(via ebaumsworld)

The folks at ebaumsworld have have posted some really funny side by side pictures of fast food, comparing what they show you on the ads, and what you actually get.

You can check out the link here.

(from spiegel online, via geekologie)

A new restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany has replaced the entire wait-staff with…gravity. They have also seemed to have replaced the person who was going to come up with the name of their restaurant with a monkey who randomly picks magnetic poetry tiles out of a hat. The name of the restaurant is, ’s Baggers. Guess they thought they would make an impact by starting strong with the apostrophe.

To me, ’s Baggers reads like “<your name here>’s Baggers”, which conjures up images of a place where anyone can go and immediately be surrounded by legions of devoted followers raring to put your groceries in paper, plastic, or paper in plastic. But I guess it’s just an automated restaurant.

Back to the gravity. In ’s Baggers, the kitchen is situated in the roof of the restaurant. Your meals, which are ordered and paid for via touch screen computer, slide down to you from the kitchen on metal rails, which corkscrew down to your table with all the grace of your favorite bowling ball zooming back up the lane from behind the pins to join you once more.

So now your faithful server is replaced by the forces of physics–which is good. Does gravity spit in your food when it doesn’t like you? Does gravity forget to tell you that the special is $100 more than any other item on the menu? Does gravity complain if you don’t tip it as well as it thinks it deserves to be tipped? No. Gravity faithfully brings you your food to you at 9.8 meters per second squared regardless of how good a day its having.

From spiegel:

“It would be easier if the food arrived on a slide,” [owner Michael Mack] thought to himself. After consulting with engineer friends and rejecting their ideas, he came up with his own: Specially made hot-spots would slide down 15-foot steel spirals, using the forces of gravity, before coming to a slow stop on rails slanted upwards at the customers’ tables.” (read more)

Granted, I’m sure they have to hire a “stick man” whose job is to have a giant wooden stick, which is used to poke the plates that don’t make it all the way down the chute. Also, what happens if they screw up your order? Do you have to walk up to the roof to return it? Well, boys and girls, next time I’m in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, I’ll have to check it out and let you know.

(via geekologie)

If you haven’t seen Ratatouille yet, get cracking. In the film, a young rat, named Remy seeks to use his amazing sense of smell for something other than checking for rotten and poisonous food. His family/pack would have been less reluctant to see him go if only they had had the SensorfreshQ™ Freshness Meter!

From the site:

SensorfreshQ™ is a handheld, battery operated meter that works with a multi-use disposable cartridge, the QCard™, that plugs directly into the handheld unit. The user friendly and rapid 1-2-3 step operation and intuitive green, yellow, and red LED output makes measuring freshness a cinch.

Thank god we have this, because according to the site,

The only alternative to using SensorfreshQ™ is to physically take samples of the meat or poultry and then perform a bacteriological analysis, which requires a minimum of 48 hours and the services of a trained microbiologist in a controlled-environment bacteriological laboratory.

Well, as I happen to live in a controlled-environment bacteriological laboratory, and once saved the life of a trained microbiologist who is now my slave, I for one will not be purchasing the SensorfreshQ™.

You guys, feel free to knock yourselves out and buy one.

Originally, my third and final destination for Boston Restaurant Week, Summer 2007 was going to be Excelsior. The menu seemed creative and by all accounts tasted great too. Unfortunately, they decided to change their menu for the second week to haddock and schnitzel, which didn’t seem nearly as exciting as the first week’s offerings. So my family and I decided to give Excelsior the pass, and look for something else.

So we went online and poked through the various menus to try to find something that looked interesting, which was easier said than done. It’s surprising how many restaurants still serve cod and skirt steak for restaurant week. Anyhow, one of the more interesting menus we found was lunch at Aquitaine, which is on Tremont Street in the South End. We were not disappointed.

A note to customers: Make sure you know which 6′+ tall brawny bald white guy waiter is yours. There are two in this restaurant and we got confused once. One speaks with a thick French accent and the other does not. Confusions aside, the service we had was excellent, and our waiter (the accented one) was more than happy to provide my father with the 10000 cups he required and was very helpful, friendly, and welcoming.

For starters we had the Crunchy Ipswich clams, lemon zest, garlic confit and baby tomatoes. These were some of the best fried clams I’ve ever had. The clams were lightly floured and fried in such away that they were crisp, yet not soaking in fat. I think the reason for this is that they they weren’t covered in a thick batter, so the oil from the frying couldn’t seep in. We originally balked at trying this dish–we live in New England, a land where fried clams flow like wine–but it was well worth the order.

