Almost every culture seems to have its own version of grilled meat on flatbread: Mexican tacos al pastor, Lebanese shawarma, Greek gyros, Turkish doner kebabs, Persian shish kebabs—and my personal favorite—Indian seekh kebabs.

Most Indian restaurants pay homage to the food once served on the tables of the Mughal emperors. Cooked in ghee and redolent with aromatic spices, ubiquitous staples from tandoori chicken and butter chicken to saag paneer and rogan josh all owe their roots to Mughal high cuisine. But those dishes don’t tell the full story of the culinary influence of the Mughals. An equally important legacy is found in the streets and alleyways of almost every city in India. From Delhi to Calcutta, kebabwallas ply their trade, cooking skewers of marinated meats over glowing sigris (charcoal-fueled open-fire grills) and serving them on parathas—usually with a squeeze of lime and a few slivers of onions fragrant with chaat masala.

These late-night street grills were the inspiration behind my Botiwalla restaurants in Atlanta—and the menu below. Mix and match the skewers and sides for the ultimate cookout, starting with the iconic seekh kebab, a skewer of spiced minced meat—and the gold standard of kebabs in India. With a large enough grill, you can cook lamb in one corner, chicken in another, and still make room for fish and vegetables. You can also do as the SAVEUR test kitchen did and pull off the whole menu indoors: simply break out your grill pans and get those burners going.

The Menu

Lamb Seekh Kebabs

My riff on this beloved classic starts with ground lamb and dials back the heat and Indian spices—flavoring the meat with just a pinch each of turmeric, ground coriander, and Kashmiri chile powder. Then I bump up the cilantro, garlic, and ginger, and add lots of fresh mint to brighten the dish. The trick is to grill hot and fast so that the meat is smoky and charred on the outside, and tender, juicy, and almost delicate on the inside. Serve as a kebab with naan, lime wedges, and chutney; or form the meat into a skinny burger instead, and sandwich between pav, the soft, sweet Indian rolls, along with a cabbage slaw and Maggi ketchup. Get the recipe >

Chicken Tikka Kebabs

Chicken tikka is the sweet and sour pork or the beef and broccoli of Indian cuisine. The O.G. bastardized North Indian export has launched thousands of curry houses in the U.K. and U.S. This version calls for treating chunks of boneless chicken breast (you can also use thighs for even juicier results) with a dry rub and a wet marinade. The dry rub is super simple—just Kashmiri chile powder, turmeric, and salt—while the wet marinade is the perfect balance of yogurt, lime, and spices. Thread the double-infused chicken onto skewers, and again grill hot and fast, turning frequently to avoid over-charring. One bite of the smoky-spicy-juicy end result, and you’ll never again want to pony up for the dry, flavorless, and dyed-red chicken under the buffet heat lamps that’s trying to pass itself off as “chicken tikka.” Get the recipe >

Paneer Tikka Kebabs

Yes, you can grill cheese on a grill! Well, the right kind of cheese. Here, bite-sized chunks of paneer, a dense, pressed fresh cheese, is marinated in a gingery herbed yogurt and grilled with sweet, colorful bell peppers and onions. Get the recipe >

Machli Kebabs

While most fish in India is fried—I don’t think I’ve ever seen it grilled—this recipe inspired by my Persian ancestry rocks on the grill. Start with a firm, chunky fillet—swordfish is my go-to—and a bright, slightly sweet marinade of fresh mint, cumin, lime, and garlic. Baste with plenty of ghee on the grill, then garnish with fresh dill and dried sumac. Get the recipe >

Kachumber

A Hindi word for “chopped up into small pieces,” kachumber is also known as Parsi salad. It was served with pretty much every meal I had growing up in India. The first time I went to a Persian restaurant, I saw an almost identical dish called “salad Shirazi,” which made sense once I looked up the history: The Parsis immigrated to India from a region of Persia known as Pars, of which Shiraz is the capital. With just four main ingredients—cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions, and fresh herbs—the slaw-like salad couldn’t be simpler. Get the recipe >

Grilled Corn Bhel

Bhel is the closest that many Indians will come to eating some type of salad. We traditionally don’t eat a lot of fresh leafy greens. Our greens tend to be dark and fibrous (think mustard greens instead of baby spinach) and lend better to stewing instead of salads. Typically served by street vendors, bhel is a “salad” of puffed rice, crispy chickpea noodles, wheat crackers (puris), chiles, onions, cilantro, peanuts, and potatoes dressed with chutney and the occasional dollop of cold sweetened yogurt. My bhel-inspired corn salad keeps the crunch factor with homemade corn poha (you can substitute store-bought corn flakes) and adds grilled corn kernels, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, and a three-minute cumin-lime vinaigrette. Get the recipe >

The post 6 Magnificent Indian Grilling Recipes You Can Pull Off Indoors or Outdoors appeared first on Saveur.

At New York City’s Carbone—and its younger Las Vegas outpost in Aria Resort—Berkshire pork spare ribs from Heritage Foods are brushed with a sweet, garlic glaze, finished over a wood fire, then topped with a mixture of fresh and pickled chiles. “I love this dish because it’s completely non-traditional to the Italian-American menu,” says chef Mario Carbone. “It’s a curveball that we throw, but somehow, once it hits the table, it looks perfectly at home.” 

Fresh cherry peppers come into season in late summer and often can be found at farmers markets and Italian grocery stores. (If you can’t track them down, though, thinly sliced green jalapeños will get the job done.) Pickled cherry peppers are available year-round in well-stocked supermarkets and online. The individual components of this recipe can be made a day or more ahead of time, and the final step is a quick and easy one, making Carbone’s cherry pepper ribs an impressive flex for outdoor entertaining. At his restaurants, the ribs are served over a bed of coleslaw, but any crunchy fresh salad would make a fine accompaniment. — Kat Craddock

Note: Slow cooking the meat in a layer of plastic wrap seals in its flavor and moisture, mimicking the effect of sous vide cooking. However, if you prefer not to cook in plastic, you may also omit this layer and bake only aluminum foil. We tested a plastic-free version and found the ribs still came out tender and juicy. 

