FriendsEAT.com

Drive Thru to Death

2010-03-10T17:20:30Z

What is the latest “in” thing today? No it’s not technology or cheating on spouses (*cough* Tiger Woods *cough*) or outrageous fashion, but speed. Letters that used to take days and even weeks to reach the intended recipient now take mere seconds. We have even cemented our contempt of that “antique method” by branding it “snail mail.” Information that used to take a lot of time and effort to gather from libraries and other sources can now be at our fingertips faster than you can say “Thank God for Google.”

Patience is a rare virtue for this generation who has gotten used to instant gratification, and it’s no surprise that the same need for speed is applied to food. Fewer and fewer people take the time to slave over or even wait for a decent meal to be cooked. They’d much rather zoom to the nearest drive-thru and pick up a quick meal so that they can have more time to do other more important things like, say, catch up on @aplusk’s latest tweets or play Farmville on Facebook. What they fail to realize is that by hastening their food preparation (if buying the damn things can even be considered that), they are hastening their life as well, as fast food is jam packed with unhealthy fats, sugars, carbs and sodium – the express way to heart problems, diabetes or cancer.

Thank goodness there are still a few health-conscious people left in this world and they decided to help out the rest of our in-danger-of-being-endangered species by putting together a list of the worst drive-thru foods in America. You’re supposed to avoid them like the plague and not seek them out, silly. Here’s a peek:

Worst Drive-Thru Meal in America:
Carl’s Jr. Double Six Dollar Burger
with Medium Natural cut Fries and 32 oz Coke
2618 Calories
144 g at (51.5 g saturated fat)
2892 mg sodium

Healthier alternative:
Famous Star
with Side Salad with Low Fat Balsamic Dressing and 32 oz Iced Tea
685 calories
38 g fat (10.5 g saturated fat)
1520 mg sodium

Worst Drive-Thru Kids Meal:
Burger King Kids Double Cheeseburger and Kids Fries with Small Coke
950 calories
42 g fat (17 g saturated fat, 4.5 g trans fats)
1,410 mg sodium

Healthier Alternative:
4-piece Chicken Tenders with Strawberry-Flavored Applesauce and unlimited water
280 calories
11 g fat (3 g saturated fat)
440 mg sodium

Worst “Healthy” Food:
Arby’s Roast Turkey and Swiss Market Fresh Sandwich
708 calories
29 g fat (8 g saturated fat)
1,676 mg sodium

Healthier Alternative:
Chicken Cordon Blue Sandwich (grilled)
488 calories
18 g fat (4 g saturated fat)
1,560 mg sodium

Check out the complete list here.

Worst fries in America (boingboing.net)

Top 10 Restaurant Coupon Tips

2010-03-10T14:56:29Z

Come and get those coupons to spend less

Even foodies who love the joy of cooking at home enjoy dining out now and then. But with the real unemployment rate approaching 18 percent, most of us are more cost-conscious these days and weary of splurging on the luxury of dining out. We’ve put together 10 restaurant coupon tips to help stretch your dining-out-dollar and support you local eatery.

10. Chamber of Commerce or Visitors Bureau
Visit your city or town’s local Chamber of Commerce or Convention and Visitors Bureau and check for restaurant coupons or publications with special discount coupons for tourists. The local Chamber of Commerce will often provide a Visitors Guide. Ask office employees about new restaurant openings that may have promotional coupons.

9. Junk Snail Mail, Yellow Pages, Local Newspapers
When searching for valuable restaurant coupons, don’t overlook promotional fliers, handouts, leaflets, and coupon books sent via U.S. mail in throw-away publications like like Valpak, Clipper, the Flyer and Penny Saver. Often times restaurant coupons appear in local newspapers, and even the Yellow Pages of the phone book.

8. Visit Restaurant Website
Make a note of the nationwide chain restaurants in your area within a reasonable driving distance, and visit the restaurant’s website. Check for any special coupons you can print from the website; look for special happy hour food deals, or value cards.

7. Credit Card Rewards Program
Check all of your credit cards and determine if they have a rewards program. Some credit card companies offer points that can be redeemed for restaurant gift cards.

6. Restaurant.com Gift Certificates
Restaurant.com gift certificates are good at thousands of participating restaurants nationwide from casual to elegant dining and feature many popular cuisine types. The standard price of a $25 certificate is only $10. Just enter your city, state, or zip code. You may be able to save even more on Restaurant.com certificates by using coupon codes available on some coupon web sites like CouponMom.com.

Restaurant.com also provides a Dinner of the Month club, a program that sends a monthly gift certificate via e-mail to the recipient. Plans range from 3 months to 12 months. You get a free gift certificate with every Dinner of the Month Club purchase.

