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artificialqueens · 5 years ago

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Beneath the Amber Moon, Part 5 (Galactica AU Group Fic) – TheDane & Veronica

Heyyy!! Welcome to Part 5 of “Beneath the Amber Moon,” a group fic set in the Galactica Universe. Click here for previous chapters.

We hope you’re enjoying it! Let us know what you think!

Summary: Day 4. All aboard for champagne wishes and caviar dreams...

/////

Fame looked out on the deck of the superyacht, pride momentarily filling her chest. Everything was perfect, from the precisely iced champagne to the decadent crackers with caviar to the hand plucked organic strawberries and the almost naughty pure chocolate cake she had selected for dessert. Fame had even saved an outfit for the occasion, her new Hermes set in white linen and the lovely goose egg sized sapphire earrings Patrick had given her sending just the right vibe of chic, without it being overdone and redundant.

Bianca looked as she always did, and while Fame was a little disappointed, it was also fully expected that Bianca hadn’t dressed up. Her friend boarded in what she always chose for any tropical adventure, a bright patterned caftan that was almost insulting with its colors.

The waiters handed out champagne, and Bianca took a sip, a smile playing on her lips. Karl had gotten the memo, the man showing up looking like he had just stepped out on the beach on the French Riviera, Sutan and Violet also looking appropriately done up. Fame hadn’t known what she had expected from Violet on the trip, the black haired woman never great company. Even though she was amongst the people Fame generally favored, on this trip she could just as well have been invisible.

Alaska and Jinkx showed up next, Jinkx looking radiant in a red bathing suit that was both age appropriate, and that matched perfectly with her sarong and the delightful emerald on her hand. Alaska was also decked out, the blonde wearing more and more jewels, but unlike Raven, Alaska had a sense of taste and Fame congratulated herself once again on hiring Alaska back when she had been nothing but a just out of college mess. Alaska had grown up to be beautiful, and while Raja and Raven walked on, kids in tow, Fame to give Raven that she was beautiful, that had never been up for discussion, but the Russian was practically dripping with jewels, her lilac getup clearly there to show off her tan and the body that once again looked physically flawless, having spent hours with a trainer.

“Welcome, welcome.” Fame smiled, Juju and Detox of course arriving second to last, but Fame had gotten used to it. Life with kids really seemed so dreadfully inconvenient. “Please treat yourself to the spread!” Fame gestured at an array of luxury treats flown in for the cruise.

Fame heard Karl snort, and she barely kept from rolling her eyes. She was happy she had picked some of the more attractive male staff for the cruise, Karl somehow becoming even more of a man-eater after Sutan had moved to Paris, which didn’t make sense, but who she to judge.

“I can’t wait to spend two days in total luxury with my dearest friends to celebrate, well, me!” Fame smiled, her eye catching on Adore who looked like her usual mess, Courtney on her arm, and Fame sighed, accepting that Adore’s favorite accessory was there as well.

After a toast, Fame took everyone on a grand tour, making sure they knew where the various bars and lounges were, the beautiful guest suites where they’d be sleeping, the wave pool and jacuzzis, the sauna and spa, the movie theatre and library. She directed Raja and Raven’s nannies to the large, colorful playroom outfitted with everything the kids could possibly want, including a wide array of child-friendly snacks and their own personal steward. Julia and Owen immediately voiced their resounding approval, shooing their parents from the room so that they could go nuts.

Fame led the rest of the group back to the breakfast spread on the upper deck. Juju (who procured a phone from her bra the moment Fame looked away, an emergency going on at her salon) and Violet set up camp in one of the interior lounges. Fame had gotten used to Violet’s sour disposition, the poor girl still looking like she wished she was anywhere but in Brazil. She let them be, noting to one of the stewards to be sure to check on them often.

/////

Courtney took a deep breath. She didn’t want to round the corner, but she knew she had to. It wouldn’t do at all to keep avoiding Bianca’s friends, and so she steeled her nerves and walked out onto the sun deck.

“Well well well, what have we here!” Sutan whistled, looking at Courtney in her golden bikini. “If you don’t mind me stating my professional opinion Miss Act, you’re looking like fucking perfection. Karl, have you seen her ass?”

Karl pulled down his sunglasses, straightening his back a little. “She has cleaned up quite nicely.”

“... Thanks?” Courtney offered a wary smile, letting Karl catch her by the hand and pull her into a lounger beside him.

“Something’s different about your face, too.” He studied her intently for a moment before snapping his fingers. “You’re not overplucking your eyebrows anymore. You look a million times better. An inspiration. Have you had your ass measured lately?”

Sutan laughed, pushing Karl. “Save that for Milano, my friend.” Sutan moved, sitting at the foot of Karl’s lounger and handing Courtney a nearby glass of champagne Karl was drinking. He himself was having a bottle of beer.

“How do you feel about Asia?” Karl asked.

“Uh...Free Tibet?”

“No, for work!” Sutan laughed. “You’re basically every marketing department’s wet dream right now. Look at you. You’re bright, bubbly, the all-American-”

“Australian, remember?”

“-Dream, a mature mind in the body of someone who’s so healthy they practically glow.” Sutan smiled. “How do you feel about partial nudity?”

“You would be perfect.” Karl took a sip of his champagne. “The market is oversaturated with garbage from Russia right now.”

“Hey!”

Karl laughed, raising his glass to Raven in the jacuzzi. “It’s a fashion catastrophe waiting to happen. Global warming is kicking in, but instead of CO2, it’s 14-year-olds from Eastern Europe getting fucked by their managers and being dumber than dirt.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Raja looked at them in confusion. “Why haven’t I heard of this?”

“America is so last year sister dearest.” Sutan smiled. “Haven’t you heard? Asia is the place to be if you want to make serious buck.”

“As I’ve been telling everyone for years, but no, we only start believing me when Sutan moves to Paris to follow his dick.”

“I think what Karl is trying to say, very unsuccessfully,” Sutan rolled his eyes, a smile playing on his lips. “Is that there would be incredible career opportunities for you right now in Asia. Judy Hua from China has sent feelers out about a face for her newest collection, and someone like you could-”

“Judy Hua? Courtney is a Guo Pei girl if there ever was one. Act, don’t you even dare consider signing with Elite. They’re a terrible agency.”

“Terrible? We’re the best in the business.”

“Just because you write something, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Courtney sat back, slightly overwhelmed. This was the most attention she’d ever gotten from either man, and she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about it. On the other hand, they were both very good at their jobs, both clearly with business on the brain, so maybe she should be listening to them.

Sutan laughed. “Excuse me, what agency discovered and represented Cindy Crawford, Raven Petruschin, Linda Evangelista, Iman, Raja Gemini and Naomi Campbell?”

“You can’t name your own sister.”

“Oh, what’s the sound of that? That’s the sound of you having a 20% transfer rate last season.”

Karl rolled his eyes, turning to Courtney. “If you ever feel like making money off of those 32B’s, don’t go with him.”

“... How do you know my cup size?”

“A lucky guess.” Karl smiled, his eyes glinting with delight.

“Secret of the trade Courtney darling.” Sutan swept in, clearly sensing her discomfort. “Any agent worth their salt has to be able to guess that you’re 5’5, have Swedish or Danish somewhere in your bloodline, maybe mixed with just a little bit of Spanish-”

“Portuguese, how did you-”

“See.” Sutan smiled. “It’s not really that hard.” Sutan looks her up and down. “You’re... What would you say Karl? 115?”

“115- or actually. Courtney. Flex please.” Courtney did as requested, and Karl laughed. “No my man, that’s 117 of Supergirl-made muscles.”

Bianca strode over, hand on her hip, having walked in on only the tail end of the conversation, but already irritated by it.

“Hey!” she barked. “Will you two fuckheads stop objectifying her?”

There was a brief pause, and then everyone - Karl, Sutan, Raja, and Raven, burst out laughing, mocking Bianca mercilessly.

“You fucking hypocrite!”

“Sorry for stepping on your toes, there, B!”

“I guess you’re the only one allowed to objectify pretty blondes, eh?”

“We’re not trying to fuck her, for Christ’s sake…”

Bianca glowered, not quite willing to admit the grain of truth in what they were saying. Courtney was the only one not laughing, meeting Bianca’s eyes and giving her a sympathetic smile. And maybe the look went on a little too long, because Bianca began to feel that familiar tingling, finally breaking off the eye contact.

Courtney bit her lip. And when Bianca pulled off her caftan to reveal a sexy, figure-hugging black one-piece, she inhaled sharply. Fuck, she looked good.

“Court! Come here, boo!”

Courtney looked up to where Adore was calling her, scrambling to her feet and hurrying over, relieved for the interruption, muttering, “Thank god…”

Bianca watched her go, a twinge of regret in her belly.

“Happy now? You scared her off,” Bianca said, and Sutan laughed.

“Come on, B, you must get where we’re coming from. That girl is a gold mine.”

“You’re gross,” Bianca grumbled, leaning back in her chair.

“It’s literally our job to scout talent, Bianca. You just do it for fun,” Karl teased.

“True. Why don’t we just parade a bunch of girls in front of you two assholes and you can rate them on marketability?”

“Know what?” Sutan said thoughtfully. “That’s actually not a bad idea…”

/////

“Do you need any help?”

Juju looked up from her phone, surprised at the gentle tone of Violet’s voice.

“You seem anxious.”

Juju smiled, Violet’s concern so kind. Violet did look a little better, but Juju’s mother's heart had a hard time not worrying about her. If it wasn’t for Sutan’s reassurance, and the pictures she had seen of Violet’s work in Paris, she would be genuinely concerned for the girl.

“My holiday replacement just messed up our orders.” Juju sighed. “It landed in New Jersey of all places and my entire staff has their thumbs up their ass, so now I have to find a courier.” Juju blew a bit of her hair aside, the strand falling into her face. “For such an expensive resort, you’d think their wifi at sea would be better.”

“I still know the number to a great courier company.”

“You do?”

“Mmh.” Violet reached out, holding her hand open. “I can call them if you want?”

Juju gave Violet her phone, a bright smile blossoming on her face. “You’re a lifesaver, Violet.”

/////

“Come here, Gracie!” Alaska cooed, holding out her arms, waiting for Grace to go down the slide.

Jinkx sat nearby with Owen and Julia, patiently teaching them how to fold an origami balloon while simultaneously playing peek-a-boo with Tanya in her nearby high chair. Isolde was wandering around the room unsteadily, trailed by her nanny.

Alaska strolled over with Grace in her arms, bending down to kiss Jinkx on the top of the head.

“Auntie J, is this right?” Julia held up her origami, and Jinkx nodded.

“Yeah, looks great! Just make sure you get the corner sharp…” she pressed down, showing Julia how to make the crease.

“No! Isolde! NO!” Owen yelled as a chubby little hand reached out to grab his paper crane, stuffing it into her mouth. Her nanny scooped her up apologetically, the sound of her shrieks echoing off the walls of the playroom. Her screaming set off Tanya, who began to wail out of either sympathy or competitiveness.

“We can make another one,” said Jinkx, seeing Owen’s lip quivering, giving him a reassuring hug. “Look, let’s use this cool blue striped paper!”

“Those babies are very naughty,” Julia explained to Jinkx, who smiled.

“They’re still learning,” Jinkx said. “I’m sure someday they’ll be as wonderful as you guys.”

Julia raised an eyebrow, the move so like her mother that Jinkx almost burst out laughing.

“Maybe,” she said, and Jinkx grinned.

“I guess we’ll see.”

/////

Adore let out a frustrated groan, peering through the glass at her girlfriends in the playroom.

“What’s wrong?” Courtney asked her.

“I’m so conflicted. Cause I really wanna play with those legos but I don’t want to make Alaska start awwwing again about how good I am with children.”

“You’re not that good with children,” Courtney said. “It’s just that you are a child.”

“Yes! Exactly! Thank you…” Adore sighed. “Why does that room look so fun? Omigod they have mini pizzas. I’m so jeal.”

“I mean, we could play with the kids and eat mini-pizzas...or, we could go to that empty bar over there and drink mimosas and I can tell you about how I almost jumped Bianca’s bones a few minutes ago.”

“Yes! Let’s do that!” She wrapped her arms around Courtney’s waist and pulled her, giggling, into the bar.

/////

“Wow!” Raven let out a gasp of delight as they disembarked from the yacht. An absolutely stunning private beach lay ahead, with what Raven could tell even from afar was an elaborate lunch spread set up for them. She took Violet’s hand, excited that the younger woman was finally joining them, thrilled to have the chance to catch up with her. They had barely seen each other on the trip so far, which Raven had every intention of making up for. Fortunately, Raja and the nannies were handling her girls, which left her free to enjoy the afternoon, and her friends, and the warm sunshine.

“Fame! This looks marvelous!” Raven called, and Fame turned back to her, beaming.

“Just a little light lunch,” she said with a wink. “A meal amongst friends.”

Raven laughed, clearly seeing the various stations with chefs in white coats standing by to cook food to order.

“Yes, of course, just a casual little beach picnic.”

Violet let out a small giggle, shaking her head, and Raven grinned at her, the sound making Raven’s heart clench.

“What looks good to you, Vi? Ooh, look, he’s ready to grill fresh fish for us! Don’t you like Butterfly fish?”

“I do.”

“Uuh, there’s stuffed crab shells too!” Raven pulled Violet with her, Violet’s hand gripping Raven’s tighter and tighter. “Don’t worry, I’ll order for you.”

Violet nodded, thankful that her brief panicked grip of her friend's hand had been read if she was worried about ordering, when she was truly struggling to not vomit everywhere. Raven started piling their plates, Violet once in a while pointing at something Raven made the waiter staff add. The two women found a place near the water, Violet not touching the fish Raven had picked out for her, the scent of the fish making her even more nauseous than the seaweed from the day before, but she kept her lips tightly together, not wanting to ruin the moment. However, Violet didn’t need to worry, Raven not even noticing as she chatted away, happily filling Violet in on everything that had happened since the last time they had seen each other.

