Dario Cecchini and Mario Batali To Open Meat Palace Restaurant on Island in Middle of Atlantic Ocean

New York City's most famous chef, Mario Batali, and Italy's most famous butcher, Dario Cecchini, are joining forces to open a meat-themed restaurant in an unlikely location; an island almost smack daube in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

After considering both Manhattan and Tuscany as sites, the two foodie superstars have finally agreed to meet roughly halfway from each other's home turf and that turns out to be Flores Island, the westernmost island of the Azores Archipelago 

Tentatively entitled il Gran Palazzo di Carne, the joint venture came about after Batali and Cecchini had lunch last year at Katz's Famous Delicatessen in New York and began toying with the idea of uniting to form what one food professional called "A Temple to the Cow". 

"This could be the greatest thing to happened to beef since Moses put two cows on that ark of his," said Sir Charles Dillingsworth, the United Kingdom's foremost food critic, but also a man woefully inept when it comes to ark ownership. 

Neither Batali nor Cecchini would comment on the project.

However, Cecchini's wife, the American-born Kimberly Wicks, was caught off guard when asked about the apparently tight-lipped collaboration. "I can't believe you found out about it!", she said in an E-mail reply from Tuscany.

A leading travel agent in the Mid East said when she heard of the partnership of Cecchini and Batali "it was one of those It's about time" moments. 

"Mario and Dario together makes total sense," said Julianne Nebuchadnezzar  from "Let's Get Away Now and I Mean Right Now!!" a popular travel agency based in Fallujah, Iraq. "If one is traveling from America to Europe, or from the Middle East to America, a stopover in Flores Island not only breaks up the flight, it provides a special destination dining adventure that will rank high on anybody's fucket list."  

Flores Island, with a population of about 3,900 - mostly-Portuguese -inhabitants,  gets it name from the profusion of wild flowers, ( especially hydrangeas)  that grow, ugh, um, wild on the island. The main municipality is Santa Cruz, where il Gran Palazzo di Carne will be located. 

Mario Batali, holding the flag of flores island, and dario cecchini, wearing the traditional red pants of flores island

"Southside" Compared to Raymond Chandler in Los Angeles Review of Books

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS , January, 2015. 

Tyler Dilts  on Southside by Michael Krikorian

Chandler’s Shadow

“WE’RE GOING TO TALK about Raymond Chandler for the next four hours,” the tour guide says. I’m on a bus with about 30 people on “Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place, An Esotouric Bus Adventure.” The driver has just pulled to the curb on Olive Street in front of the Los Angeles Athletic Club and across the street from Giannini Place, where Chandler worked as VP of the Dabney Oil Syndicate until booze, flakiness, and dalliances with female employees led to his dismissal and then to his writing career.

We get off the bus and cross the street to visit the Art Deco entrance to the Oviatt Building. The tour guide recites the history of the building and reads a passage from Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake that describes where we’re standing: “The sidewalk in front of the building had been built of black and white rubber blocks.” The rubber was removed to be recycled for the war effort, but other things have remained the same; he continues: “They were taking them up now to give to the government, and a hatless pale man with a face like a building superintendent was watching the work and looking as if it was breaking his heart.” Much of the architectural detail survived the decades — sconces and stained glass and Art Deco detailing — and much of today’s Los Angeles was Chandler’s setting 70 years ago. Anyone writing crime fiction set in Southern California today is writing in Chandler’s milieu.

Raymond Chandler, the author of The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, is widely regarded as a titan of the subgenre of crime fiction. Among writers and scholars, though, his essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” first published in The Atlantic in 1944, is nearly as well known as his fiction. In this takedown of the English tradition of mystery stories, he lambasts the Golden Age of detective fiction (“Sherlock Holmes after all is mostly an attitude and a few unforgettable lines of dialogue”) and, after offering a detailed critique of a number of those stories, offers this summation: “There is a very simple statement to be made about all of these stories: they do not come off intellectually as problems, and they do not come off artistically as fiction.”

Later in the essay, Chandler cites Dashiell Hammett as representative of a different style of detective fiction, one that deals in realistic situations and uses realistic violence to achieve its ends. Due to this realism, Chandler argues, this fiction has the potential to engage in a kind of literary art that is otherwise absent in the genre. Of those who challenged Hammett’s work as mysteries, he says, “These are the flustered old ladies ... [who] do not care to be reminded that murder is an act of infinite cruelty.”

