzman, a trends consultant, told USA Today, “I don’t think the honor bar system will work nationally…While young people are very much attuned to helping out and making a difference, if they find themselves sitting next to other customers with whom they don’t feel comfortable, they’re not coming back.”
June 3rd, 2010 | 12 notes | Permalink
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Alex AinslieI'm a recent Cornell CS MEng graduate interested in data, computation, design and their intersection. In 2009 I graduated early with an independent BA in Computing, Cognition & Aesthetics and a minor in French. My honors thesis examined the traces our Bluetooth-enabled devices leave behind in public space. I have spent the past three summers as an intern at Google working on mobile maps and gmail, suggest, query refinements, social search, and most recently goggles and mobile local search. I will join Google fulltime in August 2010. This site was born as a personal photo journal during a semester spent abroad in Paris and has evolved into a curated collection of links, text, and images. |