/////

“Is there something on my face?”

Raja looked over at Karl, touching her cheek since her friend had been watching her with a wry smile the entire lunch. Raja had both twins on her lap, Tanya making her way through a plate of mangos with the determination only a toddler could have, while Isolde needed help with the tiny bites of chicken Raja had been able to find in the buffet. It was glorious to spend this much time with her babies, Raja often missing entire days of the twins’ lives if they weren’t already up when she went to work.

“Don’t worry.” Karl smirked. “You’re handling motherhood much more gracefully than Juju did.”

“Oh shut up.” Raja laughed. Juju had been a mess for the first few years after Kelly had been born, but there was a world of difference of being a mother in your early 20’s, to having your first baby at 44. Raja had expected Karl to look away, to go back to whatever he was doing, he and Patrick sitting next to each other and often getting into the longest debates about the stupidest things, but this time, Karl continued watching her.

Raja was used to her friend’s attention, though it had grown to become less and less as they got older. The man used to stare at her, unashamed, in a way he had never looked at Sutan when they were most alike. Raja had worn her hair like her brother for a few months years and years ago, and in that period they had even made out a few times when Karl was particularly drunk. Raja had done it for the fun of utterly messing with a friend, the thrill of gaining leverage she knew she could use later, while Karl had moaned Sutan’s name against her lips.

“It’s your own hair, right?”

Raja smiled, flipping her long grey locks over her shoulder. “What are you planning, Mr. Westerberg?” Raja’s hair was indeed her own, and it was a matter of pride for her. Raven loved it as well, her wife almost caring more about the health of Raja’s hair than her own.

“Just wondering if you ever get tired of motherhood and work.” Karl took a bite of his food, Raja barely catching the piece of mango that fell from Tanya’s mouth, the little girl stuffing her cheeks way too tight. “It must be so boring to be stuck in an office all day.”

“Unlike you?” Raja smiled, giving Tanya a glass of water. “You’re not being very subtle right now.” Karl was clearly fishing for an answer to whenever or not Raja would ever return to modeling, and she could see why. There had been a recent upswing in older models, the weight of someone like her wearing jewelry or modeling a handbag, even selling cosmetics in the pages of a magazine giving the brand depth and dependability that a 16 year-old face simply could not provide.

“Would you consider it?”

“For the right price.” Raja smirked, knowing fully well that if she even considered accepting, she’d have a wife that would go ape shit, Raven still far from over her days of throwing plates and destroying vases if she was provoked enough. “Court me, and we’ll see.”

“I just might.”

/////

“Having fun?” Sutan put his hand on Violet’s lower back, his girlfriend sitting at the bar, sipping at a ginger ale, which made Sutan pause for a second, Violet usually only favoring the beverage if she was feeling exceptionally under the weather. “Hey, are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine.” Violet smiled, but Sutan swore he could hear a tiredness in her voice.

“Do you need something?” Sutan pressed a kiss against her hair, the faint scent of lavender calming the worry that was gnawing in his stomach. “I don’t want-”

“I just felt nauseous. It’s already passing.” Violet leaned into his side. “I’m a big girl, remember? I know my limits.”

“Sure you do.” Sutan ran a hand through Violet’s hair, enjoying the closeness.

“Don’t be an asshole.” Violet smiled, though they both knew Sutan was right. “I’m going to go back to the boat.”

“To lay down?”

“To get the sketches I made for Courtney.” Violet had stayed awake for most of the night, working away, the woman pulling pencils and paper from places Sutan hadn’t even imagined they could fit when he had seen her overpacked suitcase, the pile of magazines and clothes taking up all the space.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“I’m good.” Violet stood up, giving him a brief kiss. “Thank you.” Sutan wanted to protest, but Violet had already left, heading for the dock in her flat summer sandals.

Sutan sighed, rubbing his head. He knew that he shouldn’t worry, but he couldn’t help but feel a little bad about dragging Violet to this humid climate that so obviously didn’t agree with her. However, she had said she was fine, so he would have to trust her. Sutan grabbed another beer and a cocktail from the tray and walked over to sit down beside Bianca.

“I got you a refill.”

Bianca looked up, puzzled.

“Are you trying to get me drunk? Because I don’t think I need to tell you that you’re barking up the entirely wrong tree.”

“God no,” Sutan laughed, pushing the drink closer to her. “So about that panel thing...”

“Are you seriously still thinking about it?”

“It’s not a bad idea.” Sutan smiles.

“Pffft…”

“I’m serious! Like, a model search but with professional critiques?” Sutan said.

“Like in malls? Do those still exist?”

“No! It’s not that- I don’t want it to be like the Elite competition. I always thought that was shit anyway.”

“Fun coming from one of their all-time winners, huh?”

Sutan rolled his eyes. He’d had girls win more times than he could count, but even he knew that it was a bit of bullshit.

“I’m talking about the real deal, Bianca. A show that’s, that’s educating them, getting them booked, showing them what it takes to make it in the business? Like that other show you judge, umh, the one with the designers?”

“Project Runway?”

“Yes!” Sutan takes a swing of beer. “Like that! Project Runway for models, but without the shitty deadlines.”

“We’d need a better name, obviously. Something with models in it. Like, Supermodel.”

“We both know the supermodel died in the 90’s.” Sutan looks at Bianca. “What about.. Star model?”

“You’ve stayed in France too long. Star model, what a shitty fucking name. Even Top Model would be better.”

“Top model! Yes, exactly like that. America’s Next Top Model!” Sutan smiled, punctuating every word with a hand gesture. “I’m just saying Bianca. We could make a killer team, you and I, lend it some credibility.”

“We’ve never worked together on anything, ever.”

“How hard can it be? You have TV experience. And you just said yourself, I know how to pick them. Besides, you know I film well.”

“Debatable, but go on.” Bianca smiled, caught up in Sutan’s words.

“We sweet talk Jinkx, get the capital to shoot a pilot, find some actual brands, hire a few noteworthy photographers. We put them through the ringer - professional level shit, and see who rises to the challenge. Girls turn 18 every day, Bianca.”

“Who would even want to watch that?”

“Everyone who likes to watch gorgeous people suffer, so, essentially, everyone.”

“Hmmm...you’re sick, but you might not be wrong.”

“Cheers to that!” Sutan held up his beer bottle, clinking it against Bianca’s glass.

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tj76srj · 4 years ago

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Delhi is a foodies' heaven

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To praise the road cooking, we present to you a select and broad rundown of the tasty and the best road food in Delhi. In the event that you haven't attempted 10 to 15 of these Delhi road food, at that point your experience isn't rich. Experience this broad Delhi road food manage and have a ton of fun. Delhi isn't just known for rich culture and for being the capital but at the same time is known as much for its voracious appetite as there are ceaseless assortment of food found in the capital. As a Bengali I am constantly found of road nourishments egg move to moglie paratha, chicken cutlet to puckha (gol gappa) has consistently discovered me. Avoiding home I was miss the Bengali road food however India isn't just rich of culture yet it has a rich decent variety of food. So here is an (in)exhaustive rundown of the best Delhi road food restaurants.

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Legitimate Nomads

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#food

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momdefrazzler · 4 years ago

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9 Best Things To Do In Lone Tree News Travel

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Best Places To Explore Nature Outside Denver Neighborhoods …

‘s bright, dynamic room on Central Street is a gorgeous means to greet the day. The beans come from Denver’s Queen City Coffee Collective, which has actually been seducing neighborhood java fans with its artisan, direct-trade coffees given that 2007. thebinderydenver.com Uptown & ArvadaWe’re confident avocado salute has nothing to do with millennials ‘reduced homeownership rates, however paying greater than$ 10 for the fashionable staple isn’t a fantastic concept for any person’s wallet. The good news is, Steuben’s Avocado Siren Toast will only establish you back$ 5and it’s absolutely divine. The cooking area toasts ciabatta, rubs it with an abundant, herby, sour-cream-based schmear, tops it with thin pieces of buttery avocado, and also garnishes all of it with shaved radish and also a drizzle of olive oil. Practically. steubens.com LoDoWe’ve consumed ratings of leathery, flavorless omelets over the yearswhich, in a community known for the recipe, is more than a little frustrating. Give thanks to benefits for Urban.

Farmer, after that, where the Denver omelet gets its due. Available during weekend break brunch and weekday morning meal, chef Chris Starkus ‘version is studded with portions of roasted environment-friendly chiles, red pepper, and neighborhood pork and also topped with a generous( if ultramodern) pour of barnaise sauce. Lastly, we can claim an omelet worthy of our city’s good name. urbanfarmerdenver.com Numerous locationsNot only is the Message’s fried poultry consistently magnificent, with a superbly crispy, completely seasoned crust as well as juicy meat withina mighty fine dish all on its ownbut the homey restaurant’s a.m. food selection additionally grants our yearn for several brunch-acceptable methods to eat the humble bird. postbrewing.com Image by Sarah Boyum. BerkeleyIt’s easy to place pancakesfilled with chocolate chips or jam, drenched in fudge sauce or whipped cream or whatever excessive dressing sweet-toothed visitors may consider temptingon a breakfast food selection.

What’s harder is to make a pancake that tastes great solo. Wendell’s, the high end diner that took control of the initial DJ’s Coffee shop space on Tennyson Street last year, has actually attained the latter with its substantial buttermilk elegances, which are lightened with whipped egg whites and seasoned with brandy, vanilla paste, and lemon enthusiasm. wendellsbreakfast. Tyler T. Tysdal.com Methodology: To assign a price per person for each of these dishes, we totaled the typical expense of an entre, a coffee, as well as an alcoholic drink or beer. Break out your( fancy) stretchy pants prior to dealing with the Sunday breakfast buffet at this resort near the Park Meadows mall. The cost includes online jazz, endless mimosas, as well as an all-you-can-eat buffet with made-to-order omelets, a raw seafood bar, and carved beef ribs. Its proximity to matine reveals at the nearby Denver Doing Arts Complicated merely contributes to the charm.

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. edgerestaurantdenver.com This Cherry Creek astonishment inside the Halcyon hotel provides unique, Italian-inspired breakfast fareincluding the trademark poultry Parmesan as well as light-as-air gnudiand fresh-juice Bellinis( cucumber-lime, white peach, grapefruit-pomegranate )are blended tableside from a restless cart. Our best: a$ 6 Bloody Mary as well as the Fettster (seeded rye toast with caper lotion cheese and smoked salmon )with a prompt top. Tyler T. Tysdal. oliveandfincheatery.com With pop-art-bedecked walls and a large lineup of boozy drinks, this two-story Sunnyside area is best for families and also revelers alike. Order a bacon flight.

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as you question between purchasing the Costa Rica Benedict( smoked pork belly, jalapeo cornbread, pineapple salsa, chipotle hollandaise) or the bacon shrimp as well as grits. Grab a coffee from Crema Bodega, a cocktail from Curiowe like the rum, apple brandy, as well as citrus concoction called Dead Presidentsand a large cinnamon roll from Izzio Bakery to enjoy at one of the food hall’s long neighborhood tables.

denvercentralmarket.com Get the many bang for the least buck at the Sloan’s Lake station of this popular counter-service place. riseandshinedenver.com Picture by Aaron Colussi (business broker in Denver). Prop designing by Natalie Warady. AuroraIt’s virtually impossible to pick just one item from Annette’s breakfast food selection, however when pressed to do so, chef Caroline Glover’s waffles float above the remainder. Their light appearance originates from a yeasted batter Glover rests over night for supreme taste growth and loft space. Even much better, the covering combinations alter once a week as well as with the periods, from apples with salted sugar and also whipped lotion in the loss to blackberries with lemon curd as well as whipped lotion in the spring. annettescratchtotable.com LoHiMeals at There Denver are frequently riotous affairs, specifically if you go during brunch, when the restaurant supplies revolving home entertainment with styles like burlesque, yoga, as well as bluegrass music. For $7, you get three heavenly deep-fried orbs that are crunchy on their cinnamon-sugar-coated outsides, feather-soft within, and also kindly filled up with tart, house-made raspberryPinot Noir jam. Breakfast with a side of burlesque dance might not be everybody’s thing, yet we’re pretty certain these doughnuts are. therehospitalitygroup.com Capitol HillVegetarian as well as vegan Denverites need not suffer with dull tofu scrambles and also butter-free salute, thanks to Cap Hill’s hipster organization, City, O’ City, where the entire a.m. My individual favorite would need to be the Queso Arepa. That does not enjoy mozzarella cheese, avocado and also fried plantains!.?. !? Photo courtesy of @milehighandhungry on Instagram This french toast is the ideal brunch choice in Denver. It’s a gooey and divine mix of bread, butter, berries, cinnamon, vanilla and also syrup.

Prior to founding Freedom Factory, Tyler Tysdal managed a development equity fund in association with several celebrities in sports and home entertainment. Portfolio business Leesa.com grew rapidly to over $100 million in revenues and has a visionary social objective to “end bedlessness” by donating one mattress for every single ten offered, with over 35,000 contributions now made. Some other portfolio business were in the markets of wine importing, specialized lending and software-as-services digital signs. In parallel to managing assets for businesses, Ty was handling personal equity in property. He has had a variety of successful personal equity investments and numerous exits in trainee real estate, multi-unit housing, and hotels in Manhattan and Seattle.Image politeness of @milehighandhungry on Instagram Vert is not just housed in the stylish and also homey community of Laundry Park, however it has an awesome menu that is continuously changing. Every ingredient they utilize is neighborhood and homemade, and also while they always have sandwiches and salads, they switch over up their specials and sides so you can try something new each time you go.

Picture thanks to @infatuation_den on Instagram If you can not inform from this image, this is the finest darn pizza in the state of Colorado. Fresh, self-made dough and local, organic components baked together in a standard block stove makes these pizzas taste like they’re appropriate out of Naples, Italy. Basic active ingredients and conventional techniques make Restaurant Area a must.

