Omnivore Atlanta

SMOKE ’EM IF YOU GOT ’EM: Businessmen in Food, Inc.

The harrowing documentary Food, Inc. serves up a kind of sampler’s platter of the recent culinary exposé trend. Like Super Size Me, it touches on the physiological effects of a fast food diet and further examines the assembly line approach to restaurant service. Recapping the themes of King Corn, Food, Inc. reveals how agricultural policies enable farming practices that put corn in seemingly every item at the grocery store, including cheese, batteries and diapers. It even goes to the source of Richard Linklater’s dramatization of Fast Food Nation to explore the industrial mistreatment of cattle and cattle workers alike.

The tours of sprawling slaughterhouses and dark chicken houses can put you off your feed, but Food, Inc. leaves generous helpings of anger and despair on your plate as well. The documentary cites examples of massive, secretive corporations suing small competitors into oblivion and making indentured servants out of employees in once-prized professions. In its scope, effectiveness and unmistakable passion, it’s the must-see documentary of the bunch, if you can take the heat.

Continue reading “Food, Inc. reveals hidden costs on the menu”

(Photo courtesy Magnolia Pictures)

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A team of Atlanta restaurateurs are planning to open a high-end restaurant that would be America’s first all-bacon establishment.

Called “Bacon-alia,” the eatery would feature a wide variety of bacon-based appetizers, entrees and deserts. “Bacon-alia is a concept whose time has come,” says chef/owner James Gammon. “With bacon mania sweeping America, it’s both a beloved comfort food and the ultimate indulgence.”

While Gammon expects that entrees like the bacon-wrapped Canadian bacon or the Bacturduckencon (a bacon-stuffed chicken in a duck in a turkey encased in bacon) will become signature dishes, he emphasizes that bacon is not the only foodstuff on the menu. “Of course not. That would be crazy. But we’ve put our own spin – or ‘baconized’ – some old standbys. Instead of Green Salad Sprinkled with Bacon Bits, we offer Bacon Bits Sprinkled with Green Salad. The Bacon-alia BLT is a classic bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, only we substitute thick sheets of bacon for the bread – and spread plenty of Baconaisse on top.”

In general, diners should expect that everything on the menu will be either wrapped in bacon, stuffed with bacon, or both. Meals feature “Bacon Water” and will be topped off with bacon-flavored Altoids. Although the menu includes Japanese and Korean-style bacon recipes, most of the dishes come from the United States, including the “Pig Candy” dessert, slices of bacon broiled with brown sugar.

“And just wait until you see what we’ve done with fatback!” says Gammon.

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STEP OFF: Workers remove animal hooves in 'Our Daily Bread.'

In his famed 2004 film Super Size Me, documentarian Morgan Spurlock went on a monthlong all-McDonald’s diet that wreaked havoc on his health. One of his doctors told him the steady intake of Big Macs was essentially turning his liver into paté — a rare case of junk food producing a gourmet dish, assuming a market existed for Spurlock Paté.

Super Size Me took a gimmicky but effective approach to the serious theme of American eating habits and whet the appetites of documentarians for more films on the subject. Twin motivations drive today’s culinary-minded nonfiction cinema: To decry the industrialization and mass marketing of what we eat, and to celebrate the Slow Food movement and other healthier, more sustainable approaches. Specific documentaries offer diverse perspectives, in contrast to our monolithic food production practices.

January 13 marked the DVD release of Our Daily Bread, an award-winning, head-spinning, at times stomach-churning glimpse at the mechanics of industrial food processing. Director Nikolaus Geyrhalter doesn’t editorialize, but lets the images speak for themselves. For 90 minutes, Our Daily Bread simply shows of vast machines and bored human operators raising produce and harvesting livestock. You’d think Our Daily Bread would be as exciting as watching vegetables ripen, but it’s a weirdly engrossing experience. There’s always something happening in Geyrhalter’s artfully arranged shots.

Our Daily Bread almost resembles a science fiction film the way it shows familiar foodstuffs such as apples dwarfed by sterile, utterly alien environments, or baby chicks on assembly line conveyor belts, or the huge, freaky machines that suck fish from the ocean or scoop up live chickens and launch them into crates. Geyrhalter frequently cuts to workers chewing their meals on break. They seem so bored and disengaged, it’s like they’re part of the automatic routine, too. When the film unexpectedly shows two workers making a huge pot of rice, it’s a shock to see such “normal” cooking.

Our Daily Bread isn’t just an intellectual exercise. It also preys on viewer sensibilities by including slaughter scenes (although they’re probably less than a fifth of the film’s content). (more…)

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At long last, Jake’s Ice Cream has launched its new location in the Oak Grove neighborhood (at 2746 Lavista Road), officially opening its doors on August 9. I say “at long last” because the Jake’s sign has been up in an Oak Grove strip mall for nearly a month. My family and I don’t live in Oak Grove, but it’s convenient enough for us that we’ve been stalking the location for weeks, our faces pressed up to the glass. At one point I actually called one of the other Jake’s location for information, but whoever answered the phone had no idea about the new venue and insisted that it did not exist.

