This week alone my food at two local eateries arrived, surprisingly, on heavy metal trays (see below). These are places that might otherwise have used good plateware given their style and relatively steep menu prices. Yet instead they employ an item that likely reminds people of the school cafeteria, prison or mess hall. Maybe trays instead of […]
Read MoreCategory: fine-dining
My Radio Day
I’ve been a WCPN listener for years. The National Public Radio affiliate provides Clevelanders with great programming, much of it focused on the city’s arts and culture. Last Tuesday I appeared on “The Sound of the Applause,” an arts program hosted by Dee Perry. The subject was the culinary arts and by clicking you can […]
Read MoreGoodbye Charlie Trotter
Chef Charlie Trotter died on November 5, 2013, the victim of . . . well, no one’s quite sure yet. We’ll have to wait for the final results of the autopsy. Meanwhile, like many others, I was stunned at his death. And sad. He was only 54. I met Charlie years ago, shortly after […]
Read MoreFive ways to behave in a restaurant
Jonathan Gold, the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times, recently laid out a restaurant’s responsibility to customers in a superb first paragraph to a review of redesigned Spago: The first responsibility of any great restaurant is to keep you in the bubble, the soft-serve cocoon of illusion where you forget the world exists for anything but […]
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