Sweet Potato Fries – A New Menu Item of McDondald Taiwan

 

 

 

 

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Video: Chef Jeremy Chan’s Two Michelin-Starred Restaurant Is Secretly a Steakhouse

Chef Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale run one of London’s hottest restaurants. Watch as they process their aged beef and turn it into the foundation of Michelin-starred Ikoyi’s menu, which also offers items like aged sirloin topped with caviar, moin moin-inspired dumplings, plantain, and more.

Watch video at You Tube (18:09 minutes) . . . . .

Olive Oil in Coffee? New Starbucks Line a Curiosity in Italy

Colleen Barry wrote . . . . . . . . .

Putting olive oil in coffee is hardly a tradition in Italy, but that didn’t stop Starbucks interim CEO Howard Schultz from launching a series of beverages that do just that in Milan, the city that inspired his coffee house empire.

The coffee-olive oil concoction — echoing a keto-inspired trend of adding butter to coffee, only with a sugary twist — has provoked both amusement and curiosity among Italians.

Gambero Rosso, an Italian food and wine magazine, called the mixing of olive oil with coffee “a curious combination” but said it was reserving judgment, having not yet sampled the drinks.

It did praise featuring the staple of Italian kitchens as a main ingredient, not just a condiment. The magazine also noted the health benefits of consuming extra virgin olive oil, which some Italians do habitually straight from the bottle.

“Did we need coffee with extra virgin olive oil and syrups? Maybe yes, maybe no,” wrote the magazine’s Michela Becchi. But the chance to promote Italian excellence is a valuable one, she added.

Italy’s olive oil producers’ association, ASSITOL, welcomed “the daring innovation,” saying the line of drinks could ”relaunch the image of olive oil, especially among young people.″ The association has been promoting adding olive oil to cocktails.

Martina Lunardi, a student of cultural mediation, was sticking to her standard cappuccino on a recent Starbucks visit but said she wasn’t offended by the olive oil combos and might even try one someday.

“Anyway, I know where to get a regular cup of coffee,” Lunardi said.

Schultz came up with the notion of adding olive oil to coffee after visiting an olive oil producer in Sicily and teased the idea as a game-changer in his last earnings call. He worked with an in-house coffee drink developer to come up with recipes, the international coffee chain said.

Schultz presided over the launch of “Oleato” — meaning “oiled” in Italian — last week on the eve of Milan Fashion Week, with a Lizzo performance for an invitation-only crowd at the company’s Milan Roastery. The beverages will be rolled out in Southern California this spring and in Japan, the Middle East and Britain later this year.

The La Stampa newspaper in Turin taste-tested four of the beverages, giving them marks of 6.5 to 7.5 on a scale of 10. It noted that the only warm beverage on the menu, a version of caffe latte, “has a strong taste that leaves a pleasant taste in the mouth. Grade: 7.”

“The (positive) sensation is that Oleato could be something to drink all year, but most of all that it could be truly tasty in the summer,″ La Stampa said because most are served with ice.

Tourists who throng the Milan Roastery are enticed to give the drinks a try by placards around the store and a special menu insert advertising the five-drink assortment, which ranges from 5.50 euros to 14 euros ($5.85 to $14.85) for a martini version with vodka.

“It’s good,” said Benedicte Hagen, a Norwegian who recently moved to Milan to pursue a modeling career. “I’m not a big coffee fan, that’s why I like to try drinks like this.”

She was sipping the Oleato Golden Foam Cold Brew, which includes vanilla bean syrup, and said she couldn’t really taste the oil. Still, she acknowledged asking the barista to add a shot of chocolate to make the drink even sweeter and would have added caramel if it had been available.

“It’s not so random,” Hagen decided.

Kaya Cupial’s Oleato Iced Cortado, meanwhile, was in a pretty V-shaped glass and garnished with an orange peel. It’s made with oat milk infused with olive oil, demerara syrup and a dash of orange bitters.

“It’s like normal coffee, but with orange. It’s not strong,” noted the 26-year-old from Warsaw, Poland, who was traveling with a group of friends. They also ordered the Golden Foam Cold Brew along with a pair of ordinary cappuccinos.