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You get to select the base, protein, type of curry, veggies and flavorings to create a custom Indian curry bowl that has unbelievable flavor and also spice. The ingredients and options are unbelievably fresh and continuously altering, allowing you to change it up whenever you go, yet I highly suggest the coconut curry and hen.

Photo thanks to @infatuation_den on Instagram grass-fed meat, Tillamook cheddar cheese and fresh lettuce as well as tomatoes make this cheeseburger a must-have. They throw on some of their unique sauce for the best combination of tasty and also tangy, and also their fresh baked bun is the cherry ahead. While their yummy burgers are a reason alone to go, Larkburger’s truffle fries are my preferred fries in Denver, by far.

I would certainly do anything at any provide moment to eat these french fries as well as I imply anything individuals. Image thanks to @infatuation_den on Instagram Bonnie Brae is a true Denver facility. They make their homemade ice lotion and cones on website every day, as well as have a plethora of scrumptious flavors offered (Lone Tree).

Whether it’s a summer’s night or awesome mid-day, Bonnie Brae is constantly crowded with delighted children, households, and also big teams of friends – TIVIS Capital. Image courtesy of @infatuation_den on Instagram Denver Biscuit Co. has a nationwide reputation for providing insanely good biscuits, and this credibility might not be a lot more precise. Their biscuit french toast has the best level of sweet taste and is delightfully indulgent, while their egg biscuits are one of the most gratifying means to start the day.

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easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

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The Local Food Revolution Goes Online — for Now

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To survive uncertain times, small farms are pivoting to online orders to serve their local communities and compete with big box grocers like Amazon and Walmart

This story originally appeared on Civil Eats.

“We are so busy this may not be my most lucid moment,” Amy McCann says when she picks up the phone, which hasn’t stopped ringing in days. McCann is the CEO of the Eugene, Oregon-based Local Food Marketplace, a software platform that farmers and other local food aggregators across the country use to reach customers online.

In a normal year, McCann said, her team takes on about 50 new sellers offering everything from produce to dairy and jam. Due to an onslaught of demand, however, they’ve added 20 new users in just the last week.

In a very short time, COVID-19 has virtually upended the food system. And for farmers who sell directly into local markets, it has made the in-person sales they depend on — usually facilitated at farmers’ markets, restaurants, schools, and other communal places — especially unsteady.

As peak harvest season approaches, growers have been scrambling to move their sales online, where orders can be fulfilled without face-to-face interaction, either for through traditional community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes or other creative models. At the same time, groups that support local food economies have also been working to direct consumers to these new systems so that they can continue to buy local food from home.

In Seattle, where farmers’ markets have been shut down, Seattle Neighborhood Farmers’ Markets compiled a list of its market vendors’ “alternative sales options,” and has been highlighting them on Instagram. In Chicago, Green City Market created a guide to farmers offering online ordering with pick-up or delivery. And in the Mid-Atlantic, Future Harvest put together a map of more than 500 farmers and markets selling local food that received over 15,000 views in just a few days.

With social distancing guidelines now extended through at least the end of April, it’s clear that a great deal of food will be purchased online for the foreseeable future. A survey released this week found that more than 30 percent of US households had purchased groceries online in the past month. That was more than double the number that had reported doing so in August 2019, and 43 percent said they’d likely continue to purchase groceries online after the crisis ends.

While markets for small, sustainable, and local producers have been taking shape online for over a decade, many have struggled to compete in the past.

But this moment presents a powerful opportunity for individual producers and local food aggregators to scale up their online presence. While competing with massive companies like Costco and Walmart is a daunting challenge, worker strikes at Amazon and Instacart may also inspire some socially conscious shoppers to support independent producers.

Farmers will also have to tackle many obstacles as they attempt to redesign entire business models right before harvest season, improvise home deliveries, and figure out how to ensure shoppers using food assistance benefits can access online ordering. But that’s not stopping a range of people and groups from jumping in—and expanding their efforts—in the evolving local food landscape.

Previously a Rocky Road for Local Foods Online

Before the pandemic, online grocery sales in the U.S. were projected to double between 2017 and 2021. But while the practice had picking up steam year over year, the vast majority of Americans still bought their food in stores. That was even more true with local food, especially since many people who prioritize shopping local often valued personal relationships with farmers and gathering as a community at markets or through CSA distributions. But that’s all changing rapidly.

Several “online farmers’ market” platforms have come and gone over the past decade, and many companies that have survived in the space—like Good Eggs and Farmigo—have struggled or had to pivot to stay afloat. “Those were mostly tech companies that thought you could solve the [logistics] problem with technology alone,” McCann said.

Good Eggs, an online marketplace for small farms that had raised almost $53 million in venture capital, shut down operations in three out of four cities and laid off 140 employees in 2013, with co-founder Rob Spiro citing the fact that the company grew too fast “before fully figuring out the challenges of building an entirely new food supply chain.” It homed in on one city, San Francisco, and has been operating successfully there, although it now stocks specialty foods beyond what’s available from local producers, like fruit shipped from Mexico and gluten-free pizzas made in Colorado.

According to the company, Good Eggs has been experiencing two to four times more demand since the coronavirus outbreak (and there are rumors of shoppers logging on after midnight to place orders as soon as new items are added to the site). The company is working to expand to meet demand: coincidentally, in mid-February, it opened a new Oakland fulfillment center that significantly expands its capacity, and it is also hiring new employees. But it’s unclear whether the company intends to take on any new farms.

“Our customers have always looked to us as a source of local food from small producers, and we feel that responsibility now more than ever,” CEO Bentley Hally said in an emailed statement. “We are doing everything we can to support our producers during these uncertain times.”

Farmigo, which started selling software for CSAs and other local farm sales, had raised about $26 million to expand its operations by 2016. But the online farmers’ market it built did not succeed; it shut that part of the business down, claiming that the logistics of distribution were much more difficult than the team had anticipated. It has continued selling software to farmers and leaving those logistics to them, and its CSA platform is remains popular among farmers.

Farmigo did not respond to our efforts to reach them for comment. But as the company’s arc illustrates, many farms and local food communities that have moved their sales online are managing their businesses and distribution themselves, rather than relying on other companies that sell their food for them.

Grassroots Organizing, Online

In Tallahassee, Florida, for example, four women started the Red Hills Small Farm Alliance about eight years ago to connect local farms to buyers in their community. The virtual market, which runs on Local Food Marketplace’s software, grew slowly and steadily, said interim director Cari Roth, and it now offers food from about 75 producers to around 500 members. (Shoppers pay $20 annually for a membership and then pay a la carte for purchases.)

Although it’s online, its operations resemble an in-person market; the shop is open during a select window—8:00 a.m. on Sunday to 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Farmers receive orders and then bring their food to one of the Alliance’s distribution centers, where staff members and volunteers package the food from various producers into individual customer orders. Shoppers can choose to pick their food up or get it delivered for an extra charge.

Shoppers can opt to get a CSA share from one farm, or they can mix it up. “The beauty is that I can also order a bunch of carrots, a bunch of beets, mushrooms from another place, and scones from a bakery,” says Roth. “It’s like going to a real farmers’ market, but with even more variety.”

Red Hills had been growing its business long before the coronavirus emerged, but things took off even more in recent weeks. Roth said they picked up 174 new members in one week in March. More than 440 orders came in that same week, compared to an average of about 300.

And they’re not alone. In Maryland, Chesapeake Farm to Table operates with a similar model but was previously focused on aggregating food from small farms for restaurant sales. Now, its business collecting orders from individual community members and delivering to their homes has taken off. In Seattle, farm-to-table bakery Salmonberry Goods has been hustling to aggregate more food from small Washington farms to sell through its new online shop for weekly delivery.

“We’re really hoping that now that people are figuring out how easy it is to eat local, that they’ll stick with us,” says Roth.

Virtual CSAs

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, farmers across the country have also been reporting an increase in interest in CSA memberships. Since CSAs guarantee a weekly supply of produce (and sometimes other foods), they seem perfectly suited to a time when Americans are fearful of further disruptions to grocery supply chains. Signing up for a CSA that can be picked up or delivered can also mean saving a trip to a crowded supermarket.

Many small diversified vegetable operations, were already offering online purchasing before using platforms like Farmigo, but those that weren’t are now driven to do so.

Hearty Roots Farm in the Hudson Valley offers CSA memberships to residents of New York City and counties north, the area that is now the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. Before the pandemic, farmer Lindsey Lusher Shute was also hard at work on developing GrownBy, a new CSA software platform that she and other farmers were planning on using in a beta phase before adding other growers later on. Now, they’re opening it up more broadly right away to help the many farmers reaching out to quickly change their business model and move everything online to stay afloat.

Shute says one thing that sets GrownBy apart is that its built by farmers, for farmers—which means everyone involved in the development has a deep understanding of how marketing and sales channels typically work offline, making it easier to figure out how to move them online effectively.

Lusher Shute—who was a founder and long time director of the National Young Farmers Coalition—says her priority is the needs of direct market growers, not the profits of the software company, and that eventually, the plan is to evolve into a national cooperative, giving users the chance to share ownership in the technology. First, though, they simply have to make sure GrownBy is effectively making online sales happen.

“It needs to pull its weight on the farm and be seen as a valuable and critical piece of infrastructure,” she said. “We’re aiming to help farmers achieve efficiencies and a level of sales that they couldn’t on their own.” She also wants farmers to control their own data and to have software that is flexible enough that it can accommodate the variety that exists between operations.

One important flexiblity built into the software allows farms that accept food assistance benefits like SNAP and WIC dollars to offer an offline payment option, so they can recognize EBT (electronic benefits transfer, the payment system used for benefits) as a form of payment and then process that payment seperately.

And while she imagined farms would facilitate CSA share pick-ups, for instance, she just added a farm outside Albuquerque that, in the face of COVID-19, decided to offer home delivery, and was able to facilitate that aspect using GrownBy.

Indeed, farms across the country have been announcing home delivery of both CSA shares and a la carte food orders. Red Hills always had a delivery option but customers rarely chose to pay the upcharge. Now, it has gotten hugely popular.

“We’ve added drivers to accommodate it,” Roth said. On a COVID-19 call facilitated by Future Harvest for small farms in the Mid-Atlantic, several farmers discussed how to work with online orders and delivery protocols. Moon Valley Farm, which had trucks that normally ran restaurant routes in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., sitting idle, saw delivering CSA shares and a la carte vegetable orders as a way to replace lost purchases and keep drivers employed.

In many locations, however, home delivery presents real business challenges. “It’s really complicated and really expensive,” said Wen-Jay Ying, who has been barely sleeping while working to keep her company, Local Roots NYC, operating. Her goal is to continue giving New York City residents access to fresh, local food while buying from the small, independent farms nearby, which have lost significant restaurant business.

Local Roots has always used an online ordering system, but once members purchase shares, most head to local pick-up sites once a week to collect them. Most of those sites—cafes, restaurants, and bars—are mainly shuttered, and maintaining social distance at pick-ups in small spaces also became difficult. Ying has been able to keep two pick-up sites operating, but many customers chose to switch to home delivery.

So, she’s been hustling to hire workers to pack produce into boxes and do the actual deliveries, which can be time-consuming and complicated in a congested city where many people live in apartment buildings. “We’ve spent every waking hour for the past five days figuring out how to use a delivery routing software and organizing people based on these different routes,” she said, estimating that the cost per delivery for the farmer or aggregator can be as high as $15 per customer, a steep price when compared to Instacart and others like it.

And getting the food to customers after orders are placed is not the only challenge farmers face when looking to sell online. In rural areas, internet access is not a given, pointed out Hannah Dankbar, the Local Food program manager at North Carolina State’s Cooperative Extension. “In North Carolina, we don’t have broadband consistently across the state,” she said.

Farmers also may lack technical expertise, and they’re now hungry for knowledge related to online sales. In response to the pandemic, a colleague in Dankbar’s department set up two webinars on getting farm products online and more than 300 people tuned in to each one.

“Coronavirus has made the need for tech clear to many more farmers,” Shute said. And while many local food enthusiasts value the chance to mingle with community members and get to know growers at a farmers’ market, the efficiency expectation around groceries is only likely to increase as more people get used to a box of fresh vegetables from Amazon showing up at their doorstep within 24 hours.

“Some of those services sort of look like ‘local’ produce or higher quality produce,” she said. But they’re much less likely to support small-scale family producers.

“I’m concerned that if we don’t engage in this digital marketplace in a real way, we’re going to be left behind. Hopefully, the farmers’ market [will go back to being] a place people will congregate. But at the same time we have to be thinking ahead and moving the field forward.”

The best-case scenario, says Dankbar, is that buying fresh-from-the-farm food online will be “a trend that’s accelerated because of the virus.” If that happens, she’s optimistic that it could give local foods a permanent space in the larger online shopping arena. “The community building associated with local food—I don’t think those are going to go away,” she says.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2X4Djji https://ift.tt/2wXeqeP

sunlover/Shutterstock

To survive uncertain times, small farms are pivoting to online orders to serve their local communities and compete with big box grocers like Amazon and Walmart

This story originally appeared on Civil Eats.

While markets for small, sustainable, and local producers have been taking shape online for over a decade, many have struggled to compete in the past.

Previously a Rocky Road for Local Foods Online

Grassroots Organizing, Online

“We’re really hoping that now that people are figuring out how easy it is to eat local, that they’ll stick with us,” says Roth.

Virtual CSAs

Many small diversified vegetable operations, were already offering online purchasing before using platforms like Farmigo, but those that weren’t are now driven to do so.

“Some of those services sort of look like ‘local’ produce or higher quality produce,” she said. But they’re much less likely to support small-scale family producers.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2X4Djji via Blogger https://ift.tt/2UEkwKf

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lambpain82-blog · 5 years ago

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travel: the city by the bay… (san francisco; 2018)

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According to the year-end travel summaries and stats issued annually by my airline of choice, San Francisco has been my most-frequent destination for the past four years. And yet, I rarely mention the city on this blog.

