I especially enjoy the answer of the barbecue chef from D.C. who says being a woman has actually been an advantage because the male barbecue masters told her all their big barbecue secrets, because what would a lady possibly ever do with such information?

• Paul
• Yes, please, now.

It is beautiful out in Seattle and drinks o'clock approaches, and brand-new Chico Madrid has lots of windows, bocadillos (yummy Spanish-style sandwiches), and a goddamn sangria machine. It's located in the new BelRoy Apartments, where those doomed houses were turned into art in the form of Mad Homes, near the Lookout on the west side of Capitol Hill.

Both our friend Ben and our friend Paul separately report that Chico Madrid is good.

• This is what a bag full of Original Cookie Chips looks like.

Sometimes, a PR person will get in touch with The Stranger and offer to mail us some newfangled variety of junk food, in the hopes that we'll rave about it on our blog. We usually accept these offers, because in the whole history of journalism, reporters have never turned down any free anything ever.

• Taste the Tan Rainbow: Click to enlarge.

Anna Minard strenuously disagreed with Cienna. In fact, she found the Original flavor to be "really, really, really good. I think the flavor is just 'sugar-flour' but it's amazing." The Sea Salt Peanut Butter, though didn't get as many raves. Anna called it "so-so. Why is it 'salted'? That's insane. Peanut butter is already salty. Don't extra-salt it." Ultimately, though, Anna approves: "The texture is perfect for what they are," she says. "These seem like they'd make really good building blocks for weird food concoctions made by stoners." For the most part, staff opinions fell squarely between those two opinions: Those of us who hate crisp cookies did not enjoy Cookie Chips, but those of us who like buttery, sugary things no matter what form those things may come in found a lot to appreciate. Most of us agreed that Original was best, even though we've never eaten an Original-flavored cookie before in our lives; it appeared to be chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips, which sounds awful but worked best with the thin-and-crispy theme.

Yesterday, we got a package of Oberto brand Bacon Jerky in the mail. Here is how much the carnivores on staff enjoyed the Bacon Jerky: I couldn't get a picture of the stuff because it was gone before I thought to get my phone out. I thought I was finished with all the endless bacon variations a while ago—the internet's love for bacon salt and bacon-flavored popcorn finally exhausted me—but this strikes me as a viable product. It's not greasy, it tastes like bacon, and it doesn't have the clammy texture of that pre-cooked bacon you can buy in supermarkets. (Weirdly, when Goldy microwaved Bacon Jerky, it turned back into regular bacon; it was slightly chewy but just as greasy as regular old breakfast bacon.) Dominic, Goldy, and I all enjoyed Bacon Jerky, and we would definitely eat it again. Especially if it showed up for free in the mail.

Stephen Colbert cuddles an adorable piglet named Hamlet while eating prosciutto.

What's new: an interesting-sounding brewpub in Sodo, a butcher/lunch spot in Pioneer Square, a nice family-owned bakery on Cherry at MLK, a Matador-owned seafood palace in Ballard, and more, more, MORE...

Documents posted online last week in the interest of governmental transparency (and yay for that) show that the White House Office of Management and Budget "significantly weakened" food safety rules proposed by the FDA. It looks like the White House is letting the food industry have its way with the proposed rules, and the online documents show exactly what changes the OMB made, apparently at the industry's behest—including "stripping product and environmental testing requirements." Because WHO NEEDS THOSE when our food chain is screwed 10 ways to Sunday and people keep getting sick all over the place from just eating food?

Tell the President that we need tighter, not looser, controls on food safety right over here.

• Facebook
• Click to enlarge.

Masterminded by Travis Kukull, formerly at Tilikum Place Cafe and Elemental, brand-spanking-new Gastropod shares Epic Ales’ tasting room in Georgetown and has a short but fascinating-looking menu—click to enlarge at right.