In the first few paragraphs of his essay, Chandler describes the ideal detective. In a well-known passage of the work, he writes: “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” This distils the essence of Philip Marlowe, the intrepid knight-errant protagonist of Chandler’s seven novels and most of his short stories. He wasn’t the first detective of his kind — but he was perhaps the finest — and has become archetype of hard-boiled protagonists in the decades since his creation.

What sets Chandler and others of the hard-boiled school apart from the broader genre of mystery fiction is the idea that violence has consequences from which one can never fully recover. Even if the murder is solved and the killer brought to justice, order can never be completely restored, because it never truly existed in the first place. With his fiction and (even more prescriptively) with “The Simple Art of Murder,” Chandler established a paradigm for literary crime fiction that would dominate the genre for well over half a century.

Due to the many reproductions of his novels, that paradigm has necessarily included Chandler’s literary style, as well as his vivid depictions of Southern California, and both aspects have become conventions of the hard-boiled style. Two recent novels — Matt Coyle’s Yesterday’s Echo and Michael Krikorian’s Southside — highlight these sometimes disparate aspects of the genre.

Michael Krikorian’s Southside grapples with this issue in a manner from which most Southern California crime fiction shies away. Krikorian is a former gang reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and his considerable authority on the subject is clear. The novel’s protagonist, Michael Lyons, covers gangs for the city’s major newspaper, and when he’s shot outside his favorite bar after a midday double, a complex plot of revenge and retribution begins to unfold.

Krikorian nails the newspaper culture with both humor and venom. Almost as soon as the shooting occurs, Lyons’s colleagues form a “Who shot Mike?” betting pool. The speculation grows even more intense when a tape recording of a conversation between Lyons and a gang shot caller named King Funeral, in which he suggests being shot might give him more street cred, is made public. As the story develops, we see both the newspaper business and the criminal investigation in vividly realistic detail.

We know early on, though, that Lyons was not responsible for his own attack. No. The shooter was Eddie Sims. There’s no mystery in this — Krikorian reveals the attacker’s identity early on. We know not only who did it, but we also see more of what Sims has in store. Years earlier, his son, who had avoided the gangs so many of his peers were involved with, was killed in an incident involving the leader of a local crew, Big Evil. After Sims sees a documentary that shows Big Evil flourishing as a trustee in a super-max prison, he decides to take revenge on those who failed to seek the death penalty in Big Evil’s trial. Death Row, Sims believes, even without the ultimate punishment, would still be a fitting fate for Big Evil. Lyons is Sims’s first target because the reporter wrote a profile of the gang leader that humanized him and granted him even more notoriety than he already possessed.

Krikorian does much the same thing for his characters here as Lyons does for those he profiles. He gives voice to the realities of their lives in South Central Los Angeles in a way Chandler never could. Eddie Sims, in all his grief and loss and capacity for senseless violence, is the most compelling of the central characters. When Sims is on the run and holed up in a cheap motel, Krikorian writes that “he stayed in his room and watched the news. There was nothing of interest. He finally fell asleep around three in the neon morning, his reloaded S&W revolver in the nightstand drawer atop the Gideon Bible.” Even as we’re horrified we feel empathy; Sims is recognizably and understandably human. He’s a character who, in Chandler’s world, would be invisible, but whom Krikorian makes visible.

Southside is written in a combined first- and third-person perspective, but the portions written in the third person achieve an authenticity and authority that is absent in Lyons’s first-person point of view. Reading, I had the impression that Krikorian was trying too hard to fit Lyons into the mold of the hard-boiled hero Chandler described in “The Simple Art of Murder,” and wondered if Lyons, as he goes down the meanest streets Los Angeles has to offer, might in fact be mean himself. By the end, tarnished though he is, Lyons is shown not to be mean, but for a novel that examines the underside of Southern California (untouched since before Chandler began writing), that is only a minor consideration. While Lyons’s redemptive actions in the novel’s final act might not ring entirely true, ultimately, Krikorian’s authority on the subject overcomes the limitations of his protagonist’s characterization, and Southside becomes an examination of a Los Angeles too seldom seen in serious crime fiction.

Krikorian's Southside and Coyle's Yesterday’s Echo can be read as two distinct aspects of Chandler’s legacy. In terms of style, voice, and tone, Matt Coyle ably follows in the master’s stylistic footsteps and evokes the literary quality with which Chandler imbued the Southern Californian tradition of detective literature.  

Krikorian, on the other hand, builds an authentic Southern California landscape that allows the vast blind spots in Chandler’s vision to be at least partially filled in. Perhaps, it’s fitting that Krikorian’s rendering of this landscape is more problematic and less cohesive than Coyle’s. Chandler’s creation of the mythic Philip Marlowe was so successful it turned the author himself into a figure almost as mythic. These two novels find the value not only of furthering the myth, but also of tearing it down.

