nosh nook #182 - tuesday, november 24, 2009

5-month-old seattle food cart crowned best in the country (link)
11.23.09 - seattle post-intelligencer - by monica guzman

make no mistake about it--2009 has been the year of mobile food here in america, with food carts & trucks offering diverse cuisine springing up in cities all across the country. nyc could be seen as the capital of the food cart revolution, but portland, OR definitely vies for that title, with over 500 food carts scattered throughout the city. the carts & trucks have become such a big deal that every news outlet imaginable has done some sort of coverage on them, which has only helped fuel their popularity. personally, i'm sick of hearing about them, but do see that they've become an important alternative to the more costly, less mobile brick-and-mortar restaurants.

on sunday, good morning america jumped into the fray, announcing that seattle's marination mobile was the best food cart in the country. as the seattle post-intelligencer reports, the seattle-based truck, which is only five months old & serves korean-hawaiian cuisine, was, in typical food truck fashion, voted in by a strong customer base who got out the vote via social networking sites. in fact, marination mobile, which won on the strength of their spicy pork taco, is so beloved that "about 30 people came out to the cart at 4 a.m. sunday morning to support the business during a live feed on 'good morning america.'" mmm. 4am tacos.

marination mobile took home the best food cart title by defeating three other finalists from around the country. the first, nyc's street sweets truck, was the only dessert truck among the finalists, entering with the "marcarella," "a thin coconut macaroon filled with the hazelnut-chocolate spread, nutella." portland, OR's garden state food cart, with "sicily meets new jersey" style cuisine, is known for their handmade sandwiches, including their entry, a chickpea sandwich. the third finalist, local 647, which serves up american fare including a tasty hamburger (their entry in the competition) showed that you don't need to be in the big city to be recognized as one of the best, as they operate out of rural delaplane, VA. still, as marination mobile proved, if you want to have good morning america recognize you, you have to "have a really broad network of people who support [you]." the big city's always better for that.

nosh nook #181 - monday, november 23, 2009

cupcake complaints aired to weymouth school committee member (link)
11.23.09 - weymouth news - by ed baker

since launching the nosh nook back in march, i've written about a ton of cases where folks are in a tizzy about their kids' nutrition, especially at school. i've featured so many stories about crusading moms & initiatives & legislation that sometimes i feel like the "won't somebody please think of the children" angle is the only story being told in the world of food. i'm not saying that it's not important that kids eat healthy, but it's starting to get old. i can only come across so many "five hip, healthy, after school snacks for teens" articles before i snap & start taking hostages. are there really moms out there who still haven't figured out that carrot sticks are better than doritos? if there are, do we really need to force it down their throats through legislation & initiatives & news story after news story? don't we have better things to discuss?

i'm not the only one who feels this way. according to the weymouth news, there's been a bit of a hubbub in weymouth recently about a wellness policy approved by the school committee. the policy, which "establishes nutrition and physical fitness objectives for students in all grades," urges teachers to limit the amount of times that kids bring cupcakes to school for their birthdays. eventually, parents complained about the cupcake-hating policy to school committee member karen berry. she found that interesting because as the weymouth news notes, she "rarely receives calls from parents about how budget cuts will impact their child’s education, but she gets plenty of calls concerning a misunderstanding about policy on birthday cupcakes in the classroom." you hear that, weymouthians? where are your priorities?

the policy was put in place back at the beginning of 2007, which was fairly early in the recent healthy kid craziness, so parents should be used to it by now. as it is, cupcakes aren't even banned by the policy. all the policy does is "suggest that teachers limit the number of birthday parties they hold in their class each month and encourage healthy food consumption by students." although she was part of the committee that initially put the wellness policy in place, karen berry wishes that "people would be as attentive to the budget challenges rather than an eight-year-old who would be crying because he or she could not bring a cupcake to a birthday party at school." that's some shoddy english right there, but you get what she's trying to say. they put the policy in place. now it's time to move on to something more important. let's stop wasting so much time on cupcakes.

nosh nook #180 - sunday, november 22, 2009

a kid's idea, for dogs to savor (link)
11.20.09 - the ny times - by susan dominus

thanks to a bounty of boring snack-related news stories on thursday & personal laziness on friday, i decided to delay friday's edition of the nosh nook to today, where i'm bringing you a TOTALLY SPECIAL weekend edition of the nosh nook. seriously, at the end of last week, the big news in snacking was that, on the heels of kraft attempting a hostile takeover of cadbury, everybody & their mother (nestle, hershey, fererro) was thinking of buying the candy egg-making british company. YAWN. i'm so sick of hearing about people wanting to buy cadbury. other than that, there was another snack mix recall. BORING.