Epic founder/brewer Cody Lee Morris says they want to create “a more experimental brewpub,” with small plates that rotate as often as their taps do, letting them “totally transform roughly every other week.” Also, their logo has a cute snail.

As of yesterday: "Also a new item has been added to the menu: rabbit liver cheesecake." And note that this Sunday, they're celebrating their grand opening with "Pig and Paella"—roasting a whole pig and making a giant veggie paella, only $5 for a plate of one or both—from 4 to 8 p.m.

Plenty of people think Gwyneth Paltrow sounds like an ass every time she talks about food, which is a lot, because she's written lots of cookbooks now on the topic of food and, conversely, how little of it she actually eats.

And plenty of people on the internet are annoyed by this. I am not one of those people (although parody like this is amaaaaazing). I skimmed Paltrow's My Father's Daughter cover to cover, like a novel. But it wasn't until I was reading quotes from her newest cookbook yesterday that I realized why I harbor such a weird affection for Paltrow's writing: Her voice reminds me of one of my favorite fictional characters, Ignatius Reilly. Granted, she's a poor man's Reilly, but still. Half the quotes below are from A Confederacy of Dunces, half are from Paltrow's mouth. See if you can spot the difference:

“When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”

"The maple syrup adds another layer of autumnal yum."

“When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.”

"When you go to Paris and your concierge sends you to some restaurant because they get a kickback, it's like, 'No. Where should I really be? Where is the great bar with organic wine?'"

“Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?”

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Whether or not Fremont needed an upscale Italian restaurant is an argument for a Marxist and a free-marketeer to enjoy, but Maria Hines's new Agrodolce is going gangbusters. Try to make a weekend reservation only a few days in advance, and you'll end up eating at 9:15 p.m., an hour so late for Seattle that it's surprising to find the place still packed, with everyone having a good time, albeit sedately so. The clientele runs to larger parties of older people with architect-emeritus eyeglasses (including, one night, not one but two Tom Skerritt look-alikes), younger people dining with their parents, and couples at last enjoying a proper upscale Italian Fremont date...

KEEP READING > > >

• Kelly O
• The pretty potted tree and some very inoffensive paintings at the former 35th Street Bistro/Still Life Cafe.

As someone who works in the restaurant industry, I can’t help but feel pretty irate after reading this Seattle Met article on the reaction amongst local restaurateurs to the Affordable Care Act’s upcoming requirement that all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees offer health benefits. It’s hard to hear these restaurant owners play the victim when, for the most part, they’re doing just fine. Restaurant employees, however, are not.

• Kelly O
• Uneeda be willing to pay a little more for this Uneeda burger, people.

In the midst of the recent outpouring of support for MurrayAid, the fundraising effort to pay for beloved local bartender Murray Stenson’s expensive heart operation, it seems that everyone forgot to ask why he didn’t have health coverage in the first place. As heartwarming as it is that people came through for him the way they did, it’s still pretty fucked up that someone as legendary as Murray—the godfather of all the craft cocktail hullaballoo—should have to worry about finding $55,000 to pay for an urgently necessary heart surgery. I suppose it’s a lot easier to focus on how generous his regulars and colleagues in the industry were to come out to fundraisers (and donate their tips from those fundraisers) than it is to focus on how wrong it is that restaurant employees can’t expect assistance from their employers in paying for health benefits.

I've got type 1 diabetes and I pay $308 per month in premiums before the cost of insulin. I can't really throw a fundraiser every month to cover these costs...

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With profoundest apologies and the biggest NSFS** warning ever, here is something really, truly gross***.

* Remember them? HOW WILL WE EVER FORGET???
** Not Safe for the Squeamish
*** It is interesting (GAHHHH!!!), however, that the Thai family who found the thing in the thing (EEEEEEEEWWWW!!!) made a shrine for it and have managed to construe the whole thing as "lucky." We should all (SCREEEEEAAAAM!!!) have such fortitude.

Thanks a lot to Our Man in Bangkok.

