Salon.com > Adam Roberts

The turkey whisperer

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:23:00 +0000

Most people don't frolic with turkeys before eating them, but that's precisely what I did this summer before dining at Blue Hill Stone Barns, Dan Barber's idyllic farm-cum-restaurant in upstate New York. The meal, which was among the best I've ever had, was both playful and refined. Each course came with a lively presentation about the featured ingredients, how they were grown, when they were picked and what made them special. We left the meal delirious, drunk and, most impressive, edified: Blue Hill Stone Barns is more than a restaurant -- to quote its Web site, it's "a platform, an exhibit, a classroom, a conservatory, a laboratory, and a garden."

What better person to ask, then, about a holiday that celebrates the harvest than a man who has devoted his life to harvesting the best food possible and cooking it to perfection, and who raises his own turkeys. Dan Barber is as philosophical about food as he is talented, he's renowned for his public speaking (his "Carrots and Almonds" speech from the Taste 3 conference, which you can watch here -- is legendary), and he's a darling of both critics and foodies alike.

The deep delicious South

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:29:00 +0000

With one hand on the wheel and one on his cellphone, John T. Edge is driving from Atlanta -- where 300 people turned out to hear him read the night before -- to an event in Columbia, S.C., where, he jokes, he expects an audience of eight. "But seriously," he says enthusiastically, "I think people really are waking up."

Edge is a man on a mission, a mission to preserve and celebrate two of America's greatest cultural gems: the food and the food lore of the South. "When I sit down at a table, I want to commune with cooks past and present," he writes in the introduction to his newly revised version of "Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South." "I want to know their life stories. I want to understand their struggles."

For his efforts, Edge has been called "the Faulkner of Southern food," nominated for four James Beard awards and named a finalist for the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. In addition to his writing, Edge also directs the Southern Foodways Alliance, a society dedicated to preserving traditional Southern culinary culture. The Web site declares, "We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather -- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation."

The king of summer comfort food

Tue, 29 May 2007 11:42:00 +0000

In the world of fine dining, few chefs rise to the heights that Jasper White achieved in the '80s and '90s with his eponymous Boston restaurant Jasper's. Lauded in the press, awarded numerous stars and accolades (including a James Beard Award), Jasper's even touted Julia Child as a regular customer (she called White her "all-time favorite Boston chef"). Even fewer chefs, though, would take a successful enterprise like this and shut it down to devote oneself to comfort food. Yet that's exactly what White did in 1995 when he closed Jasper's, spent five years writing cookbooks, and then, in 2000, opened Summer Shack, a family-friendly seafood spot devoted to all-American shore food -- the kind you don't serve on white tablecloths.

Now four restaurants strong (with locations in Boston, Cambridge and at Mohegan Sun and Logan Airport), Summer Shack is a mini restaurant empire with White at the helm. Gourmet magazine says it serves "the best lobsters and corn dogs in the land," and it got three stars from the Boston Globe. White, it would seem, can't run away from success, no matter how hard he tries.

Bloody good food

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:04:00 +0000

"Right food, right place, right time": Nigel Slater, Britain's premier food writer, summarizes his food philosophy in one simple sentence at the start of his new book, "The Kitchen Diaries." But where other food writers might rest on that easily digestible aphorism, in "The Kitchen Diaries" Slater puts his mantra to the test, documenting every meal he cooks for himself over the course of a year -- and showing, rather than telling, how to put a diet of seasonal food into practice. From pork ribs with honey and anise in October to baked red mullet with saffron and mint in April, Slater knows how to make season-conscious cooking a mouthwatering prospect.