O.Noir branches out from MTL to TO

O.Noir is pointless. Add the Opaque restaurants on the west coast and the Dark Dining Project at Camaje in the West Village to the list of restaurant fads as well. Except for their policy of hiring visually-impaired staff, I really see no benefit to a restaurant in which you cannot see your food.

I understand the need for 'difference' in matters of stimulation and appreciation. What I mean is that it is common to believe that to being presented with objects that are set against a background that frames or focuses our attention by way of contrast or heightening the demand of certain senses over others facilitates our focus on a specific object. We are able distinguish it from our surroundings and then evaluate without distraction. A painting is set in a frame and hung on a wall that is not visually busy, in a gallery that allows contemplation and focus. Or, a symphony requires relative silence so that it can be heard at all, however nearly absolute silence offers an opportunity to better enjoy and judge the music without distraction. These cases function on the logic that diminishing the demand on senses that are not primary to experiencing the piece at hand, and focusing the demand of those which are, allows us to use those senses that are required in a greater capacity. Many people claim that their listening experience is enhanced by closing their eyes or being in a dark, quiet and still, essentially non-distracting  venue. This all reminds me of the old 'go blind and your hearing will become superhuman' claim that I am sure has some validity to it.

Like food, music's impact can be both enhanced or reduced by visual elements. and visual arts can be enhanced by things like music and setting in general (why does it always have to be a cold, quiet galliery?) Unlike food however, music is not essentially visual, nor or visual pieces essentially auditory. To continue the music-food analogy, a silent setting to music is not the same as a dark restaurant to food. Sometimes music is better in the dark, and sometimes your food may be visually distracting. In the latter, this would be unfortunate cases of style over substance. It does not taste nearly as nice as it looks or costs, which is a feeling that I am sure many people harbor toward fine dining. On the other hand, I like to think that in most cases visual enticement works to further excite our mind, stomach and mouths. To limit your senses seems like sacrilege to me. We salivate on sight, are primed by delightful settings, and without these cues we are missing integral parts of the dining experience.

Just watch this video and try to tell me this seems both enjoyable and worth the extra money for the 'experience'. They say it is all about texture and smells, but I just don't (won't?) buy it. Should food not always be about such things? If you cannot appreciate your food for its texture, taste and smell without a blindfold then maybe you have not been actually appreciating food. This Dana Salisbury person just seems full of gimmicky bullshit. (The girl who does a Stevie Wonder impression 16 seconds in is hilarious, but definitely not right.)

I suppose the dining experience cannot be essentialized though. Perhaps our other senses - olfactory, auditory and sensing temperature - will compensate and allow us to enjoy our food just as much at O.Noir (I won't go so far as to say 'more at O.Noir', but it is certainly a different enjoyment). After all, studies in the past  have shown no increase in salivation upon seeing pictures of food. But their method is flawed and the studies are old (ranging from the 1920's to mid-1970's) - unless I am starving, sterile pictures of food are not going to do much for me, especially since they are so prevalent and how easily we become habituated. If you were to isolate a plate of food from me however - cut off the smell, taste and temperature by way of a Plexiglas box, I guarantee it will make me salivate. Personally, I just want to see my food. It helps with textural perception (Rosenthal, Andrew. Food texture: measurement and perception (1999). pp. 3-5), prepares our mouth and stomach, and provides visual pleasure (as well as a dining experience that is not characterized by confusion).

I don't want to present just one side of the story though. O.Noir owner Moa Alameddine and his employees sum up the dining experience well in the following article, ("Dining in the dark: Concept restaurant offers feast for senses - except sight") and video, providing us with a history of the dark dining concept that makes these restaurants seems more legitimate in my opinion:

Finally, if you are interested in more dark dining, a comprehensive list of other "eating in the dark" restaurants can be found here:

"The World's Dark Restaurants"

Creepy Robot Chefs of the Future

I'm not too sure how I feel about this.

MNN.com: "40 farmers under 40" and Captain Planet.

Whenever I get backed into a corner in life, especially if it is school or a job getting me down, I have a consoling claim that I always repeat to myself: "Screw this! I am leaving, and I am going to be a farmer." It's quite irrational, and no doubt stems from a mix of my own misconceptions - a romanticized image of farming, and any apparently irreconcilable differences with whatever I happen to be doing at the time that is a source of stress and most likely city-centered.

