How Tech Companies Disrupted Silicon Valley’s Restaurant Scene: It wasn’t so long ago that the aroma of Moroccan spiced prawns and wood-oven pizzas wafted out to a downtown street here from the open-air patio of a once popular eatery called Zibibbo. Today that patio is behind locked doors, obscured by frosted glass. The pizza oven is gone. The formerly crowded bar has been converted into a sparsely populated start-up space of a dozen engineers, their bikes and whiteboards. After 17 years in operation, the restaurant closed in 2014. The space is now an American Express venture capital office and a start-up incubator. The building blocks of Japanese cuisine:  When it comes to Japanese food, we’ve reached beyond the fifties-era soy sauce, sukiyaki, and tempura and the seventies-era sushi, sashimi, and miso. Now, in this fermentation-crazed time, we are ready to step up our understanding of the building blocks of Japanese cuisine on our way to appreciate how the sauces used in Japanese … [Read more...]

Why Are So Many Great NYC Restaurants Closing? It’s Not Just The Rent: It’s happening all over New York City, to restaurants big and small, from acclaimed pioneers, like WD-50, Union Square Café, Telepan, the Campbell Apartment and the Four Seasons, to more humble and beloved spots, like Bianca, Hamilton’s and Brooklyn Fish Camp. All shuttered or packing up because the rent is due and it’s too damn high. How high? The Seagram Building’s owner, RFR Holding, is said to have wanted to raise the Four Seasons’ annual rent to a market rate of $3.7 million from $784,000. Mark Grossich, who took over the Campbell Apartment space 17 years ago, was paying $350,000 a year and offered to pay his landlord, the MTA, $800,000 per year to save his bar. Not enough. Nightlife guru Scott Gerber made a bid for $1.1 million a year, and after a contentious lawsuit with the MTA, Gerber got the deal. Union Square Café’s rent was tripled. No credit for making the neighborhood great in the first … [Read more...]

A Food Crawl Through San Sebastián With One of the World’s Top Chefs: About an hour’s drive east of Bilbao, and just 12 miles west of the French border, lies San Sebastián, a coastal Northern Spain gem of a resort town located in the country’s Basque region. Reputed for its turquoise waters, palm tree–lined streets, and—most of all—its cuisine, San Sebastián which also goes by its Basque name, Donostia—is the area’s culinary capital and counts two of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, in addition to one of the highest concentrations of Michelin stars anywhere. But when in town, the best plates aren’t found on white tablecloths. Heston Blumenthal interview: the Fat Duck flies again: Memories are important to Heston Blumenthal. They are the raw material of his wildly imaginative creations at the Fat Duck, and the experience of eating there is designed to stir up powerful feelings of nostalgia, right down to the name of each dish. Current examples include, “Can I have some money for the … [Read more...]

How to rain proof your barbecue: Planning a barbecue but worried about the weather? Don’t be put off: follow these tips for great grilling come rain or shine. Plus: recipes you can cook in the oven or over coals. Picking up the baton as the world’s best chef: There’s a persistent clicking sound inside the kitchen of the Hôtel de Ville. It takes a while to locate it and then, I realise… it’s coming from the chef, Franck Giovannini. The at-times frantic clicking on and off of a pen is the only sign of the adrenaline below the surface in this boyish-looking 42-year-old. He’s leading a lunch service at the restaurant in the Lausanne suburbs, which is adorned with three Michelin stars and 19 Gault&Millau points. Last year it was also named best in the world in a new French ranking. But what must it be like to take on the mantle as the world’s top chef at a restaurant where the previous two star cooks died prematurely? Five Star mayor of Turin to create Italy’s first ‘vegetarian … [Read more...]