Eat + Drink

While shopping at Wildberries not long ago, I saw Phil Ricord staring, lost in thought, in the general direction of the deli section, aka Wildplatters Café. If you shop at the store, or listen to the radio or watch TV, I don’t have to explain who Phil is – in short, he owns Wildberries. In […]

If somehow I’ve conveyed to readers that I disrespect restaurants, I’ve expressed myself badly. When we go to a new restaurant, we do so with optimism. True, we do not eat out often, as we are ourselves cooks, but when we discover a place we like, we tell everyone – because we know all about […]

Somewhere in this space a few weeks ago I mentioned that a new restaurant, 3 Foods Café, had finally opened behind the Arcata Co-op. I had not yet eaten there, and as I noted, I had no idea what the three foods in the name might be. At this point I’ve been there three times […]

Polenta is one of those ageless culinary lords, like bread. It has sprung from the hunger of mankind, and without apparent effort has always carried with it a feeling of strength and dignity and well-being. M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf Polenta is an ancient Mediterranean dish. The Greeks, Romans and others who lived […]

It’s hard to miss the Community Kitchen at the new Eureka Co-op – just look at the back of the store for the giant capital letters spelling KITCHEN, and the slightly smaller "cooking demonstrations." So far the room has mostly been used for meetings, everything from dental hygienists and Boy Scouts to the Co-op board […]

Talking with Craig Nelson, plant manager for Rogue Creamery, one of the most successful "artisan" cheesemakers in the country, I asked why French cheeses are so much more varied and flavorful than American ones. "The FDA has much higher standards for pathogens," he told me, "and many companies have even less tolerance than the FDA […]

My brother-in-law Chris first hipped me to Iron Chef, a Japanese cooking show he described as "surreal." Originally titled Ironmen of Cooking, the TV program featured a mythical "Kitchen Stadium" maintained by an equally mythic Chairman Kaga, who pitted his team of Iron Chefs against illustrious challengers in a timed battle/race to prepare a collection […]

Provenance: It’s not a word you usually associate with food, but this last year, and I’ll guess in the years to come, it’s become something increasingly important to know. You hear it a lot on shows like Antiques Roadshow . It might be the tale someone tells of how an old sword was passed down […]