                                                                                                    ¤

The bus tour ends a block away from where it began, in the rapidly gentrifying Los Angeles Arts District. The tour guide regales us with the last sad anecdotes of Chandler’s later years and his suicide attempt; I’m struck by how thoroughly and effectively the tour has deconstructed Chandler the writer and replaced him with Chandler the man. Gone is the myth, and present is the humanity, faults and failings in full relief.

Chandler argues midway through “The Simple Art of Murder” that all fiction, from the most populist to the most literary, is about escapism. It’s not hard to imagine the writer’s greatest creation, Philip Marlowe himself, as an idealized, wish-fulfilling fantasy. Marlowe may have been neither tarnished nor afraid, but it’s become impossible for me to think of Chandler as anything but the embodiment of those two qualities, and surprisingly, I like him even more for it

Ed Boyer, my former editor at the Los Angeles Times, deep into "Southside" at a local pizzeria.

Southside

By Michael Krikorian

.

.

Wanted Chef Dominique Crenn - Superhero to Many, Anarchist to Others - Returns To Los Angeles, Arrest Imminent

Nearly one year after she fled town following a very public assault, renowned chef Dominique Crenn is returning to Los Angeles where a warrant for her arrest remains active.

Crenn, who assaulted a rare and endangered Japanese Suzuki fish while it was in the possession of chef Josiah Citrin, is expected to be arrested as soon as she enters city limits which could be as early as Thursday, authorities said. ( http://krikorianwrites.com/blog/2014/3/23/chef-dominique-crenn-wanted-by-police-flees-to-france )

"We will have officers waiting at LAX, Union Station and various highway entrances to the city limits," said former LAPD homicide detective Sal LaBarbera, now in charge of the City of Los Angeles'  Fugitive Warrant Division (FWD). "I'm stunned she is coming back knowing full well she will be arrested. However, I understand she is not adverse to being handcuffed."

Crenn, the only woman chef in America with two Michelin stars - earned at her San Francisco restaurant Atelier Crenn -   will be risking the arrest to participate in the second annual All-Star Chef Classic event at the L.A. Live , the scene of the crime last year. 

"I have come to save the world from the mundane, from the cliche, from the boring," Crenn said in a phone interview at an undisclosed site. (A global positioning unit later pin-pointed the site as the southwest corner of Highland and Melrose.) 

Sources in the LAPD said it was very possible Crenn would be allowed to compete in tonight's All Star Chef Classic once she posts bail after her arrest.  Bail is expected to be set at $500,000. Pressure by the Japanese government is being cited as the chief reason the high bail, normally set at $100,00 for this crime.

Chef Jonathan Waxman believes the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office would face an uphill battle if they decide to press charges and take Crenn to trial for assault. 

"The main witness was consumed [and] therefore unable to testify, hence her ability to circumnavigate the charges," said Waxman, who will be at the L.A. Live event Saturday. .

Chef Citrin, whose restaurant Melisse in Santa Monica also has two Michelin stars, said he was going to avoid Crenn at the event.

"I'm going to keep my mise en place as far from her as possible," said Citrin "I'm avoiding danger this year."

In the brief phone interview, Crenn said that her actions,  her passions and even her recipes will all be unveiled in her first book, "Dominique Crenn: Metamorphosis of Taste" which is available for pre-order at http://www.amazon.com/Atelier-Crenn-Metamorphosis-Taste-Dominique/dp/0544444671  

Atelier Crenn: Metamorphosis of Taste

By Dominique Crenn

Nancy Silverton, seen below in a photo taken at the Mozza Kingdom with a woman who resembles Crenn, could not be reached for comment.

.

White People Account For Disproportionate Amount of Crimes at Laundromats in Los Angeles County

Los Angeles - Although they account for only 17% of laundromat users here, white people were responsible for  a staggering 73% of all crimes committed at or near the washing and drying machine establishments of Los Angeles County last year, according to a federal study released Wednesday.

The Spokane-based Bookings Institute study, which analyzed crimes committed at or within a 50-foot radius of all Laundromats in L.A. County from January 1, 2014, to December 31,  2014, found that of the 2,417 crimes committed in the target area,  1,766 were allegedly committed by white people*.  These crimes ranged from a double homicide in Monterey Park. to the theft of a single doily in Toluca Lake.