• facebook.com

How do you make Rain Shadow Meats—the Capitol Hill butcher shop that sells exclusively local/sustainable cuts, patés, charcuterie, stocks, and pornographically large hot-dogs—even better? Add lunch and booze! Rain Shadow Meats Squared is now open in Pioneer Square (Occidental at Jackson, right near the new Bar Sajor), and in addition to the butcher counter and deli case, there are around 20 seats for lunch.

Before dedicating himself full-time to the meatly arts, owner Russell Flint was the sous-chef at Boat Street Cafe (the obscurely located but lovely French-ish bistro in Belltown), so the sandwiches and platters at Squared will probably be delicious, and they will definitely come from happy, healthy animals.

Relish Burger Bistro opened on March 1st, inside the Westin Hotel on Fifth Avenue. A huge banner on the patio railing reads: “Your search for the perfect burger ends here.”

Last night, they held a “black jeans” (ugh) opening party for schmancy business people and a few schlubs from the press, and they went all out. A video camera captured people as they entered, and the host had an awards-show style microphone with SEEN on its cube base (presumably from the advertising company Team Photogenic, who run a web show by that name). An ice sculpture bar melted over the course of the evening, with Heinz ketchup and mustard bottles suspended in the base and RELISH carved in bas relief. I was informed the artist is Kevin Roscoe, a Seattle-based, international promotional marketing guy. Colored disco lights shot upward from the windowsills.

Most of the food wasn't great. The grilled steelhead salmon came with a pine nut, mushroom, raisin, and tomato relish, cooked until all of those things had the same texture (which could be blamed on the heat lamp setup) and the salmon itself was noticeably fishy/not fresh (which could not). The beer-battered fried pickle came with a "chipotle remoulade" that was SO GROSS; it had a strong, pungent flavor that doesn't pair well with the already strong, pungent flavor of a freaking pickle. Pineapple-carrot-mascarpone cakes made to look like tiny burgers—the “lettuce” was coconut flakes dyed green—were clearly for novelty rather than taste. The sweet potato fries came pre-drizzled with "garlic aioli" that was very sour, almost bleach-y.

But none of that really matters. Do they have the perfect burger? Surprisingly—judging by the sliders/mini-versions—they might. The beef slider was juicy in the literal sense, meat juices running in your mouth (but the bun wasn’t soggy! Sorcery!) and the right amount of pink in the center. With shredded lettuce, tomato, fried onion, Beecher’s flagship cheese, and just a touch of tangy, housemade steak sauce (instead of being smothered in mayo), the toppings were light, so as not to distract from that juicy, juicy middle. The chicken in the chicken slider (under the dependable combo of mozzarella, tomato, and arugula) was crispy and fatty and reassuringly irregular in shape, rather than pounded senseless into a puck.

The assistant manager of restaurants and bars at the Westin, Kristina Dziedzic, said that they're trying to get away from the "stigma of the hotel restaurant" by being engaged in the community and integrating Seattle-specific food-makers: Macrina brioche buns, Beecher's cheese, Whidbey Island ice cream, Fremont whiskey. They served several different Elysian beers at the party, and 19 of the 21 planned tap beers will be local. The beef is sourced from Niman Ranch, a network of humane farms (husbandry method, free-range, no antibiotics, grain fed—but not necessarily local), and ground in house.

The chef, Ali Majedi, just moved to Seattle; he ran the first Relish Burger Bistro at the Phoenician (another Starwood hotel) in Scottsdale, Arizona. Dziedzic insisted the two Relishes have very little in common, given their focus on local tastes.

So can a corporate hotel restaurant be more than another way to gouge hotel guests? At Relish, I’m willing to entertain the idea. You can’t judge a restaurant by the launch party, but I’ll be back for a burger.

• Kelly O
• Chu Minh owner Tanya Nguyen in November.

