Food

Former "cart star" Kevin Sandri will soon add brunch to his repertoire. PoMo brings word that Sandri's revamped menu at the Alberta Street Pub will launch brunch service this weekend, featuring menu items like crème brulee French toast, chile relleno with housemade chorizo, and "green eggs and lamb" with mint pistou. [Eat Beat]

Ramen Tatsu-Ya's Shion Aikawa. [Photo: Andrea Grimes/EATX] Last year, Shion Aikawa left Los Angeles and a cushy corporate gig — company card and all — to move back to his hometown and teach Texans how to eat, and appreciate, ramen. It was a gamble, but Aikawa says he's the kind of guy who doesn't like to have regrets. And he knew he would regret not helping his brother launch Austin's first-ever brick-and-mortar ramen shop. Opening Ramen Tatsu-Ya, says Aikawa, is exactly what he wanted — even if that meant day after day of scraping crawfish out of an old walk-in freezer and crashing on a foam mattress top in his brother Tatsu's extra room. After years in the corporate world, Aikawa wanted to remember what it was like to put his aching feet up and drink a cold beer after service. He's only 27, but it's not hard to see why, when Aikawa's Young Guns nominations came in, one industry fan called him the "youngest old man alive." He might be retired from the jet-settiing business world, but as director of operations at Ramen Tatsu-Ya, Aikawa's working harder than ever, giving folks the "awesome" experience of tasting their first authentic bowl of ramen in a strip-mall storefront on a highway service road, deep in the heart of Texas. Aikawa was born in Tokyo, but moved with his mom and his brother to Austin when he was six years old. That's where the story begins. Well, almost — just as Aikawa gets rolling on his background, a woman swings the front door open at Ramen Tatsu-Ya, perhaps pleased to have beaten the usual queue of patrons braving the Texas heat to stand in the hour-long line typical of dinner service at Tatsu-Ya. Aikawa jumps up to give her the disappointing news: there's no line today ... because they're closed today. Does that happen a lot? It does, especially on Mondays. I actually wanted to set up a tripod and a camera right in front of the door, so you can see sad people. It would be funny, but I don't think it would be appropriate. Let's talk background: have you always worked in restaurants? After high school, I stayed here in Austin for a year and a half or so at Austin Community College, not knowing what to do, like any other kid. For my birthday, I ate at Uchi. This was in like, 2005. So it was really new, before Phillip Speer was there. And Paul [Qui] was like, rolling maki. Kaz Edwards, at Uchi Houston, he was a fry cook. He was doing the tempura station. So the way I learned to cook — and to clean, first and foremost — was from those guys. It was pretty cool. I was there for a few months only, until I decided to move to San Francisco for university and studied international business. But I kept cooking. I worked at Alembic, which is on Haight and Ashbury; it's really more like a bar than anything. But it's a small kitchen, you got to do whatever you wanted. Just learning about the local ingredients there, going to farmers' markets. It was a really good learning experience. From there, I moved to Tokyo to follow an internship. In business, actually. I worked at a Fortune 500 company, but they never had penetrated the Japanese market. They had a new start-up in Tokyo and I was invited to be interning there and then I was a product manager. That must have been a pretty incredible experience, living and eating in Tokyo. I got to travel, because being a product manager in a place that didn't have a manufacturing facility, I was able to go to China and Korea to all the factories and visit a lot of places, food places, which was really important to me. For example, Shanghai has these really kick-ass soup dumplings and Korea has these barbecued chicken feet with makgeolli. Every restaurant or hole in the wall would have their own alcoholic beverage. It's really easy to drink. It gets really dangerous at the end because it just comes back at you. And eating really spicy food, man … I was definitely eating right when I was in Tokyo and abroad. That's one of my stron

Writer John T. Edge posts an open letter to Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor of Texas Monthly, about his recent trollish ways (see the 50 best barbecue restaurants in Texas list declared as "The 50 Best BBQ Joints . . . in the World!" for just one example.) Quote: "I recognize that there's a long history of barbecue braggadocio, especially in the South, slung by one state advocate at another. It's done to drum up readership. And I hear it works. But Daniel, you really want to associate yourself with this sort of bluster-and-preen style of journalism?" [Oxford American]

How to make your own fresh Nut Milk:

Don’t let the Imp drink the Lunatic Soup

#DC, are you a flavor-naming guru? Check out what's in it @ & submit a name for the #ChurnedbyDC flavor right here!

