Toronto lunchroom lockdowns, Susur’s new Yankee restaurant and Oprah’s textbook example
• Ad Age dissects Oprah’s KFC fiasco (which is adding up to six million hungry Americans) in a case study that includes other examples of fast-food blunders: New Coke and McDonald’s Beanie Baby, to name just two. [Ad Age]
• Smart Money reveals the top 10 secrets of celebrity chefs. Our favourites include Nigella’s hawking of food porn, the fact that many Food Network chefs have no kitchen experience, and a blood-chilling reminder that Rachel Ray once posed in a skimpy apron for the defunct man rag FHM. [Smart Money]
• Continuing with his plans to slowly take over the U.S., Susur Lee is opening a sushi restaurant called Zentan in Washington, D.C., next month. The place will be located near the White House; perhaps the dijon-lovin’ president will stop by to indulge his love of non-American food. [Toronto Star]
• A Czech company is opening coffee shops adjacent to newspaper offices so that regular folk can interact with reporters, thus making mass media seem more accessible. Smart idea; when the reporters get laid off, they can head next door and become baristas. [NY Times]
• The Toronto District School Board is considering a lunchroom lockdown for junior high schools. If implemented, it would force students to eat their lunch on school property and forbid them from going to the nearest fast-food joint. This must have come from the same think-tank that came up with “mandatory volunteerism.” [CBC]