Category — Restaurant News & Reviews

courtesy Gourmet Latino Festival

What do you know about culinary tradition and the power of women in Latin America? Nothing, right? Okay, maybe you do, but I don’t and I would LOVE to.

If, like me, you don’t have enough cash to reach Buenos Aires head instead for the Gourmet Latino Festival, an eight-day celebration of Latin foods, cocktails, wines and coffees that kicks off in New York this weekend. The festival brings together more than 40 of well-known Latin chefs, mixologists and tastemasters from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, México, Perú, Uruguay, and elsewhere.

The festival boasts seminars on rum, agave, coconut. There will be dancing. There will be music. There will be eating. There will be lots of stimulating conversation. All that, and a brunch featuring levantamuertos (awake the dead) food and drink.

And if you see Chef Aaron Sanchez, who’s hosting several events, tell him he’s my dude (you gotta love him. He’s the nice one on Food Network’s “Chopped”) The festival runs June 4-June 12 in New York. See their website for more details and to buy tickets.

Still Life, Pastrami with Kosher Dill/Charles Haynes

Oy vay! Who knew there were no Jewish delis in Israel?!

Ruben, dubbed Israel’s first authentic Jewish deli by the local press, recently began serving up heaps of pastrami on rye — with harissa!! — to the befuddled masses. Why befuddled? As with so many culinary traditions, giant matzo balls and sky-high sandwiches were New World creations. And it took them six decades to make it to Israel.

Check out this fascinating story in The Forward.

by Kanko

If the Mumbai daily DNA is to be believed (and why not? It’s got absolutely ALL the gossip about Bollywood celebrities!) it’s goodbye tiffin, hello take out! “Menu is always such a problem,” my husband’s cousin Anju once told me as she described getting up each day at 5am to fill her husband’s stainless steel dhaba – lunch pail — with a selection of poli, bhaji, curry and other hot, homemade food without being repetitive.   Now fashionable Mumbaikers can enjoy a Japanese-style Bento box of rice, protein and vegetables (and a Kingfisher beer!) or a “China Box” filled with chicken teriyaki or tofu long rice. Inspired by the Chinese food boxes he saw in American movies as a child, Chef Ristic Milos hopes to offer “a nice small meal that is easy to handle, one you can eat alone without having to sit at a table.” Read: one you can scarf down without leaving your desk. I’m all for freeing Anju from having to get up at 5am to fill her husband’s lunchbox. And for treating yourself occasionally to a fun, take out lunch. But I hope it doesn’t mean India’s also importing the take out culture — of eating at your desk, alone, without your colleagues, of looking on food not as social, but as fuel. A disturbing hint of things to come? “The meal contains everything you need to power you through the rest of the day,” the Milos tells DNA’s reporter.