Food

Malin + Goetz

Posted on by elemonated

Incorporating the sales of a skincare/fragrance line is something I didn’t really expect out of a restaurant, and I certainly don’t go and eat out for the perfumery discoveries I might find in the bathroom. It is, however, always nice to stumble upon some stuff you’ve never tried before, and to find out they’re not only e-commerce, they’re also rather close by.

I visited Osteria/Talde with my boyfriend riding on the buzz of the foodie crowd that extended from conversations in the depths of Isakaya MEW in Midtown, to the patrons around Dale Talde’s original restaurant in Park Slope to, of course, the artists of the Jersey City neighborhood it’s in the process of opening up in as I write this. I’ll write more about the food when the other half opens up, and I decide to write that big post about Jersey City hipsterification (said with love. They serve a freaking kale salad and their other salads have grains in them. Not hating, it was delicious.)

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This was our table. And then they moved us because it was too small for the food we picked out. And then I stopped taking pictures because I was hungry.

The place is also proceeded by Carrino Provisions which is a little gourmet market that sells meat, cheese, and…bath products. It’s rather interestingly placed in the store; it’s in a bad place if you’re coming in, since it’s on a shelf facing inward against a wall next to the entrance, but it’s in a great place if you’re leaving. The soap in the bathroom is also their rum hand + body wash, which is interesting and lovely smelling, with the main draw being the rum, and when a patron leaves, they face the shelf with Malin + Goetz on it on the way out. They also sell their lime body lotion, alongside the rum soap and body lotion. I tried. I liked. I’m penciling in Malin + Goetz for a visit.

Hershey vs. the UK

Posted on by elemonated

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/nyregion/after-a-deal-british-chocolates-wont-cross-the-pond.html?_r=0

That’s insane. I understand Hershey has a trademark to protect, but overseas Cadbury has this lovely distinct taste to it that the ones created here simply don’t have. I can’t believe Hershey was able to block the importing of decent eating chocolate. LBB Imports, the name of the company Hershey sued, cannot sell imported candies such as Toffee Crisps, Yorkies, and Maltesers, as well as candy with American equivalents like Cadbury, Kit-Kats, and Rolos anymore, and the lawsuit was dropped. It’s like an affront against globalization though.

We’re already facing a chocolate shortage. I am now even less likely to buy Hershey products, and I originally had only really liked Kit-Kats, Reese’s Pieces, and York Peppermint Patties, none of which I purchased on anything resembling a regular basis. They may have a right to protect their trademark, but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Wonuts & the first day of the rest of my life

Posted on by elemonated

I have just been alerted to the fact that waffle donut hybrids exist and can be had at the Waffles Cafe in Chicago. While this is wonderful, because donuts with the slight chewy and crispy texture of a waffle just goes so well with the sweetness of a donut (think cruller; those are my favorite types of donuts!) it is also terrible because I haven’t been to Chicago in years, I’m really bad at saving money, and I won’t be able to go until I have both money and time. And as the last semester of my undergraduate life is starting today, I may not have time until months from now, let alone money saved up.

Oh. Today’s the first day of the last semester of my undergraduate life.

Oh dear.

Oh.

Let’s hope this is the last semester, and I start my real adult life soon after *crossesfingers*.

Merry Christmas!

Posted on by elemonated

Hope you all had a good Christmas and did something as relaxing as a nature hike with your family…

…risky as eating raw oysters at a Chinese buffet…

And I hope you spent time with friends…

And ate some bangin’ food :3

Mast Brothers Chocolate Tour

Posted on by elemonated

This is painted on the left wall.

I took a tour of the Mast Brothers’ factory on Friday. It was brilliant. I’ve taken “chocolate themed” tours before, and visited the Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco when I was a teenager, and neither of those visits made me feel as excited about chocolate as the ~45 minute walk around the factory watching things being made did. I feel more educated now, and not in the way Starbucks or Teavana wanted its employees to feel and to make the customers feel when I worked for them (apologies to the, honestly, really great people who complimented me on how genuine I was), but more like when we visited the Kitchen at Grove Station and talked to the guy serving Modcup coffee near the door about how cold it was to be right next to the door during a late autumn grand opening. I still need to try honey processed coffee.

Sorry for the potato.

I tried to take some pictures, but my new phone’s camera is kind of a potato (thought apparently an improvement on the old camera), and my hands are not the most stable. I should ask for a new camera for Christmas.

I like the wooden flag. The bags with the color on them are sugar and the bags with no visible markings are cocoa beans. I convinced my boyfriend not to go lay in them, somehow.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures after passing the counter, which is understandable, as the ideas behind any number of their machines is fairly simple and easy to steal with a few good pictures, and they have a policy of a human touch being most important, which means many of their machines aren’t perfect automatons. If they did, I’m sure someone with fantastic business sense and fewer ethics could probably drive them out with a few tweaks to make the machines perfect. Although the idea of keeping the machines imperfect and stressing out the employees is a little odd, they did make a comment about how the latest they’ve worked until was maybe midnight, made it sound outrageous, and confirmed that their job was way, way better than retail in that regard at least. Anyway, the machines obviously don’t hold them back. Read More

Charlotte Royale Cake

Posted on by elemonated

It’s absolutely gorgeous.

For some reason, I’ve been really fond of “naked” cakes lately. Ones that aren’t perfectly covered in a thick layer of frosting or icing, that really reveal the texture of the cake. I’ve never been really fond of thick frosting or icing in the first place, and I prefer the stabilized whipped cream they put on Chinese-style chiffon cakes with the chestnut/red bean mousse (the best stuff), melon balls and strawberries, and I want to eat it with the cake, because by itself it’s just weird.

Coffee

Posted on by elemonated

Because I, and many of my peers, colleagues, and supervisors all over the world drink this black gold everyday, all day, and are chemically and behaviorally reliant on it for our daily functions…

The happiness and pride these people take in their coffee feels so much more genuine than the, at times hostile, song and dance the coffee geeks and small-batch packagers that I live around do. At most, the people around me teach me something about coffee in their weird, myopically western way.

Also, to balance out this anthropological episode, I bring you

So be careful with your intake and try to get your body’s worth of sleep!

At CIA Starbucks, even the baristas are covert

Posted on by elemonated

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-cia-starbucks-even-the-baristas-are-covert/2014/09/27/5a04cd28-43f5-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html

The hilarity when secrecy and customer service collide. I kind of want to work for the CIA Starbucks, not gonna lie.

If it weren’t in the middle of no where, being able to drink coffee with analyists and international go-betweens, intelligence experts, and cartographers practicing new languages and getting interviewed sounds just about ideal.

“The baristas go through rigorous interviews and background checks and need to be escorted by agency “minders” to leave their work area. There are no frequent-customer award cards, because officials fear the data stored on the cards could be mined by marketers and fall into the wrong hands, outing secret agents.”

Perhaps I’m just a sucker for a secret.