this weekend, things have remained pretty quiet on the snack news front, but i did come across a ny times article about christian liendo, a 16-year-old "bright-eyed science buff" from queens who's trying to make snacking more fun for dogs. he had to think up a product idea for a program/competition that he's enrolled in & after a few meh ideas & some childhood reminiscing, he eventually settled on "blizzard dog," an ice cream for dogs. he started out making the doggie ice cream with "carob powder (chocolate is dangerous for dogs), soy milk and lactose-free milk" & had friends' dogs try it out. since dogs aren't always all that bright, as far as flavors go, "corn and carrot were bigger hits than chocolate and vanilla."

in the end, he ended up losing to a "young woman who made vegan cookies," but he did take home $250 & an honorable mention for his idea. he hopes to eventually take his idea to the big time & wants to do so in a unique way--the ice cream would not be sold in pet stores. it'd only be sold in ice cream stores so "dog owners won’t feel bad when they stop for a cone and their dogs whimper in longing." i don't know, christian. that sounds like a pretty specific (& possibly health code-violating) target market--dog owners out buying ice cream while walking their dogs. you might want to think bigger than that if you want to one day make "blizzard dog" a household name. as it stands, your current business plan is for the birds.

nosh nook #179 - thursday, november 19, 2009

upscale mcdonald's brings european style to nyc
(link)
11.18.09 - abc news - by karen matthews, a.p.

i've always known that mcdonald's was the hippest, coolest, most in-touch fast food joint out there. back in the 90s, they pitted larry bird & michael jordan against each other in a game of horse, with the winner getting michael jordan's big mac & the loser having to watch them eat it. so cool & totally culturally relevant. over the years, they've had their hands in some of the best movie tie-ins ever. i'm telling you, if it wasn't for the mcdonald's toys based on the film, nobody would've gave a crap about finding nemo. for the record, i still have dory & she spits water & she rules. anyway, they've been damn good about keeping up with what's radical & tubular with the world's youth & pretty much every ad campaign they spit out gets the ol' "i'm lovin it!" treatment from consumers.

their latest move: according to an abc news article taken from the a.p., mcdonald's has finally decided to bring the same chic style they've been using in france & the u.k. to the united states. after introducing the "sleek" style to european mcdonald's a few years back, they've decided that americans in chelsea, the gayest (& by default chicest) neighborhood in nyc, are finally ready for a european-style mcdonald's, complete with "outlets for plugging in laptops" & "subdued lighting." it also means that customers at the locale can now say "bye bye hard plastic seats" & "hello upholstered vinyl chairs." it makes sense. the boys in chelsea love vinyl.

paul hendel, the owner of the chelsea franchise, had this puzzling comment on the new setup. "we're becoming a more relevant type of restaurant for the younger crowd. they don't feel rushed. they're reading the newspaper, relaxed." my two cents, paul: i hear you on them not being rushed, but if you think the younger crowd is hanging out reading the paper, you need to do a bit more research. the newspaper's been dead for years, dude. you're on the right track though. a large reason behind mcdonald's embracing the loungy, european-style setup is that they finally realized that in this post-9/11 world, people enjoy taking their time & doing something while they eat. asian mcdonald's have functioned as a hangout for teens for a while now, but their cultures are WAY more advanced than ours. it's good to see that we're finally catching up though. now if we can just get a mcdonald's at MOMA, we can catch up to france.

#137 - you down with ODB?

i'm not sure how many of you are aware of this, but in order to enter the wu-tang, you must bring the ol' dirty bastard type slang. it's true. ODB said so on "da mystery of chessboxin'," off the wu-tang clan's debut album enter the wu-tang (36 chambers). if you're looking to bring the ol' dirty bastard type slang, all you have to do is put some marbles in your mouth & go on an offbeat, occasionally sung rant. the rest will take care of itself. ODB, who died of a drug overdose back in november of 2004, would have been 41 this past sunday. in honor of his birthday, i spent a good part of the day hanging out at my apartment whilst blasting his two solo albums from my tiny apple speakers & doing a bunch of head boppin'.

