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Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
Steve meant so much to us.
We will miss him terribly.
Bump in the Beltway: "Me and Bourdain"
Labels: Food Politics, health, nutrition
Yeah, him
Thanks to Melanie for this insightful piece
I have a definite sympathy for Tony Bourdain's takedown rant of the Food Network. That having been said, there is a serious other side of this for me personally. As I told you last winter I'm in the long recovery curve from pancreatitis. One of my docs tells me that it will be a full 12 months before I'm back to 100%, and that would be this coming August. Disclaimer: Jody is a friend and professional colleague. I'm at about 80% right now. I can feel week-by-week improvement in such little things as being able to climb the stairs with arms loaded with grocery bags, how much laundry I can carry in one trip, things like that. I was able to walk to all of my local services (except groceries and the bank) for the things I needed to do this week. That may not sound like much, but up until a couple of weeks ago I had to drive even to the convenience store across the street in order to pick up cat food for my demanding little beast. I saw Bob-E, our condo maintenance guy, on one of these emergency trots for Friskies tuna the other day and he stopped me on the street to say how good it was to see me up and around again. My strength is returning with the good weather and I can't begin to tell you how good it feels. Being an invalid is really hard work.
Back to the Food Network. One of the things about pancreatitis which is very hard on a foodie (or anybody else, for that matter, but particularly for a food writer) is that the appetite is gone. Completely gone, even when you get to the point where everything you eat or drink doesn't immediately come back up or evacuate in minutes out the other end. The only treatment for pancreatitis is nutritional, and that's a little hard when you can't keep nutrition in your body long enough to be absorbed. My doc's physical exam reveiled that: my electrolytes were completely screwed and that I was severely anemic in addition to the severe dehydration induced by all the GI mishegos. I'm just now beginning to get my body back into some sort of balance--not totally there yet. Getting my appetite back was hard (I'm mostly better on that score) and the Food Network played a huge role in helping me to think about food in the affirmative rather than the urpy. Yup, even the relentlessly perky Rachel Ray, so reviled by Bourdain. While I was sick, my attention span was reduced to nothing, so Rachel's "30 Minutes" was perfect for me, got me up off my sick bed to actually cook something with the tiny level of energy I was able to muster.
I'm a serious student of Alton Brown and Emeril is a personal hero for his role in the reconstruction of New Orleans. Alton's Feasting on Asphalt is going to be a classic in the genre of roadfood. He was a cinemetographer before he got to culinary school, and this series really shows it. And he got my appetite back and got me interested in cooking once again. And got me back to the grocery store looking for something more than Imodium.
Bourdain likes the controversy he kicks up. I don't need it. I'm a political blogger and I live in the middle of controversy about 12 hours a day. When it comes to food, I'm up for the comfort version of same.
- posted by Bump in the Beltway's Melanie
Bump in the Beltway: "New Paradigm"
Thanks to Melanie from Bump in the Beltway for this cross-post!
Anti-Fast Food in France
By Grant Rosenberg/ParisArriving on a motorcycle, wearing jeans and a carrying a backpack, Alain Cojean is hardly the image of a Paris restaurant mogul. But then again the 45-year-old with an unassuming but frenetic demeanor hasn't created your typical Paris eatery. On an unusually warm April morning across the street from the Louvre, in a former tea salon in a building built in the mid-19th century, he is inspecting progress on the construction of what will be the newest location
of his namesake fast-food restaurant. Five or six weeks from now, the team of workers sanding and drilling will give way to crowds of customers ready to sample the fresh foods served quickly, with a focus on nutrition, in a modern, smoke-free environment that has become the trademark of Cojean. Since opening his first restaurant in 2001, he has expanded his chain to nine locations, mostly clustered in the office-heavy 8th and 9th Arrondissements of the French capital. And
he's done it all without any advertising.
The restaurant chain's popularity is proof that in a city famous for its smoky brasseries and aloof,
bow-tied waiters serving up artery-clogging dishes, there are citizens hungry for alternatives. Until Cojean, Parisian lunchers who didn't have time for hour-long steak-frites meals were mostly limited to baguette sandwiches on the run or the international fast food chains hardly noted for their selection of nutritional offerings. But now Cojean, with his vegetable-packed toasted sandwiches, chicken curry wraps and salmon and quinoa salads, is the de facto godfather of a near-movement. In the last few years, other like-minded, health-conscious fast food
restaurants have sprouted up around town, with easy-to-pronounce, linguistically neutral names like Bioboa, Noon, Jour and the deliciously provocative Eatme. The Belgian chain Exki (motto: "natural, fresh & ready") opened their first location in France last August — also in Paris's financial district. All of these places emphasize fresh products, clearly labeled ingredients and absolutely nothing fried.
I can't wait until we get something like this here. I go to fast food restaurants maybe twice a year when I'm really pushed for time and I'd love to have choices greater than prepackaged salads. We've got a bit more choice with chains like Chipotle Grill and Baja Fresh. I'd love to be able to pop in a quick place and pick up a grilled chicken wrap and a fistful of fresh vegetables. Here's the menu at Cojean (.pdf) I can read enough culinary french to know that I want to eat there. This would sell in the US. Cosi is the closest thing we have here, and I just got a new one down the street, which I'm going to try tomorrow.
- posted by Bump in the Beltway's Melanie