The Entrance to our Villa  Vive La France!          We just got back from our 20th visit to St. Barth, FWI, so you know we like it there.  You might say almost obsessively so.  But you can’t really improve very much on perfection.  Especially when you’ve…

         While we’re all anxiously awaiting Spring, Winter weather is still in our forecast.  Cold temperatures and Indian-inflected dishes seem made for each other.  This dish, which appeared in last month’s Bon Appetit, really drives that point home.  It’s a rich stew full of…

The man himself, Jim Lahey          Strip malls are not in the New York Architectural vocabulary, thank God. But there’s something that comes awfully close on Ninth Avenue between 24th and 25th Streets.  A long low building sits on the east side of the…

         Confession time: I used to loathe Brussels Sprouts. When I was growing up, I even made up a story to explain the Brussels Sprout.  It was, I told myself, a vegetable forced on wartime Europe.  I reasoned this lowly member of the cabbage family…

This must be the place…          “Food Truck Wars” on the Food Network have given a face to America’s passion for street food and pop-up food destinations.  Most of what you see on Television are high tech trucks that would give an…

First Issue of Gourmet, January 1941          How we still miss Gourmet!  Some of my earliest childhood memories are listening to my father reading aloud as he and my mother ate vicariously at Gourmet’s table.  The magazine first appeared in 1941.  The United States entered…

         Winter weekends are just made for hearty soups, especially on those days when you are dodging snowflakes or stuck indoors because the weather’s just too cold.  So when I found myself shut in during the Great Blizzard of ’13, I pulled out the cookbooks…

Judging from the popularity of James Beard’s recipe for Roast Beef Hash, which has had 3801 pageviews, and that of Ina Garten’s Chicken Hash at 682, Hash has a special place on the tables of our readers.   It certainly is at our house.  Unfortunately, one of…

         Today is another milestone in the life of Chewing the Fat. This is our first guest post!  It’s not, however, the first appearance of its authors, my dear “cousins”, Sir John and Lady Martha Stracey.  The bakers among you likely swooned…

         Grits are about as southern as my Aunt Charlotte. She hailed from Huntsville, Alabama and yet never lost a syllable of her Southern accent despite living in Canada for decades.  But for all her southernism, Aunt Charlotte never introduced us to grits. That happy…

         Beef prices have escalated this year to the point where a perfectly ordinary New York Strip is 15.99 a lb.  Filet Mignon? 29.99. Last week, I even noted that our favorite neighborhood bistro’s Steak Frites has diminished in size and risen $4.00 in price.…

Sara Jenkins as photographed by New York Magazine          There’s almost no end to what people are putting on pasta these days. The most recent issue of Bon Appetit has 7 entirely new takes on pasta sauces and a couple of pastas that are new…

Chef Michael Ponzio of Chicago’s Rosebud on Rush          When I saw a special for Veal Short Ribs at 4.99 a lb, it was like discovering a new protein!  I’d never even heard of the cut and never seen it on a restaurant menu.  I…

          We should all eat more fish.  Further down the page you’ll find a list of eight reasons why. But there seem to be an equal number of reasons people do not.  I was talking to my friend Barbara, an Ohio native,…