Rather than oh-so-predictable bacon vodka and bacon chocolate, Rick Gresh, the chef at David Burke’s Primehouse in Chicago, is serving guests bacon candles. The votives are made of rendered bacon fat and a vegetable-based wick, and as they melt, are poured over dry-aged steaks and rare scallops to impart a rich, smoked aroma.

What a wonderful idea — a great way to get a taste of bacon in your scallops or steak, without overwhelming the main dish. Just don’t be tempted to treat the bacon votive like a shot . . . liquid bacon. Mmmmmm.

Sometimes the headline says it all: “Man dressed as Breathalyzer suspected of drunk driving.” [Oxford Press]

There’s more than one way to kill a clam. I prefer frying to oxygen deprivation. [Reno Gazette-Journal]

The Redskins sell beer at FedEx Field in the… men’s room. [YouTube]

Menu labeling requirements folded into healthcare bill. [Furious Seasons]

Lyin’ about lions. Famous African man-eaters in late 1800s only killed and ate an almost kitten-like 35 people, not the long-alleged 135. [MSNBC]

Secretes of the Worcestershire sauce recipe revealed. [Daily Mail]

The restaurant is easy to miss as it is upstairs and only a small sign on street level says, “Burma Upstairs.” What follows would scare off anyone who had not heard about the great food: a neglected staircase with peeling bright yellow paint that has the feel of a garage staircase and then, on the second floor, a sign on a door that has a window protected by steel bars: Enter Burma. It has the feel of entering a prison, not that I have done that, but I can imagine.

The place was busy at lunchtime and I got three dishes to go. Two were good and one was bad. The good were the pork with mango and the beef curry. The bad was the tamarind fish, which had no trace of tamarind and was, well, fishy. Overall, I think the place is overrated and would not go back. But I do love that they call it Burma and not Myanmar.

At one such market this week, a chalkboard read “there are potatoes,” meaning spuds could be purchased with Cubans’ monthly ration cards. Besides that, a single produce stand sold only plantains, taro root and onions.

“They want to make all the markets like this. Sad,” the lone vendor said.

Price controls on food come and go in Cuba, with the state permitting market mechanisms in times of extreme scarcity, but then cracking down again once things get better:

Producers, sellers and customers said they heard from party officials that new price controls were set to begin Nov. 1 — but were postponed until January after a public outcry unheard of under the totalitarian government….

The agros [farmer's markets] first appeared in the 1980, when food shortages forced a reluctant Fidel Castro to allow farmers to sell produce at prices driven, at least in part, by the free market. Castro shuttered them six years later to improve foundering state agricultural production.

“They closed them for some of the same things we are talking about now: the black market, middle men making all kinds of money, the government unable to control the market, the food supply,” Messina said.

But the small dose of capitalism returned in 1994, when Cuba was again forced to allow more free-market enterprise to keep its people from starving after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which gave Cuba billions in annual subsidies.

The state takes 6 months to pay farmers for official production, so many farmers are tempted by the agro truckers, who generally bribe the police to turn a blind eye and pay farmers in cash upfront. Raul Castro is threatening to crack down.

The whole AP story is worth reading for a good sense of the background on this issue and what’s going on right now.

Via Crispy Reader and new food blogger Annie!

Semi-crossposted at Reason.com.

Whenever I think I should, or in fact do, reduce my meat consumption, something like this comes out.  Then I regret having contributed to  both global warming and general idiocy by having had beans for dinner, and I go buy a steak ( which, incidentally, is supposed to be a deal now.)

Lord Stern,  this steak’s  for you!

“Some hae meat and cannae eat
Some would eat that want it
But we hae meat and we can eat
Sae let the Lord be thankit!”

HT: L. Coyle.

Mrs. Kuhl and her BFFs have been taking a series of wine-tasting classes where they get together, drink wine, giggle, gossip about boys, talk about tampons — you know, the stuff chicks do. At last night’s class, a rogue male was present and the ladies struck up a running conversation. The instructor pairs the wine with food, and with one particular vintage he served pepperoni, which the male refused. When asked why, he replied that he only ate meat that wasn’t prey.

When pressed, the male said he once read a tale of high-seas cannibalism featuring shipwreck and pirates, which the Juris Doctorates among the group realized was a mongrelized version of Regina v Dudley and Stephens. How this rationalized his eating habits was unclear.

Was he serious? I asked Mrs. Kuhl. He only eats meat that isn’t prey. How does that work? He dines exclusively on wolves and alligators? The Burger²? Wife said the man went on to describe an incident in which he witnessed a chicken peck a frog to death, thereby justifying his consumption of chicken. OK, but something still eats the chicken, therefore it’s still prey. Does he eat the species as punishment for the aggression of an individual?

After trying to bend my mind around that I eventually returned to my time-tested conclusion about the world: People are crazy.

Photo courtesy of Heather.

(Although, I quite like the rabbit target as potential kitchen decor. Where do you think I might be able to get my hands on one of those?)

Semi-crossposted at Reason.com

Each day for the duration of the week of bacon, the restaurant will offer a daily Bacon Happy Hour, where bar guests can feast on bacon bites such as bacon on a stick & bacon-wrapped shrimp and wash it all down with $3 craft beer draft specials. Not only can you stop by for bacon and beer, but Restaurant 3 is offering a Bacon Tasting Menu priced at $30 per person. I was lucky enough to preview a few of the Bacon Week specials, and let me tell you. It’s impressive.

Bacon and cheap drinks — what more could you want in a happy hour? And, you can even stay for dinner and get the full experience. So work out an extra day, take a Pepcid AC, and celebrate the Week of Bacon.

We stayed near downtown to be close to the hullabaloo and thought we’d have no problem finding places to eat. Wrong-O. A quick walk looking for lunch became an hour-long odyssey as we roamed the area trying to find an open restaurant. What amazed me was that we were on top of RISD, with Brown just beyond, and yet there weren’t even any bars. (This same situation always left me scratching my head about Cornell: 14,000 students and yet only three or so bars outside the gates. I eventually determined Cornell partying revolves around the frats; apparently Cornell girls like their beer with a rape chaser).

Providence may be the second largest city in New England but even New Haven beats it for eating. Though more populous and denser than the Elm City, the two are comparable for numbers of restaurants according to my unscientific metric. Another stunner was that the locals seemed to think they had it good. When asked for recommendations, both the hotel concierge and passers-by directed us to the monolithic Providence Place Mall, which dominates the downtown like a cinder block.

“I don’t want to eat at The Cheesecake Factory,” replied Mrs. Kuhl.

We did eventually find good local places to dine though they were spread far apart. There’s a Little Italy west of I-95 and a small cluster on College Hill by Brown but downtown is a wasteland. Now I understand why H.P. Lovecraft was malnourished.

This particular WaterFire was to raise money for breast-cancer awareness (that’s the capitol building lit up in pink above). It was fun and worthwhile. At the end of the night, as we slogged back to the hotel with our exhausted Monchhichis, we passed by the mall. Its cornerstone was a glowing Cheesecake Factory.

I asked Mrs. Kuhl, Did you know beforehand the mall had a Cheesecake Factory?

No, she said. I just assumed.