Recently, Gaslight in Boston’s South End has started a series of “Last Friday” events. Come tonight, Feb. 27th, for free jazz and Grey Goose Martinis. The jazz goes from 11pm to 1:30am, and the complimentary martinis from Grey Goose are available from midnight to 1am. Light complimentary hors d’oeuvres will be provided.

Make sure that when you are there that you try their chocolate beignets with crème anglaise. Imagine the world’s best chocolate munchkins filled with molten chocolate, which you drench in an ice cold custard dipping sauce.

RSVP ASAP to manager@gaslight560.com

Gaslight is located at 560 Harrison Ave Boston, MA 02118, (617) 422-0224

Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger has helped draft a noble-minded bill that provides awareness training for the restaurant industry regarding the handling of food allergies. This bill has just passed.

The question is: Will it help?

For the past four years, Ming Tsai, the James Beard Award-winning chef/owner of Blue Ginger in Wellesley, MA and the host and executive producer of public television’s Simply Ming, has worked with Senator Cynthia Stone Creem (D – MA) to pass a bill to make restaurants safer for those with food allergies. Ming not only lobbied on the bill’s behalf but, drawing on his experiences as both the father of a child with food allergies and a chef/restaurateur, helped to shape the bill’s language and propose guidelines that were not only effective but also realistic in a variety of restaurant settings. This January the bill was signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick. This landmark legislation, the first of its kind in the US, calls for simple, inexpensive measures all restaurants can take to make dining safe for those with food allergies.

“I’m so proud that Massachusetts is the first state to pass such comprehensive legislation,” says Chef Ming Tsai. “I’ve always said if you are in the restaurant industry, it’s your duty to serve everyone safe food.”

You can see the full bill at:
http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/senate/185/st02/st02701.htm

Reading into this bill, it basically does four things:

1. Put a reminder on menus for people with food allergies to inform the restaurant of their condition
2. Make restaurant owners watch a video in order to get sanitary certification and pass a quiz on the material afterward
3. Make every restaurant have a poster on food allergy awareness in the staff area of the restaurant
4. Create a voluntary program whereby restaurants may certify themselves as “Food Allergy Friendly”

It will be interesting to see if this bill is able to improve the lives of people with food allergies in a significant, tangible way. I would imagine that point 1 is by in large unnecessary, as one would think that those with food allergies would already be diligent in looking after themselves in restaurants. I know my friends who have food allergies certainly are. Points 2 and 3 will probably not make a very large impact either. Owners will probably forget the video, and the staff will probably not spend their hours engaged in a studious perusal of the poster.

The more intriguing aspect of the bill is point 4, which lets restaurants apply to certify themselves as “Food Allergy Friendly”. Given the economic downturn, the cost benefit analysis for restaurants isn’t so clear from a business standpoint.

Being able to tout yourself as “Food Allergy Friendly” allows you to capture a niche market, in much the way as being a kosher, vegan, or halal restaurant does. This is good for business, and business is bad. But what will be the operational cost do to so? Being food allergy friendly will almost certainly impose an increase in financial cost, care, logistics, and training on a restaurant. The question will be if this operational cost is worth the roughly *4% of the market share that people with food allergies in the US comprise.

Let’s assume that operational cost of the program on a restaurant is directly proportional to the effectiveness of the certification (a large assumption given lack of success of awareness programs like D.A.R.E., which require people sitting through hours of content). If this is the case, than a high operational cost program will produce few restaurants with rigorous certification—truly helpful to those with food allergies, but confined to those restaurants probably already doing it in the first place. Conversely, a low operational cost program will produce will many restaurants with less rigorous certification—of questionable utility to those with food allergies, but a greater overall awareness across restaurants. Given the economic climate, the creators of the certification program must think long and hard to find the intersection of utility curves for those with food allergies and restaurant owners.

Also, in this litigious society, will restaurants feel that being “Food Allergy Friendly” puts them at greater risk for lawsuits if a mishap occurs? Certified restaurants are making a claim that they are food allergy friendly, which may make them especially liable if someone gets sick. Might it not just be safer for restaurants to have something equivalent to the foot notes for “consuming raw or undercooked materials” for food allergies to keep themselves off the hook? Having a statement like, “MAY CONTAIN INGREDIENTS KNOWN TO CAUSE FOOD ALLERGIES. CONSUME AT YOUR OWN RISK.” after every menu item is probably the legally safest thing for restaurants to do. Or will knowing that they are reducing their risk of incidental food allergy exposure to a customer be worth the training for both legal and societal reasons? This is, of course, the service industry, and restaurants like to make all of their customers happy.