"I think white criminals have discovered that laundromats are basically un-chartered, un-claimed outlaw territory," said William Dithers, who spearheaded the study dubbed "Operation Spin Cycle".  "Liquor stores, mom and pop groceries, gas stations and street robberies are pretty much wrapped up by other criminal elements. So, for the white thug, laundromats are the way to go. Not that in any way am I encouraging these deplorable acts on hard working, neat citizens."

The study, the first of its kind,  also showed that Chinese,  while traditionally associated with laundries, fared poorly, accounting for only 2.7% of total crime even though they made up 12% of the laundromat attendees. 

Mexicans  - both local and those from Mexico -, who comprise more than 71% of laundromat users, were suspected in only 5.8% of the crimes committed there. Authorities cited several reasons for this.

"Although they are best known for other things - most notably, making  tacos and napping -  Mexicans are not only one of the most laundry-friendly people in the Western Hemisphere, they are among laundry's most law-abiding citizens," Dithers said.. "The other thing about Mexicans is they are not particularly  good multi-taskers. So, for them to do laundry and commit crimes, is, well it's simply not in their wheelhouse." 

Black criminals were even less likely to commit crimes in a laundromat,  accounting for only 1.3% of crimes. among the lowest of any group on Earth. 

"The thing about black criminals is that they rarely go to laundromats for a couple of reason," said Matt Baylick. an associate professor criminal behavioral science at Stanford University.  "Black gang members don't like change and change is the primary loot at Laundromat crime.  For, say, a Swan or a Rollin' 60 or a Hoover to pull out a wad of bills, even if they are only ones. is fine.  But, to have a pocket full of change, even quarters, well, that is just not bool." 

*In this study  the term "white people" did not include Georgians, Armenians or Chechens or Mountain Jews.

Jeremiah Henderson Suspended After Only One Week As Beverage Director of Heaven's Best Restaurant

After yelling 'This beer and wine list sucks!" in the main dining room of "The First Supper", the greatest restaurant in all of heaven and the entire solar system, beverage director Jeremiah James Henderson, 32, was suspended for five working days by his boss, God, 4,569,269,007.

Henderson, who landed the prestigious job just a week ago after a relatively brief stint on the much-maligned, though extremely promising planet Earth, said the restaurant's chef, Georges Auguste Escoffier, was "too damn slow" in implementing his new beverage and food pairing suggestions. Henderson let this be known in the middle of Friday night service at the 667 star Michelin restaurant on the Southside of Heaven that serves only 250,000 fortunate diners a night.

"Look, kid, these old farts are still using a wine, booze and beer list curated  by Dionysus and Bacchus,' said Henderson with his infectious. but mischievously boyish  smile. "Dionysus was good.  Bacchus, too.. In their time, kiddo. In their time. Things have changed. Hell, they are still have Olde Babylon 800 in cans, for god's sake. They're still pouring  the Battle of Arbela Syrah, Alexander the Great Vineyard, 331 b.c. by the glass. Even Alexander himself thought that shit was way too tannic. Duder, in five or six centuries no one will be drinking red wine, anyway. Plus, God has his kid running the place and he's never there "

That "kid", General Manager Jesus Christ, 2014, who critics also say is rarely at his restaurant, preferring to travel and promote his own brands and self-help books, was reached in East Saturn where he is opening a branch of the popular "La Buffet 'd Jesus Christ." chain. 

"Jeremiah? I love that guy," said Christ, a carpenter by trade. "A week in and i love him.  He's got the fire. But, maybe a week off might chill him down a bit.  Look, I wouldn't have hired him if he didn't have the passion.  And do you have any idea how many "somms" come to heaven and tell me or John the Baptist they know all about wine, booze, beer and shit? But, Jeremiah, he did know. But, he also knew not to take it too seriously.." 

However, Christ said it wasn't the vast food and beverage knowledge that convinced him to hire Henderson, but rather a particular correspondence with an Earthling.

"In key positions here, before I take on anyone, I like to talk to the family and friends of the potential hire from their previous world," said Christ who grew up in a small town on Earth without a "normal" father. "So i talked to Jeremiah's father, cat named River Rock Mike,  He told me something that I thought was so moving, so soulful.  He told me that his son 'Jeremy wasn't bigger than life. He made the lives of others bigger.' 

"I heard that and I told our host, St. Peter 'That JJ guy ever come up in here and I'm on tour, hire him on the spot. You feel me, Pete?'  That's why we hired him. Because of what his father said. Not because he could blind identify a 149,000,047 B.C. Screaming Pterodactyl."

