Lobster

For nearly 20 years, Mary Ann Esposito of the PBS cooking series "Ciao Italia" has been the major promoter of Italian cooking in the USA, just as Julia Child was to French cooking. Although Mary Ann stands about a foot shorter than Julia, like Julia she's a born educator, always willing to share knowledge and expertise. She possesses a constant curiosity about the origins and the nature of foodstuffs, and has a discriminating palate.  

Prior to joining Brinker International in 2005, Roberts served as executive vice president and Chief Marketing Officer for NBC's Universal Parks & Resorts, where he assisted in significant market share growth and a measurable increase in internet sales. Roberts is also a 17-year veteran of Darden Restaurants, Inc. , where he held numerous senior level positions, including executive vice president of marketing for the Red Lobster brand. Steve Provost has been named Roberts' successor as president of Maggiano's Little Italy .  

Cookbooks often read better as literature than as technical lab manuals. That shouldn't stop us from reading them, or from improvising our recipes. We no longer learn to cook solely from generations-old oral traditions.

Anyone who cooks knows that it is in following recipes that one first learns the anticlimax of the actual, the perpetual disappointment of the thing achieved.   -Adam Gopnik

 

Mintel Menu Insights, a service that tracks US menu trends, releases five predictions for 2010, saying the restaurant industry will focus on high quality food and ingredients to lure in diners. PRESS RELEASE: Chicago (November 20, 2009)--How do you follow up a wild year of $5 menus, gourmet meals for paupers' prices and buy one get one restaurant specials? You return to quality, that's how.

Restaurants are redefining 'value' on the menu, moving away from the cost-savings that were so important earlier this year to incorporate high quality ingredients, classic flavor combinations and authentic, old-fashioned preparations. In 2010, we expect menus to go back to the basic roots of good food and drink   -Maria Caranfa

 

Though The Roost enjoyed a six-decade run, its first successor failed to last one year. In January, my wife and I came here, to Bombay Garden, for lamb saag and sizzling tandoori. Weeks ago we returned for our second time in 2009, this time for some all-American comfort: surf and turf and a filet of flounder topped with lump crab.  

Thanksgiving isn't until Thursday, but Central Market in York City is getting the Butterball rolling early. The market is holding its first Turkey Times celebration this weekend, and if it proves popular, it could become an annual event, operations manager Annette Fisher said. "We're just trying to do more and get more involved and have a little bit of fun in here," she said.

We're just trying to do more and get more involved and have a little bit of fun in here   -Annette Fisher

 

Chinese food goes sexy. And successful. P. F. Chang's China Bistro has been packing them in for about a month now in the Walden Galleria's ultra-eating section (as opposed to the food court — it's definitely not the food court).  

Food critics risk swift foodie wrath when they proclaim a restaurant to be "the best" at anything, whether it's a debate-riven subject like "best barbecue" (Mista B's in Bear), or even a fairly esoteric topic such as "best Peruvian restaurant on the eastbound side of Kirkwood Highway." (Manos Latinas. Sorry, Chicken House fans). So it's with some fear of evisceration that I submit that the "new" Pomodoro in Wilmington has the state's best Italian food.  

The New England Fishery Management Council has removed a powerful disincentive for fishermen who have chosen to remain outside the catch share system and instead fish independently in the common pool next year. But the margin of the vote Wednesday night — against running the fishing clock at double time against the common poolers for time spent on the inshore grounds — was most narrow, with the recommendation from the council's Groundfish Committee rejected 8-7 with one abstention. Moreover, ...