his 1995 debut album, return to the 36 chambers: the dirty version, is my favorite of the two, with tracks like "shimmy shimmy ya" & "brooklyn zoo." on it, you get a bounty of half-sung, half-rapped lyrics like "cause I create rhymes good as a tasty cake." there's even a song with him singing the chorus to "somewhere over the rainbow." obviously. over four years later, he released his second album, nigga please, with plain white album art featuring nothing but a photo of him jheri-curled up like rick james. it's a funkier album at times & features two neptunes' produced tracks. the first is a sweet cover of rick james' "cold blooded," which is perfect for ODB, who loves to get to warblin' every once in a while. the second is "got your money," which was the album's only single & also helped introduce the world to kelis, who we've since forgotten about.

by that second album, he was getting into a lot of good ol fashion trouble, which led to the four year wait between albums. we're talking arrests, gunshot wounds, drug possession, life as a fugitive, jail time...all that good stuff. in 97, he took a limo to the welfare office to pick up his check, all while an mtv crew filmed him. remember the 1998 grammy awards, when he took the mic before shawn colvin gave her acceptance speech, rambled for a bit & declared that "wu-tang is for the children?" that was awesome. it was like my generation's "imma let you finish." that was around the same time when he starting calling himself "big baby jesus," just one of many pseudonyms he used over the years. so yeah, his rapping was epic but his behavior was too...sad but entertaining.

his legacy lives on. this past tuesday, a new, posthumous ODB album entitled message to the other side (osirus part 1) came out on money maker entertainment. the record was created from the wu-tang vaults & features a ton of guests, including the RZA on a quarter of the tracks. it even comes with a bonus DVD. i'm extremely skeptical of posthumous albums. they're often culled together from existing material, which is often sparse. plus, i'm of the opinion that wu-tang productions have declined in quality over the years, so there's a good chance that the album could be absolutely awful. hopefully it's not though. ODB doesn't need some lame posthumous album sullying his reputation like that.

#137 - you down with ODB?
snack: dirty chips funky fusion flavor
drink: arrogant bastard ale



since sunday was ODB day, i chose to snack on a bag of funky fusion flavor dirty chips while i listened to his albums. the funky fusion flavor's one of a few new flavors that dirty chips just put out (along with smoky chipolte & pesto parmesan). according to their website, which appears to have been designed some time back in the nineties, the funky fusion flavor "defies description! a little sour, no, a little sweet, no, a little salty, no, a little creamy, no, a little tangy, no........just enjoy!" dear dirty chips. your use of punctuation is too radical even for my tastes. NINE commas in one sentence? what is that? a triple ellipsis? seriously though, unless the owner has a thirteen-year old daughter & she's writing copy for the website, you should probably watch it with the punctuation. thanks.

since i'm a professional, despite dirty chips' claim that they defy description, i'm going to attempt to describe them. i figure it's the least i can do, so here goes: they taste sort of like a spring roll from a thai restaurant. see? that wasn't so hard. they definitely have an asian flavor to them & in classic dirty chips style, that flavor is in abundance. there's a lot going on with them. it's like an EXPLOSION of funky fusion. as for the texture, you can't beat the crunch of a dirty chip. still, even though they're kettle cooked & all natural, they're slightly greasy & full of a bunch of fat & sodium. health concerns aside, i definitely enjoyed them though.

to complete sunday's ODB tribute, i had a 22 oz bottle of arrogant bastard ale along with the funky dirty chips. the arrogant bastard's made by stone brewing co., who brews out of sunny san diego. a little known fact about san diego (home of the padres & ron burgundy): discovered by the germans in 1904, they named it san diego, which of course in german means a whale's vagina. i guess that the devilish dude on the front of the bottle is the arrogant bastard. he's kind of a lil bitch. in order to access his website, in addition to certifying that you're 21, you have to certify that you're "not a fizzy yellow beer drinking ninny here under false pretenses." according to the front of the bottle, i'm not worthy of drinking it. screw you arrogant bastard devil mascot. you don't know me.

the arrogant bastard's beer is decidedly less arrogant than his website & bottle. the ale pours with a dark reddish-orange color & a rich, hoppy smell. with the abundance of hops & all the bastard's talk about arrogance, i was expecting a harsh taste, but it's actually pretty smooth & drinkable & it's definitely something that i'm going to return to in the future. i'm pretty sure it's not something ODB would have drank, but i wasn't really in the mood for a 40 oz of old english this weekend. forty ounces are more of a summertime thing for me. anyway, at least it's brewed by someone who believes in carrying on the good bastard name. i think that'd make ODB proud.