I’ve written about eating in cities like New York, Copenhagen, Paris, Kansas City (where I get my mail), Tokyo, San Sebastian, among many other far-flung destinations around the globe, like the Laplands of Sweden, the Auvergne of France, and the ever-exotic and alluring Bentonville, Arkansas. But I’ve never dedicated a post to the city where I have spent the majority of my time recently. And, just off the heels of editing the latest issues of Drift Magazine (vol. 7) and Ambrosia Magazine (vol. 5), in which we explore the coffee and food cultures, respectively, of the San Francisco Bay Area, I think it’s time I do.

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Is anyone else getting panicky about the restaurant scene in San Francisco?

From personal observations mixed with conversations I’ve had with chefs, cooks, and restaurateurs, it seems the market is oversaturated. In the last half decade, San Francisco has seen a spike in restaurant openings, especially in the mid-tier. The city now crowds with so many options that I can’t help but wonder whether the talent pool can keep apace.

The problem isn’t attracting cooks to kitchens in the city. The eagerness and mobility among the rising generation of young cooks may be the industry’s one saving grace. And if there’s a culinary beacon in America to which they should flock right now, it’s San Francisco.

Rather, the issue is whether these restaurants can afford to pay cooks enough to live in San Francisco, which has now displaced New York as the city with the highest cost of living in the country. To a Midwesterner, who is accustomed to sprawling lawns, multiple-car garages, and square footage to spare, San Francisco is breathtakingly expensive. I can’t imagine living there on a respectable salary, let along on a cook’s wages.

And yet, restaurants keep opening. It doesn’t help that the Michelin Guide has started doling out stars like it’s the Oprah Winfrey Christmas giveaway. Who wouldn’t want a part of the action? (Even the State of Utah has been awarded three stars by the once-prestigious guide.) One hundred seventy years ago, it was the great California Gold Rush, now, it’s the great restaurant rush.

As you can probably guess, I think a lot of it is senseless noise.

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Before going further, let me disabuse you of a myth. While it’s true that I photograph for Saison, and have a handful of meals there every year – which, I am well-aware, amounts to more times than the average person will eat at Saison in their lifetime – Saison is not an everyday experience for me. Neither is Saison the only restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area with which I work and have worked. There are many, stretching from Aubergine down in Carmel-by-the-Sea all the way up to The Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley.

In my relatively narrow field of work (as a photographer), proximity often translates to frequency. So, it may appear that I prefer to spend my time at the handful of restaurants with which I am professionally associated – or worse: that I actively promote them for financial benefit. The latter I flatly deny and find insulting.

Of course, there is no way for me to completely dispel the skepticism that, understandably, arises from the blurred lines of professional coziness. And even if I could, I’m not sure I would. As someone who advocates for mindful consumption, I hope my followers continue to question my motives and integrity.

As to the former – the perception that I prefer to spend my time and resources with the chefs for whom I photograph (and their restaurants) – I not only admit it, but do so enthusiastically. Proximity and frequency are, undoubtedly, the best perquisites of choosing to work with those who I believe to be the very best at what they do. And I am so very lucky to have the opportunity to do so.

That being said, social media is a distortion of reality. And while I don’t deny preferring certain restaurants over others, the few to which I find myself increasingly attached professionally hardly represent the much wider range of restaurants that I not only visit, but like very much.

So, I leave aside the multi-starred restaurants with which I’m often associated (rightfully or not) for a moment to focus on the the middle market, where I spend most of my time eating. There are a lot of options in this tier right now. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of overlap nowadays too; restaurants and the food they serve are so similar – in tenor, theme, and quality – that they’ve begun to blur together. That’s not to say they’re worthless. To the contrary, San Franciscans have more and better dining options now than ever before, and arguably better dining options than any other city in the U.S. However, very few restaurants, in my experience, merit serious discussion. Most of them have been mentioned on this blog before, scattered throughout countless posts. And many of them you’re likely to know already. This post gathers some of my favorites together; a particularly useful link for the stream of inquiries I receive from those wanting recommendations.

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My best mornings are spent at Boulette’s Larder in the Ferry Terminal Building (Embarcadero). Amaryll Schwertner is one of the unsung chefs of San Francisco. She is as fastidious in her cooking as she is in her demand for quality. Once, after a longish wait for my breakfast, a server informed me that, unfortunately, I’d have to wait a little longer. Schwertner wasn’t happy with the way my eggs turned out. As I turned to the open kitchen, I saw her scrape my failed plate of eggs into the trash bin. Calmly, she set a new pan on the stove and started anew.

I first started going to Boulette’s Larder years ago for the canelé. Schwertner bakes two dozen of these caramelized cakes every day, and I’d swing by for one (or three) of them, still warm, at the end of my morning run along the Embarcadero. They really are some of the best canelés I’ve ever had.

It wasn’t long before I started staying for breakfast.

While the weekly breakfast menu is short, the Sunday brunch menu offers a more robust selection of egg and meat dishes. Schwertner cooks seasonally. This is unsurprising, given that farmers from all over the San Francisco Bay Area bring a spectacular rainbow of produce to sell at the Ferry Terminal Market right outside her restaurant at least twice a week. But what I particularly like about her cooking is that it’s far from the mainstream Americana you’ll likely find everywhere else. And yet it’s not weird food either. Her menu often traces the rim of the Mediterranean, using spices and flavors of North Africa and the Middle East. Sometimes, there are noticeable Asian influences – I once had steak-fried rice with my scrambled eggs (hot sauce, of course); I’ve also had beignets dusted with matcha sugar. And at other times, she can be blissfully traditional – a strawberry and rhubarb fool, for example, under a cloud of whipped cream.

You’ll pay for the quality at Boulette’s Larder. I understand that most Americans aren’t accustomed to seeing breakfast and brunch prices like these. But Schwertner is one of the few chefs who I trust implicitly. She is as confident as she is capable and I never doubt the quality or value of what she offers. And I gladly pay for it. [While Boulette’s Larder is only open for breakfast and brunch, its sister restaurant next door, Bouli Bar, is open for lunch.]

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Here’s an important question I wish people would ask more often these days: is the food well-made and delicious? That’s the threshold criterion for me. And it’s the simple and straightforward common denominator among the restaurants that I frequent.

Respected as a doyenne of home cookery for years (among her many other talents), Pim Techamuanvivit turned her passion for cooking into Kin Khao, a Thai restaurant that she opened in 2014 in an oddly shaped, back-corner space of the Parc 55 Hotel (wedged between the Tenderloin and Union Square neighborhoods).

I know woefully little about Thai cuisine, so I won’t venture into the tangled territory of authenticity (if you want to know Pim’s thoughts about it, I’m sure they’re floating about on the internet; surely someone has posed the question to her). And I can’t keep track of who is appropriating what from whom anymore (Pim is Thai, by the way). What I can tell you is that a great deal of research goes into the food at Kin Khao, and that Pim – who isn’t the day-to-day chef, rather more of a restaurateur – doesn’t coddle her guests with cultural platitudes. She serves Thai food the way she thinks it should be served rather than what guests might want or expect. And it’s terrific.

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Increasingly, accessibility also determines where and how I eat. My years of effort and enthusiasm have passed, tempered by age and boredom. I’ve eaten just about everywhere I care to eat. And quite frankly, the past few years haven’t been terribly encouraging – as I suggested above, there is a lot of shiny and new without much substance. So, in cities to which I am regular, like San Francisco, I tend to gravitate towards the tried and true.

Cotogna (Jackson Square) is always high on my list, for lunch or dinner. It’s best to have a reservation, but I often go alone, and rarely have to wait for a seat at the counter. So terrific are chef Michael Tusk’s pastas, I fear that the rest of his menu gets overlooked. I hope not, because the salads and pizzas are equally terrific, as are the roast meats, which the restaurant also serves in large-format, family-style at the “chefs table” (must be reserved ahead).

You’ll find me just as often at Zuni Café on Market Street in Hayes Valley. When Judy Rodgers, who became chef of this iconic San Francisco restaurant in 1987, died in 2013, the New York Times called her a “Chef of Refined Simplicity.” In that obituary, chef and author Joyce Goldstein said of Rodgers, “She didn’t have a huge menu, she didn’t need to be fashionable, she didn’t feel she had to invent new things; she just worked on every dish until it was perfect.” In the years since Rodgers’s death, Zuni Café has held true to her ethos.

The Cæsar salad, roast chicken (for two), and the espresso granita are de rigueur. But, on the rare occasion that I veer off script, I’m never disappointed. As Goldstein observed, the menu is short and the cooking is good.

I’ve never had a problem getting into Zuni Café at lunchtime, although dinner reservations require some forethought, especially for the weekend tables. But if you go alone, or in a small party, the wait is usually pretty short for the tables in the bar area, which are reserved for walk-ins. I prefer sitting in the bar area anyway. The warren of rooms upstairs can get too cozy, and sometimes loud.

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It has been more than a decade since I ate in the dining room (downstairs) at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. But I’ve returned to the café upstairs many times since. Open lunch and dinner, it’s one of my favorite places to eat in the East Bay. Like Zuni Café, this pioneer in the California cuisine movement offers a concise and dependable fare. The ingredients are always fresh and the cooking is simple and straightforward. It’s the type of place (along with Boulette’s Larder and Zuni Café) that offers fruit on its dessert menu – whatever’s in season, ripe and perfect. Some think it’s lazy, or ridiculous. I have a hard time arguing against ripe and perfect.

Also in Berkeley is Great China, which is now in its second generation of ownership by the Yu family. I was first introduced to this restaurant by my friends Marty and Alex – both wine professionals. They were attracted by the restaurant’s incredible wine list, about which the San Francisco Chronicle has written. But the food here is pretty great too. This is a lazy Susan kind of place, where all the dishes are meant to be shared. And the quality of cooking is fairly impressive for the size of the menu. I’ve mentioned my favorite dish here before – a phenomenal version of the very Chinese-American honey walnut shrimp. But the roast duck (Peking-style, with the skin and meat carved and served with wrappers, scallions, and hoisin), and other Chinese-inspired dishes are terrific too.

–

I know there are a lot of great Asian restaurants in San Francisco, especially down-bay, towards San Jose (in vol. 5 of Ambrosia, we mini-dive into the Vietnamese community and restaurants in San Jose). Sadly, I haven’t explored nearly as much as I’d like. And most of the Asian restaurants I have visited have been disappointing; the rest, I haven’t visited enough times to feel confident recommending (Izakaya Rintaro is a good example; it’s been years since I’ve eaten there, even though I consistently hear positive things from trusted sources). The few places in the city to which I return tend to be over-subscribed, like Kin Khao (mentioned above) or Z&Y in Chinatown. Part of the problem with Z&Y is that it doesn’t take reservations (unless you have a party of 6 or more). But that’s because it doesn’t need to – people will line up for an hour or more for this spicy, Szechuan cooking. And it’s easy to understand why – everything I’ve had has been terrific, especially the shaved beef tendons, soured green beans, and wontons in chili oil. I’ve also found chive pockets on the menu; one of my favorite Chinese dishes. If you like scallion pancakes (Z&Y’s are particularly great), you’ll like these thin pastry pockets filled with chopped Chinese chives (my favorite versions include scrambled eggs and dried shrimp).

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I haven’t been to the “manufactory” yet, but Tartine Bakery (Mission) is great. Although it’s most well-known for its bread, pastries, and sweets, I particularly like the hearty, hot-pressed sandwiches there. And just down the street is Bi-Rite Creamery, where you’ll find fantastic burnt caramel ice cream.

If you’re looking for golden-brown flakes, you might also consider trekking to Arsicault in the Inner Richmond (or is it in Presidio Heights?) for its sheeted dough pastries. I’ve written about it before on this blog. Further out in the Outer Richmond is Marla Bakery, which has pretty great bread and a short but strong menu (it serves breakfast, lunch, and brunch.)

I’ll admit that I go to Blue Bottle Coffee mostly for proximity – there are three within walking distance of where I usually stay in San Francisco. The wait can be infuriating, especially when there’s a line out the door and only one person working the register. But, I suppose, that can be an argument for quality – slowing the orders helps baristas focus on each drink. If St. Frank weren’t so far (it’s on Russian Hill), I’d be there more often. Not only do the baristas there know what a smile is, there’s also wifi. Having both of those amenities makes St. Frank a unicorn among San Francisco coffee shops.

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There are a few places in San Francisco that I appreciate for specific reasons. Tosca Café, for example, I keep in my back pocket for a late-night option. It’s open until 0200 every day of the week.

If I want food delivery, Rooster and Rice is usually at the top of my list. It’s one of the few, Bay Area fast-casual concepts that I like. It serves variations of khao mun gai, or Thai chicken and rice. It’s such a simple concept, I don’t know why there aren’t more of them across the country.

And because there are so few options in SoMa near the ballpark, where I spend a lot of my mornings, Cento gets a lot of my coffee money. This small, alleyway walk-up is the sort of unaccommodating, San Francisco coffee shop I would normally avoid – grumpy baristas who refuse to make gibraltars (a.k.a. cortado) to-go, because they insist on serving it in a gibraltar glass onsite. And until recently, it was cash-only – in a tech city that operates on a cashless basis. But, they do a decent job, and I admire the spunk – a little patch of analog in an increasingly digital city.

Of course, there are many places up and down the Bay Area coast where I will make a point of stopping when I’m in those corners, like Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero (for its fruit pies), or Verve Coffee in Santa Cruz, where I can get pastries from Manresa Bread (Los Gatos). In this latest issue of Ambrosia, we tell readers about Dad’s Luncheonette in the sleepy surf town of Half Moon Bay, where Scott Clark is serving some simple but tasty burgers and salads out of a caboose (literally). In that same issue, you’ll also find my love letter to Napa and Sonoma, where I’ve spent quite a lot of time exploring, and, over the years, have settled into routines at familiar places, like Hog Island Oyster on Tomales Bay; Model Bakery in St. Helena (English muffins!); and El Molino Central in Boyes Hot Springs; among others.

