- Science: Bruce Feiler on the Sense of Taste
- Visiting a Halal Butcher in New York
- Colman Andrews on the Best Thai Restaurants in Los Angeles
- Roadfood: The Sterns Eat Fried Chicken in Charlotte, N C
- Oliver Schwaner-Albright on the Culver City, CA, Dining Scene
- Gourmet Travels: St. Croix River Valley, MN; Beijing’s Provincial Restaurants
- Gourmet Entertains Menus: Summer Boathouse Dinner; Herbal Menu
- The Gourmet Cookbook Club’s July Selection: Beyond the Great Wall
- Seasonal Kitchen: Tomatoes
- Kitchen Notebook: More Than 15 Tomato Varieties
- M. F. K. Fisher
- The Last Touch: Parsley
In “The Corrections” (page 46), best-selling author Bruce Feiler explores new discoveries in taste science, some of which may profoundly change the way we cook and eat. In particular, he finds that each of us may have a different and unique sense of taste: “Though all humans have the same number of receptors, how the brain interprets what those receptors transmit can be radically different.”
In “Getting Their Goat” (page 40), Gourmet editors Ian Knauer and Alan Sytsma visit Mandani Halal, a halal butcher in a remote part of the New York borough of Queens. What they find there is much more than a butcher shop—it’s a whole way of thinking about the act of killing animals for food, one that causes them to look at cooking in a very different light.
Good Living Restaurants: In “Tinseltown Thai” (page 24), Colman Andrews asserts that Los Angeles is the undisputed Thai-restaurant capital of America, with the largest Thai population of any urban area outside Thailand. In a mini-mall on Sunset Boulevard, Andrews eats at Jitlada, which serves some of the best Thai food in America. In “Beyond Bangkok” (page 26), Andrews recommends his favorite Thai restaurants in L.A.: Lum-Ka-Naad; Spicy BBQ Restaurant; Thai Nakorn; and Wat Thai of Los Angeles. In Roadfood (page 28), Jane and Michael Stern travel to Price’s Chicken Coop, in Charlotte, North Carolina, to stand in line at a takeout-only stand that’s been serving some of the best fried chicken in North Carolina for decades—and maybe the best fried chicken in the South. In “From Back Lot to Boomtown” (page 30), Oliver Schwaner-Albright, a travel writer for The New York Times, eats at the rising-star restaurants in Culver City, California, home to the Sony Pictures studios and one of the country’s most explosive dining scenes.
Gourmet Travels to Minnesota and Beijing this month. In “Hidden Valley” (page 84), James Beard Award winner and gourmet.com contributor Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl visits the St. Croix River Valley, which straddles the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. “Details” (page 116) recommends where to stay and eat in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
In “Olympian Appetites” (page 86), Newsweek International contributing editor Stephen Glain highlights Beijing’s array of provincial restaurants and investigates its regional-cuisine wars. Beijingers are passionate foodies, and the eating competition is heating up all over town with rivalries between chefs. A recipe for Mapo Doufu (Spicy Sichuan Tofu) is included on page 92. “Details” (page 93) recommends where to stay and eat in Beijing.
