According to this CNN Money report from last year, Cargill, the manufacturer of the ground beef that partially paralyzed the dance instructor profiled in Sunday’s New York Times, is the second largest privately held company in the country. Fortune magazine estimates that Cargill’s 2007 revenues were $88 billion. The company’s third quarter net earnings in 2008 were more than $1 billion.

And yet according to the Times‘ story, Cargill, despite its wealth, can’t seem to follow its own safety practices, doesn’t want to test its suppliers’ meat before grinding, and seems to enjoy some measure of protection from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The New York Times published a devastating piece on Sunday, detailing not only how a nasty strain of E. coli ruined the life of a young dance instructor but also how the tainted meat came to be in the first place. The short answer: because the inspection and safety system favors the beef industry, with its need for cost economies and limited liability.

Some of the lowlights from Michael Moss‘ A-1 story:

• “Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.”

Read More “The Times’ Shattering Expose of Ground Beef: Where Does It Leave Burger Lovers?” »

This is skit from the Colbert Report — I’m not even sure it actually aired, since I didn’t see the former New York Times dining critic’s appearance on the show — captures much of what it’s like to be a professional food reviewer. Let’s review Frank Bruni’s technique:

Read More “Deconstructing Frank Bruni’s Ability to Make Restaurants Nervous” »

In my post earlier today on Oreo cookies (not to mention my recent Y&H column on Tex-Mex), I name-drop Mexican chef Patricia Jinich. If you haven’t learned about her already, do yourself the favor and read Joan Nathan’s insightful piece in the New York Times on Jinich.

Jinich’s star is obviously on the rise. In this video, she teaches Paula Deen how to fry (and eat) plantains. The usually motor-mouthed Deen is reduced to nothing but “mmmmms.”

There’s no mistaking that Young & Hungry readers love their beer. They love it in a glass. They love it in a growler. And they love it in print. The single most-read item of the week — by a wide, wide margin — was Beerspotter Orr Shtuhl’s post on the inaugural D.C. Beer Week.

I predict it will remain a popular post for awhile, too. Because Shtuhl’s constantly updating it as new information arises. Keep it bookmarked.

Here’s what Y&H readers liked this week:

1. Another D.C. Beer Week? Yes, Please.
2. Strip Club Food: Not as Nasty as You’d Think
3. Spike Mendelsohn Evicted from His Capitol Hill Rental House (A surprise returnee to the list, likely due to the First Lady’s recent visit to Good Stuff Eatery.)
4. Birch & Barley Should Tap Its First Keg in September
5. Is the ‘Times’ Saying Anonymity Doesn’t Matter Anymore in a Dining Critic?
   

This Aug. 3 story from the New York Times just crossed my path. I’m hoping you haven’t seen it, either. It’s a hopeful tale about the Chesapeake Bay and its long-suffering native oyster population.

Reporter Henry Fountain writes that large experimental reefs, designed by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary, are now home to 180 million oysters at the mouth of the Great Wicomico River. Just as encouraging is the survival rate, which hovered around 30 percent in the first year of the study, much higher than previous attempts to restock the bay with oysters.

The difference? Fountain reports that:

Read More “Scientists May Have Figured Out a Way to Rebuild the Chesapeake’s Oyster Population” »

Just a day after the New York Times announced that Sam Sifton would be its next restaurant reviewer, the blogosphere and the dead-tree media have been tirelessly carving up the critic like a roast pig. Here’s a taste of what’s been written about Sifton so far:

• Eater.con has put together a dossier on Sifton. It lists his likes and dislikes, his favorite restaurants, and even what his voice sounds like.

Read More “Times’ New Dining Critic Gets His First Reviews” »

Today’s announcement that Sam Sifton will be the next dining critic for The New York Times leaves little doubt in my mind that the Gray Lady’s editors have decided anonymity is next to impossible to maintain in that vaunted position. Sure, they apparently scrubbed Sifton’s image from the Times‘ Web site, but it takes all of .11 seconds to find his Spud-like mug in a Google search.

So, in a larger context, what does this hire mean for the role of the restaurant critic? Has the era of new media changed the rules on anonymity, as the New York Observer suggested this afternoon? Or have the Times editors just finally acknowledged that no restaurant critic, ever, has truly been anonymous — no matter how many disguises they donned to conceal their identity?

Read More “Is the ‘Times’ Saying Anonymity Doesn’t Matter Anymore in a Dining Critic?” »

The Iowa State Fair’s plan to memorialize Michael Jackson in butter has turned sour.  A majority of folks in the Hawkeye State just don’t think MJ has the credentials to merit such a creamy honor, even though the Jackson 5 once played the state fair in 1971.

So reported the New York Times over the weekend:

Read More “Michael Jackson Not Iowan Enough For Butter Sculpture” »

We’ve seen them hundreds of times, these cylinders of compressed meat spinning slowing in front of a burning-red heating element. They’re fixtures at Greek restaurants from here to Anchorage, but who exactly invented these ubiquitous cones of gyro meat?

David Segal, a former Postie who cut his teeth as a City Paper freelancer years ago, took up the challenge of unearthing its creator in today’s Dining & Wine section in the New York Times. It’s a flawlessly written piece that comes to an unlikely conclusion: The inventor of the gyro cone was not Greek, not Greek-American, but a Jewish Cadillac salesman named John J. Garlic.

Writes Segal:

Read More “Who’s the Henry Ford of the Gyro? A Jewish Ex-Marine Named Garlic.” »