Monthly Archives: August 2009

As early as the first century A.D., Western cartographers and geographers began to speculate that there must be a large continent in the southern hemisphere, to act as a counterbalance to the large known landmasses of the north. Beginning with Magellan, explorers sailed out into the vast expanse of the Pacific hoping to find and […]

The unstoppable rise of the cupcake over the past five years has been analysed in terms of retro-food chic and nostalgia, the infantilisation of Western civilization, the triumph of appearance over substance, and even American political culture. After all, a cupcake is both democratic (one equally-sized cupcake each) and libertarian (there is no imperative to […]

I first saw sot l’y laisse on a restaurant menu as a teenager, somewhere in south west France. I risked appearing the fool by asking the waiter what on earth they were, and even though I couldn’t quite follow his explanation, ordered them rather than make matters worse. […]

A former boutique storefront in London has become the temporary home for a pop-up bar with a twist: 2 Ganton Street is currently the U.K.’s “first walk in cocktail.” Created by Bompas & Parr (known for their earlier experiments with glow-in-the-dark jelly […]

The concept of terroir has its origins in French winemaking, as a means to describe the effect of geographic origin on taste. As a shorthand marker for both provenance and flavour, and as a sign of its burgeoning conceptual popularity, it has spread to encompass Kobe beef, […]