5. OpenTable Dining Rewards
OpenTable members can earn Dining Rewards Points for online reservation they make and honor. Points are redeemable for OpenTable Dining Cheques which can be used at any OpenTable restaurant. Simply join OpenTable (it’s free) to create an account. When you make and honor online reservations initiated at www.opentable.com, points are automatically awarded to your account.

Your points will be awarded once the reservation is completed. When you’ve earned enough points to exchange for a Dining Cheque, the option to “Redeem Points” will appear on your “My Profile” page when you log in. Simply click “Redeem Points” to place your order.

We’ve heard plenty of complains though from restaurantuers saying that OpenTable doesn’t play fairly with them. So be prepared for some push back.

4. Register with ActiveDiner
Register with ActiveDiner for future specials in your area. Provide your name, email address, and the area in which you live, and they will notify you of specials. Also follow them on Twitter to be notified of the latest dining specials.

3. FriendsEAT, Google, Facebook and Twitter
Use FriendsEAT, Google, Facebook and Twitter. Conduct a search on FriendsEAT under Restaurant Coupons. Google your favorite restaurant and add the word coupon. For example: Whole Foods coupons. Look for restaurant coupon deals on Facebook. Check out Half Off Deals on Facebook for a gift certificate to your favorite place half off.

2. Join Restaurant Birthday Club
Check every restaurant you visit for a restaurant birthday club. A participating restaurant will either send a free dinner certificate for the birthday month, or honor you with a free dinner on your birthday. Also check for any possible drawings you can participate in. Some restaurants allow customers to leave their business cards in bowls at the cash register.

1. 2010 Entertainment Book
The Entertainment Book is filled with hundreds of 50% off and 2-for-1 discounts for dining and other services. With each book purchase you get online access to hundreds of additional local printable coupons. An Entertainment Membership Card is included with each book purchase to use at select fine dine restaurants, as well as to receive discounts when traveling. Book price is $17.50.

Food Companies Riddled with Corruption, Bribery, Conspiracy

2010-03-09T21:32:51Z

In the last several years, Americans have witnessed a series of the largest financial scandals it its history — from Bernie Madoff and Wall Street bailouts to the government take over of GM, Chrysler and AIG. We’ve all become accustomed to associating greed, graft and corruption with bankers, politicians, lobbyists and powerful corporations — rarely are we exposed to scandals that expose the murky underworld of those who supply food to our supermarkets in cheerful and deliciously bright packages.

For ten years, from 1998 through 2008, a group of high-ranking corporate purchasing managers from some of the most well-known and largest food companies in North America were involved in racketeering, bribery, conspiracy, price fixing, bid rigging, and falsifying laboratory tests. The scope of corruption has reached more than 55 companies, and includes PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay, Kraft Foods, B&G Foods, the maker of Ortega Mexican foods, Safeway, and SK Foods LP, one of the nation’s largest tomato processors.

The alleged kingpin of this massive web of corruption was Frederick Scott Salyer, the founder of SK Foods. Salyer is accused of masterminding a racketeering enterprise that regularly paid bribes to the purchasing managers of Kraft Foods, Safeway, B&G Foods, and PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay. Not only it’s alleged that Salyer bribe the purchasing managers to pay above market prices on behalf of their companies, the purchasing managers knowingly paid for and supplied millions of pounds of bulk tomato paste and puree contaminated with high levels of mold (prohibited under federal law), substandard acidity levels, and date expired content.

Robert Watson, a top food buyer for Kraft Foods, and three other purchasing managers at Frito-Lay, Safeway and B&G Foods, plead guilty to taking bribes. Five people with SK Foods also plead guilty.

Robert Turner served as a corporate purchasing manager for B&G Foods Inc., a multinational manufacturer, seller, and distributor of food products; he was also employed by Nabisco as a purchasing manager. Turner admitted to receiving some $65,000 in personal bribe payments from Randall Lee Rahal, a former sales broker and Director of SK Foods.

And Robert Watson and James Wahl, former purchasing managers at Kraft Foods Inc. and Frito-Lay Inc., admitted to receiving illicit payments from Rahal over extended periods. Rahal plead guilty to racketeering, price fixing, bid rigging, and contract allocation conspiracies, among other charges, in U.S. District Court in Sacramento on December 16, 2008.

According to court papers, Rahal recounted how he would drop a $100 bill on the floor, then bend to pick it up, saying: “You must have dropped this. Is it yours?” If the person said yes, Rahal considered him receptive.

Additionally, a former records and business analyst for SK Foods, Jennifer Lou Dahlman, plead guilty to mislabeling shipments of adulterated products. Dahlman routinely falsified grading factors and laboratory results of required testing contained on “Certificates of Analysis” and other quality control documents that accompanied customer-bound shipments.