But,  after three days on the job, Henderson began to clash with Escoffier and chef de cuisine Fernand Point over the future direction of The First Supper's food and beverage parings. Jeremiah was urging the kitchen to incorporate more Thai and Vietnamese dishes on the menu, food he knew matched well with wines and beers he loved. That didn't go over well. Monday night, Jeremiah took a 10 and had a martini with a bleu cheese-stuffed olive backed with a tumbler of garage-made California Apple cider he had brought with him from Earth. He then returned to the dining room and let it rip.

After being suspended during service, Henderson stormed out of the restaurant and went to a hill overlooking the entire world and sat on a lone chair arranged to appreciate the view. A reporter caught up with him. Henderson rose from the chair. He started getting nostalgic for his previous jobs, all of them on Earth, which looked so little, so fragile, yet so damn achingly beautiful  on this heavenly night. Henderson took off his L.A, Kings cap and wiped his brow with the back of his wrist. He sniffled a few times and his eyes grew as shiny as the stars when he wondered aloud what his family and his beloved crew were doing. He even lamented leaving so soon.  

"I wonder if they're missing me. You think they miss me, bud?"

The reporter assured them they did indeed. "Very much so. More than you know."

Henderson pointed to the now-vacant chair. "My crew used to make fun of me because I was always late. They'd send me pictures of an empty chair like that one and say I was there in spirit. Sweet, huh?"

Yeah.

"Earth gets a bad rap lotta the times, but when it's on, bud, when it's on, no place in the universe can beat it. One time, I had the crew dancing to James Brown on a hardwood floor in their stocking feet, sliding around and jumping on the bed like we was five-years-old. Pure, unfiltered, unrestrained  joy. Get on up!" I'll always remember that. Get on up!" 

The reporter asked if Henderson was concerned when he came back to work in a week that he would still have his job at The First Supper.

"I'm not worried at all," said Henderson as he gazed off at Mount Olympus. "But, either way, it's bool.  I hear Zeus is hiring. Yowza!"

Then Jeremiah Henderson looked even further away. Off at galaxies so distant they don't even have formal names. "Maybe I'll just go traveling. Rock a few casbahs.  Hey, kid, you know the best part about traveling?"

The reporter thought about that for awhile, then said 'No. What?'

"Gettin' lost."

This story was reported by Mike Henderson, Taylor Grant, Kate Baratta, Alexis S. Kozac, Gary Alan (who is often mistakenly called Alan Gary),  Bethany Walls, Jared Hooper, Adam Vourvoulis, Verona Masongsong, Daniel Flores, Kim Trac, Rachel Kerswell, Matthew Kaner and  Kate Green. It was written by Morty Goldstein, Jr.

Twitter nom is  @makmak47

"A Slice of Runyon" Closes Downtown, Hank's Bar Is Knocked Out

February 11, 1997

If Damon Runyon were alive and looking for a watering hole in downtown Los Angeles, five'll get you 10 he'd be hanging out at Hank's Bar.

Runyon would find plenty of colorful characters to write about in the New York-style saloon on Grand Avenue near 8th Street.

There's Racetrack Charlie, who won't talk to a reporter because he might be "a copper." There's Liquor Mary, who can put 'em away with the biggest drinkers. There're undercover cops, ex-showgirls and Playboy bunnies, lawyers and gamblers, Wall Streeters and office workers.

But first and foremost, there is the bar owner, Hank Holzer.

Holzer, a former prizefighter, approaches a customer sitting on a bar stool. He fakes a right hand to the customer's ribs, then brings an uppercut to within an inch of the man's jaw. It happens so quickly that the customer, an athletically built man in his 30s, cannot react. He only smiles and shakes his head at the speed of the impressive combination. Nothing unusual about an ex-boxer showing off his skill.

Except that Hank Holzer is 88.

"I still have the punch, but it's my reputation that gets me by," says Holzer in a New York accent as thick as the pastrami at Langer's Deli and decked out in his trademark captain's hat.

His mind is as sharp as his fists used to be. Once a sparring partner for Rocky Graziano, he tells you in vivid detail (including the weather) about the three legendary middleweight championship fights in the late '40s between Graziano and Tony Zale.

The narrow bar--a few booths and 14 stools--is attached to the 80-year-old Stillwell Hotel. The jukebox, full of Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane, Barbra Streisand, Smokey Robinson, Patsy Cline and Louis Armstrong, is almost always spinning.

Near the bottles of booze is a sign that old-timers say Holzer put up a decade before the hit TV show "Cheers": "Welcome to Hank's, where everyone knows your name, where everyone's glad you came."

"There are no racial barriers in this bar," says one of the youngest regulars, Greg Meyer, a 32-year-old stockbroker. "Everybody gets along good here."

