Earlier this month, David Sax, author of Save the Deli (warning: link goes to a website containing impassioned, somewhat salty language) raised a “cri de coeur” for another Montreal institution, Schwartz’s deli.  Writing in the Globe and Mail, Sax delivered a mouth-watering description of its famed smoked meat sandwiches and the deli’s rich history and offered up this advice to the restaurant’s new owners:
 

Now, there are other places that have opened up recently in Montreal making smoked meat that is as good or even better. But the value of Schwartz’s lies in the fact that it is unchanged; it’s one of the last of its kind. Tamper with that, Mr. Nakis, try to improve it and you’ll diminish its value, perhaps even ruin it forever. Stay the course, and you’ll not only earn back your investment, you’ll do your part in preserving this country’s most beloved culinary icon.

Beloved though it may be, it’s not the only destination on the dining map, as evidenced by this neat article: One Question, Five Chefs: Favorite Montreal restaurants.  The chefs in question are from Burlington, Vermont, and they offer an interesting perpsective on the city’s best restaurants — equal parts industry insider and voracious vacationer.

If you’re thinking this post looks (reads, sounds) familiar, that’s because it’s a reposting of a popular (and timely) article from last year.   One interesting update: in the U.S., the shamrock shake is now available nationwide for the first time.  Not sure if that’s also the case in Canada, but shamrockshake.com is a good, if curiously non-chronological, place to track local “sightings.”

About 20 web pages deep into research about a mint milkshake it hits you: those folks over at McDonald’s are a real clever bunch.  Newspaper articles, blog posts, online forums, videos, websites — all dedicated to the fast food giant’s elusive seasonal confection, the Shamrock Shake.  But why?

The author of this article could have just stated the obvious — because it is DEE-LISH-ISS — and left it at that, but after that much research I suppose a more in-depth analysis is called for.  And on that front, The Daily Meal‘s For the love of the Shamrock Shake does not disappoint!

Celebrating its 40th birthday this year, the Shamrock Shake is one of the oldest seasonal offerings from QSRs.   What’s the secret to its mint-o-licious success?  According to The Daily Meal, there are five reasons why this Hulkified beverage remains so popular:

1. Limited supply. “Because nothing pushes a product better than an expiration date.”
2. Location, location, location. “Headlines for the first Shamrock Shake sightings of the season read like eyewitness accounts of seeing the Loch Ness Monster or the Abominable Snowman … fortunately, dedicated sites like shamrockshake.com make the quest a whole lot easier.”
3. Fans love the familiar. “Don’t mess with a sentimental food memory, man.”
4. Taste of tomorrow … er, yesterday. “Just about anything with retro appeal does well these days and the Shamrock Shake is no exception.”
5. Often imitated. “When McDonald’s is a source of recipe inspiration, well, that’s just badass.”

Chain menu offerings are often dismissed by foodie-types as being “derivative,” meaning that food trends take hold in more avant-garde independents then filter down to the hungry masses.  This is likely less true in an age of social media spread, where one wacky recipe, once “pinned,” can spread like wildfire — but this belief persists.

Personally, I’ve always felt that this theory of mass popularity underestimated the incredible innovation involved in chain operations.  Like an entire meal you can eat with one hand.

In fact, when it comes to breakfast sandwiches, it’s the humble McMuffin that is being “reimagined” by top chefs.  From Toronto Life, Flavour of the Month: eight sublimely sloppy breakfast sandwiches.

There isn’t one of the eight that doesn’t look like it shouldn’t be eaten slowly, communally, accompanied by strong coffee and good conversation (or, failing that, strong coffee and the Globe and Mail’s weekend crossword).

Here’s one worth savouring, from Mildred’s Temple Kitchen, accompanied by Toronto Life’s description:

Related Stories:

• Bacon and breakfast starches boost breakfast menus
• Poultry has room for growth on breakfast menus
• Breakfast a top trend for 2012
• Recipe: Carmelized onion, egg and bacon breakfast pita
• Recipe: Bacon, arugula, Tabasco-Chipotle breakfast sandwich

Chef Michael Bashford, catering manager at Beretta Farms in Etobicoke, won Monday night’s showdown with a menu that included a gorgonzola-drizzled prosciutto, pistachio and apple app; a main that paired grilled beef bavette with a chorizo and fingerling potato hash, served with grilled asparagus with a smoked paprika and mustard hollandaise; and a ginger shortbread cookie topped with blackberry puree and a buttermilk and icing sugar glaze for dessert.

