Joseph Byrd

It all started with my locavore-restaurant concept, a whimsy that became a column. But readers took it seriously: “When are you opening, what’s the name going to be, who are the chefs?” As though some millionaire had just presented me with a check for $875,000. Of course, folks in the food business know that restaurant […]

Last week’s “Table Talk” described how a national aversion to saturated fats was exploited by the National Pork Board in two ways: First, in creating “Pork — the Other White Meat” as slogan and campaign. Second, by breeding and raising pigs in confinement, and with low-fat, antibiotic-laced diets. The column detailed the literally odious methods […]

Once upon a time there was a pork chop: nearly two inches thick, moist with tiny interior seams of fat, seared in butter in a heavy copper skillet; then a splash of Calvados deglazed the pan, and it gently braised until it was the color of burnished cherrywood. It arrived on the plate attended by […]

There has been a shift In the way Americans think about food over the past two decades, a change in tone. At first, only pinpricks of awareness, then — as water doesn’t become viscous on its way to becoming ice — a sudden consciousness that we need to change the way we eat. True, this […]

Who would have thought there would ever be two successful movies about American wine? But following on the heels of Sideways (based on Merlot-tasting in Santa Barbara wine country), comes Bottle Shock, a critically acclaimed comedy based on George Taber’s book Judgment of Paris: California Vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized […]

In a previous column, I wrote of New York’s newest culinary destination, David Chang’s Momofuku Ko, a restaurant at the forefront of a new American cuisine, making eating out an exciting yet relatively affordable adventure ("Table Talk," Aug 21). But there is another kind of culinary adventure, one presaged by Michael Pollan, whose books (most […]

In a faraway city, a Korean-American chef is changing the way restaurants work. David Chang is a top young restaurateur in New York, and the darling of the Eastern culinary sophisticates; in fact, he just won the James Beard Award for Best New York Chef. Of course, right there, that’s enough to damn him as […]

I have food prejudices like most people, but I have always felt uncomfortable with them. A half century ago, I watched with envy as patrons of the Grand Central Oyster Bar indulged in what looked like having sex in public; it would be decades later that I enjoyed my first oyster, and years more before […]

“We’ve never had such a breakfast: heaping cuts of wild pig, some with skin, some with crust-crunchy bones, and a smoky tenderloin chop….” Photo courtesy of flickr.com user drazz. This is a memoir of a Humboldt County legend, a restaurant that broke all the rules, sold incredible food cheap and, like a meteor, came and […]

In the days when we thought we had money, we used to go for breakfast to The Crest House in Culver City, a big "family restaurant" with a dark, dingy bar attached. We’d play racquetball for an hour, shower, then sit in the bar (away from the "family" section) and have Bloody Marys and a […]

Are we obsessive about food? The popularity of Michael Pollan’s recent books (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, preceded by The Botany of Desire, and followed by In Defense of Food) suggests that we are. Pollan is a serious science writer and director of UC Berkeley’s program in Science and Environmental Journalism. But science battles pseudo-science in the […]

The Kentucky Derby is a hard luck race in a hard luck town. It was settled by people who tried to beat life with a pair of treys. The pickpockets are the only ones who go home winners on Derby Day. Unless you count the concessionaires, who put a nickel’s worth of bourbon in a […]