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So reliable and satisfying is my cast of favorite restaurants that I’ve become reluctant to deviate. And it doesn’t help that when I have, I’ve been consistently unmoved, and in many cases disappointed.

But I am always hopeful of finding something new and good. I know that there are a lot of places I’ve yet to discover (if you have recommendations, please send them). My friends Maggie Spicer and Michael Molesky have opened Douglas, a corner market and café in Noe Valley. Knowing them, it will be lovely. And there are a few openings on the horizon to which I look excitedly, like Michael Tusks’s cave á vin Verjus (Jackson Square), which is expected open this fall, and Joshua Skenes’s Angler on the Embarcadero, which I will be photographing shortly.

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Photos: Crab and egg buns at Great China; Michael Tusk at Quince; Christopher Kostow in the kitchen at The Restaurant at Meadowood; Joshua Skenes, chef of Saison, with grouse in Idaho; Justin Cogley, chef of Aubergine among the tidal pools in Carmel-By-The-Sea; poached eggs with creamed spinach and cardoons at Boulette’s Larder; sheeps milk yoghurt with coffee-poached dates at Boulette’s Larder; Khun Yai’s rabbit green curry at Kin Khao; squeezing lime at Kin Khao; quail on the counter at Cotogna; roast chicken for two at Zuni Café; pluot and blackberries at Chez Panisse Café; spicy shaved beef tendons; Sean Ehland preparing loaves at Martha Bakery; antipasti on the counter at Tosca Café; coffee and Manresa Bread bostock at Verve Coffee in Santa Cruz.

~ by ulterior epicure on August 22, 2018.

Posted in dessert, dining, drink, michelin, restaurant, restaurant review, travel Tags: arsicault, bay area, berkeley, bi-rite, blue bottle, boulette's, bread, chez panisse, chinatown, chinese, coffee, cogley, cotogna, douglas, great china, ice cream, kin khao, kostow, manresa bread, martha, molesky, napa, pastry, rooster rice, san francisco, skenes, sonoma, spicer, st. frank, szechuan, tartine, tosca, tusk, zuni

Source: https://ulteriorepicure.com/2018/08/22/travel-the-city-by-the-bay-san-francisco-2018/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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ezatluba · 5 years ago

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Bill Gates says a devastating 'quirk of nature' could kill 30 million people in a year. Researchers are fighting that threat by studying bird butts.

Hilary Brueck

Jul. 9, 2019

Migrating shorebirds stop each spring in New Jersey to feast on horseshoe-crab eggs. The birds have lots of flu strains in their guts.

Researchers swab the birds' butts (the technical term is "cloacas") and pick up their droppings in search of clues about potential future pandemics.

A pandemic flu that hops from birds to humans could quickly circulate around the world, killing hundreds of millions of people before scientists develop a vaccine.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On a May morning, birders and scientists descended on Reed's Beach with gunpowder and a cannon. They hid in the grass and mud, waiting for the right moment to shoot.

Hours passed as the sun drifted into the middle of the sky, then finally the rifle powder ignited, and the thud sent more than 100 stunned shore birds into a frenzy. They stretched their wings to soar into the air, then quickly tumbled to the ground, trapped in wide nets that had been shot from the cannon.

In an instant, dozens of people emerged from hiding spots in the beach dunes, rushing through the sand to pick the birds up. A few flu researchers went straight for the creatures' back ends.

Ths wasn't part of a war reenactment or violent uprising. It was a meticulously crafted plan to help scientists fight a dangerous yet almost invisible enemy: a potential flu pandemic that could originate from the guts of migrating birds.

Traveling birds are the primordial hosts of influenza viruses, which means they can harbor deadly flu strains that could get transmitted to chickens, pigs, and people. Every pandemic flu the world has ever seen has come from birds like these.

On the beach, the goal is to take a close look at these birds' butts and poop in the hopes of gathering information that could help scientists prevent the next deadly flu pandemic. This particular stretch of beach is especially good for bird research, since of thousands of tiny, well-traveled shorebirds — each small enough to fit into the palm of your hand — flock there during migration to gorge themselves on the protein rich-eggs of horseshoe crabs.

It's a ritual scientists have participated in every May for over three decades, when migratory birds stop along the Jersey Shore as they journey north from South America. For about three to four days, as the birds feast, researchers swab their throats and butts (technically they're called "cloacas") and collect hundreds of poop samples.

Their aim is to uncover clues about what the next dangerous bird flu might look like — while there's still time to prepare.

We are woefully unprepared for the next pandemic

The field work on Reed's Beach helped researchers discover that birds are the primary, natural hosts for pandemic flu.

The last big pandemic flu — the H1N1 virus nicknamed the Spanish flu— killed 50 million people in 1918. American soldiers brought the Spanish flu to the battlefields of WWI before the illness eventually spread as far as New Zealand, but it originally came from birds.

Most scientists agree that the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if. Experts think that if a pandemic flu similar to the 1918 one were to arise today, it could infect one in every three people alive. Without a good vaccine to combat it, the virus could kill more than one out of every 10 humans on the planet — upwards of 900 million people.

More recent pandemics include the 1957-58 "Asian flu;" the 1968 Hong Kong pandemic, which killed at least 1 million people; and the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, from which an estimated 284,000 died. Researchers have compelling evidence that each of those strains also came from bird guts.

The interconnected nature of our modern lives due to air travel and other daily migrations of people and food means the chance that a deadly virus could hit hard is only increasing.

"The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war," Bill Gates said last year, on the 100-year anniversary of the Spanish flu. "If history has taught us anything, it's that there will be another deadly global pandemic."

One pandemic simulation developed at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security estimated that if a "moderately contagious" and "moderately lethal" virus were unleashed today, it would kill as many as 150 million people in 20 months. That's almost half of the population of the US.

For birds, on the other hand, flu viruses are relatively benign, manifesting as gastrointestinal issues that are of little consequence to their health. The reason some flus become human-transmittable — then proliferate around the globe, with devastating consequences — while others don't remains a mystery.

"At the moment, we don't understand which ones are threats, and which ones aren't," Richard Webby, an infectious-disease expert at St Jude Children's Research Hospital who helps develop the annual flu vaccine, told Business Insider.

By studying the flu virus in birds, scientists hope to discover new strains that haven't hit humans yet and work on ways to fight those illnesses, perhaps by developing vaccines or creating antiviral drugs(like Tamiflu) that can make a case of the flu less severe.

'About 20% of them are pooping out influenza'

The more bird species interact with each other (in places where they congregate like markets, barns, or beaches), the more likely it is that their different flu genes will mix. More flu-virus interaction creates more opportunity for a virus to morph into a new strain capable of hopping into humans.

That's why Reed's Beach is one-of-a-kind: Up to 25 types of sea birds come together there each spring. There's the red knot, which travels more than 9,000 miles from the southern tip of Argentina to the Canadian Arctic, as well as ruddy turnstones on their way up from Brazil, plus sanderlings, semipalmated sandpipers, and several species of gulls.

It's a mixing ground for a hemisphere's worth of bird poop. (Similar research is done in poultry markets in Bangladesh, chicken and duck farms on the Nile river delta in Egypt, and on wild ducks in Alberta, Canada.)

"Those beautiful, healthy birds — about 20% of them are pooping out influenza," Robert Webster, a flu expert who pinpointed the Jersey shore bird hotspot in 1985, told Business Insider. "Where do so many infected birds come from? Where did they get their viruses from? We don't really know."

Flu viruses can morph in two ways. The first is via a routine process called genetic drift, in which a virus multiplies and undergoes small genetic changes over time as it replicates. The second happens when two viruses mix together, which can create new (and dangerous) bugs capable of infecting chickens, pigs, or people.

At least 16 different "A" influenza subtypes — the kind responsible for pandemics in humans — are found in aquatic birds (and two additional influenza A subtypes were recently discovered in bats). Researchers looking at flu strains on Reed's Beach have found close relatives of the 1918 Spanish Flu (in the H1N1 group), as well as other strains that look like the Hong Kong pandemic bug.

"You're never going to know somebody had some bird flu unless they get really sick," Pamela McKenzie, a flu researcher from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital who participates in the annual bird-research frenzy on the beach, told Business Insider as she gathered poop samples.

The birds also harbor some strains that we haven't seen in humans in over 50 years, Webster said. That means if they were to hop into people now, our immune systems would be shocked.

"We know that the H2 viruses are still there in the wild birds and they're a potential threat to humans," he said. "We are concerned that there is no immunity in the human population, or only in the elderly, and so that is why we worry about them."

If a bird flu were to break out, public-health officials have a few anti-flu weapons to deploy. Stockpiled antiviral drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors can help, as long as they're dispensed within a couple days after a person gets sick. Otherwise, scientists would need to develop a new vaccine, but that could take months and ultimately prove ineffective if the virus morphed again before the vaccine was finished.

"Even with the very best technology that we have, it takes six months to make a new vaccine," Webster said. "And in the meantime, the virus is spread all over the world and if it's a deadly virus, it's going to kill many, many, many people."

This is another reason scientists are scrambling to develop a universal flu vaccine that would offer long-term protection against all kinds of flu, unlike the annual shot.

Trapping birds using cannons, nets, and tall grass

Trapping the birds on Reed's Beach is a multi-hour operation that can be easily foiled if the birds get startled.

Before the big cannon-shooting moment, researchers used walkie-talkies to radio to one another in different spots around the bay. Slowly, they worked together to corner the birds into a small inlet. Then after the projectile net sent the birds gently toppling to the ground, the flu researchers unpacked their vials and swabs.

In addition to the live swabs, researchers also gathered about 600 poop samples from the beach using long-stemmed Q-tips.

None of these scientists seemed too concerned about coming into contact with a potential killer flu on the beach — they don't even wear gloves while picking up poop samples (though they do when swabbing the birds' cloacas). Instead, they simply maintain good hygiene on the sand and off, knowing they're more likely to get the flu from touching a door handle or sitting next to a sick person.

Once all the samples were packed in coolers and ready to go to the lab, the research crew left the birds alone on the beach. By the end of May, most of the birds had flown north; their dedicated beach area re-opened to the public in June.

In labs, researchers are now conducting DNA analyses to find out which influenza strains were circulating on the beach this year, how that compares to years past, and whether there was any new flu. That work will take about six months.

So far, after years of field research, scientists have gained some clues about which genes make an influenza strain more likely to be harmful and better able to jump from birds to poultry, pigs, and people. The new genetic information from this year will become part of that catalogue of three decades' worth of flu-gene segments, enlarging the database that helps researchers better track — and potentially fight — pandemic flu.

"You're looking for key components of the genetic sequence that make a gene more dangerous," McKenzie said.

But the scientists said their research is far from done.

"We would like to know if we can predict which are the viruses in the wild birds that are a real threat to either pigs, poultry or humans," Webster said. "We don't know the answers, but as we look at the genome of the viruses that are in the wild birds and in humans and so on, the goal is that in the future, we can make predictions of which viruses are really dangerous."

That research cycle will start again next May, when both birds and bird-catchers return to the Jersey shore.

"Ultimately we dream about having a universal vaccine," Webster said. "In a perfect situation, we would have four or five anti-viral drugs and a universal vaccine. Then I could die happy."

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travelonlinetips-blog · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://travelonlinetips.com/best-gold-coast-restaurants-by-precinct-2/

Best Gold Coast restaurants by precinct

If you can’t find a rockin’ place to eat on the Gold Coast, than you’re doing something wrong. In fact, there just aren’t enough mealtimes in the day to get through this mammoth list of Gold Coast restaurants and cafes that are truly local faves.

We’ve broken it down by precinct, starting north and heading our way down the coast, so no matter where you’re staying, the best eats and Insta-opportunities are just moments away!

Southport

The go-to for authentic Asian eats on the Gold Coast, you can expect to rub shoulders with office workers by day and dim sum lovers by night in Southport (or SoPo as the kids at Randy Wallhole like to call it).

Randy Wallhole is basically all your childhood breakfast dreams realised. Start your morning with their iced latte Coco Pops – yep, literally Coco Pops served over an iced latte (Tobys Estate none the less) – or go old school with a Mum’s Special Jaffle (aka Heinz spaghetti and cheese).

If you’re feeling a little more grown up and sophisticated, they do bagels too.

Then, make a beeline for Blendlove. While they serve a full plant-based food menu here (try the Magic Mushrooms with basil vegan mince and cashew aioli for brekkie, and gluten-free BBQ Ranch Burger with housemade bean and kale patty later on), we’ll admit, it’s ALL about the raw desserts and bowls.

Top your choc berry ripe smoothie bowl with flaked coconut and caramel buckinis, and take away a slab of Cheezecake made from the flavours of the day.

If you’re after cheap, quality Japanese BBQ, head for JFX where you can grill your own or fuel up with a tasty bento or ramen. For authentic north Chinese Uighur cuisine, grab a table and BYO at Xin Jiang, or join the queue for yum cha at Top One at Australia Fair Shopping Centre.

Also check out… Chinatown Street Markets are on the first Saturday of every month from 5pm to 9pm.

Main Beach

A bundle of fish and chips or a Chiko Roll are just as at home in Main Beach as the swanky prix fixe lunches found along Tedder Ave. One thing’s for sure, Main Beach packs a lot of culinary punch into its patch.

Head to Marina Mirage for the pick of the bunch, like Glass Dining, which fits like Cinderella’s slipper every time you visit. Start with a mixed dozen of the freshest oysters and wash them down with one of Glass’s signature cocktails as the sun sets over the marina. (Psst. You might have seen it in our list of 11 Gold Coast restaurants with epic water views.)

Just down the road you can treat yourself to a swanky high tea (gluten-free options available) in the Le Jardin Lobby Bar at Palazzo Versace. For Italian, book into Ristorante Fellini, or there’s good ol’ fashioned fish and chips at the Omeros Brothers.