The following group of farmers, featured by the Mother Nature Network (MNN), makes my claim seem a little less ridiculous however. They are all under 40 and have varying backgrounds and applications of agriculture today. Many have taken off from their city lives to carry out their pastoral dreams, some are urban farmers, while others are born and bred family farmers. To quote MNN,

"They're urban, they hold advanced degrees and they're often female. They sprout up in not-so-bucolic places like Brooklyn, Oakland, Atlanta and Indianapolis, and they sometimes work as educators, eco-entrepreneurs, yogis, journalists, filmmakers, activists and doting parents on the side. They're passionate and adventurous. And most notably, they're focused on sustainability and community building."

Also at MNN.com, and back from the dead, is CAPTAIN PLANET (he never really died, but was definitely cancelled on cable).




To see the full list of farmers, click the link below:
MNN.com: 40 farmers under 40

To watch Captain Planet for some retro-satisfaction, click here:
MNN.com: Captain Planet

Marriott, Mikasa, Montreal - Concrete slab falls, crushes diners.

Thursday night, at one of the nicer sushi bars in Montreal, a slab of concrete fell from the Marriott hotel, crashing through the roof of Mikasa's windowed dining room -- killing Léa Guilbeault and injuring her husband. Reports are conflicting, however it is assumed that the slab crushed and killed Guilbeault on contact (and judging from the Gazette reports, it was extremely gory). She was out for an early birthday celebration with her husband. Her birthday was today.

Mikasa is just up the street from where I work, and I once ate there awkwardly with an ex for lunch. That is the extent that I will go to tie myself to this story though, as it seems the Gazette and every other Montreal media outlet has limited itself to mainly "eye-witness accounts," as passers-by and fellow diners have been quoted extensively.

Three days later, very minimal discussion has taken place in the media about why the slab may have fallen in the first place. Considering our weather, I thought regular building safety checks would have been carried out. The Marriott building had not been inspected since 2000, but I am unsure if this is a relatively long time or not when it comes to examining structural integrity. Either way, it was too long in this case. Sometimes I forget the extent to which city services must be in disarray. Things are seemingly under control, but the reality is that we consistently engage in patchwork and band-aid solutions.

This raises a whole range of questions - who is liable? will the victim's family sue Marriott? should the city be conducting more regular and stricter building inspections? will Mikasa sue Marriott? how can Mikasa possibly survive as a successful restaurant after this gruesome tragedy took place in its main dining room? What do we expect of all the involved parties and how far do we go to prevent such things from happening before it is an absurd precaution and restriction upon our daily activities?

Read the Gazette and CBC article below for more information:

CBC: Montreal probes death of woman killed by falling concrete

Montreal Gazette: 'We were sitting next to them, oh my God'


Note: This is a quote from a Listserv e-mail I just received at work:

Please be advised that starting at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 21st, an architect from ___ will be inspecting the masonry on the building façade. He will require access to offices at the front of the building. Please accord him access as required.

I imagine many institutions and companies, both public and private, will be conducting voluntary 'facade' checks. Such as at my building, where decorative stone could really do some damage:

Tourisme Montréal

I just found this YouTube channel for Tourisme Montréal.



While the content varies greatly, there are a ton of food & drink related videos. The culinary spots are usually hosted by Katherine Rollet, whose interjections can get kind of tiresome, but judging from the selection of restaurants, bakeries and cafés she definitely has great taste. In addition to an Epicurean section, they also have:

• Nightlife - they do a feature on Baldwin Barmacie which is a bar I'm a fan of, as well as hipster-haunts Blizzarts, Korova and Billy Kun.
  
• Arts & Culture - Musée Beaux Arts, the Jazz Festival, Tam Tams, as well as neighbourhood tours are offered.
  
• Girls' Getaway - not sure?
  
• Gay Life - most of which is shot down by my apartment in the Amherst/Beaudry area, where we see the male host and his drag-double partake in activities such as receiving a lesbian haircut (first on his receding hairline and then on their wig), hunt for antiques, and check out local clothing stores.

The Epicurean Life section offers some of the best material out of the bunch. It is kind of uppity and obviously advertisement-like, but it covers so many places that are to my liking, with features on our city's markets and the new Müvbox concept-restaurant, along with other culinary walking tours and restaurant stops that reflect the refined crowd they are trying to court from Toronto and New York City.

This series of videos joins the already existing repertoire of high-production value promotional materials recently developed by Tourisme Montréal, as can be seen on their Montreal TV site. Personally, I prefer something a bit less glossy, but they gotsta get the $$$ I 'spose.