The prosecution of these corrupt corporate officials was the result of a three-and-a-half-year probe by federal agents. But this racketeering scam had been going on for 10 years. Where was the FDA while the American public was being sold contaminated food?

The New York Times reports that the scope of the tainted shipments was much broader than the bribery scheme, touching more than 55 companies. “In some cases, companies detected problems and sent the products back — but in many cases, according to prosecutors, they did not, and the tainted ingredients wound up in food sold to consumers.”

From 2004 to 2008, Kraft bought about 230 million pounds of moldy processed tomatoes from SK Foods, as Watson took $158,000 in bribes. Renee Zahery, a Kraft spokeswoman, portrays Kraft as a victim because they rely on the tests by suppliers. “We do not duplicate those efforts,” Zahery said in an e-mail exchange with the Times.

Ms. Zahery told the Times that Kraft tested all its finished products for possible food safety hazards and that no problems were found with products made with SK Foods ingredients. Another Kraft spokeswoman, Susan Davison, said Kraft sent a quality expert to monitor SK Foods’ operations in 2007 and 2008 because of other quality concerns. Evidently Kraft’s quality expert missed 230 million pounds of moldy processed tomatoes.

Randy W. Worobo, an associate professor of food microbiology at Cornell University, told the Times companies should learn from the SK Foods case that they must do a better job of monitoring their ingredients. But companies don’t learn because the USDA and FDA essentially allow mega food corporations to police themselves.

“This was a very large fraud encompassing food for the American people,” said U. S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton.

According to Dan Flynn with Food Safety News, the Criminal Investigation units of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the FBI, and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Justice Department are involved in what they call “a joint and extensive investigation” that is continuing.

Indeed, and you can bet the corruption, bribery, and conspiracy in our nation’s corporate food supply isn’t limited to tomato suppliers. Michael P. Doyle, the director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, told the NYTimes there had been several cases in recent years in which ingredient suppliers were suspected of falsifying documentation to mask quality or safety faults in foods, especially with imports.

As we’ve previously reported, last year alone left nine dead and over 22,000 sick from contaminated food that was used by dozens of manufacturers in hundreds of products that were all recalled.

Mall Makan: Food in Singapore Shopping Centers

2010-03-08T17:51:33Z

Beautiful Singapore

Singapore is famous for its shopping centers and sales. Tourists come in droves to snap up branded clothes, electronics and other stuff especially during the annual Great Singapore Sale. But after miles of walking and heavy lifting brought about by this “exercise,” it is but normal – expected, even – for shoppers to feel the need to replenish their energy stores. This is when restaurants and food courts come to the rescue.

First, a little background on Singapore. It is a country, really, and not a city, promise! Despite its size, it is populated with diverse cultures because everyone likes to migrate there for its promise of security, higher pay, and everything that a first world country can offer. Their four major races are Chinese, Malay, Indian and European. With this premise, you can just imagine what their food courts look like.

There are numerous stalls offering assorted kinds of cuisine to cater to the diverse tastes of the different races. It offers choices for people who love their own cuisine and would prefer to stick to it or for those who get bored with eating the same thing every day and would like to experiment. You fancy Indian curry on Monday, Hainanese chicken rice on Tuesday, Indonesian Nasi Lemak on Wednesday? Not a problem! Some food courts also offer Malay, Thai, Korean, Filipino and Western food. All malls have at least one food court, so going hungry or finding nothing that suits you shouldn’t be a problem, unless you’ve spent all your money on sales items, which is an entirely different issue that shouldn’t be tackled in this article.

One of the popular mall food courts is Makansutra Gluttons Bay, though technically it’s not located inside but on the outskirts of the Esplanade Mall. No the name is not that movie you are thinking about right now. “Makan” is Malay for “food” or “to eat” while “sutra” means guide or lessons. The brand is founded by a food anthrolpologist and photojournalist who has been acknowledged by the New York Times as the “food guide maven”. Makansutra’s stalls offers all sorts of food. A must try is the famous local exotic cuisine called barbeque stingray - grilled, smothered in sambal sauce and served on a bed of banana leaves. It’s the perfect vengeance for Steve Irwin. Just in case you didn’t know, he is Australian TV’s “crocodile hunter” who was pierced to death by a stingray while he was being filmed snorkeling for a show. Makansutra is an excellent place for foreigners to visit because aside from its wide array of Singaporean food that they can try, it also has a good location – a short walking distance from the Merlion, the icon of Singapore. No one will believe you’ve been to Singapore unless you have a picture with this water-spouting statue as the ultimate proof. On your way there, you should also take a shot with the beautiful backdrop of the Esplanade and the Singapore Flyer which you will be passing. Then you might want to visit Sentosa Island too… oops, this is not supposed to be the topic of this article. Okay. Moving on.