The post Carbone’s Cherry Pepper Ribs appeared first on Saveur.

Cyrus Schultz thinks Champagne is always a good idea. Born and raised in Maui, Schultz cut his teeth serving wine in celebrated fine dining establishments throughout Hawaii and California, including Roy’s in Maui, Benu in San Francisco, and the French Laundry in Napa Valley. When the now-sommelier signed on to run the wine program at Sonoma County’s Cyrus (the shared name is a coincidence), he took great care to ensure that the restaurant’s aperitif service set the tone for the whole meal. That’s why, heading into year-end festivities, I reached out to him for advice on how to serve Champagne at home like a pro—from optimal glassware to perfect food pairings.

If ever there was a time for the Cyrus team to break out the Champagne, it’s now. The Northern California wine region’s most anticipated new restaurant of the year, Cyrus is actually about to embark on a new chapter. After a lease dispute in their intimate and widely loved original location, co-owners, chef Doug Keane and mâitre’d Nick Peyton abruptly closed up shop a decade ago. This September, after years of false starts and pandemic woes, the pair finally opened the doors on this second act. Barely three months later, reservations for the 17-course tasting menu are booked solid, and the team recently took home Cyrus 2.0’s first Michelin Star.

The morning before the Michelin news came through, I happened to be on the premises, scoping out the space and sipping a graciously poured glass of bubbles before dinner service. The room was designed as a reimagining of the famed pre-dinner Champagne and caviar cart guests had come to love at the original location. Diners begin their meal with bubbly and small bites overlooking acres of surrounding vineyards and, beyond that, the rolling hills of the Alexander Valley. Even in the daytime, an understated luxe permeates the room. “It’s hard to not fall for the space,” Schultz tells me. “We offer three seatings each night, and for each of those, we’ve built in a half an hour where you can just sit, get a glass of Champagne, and watch the seasons change over the vineyards.” 

Whether you’re hosting everyone you know this season, or are looking to make the most of a special bottle with your favorite dinner companion, your evening deserves just as much. Here are Schultz’s tips for bringing a little bit of Cyrus’ Champagne chic into your own home.

The Glassware:

At Cyrus, stemware is the first thing diners bring to their lips, so Schultz was acutely aware just how important it would be to choose the proper champagne glass. In the Lounge, he uses Zalto tulips to serve all effervescent pours. “You want something that doesn’t cage all the flavors,” he explains. “A more generous glass shape allows the wine to be more expressive and speak louder” than it might in a standard, straight-sided flute.

For elevating the Champagne experience at home, glassware is the clear place to start. If your space or budget demands that you streamline your options, though, Schultz finds that sparkling wines can shine just as brightly in an elegant, all-purpose white wine glass that “lets the bubbles breathe a little.” (He uses the Sophienwald brand at home.)

Feeling festive, or setting up a Champagne fountain? “I also do love a coupe,” he admits. “For the right time and occasion, with a wine that’s fresh and vibrant and super-cold, a coupe can make you feel like you’re in that Great Gatsby era.” In other words, the glass sets the mood. “Coupes may not be the most functional, but sometimes they make you feel great, and how you feel when you’re drinking something is so important, too.” 

Keep it Cold:

When it comes to Champagne, you’re going for cold—significantly colder than other white wines, but not freezing. “You don’t want your champagne so cold that its flavors start to close down,” Schultz warns; he suggests aiming for somewhere around 46 degrees Fahrenheit (or a touch colder for non-Champagne sparklers, like cremant or Prosecco). 

The reason for this chilly temp boils down to physics. With still wines, proper temperature is all about flavor and fragrance, but with bubbles, temperature also has an impact on texture. Rising temperatures cause carbonation to expand, resulting in a more open mousse (i.e. fatter bubbles). “Effervescence is a texture rather than a flavor,” Schultz explains, “and there’s a point where the mousse behaves on the palate in a way where the wine just sings. I usually like Champagne to be very finely, tightly wound, and have that really delicate bead, but depending on the wine, sometimes it can warm up a touch, and become much more expressive.”

How can you tell when a bottle is cold enough? After years in the business, Schultz relies on instinct and physical touch, but admits that, for most, this method is not precise. For a 750-milliliter bottle, three hours in the fridge is a safe minimum starting point. An ice bucket can be faster and convenient, but Schultz reminds us that when using one, the bottle should be fully submerged in order to chill evenly. (Also remember that magnums and larger bottles take substantially longer to chill than those standard 750s.)

Food Pairings:

For nibbles to pair with their Champagne, chef Keane sends guests dainty canapés—often featuring uber-luxe ingredients like wagyu and truffles—to tease the lengthy dinner to come. They may also choose to enjoy a serving of caviar. While the ingredients are lavish, the bites are intentionally petite. 

For a more casual—yet still elevated—home experience, Schultz likes to offer more generous portions of simple, fatty foods: think fried chicken or potato chips, or the occasional silky slice of foie gras. With fuller, fruitier rosé Champagnes, though, he prefers to veer in another direction, looking to his home state for inspiration: raw tuna, seasoned with scallion, soy sauce, sesame, and inamona salt. “Rosé has enough power to stand up to the rich, oily nature of ahi,” he tells me.  “Don’t sleep on rosé Champagne and ahi poke!”

