August 2009
9 posts
View from the inside of a failing kitchen →
Samin Nosrat, sous chef at the Berkeley restaurant Eccolo (which has just closed down), tells what it’s like to try to serve local, organic food during the financial crisis:
We did fine for a long time - barely making it is considered fine in the restaurant business - but when the financial crisis hit last fall, we felt an immediate impact. We started to tighten things up; when one cook...
The best way to navigate a menu →
Frank Bruni, in his last column as NYT restaurant critic, offers this advice for navigating a menu:
Scratch off the appetizers and entrees that are most like dishes you’ve seen in many other restaurants, because they represent this one at its most dutiful, conservative and profit-minded. The chef’s heart isn’t in them.
Scratch off the dishes that look the most aggressively fanciful. The...
The $400,000 magazine story →
In an online chat, NYT Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati says that this weekend’s big piece on one hospital after Hurricane Katrina cost $400,000 to produce:
The Magazine is publishing a 13,000-word piece on Sunday (it will be up online earlier) that we did in partnership with ProPublica, the independent, not-for-profit newsroom. One of ProPublica’s editors and I did a...
I have 91 Facebook requests. Why isn't there an... →
Facebook tells me I’ve got 91 requests from various apps. Please, Facebook, add an Ignore All button! Or perhaps, Ignore All Requests From This App? We need help!
This is what my Pending Requests page looks like:
Student Reporter Damon Weaver Interviews President... →
The New Yorker is immune to cuts at Conde Nast →
John Koblin reports:
The Observer has learned, however, that New Yorker editor David Remnick will be exempt from meeting with McKinsey, as will anyone from the editorial side of his magazine. Two well-placed sources said that Condé Nast’s chairman, Si Newhouse, reached out to Mr. Remnick shortly after the McKinsey announcement was made and told him not to worry about anything—the magazine...
The Chevy Volt Gets 230 mpg? Only if you use bad... →
Mark Chu-Carroll writes:
Chevy has announced that for city driving, the Volt will get gas mileage of 230 miles per gallon.
That’s nonsense. Pure, utter rubbish.
The trick is that they’re playing with the definition of mileage. In city driving, the Volt is primary an electric car: it’s powered by its batteries which you must recharge every night, not by gasoline. On...
Keanu Reeves visits the 1984 International Teddy... →
(via Buzz Feed)
A Breastfeeding doll →