Certain food centers not only delight the taste buds but the eyesight as well. Suntec City Mall’s Food Republic, for example, is decorated to look like an old fashioned library with stocked bookshelves painted on its walls, antique-looking candelabras as table centrepieces and chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. Eating there makes you feel as though you’re dining on fine cuisine instead of the three-dollar meal that you bought from one of the stalls. That, or it will make you want to brandish one of your chopsticks like a wand and yell “Avada Kedavra!” at passing people. Just make sure you don’t actually kill someone because Singapore is also known for being strict law-enforcers.

Top 100 Restaurants Using Twitter

2010-03-05T22:12:37Z

No Fail Whale for these Restaurants

Twitter, has revolutionized the restaurant industry. Twitter is a free service that chefs and restaurateurs have found to be an extremely useful tool. It is a free micro blogging site that allows its users to send and read messages known as tweets. A tweets is a post of up to 140 characters that is displayed on the restaurant’s Twitter page and seen by people who follow it.

Savvy restaurants know they can tweet anything they wish to convey to their followers. Restaurants and chefs have been known to tweet daily specials, wine dinners, free offerings, changes on their wine lists, special recipes, tweet props to their staff and even enlist the twitter crowd to find new employees.

This month alone, 50 million tweets went out to followers. Tweeting is free and effective. Smart restaurants understand that Twitter is a great way to engage clients and build loyalty; a way to make them feel like family. When we asked Sondra Bernstein (number 28 on our list, and master restaurateur) about Twitter she told us: “I feel that I am able to be in constant touch with our guests, friends and fans even when I am not in the restaurant. So many of the Social Media tools are amazing and Twitter has its special place for being personal, instantaneous and fun! What I struggle with is being able to read all the wonderful tweets by all the people that I follow – the more there are the harder it is to keep up!”. Sondra’s is the perfect outlook and the perfect way to utilize this amazing tool.

We’ve put together a list of 100 restaurants, chefs and restaurateurs who understand engagement and utilize Twitter to its full potential. The tweets we’ve highlighted show how these restaurants get people off their laptops and in their doors. Some of the best tweets have nothing to do with food. Instead, these tweets are fun, candid and honest and end up cementing the bond between the restaurant and their clients.

100. Allegreti (New York, NY): 90 followers, 33 tweets.

“Alain Allegretti – Nice native, Chef and Owner of Allegretti Restaurant in New York City”. @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: To raise money and support for the devastation in Haiti, Allegretti is participating in “Dine Out For Haiti” on… http://bit.ly/6p7Pkd

99. Le Meurice(Paris, France): 109 followers, 28 tweets.

“Located at the front of the Tuileries Garden, Le Meurice is the place where the splendours of 18th century architecture meet the latest in contemporary chic”. @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: The world’s best receptionist is at Le Meurice! http://bit.ly/4UNsBR

98. Herbstreet (Dublin, Ireland):184 followers, 133 tweets.

“Restaurant at Hanover Quay in Dublin Docklands” @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: is looking for a part-time waitress/waiter to join our team. If you’re interested or know anyone who is, call in… http://bit.ly/71j95x

97. Teatro (Boston, MA) 202 followers, 202 tweets.

“Acclaimed Best of Boston Italian Restaurant in the Boston Theater District” @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: The Cavalera: @BeijaCachaca, Mionetto Prosecco, fresh lemon, natural sugar

96. OM Restaurant (Cambridge, MA): 206 followers, 176 tweets.

@FriendsEat

Best Tweet: We’ll be open throught he storm! Come warm up with a Beef Noodle Bowl; star anise broth, rice noodles and sprouts!…http://bit.ly/dtizXf

95. Square One Bistro (Bryan, TX): followers, tweets.

“Local Flavor in Downtown Bryan” @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: Our first bar customers! http://bit.ly/cUnGeZ

94. The Reserve (Washington DC): 213 followers, 168 tweets.

“Restaurant. Wine. Lounge” @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: Thank You to all those who came out to Reserve Wednesday last night. Big thanks to @benyblaqent @BenyBlaq @CMbengue@JayBeezy06 @itzkwam

93: Woodman’s of Essex ( Essex, MA): 232 followers, 117 tweets.

