Saveur Winter 2018

I took part in a panel discussion recently on the future of technology in the kitchen. We panelists were asked to name a timesaving gadget we hoped to see invented. I’m not a Luddite. I like to talk to the voice in my car. At home, I like the music to follow me, magically, from room to room. But I was stumped for a tech upgrade I needed in the kitchen. I could see the value in a dishwasher that could reach out and clear the table itself. Or an app that would remember to remove the cheese from the fridge at an appointed hour so it’s not too cold to nibble on when I get home. Beyond that, though, when it comes to cooking I mostly subscribe to the…

Rising rents across Los Angeles have forced would-be restaurateurs to consider some creative locations. Can’t afford a stand-alone retail shop? Open one inside a magic theater. Have an idea for a Mexican-inflected Korean spot but don’t want to deal with a standard retail space? Try a local swap meet. Then there’s the Bombay Frankie Company, run out of a family-owned Chevron station in West L.A. Their stuffed-naan roti rolls are selling so well they’ve got plans to expand to another Chevron station soon. CRYING TIGER THAI at a Magic Show Black Rabbit Rose is a house of illusion, with Prohibition-era magicians performing nightly shows—but the more potent sorcery is found with Crying Tiger, the Thai restaurant housed in its adjacent bar (with a street-front window for passersby). Diners indulge in baskets of…

It’s easy for Americans to imagine Italy as a land of strict adherence to coffee rules— pity the tourist clueless enough to order a cappuccino after lunch. But this supposedly extremist coffee culture tolerates an imposter at virtually every café. It’s a caffeine-free roasted barley drink called caff è d’orzo that’s made in an espresso machine and could be said to taste sort of like coffee, if you’re being generous. As plain espresso it’s a little boring, even if it mimics the real thing’s deep brown color. But made into a cappuccino, the barley’s malty notes mingle with the foamed milk to create something more satisfying. It’s not hard to see the appeal — if nothing else were available. Which, in fact, is how Italy came to love the drink. The…

On a rainy Monday morning last autumn in the Chinese city of Suzhou, it was warm and dry inside Ren Xiaochen’s noodle shop, Yu Mian Zhai. Three young rich guys, who had parked a blue Maserati on the curb, tucked into bowls of wild duck noodles. They were missing out: Autumn brings rain in this part of eastern China, but more importantly, it brings hairy crabs, and hairy crabs mean crab soup. An ancient city best known for its canals and Chinese gardens, Suzhou is less than half an hour from Shanghai on China’s sleek new bullet trains, and it’s perhaps eastern China’s best place for a bowl of noodles. Ren, an accountant who retired to pursue her love of cooking, worked in silent coordination with her cook, Xu Hongden. She spooned…

Around three in the morning Ronald David turned on the lights and fired up the boiler at Glade Hill Cannery in rural Franklin County, where tobacco fields and apple orchards checkerboard the red clay foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge. A sturdy 74-yearold former mechanic with a bottlebrush mustache and a crescent wrench stuck in the back pocket of his jeans, he is the master canner at one of the remaining community canneries in operation. It was still dark when parishioners from Greater Mount Parrish Baptist Church arrived to cook the 40 bushels of fruit they had cored and sectioned here a day before. Soon, steam from the pressure cookers gathered on the ceiling and fogged the studio windows of this cinder block building, a former schoolroom and occasional garage for the…

The first tell is the battery of tinctures, tisanes, spices, and pickles crowding her new test kitchen, a collection so varied and impressive it could probably sustain a family of four for a couple of years if it came to that. The second is the talk of not really needing any human interaction, relayed as she puts the finishing touches on a fermented harissa that’s spicy and sour and just about good enough to eat with a spoon. But the clearest sign that chef Cortney Burns is adjusting well to life at the edge of the Berkshires comes a bit later on, when she shows off a slick collection of Japanese donabe, puts on a Keith Jarrett record, and fixes me and a few of her new collaborators what was…