(via b3ta)

Chickens are everywhere in the world. They’re easy to handle, don’t take up much land, and give you both meat and eggs.

gadling.com has a little photo-essay up about different means of poultry conveyance around the world that is worth checking out.

This is a picture of how I usually transport my chickens:

Just because FoodMonkey is always ahead of the curve, you don’t have to hate us… Obviously taking a cue from my run down of the best places on Earth to travel for meat this sumer on vacation, we have the opening of Gaucho Steak Co. in NYC this coming week. Located at 752 10th Ave, at 51st, it’s another great step in the complete gentrification of Hell’s Kitchen (aka Clinton).

That aside, the food looks awesome and prices are great. See the menu below:

Seriously… a steak house in New York with a $20 rib eye and a steak sandwich for $8! Other interesting items are a porterhouse pork chop with chorizo or the seafood empanadas, There is also a mixed grill with skirt steak, short ribs, and sweetbread.

 

Three months ago, YoMa quietly opened in Allston, taking up the banner for Burmese food (which puts the Rangoon in Crab Rangoon) in the Boston area. Nestled in Union Square between the Model Cafe and two Vegan restaurants, YoMa gives people a good reason to stray away from Harvard Street. Its menu states, “To have authentic Burmese cuisine you’ll need a valid visa and passport to travel to Burma. At YoMa you won’t, just around the corner of N. Beacon and Cambridge in Allston.”

When you walk into YoMa, you can very clearly see ghosts of the building’s Chinese take-out restaurant past (Charles Kitchen) with its sparse decor, red tile floors, and faded panoramic picture of Allston on the ceiling. But the owners of YoMa have injected a nice dose of cleanliness and Burmese charm to make for a comfortable dining experience.

Our server (and perhaps the owner) was extremely welcoming and friendly, and was happy to guide us through the menu. As I had never had Burmese cuisine before, I asked for the most traditional Burmese dishes and our server was very glad to help my friend and me pick out a few dishes to share.

Burma is known for its salad dishes, and we first got ThaYetTheTho, a fresh green mango salad with shredded cabbage, cilantro, shallots, ground peanuts, and salted shrimp. The salad was quite spicy and is eaten with rice, and was a great fresh, crisp, and delicious way to start out the meal. We followed that with JaZanHinGar, a chicken soup with mushrooms and black peppers, and these amazing lotus flowers hand-tied in knots. This is served with dishes of cilantro, lime, and chili flakes to add as needed. Finally we had the SiJetKhotSwe, roasted pork on steamed yellow noodles with shallots and garlic, which was a nice salty-savory dish that rounded out the meal nicely after our spicy beginning. YoMa doesn’t serve dessert, but our server was more than happy to present us with some cubes of palm sugar that really hit the spot.

All of the above cost us under $25 total for two people, and was more than enough food. YoMa fits in very well with the affordable Epcot Village atmosphere of Allston eateries, and I will definitely be going back very soon.

YoMa is located at 5 North Beacon Street in Allston, MA. 617 183-1372

And now, after a short delay, we have the Food Monkey award for #1 Summer Meat Travel Destination – Argentina.

Argentina offers some of the best beef anywhere in the world. Preparation in the country is simple – it’s the freshness and quality of the meat that really shines through. Beyond just the various cuts of cattle, Argentina also offers a range of spice chorizo sausage, lamb, spicy chicken, meat empanada, and so on.

Argentine cuisine is more similar to a Mediterranean diet than the rest of Latin America due to a heavy influence of Italian, Spanish, French and German cultures. The traditional way that beef and other meats are prepared is the parrilla – a large open barbecue – and accompanied by a simple chimichurri sauce consisting of herbs, oil, and lots of garlic. Parrillas are omnipresent in the country, from Buenos Ares to any small town.

Here is a video:

Make sure you washed down your meal with the Argentine version of Cabernet wine, known as Malbec, which is generally delicious with a slight spice to it that compliments the meat perfectly. Also finish up with some dulce de leche, which is slow-cooked caramelized milk. Finally, if you don’t want to fly all the way to Argentina, you can get some taste of what the food is like by ordering online here from Patagonia Premium Export Argentine (featuring Beef, Lamp, Chicken, Rabbit, and Horse)

I had the good fortune of going to the opening of KO Prime last night. KO Prime is a new steakhouse from Ken Oringer and takes over the space formally occupied by Spire, upstairs in Nine Zero Hotel at 90 Tremont Street in Boston.I mounted the narrow staircase to find myself in a lively room full of guests. KO Prime has chosen to maintain many of the internal design features of Spire, but instead of a white and blue interior, they have opted for the comfy feel of earth-tones. They have also replaced the thin curtain dividing the diners from the kitchen with a full wall. I’m a big fan of seeing the kitchen when I eat, but Spire’s solution of giving us the silhouettes of the cooking staff just proved a distraction. The wall, though removing the diner from the cooking process, is a much more solid choice.

As there were few tables set up (to leave ample room for the mingling multitude), it wasn’t possible to get a full sense of what the final decor will be, but after seeing the scattered animal-print couches and giant sepia reproduction of American Gothic on the ceiling, I have a feeling we can expect something chic and earthy.

The event was set up with two food stations (one meat, one vegetable), an oyster bar, and the main bar open for drinks. As the guests circulated, we were treated to some tastes of the foods yet to come. Among my favorites were soft shell crab sandwiches, sweetbreads Chicken McNugget style (some of the tastiest thymus gland I’ve had), and soft and tender corned beef tongue rubens with homemade coleslaw. The highlight of the food that evening, however, was massive steak and charcuterie station manned by Ken Oringer himself. The steak was extraordinarily juicy and perfectly medium rare. It was served with an assortment of pâtés and your choice of nine different salts.

The evening was capped with some green tea cotton candy, as well as orange-blossom madeleine worthy of several thousand pages of French literature.

From the bovine logo, KO Prime presents itself as a steak house, but the wide array of different offerings from both land and sea give it the promise of being a multifaceted dining experience that will keep the palates of Boston happy for many years to come.