But the new Jake’s is definitely real, and on Sunday my family and I ate scoops of Tiramisu Su Sudio, Devyn’s Animal Cracker and Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream to prove it. The new restaurant is still getting its sea legs, with servers providing ice cream in plastic cups rather than dishes, but the table tops have amusing decorations and the sofas are plush and comfy. My family will inevitably be regulars there.

Image courtesy of Jake’s Ice Cream.

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As research for our upcoming Best of Atlanta issue, I took my wife and daughter to Crescent Moon at Northlake Mall. All three of us have enjoyed the place in the past, and Monday night is Family Night, allowing kids to eat free off the versatile children’s menu. Alas, we ended up eating Chic-Fil-A at the mall’s food court instead.

There was no wait, but our first warning sign came when the Crescent Moon hostess offered to seat us at a booth near the counter. A visibly tense server strode over and told the hostess that he also had an 11-party table on the other side of the restaurant, and he would have trouble paying attention to anyone sitting in that booth. He was so clearly stressed out that my family and I should have just left then, but we took a seat in a more populated part of the restaurant instead.
(more…)

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When I returned from running the Peachtree Road Race on Friday, my wife suggested that we go to dinner at Woodfire Grill that night. Perhaps she was hoping to catch me off-guard and mentally woozy — you know, more so than usual — to coax me into taking the family to her favorite restaurant. She made a compelling case, however, because that night Woodfire offered a three-course, $29 price fixe Pig Roast, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Save the Hooch fund. The menu also featured “all you can drink” (with $2 suggested donation) glasses of Sweetwater Brewery’s India Pale Ale and Hummer, a summer Belgian white ale with hints of orange and coriander in the flavor. The phrases “all you can drink beer” and “pig roast” worked their magic on me, so I suggested we go for it.

It seems like a great new tradition for July 4. Woodfire’s elegant approach to Southern cooking provided, as usual, for a delicious meal. The entrées included a salad of arugula and luscious heirloom tomatoes, along with cornbread croutons that would make an addictive bar snack; a slow-roasted Berkshire hog from Gum Creek Farm in spicy (but not overpowering) barbecue sauce, served with grits and succotash; and blueberry and peach crisp with vanilla ice cream. It’s possible that I’ve never tasted better off-the-bone BBQ pork before, certainly none so lean and tender, and the vinegary sauce didn’t overwhelm the flavor of the meat. The pork didn’t come in the kind of huge portion that would buckle a paper plate at a backyard barbecue, but was ample to whet my appetite. I probably shouldn’t each too much pork, anyway.

Part of what made our Independence Day visit to Woodfire a special occasion was that my wife and I brought our five-and-a-half year-old daughter with us. She likes princesses and books like Fancy Nancy, and we knew that she’d be excited at the chance to go to a nice restaurant, although we refrained from wearing neckties or other formal wear — it was a pig roast, after all. We pointed out the wood-fired ovens and the cheese cave to her, and Woodfire proved quite accommodating to her, plating half-sized portions of the entrées for her, putting the sauces on the side (and cutting the price in half as well).

If they do it again next year, we’ll be the first to show up.

(Image courtesy of Sweetwater Brewing Company)

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If you’re a “locavore” or are otherwise interested in the slow, simple, locally produced food movement, you should definitely read Salon.com’s interview with Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, Calif. It strikes a good balance between advocating for organic, locally produced, cruelty-free, nonprocessed shopping and cooking, and acknowledging that such an approach can require more time and money than many people have — or, Waters would probably counter, think they have.

For reading enjoyment that won’t make you feel guilty, Cracked.com has an article on “The Six Most Terrifying Foods in the World.” The writer emphasizes snarky attitude more than culinary information, but the faux ads meant to sell the products for trendy American consumers are hilarious. (Ex.: packaging “Pacha,” or Iraqi goat head, as an energy drink called “Ahead.”)

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I found a pair of interesting, if less than appetizing, stories about weird food products online, both of which originated with Mental Floss. “Funky Fries and other foods that flopped” names some genuinely strange foods that never caught on with the American public, including “Gerber Singles,” i.e., baby food packaged for unmarried adults. Somewhat more conventional is “Six canned foods we’re reluctant to try,” including dandelion greens. They all sound like items you’d stumble across at a store, and then dare somebody to eat them. The comments field in the latter story offers additional ones.

