| Platter: Food Finds, Restaurant Reviews and Dining Trends | | Posted Saturday, January 13, 2007 1:17:29 PM by Blog57 Team | | These days, it seems you can come up with any combination of bread and protein, pair it with a poached egg and hollandaise, and call it a Benedict. In different kitchens around town, you can find Benedicts fashioned out of brioche, croissants and flaky biscuits, and topped with everything from crabmeat to pork loin. One of the best interpretations right now has to be the smoked salmon Benedict at Helser's on Alberta, built on toasted crumpets, which are less bready than the traditional split English muffins. The thick fillet of fish straddles the borderline between bright-orange and crimson and has a smoky intensity that accentuates the tang of the thick hollandaise. Paired with enough roasted Yukon Gold potato slices to help sop up the runny egg yolk, it's a filling way to start a day. Those potatoes show up in a number of hash combos, including one featuring bits of spicy bacon, Tillamook cheddar cheese and dollops of sour cream.... | |
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| | | Advertising campaign that's spiced up restaurant business | | Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 7:09:49 AM by Blog57 Team | | MOST new local restaurants rely on word of mouth and favourable reviews to draw in customers. But, worried that his non-central location might deter lazy Edinburgh diners, Bangladesh-born restaurateur Salim Miah decided to jump in with both feet with a £50,000 advertising campaign to launch his first business venture - new contemporary Indian restaurant Voujon. .... | |
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| | | Mobil Travel Guide Announces the 2007 Mobil Four- and Five-Star Hotel and Restaurant Awards | | Posted Thursday, November 09, 2006 11:20:02 PM by Blog57 Team | | Mobil Travel Guide, originator of the Mobil Five-Star ratings program and certifications, today unveiled its list of Mobil Four- and Five-Star hotels and restaurants for 2007. For the first time in Mobil Travel Guide's 49 years of evaluating hotels and restaurants, a Las Vegas hotel, The Tower Suites at Wynn Las Vegas, earned a Mobil Five-Star rating. Four other hotels and three restaurants also are new additions to the Mobil Five-Star category. The complete list of Mobil Star award winners and updated, comprehensive reviews written by Mobil Travel Guide's experts are available exclusively at www.mobiltravelguide.com. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20061109/CLTH054LOGO ) "Mobil Travel Guide's rating process minimizes subjectivity, enabling us to provide expert, objective guidance that travelers can trust," said Shane O'Flaherty, Vice President of Quality Assurance for Mobil Travel Guide.... | |
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| | | Chicago Named Most Star-Studded Restaurant Town In America | | Posted Saturday, November 04, 2006 11:40:05 AM by Blog57 Team | | With the announcement of its 2007 Five Diamond Restaurant list, AAA has made Chicago the U.S. city with the most five diamond rated restaurants, outranking New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Thanks to the addition of Alinea in Chicago's Lincoln Park and Avenues, located in the Peninsula Chicago, Chicago is now home to seven five diamond restaurants and three AAA Five Diamond rated hotels. These restaurants and hotels join an exclusive list of just 56 and 93 respectively nationwide that hold one of the hospitality industry's highest ratings: the AAA Five Diamond Award. Overall ten new hotels and six new restaurants were added to the 2007 list of lodgings and restaurants receiving AAA's coveted five diamond rating. The lodgings earning five-diamond awards for the first time were Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, Ojai, Calif.; Falling Rock at Nemacolin Woods, Farmington, Pa.; Four Seasons Hotel Miami; The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina; The Ritz-Carlton Lodge, Reynolds Plantation, Greensboro, Ga.; Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole - Teton Village in Wyoming; Skylofts at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas and Wynn Las Vegas; and in Mexico, Grand Velas All Suites & Spa Resort, Nuevo Vallarta, and Occidental Royal Hideaway Resort & Spa, Playa del Carmen.... | |
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| | | Satire in cyberspace unsettles the old order | | Posted Saturday, October 28, 2006 1:36:24 PM by Blog57 Team | | CHINESE officialdom is struggling to respond to waves of satire on the internet, regularly used by 123 million people. These net users are flexing a newfound freedom to communicate their emotions - and fears, desires, ambitions and humour - to a broad audience. It is the sort of freedom never before experienced in China. A typical case is that of Qin Zhongfei, an education clerk in the small town of Pengshui, in the vast, mountainous Sichuan province in central southern China. He wrote a poem about corruption in the town, illustrated by the fate of a planned school that was never built, although $350,000 was spent on it. It says in part: Look at Pengshui today, full of malaria, Cadres and people trapped in conflict, The police even insulting corpses. The moon is dark and the wind is high.... | |