The spirit of this bill is certainly an excellent step towards keeping those with food allergies healthy and happy. However, there is much in the execution that will determine what change, if any, comes of it. I certainly hope this bill fulfills its purpose, and I urge the drafters of the certification program to think about the realities of the state of the restaurant industry in order to create a program that is both helpful and practical.

*A rough calculation of a ceiling of percentage of people with food allergies in the US. Take the number of people in the US with food allergies as stated by FAAN: 12,000,000. This estimate is likely to err on the high side, given that FAAN is an advocacy group. Take the population of the US rounded down to the closest hundred million: roughly 300,000,000. Divide the first by the second and get 4%. Given that the numerator is overestimated and the denominator is underestimated, this is a rough approximation to a ceiling of the statistic. Regardless of the nuances of this figure, food allergy incidence would probably require an order of magnitude greater market share to provide a purely financial incentive for restaurants to change.

Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Boston has just announced the opening of Technique Restaurant, a student-staffed and operated restaurant. Technique is open Monday through Friday for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and dinner from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Technique is located at the Athenaeum Building at 215 First Street in Cambridge.

Located in the Athenaeum Building in Cambridge, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts’ full-service restaurant, Technique, features high-quality food at an affordable price. Patrons are served contemporary regional cuisine, meticulously prepared and served by the students. The largest classroom kitchen in New England, Technique offers students a chance to work in the front and back of a restaurant before embarking on a three?month externship.

“Le Cordon Bleu is very excited to offer Cambridge a new lunch and dinner destination,” said Stephen King, president of Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Boston. “Le Cordon Bleu students are eager to execute what they have learned in classrooms over the past year. This is a great opportunity for diners to experience Boston’s future chefs in their first restaurant venture.”

A new class of students advances into the restaurant every six weeks. Throughout their training, students are taught an array of the finest culinary techniques from Le Cordon Bleu, hence the name “Technique”, where students will apply their skills.

Last night was the soft opening for Ten Tables in Cambridge, which subsumed the former walls of the Craigie Street Bistrot—rendering the new space softer, a little more cozy, and a lot less French.

Upon being greeted by Owner Krysta Kranyak in the significantly larger space, the first query I put to her was, of course, “So how many tables are there here??” Ten Tables Cambridge actually has twenty tables, so if we accept the premise that each restaurant can use its branch number as a multiplier, I think we can let the x2 slide.

As is the way with all construction, the renovation of the space has been a hectic and harrowing journey, which has been chronicled on their construction blog:

http://tentables.blogspot.com/

Now at soft openings, one gets an idea of the quality of the finger foods and catering that a restaurant can produce, rather than a sense of the true dining experience, but if the quality of the JP branch has anything to do with things to come, which it indeed does, then Cantabrigians have a wonderful new experience for the taking—minus the schlep down south. Fortunately, Executive Chef/Owner David Punch,  is currently embracing the schlep and supervising both kitchens to insure that the Cambridge branch is a faithful sibling in both quality and vision. I have had at least four meals at Ten Tables JP, each of which has been nothing less than spectacular.

While the new location is twice as big, the kitchen is not.  In fact, Chef Punch says that the new kitchen is slightly smaller than the one in JP, but he embraces the challenge of steering a full-sized restaurant from a pint-sized helm. The good news, he told me, was that they were able to include more sophisticated and varied appliances back stage, which will grant him more technical freedom with the dishes.

One of my favorite features of Ten Tables JP is the Chef’s Table, which is a high-top right in front of the open kitchen. While the kitchen is behind the scenes in Cambridge, Punch expressed hopes that a Chef’s Table would appear some day soon.

The soft opening, while shedding light mostly on the mechanical aspects of the new restaurant, left me with great anticipation for a full meal there, and great excitement for the new experiences to come.

The new Ten Tables is located at 5 Craigie Circle in Cambridge. Tables for the Cambridge branch can be reserved online via opentable.

Here is another excellent TED talk–this time by Jennifer 8. Lee, the author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, about the place of Chinese food in American culture.

Enjoy:

Also, make sure to check out Malcom Gladwell’s talk on spaghetti sauce and marketing.