It is not the first time Italy has inspired Schultz. He acknowledges his debt to the Milan coffee bar, which he discovered during a trip to Italy in 1983, as his inspiration for building the now-global coffee chain.

Schultz waited until 2018 to bring Starbucks to Italy, aware that he was treading sacred coffee ground. Italians typically take their coffee standing at a bar, chatting with friends or the barista for a few minutes, before continuing their day. It is not something to be nursed.

Since then, Starbucks has opened some 20 stores in northern and central Italy. The Milan Roastery is often packed, while other locations in the city have shifted in the wake of the pandemic.

Source: AP

 

 

 

 

Self-taught Chefs Win Coveted Stars from Michelin Guide

Elaine Ganley and Jean-Francios Badias wrote . . . . . . . . .

If your secret wish is to get a reward, not just family compliments, for your talents in the kitchen, then Georgiana Viou might serve as inspiration.

The self-taught chef from the west African country of Benin, who came to Paris dreaming of becoming an interpreter, was awarded a star on Monday by the Michelin Guide, the bible of gastronomy, for her cuisine at “Rouge,” a restaurant in the southwestern French city of Nimes.

She wasn’t alone. A chef who studied literature, David Degoursy, and pastry chef Jeanne Satori, with a degree in sustainable development, also won a star for their restaurant de:ja in Strasbourg, eastern France, where the annual awards ceremony was held.

Michelin’s 2023 awards for French chefs put the accent on the regions of France, not Paris. The only chef to walk away with three stars — the highest award, reserved for gastronomic luminaries — was Alexandre Couillon for his creations at La Marine, his restaurant on the tip of the Ile de Noirmoutier on the Atlantic Ocean.

Of the 44 new Michelin stars handed out, Viou’s is the only one won by a woman working single-handed. Several other women were honored as part of a team, like Satori, the pastry chef at de:ja.

Viou, 45, has described her cuisine as a mix of French Mediterranean perfumed with notes recalling her home country. She has written several books about Benin’s cooking.

Becoming a chef was a fall-back plan for Viou, who came to France in 1999 to study languages at the Sorbonne, hoping to become an interpreter. Working at a communications agency in the southern port city of Marseille, life’s complications forced her to change directions and, at 33, her second passion, cooking, took over.

In an interview last fall with online publication terrafemina, she said that as a Black African woman who was older than most chefs-in-training in a mostly masculine universe her maturity helped her cope.

But she dislikes being categorized because of her sex or skin color, saying that “it’s completely ridiculous” to be considered “a la mode” for being a Black female chef. She wants to be judged for what’s on the plate she serves.

Viou learned to cook from her mother who had a simple little restaurant in Cotonou, Benin and got a lesson in perseverance from her grandmother. She worked her way up the chef’s ladder step by step in Marseille, eventually getting recognition at restaurants bearing her name. She joined Rouge, in Nimes, at its inception in June 2021.

Last year, Viou was on the jury of the popular TV show MasterChef, years after being a candidate.

Viou’s Michelin star was bestowed for her “singular cuisine … celebrating her Mediterranean environment and Benin roots.”

“Today is really top,” she said at the awards ceremony, adding that she had been invited and thought, “This is cool. I’ll find myself among lots of chefs, an occasion for encounters,” not for the bestowal of a star.

She was clearly overwhelmed.

At Rouge (Red), “We’re not a team. We’re a family,” she said, her voice trembling and her eyes welling with happy tears. She then shyly took a few dance steps and raised her arms as if in thanks.

Self-taught chefs with Michelin stars are less rare than one might think.

There is Eric Girardin, for instance, at La Maison des Tetes in Colmar, near Strasbourg, who began his working life as an electrical engineer.

The only woman to have won three Michelin stars is Anne-Sophie Pic. The grand-daughter and daughter of chefs, she moved from her native Drome region to Paris to study commerce before returning to her roots. With restaurants in Paris, London and Lausanne, Pic opened another in Singapore in 2019.

Source: AP

 

 

 

 

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