The Main Event:

Schultz built Cyrus’s 800+ bottle wine menu from scratch; today, the restaurant’s cellar boasts just over a hundred Champagnes (and a handful of stand-out Sonoma sparklers). Rare vintages from well-known marquee houses are listed alongside niche grower-producers, and while many of the selects are near impossible to find outside of private collections and wine-focused restaurants, some of the somm’s favorites are available in stores. In the $40 to $60 price range, he suggests seeking out Chartogne-Taillet, Pierre Peters, or the consistently delicious Pol Roger. 

For folks looking to splurge, Schultz points to Krug or cult favorite Salon—an early pioneer of the Blanc de Blancs style which only produces wines in the most exceptional of vintages. “[Salon] only makes one wine, so you know it’s going to be delicious. You don’t have to do all this homework about, ‘was that a good vintage or a bad one?’ They’ve done it all for you—but it is a splurge!”

A Note on Gifting Champagne Like a Pro:

Schultz has thoughts on gifting Champagne, too. “The biggest thing I try to let people know is that if I’m giving them a bottle of Champagne, I’m saying, ‘Hey, this is something for you to drink and enjoy now.’” Recipients of wine gifts may instinctively save the bottle for another special occasion, but Schultz reminds us that the holidays are about enjoyment and fun. “Nothing does that like opening a bottle of Champagne.”

How To Open Champagne Like A Swashbuckling Sommelier

The post How to Serve Champagne Like a Pro at Home appeared first on Saveur.

There is no shortage of challenges for the front of house, an industry term for those who work in customer-facing restaurant roles. A new project, launched by a collection of international hospitality organizations, aims to investigate these shortfalls, with the goal of developing better support systems.

Last month, The Front of House Project—conceptualized by digital publisher Fine Dining Lovers, in conjunction with a handful of partners like the Basque Culinary Center and Relais & Chateaux—launched two global surveys targeting both diners and hospitality workers. 

“It has been hard to ignore the devastation that has been building over the last three years, and while a lot of support has been shown for the restaurant industry, it has focused on the restaurant as a whole, as well as the chef and kitchen,” says Ryan King, editor-in-chief of Fine Dining Lovers. “It was clear that [the] front of house was just not being given the attention they needed. Fifty percent of a dining experience is down to the amazing work of the front-of-house crews.”

The surveys, which were developed over the course of six months and edited by Vaughn Tan, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at University College London’s School of Management, ask diners to select from a list of several possible beliefs to ascertain the respondent’s view of “good service” (i.e. “Waitstaff are attentive but don’t get in my way or interrupt my meal repeatedly,” or “Waitstaff know the food and drinks menu in detail and can explain it to me”). The survey also poses questions like, “Do you believe that the customer is always right?” 

The survey asks respondents in the industry things like what resources their current employer is lacking and quizzes them about their views on career-development opportunities. “Have you encountered discrimination of any kind from fellow restaurant team members while working in front of house in any of the restaurants you have worked at?” the questionnaire asks.

Both versions of the survey attempt to investigate how and why a guest may choose to shirk a reservation, and what impact that has on service.

King says that so far the questionnaire has received about 7,000 responses, though the surveys will be open until Aug. 25. The resulting data will be made accessible to all through a free-to-access digital report. 

“The industry is on its knees,” he says. “We are in a critical position right now and this information may give us the opportunity to shape and direct the industry in the best way possible for the future.”

The post Servers Have It Rough, But Help Could Be On the Way appeared first on Saveur.

The last of the day’s visitors trickle out from Singapore’s famed Botanic Gardens, leaving the footpaths that wind through the lush foliage and throngs of orchids deserted. But listen carefully and you can hear the din of dinner service emanating from within the flora. The source? Pangium, a new fine-dining restaurant that opened in June, tucked away in the heart of this 163-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Inside, chef Malcolm Lee serves a contemporary tasting menu that spotlights heritage flavors as emblematic of the country’s identity as these tropical surroundings. As a Peranakan, Lee is one of the chefs driving a revival of Singapore’s indigenous cuisine and diverse heritage foods. “I’m quite a traditionalist,” says Lee. “I really liked the way things were done before.”

Peranakans descend from early settlers, many from Southern China, who began migrating to the Indonesian archipelago around the 14th century, where they married local women. “For me, you are a Peranakan if you can trace one of your ancestors to being an offspring of the intermarriage at that time,” says Alvin Yapp, owner and curator of the Peranakan private-home museum The Intan. In Chinese Peranakan family kitchens, Chinese cooking practices coalesced with Malay flavors into a distinct and colorful hybridized cuisine characterized by aromatic, herbaceous dishes—foods like mee siam (rice vermicelli tossed in a spicy gravy), babi pongteh (pork stew cooked with fermented soybeans), and kueh salat (glutinous rice and coconut milk topped with custard)—that were complex and time-consuming to make, but bold and hearty to eat. “Peranakan cuisine started off as home cooking,” Yapp adds, and in the home it largely remained. 

Early in his career, Lee, now 37, felt that young people—many of whom were, like him, among the third generation to build a life in Singapore—were losing touch with the culture and traditional dishes that defined their childhoods. He notes how the city-state has absorbed so much foreign influence throughout history that, for many young Singaporeans, the link to their ancestral roots can feel tenuous. “Any new nation struggles to find its identity, and to assert its identity,” says Christopher Tan, a Singaporean cookbook author of Peranakan descent. (Singapore gained independence on Aug. 9, 1965.) The Peranakan community’s matriarchs, who orchestrated large family meals with care and took great pride in their homestyle recipes, were also fading away, explains Peranakan cookbook author Sharon Wee. As young people saw their grandparents aging, “it coincides with this young generation that realizes, ‘if I don’t learn how to cook this, or if I don’t record this for posterity, I’m going to lose it altogether,’” she says.