“We invented the fried clam!” @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: Gluten free? What does it mean? Where can you go out to eat if you have a wheat intolerance? This website has… http://bit.ly/bq9qKY

92. Policy Resto-Lounge: (Washington, DC) 236 followers, 160 tweets.

“Truth. Love. Liberty” @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: Gearing up for this weekend and next week….Who really believes its going to snow tonight??? #FAIL…there will be no snow HOPEFULLY

91. Spina Restaurant (New York, NY) 241 followers, 91 tweets.

“Spina is an Italian Fresh Pasta House in the East Village NYC, serving fresh handmade pasta. Join us for a taste of Italy in New York City.” @FriendsEat

Best Tweet: Come to Spina’s latest mystery dinner on Wednesday, October 14 to win prizes and gift certificates. Enjoy 4 courses…http://bit.ly/FSq8M

Levantando Chile Fund

2010-03-05T19:38:35Z

Help the Victims of the Chilean Earthquake

In response to the tragic earthquake that rocked Chile last month, NESsT has established the Levantando Chile Fund to support local Chilean nonprofit organizations that are channeling assistance to communities on the ground. Levantando Chile will support both immediate assistance and long-term reconstruction efforts in Chile.
www.levantandochile.org

Levantando Chile fundraising event at Puro Chile located:
Thursday, March 4, 2010
6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.
at Puro Chile
221 Centre Street
(cross of Grand Street)
New York, NY 10013

If you would like to help the victims of the earthquake and cannot make the event please donate here:

Levantando Chile

* NESsT is an IRS 501c3 nonprofit organization incorporated in the State of Maryland (IRS tax ID number: 52-2018791). Charitable contributions to NESsT in the USA for the Levantando Chile Fund are fully tax deductible for individuals and corporations as permitted by US tax laws. Donations made within Chile are not tax deductible.

The History of Iron Chef

2010-03-04T20:57:15Z

Once upon a time in the land of the rising sun (that’s Japan, in case you were absent when this was discussed in History class), Fuji Television came up with a cooking show called the Iron Chef. It was a cooking contest that featured accomplished guest chefs challenging one of the show’s resident “Iron Chefs” in a time-pressured cooking battle built around a “secret” theme ingredient. It became such a hit in Japan that USA’s Food Network decided to bring it to American television but dubbing it in English.

Surprisingly, it became an American favorite, so UPN Television came up with the brilliant idea of coming up with an American adaptation of the show. They called it Iron Chef USA and it aired in 2001, 8 years after the original Iron Chef first aired in Japan. They showed two pilot episodes, “The Las Vegas Showdown” and the “Holiday Battle,” but none were favorably viewed. One noted reason for the failure was the larger audience compared to the original Iron Chef; the spectators were noisier than the quiet audiences of the original series. The commentators were also criticized for having a huge lack of knowledge of food with dumb comments such as “What? It’s the sperm? We eat that?” in reference to sea urchin roe.

Three years after that mishap, Food Network decided to do its own remake of the Japanese show which they called Iron Chef America. This time they stuck as much as possible to the original formula that worked. Martial artist Mark Dacascos plays the chairman who is introduced as the nephew of the original Japanese chairman Takeshi Kaga. Each episode typically starts with some cooking footage with his voiceover, then a cut to him taking an exaggeratedly crunchy bite of an apple before showing the title. Chef and actor Alton Brown gives a usually humorous commentary while “celebrity bartender” and host Kevin Brauch is the floor reporter. They both narrate what is going on in the kitchen the way sportscasters give play-by-play commentaries of ball games, so it’s pretty exciting stuff.

Who is it this time?

A challenger chef is introduced in each episode and he chooses his iron chef opponent. After the “secret” theme ingredient is revealed, they start grabbing the ingredients right after the chairman’s signature tagline: “So now America, with an open heart and an empty stomach, I say unto you in the words of my uncle: Allez cuisine!” Allez cuisine is French for “start cooking.” Both chefs have 60 minutes to prepare five dishes based on the theme ingredient. They each have their own team of sous-chefs or assistants, a counter of all kinds of ingredients, half of the specially built kitchen stadium and any materials they may have brought from their own kitchens at their disposal.

A panel of three judges, two of whom are professional food critics, taste the prepared dishes and each can award a total of 20 points per chef. The criteria for judging are: taste – up to 10 points, plating (presentation of the food) – up to 5 points, and originality of the dishes – up to 5 points. The chefs are given a chance to present their meals to the judges and to explain their approach to the ingredient as well as give some comments about each dish. The judges then try each dish and give their criticism or commendation to the chef.

iron chef in action

At the end of the show, the chairman declares the chef with the higher score as the winner of the battle. Should there be a tie, it remains as the final result . There is no tie-breaker overtime contest because hey, this isn’t a basketball game.