The Discovered Culinary Competition is a four-month search for the best of Canada’s up-and-coming culinary stars. The winning chef will get the opportunity of a lifetime:  an all-expenses-paid trip to spend a week cooking at a Michelin-star restaurant in northern Spain.  Chef Bashford will join the winners of the first nine rounds to compete in the semi-finals at the CRFA Show, March 4 – 6, 2012 at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto.

And now the most important part … you still have an opportunity to join these top-notch chefs because the competition continues through February and applications are still being accepted:

Winners to date:
Round 1 – Chef Arron Carley of Volos restaurant, Toronto
Round 2 – Chef Trish Gill of Beast restaurant, Toronto
Round 3 – Chef William Tolentino of Celestin restaurant, Toronto
Round 4 – Chef John Koplimae of the Drake Hotel, Toronto
Round 5 – Chef Alejandro Winzer of Ristorante Verdicchio, Sudbury
Round 6 – Chef Glenn Sheridan of Le Bon Marché, North Bay
Round 7 – Chef George Tyminski of Annona restaurant, Park Hyatt Hotel, Toronto
Round 8 – Chef Mitchell Lamb: Stone House, Burlington; Lake House, Vineland
Round 9 – Chef Bruno Elsier of the Toronto French School
Round 10 – Chef Michael Bashford of Beretta Farms, Etobicoke

For more information and to apply, go to the Discovered Culinary Competition page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/discoveredchefs.

As of today (Feb. 14) I can’t find a chef version and I don’t have in-kitchen experience, so I’m not about to attempt to make one.  But if you come across one, be a dear and let me know?

In the meantime, here is the only food industry version I could find (click image for larger version):

(image via Portola Coffee Lab)

We’ve got a year to work on that.

In the meantime, you can get crackin’ (sorry) on these treats for next year’s celebrations:

• How to make a heart-shaped egg (Anna The Red, via Pinterest)

(Confession: this is the only item on this list I’ve actually tried to make.  It didn’t work so well.  Then again, my two-year-old kid did correctly identify the shape as “heart” and not “misshapen eggy blob,” so maybe it worked okay after all.)

• (Amazing) Heart cake tutorial (I Am Baker, via Babble)

… which of course you’ll want to wash down with an equally beautiful beverage …

• How to draw a latte-art heart (Serious Eats)

The next item might seem like a no-brainer, but check out the slide show for some time-saving tips:

• How to make heart-shaped pepperoni slices (Serious Eats)

… which naturally leads to …

• How to make a heart-shaped pizza  Serious Eats)

Of course, if you’d rather dine than dash around a kitchen, you could always head to a local Boston Pizza restaurant, where more than 50,000 special one-day-only heart-shaped pizzas will be served up.  With love, no doubt.

Our infatuation with chocolate first began 2,000 years ago when it was discovered in Latin America. The Maya and Aztec elites infused cocoa beans with water to form frothy chocolate drinks – the first frappuccinos, if you will – for special occasions and as sacrifices to the gods.

Of course, it was just a short hop, skip and jump across the briny pond once Columbus caught whiff of its reputed powers — and actual deliciousness — but that still doesn’t explain the February 14th connection.  For that we can possibly blame/credit Cadbury Brothers (not Kurt Cobain) though Cadbury’s own history acknowledges only fancy boxes, not  just heart-shaped ones:
 

Cadbury began producing fancy gift boxes of assorted chocolates … in 1866.  The first chocolate box designed by Richard Cadbury was decorated with a painting of his young daughter Jessica holding a kitten.  He often used his own children as models, or painted flowers and scenes from holidays.  These new decorated boxes were very popular, helping the growth of both the Cadbury business and the confectionary trade in general.

Of course, if you’re looking for a more detailed account of the history of chocolate, the Cadbury site is a good place to start (or Wikipedia’s article on the subject, if you like your chocolate facts in bullet-p0int form).

