Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

erica for one, is down with breakfast beer:

see, i think beer, like any other alcohol, can use a little spruce-me-up-water-me-down-juicy-somethin’somethin’ for breakfast time. that’s why in Europe they’ve got the Shandy: half lager, half sparkling lemonade. it may sound kinda nasty but i’ve tried it and it not only works well at breakfast, it makes piss beer (cough *pbr* cough) actually palatable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandy

according to a friend in stuttgart, they often do Shandies with banana juice instead of carbonated citrus stuff in that neck of the woods… uh, yeah.

Good thoughts, Erica. Also, Endless Simmer is meeting this weekend to decide whether we should replace our “we just can’t keep our mouths shut” tagline with “Endless Simmer: spruce-me-up-water-me-down-juicy-somethin’somethin.”

– In other beer innovation news, Tim is not down with name tags on Bud Light bottles:

Disappointed! How would you feel if Kraft ran the same promotion on their processed American singles?

Tim, you don’t know ES very well if you think our answer would be anything other than “that would make us very, very happy.” Everybody’s gotta protect their night cheese.

– Speaking of fake cheese, ES made our vegan readership very, very happy this week with America’s top 10 new sandwiches — veganized. My favorite comment comes from MunyaBuddya over at HuffPo:

“Where’s the vegan Double Down?”

Are you on that one or what, vegan bloggers?

(Photo: Mike Saechang)

Top 10 New Foods We Ate in 2010

With another year gone it’s time to look back and reflect on all the deliciousness that was. Here are the top ten new dishes the Endless Simmer team was lucky enough to stuff in our mouths over the past 12 months.

10. Fried Peanut Butter, Banana and Bourbon Sandwich

breslin peanut butter and banana

Breakfast at The Breslin in New York is about as ridiculously delectable as it gets. In their modern update on The Elvis sandwich, peanut butter, banana, bourbon and vanilla are all goo-ily encased in a fried-til-crispy puffed skin. (Photo: gsz)

9. Sustainable Sushi

sustainable sushi

Sushi is the modern foodie’s last major guilt trip — a dish that just can’t be done locally, sustainably, or ethically. Or is it? At Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, Connecticut chef Bun Lai is turning the sushi CW on its head, proving it can be just as tasty and exciting when overfished species like unagi and bluefin are replaced with sustainable, North American fish. If there’s one new food idea that turns into a 2011 trend, we hope it’s this.

8. Burrata Everywhere

burrata

This revelatory cheese wasn’t invented in 2010 (try 1920) but this was the year we saw the Italian delicacy pop up on menus all across America. Fresh curds of buffalo milk mozzarella are stirred into salted cream and kneaded and pulled until they take on a gloriously goopy texture that makes all other mozz look like lifeless balls of nothing. Burrata is such a perfect cheese that only a sliver of bread and a touch of olive oil are needed to make it a meal. The quality varies place to place, but we sampled particularly tasty versions at Roman’s in Brooklyn and The Lake Chalet in Oakland. You? (Photo: Chiara Lorè)

7. The Mighty Cone

the mighty cone

The Austin, Texas food truck scene is one of the most heralded in the nation, and this local ready-to-eat-on-the-street treat is the one we’re most hoping to see go national. At this year-old trailer, a tortilla cone is filled with cornflake-almond-chili-crusted chicken tenders, fried avocado, mango-jalapeno slaw and ancho sauce. The ice cream cone is dead. Long live the chicken cone.
(Photo: The Mighty Cone)

6. Malaysian BBQ

fatty cue

Usually by the time a budding chef-lebrity opens their third restaurant, they’re churning out a watered down, assembly line version of what made them famous. Not so for Zak Pelaccio, who branched out this year with Fatty Cue, a Brooklyn restaurant that ingeniously fuses traditional southeast Asian flavors into classic BBQ dishes. The never gimmicky menu ranges from heritage pork ribs in smoked fish-palm syrup and Indonesian long pepper to Manila claims swimming in bone broth with barbecued bacon and chili. (Photo: Fatty Cue)

Next: Top 5 New Foods We Ate in 2010