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Two amusing things I found via Livejournal:

First, Livejournal blogger ‘Robyn_Ma’ writes hilariously about hot-headed chef Gordon Ramsay’s show “Kitchen Nightmares” on BBC America: “This is the show where he goes in and troubleshoots dying restaurants in his incomparable manner, and then the restaurants turn around and become successful. When he comes in, rats are shitting in the crème brûlée and the head waiter is shooting heroin into his dick in full view of the diners and the owner is keeping financial records on toilet paper with crayons. Gordon comes in and says ‘Everything is fuckin’ bollocks, you know that, yeah?’ and at the end of the show everything is awesome and waitresses dressed as faeries are serving glazed duck to important British film producers and Gordon looks at the camera and says ‘I am fuckin’ God, mate’ and, y’know, the end.” The blog entry also links to a YouTube clip from the show.

Also, Livejournal blogger ‘cleverusername2’ drew my attention to something I missed: the McDonald’s “I’d Hit It” banner-ad controversy from 2005, which featured a guy saying “Double cheeseburger? I’d hit it” (“Evidently unclear on the concept,” says ‘cleverusername2’). Here’s the link to the pertinent Wikipedia article.

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When most people go on holidays, they paradoxically put their stomachs to work, eating more sinful food – and more of it – than they do at home. My special bonus question of the week is, What kind of cooking do you like to do on beach vacations?

When we go on trips, my family has a tradition of making Frogmore Stew, which basically amounts to boiling up a mess of shrimp, new potatoes, sausage links and ears of corn. It’s easy to make, leaving you more time to mellow out.

On vacation I’m particularly fond of cooking not just seafood, but “disreputable” food, which creates a party atmosphere. A few years ago we cooked Beer Can Chicken, for which you roast a chicken that’s sitting upright with an open, half-empty can of beer jammed up its, uh, innards. It turned out to be quite yummy. The flavor wasn’t noticeably beery, so that’s not a selling point, but the process makes the chicken meat extremely moist and succulent. It was the kind of dish that sounds more “white trash” than it actually is.

I haven’t yet built up the nerve to make Butter Burgers, which, as I understand them, are like cheeseburgers only cooked with an equivalent quantity of butter instead of cheese. (Partly the problem is that I haven’t found a recipe that inspires me to take the plunge.) It sounds like an unbelievably decadent taste sensation, and also like it could cause your heart to explode like a hand grenade. Which could, you know, put a crimp in your vacation plans.

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Question of the Week usually doesn’t appear on this blog, but these days I find that my breakfast cereal needs are not being met. I don’t actually eat my breakfast cereal at breakfast, mind you, but I have a ritual to enjoy a bowl shortly before bedtime, mostly because I can’t stand waking up hungry in the dead of night.

For a long time Cinnamon-Raisin Kashi was my cereal of choice, but lately I’ve been hankering for something that’s not so deafeningly crunchy, and perhaps a little sweeter. I’ve been sampling varieties that tend to be more “flake-based,” ideally involving some combination of honey, granola and/or oats, enhanced with nuts, raisins and/or some other dried fruit. I’m not the hugest fans of heavily sugared “kiddie” cereals, but I’m open-minded in my question: What kind of breakfast cereal tastes the best?

Speaking of cereal, probably the best writing I can think of on the subject of is Cryptonomicon author Neal Stephenson’s observations on Cap’n Crunch.

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1) Herr’s Steak & Worcestershire Potato Chips: I discovered these a couple of weeks ago and found them to be the kind of treated, flavored potato chips that don’t necessarily taste “good,” but activate your salivary glands so well that there’s no real difference. They’re comparable to mesquite-flavored chips, without the peppery remnants (or tendency to leave your fingers bright-orange) of “barbecue-style.” There’s no mention of actual steak or even “meat” on the ingredients, but it does say “natural flavors (including grill).” Grill flavors: how intriguingly vague! They strike me as good “special occasion” chips for picnic cookouts or beach trips, but maybe not the kind of “everyday use” chips you want to have in the house week in, week out.

Incidentally, the package says “It is hard to pronounce (woos-ter-shir) but so easy to enjoy.” Hey, don’t condescend to ME, bag of chips.

2) Steaz Organic Raspberry Green Tea Soda: A family member recently dropped a few bottles of this by our house, which was fortuitous because it’s very tasty, but I’d be leery of drinking anything called organic green-tea soda. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of the beverage’s green-tea foundation when I drank from my first bottle. I’ve tried the raspberry variety, which is extremely yummy, proving sweet without being adversely syrupy or sugary. According to the label, “We’ve created a revolutionary tea-soda ’steaped’ full of flavor and nutrition.” That so-called “steaping” process must pay off, because it tastes comparable to classic deli-style flavored soda (at least, the kind you can buy in glass bottles).

My only caveat is that after drinking about half a 12-ounce bottle, I noticed a green-tea aftertaste beginning to assert itself. Maybe the bottle needed shaking up, maybe it’s more noticeable when it gets warmer – I don’t know. Green tea isn’t necessarily a bad flavor per se, but it’s a little unexpected and out of place in a sweet, fizzy, refreshing beverage.

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