In hopes of reinvigorating interest in Peranakan cuisine and heritage, Lee decided to reimagine the traditional flavors he loved. Lee’s first restaurant Candlenut, which he opened in 2010 after culinary school, had been serving Peranakan food for five years when he dreamed up a tasting menu of contemporary takes on classic dishes. The following year, Candlenut won a Michelin star, the world’s first ever awarded to a Peranakan restaurant.

At his new sophomore endeavor Pangium, Lee’s culinary mission has broadened beyond the dishes of his Peranakan community to focus on understanding Singapore’s past and bringing it into the future. In the multicultural fabric of the country’s heritage cooking, Peranakan cuisine is only one component; Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian dishes also comprise Singapore’s heritage cooking. Though many diners may describe his new tasting menu at Pangium as innovative, Lee is more preoccupied with capturing heritage ingredients, reviving lost dishes, and showcasing them intentionally with a modern flair. “I’m trying to preserve those stories,” he explains. “The whole idea is how to present [dishes in ways] that will connect them back to the past.” On a foundation of respect for inherited tradition, Lee acknowledges the contemporary context of Singapore today. He garnishes the classic deep-fried fish dish ikan chuan chuan with hand-knotted lily buds; he serves sagun, a powdery coconut snack enjoyed by his parents’ generation but rarely seen nowadays, atop a dollop of young coconut sorbet; the nasi ulam, rice mixed with an array of herbs, arrives alongside a collection of side dishes that feature ingredients like fermented durian sambal and banana flower.

Documenting Singapore’s complex past and present is no small undertaking. Chef Damian D’Silva, the MasterChef Singapore judge who opened his latest restaurant Rempapa at the end of 2021, is among the most enthusiastic champions for upholding the vast breadth of Singapore’s heritage dishes. “If no one does that, it’s going to disappear,” says D’Silva. He points out that the country, shaped by centuries of colonialism and immigration, has four official languages—English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil—reflecting the diversity of the demographic landscape. At Rempapa, he honors the threads that make up Singapore’s cultural tapestry by cooking a wide array of traditional dishes in homestyle fashion and serving them in family-style portions. The menu is anchored by deeply personal recipes (many from his paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother) that D’Silva, who describes his roots as Peranakan and Eurasian, once enjoyed at his childhood dinner table. He also makes space in the kitchen for other chefs to document dishes from their own heritage. A meal at Rempapa might include everything from kedondong salad (a Peranakan dish of wing beans and makrut lime leaves tossed with peanut brittle and shrimp floss) to Hakka fried pork (Chinese marinated pork belly) to baca assam (Eurasian-style beef cheeks cooked in tangy tamarind water). 

Though D’Silva supports chefs applying newfangled spins to tradition (and has introduced his own fresh takes like limpeh sliders, made with beef brisket cooked in spicy rempah), he sees himself primarily as a custodian of the history and collective memories buoying the foodways of Singapore’s many ethnic groups. He encourages cooks and eaters alike to understand and appreciate that bedrock. “If you don’t do that, then you’re creating a dish out of thin air,” says D’Silva. “And that, to me, makes a dish lose its soul.”

Now, a resurgence of interest in the country’s heritage cooking is well underway. “We grew up in this modernizing Singapore,” says Wee. “I think it came to a point where we realized that we weren’t quite treasuring what we had.” 

The urgency of reviving and preserving these traditions is even greater knowing that the community upholding it is very small—and getting older. Though Chinese descendants make up the majority of the Peranakan community today, the group also includes the Jawi Peranakans, who descend from locally born Muslims with mixed South Asian and Malay ancestry; and the Chitty Melaka, also known as the Peranakan Indians, who descend from locally born children of South Indian merchants and Malays. To illustrate and preserve the special cultural hybridization that created Chitty Melaka food customs, Singaporean home cook Tanya Pillay-Nair is collecting recipes from her community for a cookbook that will be published in 2023.

Though many in the community no longer have direct family ties to India or Malaysia, appreciating the food of one’s heritage can maintain a poignant link to one’s ancestral roots. Pillay-Nair herself has “visceral connections to the past” anchored by vivid memories of her grandmother puttering about in the kitchen, and her family sitting on the floor eating food from banana leaves. “Now that they’ve gone, I’ve had to find ways to retrieve those old recipes,” she says. “There are so many dishes that you would never have heard of,” including many that were new even to Pillay-Nair. “To me, that’s treasure.” 

The pandemic had a hand in encouraging Singaporeans looking to reconnect with the dishes of their childhoods to turn to their kitchens. Limitations on restaurant visits sparked a private home-dining movement throughout the country, with countless locals opening up their own dining rooms to strangers hoping to enjoy home-cooked food in the comfort and safety of a small private group. “When you go to somebody’s house to eat, you feel the love,” says Tinoq Russell Goh, a hairstylist and makeup artist who, alongside his partner Dylan Chan, quietly launched private dinners in their home in 2020. Now, the waitlist is two years long.

As awareness of the diversity of Singapore’s heritage foods continues to build, and as chefs continue to reach diners through contemporary avenues, Yapp, for one, is curious and excited to see where the reinvention will lead. “I don’t think culture should be stuck in time,” he says, pointing out that the Peranakan cuisine of his own background was born from applying modern ingredients and presentation to existing traditions.

One of Lee’s proudest creations is Candlenut’s signature ice cream made from the hydrogen cyanide-containing poisonous seed of the indigenous buah keluak tree (also known as Pangium edule). Making it edible is a lengthy process that involves boiling, burying, and fermenting it before extracting the pasty filling, which Lee’s ancestors thought would work well with chicken and pork. But for Lee, “it’s almost like dark chocolate. A bit bitter, like rich coffee, slightly acidic.” He wondered if it might shine in a dessert. Now, the dish has been on Candlenut’s menu for nine years, served on a bed of salted caramel and embellished with chocolate espuma.