Also check out… Pick up just-shucked oysters and fish and chips at Peter’s Fish Market – one of the best spots for fish and chips on the coast.

Surfers Paradise

For first-timers to the Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise usually becomes the epicentre of your stay.

On the eating front, options span the entire spectrum – from Shake Shak-style burgers and frozen concretes at cult burger joint, Betty’s Burgers, to unbeatable water views (and insanely good oysters) at Seascape.

Hotels are the hotbed of restaurant stars in this precinct, with Bazaar at QT Gold Coast offering a gourmet buffet like you’ve never experienced before. If it’s a Friday night, make a bee-line for Rumba Caliente at Stingray Bar, where you’ll be transported to Latin America with empanadas, Cuban espresso martinis, and Latino jams.

Get your teppanyaki on at Misono at the Surfers Paradise Marriott Resort & Spa – which claims to be the largest teppanyaki restaurant in the country – or experience Asian fusion delights at Catch Restaurant in the Hilton Surfers Paradise.

After you’ve eaten your way around the hotels, head to the 4217 complex for an excellent brew at Paradox Coffee Roasters, wings and burgers from Brooklyn Depot, or a gooey woodfired pizza from Salt Meats Cheese.

Also check out… Cute cafe Bumbles (okay, technically it’s Budds Beach but at just a two-minute amble from the bungee bullet).

Broadbeach

Just six kilometres south of Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach is a food lover’s mecca, with everything from Bavarian to Middle Eastern, through to high-class Japanese and vegetarian on the menu.

If you’re into sharing, pull up a seat kitchen-side at Social Eating House + Bar for a theatrical dining experience, or keep the carbs coming with authentic pasta and pizza at Rivea Italian

We’re not surprised Kiyomi scored a coveted chef’s hat in the 2019 Nation Good Food Guide. Tucked neatly away inside The Star Grand, this modern Japanese restaurant hits all the right notes. (Read our full review in this post.)

If Asian fusion is more your bag, check out Mamasan Kitchen + Bar (hello, spanner crab ravioli dumplings!) and Hideaway Kitchen and Bar.

From yellowtail sashimi and Thai-style ceviche, through to dumplings and wontons, every variety of Asian street food garners a mention here. Wash it down with imported Asian brewskies or a local Balter can.

Looking for breakfast? If there was an award for the prettiest cafe on the coast, we’d give it to Elk Espresso. Always buzzing and always adorable, this Broadie cafe starts the day with the likes of blueberry pannacotta, and basil and chilli scrambled eggs with goats cheese, and warms up to hearty salads and burgers at lunchtime.

Also check out… Epic vegetarian eats at The Cardamom Pod (also in Southport).

Mermaid Beach

Once only seen as a strip of the Gold Coast Highway where Sizzler and Hooters laid their claim, Mermaid Beach is now a hot foodie haunt with everything from meatballs to perfectly flaky croissants.

If you like your margaritas spicy and your empanadas stuffed with pumpkin and salted caramel, slip into Bonita Bonita for blow-your-mind Mexican. While you’re waiting for a table, road-test their cocktail list in sister bar, Bon Bon, right next door.

Consistently rating its pants off on the Gold Coast dining scene since the doors opened in 2010, Little Truffle is on an unassuming corner but once you step inside, it’s so Frenchy; so chic. We love the Monday to Thursday three-course deal for $60.

Looking for something more casual? After lighting up the backstreets of Miami with Paddock Bakery, the owners decided to open Bam Bam Bakehouse in homage to artisan croissants through to a full bistro menu. Order the croissant French toast. Don’t ask questions.

When we said Elk would win the award for cutest cafe on the coast, we had forgotten all about everyone’s favourite Disney movie (and also Gold Coast cafe), Little Mermaid.

Just like Ariel’s high notes, Little Mermaid’s menu is filled with sweetness, from the Nutella & Grilled Strawberry Toastie with flaked sea salt at breakfast time, to jugs of rose-infused sangria and Stone & Wood beer-battered fish and chips come nightfall.

Also check out… Etsu Izakaya for sublime Japanese.

Nobby Beach

Ten years ago, Nobby Beach wouldn’t have been a blip on the food radar, but this beachside strip now has some of the coast’s most-wanted menus and linger-all-afternoon vibes.

Hellenika could be credited with starting the movement, the Greek baby of restaurateur Simon Gloftis, that will want you leaving more with every mouthful.

From zucchini chips to wood-fired octopus and melty lamb ribs, you can’t go wrong here. But if we were the betting type, we’d put our money on the $88 signature banquet, which takes the decision-making out of the equation so you can just indulge in the seemingly endless stream of dips, saganaki, calamari, salty pork belly, fish, salad, baked lamb and greek sweets.

If you’ve got a hankering for Cocowhip, superfood salad or big ‘ol bowl of sweet potato fries, wander down to the beachfront to BSKT. You can downward dog before or after you eat with their yoga studio just upstairs.

For a slice of Italiano in Nobby Beach, intimate pizza and wine bar Gemellini (sister restaurant of Gemelli in Broadbeach) is ready and waiting to serve you with piping hot, cheesy arancini, traditional pizzas and nonna’s secret bolognese recipe.

Also check out… The Yard for shakshuka eggs by morning and cocktails and cuca tins by afternoon.

Miami

A blink-and-you’ll-miss it suburb snuggled in between Nobby Beach and Burleigh Heads, the Gold Coast’s Miami is less ’80s TV cop dramas and South Beach pastels, more hipster grunge and vegan delights.

Housed in a cute cottage, Paddock Bakery brought queue-inducing dippy eggs and salted caramel cruffins to the backstreets of Miami in 2014, and locals have been addicted ever since. We don’t know what we love more – the purple eggs (poached eggs served over house woodfired toast, slathered in beetroot and za’atar puree and topped with fetta) or the eggy custard tarts… or the, well, everything!

Head to Greenhouse Canteen when you want to treat your body like a temple and your Instagram feed like a boss. Working under the tagline, “Cruelty-free and killing it”, you can expect brain-tricking dishes like smoked jackfruit enchiladas with turmeric rice, cucumber guacamole, sour cream and pickled cabbage, and an epic plant-based grazing board.

If cheap and cheerful Chinese is more your cup of (Jasmine) tea, Miami Rice will keep your belly happy and Kung Po your taste buds with Malaysian and Thai dishes sidling up alongside your chow mein and Cantonese crispy roast duck.

Also check out… Miami Marketta for a smorgasbord of food truck eats and live music every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday night under the fairy lights.

Burleigh Heads

The list of epic eats in Burleigh Heads is as long as the sets of perfectly peeling waves curling around the headland, best watched from a picnic rug on the hill. From beachfront fine dining to rooftop bars and backstreet secrets, you’ll feel completely satiated here.

The fresh catches flown in twice-daily, the crisp, white tablecloths and the smooth-talking sommelier are just a few of the reasons why we’re sure the judges awarded The Fish House a chefs hat (again) in the 2019 Australian Good Food Guide. The views and the tasting menu are what takes it over the line from fine to freakin’-fabulous-every-time for us.

Across the road, in prime beachfront territory, Rick Shores (named one of the Australian Financial Review‘s 2018 Top 100 Restaurants) offers up its trademark Thai twist, with goodies like crispy tofu sliders with pickled kimchi through to sticky pork belly with wok-fried pak choi and yellow peach.

For casual eats and curl-your-toes coffee, head to Canteen Coffee and Kitchen or local fave Commune.

When the sun starts to shimmy its way down towards the horizon, the rooftop at Justin Lane is where you want to be.

Also check out… Willow Dining Room for tapas by candlelight.

Currumbin

It’s hard to go past the Currumbin Beach Vikings Surf Life Saving Club – perched on the most impressive piece of waterfront land on the entire coast – but the dreamy, beachy strip of Currumbin has plenty of other food stars in the lineup, too.

Start your day the right way with an acai bowl from the kings of the purple berry, The Salt Mill, or munch on breakfast bruschetta and bircher at Elephant Rock Cafe.

Also check out… Biker hangout Iron and Resin Garage on a Sunday for great coffee, live tunes and a rolling roster of food trucks.

Coolangatta

Home of pro surfers, one of the coast’s most famous breaks, and right on the border of New South Wales, Coolangatta is Queensland’s final frontier when it comes to beachfront eats done right.

If you’re into cafe hopping, you’ve found your zen. Plan to spend a morning at longtime local fave Cafe Dbar, then check out Rockleigh Cafe (can you say all day brunch?!) and Black Sheep Espresso Baa, which you’ll find in The Strand.

Make a sneaky sidestep to Griffith St Larder. They do a mean breakfast, but let’s face it, with the sweet treats being dealt from their window, we know it’s all about the doughnuts. And the cakes. And the muffins. (Okay, we’ll stop now.)

Later on, tame your tapas cravings at BiN 72 or discover Americana in full swing at Eddie’s Grub House, with burgers, Southern fried free-range chicken, and Texas chilli cheese fries just some of the waistband-stretching wonders on the menu.

But perhaps our favourite food baby on this end of the coast comes from Tupe Aloha for its Mexican delights and tiki cocktails. Because, let’s face it, how can you not love tiki?

Also check out… You can’t leave Coolangatta without a triple scoop from Gelato Messina.

*For more ideas, check out our 48 hours in Coolangatta post.

That should keep you full! Are there any you think we’ve missed? Add your favourite Gold Coast restaurant to the comments below.

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gardenplow3-blog · 6 years ago

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Yo, Soy

Though still a rare delicacy outside of most Asian cultures, yuba has slowly developed a foothold here in North America thanks largely to one shining example produced right in my backyard. Hodo, better known for their contributions to Chipotle’s popular tofu sofritas and now their ready-to-eat line of seasoned savories still pushes eaters to expand their culinary boundaries. Yuba, the gossamer-thin skin that forms on top of soymilk as it’s heated is very closely related to tofu, but bears a few distinct differences. Tofu-making takes soymilk and immediately mixes it with either calcium chloride, calcium sulfate, or magnesium sulfate to curdle, whereas yuba requires no coagulant whatsoever. Fragile, quick to spoil, it’s a treat that few have an opportunity to experience fresh. Most options are sold dried, to be rehydrated on demand, which obviously loses a good deal of flavor and texture in the process.

This isn’t the first I’ve shared about Hodo nor extolled the virtues of Yuba, but it’s a delicious declaration that bears repetition. There’s no need to be redundant, however, since Hodo has begun sharing the softer side of yuba that only a privileged few have ever had access to before. In the stages just prior to coagulating into consolidated, solidified sheets, there are actually a number of stages that the soybean slurry goes through, each one uniquely delectable in its own right. I was lucky enough to experience these earliest phases right when production was just barely getting underway, photographing some of the first batches for easy reference to the uninitiated.

If you should be so as lucky to get your hands on an ingredient of such superlative quality, the best (and most difficult) thing to do is not mess it up. Little is needed to enjoy the naturally rich, luscious character of young yuba. The very earliest harvest, Kumiage, is the style I savored the most, being completely unique from anything currently on the market, or available in restaurants, for that matter. Given a pinch of black salt, you would swear you were eating the creamiest scrambled eggs on the planet, yet no shells will be broken for this plant-based luxury. My favorite approach was to simply scoop out a tender mound into a bowl, drizzle with light soy sauce, and finish with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and scallions. Nothing more, nothing less. Working in concert to bring out the nutty, umami notes of the whole bean, it’s unlike any other tofu experience to which I can compare.

Deeply savory yet just as versatile as the familiar beige bricks we’re all familiar with, I was delighted to try my hand at a sweet Philippine snack otherwise well out of reach: Taho. Made of soft soybean curds and lavished with tender tapioca pearls soaked in a sugary syrup, it’s a classic street food perfectly suited for the brutal heat of summer. Glittering in the sunlight, cherry- and mango-flavored popping boba sparkle atop this unconventional take on the concept, yet it’s truly the yuba beneath that shines.

These softer stages of soy supremacy can be purchased by the general public only online, not in stores, but it’s worth going all in for a big batch and sharing the riches with friends.

Source: https://bittersweetblog.com/2018/08/14/yo-soy/

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jeramymobley · 7 years ago

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Kraft Heinz Joins Breakfast Club With Ore-Ida’s Just Crack an Egg

Kraft Heinz’s Ore-Ida brand is trying to mix four U.S. food trends into a winning new product: consumers’ demands for convenience, the rise of breakfast as an increasingly sophisticated consumption day part beyond cereal and toast, an appreciation for dietary protein, and the renewed nutritional appreciation of eggs.

Its new Just Crack an Egg combines ingredients such as potatoes, ham, cheese, peppers and other vegetables so that consumers can add an egg and make a hot scramble in under two minutes in the microwave.

With the launch, Ore-Ida is offering an easy opportunity for consumers to eat a well-rounded entree for breakfast, without the mess or time involved.

There are four varieties of Just Crack an Egg, including one with turkey sausage and another with uncured bacon. The product innovation sees Kraft Heinz (smartly) leveraging its existing brands: Oscar Mayer for the meat, Kraft for the cheese and Ore-Ida for the potatoes.

“We know that consumer aren’t happy with their current weekday breakfast options, and we saw an opportunity to reignite consumers’ love of a hot, filling breakfast,” Greg Guidotti, head of marketing for the new line, stated. “Too often, their busy lives force them to make compromises and trade-offs around breakfast when it comes to taste, convenience and freshness.

“Just Crack an egg bridges that divide, making it easy for them to have a savory breakfast scramble that can fit into even the fastest morning routine.”

Kraft Heinz is entering the breakfast space with a 360-degree marketing push to introduce Just Crack an Egg, including a print ad and TV campaign.

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In its first TV spot for Just Crack an Egg, Ore-Ida depicts a woman who’s continually disappointed when she opens her refrigerator door to see what there is for breakfast, whether it’s a cup of blueberry yogurt or a green smoothie. “Your relationship with breakfast is filled with compromises,” the commercial intones, sadly.