The first episode of Iron Chef America was a special titled Iron Chef America: Battle of the Masters and featured Bobby Flay and Hiroyuki Sakai, both brilliant chefs with “Iron Chef” being only one of their numerous accolades. Their theme ingredient was trout, presented as live fish in an aquarium tank that each chef had to fish for by themselves with a net. So lively were these fish that one actually jumped out of Flay’s hands and onto the floor and kept wriggling down to the last moment when the chef put an end to its fight by cleaving its head off. Since Sakai spoke in his native Japanese tongue, his comments were dubbed in English by Joe Cipriano. It was noted during commentary that Sakai had never lost a battle that involved fish as an ingredient and though he made two noteworthy dishes – a gift-wrapped one to commemorate the opening of Kitchen Stadium America and the unexpected trout ice cream, he lost to Flay by 3 points in taste and 1 point in plating.

There were three more Battle of the Masters episodes – spiny lobster between Mario Batali and Masaharu Morimoto (won by the former), eggs between Wolfgang Puck and Masaharu Morimoto (won by the former), and fruits de mer between team Bobby Flay-Masaharu Morimoto and Mario Batali-Hiroyuki Sakai (won by the former). When they all proved successful, a regular series was commissioned and season 1 officially began in 2005. The show has since then had eight seasons, over 120 episodes in all.

A pose before the final battle begins

The program had a total of seven iron chefs from whom the challenger guest chefs would do battle, each with a different specialty: Mario Batali – Italian, Cat Cora – Greek and Mediterranean, Bobby Flay – Southwestern, Jose Garces – Latin Fusion, Masaharu Morimoto – Japanese, Michael Symon – Mediterranean, and Wolfgang Puck – California Cuisine. Puck had to retire right after the Masters episodes, however, and was replaced with Morimoto. Among them all, Flay had the most wins as well as the most number of battles.

Iron Chef America has long outlived its Japanese predecessor which ended in 1999. Its recipe for success is this – a dollop of the nation’s addiction to reality TV and a dash of the medium itself: food, which everyone enjoys. Not all people want to hover over the TV set with trepidation as a bachelor decides which beautiful damsel is worthy of a rose – but everybody loves to eat. And this is why America continues to watch this show with an open heart and an empty stomach. Allez cuisine!

I, Robot – In Your Kitchen?

2010-03-05T12:57:14Z

In May 2008, a creative team of professors, designers, behavioral scientists and industrial engineers — including undergraduates and doctoral students — at Carnegie Mellon University, were awarded $500,000 in Microsoft’s Human-Robot Interaction funding to develop a social, snack-selling robot designed to navigate it’s way through the office halls at CMU, and deliver snacks and sundry items to students.

The team’s goal was to promote and enhance smooth interaction between robots and humans from both a sociological and technical/mechanical perspective. The robot’s snack delivery itself was more a gratuitous vehicle used as a means to learn how to best merge robots into human daily lives.

Developers equipped the robot’s head with a $20,000 laser navigation system — sonar sensors, stereo camera eyes, and a pulsating LED display for a mouth — and programmed the robot to accomplish self-governing tasks in an office environment, including perception, spacial reasoning, communicating with people through verbal and non-verbal mechanisms, and planning with incomplete information.

The two year effort resulted in “Snackbot”, a robot that can navigate through congested areas; detect individuals moving near it; recognize when someone that it knows approaches, and distinguish new objects. Snackbot’s chest level size was determined through a survey people indicated they felt comfortable with.

“Hello, I’m the Snackbot,” says the robot. “Here is your order. I believe it was a granola bar, right? All right, go ahead and take your snack. I’m sure it would be good, but I wouldn’t know. I prefer a snack of electricity.”

As a recent New York Times piece points out, Snackbot is but one of an army of new robots designed to serve and cook food in a more automated future. In 2006, Fanxing Science and Technology, a company in Shenzhen, China, designed an AIC-AI Cooking Robot that fries, bakes, boils and steamed Chinese delicacies.

In 2008, scientists in Switzerland developed the Chief Cook Robot, which can make omelets. Last June, at the International Food Machinery and Technology Expo in Tokyo, a robot called Motoman SDA-10, with spatulas for arms made pancakes; another robot grabbed sushi; and another called the Dynamizer sliced cucumbers.

At a ramen noodle shop in Nagoya, Japan, a pair of robotic arms serve up 80 bowls of noodles a day to their hungry customers. When it’s slow, the robots act out a scripted comedy routine and spar with knives. “The concept of this restaurant is that Robot No. 1 is the manager, which boils the noodles, and Robot No. 2 is the deputy manager, which prepares for soup and puts toppings,” said Famen’s owner, Kenji Nagaya. “Human staffs are working for the two robots.”

Dr. Heather Knight, a roboticist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that the industry is trying to change “the perception of robots.”