“That’s truly Peranakan,” says Yapp. “We are not afraid to try new things.”

The post The Revival of Singapore’s Indigenous Cuisine appeared first on Saveur.

There’s a running joke among Americans in Paris about Europeans—Parisians especially—signing off the entire month of August. (True enough; I recently tried to reschedule a late July meeting only to be offered a raincheck for September.)

Sure, the joke’s a little tired, considering plenty of people work throughout the summer. But it does seem fair to say that August days are long and languid. Compared to the flurry of activity come September, big cities feel delightfully uneventful. And when it comes to cooking, no one wants to sweat by a stove, which means meals are often as simple and straightforward as dressing up seasonal produce. 

Despite the slightly muted vibe of the month of August, there’s still a lot that the SAVEUR team is excited about in the world of food and drink. We’ve rounded up the events that should be on your radar, as well as some of the forthcoming cookbooks we can’t wait to crack open, for filling the final dog days of summer with plenty of good food and inspiration.  

Smorgasburg — Toronto, Canada

The popular open-air food market that has become an institution in New York City is launching its first-ever international location in Toronto. Located at 7 Queens Quay East, the weekly market will feature dozens of local food vendors like Afrobeat Kitchen and LÀ LÁ Bakeshop. It will run for eight weeks, beginning July 23.  

EVERYBODY EATS — Houston

A novel concept from chefs Tobias Dorzon and Matt Price, EVERYBODY EATS is a multi-city dining experience that marries food and social media. The event’s name is also the very theme here: While in-person attendees will enjoy a multi-course menu, those unable to visit IRL can participate by accessing the chefs’ recipes via their social media. Additionally, part of the proceeds will be donated to charity to help feed families in need. The first dinners ran in Washington, D.C. in July, and the next will be hosted in Houston on Aug. 8. Future dates will be announced soon. 

Claud — New York City

Momofuku Ko alums chef Joshua Pinsky and wine director Chase Sinzer are opening a European-inspired restaurant and wine bar, Claud, in the East Village. According to the pair, their goal is to “create a space that leans on their roots but provides an everyday experience for the neighborhood.” With dishes like swordfish au poivre and half chicken with foie gras drippings, the establishment opens its doors on East 10th St. on Aug. 2.

Octopus Festival — Ourense, Spain

On Aug. 14, between 25,000 and 30,000 kilos (that’s 55,116 to 66,139 pounds) of octopus, or pulpo in Spanish, will be prepared in O Carballiño, a town in Galicia (pulpo capital of the world), for this year’s Octopus Festival. In addition to the main attraction, attendees can try other regional favorites like Cea bread and pies, with plenty of Ribeiro wine.

Prosperity Market Black Business Scavenger Hunt — Los Angeles

Throughout the month of August, a roving farmers market spotlighting Black farmers, food producers, and chefs will host a Black Business Scavenger Hunt across the city of Los Angeles. For the occasion, founders Kara Still and Carmen Dianne have partnered with more than 50 Black entrepreneurs across food, fashion, arts, and entertainment. Each week, Prosperity Market will release clues on its website and Instagram to unlock the designated locations, from wine bars to coffee shops to galleries and more. Participants earn points by visiting the locations, checking in, taking a photo with a QR code, and sharing on Instagram (or via email, for those without social media).

Forever Beirut: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Lebanon

Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, is known for its unmatched cuisine that combines Arab, Turkish, and French influences. Forever Beirut, a love letter to the city’s vibrant dishes that publishes Aug. 23, is written by renowned chef and award-winning cookbook author Barbara Abdeni Massaad. 

I Am From Here – Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef

Available on Aug. 16, I Am From Here takes readers on a journey through James Beard Award-winning chef Vishwesh Bhatt’s take on American Southern cuisine. The Indian-born, Mississippi-based chef shares dishes like Peanut Masala–Stuffed Baby Eggplant alongside fried okra tossed in tangy chaat masala, Collard-Wrapped Catfish with a spicy Peanut Pesto, and much more.

Gaby’s Latin American Kitchen

You might know Chef Gaby Melian from her viral videos during her reign as Bon Appétit’s Test Kitchen Manager. Her latest project is Gaby’s Latin American Kitchen, a cookbook aimed at young cooks in which the Buenos Aires-born chef shares her favorite recipes from Latin America, including Colombian-style Arepas con Queso and crepe-like Panqueques with sweet Dulce de Leche. It will be available Aug. 9. 

The Gracias Madre Cookbook

In California, the restaurant Gracias Madre is known for its tasty plant-based Mexican cuisine and exceptional cocktails. Now, the eatery is releasing a cookbook, which drops Aug. 9, featuring recipes from chef Alan Sánchez like Calabaza and Onion Quesadillas, Coliflor with Cashew Nacho Cheese, and Coffee Flan.

Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew

In Koshersoul, James Beard award-winning author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty examines the crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine, and explores themes of identity, food, and memory. Part cookbook and part cultural exploration, Koshersoul includes over 50 recipes and is available beginning Aug. 9.

Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland The Cookbook 

Everybody knows Popeye’s, but the story of the man behind the famous fried-chicken empire has been largely overlooked—until now. Secrets of a Tastemaker shares stories from the life of New Orleans-born founder Al Copeland and includes more than 100 of his closely guarded family recipes. The book is now available for Kindle pre-order, and hardcover pre-order begins Aug. 13.

The post Cultural Calendar: Where to Go and What to Read in August appeared first on Saveur.

Generation Z is dining in.

At least according to a new report released by American market research company The NPD Group, which surveyed 18 to 24 year olds in the U.S. about their dining habits. The report reveals that these Gen Z diners make, on average, significantly fewer annual visits to restaurants compared to prior generations at the same age. 