But when she opens the fridge again to “discover” she’s purchased Just Crack an Egg, she smiles with delight—as the voiceover announces that “Breakfast wants you back!”

With minimal fuss, each breakfast bowl is designed to be microwaved in under two minutes: Microwave on High 40 sec.; stir; microwave for an additional 30 sec.; stir; let cool and eat, as Ore-Ida demonstrates in the video below:

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The post Kraft Heinz Joins Breakfast Club With Ore-Ida’s Just Crack an Egg appeared first on brandchannel:.

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glenmenlow · 5 years ago

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How Brands Can Wow Customers With Less

Costovation is a type of innovation that significantly compresses costs while still wowing customers. It’s about meeting or exceeding customer expectations with less. Planet Fitness with its low costs and slim offerings—but ecstatic customers—is an example of costovation. Ryanair, an ultra-budget European airline which at one time tried to charge customers for drinking water and bathroom use, is not. The difference is in customer experience. Ryanair tickets can be a grudge purchase, and purchases made with gritted teeth don’t often lead to ever-thriving companies.

To get a better sense of costovation, let’s look at an example from the hospitality industry. If you’ve ever been stuck on a six-hour layover, you know your options for comfort are bare: you can get in line for a shuttle to a local airport hotel (and plunk down your credit card for an entire night’s stay), or you can cozy up to a worn-out chair in the airport terminal. Both of those options are depressingly unappealing, especially for the frequent traveler. Enter Yotel.

Yotel is a hotel chain found in international airports like London’s Heathrow and New York’s JFK. Accommodations are often directly on-site within airport terminals, and rooms are extraordinarily small, fitting just a bed and an airplane-like bathroom. But for time-conscious travelers, Yotel offers exactly what they crave—a comfortable bed, an excellent shower, strong Wi-Fi, proximity to their next flight, and fast check-in. Yotel doesn’t really offer much more than that, yet it’s become quite popular with experienced travelers. This travel segment is not looking for extra amenities such as a tub, a gym, or a pool.

And by keeping things simple, Yotel’s back-end operations can be exceptionally lean. It uses automated kiosks for check-in and food vending, and it makes the most of its prime real estate by shrinking room sizes to tiny pod-like cabins. These cost savings enable Yotel to offer rooms that are much cheaper than a typical hotel—cheap enough that travelers use it during long layovers. At the same time, Yotel exceeds competitive offerings in critical ways, such as by providing monsoon showers for customers looking to de-grime after a long flight. Yotel runs a low-cost model, but it still nails the core needs of long-haul travelers looking for a quick place to rest and freshen up.

Many industries need a Yotel—a company that excels at offering something at a radically lower price, for a well-defined customer set. We’ve seen an increasing number of costovations in recent years, and as we’ll soon see, they are often enviably simple in nature.

Innovation And Simplicity

Innovation is typically thought to mean more: more flavors, more options, more features. What makes costovation so radical is that it flips this understanding on its head and says that sometimes the winning approach is to do less. McDonald’s is a great example of how a less-is-more approach might have worked better. In 2004, the fast-food giant had 69 permanent items on its menu. A decade later, it had 145.4 This 75% increase was rooted in a genuine desire to keep up with trends and give customers the variety they seemed to want. Diversifying its menu was an important part of McDonald’s strategy to stay fresh, relevant, and exciting.

But expanding the menu so quickly added tremendous complexity to McDonald’s operations. To accommodate the McWrap, for instance, supply-chain managers had to source a steady annual supply of 6 million pounds of English cucumbers (not an easy feat!). Staff that were used to assembling burgers had to be trained to make a McWrap and maneuver it into its specially designed container in under 60 seconds, with just the right amount of lettuce and chicken peeking out from the top. Kitchen bottlenecks were further caused by limited-time-offerings items like Fish McBites, Steak & Egg Burritos, and White Chocolate Mochas. In 2013, Chief Operating Officer Tim Fenton told analysts that the chain had “overcomplicated” its menu by adding “too many new products, too fast. . . . We didn’t give the restaurants a chance to breathe.” Two years later, McDonald’s ran into the same problem again when it rolled out all-day breakfast, which cramped kitchen quarters as staff jostled to put an increasing number of food items onto limited grill space.

Contrast that with Chipotle, a popular Mexican restaurant that McDonald’s partially owned until 2006. Chipotle has offered virtually the same 25-ingredient menu since the company was founded over two decades ago. Customers mix and match these 25 ingredients to create custom meals, allowing Chipotle to win on freshness and personalization while also reducing complexity in its kitchens and in its supply chain. Chipotle’s strategy countered industry wisdom. The restaurant chain rejected limited-time offerings to boost sales and passed up low-risk/high-profit items such as coffee and cookies. They determinedly stuck to their modest menu and found a way to make it fresh and interesting to the everyday consumer. Despite its streamlined offerings, Chipotle is actually priced higher than McDonald’s—showing that you can be upmarket, low-cost, and simple all at the same time.

Companies don’t deliberately set out to make things complicated. But more often than not, they find themselves grappling with convoluted solutions to pressing problems that don’t quite get them where they want to go. The mindset that “success is a function of doing more” so dominates how companies do business that going simple is rarely treated as a viable option. And, if paring things down does happen, it’s typically through a cost-cutting campaign that has no innovation remit whatsoever. Costovation defies this established thinking and suggests that big innovations can come from decluttering how you think, the way you do things, and what you offer.

Why Consider Costovation

There are a lot of reasons why companies would want to costovate. Some are trying to surprise their competition or open up markets in industries that seem stale. Others use costovation to insulate themselves from the threat of disruptive innovation, or to build resilience against macroeconomic headwinds. Taking a birds-eye view of the field of costovation, here are three main reasons for why costovation repeatedly appears:

1. Cost-cutting is never easy, and there’s no more fat to trim. Costovation is a different approach to cost-cutting. Here, cost-cutting is not the overall mandate, but rather a happy byproduct in the journey toward being truly customer-centric. Why is this important? Companies have become extraordinarily adept at squeezing blood from stone, eliminating costs large and small whenever the mandate is given—often from areas such as administrative and operating budgets. But cost-cutting can only go so far. After years of this, there’s likely little left to cut. In a 2016 study of 210 senior executives at U.S.-based Fortune 1000 companies, nearly half reported that they failed to meet their cost-reduction targets—a number that has climbed sharply from 27% in 2010 and 15% in 2008. The never-ending focus on cost-cutting and beating the industry cost curve—even when business is going well—has led to fatigue. We’ve heard again and again that companies need new ways to pursue transformative innovations in their operations. Costovation is one such solution.

2. Even in markets that feel saturated, there are still unmet needs everywhere. Although it can feel as though the world is cluttered with endless services and products, the reality is that many customers and businesses actually struggle with the products and solutions they use today. They complain about price, customer service, and the product itself; they MacGyver the products into more useful formulations. These customers will jump at opportunities to spend less if they can be well satisfied too. Costovation is a great tool for delivering on those needs. Think of Airbnb. No one said the world needed another hotel company; there’s a hotel out there for every kind of budget and taste. But Airbnb brought a different kind of lodging proposition—one that catered to unsatisfied desires for unique living experiences and for making easy money. Thousands of people who ordinarily would have stayed at hotels were delighted with the option to stay in a cozy, unique home. And thousands of people who would ordinarily have just let their spare bedrooms lie vacant were pleased to discover that they could generate income from them. But even with Airbnb’s meteoric rise to success, there are still countless unmet needs in hospitality that are yet to be satisfied—perhaps by the next great costovation.

3. There’s a large swath of customers seeking low prices. Even during the long economic expansion of the past decade, many customers—both businesses and consumers—have struggled. For instance, despite a low unemployment rate of 4%, the average hourly earnings in the U.S. grew just 2.5% in 2017—which is hardly anything at all after accounting for inflation. Many people are under constant pressure to make ends meet, and they need innovation relevant to them. Moreover, we all know it is wise to be prepared for the worst, and recessions have not been abolished forever. Being prepared for macroeconomic downturns doesn’t have to mean that you can’t innovate and push forward. With costovation, you can do both. Economies and industries can shift quickly, turning winners into losers seemingly overnight. Healthcare, for instance, used to pay high amounts for treating people when they were sick.

Now, due to regulatory and economic pressures, the focus is increasingly on the opposite: paying low sums for keeping people healthy. The reversal has sent much of the industry scrambling, even while some early pioneers of this model like Kaiser Permanente are thriving in the new context. While customer difficulties, economic downturns, and industry disruption may not be predictable, they are inevitable. Costovation enables nimble response.

What’s Next?

Innovation and cost-cutting—so often considered magnetic opposites—can be a powerful duo, capable of reshaping markets and creating long-term competitive advantages. For six years we carefully investigated: Are there patterns in costovation? How did these companies pull it off? And how can others do the same? We found that companies that excel at costovation share three traits:

Trait 1: Breakthrough perspective. These companies had a fresh perspective on the market. They threw out assumptions and long-standing industry beliefs and viewed their market and customers in a way that no one else had. The idea behind this is straightforward: the more unique your perspective on the market, the more you can differentiate yourself.

Trait 2: Relentless focus. The costovation winners have relentless focus. What they concentrated on could vary; for some it was a market segment, for others it was a customer’s job to be done, and for still others it was a particular part of the business. But there was always a steadfast focus, just as in Planet Fitness’s case. The focal points were critical for guiding the companies through the many decisions and trade-offs they had to make.

Trait 3: Willingness to blur boundaries. The most obvious place to innovate is on the product. But companies which excel at costovation—that is, the companies using costovation to shake up their markets—also took magnifying lenses to how their offerings were made, delivered, and sold. These companies innovated across different areas of the business.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Steve Wunker and Jennifer Law. You can find much more on these concepts in their new book Costovation.

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easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