The other starter I tried was the Steak tartare, petite salade, white truffle oil and gaufrettes. As those of use who watched the first season of Top Chef and listened to Stephen know, gaufrette is the French word for potato chip. And these were some fine gaufrettes at that. They were thin, crisp, and salty. The tartare was soft and slightly sweet, but lacked punch and texture by itself. Eating it with the gaufrettes and the truffle oil gave it just the flavor and texture the tartare needed, and made it a really nice way to start a meal.

The highlight of the meal, and the winner of the Most Creative Restaurant Week Dish, 2007 award was the Crepes stuffed with house-cured salmon, bacon, pommes purée and green beans with petite salade. The crepe was delicate, pillowy, and a perfect container for the treasure inside. It was as if the softness of the salmon, the crispness of the bacon, the mellowness of the pommes purée were sent rocketing through space and crashed headlong into the green beans resulting in a flavor and texture explosion.

Opening up the crepe reveals the beautiful color inside. This was a truly clever dish, and the mark of a creative chef.

While not as complex, the House-smoked beef brisket sandwich, hazelnut-plum mustard with meat juices and pommes frites was no less artfully executed and delicious than its crepe cousin. This was just a simple sandwich executed very well. The bread was thick, sweet, and had enough porousness to act as the sponge for the juices of the brisket. I’m coming back for lunch for this one.

Finally for desert, we had the Brulée figs with home-made fromage blanc and spiced almond Florentine. The figs were fresh and had a nice little brulée crust of sugar on top, with powdered sugar on top of that. These were nice and fresh, but I have to say the peach tart at the next table looked awesome.

Overall, Aquitaine delivered in spades. It had a creative restaurant week menu (most dishes weren’t on the regular menu) that highlighted the ability of the restaurant to deliver a great meal with simple ingredients prepared well. For this lunch, Aquitaine had a particularly poor restaurant week ratio of about .7 (RWVM 1.3). But in looking at the regular lunch menu, I realized that this is because you get such a good value there anyways. The sandwiches go for about 10 bucks each, so lunch at Aquitaine can be a very manageable and a delicious way to pass the time. I believe they’re extending their restaurant week menu, so make sure to check it out!

For my second stop during Boston Restaurant Week, Summer 2007, I had dinner at Sorellina, located just by Copley Square. Sorellina, though wedged between the Westin Hotel and the Boston Public Library in a Bostonian cousin of the flatiron building, opens up as soon as you enter to reveal a jaw-droppingly chic yet mellow decor. This restaurant is truly stunning, with a giant back lit monochromatic mural of fir grove towering over the crisp white table clothes with chargers painted with the stark silhouette of a tree.

Happily, the food tasted as good as the restaurant looked. I started off with the Spaghettini with summer mushroom ragu and black truffle butter. This dish was was the shining star of the meal. The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente, and the earthy saltiness of the truffle butter on the mushrooms was beyond compare. In many places I’ve been, al dente has often been a euphemism for undercooked, but the spaghettini was well cooked with just a hint of firmness, giving it a wonderful texture in contrast to the mushrooms. This is one of those dishes where I felt fortunate to have a giant loaf of fresh bread on the table so I could sop up every ounce of truffle butter after I had cleaned my plate. This dish alone is worth a Restaurant Week trip Sorellina.

For the main course, I ordered the Tuscan barbecue style duck legs with sweet corn and baby spinach. This was a very good dish, but I felt it was duck that was cooked like chicken, and in fact, it reminded me of a chicken dish my mother makes (which I enjoy very much). When I have duck, I enjoy the crispiness and fattiness of the skin, but the skin on this dish was soft and lean. The flavor of the duck was sweet and delicious though, and the sweet corn added just the right pop and crunch.

The other entree offered was the Plum glazed boneless beef short ribs with a sea salt baked potato. I really enjoyed the tenderness of the beef that yielded itself to just the slightest pressure from the fork. The plum sauce was sublime, and the only bad thing that I could say about this dish is that I wish there were more of the sauce, because I couldn’t get enough. The potato was a potato, but it was a good one, and the spinach salad added that needed crisp crunch for a balanced texture.

For dessert we had a Vanilla custard with dark caramel and amaretti, which was basically a flan with amaretto flavored crispy crackers on it. A really great way to end such a good meal.

Hats off to Sorellina for having a really wonderful Restaurant Week menu and being a great place to check out. Extra credit for having inventive items that are not on their menu. Given the average price of appetizers, entrees, and desserts, I give Sorellina a very good RWR of .58, which is a RWVM of 1.7.