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| | | Cheesecake Factory Postpones 3Q Filing | | Posted Tuesday, October 24, 2006 11:08:30 AM by Blog57 Team | | Restaurant-chain operator Cheesecake Factory Inc. said Monday it will postpone filing its third-quarter results until a review of its stock-option grants is completed. The company's audit committee, legal counsel and independent accounting firm are reviewing historical stock option granting practices. Cheesecake Factory said it plans to file its second-quarter and third-quarter reports by Nov. 13 if the review is complete. As of Friday, there are currently 93 companies under SEC or Justice Department stock-options grant scrutiny, plus at least 52 other companies that have launched or completed internal reviews into their stock options practices that are not currently facing an SEC or DOJ probe. At least 140 companies have disclosed SEC, DOJ or internal investigations into the possible inappropriate backdating of stock options.... | |
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| | | 5 QUESTIONS FOR: Jane and Michael Stern | | Posted Thursday, October 19, 2006 11:12:17 AM by Blog57 Team | | Jane and Michael Stern hit the road after grad school with a simple mission: To eat at every restaurant in America. More than 30 years later, they're still driving and eating. They've written more than 30 books, starting with "Roadfood" in 1978. They write a regular column for Gourmet and file regular reports for public radio's "Splendid Table." And they're still chronicling everything from cafes to dives. Tonight at 7, they speak at the Novello Festival of Reading on their memoir, "Two for the Road: Our Love Affair With American Food." Kathleen Purvis caught up with Michael Stern by e-mail: Q. With all the food Web sites like Egullet and Chowhound, plus so many food bloggers, has it gotten harder to find undiscovered food gems? The explosion of interest in great regional American food has exposed a lot of previously "undiscovered" places, but the other effect is to keep them in business and to encourage new ones to open.... | |
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| | | Beyond the Multiplex: Terry Gilliam's "Tideland" marks the final, ugly implosion of a one-time maverick's career. Plus: | | Posted Saturday, October 14, 2006 11:07:06 AM by Blog57 Team | | This is one of those crazy, overcrowded weeks that film distributors want to avoid, because there are too many new films. (I guess this is the same problem once identified by Yogi Berra: Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore; it's too crowded.) The New York Film Festival is premiering "Marie Antoinette" and "Pan's Labyrinth," two of the fall-winter season's likely hits. Full Salon reviews are forthcoming, and I've had my say on both at Cannes: Blah to the former, big old yay to the latter. Stephen Frears' "The Queen" and John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus," based on sensational first-week returns, look like ironclad Indiewood smashes that may play well in many corners of our happy land through the Christmas season. These results may surprise some folks, but never underestimate the American public's abiding interest in the British royal family.... | |
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| | | Ordinance gets mixed reviews from busineses | | Posted Monday, October 09, 2006 3:11:47 AM by Blog57 Team | | When doctors told Nick Kolinsky that his throat cancer could likely have been linked to secondhand smoke, he didn't have much choice but to return to a smoky environment. As owner of Nick's Ice House, a bar and live music venue where customers like a cigarette with their beers, it has always been do what you need to do for the business. .... | |
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| | | Michelin rankings cut Bay Area restaurants down to size | | Posted Wednesday, October 04, 2006 7:07:16 AM by Blog57 Team | | The French hospitality review Michelin Guide unveiled its first-ever San Francisco-area restaurant rankings, with just one three-star review, for Thomas Keller's Yountville restaurant the French Laundry. The guide's two-star awards were eyebrow raising, since only one of four has won four stars from the most influential local food critic, the San Francisco Chronicle's Michael Bauer. Michelin Guide gave two stars to Aqua and Michael Mina in San Francisco, to Manresa in Los Gatos and to Cyrus in Healdsburg. Only Manresa has four stars from Bauer. .... | |
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