Forking Tasty

Best Wings in Brooklyn 2012

Last Saturday Anthony and I were privileged to be invited for our third year to the annual Best Wings in Brooklyn competition hosted at Red Star Bar. This year we took a different approach. We decided to get a little clever with how we showed you each wing we are about to critique. We wanted to give them all an equal chance to shine and to do that we needed to devise a way to put all the contestants on a level playing field. We thought our skewer idea was a pretty cool way to achieve this goal plus, it allowed us to create the awesome frankenwing lead image above. Check out the run down...

The March to Fryer’s Delight

The name of this place always sounds like you'd walk into a velvet draped boudoir riddled with oil rubbed fry men being fanned by veiled mermaids. My over active imagination aside, any trip to Londontown without a stop at this bare bones chip shop is a failure as far as I am concerned. I hit it on the very last day of the trip during a long walk back to the hotel to grab my bags and head to Heathrow. Despite it being a bit dated and factory fry I enjoyed my cod and fries immensely. This was the last stop in what had been quite the afternoon eating adventure. Among my other stops in this final munch march were...

Lil’ Tasties

Now that I've been married for a year, the questions about kids have crept back into the Sunday dinner conversation. Little hints pop up here and there like baby carrots in our salad or wine served from sippy cups. You know those subtle Italian and Indian parents, so gentle. Well, unknown to them we have been cultivating our own crop of lil' tasties. With the help of IKEA, our little guys are pretty grown up and were ready to journey out into the real world for a little adventure. Last week Carmine Carrot, Bruno Broccoli and Sophia Strawberry boarded the Box Express heading off on a world wide tour ultimately landing in Washington DC. They are stopping there to visit their new friends Roman and Vera whom they met earlier in the year. So far they seem to be having a great time and learning a lot about the world. We'll keep you posted on their adventures and whereabouts from time to time. For now, this is about as close to kids as we are going to get. So take those rubber nipples off the cordial glasses please.

Bangered!

London called and I answered with wife in tow. A 72 hour long banger and mash crawl sent us to the far ends of London proper allowing us to discover a myriad of tasty outside of our self-prescribed sausage hunt. A few delicious, quick food joints and a small disappointment at one of London's most famous chef's hot spots are among the oven fresh topics. Look for the highlights in upcoming posts this week and next. We might even get to print a few words from my wife on this one. Her "Born in Britain" was in full effect and the nostalgia meter was off the chart. For now think about eating 10 sausages in 3 days. Then look close at the above image. Tasty right?

Burrito Video Fix

Because Chipotle is Tasty, I love animation and they took a nice, big, 2 minute long media risk on this Sunday's Grammy awards. That's why I give you this lovely snap of my carnitas burrito with guacamole (extra charge). I have not done a corporate endorsement for a "fast food" spot since the KFC Double Down and Chipotle deserves some love for everything listed above. The video is worth the time. You may even need a tissue. The burrito is one of the best in the city since no one from San Francisco has bothered to come out here and teach us how to make a proper one. Jump to see the video.

Layers of Love

It's a little know fact that I heart heart day. It's always been about much more than getting a great gift for your husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend. Just like we give thanks for our family, friends and life at Thanksgiving, Valentines Day is about giving love to those people and things that touch your heart. Call me a big mush or even harsher words that attempt to diminish my manhood. That's fine. I'm still going to love this fabricated Hallmark holiday dedicated to that same emotion. As you grind your teeth, pick up some over priced flowers and rush to meet your significant other at a crowded, inflated priced prix fix someplace that is momentarily gussied up for romance, take a pause to quietly remember the people in your life you love the most. Then eat an overindulgent dessert to seal the thought. Happy Valentine's Day to those who agree with me and to those who hate me for writing this. I leave you with my top 5 Valentiney things I saw today. 5. Google's take 4. A geeky proposal 3. Well said 2. Eat your heart out 1. Remember those butterflies

A moment in Philadelphia

Memory is an odd thing. Mix taste that with and you'll get some really strange stories. If you ask me, these are some of the best memories to have but then again I write this blog. What would you expect? The bite you see above was the very last thing I ate on a recent visit to Talula's Garden, one of Steven Starr's newest and best Philadelphia restaurants. Yes, there were plenty of other amazing bites as I progressed from bar cocktail to appetizers, to entrees and through dessert. The  braised veal rosemary pappardelle with kale, mushrooms, and garlic-tomato jus made me tingle. The Florida pink snapper with grapefruit, fennel, fingerlings, herbs and warm baby lettuces burned itself into my brain. The miniature cupcake trio of a spiced pumpkin, a dark chocolate-peanut butter and a sweet cream-apple was an olfactory hat trick. But, it was these small cardamom chips that blew my mind. Their subtle but super complex taste became the single dominant memory from this meal. When I talk about this restaurant, when I recommend it, when I mention Philadelphia even, I talk about these crumbs. The small, seemingly insignificant chips placed next to a simple cup of coffee is the dominant menu item that flashes instantly to mind. Dan Gilbert can explain much better than I can what happens to an experience memory days, months and years after it's moment but if these little sweets can leave such a lasting impression, imagine how superb all the "real food" must be. Get there. Tell me your story.

Options of Joy

I promise this will be my last post for at least a week about the absurdity of product options available in the US. This one tickled my marketing bone conjuring up an audible chuckle while standing in my local grocery store. I understand the naming and purpose of "Ultra Joy". It's a better, soapier, thicker, fresher and greener product. Conventional wisdom would dictate that the alternate option be "Joy". It's not. It's actually "Non-Ultra Joy". I don't know about you but I'm not buying non-ultra anything. Seems to me this is what happens when you let the production team name the product instead of consulting the marketing team first.

‘Wich Hunting: Pilot Video

No Frills

When I was ten years old part of my weekly adventure was accompanying my mother to the food store. In 1984, on Long Island, the major supermarket was Pathmark. At the time, I had no idea I wanted to be a designer. I had no idea I would come to love great advertising and marketing because of the emotional reach it could have. I had no idea great design could subconciously change peoples behavior. What I did know is that I loved the NO FRILLS aisle. The NO FRILLS aisle amalgamated all supermarket items from canned spaghetti to laundry detergent into one simplistic, typographically genius, less-is-more designed, perfectly merchandised  row. At a time of "new and improved", "extra-strength" and "free prize inside" package design the NO FRILLS aisle was way ahead of it's time in both aesthetics as well as convenience. Think Apple Store and Muji. Years later, I now realize what I felt and my behavior in the NO FRILLS aisle were the catalyst for my entire career. In particular, my focus on the power of behavioral science in my designs, marketing and communication with consumers stems from this aha moment. Sadly, the NO FRILLS aisle no longer exists. On a recent trip to Canada my Mother-in-Law took me to Loblaws, one of Canada's largest supermarkets, for a special surprise...