Moving On Out Party!

As George Harrison put it so well, “All Things Must Pass”. So, after 16 award-winning years we are going to go out in style with some of our dearest and most talented friends. On Saturday, August 3rd we will gather with the following folks and a roomful of guests who will make me,…

Moving On Out Party!

Recipes

Full Moon Saloon Fish Sandwich

FULL MOON FISH SANDWICH, ‘FULL MOON SALOON’ Norman Van Aken © All rights reserved. No sandwich in the history of Key West was consumed by more drunks on premise than this one. No sandwich saved more people from a certain, potentially lethal, hangover. Essentially it is a fresh as can be fish…

Turntable

“Remember When”, Alan Jackson

There are certain songs that make you fall in love with your life partner all over again… If you are very lucky. And this song is certainly one of ‘those songs’ that will release that emotion. It is his patience and strength that I find in his voice that makes ‘Remember When’…

Press

Interview, D’Artagnan, “Center Of The Plate”

Courtesy: Center of the Plate

At D’Artagnan we proudly work with chefs across the country, providing them with quality ingredients to express their creativity in the kitchen. Some we have decades-long relationships with, and others are new to the family. The chef we interviewed for this blog post falls in the former camp. Chef Norman Van Aken is…

Memories and Musings

Meeting Julia Child, (The First Time)

I didn’t grow up watching Julia Child on television the way many people of my generation did. My television hours were not inclined toward any aspects of cooking, though we did cook in our home. My mother was a both a restaurant worker and also (for a time) a Girl Scout leader….

Press

Edward Lee’s “Buttermilk Graffiti” in the L.A. Times; A Review by Amy Scattergood

Courtesy: LA Times

To be candid I love Edward Lee. I came to know him after he came to know me. That happens when there is a generational divide sometimes. But something drew us together and in places like Atlanta, Napa Valley, Orlando, New York City and Miami we have had the chance to experience…

Memories and Musings

My Kitchen Meditations: “On Knives”

My Kitchen Meditations ‘On Knives’ I went to bed after a long day of cutting. I thought back on the previous 24 hours as I hulled and then evenly sliced Florida strawberries in the ascending morning light using a Japanese knife its creator might have envisioned for other tasks. My knives are an…

A Word on Food™Series

A Word On Food: Julia Child

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A Word On Food: Po Boys

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Crazy long days of work and not assured of getting a meal later I went for a bigger sandwich for lunch… much different than the meals I typically split with my wife, Janet. Two men sat down right next to us at the neighborhood place we were ensconced in. A nicely dressed...

A Word On Food: Cheeseburgers

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Is it just me or has every major food magazine in the country had a cheeseburger on the cover as we gear up for summer? One of the magazines asked the question, “Did you have a happy meal?” and goes on to report how McDonald’s had experienced a state of “Mc Emergencies”....

Won Tons

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Who does not love won tons? These ethereal purse like morsels of food first appeared in the Pearl River Delta port of Guangzhou during the Tang Dynasty around 618-907 A.D. Then they followed the Cantonese diaspora, drifting east to Hong Kong. If you are not yet familiar, but do know more about...

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#fusion #newworldcuisine

“If the map of the world were a tablecloth, and I could choose a place at that table, I would sit at the Southern tip of Florida, at the nexus of North America and the Caribbean. My plate would touch Cuba, the Florida Keys, the Yucatan, the West Indies, the Bahamas, and South America. And, if time could tell, I would listen to the tales of voyagers, discoverers, traders and mystics who, in searching for “the Indies”, the Great Kahn and the riches of China, discovered something much more valuable and enduring, A New World of Culinary Treasures. Almost instantly, the cuisines of the Old World began to merge with foods of the new one; This evolutionary and inexorable fusion lies at the heart of New World Cuisine.”

— Norman Van Aken, July, 1993