Omnivore - Where to dine tonight, brandade sliders, food and memory, bye-bye to meat
Some random notes
- Goin’ Coastal, Facebook
WHERE TO DINE TONIGHT: Goin’ Coastal — recently famous for its Monday-night, $20 lobster dinners — is serving a shrimp boil with andouille sausage, corn, and salad for $15 on Thursday nights. It’s being served at the Virginia-Highland and Canton locations. Better make a reservation right now ....
EVOCATIVE SLIDERS: Last night, I paid my usual visit to The Shed at Glenwood for $3-slider night. One of the evening’s choices was identified as cod with bits of roasted poblano peppers. What it actually turned out to be was a spiced-up version of brandade, one of my favorite substances on the planet.
It’s also a dish I haven’t run into in Atlanta restaurants in quite a few years. I remember that Jacques Hourtal, one of the original chefs at Anis, used to make it regularly in the early 2000s. Brandade is usually eaten on chunks of bread. So, there’s a logic to its appearance on a slider bun, thanks to chef Lance Gummere....
FOODIE BUDDHA has posted a really wonderful memoir about his experience of cooking for a Michelen-rated chef. Give it a read, seriously....
MARK BITTMAN has an interesting column about Americans’ meat consumption in the New York Times. It seems that sales of chicken, poultry, and (especially) beef have been plummeting during recent years.
Bittman notes that there are good economic explanations for the decline but the livestock industry also blames the federal government for “waging war on meat protein consumption” for the last three or four decades.
What an absurd claim, considering the enormous subsidies and lax regulation the livestock producers enjoy. As Bittman writes:
The flaw in the report is that it treats American consumers as passive actors who are victims of diminishing supplies, rising costs and government bias against the meat industry. Nowhere does it mention that we’re eating less meat because we want to eat less meat.
Since I started cooking frequently again, I’ve been shocked by the cost of beef in particular and — duh — buy much less than I did in the past.