Of course, the pandemic and its associated rounds of lay-offs (to which Gen Z was disproportionately vulnerable) accounts for a significant portion of this generational shift, though The NPD Group notes survey participants cited a host of other factors as well. 

According to the survey findings, “Apparel, footwear, beauty, and technology are among the categories on which young adult Gen Zs spend their money… Many apparel brands have successfully tapped into Gen Z values, like diversity and empowerment, and, as a result, have gained a larger share of their spending.”

An increase in menu prices was also flagged as a major contributing factor for half of the Gen Z subjects surveyed. 

As for the other half, Gen Z diners themselves suggest that it might not be so simple—and some restaurateurs would agree.

“When you look at Fat Choy, everything about it makes it appealing to a Gen Z person,” says Justin Lee, owner and chef of the Lower East Side restaurant which he describes as “kind of Chinese” and vegan. The setup is fast-casual, with most items (like the popular Green Veg Rice Rolls or Sticky Rice Dumplings) going for $10 or less. “It’s a very non-judgmental place, with extraordinarily good food that’s very good for the environment.”

And yet, Lee estimates that only about 10 percent of their customer base is Gen Z.

“I have no idea why. Do they have so much interaction with their phone, they don’t want it with human beings? It’s mind boggling,” he says. “We’re trying to be a progressive restaurant for the world. Those kids can talk about how [culturally aware] they are, but if they’re not voting with their dollars, and they’re buying chicken tendies down the block, it’s hypocritical.”

“I would like to support places in line with the practices I have in my own at-home eating,” muses Isabel Merrell, who just turned 25 and lives in Los Angeles. “But usually when I go out, I’m just looking for places that have really good food and atmosphere.”

Amy Morton, the owner of Found Kitchen, The Barn Steakhouse, and Stolp Island Social in Illinois and the mother of three Gen Z daughters, suspects that the reported reduction in Gen Z diners could be explained by the profound ways in which quarantine affected young adults’ habits. 

“Their time out in the world as an independent being versus the amount of time that was Covid, it’s way more than it would be for someone who is 50 or 60. Their habits could take longer to shift back. And it could be the first time in their life that they had the experience of being a homebody,” she says. 

Corey Smith, 24, lives in San Francisco and cops to maintaining a number of dining habits she adopted out of necessity during quarantine, like taking food to go and eating it outside at Ocean Beach. 

And Merrell says she’s more of a homebody than ever. “People have built more of a relationship with being at home, whether it’s conscious or unconscious. There’s less drive to be out all the time,” she says. “There’s less of a baseline of always doing something, and more of a baseline of doing things on your own.”

For her, this at-home comfort is compounded by her excitement about a garden she began to grow during the pandemic. “It was one of the only fluid, dynamic things I had in my life at the time,” she says. And cooking with what she grew was one of the only ways to infuse her life with excitement, she says. Just recently, she planted a new crop of sungold tomatoes, fairy tale eggplants, and shishito peppers, which she says she looks forward to incorporating into her meals.

Smith says that when she does go out to a restaurant now, she does so with firm intentionality. “I want to get something really good, and something I can’t make at home. If I am going to try somewhere new, it should be an exciting thing.”

(A handful of the Gen Z sources I interviewed told me that quarantine either forced them to learn to cook or strengthened their cooking skills, by way of TikTok and other internet platforms that made it easy to experiment with new recipes.)

Meanwhile, some restaurant owners are grappling with the challenge of attracting this age group in time to convert them to the next generation of regulars. 

At The Clam and also Market Table, two long-standing restaurants in New York City’s West Village, roughly 10 percent of customers are Generation Z, estimates Mike Price, President of Blackfoot Hospitality. 

And when Gen Z diners do come in, it tends to be because they’ve identified either spot as a good location for a first date. “Quickly, those 22 year olds are going to turn into 28 year olds, looking to entertain a group of friends, not just splitting an app on a date,” he says. 

Part of Blackfoot’s strategy for those two restaurants, as well as for its newer addition The Mary Lane, has been to hit social media as strategically as possible. “We’re leaning into those things in a way we haven’t before, because we know the necessity,” he says. 

Blackfoot has experimented with engaging Gen Z influencers to post about the brunch at one of their locations in exchange for a free meal. Price also says that after a TikTok influencer posted about the Happy Hour at another Blackfoot restaurant, The Little Owl, “happy hour blew up” with Gen Z. Price is currently discussing with his team whether it makes sense to host a party around fashion week at The Mary Lane for even more exposure. 

Price also says he has noticed that Gen Z clientele tend to come in for a dish or specialty cocktail that would be cumbersome to execute well at home, like perfectly shucked fresh oysters, which is the one item he won’t deliver on DoorDash. 

“We watch long lines of people lined up for Supreme, or for whatever merch drop. There is this aspect to TikTok and Gen Z that is FOMO-oriented and needs exclusivity, and [they] will wait from sun up to sun down for literally nothing as long as they have validation on their TikTok when they get it,” says Lee.

When asked whether he would pay a TikTok influencer to hype up Fat Choy, Lee barely pauses.

“We probably should have done it already. It’s something we should do as soon as I get off this phone call.”

The post Why Gen Z Is Lukewarm About Dining Out appeared first on Saveur.

In 1957, a new kind of restaurant opened at 135 Essex Street in Manhattan, more or less equidistant from the borough’s Chinatown and the tenements that had served as the epicenter for Jewish immigrants since the turn of the 19th century. 

It wasn’t the cuisine that was new. Americanized takes on Chinese food, like moo goo gai pan in a velvety slick of soy sauce and broth thickened with corn starch, had become ubiquitous in New York City since the collapse of the Gold Rush fueled discrimination and violence that forced Chinese immigrants living on the West Coast to move east. 