Almost on cue, two customers out of earshot at the other end of the bar--one black, one white--start singing "I've Got You Under My Skin" along with Sinatra.

*

Holzer was born in Greenwich Village in 1909. By the time he was 16, he was fighting professionally as Steven Terry. ("Back then, you took on an Irish name because they were the most popular.") Though never a champion, he fought well enough as a welterweight to make a good living and marry a successful model. He earned several medals and commendations for bravery while serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

When his wife, Frances, became ill with diabetes, doctors advised Holzer to move from New York to California for the warmer climate. He opened Hank's Bar in 1959 and ran it for 14 years until Frances' illness forced him to quit to take care of her.

A decade later, in 1983, at her urging, he bought back the bar.

"She told me 'I'm getting well, go on back to the bar, you love it too,' so I did."

Shortly afterward, she died.

The vast majority of the regulars are friendly to strangers. Of course, this is a New York-style bar. Five-foot-one Fast Eddie Schrodeski, 76, balls his fist up at a reporter who asks about Hank.

"How do I know you're the real deal, maybe your some kinda agent?" says Schrodeski, who proceeds to cuss out the reporter from beneath a cap that hides his eyes. Holzer intervenes and vouches for the reporter. Schrodeski slowly acquiesces.

"Hank's kind of like an inspiration to us younger guys," he says.

"Hank is like the father I never had," says bar regular James Watson, 46.

Holzer looks healthy but says, "I'm pushing 90, I probably only got a couple years left. I don't like to dwell on past glories. I've had a good life. I was married 42 years to a beautiful woman. She gave me a good son. I have plenty of friends. I've known all types of people, from killers and shylocks to millionaires."

One millionaire who used to frequent Hank's Bar was the late philanthropist Ben Weingart, whose name now graces a large homeless center in Skid Row.

"Weingart used to look at these guys sleeping in the gutter and tell me, 'Hank, one of these days I'm going to do something for these people,' " Holzer recalls.

Inevitably, the conversation turns again to boxing. Holzer reels off his all-time favorites: Rocky Marciano ("If he fought Tyson, they have to indict the Rock with murder"), Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Zale and Harry "The Human Windmill" Greb, who had 294 bouts.

Behind the bar is a small box with markers of the few people who owe Holzer money. Holzer takes the box and pulls out a IOU slip.

"This one is from Henry Armstrong," a legendary champion of the '30s who died in 1988. "That guy still owes me 48 bucks."

"Fire Alarm Biscuit" of Nancy Silverton/Ruth Reichl Disqualified in International Competition

 A biscuit designed by Nancy Silverton and assembled by Ruth Reichl was disqualified Sunday at the prestigious World Biscuit Championship in Lyons, France by a panel of judges who ruled it had "Violated the spirit of friendly and fair competition."

The biscuit, dubbed the "Fire Alarm Biscuit" due to its propensity to set off alarms because of the copious amount of butter deployed in its assemblage, had taken an overwhelming lead in the competition when the Belgium team filed a formal complaint with the international judges. Brussels Biscuits United claimed the Nancy/Ruth biscuit was more butter than actual biscuit.

What also put the biscuit in the illegal zone was the after-baking addition of two inches of  Buerre de Baratte of Rudolphe Le Meunier. (See http://krikorianwrites.com/blog/2014/1/29/the-dangerous-french-butter-thats-despised-by-its-peers )

"This is a biscuit championship, so enter a biscuit," said Roger DeCoster, team leader of the Belgians. "There were more fire alarms going off in Lyons during the event than their were in the South Bronx in 1977."

The recipe for the biscuit is expected to be released to the public in Silverton's next cookbook.

Both Silverton and Reichl could not be reached for comment.

Squad 7 - The Nancy's Fancy Flavors

There are seven  flavors of Nancy's Fancy. Like the United States Navy's SEAL Team Six, they are an extremely elite unit;

So, with just a little further ado, Nancy Silverton is proud to announce “Squad 7”, the first flavors to qualify to be called Nancy’s Fancy. Five are classified gelato and two are sorbetto.

Before we reveal them, let it be known that Nancy’s Fancy is not intended to shock the world of gelati and sorbetti with joy-dropping flavor combinations. You will not find any overly-manipulated, complex flavor combinations that twist and yank ingredients out of their natural role. They’ll be no main course for your dessert. No fried chicken gelato.  

What you will get from a pint of Nancy’s Fancy - scheduled for release this spring in markets across the United States - is a refinement and enhancement of traditional flavors we’ve all enjoyed. The classics:  chocolate, coffee, peanut butter, coconut, butterscotch, banana, berries. All combined with components that turbocharge Squad 7 to an extraordinary level of concentrated taste. 