Fortunately for food fans, Gourmet Live has continued to look back at the history of various food traditions, with a year’s worth of posts now available for sampling (I recommend a full stomach):

The history of …

… Easter and chocolate bunnies
… state fairs and funnel cakes
… teachers and apples
… Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie … and turkey
… Hannukah and latkes
… Christmas and candy canes

If you’re having a bit of subject line déjà vu, no need to worry — we have, in fact, posted about food myths in the past (MythBusting: when food and science collide).

But where that post dealt more with fraught foods — buttered toast! poppy seeds! the five second rule! — today we’ll be looking at myths that are a bit more restaurant-specific, namely, myths of menu design and the mystery behind the McRib.

The Huffington Post got things started with their reporting that a menu reading study shows restaurants have misunderstood customers for years. The target of their myth busting? The so-called “menu sweet spot”:

Researchers at SF State trained retinal scanners on study participants as they read menus and then ordered things as if at dinner. They found that people basically read menus the same way they read books — starting on the left page, going down to the bottom, then moving to the right and going down to the bottom. They don’t linger particularly long on any one spot.

Press release summarizing study results here; abstract of study printed in the International Journal of Hospitality Management here (abstract is free, $39.95 to purchase the article in full).

CHOW.com took the study one step further and attempted to bust some other menu myths: All that menu psychology stuff is bull. I don’t always recommend reading the comments on internet articles but the commenters on this one made some good points about the validity of the author’s conclusions.

Over at SmartBlog on Restaurants, one menu item in particular was put under the microscope / heat lamp: Myths surround the mysterious McRib.

It’s no secret that the McDonald’s McRib has developed a cult following since it debuted in some markets in 1981, but stories, myths and now a research project aim to discover the reason the sandwich shows up when it does, only to disappear again a few weeks later.

Restaurants generally have several reasons for launching limited-time items, including seasonal promotions and a chance to try out a dish to gauge whether guests love it enough to perhaps make it permanent. But the McRib has evolved into a special case, not tied to a holiday, not a permanent part of the menu but a recurring character around which buzz seems to grow greater each time it appears. So, how did it go from another test sandwich to perhaps the most famous limited-time quickservice offering?

The article outlines the history of the popular now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t menu offering, and McDonald’s own efforts to promote the “McRib mystique.” A few theories about McRib timings are offered, from competitors’ releases to supply chain dynamics, but no definitive explanation seems to exist. File theories under “plausible,” and pass the fries.

It wasn’t just random callers that said wacky things — sometimes the random wackiness came from my coworkers, like that one time a staffer heading up a response to proposed bans on drive-throughs noted that those who would be impacted  include — quoting from a press release now — “people who are mobility impaired, parents with young children, the elderly or people who are in unfamiliar areas late at night or in bad weather.”

Well, that’s kind of awkwardly worded, but you get the point — lots of people rely on the convenience offered by drive-through outlets.  Now I’ll give you a guess as to which identified group I questioned at the time.  Yep.  Parents with young children.  I just didn’t “get” that that group would seriously have a problem with having to park and go into the store.

Prepare ye for the words that excuse my previous cluelessness and explain why I feel like a dork for having ever doubted my coworker in the first place : “… and then I had kids.”

And then I had kids.

Kids who fall asleep at The Most Inopportune Times (in the car) and who like to mock my efforts to make sharing a habit by demanding their share of fries (in the car).

Is it any wonder that this post from Crappy Pictures hit a little close to home?

Have a great weekend.  Go crazy and splurge.

At the time, CRFA politely declined to get involved — noting that the association’s lobbying efforts were better spent trying to create a better business climate for foodservice operators than in trying to get a local station to overhaul its programming schedule — but as you can see, the complaint stuck with me.  I like to think that I can watch the show with a certain degree of informed detachment, but what about operators, who perhaps share that viewer’s concern?  Does Ramsay’s salty-tongued terrorizing leave a bad taste in their mouths?

I set those residual worries to rest when I read 3 lessons from Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on AmEx OPEN Forum.  The item is from several months ago, but the insights remain fresh, namely:

• fix the people first;
• get back to basics; and,
• never, ever quit.

I have no reason to believe that Toronto restaurateurs Ed and Lilly Pottinger are fans of the series, though their recent experiences suggest an intimate familiarity with the third lesson noted above.  The same could be said of supercustomer Keith Lambert, who, on hearing the news of The Real Jerk’s closing, booked a vacation, drove up from Detroit and dined at the restaurant every night for a week.  Talk about a Kitchen Dream.