Farm aid vs. Food aid

After finally going to see Food, Inc. and hearing of the G8's recent commitments to farm aid over food aid, I can't help but write about such things. For as long as I can remember, the G8, 'G20', and Western governments have generally subscribed to a view of so-called development in the developing world. A more accurate description of the relationship between developed and developing nation-states would be one of dependency, accompanied by an overarching, yet subtlely-framed theme of 'food security' (whose security they are referring to depends on who you are speaking to though).

Such an approach is more in line with what politicians have openly discussed as burden-sharing, and the panic that is felt when a lack of food leads to political instability, therefore becoming an international security concern as refugees flood over borders. However, we continue to send bags of rice and grain, sterilized seed and other short-term support measures - policy enactments that fail to include a practical and long-term "teach a man to fish" angle. We need to meet immediate needs while literally sowing the seeds for future self-sufficiency.

The idea of offering emergency food aid alone - whether it be bags of grain, money or some combination thereof - has long been understood as a stop-gap measure (except by state politicians it seems). There are many reasons this type of aid continues without the accompaniment of enduring development programmes however:

• a paradoxical philosophy of self-determination, state sovereignty, and responsibility (we wouldn't want to meddle in the affairs of other states by intervening with education and training, but moral obligations state that something must be done);
• a food-drop or bank transfer seems like the most direct, time-efficient and therefore cost-efficient manner of dealing with the hunger dilemma;
• and following from the previous two justifications, yet of a more psychological nature, it is a worry doll solution (let the irony of the Guatemalan history and tourist appropriation of the dolls sink in).
  

If you talk about the problem and then throw money at it so the issue has been dealt with in some capacity, it can then be checked off the list of crisis-level priorities and be stricken from most people's consciences for the time being. That is, until the politicians are due back at the next international conference with their renewed sets of worries and guilt while they cynically wonder how the aid-receiving state could have 'wasted' all that money.

Of course, starvation and hunger persists, Oh-Dearism has become rampant among the increasingly rich, while the often violently, yet sometimes quiescently oppressed populations suffer in apathetic dependence, so leaders of the most wealthy nations respond the only way they know how to, or at least to the extent that they are willing to commit, by pledging aid money and dropping rice from airplanes. The legitimacy of a 'pledge' is quite suspect though. A media-safe and public-satisfying dollar amount (such as the $20-billion recently announced by the G8 in L'Aquila, Italy) will have already been pledged years ago in some manner, perhaps publicly but quite often not, and is simply shuffled from one report or budget to that of the newly-adopted and renamed strategy for feeding the poor.

Obama has other things in mind apparently, and has lead a world-wide shift in policy from food aid to farm aid. I am unsure of how to deal with the whole issue. Emergency aid needs to continue, while we assist people in growing their own food. Under current conditions however, I see no way to help without being heavy-handed, and therefore risking relations with the (often corrupt) governments of these nations in dire need. NGO and UN workers are constantly at risk of being received as bearers of western imperialism, soldiers are obviously not perceived as liberators or saviors, yet we cannot continue to fight the problem with short-term solutions that do not address the root issue of having an incapacity for domestic food production and distribution. I'm hoping the second McGill Conference on Global Food Security in October will provide me with some answers or at least steer me in the right direction.

FarmVille

Bored and on Facebook?

Checkout FarmVille. I won't, but you might like it.

Taste: "The Superhero Of Senses"

Here is a good article from Forbes for you. It is about how resilient, but easily affected, our sense of taste can be:

The Superhero Of Senses by Jonathan Fahey.

Also, if you would like to know more about the olfactory and taste systems, as well as potential disorders, this article from the American Academy of Family Physicians is all-encompassing, yet provides plenty of basic information about the anatomy of smell and taste (with many diagrams!):

Smell and Taste Disorders: A Primary Care Approach
Steven M. Bromley, M.D.
University of Pennsylvania Smell and Taste Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

In New York? Miss Montréal? Mile End in Brooklyn.

St. Viateur and Fairmont bagels, poutine, St. Ambroise beer and more at Mile End restaurant in Brooklyn.

97 Hoyt St.
(Atlantic and Pacific Aves.)


Someone let me know how it is??

"When Seal is on the Menu"

It seems as though the seal hunt is always in the media. Every year PETA and the world press highlight its commencement and exert pressure on the seal industry to find a humane end to this issue... an issue that I cannot seem to take a side on.

I first saw the seal hunt in action, beyond the horrible baby-seal-blood-splattered-snow image, on Anthony Bourdain's show No Reservations back in 2007, where he visited an Inuit community in northern Quebec (these videos are not for the faint-hearted, but you gain a respect for one culture's use of the animal):

Then we have Canada's Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, cutting open a seal and eating its raw heart:

So when I read these New York Times articles about seal on the menu at Au Cinquième Péché, as well as several other restaurants in Montréal, I felt like I had to share:

and "Canadian Chefs Serve Seal, With a Side of Controversy" both by Micheline Maynard.