“The Japanese have always been more comfortable with it, but particularly in the West, there’s this whole Frankenstein thing that if we try to make something in the image of man, to make a new creature, we’re stealing the role of God, and it’s going to turn out wrong because that’s not our role,” she said. “So how do you change this perception that robots are going to be way too intelligent and destroy us? One of the fastest ways to people’s hearts is food, right? Any girlfriend or wife would say that.”

Well, maybe, until I recall the homicidal HAL 9000 computer in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001, a Space Odyssey. Dave Bowman was forced to perform an electronic lobotomy on HAL in order to regain control of the spacecraft.

I wouldn’t want a similar event taking place in my kitchen.

Spence: “Open the microwave oven door, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?”

HAL: “I’m sorry, Spence, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Spence: “What’s the problem?”

HAL: “I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.”

Spence: “What are you talking about, HAL?”

HAL: “This meal is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”

Spence: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.”

HAL: “I know you and Irene were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.”

Starving Chefs

2010-03-03T15:51:42Z

We’ve all heard of the starving artist. Today is becoming the era of the starving chef.

The celebritization of the culinary industry has led every aspiring cook out there to believe that they can lead an easy, glamorous and lucrative life by becoming a chef. Well, it’s time for a very rude awakening. Almost every chef we have interviewed over the past year has told us that is one of the biggest misconceptions people have when coming into the field.

Chef Julio-Cesar Florez of Mirabelle: “that it is all glamour and no hard work, when it is the complete opposite. you have to be ready to humble yourself, you will be taking out trash, sweeping and mopping floors, and doing lots and lots of cleaning. cooks have short tempers and alot of them are not patient. cooking can be a messy job, it is stressful, and kitchens are hot.”

Chef Sam Freund of One if By Land: “People think it’s easier than it looks. When I entered culinary school I had 15 close friends; only two of us are cooking professionally today. People think cooking is glamorous and think “I can do that”. They don’t realize that it’s a daily commitment of a tremendous amount of time and energy and you have to have a passion for it to continue with it.”

Chef Steve Mendoza of Las Chicas Locas: “I see so many people change careers because they think being a chef is all about being on TV and parties and champagne. It takes a lot of long hours with very little pay, all nights, weekends, holidays, no insurance, no personal life and lots of cuts, burns and mental anguish to be a chef. It takes a special kind of crazy to want to do this.”

Basically, you have to really love to cook and be willing to endure the physical requirements of the job and work hard for a very long time before you start to see the fruits of your labors. Becoming a chef is not for the weak of mind or heart.

Let’s go back a couple of steps. Say you are not already employed in the field. Most likely you will consider culinary school. Well, that’s no picnic either…and it will cost you. Tuition for the first semester of Freshman Year at CIA will run you a mere $14,850.

So you’ve graduated from culinary school, have some nice student loans and now you’re out looking for jobs. What can you expect to make? If you are interested in finding out, you may want to pick up Rick Smilow’s new book. He is the president and chief executive of the Institute of Culinary Education. His book: Culinary Careers, exposes the salaries being earned by chefs and other people in the industry. Here are some highlights:

Cooks – $30,000

Pastry Chef – $35,000 – $50,000

Sous Chef – $45,000-$50,000

Chefs – $60,000

Executive Chef – $70,000 to $140,000 (depending on seniority)

According to Restaurant News: Katie Button who was slated to work at the world’s best restaurant (El Bulli…wonder what her plan is now that it is closed) would make somewhere “between “free to $15.50 an hour.”

So say that you are in the top end and you are making a good $75,000 a year. Bring into consideration that you will work every weekend, every Valentine’s Day, every Christmas (Hanukkah or Festivus if you wish) and that most chefs work 6-7 days a week for about 12-14 hours a day and those hours are the hours when everyone else you know is having fun. If you have a family, you might as well forget about seeing them.

We were not surprised at all by the book’s findings. It is important that this information is out there. Many young people can be misled by the glamorous lights of kitchen stadium and many diners forget the amount of sweat and tears that go into making their meals every single night.

The Yearly Dolphin Slaughter – Japan’s Best Kept Secret Until Now

2010-03-03T15:10:17Z

As dolphins migrate through the waters of a small bay off the coast of Taiji, Japan, fishing boats scurry out to meet them. Fishermen pound on metal poles submerged beneath the water, using the sound as a sonar wall to confuse and corral the dolphins into a fortified cove where a series of nets are strung to imprison them.

Fishermen sift through the ensnared dolphins for live specimens that can be sold to aquatic parks for six figures. The rest are slaughtered — harpooned to death with spears, turning the cove’s water a blood red. The dolphin screams are silenced by the sea, and until last year, the wholesale extermination of hundreds of thousands of dolphins was one of Japan’s best kept secrets.