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sunlover/Shutterstock To survive uncertain times, small farms are pivoting to online orders to serve their local communities and compete with big box grocers like Amazon and Walmart This story originally appeared on Civil Eats. “We are so busy this may not be my most lucid moment,” Amy McCann says when she picks up the phone, which hasn’t stopped ringing in days. McCann is the CEO of the Eugene, Oregon-based Local Food Marketplace, a software platform that farmers and other local food aggregators across the country use to reach customers online. In a normal year, McCann said, her team takes on about 50 new sellers offering everything from produce to dairy and jam. Due to an onslaught of demand, however, they’ve added 20 new users in just the last week. In a very short time, COVID-19 has virtually upended the food system. And for farmers who sell directly into local markets, it has made the in-person sales they depend on — usually facilitated at farmers’ markets, restaurants, schools, and other communal places — especially unsteady. As peak harvest season approaches, growers have been scrambling to move their sales online, where orders can be fulfilled without face-to-face interaction, either for through traditional community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes or other creative models. At the same time, groups that support local food economies have also been working to direct consumers to these new systems so that they can continue to buy local food from home. In Seattle, where farmers’ markets have been shut down, Seattle Neighborhood Farmers’ Markets compiled a list of its market vendors’ “alternative sales options,” and has been highlighting them on Instagram. In Chicago, Green City Market created a guide to farmers offering online ordering with pick-up or delivery. And in the Mid-Atlantic, Future Harvest put together a map of more than 500 farmers and markets selling local food that received over 15,000 views in just a few days. With social distancing guidelines now extended through at least the end of April, it’s clear that a great deal of food will be purchased online for the foreseeable future. A survey released this week found that more than 30 percent of US households had purchased groceries online in the past month. That was more than double the number that had reported doing so in August 2019, and 43 percent said they’d likely continue to purchase groceries online after the crisis ends. While markets for small, sustainable, and local producers have been taking shape online for over a decade, many have struggled to compete in the past. But this moment presents a powerful opportunity for individual producers and local food aggregators to scale up their online presence. While competing with massive companies like Costco and Walmart is a daunting challenge, worker strikes at Amazon and Instacart may also inspire some socially conscious shoppers to support independent producers. Farmers will also have to tackle many obstacles as they attempt to redesign entire business models right before harvest season, improvise home deliveries, and figure out how to ensure shoppers using food assistance benefits can access online ordering. But that’s not stopping a range of people and groups from jumping in—and expanding their efforts—in the evolving local food landscape. Previously a Rocky Road for Local Foods Online Before the pandemic, online grocery sales in the U.S. were projected to double between 2017 and 2021. But while the practice had picking up steam year over year, the vast majority of Americans still bought their food in stores. That was even more true with local food, especially since many people who prioritize shopping local often valued personal relationships with farmers and gathering as a community at markets or through CSA distributions. But that’s all changing rapidly. Several “online farmers’ market” platforms have come and gone over the past decade, and many companies that have survived in the space—like Good Eggs and Farmigo—have struggled or had to pivot to stay afloat. “Those were mostly tech companies that thought you could solve the [logistics] problem with technology alone,” McCann said. Good Eggs, an online marketplace for small farms that had raised almost $53 million in venture capital, shut down operations in three out of four cities and laid off 140 employees in 2013, with co-founder Rob Spiro citing the fact that the company grew too fast “before fully figuring out the challenges of building an entirely new food supply chain.” It homed in on one city, San Francisco, and has been operating successfully there, although it now stocks specialty foods beyond what’s available from local producers, like fruit shipped from Mexico and gluten-free pizzas made in Colorado. According to the company, Good Eggs has been experiencing two to four times more demand since the coronavirus outbreak (and there are rumors of shoppers logging on after midnight to place orders as soon as new items are added to the site). The company is working to expand to meet demand: coincidentally, in mid-February, it opened a new Oakland fulfillment center that significantly expands its capacity, and it is also hiring new employees. But it’s unclear whether the company intends to take on any new farms. “Our customers have always looked to us as a source of local food from small producers, and we feel that responsibility now more than ever,” CEO Bentley Hally said in an emailed statement. “We are doing everything we can to support our producers during these uncertain times.” Farmigo, which started selling software for CSAs and other local farm sales, had raised about $26 million to expand its operations by 2016. But the online farmers’ market it built did not succeed; it shut that part of the business down, claiming that the logistics of distribution were much more difficult than the team had anticipated. It has continued selling software to farmers and leaving those logistics to them, and its CSA platform is remains popular among farmers. Farmigo did not respond to our efforts to reach them for comment. But as the company’s arc illustrates, many farms and local food communities that have moved their sales online are managing their businesses and distribution themselves, rather than relying on other companies that sell their food for them. Grassroots Organizing, Online In Tallahassee, Florida, for example, four women started the Red Hills Small Farm Alliance about eight years ago to connect local farms to buyers in their community. The virtual market, which runs on Local Food Marketplace’s software, grew slowly and steadily, said interim director Cari Roth, and it now offers food from about 75 producers to around 500 members. (Shoppers pay $20 annually for a membership and then pay a la carte for purchases.) Although it’s online, its operations resemble an in-person market; the shop is open during a select window—8:00 a.m. on Sunday to 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Farmers receive orders and then bring their food to one of the Alliance’s distribution centers, where staff members and volunteers package the food from various producers into individual customer orders. Shoppers can choose to pick their food up or get it delivered for an extra charge. Shoppers can opt to get a CSA share from one farm, or they can mix it up. “The beauty is that I can also order a bunch of carrots, a bunch of beets, mushrooms from another place, and scones from a bakery,” says Roth. “It’s like going to a real farmers’ market, but with even more variety.” Red Hills had been growing its business long before the coronavirus emerged, but things took off even more in recent weeks. Roth said they picked up 174 new members in one week in March. More than 440 orders came in that same week, compared to an average of about 300. And they’re not alone. In Maryland, Chesapeake Farm to Table operates with a similar model but was previously focused on aggregating food from small farms for restaurant sales. Now, its business collecting orders from individual community members and delivering to their homes has taken off. In Seattle, farm-to-table bakery Salmonberry Goods has been hustling to aggregate more food from small Washington farms to sell through its new online shop for weekly delivery. “We’re really hoping that now that people are figuring out how easy it is to eat local, that they’ll stick with us,” says Roth. Virtual CSAs Since the COVID-19 outbreak, farmers across the country have also been reporting an increase in interest in CSA memberships. Since CSAs guarantee a weekly supply of produce (and sometimes other foods), they seem perfectly suited to a time when Americans are fearful of further disruptions to grocery supply chains. Signing up for a CSA that can be picked up or delivered can also mean saving a trip to a crowded supermarket. Many small diversified vegetable operations, were already offering online purchasing before using platforms like Farmigo, but those that weren’t are now driven to do so. Hearty Roots Farm in the Hudson Valley offers CSA memberships to residents of New York City and counties north, the area that is now the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. Before the pandemic, farmer Lindsey Lusher Shute was also hard at work on developing GrownBy, a new CSA software platform that she and other farmers were planning on using in a beta phase before adding other growers later on. Now, they’re opening it up more broadly right away to help the many farmers reaching out to quickly change their business model and move everything online to stay afloat. Shute says one thing that sets GrownBy apart is that its built by farmers, for farmers—which means everyone involved in the development has a deep understanding of how marketing and sales channels typically work offline, making it easier to figure out how to move them online effectively. Lusher Shute—who was a founder and long time director of the National Young Farmers Coalition—says her priority is the needs of direct market growers, not the profits of the software company, and that eventually, the plan is to evolve into a national cooperative, giving users the chance to share ownership in the technology. First, though, they simply have to make sure GrownBy is effectively making online sales happen. “It needs to pull its weight on the farm and be seen as a valuable and critical piece of infrastructure,” she said. “We’re aiming to help farmers achieve efficiencies and a level of sales that they couldn’t on their own.” She also wants farmers to control their own data and to have software that is flexible enough that it can accommodate the variety that exists between operations. One important flexiblity built into the software allows farms that accept food assistance benefits like SNAP and WIC dollars to offer an offline payment option, so they can recognize EBT (electronic benefits transfer, the payment system used for benefits) as a form of payment and then process that payment seperately. And while she imagined farms would facilitate CSA share pick-ups, for instance, she just added a farm outside Albuquerque that, in the face of COVID-19, decided to offer home delivery, and was able to facilitate that aspect using GrownBy. Indeed, farms across the country have been announcing home delivery of both CSA shares and a la carte food orders. Red Hills always had a delivery option but customers rarely chose to pay the upcharge. Now, it has gotten hugely popular. “We’ve added drivers to accommodate it,” Roth said. On a COVID-19 call facilitated by Future Harvest for small farms in the Mid-Atlantic, several farmers discussed how to work with online orders and delivery protocols. Moon Valley Farm, which had trucks that normally ran restaurant routes in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., sitting idle, saw delivering CSA shares and a la carte vegetable orders as a way to replace lost purchases and keep drivers employed. In many locations, however, home delivery presents real business challenges. “It’s really complicated and really expensive,” said Wen-Jay Ying, who has been barely sleeping while working to keep her company, Local Roots NYC, operating. Her goal is to continue giving New York City residents access to fresh, local food while buying from the small, independent farms nearby, which have lost significant restaurant business. Local Roots has always used an online ordering system, but once members purchase shares, most head to local pick-up sites once a week to collect them. Most of those sites—cafes, restaurants, and bars—are mainly shuttered, and maintaining social distance at pick-ups in small spaces also became difficult. Ying has been able to keep two pick-up sites operating, but many customers chose to switch to home delivery. So, she’s been hustling to hire workers to pack produce into boxes and do the actual deliveries, which can be time-consuming and complicated in a congested city where many people live in apartment buildings. “We’ve spent every waking hour for the past five days figuring out how to use a delivery routing software and organizing people based on these different routes,” she said, estimating that the cost per delivery for the farmer or aggregator can be as high as $15 per customer, a steep price when compared to Instacart and others like it. And getting the food to customers after orders are placed is not the only challenge farmers face when looking to sell online. In rural areas, internet access is not a given, pointed out Hannah Dankbar, the Local Food program manager at North Carolina State’s Cooperative Extension. “In North Carolina, we don’t have broadband consistently across the state,” she said. Farmers also may lack technical expertise, and they’re now hungry for knowledge related to online sales. In response to the pandemic, a colleague in Dankbar’s department set up two webinars on getting farm products online and more than 300 people tuned in to each one. “Coronavirus has made the need for tech clear to many more farmers,” Shute said. And while many local food enthusiasts value the chance to mingle with community members and get to know growers at a farmers’ market, the efficiency expectation around groceries is only likely to increase as more people get used to a box of fresh vegetables from Amazon showing up at their doorstep within 24 hours. “Some of those services sort of look like ‘local’ produce or higher quality produce,” she said. But they’re much less likely to support small-scale family producers. “I’m concerned that if we don’t engage in this digital marketplace in a real way, we’re going to be left behind. Hopefully, the farmers’ market [will go back to being] a place people will congregate. But at the same time we have to be thinking ahead and moving the field forward.” The best-case scenario, says Dankbar, is that buying fresh-from-the-farm food online will be “a trend that’s accelerated because of the virus.” If that happens, she’s optimistic that it could give local foods a permanent space in the larger online shopping arena. “The community building associated with local food—I don’t think those are going to go away,” she says. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2X4Djji

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-local-food-revolution-goes-online.html

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joejstrickl · 5 years ago

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How Brands Can Wow Customers With Less

Innovation And Simplicity

Why Consider Costovation

What’s Next?

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Steve Wunker and Jennifer Law. You can find much more on these concepts in their new book Costovation.

The Blake Project Can Help You Grow: The Brand Growth Strategy Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

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thehungrykat1 · 5 years ago

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Motto Motto Serves All Day Japanese Dishes

Residents and office people working in Serendra and Bonifacio Global City will be happy to know that there is a new restaurant called Motto! Motto! serving their favorite Japanese dishes all day, every day. The Hungry Kat was invited to sample some of specialties being offered inside this colorful and casual dining venue, just a few days before I left for my summer studies in London, so it was a good opportunity to try their extensive menu.

Motto Motto is a new Japanese concept from the Raintree group of restaurants which include Saboten, Providore, The Coconut Club, and Chotto Matte among their repertoire. Motto Motto actually means “more more,” which really sums up their Japanese comfort food selection because their menu literally and figuratively huge! Japanese food lovers like me will definitely enjoy hanging out at this cozy spot because everything we want can be found in one location.

You can find Motto Motto at the ground floor of Serendra Piazza, just in front of Art Bar near the Market! Market! side. This was previously where Chelsea Kitchen, which is also under the Raintree group, used to be. The restaurant opens as early as 8:00am up to 11:00pm so you can have breakfast, lunch, or dinner here whatever time you want.

The colorful interiors of Motto Motto are a breath of fresh air from the busy streets of the city. The venue can accommodate up 60 diners inside and another 20 guests outside at the al fresco area. It’s a fun and casual setup where kids. families, and friends can enjoy a sumptuous meal.

When I say that their selection is extensive, I really mean it! Aside from carrying almost all types of Japanese dishes, they also have a pastry section carrying items from Tokyo Bakery.

The sushi and sashimi station is also more than ready to serve all sorts of sushi, rolls, maki, nigiri, and more.

Hosting me that afternoon was my friend Gwen Jacinto, who also takes care of marketing duties for the Raintree group, as well as Chef Kalel Chan, Corporate Chef for Raintree Restaurants.

We started with some Japanese snacks and Agemono or deep-fried dishes like the Ebiashe Age (P75) which are deep fried shrimp “socks.” The Kani Kama Fries (P150) are crunchy strips of kani or crab meat which are good to nibble on while waiting for the other dishes. You can also get some Edamame (P130) for a healthier appetizer.

The Mount Fuji Salad (P150-Sharing / P85-Solo) is also a good option, especially if you want to share it with your tablemates. Pour the dressing on the cabbage strips and mix it all together.

This is the type of appetizer I like more. The Spicy Tuna (P195) is what I usually order at Japanese restaurants with its tuna sashimi chunks topped with tempura flakes. It’s not actually that spicy so it’s just right for me.

Their beverage menu is also quite interesting. Matcha lovers will enjoy the Matcha Latte (P175) with its cute latte art.

Try some of their Specialty Motto Motto Beverages like the Strawberry Guava Yakult (P150), a unique and refreshing blend of fruits and yakult. I ordered this for myself and I loved it.

Here come the rolls! Motto Motto offers a wide range of traditional and signature sushi. Let’s start with the classic Dragon Roll (P220) which comes with unagi, cucumber, avocado, tempura flakes and unagi sauce. You can also try some of their signature rolls like the Sakura Blossom (P295) which has a delectable combination of salmon, bluefin tuna, white fish, cucumber, yellow radish and denbu.

Chef Kalel is preparing one of the bestsellers himself - the Maki Aburi Style which are torched on the spot. This is the Salmon Tempura Aburi (P395) with its crunchy prawn tempura and tender salmon combined with salmon roe, asparagus, spicy mayonnaise and unagi sauce.

Motto Motto stays true to its name because it offers almost every Japanese item you can think of. What was served to us was not even half or a fourth of the menu. A special Yakitori Platter was also featured with different sticks of chicken skin, pork, quail eggs, beef asparagus, and more.

They also have pasta and one of the interesting versions is the Wasabi Cream Carbonara. This is a creamy carbonara with hints of wasabi that you can also mix into the pasta if you prefer.

The Mixed Seafood Foil Yaki (P395) opens up to reveal a medley of seafood items like salmon, white fish, shrimp and squid all freshly steamed 'En Papillote' with garlic butter and mushrooms.

As part of their All Day Brunch selection, Motto Motto has added three new Filipino Breakfast favorites with a Japanese twist! Choose from among the Beef Tapa, Chicken Tocino and Horse Mackerel served with aonori scrambled eggs, rice and Japanese pickles. These are served all day, every day for only P295 each.

They also offer new Superstar Lunch Sets which are available daily from 11:00am to 2:30pm. The US Beef Belly Gyudon (P195) is an affordable and tasty lunch option especially for BGC people who are always on the go. These lunch sets come with miso soup, cabbage salad, and a glass of iced tea.

Another Superstar lunch set is the Mapo Tofu with Pork (P265) with its spicy ground pork. Other items to choose from include Seafood Tempura Don (P325), Spicy Dynamite Chicken Karaage (P250) and Chasu Pork on Chasu Fried Rice (P250) and many more.

Would you believe hamburg steaks are also on the menu? The Avocado and Hollandaise (P375) is a sizzling hamburger steak served with avocado and hollandaise sauce. This would really go well with some rice, or maybe go for their omurice plates.

For families with children, you must order the Okosama Special Kids Shinkansen Set (P295). This cute train is a special Motto Motto set made especially for kids. It comes with favorites like spaghetti, chicken karaage, burger patty, potato salad, rice and dessert.

Best of all, the Shinkansen Set is served with a FREE toy! The kid can choose a toy from the box so I’m sure they will be very happy. I’m actually thrilled to grab a toy as well for myself!

Of course, there are also lots of desserts. The most popular item is Chef Kalel’s souffle pancakes which are just unbelievably good! These fluffy pancakes are delicately prepared and topped with matcha butter, whipped cream, and powdered sugar then served with maple syrup. You can try the Orange Creme Brulee (P295) or the Strawberries and Cream (P295).

Thank you so much Chef Kalel and Ms. Gwen for hosting our colorful Japanese lunch. Motto Motto is a new charming venue that guests of all ages can visit and enjoy. They also have Happy Hour and serve a variety of Japanese cocktails so this should also be a great place to unwind in the evening. I’ll have to visit this again when I come back to try the other items on their huge menu.

Motto Motto

G/F Serendra Piazza, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

909-7011

www.facebook.com/raintreemottomottoph

www.raintreerestaurants.com

#MottoMotto #MottoMottoph #Serendra #BonifacioGlobalCity #Japanese

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