Salt!

Did you know a 1/2 cup of Cheerios has more salt than 31 individual Ms. Vickie's brand chips? Scary. No wonder the FDA is giving General Mills such a hard time.

When cooking, I mostly fail to consider the salt content of my food, unless it is related to flavor. After being reminded in nearly every recipe that calls for butter or stock, I only buy unsalted butter and low or no sodium stocks (veal, chicken, veg). In my opinion, your meals should not be salty, but they should be well-seasoned with salt so to stimulate saliva production.

Both acid and salt act alike in this way. Many people will make the mistake of continuing to add salt to their dish, when a squeeze of lemon or vinegar would have done the trick. As you produce saliva, it begins to chemically break-down what you are also mechanically breaking-down by chewing. While saliva acts as a first stage of digestion, it also affects the sensitivity of our TASTE BUDS.

I would by lying to myself if I denied being in love with soy sauce, salt & vinegar chips, and salted snack mix though. They tear my mouth apart and create both a satisfaction and urge to repeat like only sodium can. They're great, seriously. Since I have a bipolar penchant for controlling and consuming, I inevitably began to wonder about the food that I eat daily, which is prepared to some degree, but I have yet to check or even care about the sodium content.

Then pops up this 'Special Report' by The Globe & Mail. You should click-through to the multi-part series here: The Globe & Mail - Salt: Hard to Shake. The articles are comprehensive, while the videos have the usual CTV hokey-ness to them. It is a pretty decent feature, despite sometimes attempting to reproduce the same diet-craze formula we know so well when we hear the words cholesterol, fat, trans-fat, carbohydrates, and now salt. I feel like a health-nut or an old man talking about this sort of thing. I will make sure that my following post is a little lighter in mood.

I promise. I will not mention tuna for months after this.

LINK: Japanese scientists to breed 'super tuna'

"Japanese scientists will have bred a new "super-tuna" within a decade that will be stronger, more resistant to disease and taste better than the bluefin presently in the oceans."

Oh yeah, happy Canada Day.

I will not eat bacon or maple syrup or drink Tim Horton's coffee today.

While we're on the topic of Canada though, do you remember the Canada Food Guide? You know, the staple of Canadian K-12 health education, with dubious servings and industry influence? It's back.

CANADA'S FOOD GUIDE (for entertainment purposes only)

P.S. I can hear the Canadian anthem playing from the JazzFest right now. I can also hear some bickering Québécois neighbours. I can't understand them, but I doubt they're happy about it.

I don't care about what you eat.

Knowing I enjoy food, my friends often let me know what they have eaten recently. For the most part, it's a genuine effort to share what they have enjoyed in my absence, willingly giving me a rundown on the preparation, where they picked up the goods, and what was or wasn't a success about the meal.

Now imagine if nearly every stranger out there was trying to let you know ONLY what they have eaten. Somehow, they have convinced themselves that not just their close friends (or lack of), but everyone cares about what they have just consumed.

Let me introduce you to FoodFeed - the most annoying retooling of Twitter yet.
Take this guy as a prime example - I don't know him, I'm sure he's alright, I just don't give a shit about what he's ingesting: http://jun6lee.foodfeed.us/.

My criticism toward media of this kind is related to a greater peeve that I have with many food publications, both print and online. Most of them have become (or have always been) a lure for advertisements, with short and irrelevant articles matched to photoshopped food, or they function as a place to jockey for status as you drop a line about where you dined last.

Fortunately, as we have seen with many shitty technologies, we manage to make something decent of them. In this case however, the saving grace of Twitter is irrelevant for FoodFeed. The only practical use Twitter has given us so far is to provide hurried bits of breaking news, for which writing a full article on the matter is not possible due to an oppressed voice or the urgency, immediacy or hostility of the event. If this is the one practical use of Twitter, how can you convince me that your latest "adventurous" salad with mandarin in it is worth hearing about? If you cannot tell us (in the space provided) how the dressing was made and what type of lettuce is in it, we just have no practical use for your information, and it otherwise functions as poor entertainment. If you feel the need to keep track of your diet, just do it in a spreadsheet!

Anyway, enough of my griping! Make sure to check again soon for an update on why you shouldn't waste your money on many food magazines. I will be providing both free and superior alternatives to the holy trinity: Food & Wine, Gourmet, and Cook's Illustrated.