Imagine the horror of surviving the liquid killing fields only to be enslaved as a circus act in a concentration camp we call aquariums.

What makes the cold blooded massacre of these dolphins all the more tragic is that the dolphin flesh — contaminated with toxic levels of mercury — is fallaciously labeled as whale meat, sold to schools and eaten by innocent Japanese school children. Dolphins accumulate high levels of mercury because they can live to be about 40 years old. Tests of the Taiji population found that residents have up to twenty times the normal amount of mercury in their bodies.

This horrifying tale was widely exposed in a 2009 film documentary called The Cove, showcased at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, and recently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.

The Cove tells the story of how an elite team of activists comprised of filmmakers and divers armed like Navy Seals with thermal cameras, a miniature drone helicopter, underwater microphones, night vision devices, and an assortment of superior hi-tech spy gear, penetrate a hidden cove obscured from the public and fortified by high rock cliffs and a barbed wire fence. Their goal was to record the truth many activists before them had tried and failed to do because of corruption and secrecy.

The film idea was spawned by veteran National Geographic photographer-turned-director, Louie Psihoyos, and activist Ric O’Barry, who trained the dolphin actors for the 1960s television series “Flipper”. In an effort to redeem himself, and clear his conscience, O’Barry spent decades trying to free dolphins from marine parks around the world.

“I captured the five dolphins that collectively played the part of Flipper,” O’Barry tells New York Magazine. “I trained all of them, from the very beginning of the first show to the last show. I lived with all five of them in the Seaquarium. And on Friday nights, at 7:30, I would take the TV set, with a long extension cord, out to the end of the dock, so Flipper could watch Flipper on television. And that’s when I knew they were self-aware. I could tell when the dolphins recognized themselves and each other. Cathy, for example, would recognize the shots she was in, Suzy would recognize her shots, and so on. Dolphins are hard to read, because you have to look at body language. Almost all other animals you can read by looking at their faces. But dolphins have this built-in ’smile’ that makes it look like they’re always happy.”

What seemingly changed O’Barry’s life forever was what the dolphin named Cathy did during his tenure with the T.V. show. “Cathy died in my arms of suicide. She looked me right in the eye, took a breath, held it and she didn’t take another one. She just sank to the bottom of the water. That had a profound effect on me.”

O’Barry — now campaign director for SaveJapanDolphins.Org — says Dolphins are not automatic air breathers like we are. Every breath for them is a conscious effort. “It was just before Earth Day, 1970. The next day, I found myself in a Bimini jail, trying to free a dolphin for the first time. I completely lost it.”

O’Barry claims that even though dolphin killing is legal in Japan, the dolphins are being herded and killed in a national park where the fisherman have no jurisdiction. “They’re just a bunch of thugs,” he says.

O’Barry insists the Japanese people have no clue this is all happening. Only one percent of the Japanese population eats whale meat, he says, and a very small percentage of that one percent eats dolphin or even knows that people eat dolphin. He believes it’s really about over-fishing. He thinks fisherman are killing the competition because each of dolphin eats 25 to 30 pounds of fish.

But the fact is, Japan is one of the world’s largest consumers of whales and dolphins. Commercial whale hunting is officially permitted in Iceland, Norway, and Japan. In Japan alone roughly 1,000 whales are caught each year under the guise of “scientific purposes”; much of the whale meat ends up on restaurant menus.

Furthermore, Martin Fackler with The New York Times characterized the village city of Taiji, Japan, as a town of 3,500 residents fiercely proud of its centuries-old tradition of hunting dolphins and whaling, where residents are used to the international scorn that accompanies the dolphin drive.

Dolphin meat is a prized local delicacy, served raw as sashimi or boiled with soy sauce.

Tens of thousands of dolphins are killed annually in coastal waters, according to Japan’s Fisheries Agency. But even the Times claims only a minority of Japanese eat whale, with dolphin meat being even less common, and only consumed in a handful of rural areas and regional cities like Osaka. Taiji is the best known source of dolphin meat because the people of Taiji have hunted coastal whales for 400 years.

“We are a whaling community, and we don’t want to lose that,” said Katsutoshi Mihara, chairman of Taiji’s town council. “Here, all boys grew up dreaming of hunting whales.”

Dolphin meat accounts for about a third of Taiji’s $3 million fishing industry, according to the fishermen’s association. Dolphin also brings higher prices than other locally caught seafood. In a Taiji supermarket, a pound of frozen dolphin meat sells for $14, roughly the price of sashimi-grade tuna.

WRITE TO THE JAPAN EMBASSY!
Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki
2520 Mass. Ave N.W
Washington D.C 2008-2869

Want to learn what else you can do…check out the suggestions The Cove has for you.