Seth Rogen as Martin Picard, obtaining a perfect peach, America’s most bizarre restaurants
• The cool, rainy spring that kept tomatoes green has actually been good for the peach crop. The New Jersey Peach Council says this is the best peach season in years. While the Peach Council may be biased, we say bring on the cobblers. [New York Times]
• With the success of Julie and Julia, the National Post is predicting that more foodie flicks are on the way. Brad Frenette wonders why no one’s made a movie about Marie-Antoine Careme, the orphan turned pâtissière who cooked for Napoleon, George IV and Tsar Alexander. Other suggestions: a film about wild chef Martin Picard played by Seth Rogen, and a Daniel Craig rendition of Gordon Ramsay. [National Post]
• Dining in the dark (O. Noir) and hiring ex-cons as servers (Conviction) are not the only ways to garner buzz for a restaurant. At San Francisco’s Supper Club, diners lounge in private beds, experience surprise entertainment and get massages between courses. And at Ninja New York, nervous patrons watch swords and throwing stars whiz by their heads. Forbes offers a slide show of America’s most bizarre restaurants. [Forbes]
• Less money to spend at restaurants means more people are learning how to cook for themselves—even in Manhattan. Whole Foods in Soho is cashing in, with a 46 per cent rise in cooking class enrolment between 2008 and 2009. Unemployed chefs, take note: your neighbourhood cooking school might soon be hiring. [Wall Street Journal]
• Now has launched an iPhone app that provides restaurant listings based on GPS coordinates. Well, it might. Initial reports suggest that the app is “undercooked,” since it often crashes when users try to search. Take that, UrbanSpoon. [TasteTO]
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