Stranger resident vegan Dave Segal reviewed Chu Minh Tofu & Veggie Deli in the International District this past November and found that the "tiny, unassuming" restaurant for the tofu company had good tofu dishes, if very little in the way of atmosphere. He also found it had a good story: Owner Thanh-Nga, aka Tanya, Nguyen left Vietnam when she was in her fourth year of medical school in Saigon, then got a biochemistry degree at the University of Washington in 2002, and started running Chu Minh in 2006 (her parents started the company in 1998).

(Dave initially went to check out Chu Minh on the recommendation of Slog commenter Anne X, who said, “ChuMinh Tofu & Veggie Deli at 12th and Jackson is a rad all-vegan Vietnamese deli that, in addition to a vegetable-heavy hot entree selection and fresh soymilk & tofu, has some delicious chili lemongrass tofu banh mi. A sweet li'l hole in-the-wall place with good food.” Comments on Dave's review were also universally supportive, like this one from Benj: "I've been going since the first week, and I've never had a bad experience... The people at ChuMinh are earnest and generous... Bonus points: they have a sign on the wall that reads, 'We care more about your spiritual well-being than making money.'" After Dave's review, Chu Minh Tofu delivered a bunch of food to The Stranger's office at lunchtime, and we all ate it and thought it was great.)

Now the Washington State Department of Agriculture has taken away Chu Minh's license "after finding repeated health violations at the company’s facility," also fining the business $17,800 in civil penalties, according to Food Safety News. FSN reports that "the company had been warned repeatedly" by both the WSDA and the FDA, and that its license has been suspended twice already, "most recently in October of 2012."

And last August, two months prior to Chu Minh's most recent previous shutdown (HOLY HELL WHY DIDN'T THEY SHUT IT DOWN RIGHT THEN AND THERE?!?!?!?):

The FDA sent a warning letter to the company following an inspection during which the agency noted 16 different types of significant violations. Investigators noticed several sanitation problems, including pigeons sitting on exposed vats of soaking soybeans outside the facility, an employee picking his nose before handling ready-to-eat tofu, rodents (live and dead) and rodent feces in the processing facility and cracks in equipment used to process foods.

FDA also noted that some soybean drinks contained an illegal color additive. Other drinks were sold with ingredient lists that omitted additives used to make the beverages. Nutrition labels were also found to contain false information.

I cannot currently find words to address the above.

Chu Minh owner Tanya Nguyen, however, has found some words—her letter to her customers is after the jump. But before that, here is what she told Dave Segal in November—one month after the business was shut down for the violations above, about four months before this Monday's shutdown:

Discussing her mission, Nguyen says: "I can help people to explore a nourishing world of the wonderful taste, texture, and beautiful color that they did not even know existed. I can help people who want to be vegetarian but they don't have time to cook. I can help people to reduce their meat in their diet and live a healthier and longer life. This is the reason that inspired me to open ChuMinh Tofu and Veggie Deli."

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This guest post is by Maria Hines, chef/owner of certified organic Tilth, Golden Beetle, and Agrodolce in Seattle.

Thanks for the GB (Golden Beetle) shout-out in your Mediterranean diet blog post last Tuesday. [Eds. note: This kinda got away from us... but meanwhile, we updated our list of recommended Mediterranean restaurants for you.] It seems as though your readers have quite the dialogue going in the comments section—lots of recipe requests and book requests. So I thought I would take the time to nerd out with you and the readers about the topic. I’m super-psyched that the New England Journal of Medicine put this study out to validate the science of a diet that researchers having been telling us about for decades.

Let’s talk cookbook recommendations. At GB, we have an expansive selection of books. For those of you interested in learning about the authentic preparations and the deep, rich Arab culture of the Mediterranean, I recommend:

1. The Food of Morocco by Paula Wolfert
2. The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean by Paula Wolfert
3. Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon by Claudia Roden

For those of you interested in learning about authentic dishes and looking at pretty, pretty food porn of the Mediterranean, I recommend:

1. Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi
2. Vefa’s Kitchen by Vefa Alexiadou

For those of you looking for some Mediterranean recipes, here you go.