But Bernstein-on-Essex, as the restaurant was called, was the first in the city to offer up these dishes in strict compliance with kosher standards. The egg foo yung, for $2.50, came with chicken livers instead of pork. Shellfish was nowhere to be found. And the restaurant’s sign featured a man in a yarmulke, next to text that declared the eatery “the tastiest delicatessen in the world.”

In her new exhibition Open Sundays, now on display at the Harkawik gallery on the Lower East Side, Stephanie H. Shih displays a stunningly rendered version of this sign in her signature painted ceramic. It is one of 30 sculptures she has created to explore the overlap of Chinese and Jewish communities in the neighborhood for the roughly hundred-year period beginning in the late 1800s. 

A few yards from where the Bernstein-on-Essex sign hangs is a long table that displays Shih’s sculpted takes on other iconic food and drink, like a bilingual bottle of Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki, roast pork on garlic bread, Golden Plum Chinkiang Vinegar, and a can of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda.

“A lot of my solo shows are about this idea of authenticity,” says Shih, who has been working in ceramic full-time since 2015. “There are no cultures that are untouched by other cultures. These are two communities that grew up alongside each other. It was not always friendly, but simply from proximity and the fact that they were the two largest non-Christian immigrant groups, they had commonalities.” For example, she says, the tradition of Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas began right near Harkawik, on the Lower East Side. 

Shih’s “RPG” sculpture, featuring 10 glossy slices of roast pork arranged appealingly across a slab of garlic bread, depicts another classic crossover: a sandwich stuffed with Cantonese-style char siu and duck sauce, popular in the Borscht Belt in the 1950s. (Just a few neighborhoods northwest, the Manhattan outpost of Court Street Grocers still peddles an RPG under the moniker “Catskill Roast Pork” for $15.) 

Shih says she almost named her show “safe treyf,” after the colloquial way Jewish immigrants referred to Chinese food in New York City. (It was characterized as such because of the lack of milk mixed with meat—a kosher no-no—and because, as some historians posit, discrimination against both immigrant groups in New York City made for a sort of culinary safe haven.) “Chinese food started to get this pass, when people might have kept kosher otherwise in the home,” Shih says.

Instead, she called the exhibition Open Sundays, to capture yet another commonality: while most businesses closed in observance of the holy day, the doors to both Jewish and Chinese businesses remained unlocked, ready to tout frozen dumplings, warm loaves of challah, and heaping plates of lo mein that were, in some cases, completely kosher.

The post The Fascinating Connection Between New York City’s Jewish and Chinese Immigrants appeared first on Saveur.

On a recent Thursday evening in the West Village, several dozen people gathered at Emmett’s on Grove to eat pizza and drink beer. It would have been like any other night at the popular Manhattan restaurant, but for the price of entry: not a standard reservation, or a forty-minute wait for a walk-in seat, but an NFT, featuring the Hot Papi pizza anthropomorphized with fried-egg eyes and a bacon smile. 

The NFTs were the handiwork of the new company Front of House, which launched in early June with the aim of becoming “the internet’s one-stop-shop for digital collectibles from the best bars and restaurants anywhere.” For now, it offers NFTs linked to special diner privileges at New York hotspots Dame and Wildair, in addition to Emmett’s on Grove. Each can be purchased with cryptocurrencies, or plain-old credit cards. (NFTs, in case you live under a rock, are “non-fungible tokens,” aka unique digital crypto assets that are registered on a blockchain, and increasingly being used to gain access to member-only clubs, services, and subscriptions.) 

To enter the pizza party, guests needed to furnish either a $33 NFT good for that specific event, or one of the heavier-hitting NFTs currently offered by Front of House, such as the $1,000 Fish & Chips Hospitality Club collectible from Dame, designed by Marianna Fierro and redeemable for one table reservation per week until the end of 2022. 

Turnout was strong, with about sixty adults, two children, and one extremely fluffy gray dog. Revelers drank beer from tall glasses adorned with a cheeky FOH logo (sarcastic, colorful 2017-era food mag branding seems to be a strength of the company) and ate as many slices of pizza as they could stomach. One bearded man wandered the room ostentatiously displaying a black tote bag from ApeFest. At 7pm on the dot, party guests were politely ushered out, so regular service could begin. 

According to Front of House co-founder Phil Toronto, a consumer tech investor and Partner at VaynerFund, the company has so far sold about 100 NFTs, including 40 of the pricier, single-restaurant-affiliated tokens. In addition to the $1,000 Dame Hospitality Club collectible, Emmett’s on Grove offers a similar token with reservation access until the end of this year for $300, and Wildair offers a series of Donut Friend collectibles for $200 a pop, which provide (vaguely defined) access to their specialty donut flavors and events, plus a hint at potential extra benefits down the line. Front of House expects its next drop to be a series of NFTs from East Village restaurant Hanoi House.

“The beauty of the opportunity is that we don’t need to decide from conception what perks are offered [with the NFT]. On an ongoing basis, we can experiment with different offerings. There’s the opportunity to establish a meaningful relationship with top supporters of the restaurant,” says Sarah Better, Emmett’s chief of staff. 

At the end of this year, participating restaurants will have the chance to evaluate the NFTs they have issued and either re-up or alter the perks offered, as well as the option to issue a fresh set of tokens. 

Toronto says the revenue from the sale of each collectible is split 80 percent to the restaurant and 20 percent to Front of House (including FOH NFTs traded on the secondary market). His primary goal with FOH is to increase cash flow into restaurants, he says. The company has plans to expand to Los Angeles and Canada next, and would like to create NFTs that offer package deals—for example, a single NFT that offers reservation perks across some five or six separately owned restaurants in a single neighborhood. 

