Younger consumers are demanding fast food chains offer new, healthier choices. For a big company like McDonalds that means taking a risk on over six million pounds of cucumbers and a bunch of weird Austrian tubes.
Main Course
Frozen Beer Heats up in L.A.
An ice cold beer -- it's the iconic summer tipple. The paradox: how do you keep that beer ice-cold in the summer heat? We head to L.A. restaurant Chaya, the first restaurant in America licensed to sell the solution: frozen beer.
Roots drummer Questlove shares a meatier kind of drumstick
As the drummer and co-leader of hip-hop group The Roots (also the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) ?uestlove is music royalty. Now he’s getting into the food game, too, and it turns out his buttermilk chicken is as good as his music. Bon Appetit named it one of their top things to eat in 2012. We grilled the musician about his ironically healthy new diet, and why food is the new hip-hop. For more tales of ?uestlove’s life - musical and otherwise - his just-released memoir is sure to be a treat.
Jason Wise captures the ballet of wine tasting on film in ‘Somm’
Filmmaker Jason Wise follows the process of preparing for the insanely difficult examination required to become a certified Master Sommelier in his new documentary SOMM (in select theaters, and on iTunes). He tells us how making the film taught him about the seriousness and non-BS-ness, of becoming a true “wine surgeon.”
Stuffies, from tiny Rhode Island, finally hit it big
Rhode Island might be our smallest state, but its seafood heritage looms large. Case in point: the emergence of local favorite, the stuffie. Rico visits newly-opened eatery Connie & Ted’s in West Hollywood - and its two-Michelin-star chef Michael Cimarusti - to get the story in a clam-shell.
Gin’s special friend gets a spicy make-over
Gin and tonic might be long-time BFFs (possibly involved in a torrid love triangle with vermouth) but sometimes it seems like tonic water just isn’t holding up its side of the relationship. Enter Pedro Goncalves, beverage director at the Michelin-starred Oceana Restaurant in New York City, who’s joining the ranks of bartenders making their own tonics in-house. Looks like ol’ gin and tonic might still have some new adventures ahead of them after all.
Catching up on the Cronut craze
What has New Yorkers queuing for hours, launching a crazy black-market, and food-blogging so hard? Cronuts, of course. Brendan visited Dominique Ansel Bakery to learn all about the buttery treats - but that doesn’t mean he got to taste one.
The pros and cons of cocktails on tap
Not every craft cocktail is best made right when you order it. At bars like The Eveleigh, mixed drinks are being aged in barrels and poured out of taps - and the compliments are flowing.
Michael Pollan’s Elementary Approach to Cooking
The famed food writer talks about baking anxiety, the dark side of cheese, and crackerjacks - and why we are because we cook.
When it comes to groceries, guilt is good
Food writer Cathy Erway on the pros and cons of joining a CSA