Amuse Bouche

News from the world of food and wine that you might have missed this week

• Wolfgang Puck joins Top Chef judging panel.
• If you think molecular gastronomy is really progressive or just weird, it looks positively conservative when compared to the 1932 book on cooking by the Italian futurist (and fascist) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. One recommendation was to ban pasta to be replaced by roast chicken using ball bearings as seasoning.
• Hooters—family style. The new CEO wants to appeal to women by “freshening up the menu” and adding more lighting. I don’t think the menu is the issue.
• Our stupid policy of mandating a percentage of the corn crop be used to make ethanol to feed cars is raising corn prices and distorting markets around the world especially in bad harvest  years. In the U.S. this is just a subsidy for wealthy farmers.
• The Amateur Gourmet rants about communal tables in restaurants. What. You don’t want to share dinner with a loudmouth telling bad jokes or a couple initiating their divorce? How unsociable!
• An article on tip creep. No, not the waiter pretending to be your BFF. Apparently, some New York waiters are expecting 25%
• The trials and tribulations of bill splitting in restaurants. Or a primer on how  you can punk your friends if they’re light eaters or drinkers.
• A new seasoning for risotto. Substantial amounts of arsenic found in rice (and chicken)
• An interesting take on the future of California wine from Steve Heimoff. The short version—Central Coast is where the action is, but California’s market share will decline.
• Want to know the fastest growing wine varieties in CA? Pinot, Chardonnay, and Cab head the list which shows that wine drinkers are not becoming more adventurous. The surprise is the growth in pinot gris, most of it inferior to the real stuff from Alsace.