Here they are:

GELATO

Chunky Salted Peanut Butter/with Crunchy  Chocolate 

Butterscotch Budino / with  Salted Caramel Swirl  

Roasted Banana  / with Bourbon   & Pecan Praline 

Cold-Brewed Spiced Stumptown Coffee/ with Cracked  Cocoa nib

Fruitti Di Bosco /with Greek Yogurt & Mixed Berries

SORBETTO

Coconut Stracciatella  /with Bittersweet Chocolate Strands

Chocolate  Rum Fondente/  with  Dark Rum & Chocolate Chips     

These seven have an esprit de corps about them, a frozen swagger knowing that of the hundreds of flavor combinations that tried out, they were the ones selected by Nancy Silverton and her executive pastry chef Dahlia Narvaez to be Nancy’s Fancy.

They are a tight-knit group as well. Not only do they chill out together at the pastry kitchen of Mozza or the L.A. Creamery complex in Chatsworth, California where they develop, but at tasting parties and other gatherings. 

And like the Original Rat Pack, they are there for each other and, man, do they know how to have a good time.

For example, check out what happened at a gathering in January. Chocolate Rum Fondente with Dark Rum and Chocolate Chips had a few too many at a Southern California park and cracked wise to three local ice cream sandwiches. Soon, Fondente was surrounded by more than three dozen ice cream sandwiches, many of them frozen hard, frosty cold and steaming.

Suddenly, out of a Nancy’s Fancy Squad 7 freezer, two team members, Coconut Straciatella and Chunky Salted Peanut Butter rappelled down. It was now Fondy, Coco and Chunky, side by side. Talk about a combo. Never in recorded history have so many ice cream sandwiches melted so fast.

It is that closeness, that raffish bond they share, that makes the seven flavors of Nancy’s Fancy so deviously delectable to enjoy together

###.

Here’s a little info on some of the squad.

Chunky Salted Peanut Butter/with Crunchy Chocolate      

On a spring day in 2014, Nancy Silverton took a forkful of just-made micro-batch of peanut butter gelato and slowly savored its intense flavor in silence. Then the nods began. One, two, three, four and then, in the most rarified of reviews, Silverton nodded for a fifth time. The storied “Five Nods from Nancy” had been achieved.

It was salty. Almost too salty, but not. It was like the gelato itself had tip-toed up to the salt limit wall and set up camp. It was a gelato that brought instantaneous pleasure to the taste buds. The zero to 60 time on Chunky is the fastest of any production gelato or ice cream in the world. 

Since then, Since then, in the officina of  Dahlia and Nancy - the pastry kitchen of Mozza -  this salty peanut butter landmark has been given the zultra treatment. For crunch we fold in chocolate-dipped French cookie wafers that are enrobed in 70% bittersweet chocolate.

Let the nods begin.

Butterscotch Budino with Salted Caramel Swirl.

This Nancy’s Fancy is named after the most popular dessert in all of Mozza Land, Dahlia Narvaez’s fabled Butterscotch Budino, which is now copied all over America. Budino is the Italian word for pudding so the gelato is extremely smooth and delicious. And then, as Nancy and Dahlia love to do, it is taken to the zultra level by having salted caramel swirled throughout its lusciousness.

 ##

Fruitti Di Bosco with GreekYogurt & Mixed Berries

Inspired by the classic Greek breakfast of yogurt and berries, this gelato releases wave after wave of mouth-filling sweet tart flavors that invigorate the mouth, linger on the palate and bring a sense of contemplation. Although neither Aristotle, Socrates nor Plato were known to be particularly aggressive and violent, one has to wonder how the three giants of philosophy would react if they were together at a market and all that remained was a lone pint of Nancy’s Fancy Greek Yogurt with mixed Berries.

##

Cold-Brewed Spiced Stumptown Coffee/ with Cracked Cocoa nib

Take a Los Angeles base,blend in ingredients from Oregon, Zanzibar, Colombia, Indonesia, Madagascar and India and the result is this eye-opening member of Squad 7. 

We source our cold brew from Stumptown Roasters in Portland, Oregon and mix it with a quintet of Earth’s most beloved spices; cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves and vanilla beans. Once the gelato is spun, Corderilla cocoa nibs, (unfermented cocoa beans) from Colombia join the festa. The result is a gelato that brings mind exotic faraway places and confirms coffee’s place in the pantheon of tasteful pleasures.