Danielle Vreeland, who lives in Tribeca, tells me she initially bought an Emmett’s Supper Club collectible for her husband as a Father’s Day gift, but decided to keep it for herself. (The NFT holder must be present at any reservation made using the token.) “I would like to see 4 Charles and Carbone create NFTs,” says Vreeland. “That would be beyond.”

The post The New Price to Be a Restaurant Regular? An NFT appeared first on Saveur.

In the latest End-Stage Capitalism marketing stunt so bizarre that it’s bound to cause vertigo, cream cheese giant Philadelphia has teamed up with two of the most famed chefs in New York City—Jeremiah Stone and Fabián Von Hauske Valtierra of Contra and Wildair—to create “an immersive culinary experience” that sits squarely at the intersection of thick, blended dairy and… feelings?

From July 14 through July 16, diners will be able to visit this pop-up restaurant, aptly called Feeladelphia, for $35 a seat (reservations via OpenTable). Each course of the prix-fixe menu, curated by Stone and von Hauske Valtierra, is poised to elicit a specific emotion—such as the cream cheese–infused “Playfulness” course of chocolate, strawberry curd, and mousse, which has a menu description that promises to awaken one’s inner child. 

Other aspects of the dining experience (or, as the press release calls it, the “sensorial and experiential journey”) portend “captivating visuals, stimulating sounds and sensorial surprises to enhance each feeling.” Spoilers include a captivating checker-pattern on crackers, and the “pop” of caviar. 

This latest experiment in multi-sensory dining seems tangentially (if accidentally) related to the work pioneered by scientist Charles Spence, who runs the Crossmodal Research Lab at Oxford University. Spence has partnered with large food brands to incorporate ASMR triggers into products, and worked with fine-dining chefs to develop and track the ways in which inedible stimuli paired with meal courses might enhance or otherwise affect the eating experience. (Think: hearing through headphones the sound of a duck being shot as you take a bite of perfectly seared duck breast, or smelling salt water as you toss back a fresh oyster.)

As to whether New York City diners will in fact experience “allure” while tasting a dish of black truffle, caviar, garlic confit, and cream cheese this week, only time (and, presumably, reviews delivered via TikTok) will tell. If anyone could make a person feel feelings about mass-produced cream cheese though, it is Stone and von Hauske Valtierra, whose innovative Michelin-recognized restaurants have kept a steady stream of diners waiting for tables on the Orchard Street sidewalk since 2013. 

And at the very least, diners can rest easy after the meal, knowing that all proceeds will be donated to an as-yet-defined charity. Unless, of course, they are lactose intolerant.

The post Eat Your Feelings for $35 Plus Tax appeared first on Saveur.

New York City is arguably one of the toughest places in the world to open a brick-and-mortar business, let alone during the late-stage pandemic era with both commercial and residential rent prices skyrocketing despite tenants fighting tooth-and-nail. Right now, success stories in the cities can seem few and far between—but they taste that much sweeter when they do happen.

On June 28th, wine entrepreneur and Brooklyn native Marvina Robinson celebrated a major milestone for B. Stuyvesant—the first Brooklyn-based, Black-owned Champagne company—with the opening of her new tasting room in the heart of the borough’s historic Navy Yard. The brand, which Robinson launched in February 2020 after extensive research and tasting trips to France, endured countless challenges in the face of COVID-19. Ultimately, she was forced to relocate the business in the wake of the real estate market’s surge in prices, which (perhaps serendipitously) brought B. Stuyvesant to its current location. “The Navy Yard chose me,” Robinson shares. (A trip to the area’s grocery store inspired her to put in an inquiry on a listing, and, over the following days, things came together much more quickly than she’d anticipated.)

Housed inside one of the neighborhood’s industrial warehouse buildings, the chic open-concept space is a fitting juxtaposition of fine bubbles and city grit that could also mirror Robinson’s own journey into the wine scene. The energetic entrepreneur, who holds an undergraduate degree in biology from Norfolk State University and a Master’s degree in statistics from Columbia, spent years working in finance before a company downsize inspired her to pivot to a career in a totally different industry, inspired by a longtime affinity for drinking bubbles in her hometown.

Today, B. Stuyvesant’s core three cuvées—a classic brut Reserve, a traditional-blend rosé Champagne, and (our personal favorite) a Grand Reserve—are quickly gaining recognition in their new pied-à-terre, thousands of miles away from their somewhat buttoned-up home region. Also lining the shelves (and available online) are several limited-edition releases.

 A big part of Robinson’s vision with the space is to make the effervescent drink more approachable and fun (see that expertise on full display as she shows how to saber Champagne alongside fellow New Yorkers the Wine Migos). While sabrage likely won’t be one of the activities on offer inside the newly-renovated tasting room, it’s that joie de vivre and ease that defines the brand—and, not to worry, there will be plenty of other ways to get acquainted with the Champagnes. 

Currently, Robinson is starting to import grower Champagnes not yet available stateside, which she plans to incorporate into the tasting menu as a means of exposing visitors to the region’s diversity. “Every time I go to Champagne, I find a new grower champagne that is divine, and I want to bring more awareness to these brands,” she shares. In addition to the tastings, which are offered on an individual basis and in a class format, “We are beginning to host curated dinners—it is an amazing experience!” she tells us. 

Economic obstacles aside, Robinson is poised to become a source of inspiration for other budding entrepreneurs in the wine business—especially those who want to challenge industry norms. Her words of advice? “Don’t try and fit in—make your own waves to find your niche. Stick to your goals and visions and leave the fears behind.”

The post Brooklyn’s First Black-owned Champagne Brand Is the Bubbly To Sip This Summer appeared first on Saveur.