TILTH QUINOA SALAD...

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You'll have your goddamned Twinkies back by this summer, America. Now you can quit making jokes about dwindling Twinkie stockpiles and go back to your older jokes about how Twinkies would survive a nuclear apocalypse.

NPR says:

On Monday, a state judge in Manhattan struck down New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's rule capping soda sizes. And lawmakers in Mississippi are taking the backlash against government regulation on food marketing one step further.

A bill now on the governor's desk would bar counties and towns from enacting rules that require calorie counts to be posted, that cap portion sizes, or that keep toys out of kids' meals. "The Anti-Bloomberg Bill" garnered wide bipartisan support in both chambers of the legislature in a state where one in three adults is obese, the highest rate in the nation.

Yes, "The Anti-Bloomberg Bill" is the real name of the bill. Mississippi may not be the most obese state in the union, though; this Gallup poll calls it the second most obese state after West Virginia.

You can complain about the nanny state all you want, but the fact is, the playing field is not fair when it comes to junk food. And we're not doing enough to combat an industry that is spending unthinkable amounts of money to keep us hooked on large quantities of its product. A character in Cory Doctorow's novel Makers points out that it's not like all of a sudden an entire generation of Americans just stopped exercising their willpower:

We didn't get less willful in the last fifty years. Might as well say that all those people who died of the plague lacked the willpower to keep their houses free of rats. Fat isn't moral, it's epidemiological.

An entire generation wasn't suddenly born with an inability to push away from the dinner table. As the junk food industry moves into developing markets, the people in those developing markets become more obese. This has been proven time and time again. It's what Michael Moss's excellent book Salt Sugar Fat is all about. Did the citizens of Mexico and Brazil and China just suddenly happen to lose their will power at the exact same time that junk food companies moved into their countries? How many coincidences have to happen before it's a pattern?

I don't think we should ban junk food. But I do think we should make sure people are informed about the decision they're making when they buy junk food. I think it's hard to find a down side to Washington State's law that demands chain restaurants to list the calories of each item on the menu. I think it's perfectly okay to require corporations to control the portions of their junk food. I think a person is less likely to buy, say, four 16 ounce sodas, rather than one 64-ounce cup from 7-11. I think that's human nature. I don't see a problem with what Bloomberg is trying to do in New York City, and I think that his soda law will eventually be the law of the land in most of the United States, the way cigarettes are taxed and regulated just about everywhere now. But I think there are going to be a hell of a lot more dumbshit maneuvers like this Mississippi law between now and then.

I was just sitting alone in the office, fantasizing about having chocolate for breakfast—specifically, this girthy See's Candy Chocolate Butter Egg, not some watery bullshit like a mocha—and it reminded me:

Chocolate for Choice is happening tomorrow night. If you've never been, it's a girdle-splitting blast. Picture a bunch of well-dressed feminists invading one of them fancy boxes at Safeco Field (the baseball place) talking and snacking on the delicate wares of 40 local chocolate companies—beautiful cakes, truffles, even chocolate bars shaped like birth control packets. (Fingers crossed for a chocolate NuvaRing this year, my mouth could use a break.)

• NARAL Pro-Choice WA

The best part is, tickets start at $40 and all proceeds benefit NARAL Pro-Choice Washington. Ostensibly, at the end of the night a panel of judges—including the delightful Nancy Guppy, Jezebel's Lindy West, burlesque queen Miss Indigo Blue, Washington's new first lady Trudi Inslee, and me—choose the evening's chocolate winners but I fail to understand how there can be any losers in a situation like this.

If you're not busy, and you love lady parts and chocolate, you should attend.

(Safeco Field, First Base Terrace Club, 1250 1st Ave. S, 7-9pm, $40, tickets here)