 ##

Chocolate Rum Fondente/ with  Dark Rum & Chocolate Chips   

Melted 70% bittersweet chocolate is brazenly, if not downright recklessly folded into a Nancy’s Fancy base with Colombian cocoa powder from Corderilla Chocolate for this insanely rich sorbetto fondly referred to above as “Fondy”

To make matters even more delicious, Meyers dark rum is poured in to give it a kick in the pint. The final blast of flavor and texture come from chocolate chips.

The Fondente family in Italy is planning a week long festa in the spring of 2015 to celebrate the official release of this intense sorbetto.

There will be more flavors that make it to Nancy’s Fancy, but Squad 7 will always be there for you to enjoy.

Squad Seven

Still to come profiles of Roasted Banana / with Bourbon & Pecan Praline and Coconut Strach, both of whom were available.

Chef Matt Molina Resigns From Mozza To Pursue Career As Race Car Driver, Silverton Calls Him the"George Washington of Mozza"

James Beard Award-winning chef Matt Molina stunned the Los Angeles restaurant world, his family and even his boss, Nancy Silverton, when he announced Saturday he was leaving his job as the Executive Chef of Mozza to chase his dream of becoming a professional race car driver.

"Matt is like the George Washington of the Mozza kitchen," said Silverton shortly after hearing Molina was moving one.  "I'm stunned he is leaving. Especially to race cars."

Within one hour of the news, Team  McLaren announced that Molina, who has been secretly testing road and race cars, had signed a seven-figure contract to be the chief test driver for the esteemed British automobile manufacturer.  McLaren founder Ron Dennis said it was "with profound relief I can finally let the world know it was Matt Molina behind the wheel when the McLaren P1 recently lapped the Nordschilfe at the Nurgurging in under seven minutes."

It had been assumed that McLaren test pilot Chis Goodwin had been driving the P1 during this stunning lap. Check out the video of Molina in the P1 at the Nordschilfe;  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9IWiTpWeiM

Molina had been hinting he would leave to race cars for months. The San Gabriel Valley native  who won the James Bead Award for Outstanding Chef in the Pacific region in 2012 ( http://www.grubstreet.com/2012/05/matt-molina-james-beard-award-mozza.html) was often seen wearing a golf cap with the letter "M" on it, but most thought it meant for either "Matt" or "Molina", It is now known it symbolized McLaren.

It was a 2014 trip to Las Vegas to celebrate the birthday of his friend Adam Levine that really charged Molina when he got to drive an Aston Martin Vanquish S at a local track. "Matty was really happy when he came back from that racing weekend," said former Osteria Mozza sous chef Chris Feldmeier. ."If I'm not mistaken, I think he even asked me how my children were doing. I don't have any kids, but, still." 

News that Molina, who worked with Silverton at Campanile, was leaving stunned the Mozza family.

In New York City, Mario Batali, who gave Molina his nickname "Ponce" because of his uncanny ability to get lost in Italy, wished him well. 

"i have known Ponce for 20 years and have driven long on the golf course and slowly on the 405 with him and  he is truly great at both, but his true metier is in the saute pan,"

Batali added he expected Mclaren's arch rival to try to lure Molina away..

"i wish him the best of luck with the McLaren team, but do not be surprised if the Ferrari team comes knocking," Batali said. "Matt's heart, his palate and his engine are forged of steel and titanium near Modena in Emilia Romagna."

In Los Angeles, there was sadness.

"I am saddened and shocked," said Kate Green, Silverton's assistant. "Hey, let me ask you something. Do you know if I will still be able to get free food with Matty gone?"

Silverton had little to say.

"It's really sad Matty is leaving," said Silverton. "Like I mentioned, the strange thing to me is his new job, racing cars. Every time I've ever been in his car, he drove like an old lady."

Still, she praised her chef who opened Pizzeria Mozza in 2006 and Osteria Mozza months later. "Matty will always be part of the Mozza family."

Liz "Go Go" Hong, formerly the chef at Pizzeria Mozza will move over to the Osteria Mozza as executive chef.  

Molina has not ruled out a return to cooking and opening his own restaurant. 

"The race  season lasts only eight months," said Molina as he enjoyed a smoked short rib at Odysseus and Penelope on La Brea. "I'll have to do something during the other four." 

A sources close to Molina said he would either open a restaurant or join the PGA Tour. Another source said Molina has been offered a job as the private cook for the Tips For Jesus guy

AFter his farewell "lineup" talk, Matt Molina listens as Nancy Silverton toasts his mozza career. Pastry chef Dahlia Narvaez Looks on

*For the 2015 season McLaren has already signed Fernando Alonzo and Jenson Button as their Formula One drivers, however Molina is expected to replace either one if they falter