(St. Paul, MN) – Summit Brewing Company Founder and President, Mark Stutrud, discussed the brewery’s expansion at the recent St. Paul Summer Beer Festival. Summit broke ground on a $6 million expansion last November, several months before it originally planned to due to rapid growth in market demand. To illustrate, production increased 8% to 112,450 barrels in 2012 and could have rose higher if not for capacity constraints it encountered last summer. The latest phase of the expansion wraps up soon. To recap some expansion highlights, the brewery reported the following back in November… Although we have been quietly investing an annual average of $1.7 million into the brewery over the past 10 years, this is the most ambitious expansion since the building of the new brewery back in 1998. The truth of the matter is that we have hit the wall on capacity. The brewery had to cut 12 brews this year due to capacity issues, so the original expansion date of June 2013 had to be moved up to this month. The current capacity of the brewery is 120,000 barrels (bbls) a year. The $6 million expansion will increase our production capacity to 240,000 bbls a year. The addition of 7,632 square feet of cellar space and twelve 600 bbl fermentation vessels will be completed by June 2013. We are partnering with some great Minnesota companies: DCI in St. Cloud is fabricating the tanks, our general contractor is Burnsville-based PCL Construction Services, and our engineering/architecture firm is Van Sickle, Allen & Associates out of Plymouth. New Tanks Stutrud touches on a lot of those same points though he clarifies that they are adding 800-barrel tanks (not 600-barrel tanks). Each tank holds four brews out of the 150-barrel brewhouse. The 200-barrel overage in each tank, as Stutrud explains, is for krausening. Six of the twelve tanks are in place and Summit brewed into them for the first time earlier this month. The other six will arrive soon. Summit is currently brewing 3-4 times a day, five days a week, and can increase that with the new tanks. New Cellar The new cellar space can hold two dozen tanks so the other 50% of the space will be reserved for future expansion up to 360,000 barrels of capacity. It will be highly automated compared to its existing cellar where brewers have to do things manually (like lug hoses around) and feature new-to-North America equipment from Pentair. The valve tops have LED lights when they are in-use, need maintenance, etc. Other tidbits…Summit added a centrifuge and separator last year, moving away from Diatomaceous Earth. The brewery added a sheet filter for additional ‘brilliance,’ primarily for lagers. Extra Space: Summit bought property next to its front plaza where it plans to add an outdoor beer garden next year that overlooks the Mississippi River (3.5 acres and 38,000 square feet?). If the brewery passes 300,000 barrels and gets uncomfortably close to that 360k-bbl capacity mark, it can add a second brewhouse in that additional area. New Distribution: Summit accounts for only 2.3% market share in the state of Minnesota. Stutrud looks to push up to 5-6% and grab market share away from the big companies. On that note, Stutrud says focus will remain on Minnesota and neighboring states like Iowa, Wisconsin and North Dakota. They will remain careful and selective with new distribution partners. Stutrud jokes that they won’t be impeding on Stone’s territory in San Diego or doing big tap takeovers. There is some availability in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and Florida where Summit partnered with JJ Taylor (JJ Taylor has Minnesota and Florida branches). New Beers: One of the twelve beers that Summit discontinued in 2012 was Hefeweizen though the brewery did replace it with a Kolsch. That beer “took off like a rocket” and Summit brewed more than double what initially projected. Summit also introduced Saga IPA around the same time and that beer was equall

TODAY'S SPECIAL: THE FRIED CHICKEN AND WAFFLE MELT: Cheddar Cheese and Fried Chicken sandwiched between waffles!

[Donut photo: Shutterstock] Since news broke of Food Networkperson/pharmashill/buttershill Paula Deen's allegedly racist deposition testimony, Twitter users have been adding the hashtag #PaulasBestDishes to tweets lampooning Deen. People are using puns, portmanteau, and alliteration to create alternative, racially charged dish titles to attribute to Deen. (Think along the lines of "Fresh picked cotton candy" and "Honey Bunches of Ropes.") A friend of Eater called it, "It's a high-tech lynching -- fusillade of insults." Now viral, the hashtag is tied to countless tweets aimed at Deen. Below are some of the standouts: #PaulasBestDishes Ku Klux Klandike Bars— Moses (@Lexvegaskid) June 19, 2013 Paula Deen can teach you how to properly segregate the eggs whites from the colored yolk. #paulasbestdishes— Steph B-More (@StephBMore) June 19, 2013 Dred Scott Potato Pie #PaulasBestDishes— Eric Wolfson (@ericwolfson) June 19, 2013 Did anybody say "Lynchables" yet? #PaulasBestDishes— Lucky. (@LxckyVII) June 19, 2013 Uncle Tomato Soup #paulasbestdishes— Larry (@larry8675309) June 19, 2013 We Shall Over-Crumb Cake #PaulasBestDishes— Ashley Carter (@ashcar) June 19, 2013 Cotton Pickin' Fried Chicken #paulasbestdishes— Jordan Billups (@FunnyLittleLola) June 19, 2013 Massa-roni and cheese #PaulasBestDishes— Swole Biz (@swolebizness) June 19, 2013 White Devil's Food Cake #PaulasBestDishes— Feodor Chin (@FeoChin) June 19, 2013 Back Of The Bus Biscuits #PaulasBestDishes— ???.pa? (michael) (@emptychampagne) June 19, 2013 You Hear White Folk Talkin You Better Hushpuppies #PaulasBestDishes— Shen Tsung (@Rebel_Salute) June 19, 2013 Swing Low, Sweet Cherry Pie #PaulasBestDishes— imani ? ? (@bootysmoke) June 19, 2013 · Deen Allegedly Admits Disturbing Racism in Deposition [-E-] · All Paula Deen Coverage on Eater [-E-]

RT @Photos_in_Chile: Last supper? Think again. A tasting at Valle Dell'Acate in Sicily #cwwsicily