Eat My Florida

Not sure what we’re going to call it this year (maybe the BRGR, maybe the NCDoubleMeat) but I’m ramping up for this year’s March Madness Tournament of Champions, where we’ll be biting into 64 of the Bay area’s best burgers and pitting them head-to-head. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out last year’s month long PZZA competition here, here, here and here.

Let me do the math: if I eat one burger every work day until the piece debuts on March 12, I’ll still be about two dozen burgers behind schedule. And you thought the life of a food critic was easy!

We’re finalizing the final list of competitors soon, so don’t forget to throw your suggestions into the ring before it’s too late. Ive already nailed down the favorites, I just need the neighborhood joints and local dives that somehow squeeze out a stupendous meat patty under the radar. Who has your favorite burger?

According to the fine folks at Where The Locals Eat, Tampa/St. Petersburg qualifies as one of the Top 50 cities in the US!

WTLE’s new book tries to nail the best 100 restaurants in each of their top 50 cities and, as vague survey lists go, it does a fairly good job. The big guys are on there — like Bern’s, The Columbia and Ceviche — but there are also some actual local joints like Mel’s Hot Dogs, El Cap, Skyway Jack’s, Thai Sweet Basil and Atwaters. And, perhaps as a nod to our love of the prefabricated dinner experience, there are a half dozen chains included in the list.

If you’re traveling to the Bay area and don’t want to bother doing a little web research, this book might be for you. But anyone who actually uses the web won’t need to pick up the print version of Where The Locals Eat; you can find all the Tampa/St. Petersburg listings for free on the WTLE website.

The James Beard Foundation Book Awards Committee just released their list of 20 “essential” cookbooks and, on the whole, I can get behind it. Sarasota’s own Marcella Hazan gets a nod with her classic Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking and there is a fine spread between omnibus compilations (Bittman’s How To Cook Everything, Silver Palate) and a smattering of ethnic specialties (especially Bayless’ Authentic Mexican). In my opinion, though, there are two glaring omissions.

The New Best Recipe, Cooks Illustrated — Cooks Illustrated is known for their exhaustive recipe testing, simplification without sacrifice of flavor and focus on home cooking techniques. Each of the more than 1000 recipes comes with a detailed essay explaining the reasoning — based on that extensive testing — behind the important steps in the cooking process. More than just a cookbook, Best Recipe can be a no-nonsense, mythbusting education in how to cook. And just about every one of the 100’s of recipes I’ve cooked out of the book have been successful, with enough information provided that the even a schmoe like me can fiddle without screwing things up. It’s a necessity in any kitchen.

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Peter Reinhart — Yet again, this is a book that combines recipes that are relatively simple to follow with detailed and engaging explanations of why the steps work the way they do. Reinhart also made a “breakthrough” in explaining a process of slow, cold fermentation of dough that results in incredible flavor. Anyone intrested in the process of bread baking should have this book.

Check out the full Beard Foundation list after the jump and let me know if there are any of your favorites missing.

(more…)

Enjoy Beerfest? Yeah, me too.

Right in the middle of the Fest festivities, CL editor David Warner took the stage to run the finals of our Everyperson International Beer Challenge. Let’s air this out right now: this on-stage tasting was my idea, originally. I accept all blame for the fact that watching four people taste beer for a half hour is a big-time buzz kill. No matter that Dave innovated by bringing red-faced schmoes on stage to try the same beer the judges were trying or that lovely Ashle was up there pouring, it was a long 30 minutes.

But who cares? Our mugs and hearts were already full of two hour of generous pours from Beerfest vendors.

When it was all over and the votes were tabulated, perhaps the most commonplace beer on the tasting — Fullers E.S.B. — took home top honors. Other beers had their proponents, especially the St. Feuillien Triple, but there was always one person who took offense to those worthy brews and marked them harshly. Fullers was universally popular.

Thanks to all the judges — Bethany Sherwin of World Of Beer, Bob Sylvester of Saint Somewhere Brewery, our own Wade Tatangelo and Wayne Roddy from barproducts.com — as well as to Ashle and Dave for their fine work.

Last Thursday, beer maven and writer Michael Jackson died. If you’ve never heard of him, you’ve probably never read about beer. For almost four decades he had been the blessed brew’s most tireless supporter, describing — occasionally with flowery love and occasionally with frank calculation — the popular and obscure styles of the world’s beers.

I still use an old copy of his New World Guide To Beer on an almost weekly basis (sometimes as a checklist for beers I still need to try). His Great Beers of Belgium was a classic that rivaled Robert Parker’s Burgundy. The proliferation of US microbreweries, the popularization of home-brewing and the re-discovery (at least in England and here in the US) of a vast array of almost forgotten European beer styles all has a lot to do with Jackson’s efforts.

Let’s drain a cold one for the man.

For the depressing lowdown on how it feels to work in journalism when the Pulitzer lists come out, check PoHo’s post, but I’m feeling pretty exuberant about the whole ordeal. Sure, I may have been overlooked (again!), but at least a brother in arms — Jonathon Gold of LA Weekly — took home the trophy. First food critic to ever win, by the way. Thanks for paving the way, Gold.