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Vertumnus, Arcimboldo's portrait of Emperor Rudolph II. Photo: Wikimedia Commons " width="667" height="500" class="size-full wp-image-62199" />Vertumnus, Arcimboldo’s portrait of Emperor Rudolph II. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Post by Maria Godoy, The Salt at NPR Food (5/19/13) It takes a lot of chutzpah to reduce one of the most powerful men on Earth to a pile of fruits and vegetables. Luckily for art lovers, Giuseppe Arcimboldo had nerve to spare. Arcimboldo created this unorthodox produce portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II back in 1590. By that time, the Italian artist had been painting for the emperor and his powerful Habsburg family for more than 25 years, so presumably, they’d grown used to his visual jokes. (The emperor has “peachy” cheeks and “ears” of corn, get it?) Though he also dabbled in the angels and saints that were the standard stuff of art in his day, Arcimboldo is best known for his “scherzi” or “capricci” — “meaning jokes or games,” as David Brown, a curator at the National Gallery of Art, explains in this video. “It’s very clear that’s how they were meant to be seen,” Brown says. “They were a source of amusement or entertainment, because there was this element of surprise.” That they also often feature an element of fruits, berries or other foods is partly a reflection of the Renaissance blossoming of natural sciences, like botany. “At a distance, they just look like heads in profile or three-quarter view,” Brown says. “Up close, they look like an incredible variety of nature’s wonders.” That talent for upending the viewer’s expectations helps explain why Arcimboldo — whose work, Brown says, fell into “virtual oblivion” after his death — found new champions among 20th-century modernists. (Picasso and Salvador Dali were among his fans). The latest to pay homage to this Renaissance man is American Philip Haas, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker (for Angels and Insects) and contemporary artist. This weekend, the New York Botanical Garden opened a new exhibit featuring Haas’ giant, 15-foot-high fiberglass sculptures based on Arcimboldo’s “Four Seasons” — winter, spring, summer and fall personified as people, crafted of foods, trees and other natural elements. Winter, on display in downtown Milan, Italy, in 2011. Photo: Luca Bruno/AP As in the originals, Haas’ sculptures contain clues to the foods of the 16th century, when Arcimboldo painted. Winter is a craggy-faced old man, and his “cravat” is made of oranges and lemons — imported from the warmer south, they were one of the few fruits that could be seen in Renaissance Italy during the colder months. Summer. Photo: Courtesy New York Botanical Garden Summer’s bounty — in the shape of a young man, naturally — includes eggplant in his skull and corn ears, two crops introduced to Europe from Asia and the New World. Autumn. Photo: AP/Courtesy New York Botanical Garden A fall-ripening gourd caps Autumn’s head. Figs dangle from his ears. The grapes that tumble from his head like hair and fill his wooden barrel chest both nod to Italy’s fall wine-making season. Like Arcimboldo, Haas says he was attracted by the idea of playing with context and viewer’s expectations. “Arcimboldo was making a painting from the natural world, and then he turned it into a painting and [others] stuck it in a museum,” Haas tells The Salt. “I took it out of the museum and put it back into the natural world.” The sculptures have been on a tour of Europe and the U.S., where they were most recently on display at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. By transforming Arcimboldo’s seasons into colossal 3-D sculptures, Haas says he aims to change how the viewer experiences not just the art but the natural world that surrounds them, too. “S

Ever feel like there's just not enough Eater in your life? Well, there's an easy way to fix that. Head over to the Eater NY Facebook page and hit that little 'like' button. Then, like magic, all our top stories will start showing up in your Facebook feed daily. And if that still isn't enough for you, check us out on Twitter, too. Voilà! Problem solved. [EaterWire]

Come inside and check out some photos from the latest events Urban Diner has attended over the last few weeks… Le Gavroche serves up a tingling Stinging Nettle Amuse Bouche to start off the showcase of their new menu Le Gavroche GM & Partner David Auer preparing Sea Urchin Coffee Siphon Fresh Sea Urchin – unique and very tasty from the ocean coffee pot GM & Partner David Auer preparing The Salmon Jar with staff at the LE GAVROCHE FRANÇAIS MODERNE GM & Partner David Auer serves up a smoking Nitrogen Sorbet & Herbs at LE GAVROCHE FRANÇAIS MODERNE An impressive collection of wine in the viewing cellar at LE GAVROCHE FRANÇAIS MODERNE Venison and Hay served in a cloud of smoke at LE GAVROCHE FRANÇAIS MODERNE New 2012 vintage wines are featured in a tutored tasting at the BC VQA Vintage 2012 Preview at at Hawksworth Restaurant Vintage 2012 table – Nathan Goltz, Sandhill Vineyards,  Rob Van Westen, Van Westen Vineyards, Michael Bartier, Okanagan Crush Pad, Theo Siemens, Okanagan Crush Pad, Warwick Shaw, Tantalus Vineyards, Anthony Gismondi, host from the Vancouver Sun Journalist John Schreiner and Tantalus Vineyards Viticulturist Warwick Shaw at Vintage 2012 Wines from Vintage 2012 event – Tinhorn Creek Vineyards Gewurztraminer, Tantalus Vineyards Old Vines Riesling, Sandhill Sauvignon Blanc, Van Westen V Vintage 2012 participants – Warwick Shaw, Tantalus Vineyards, Rob Van Westen, Van Westen Vineyards, Andrew Moon, Tinhorn Creek Vineyards, Nathan Goltz, Sandhill, Michael Bartier, Okanagan Crush Pad, Howard Soon, Sandhill, Theo Siemens, Okanagan Crush Pad, Anthony Gismondi, host from the Vancouver Sun Vintage BC 2012 celebration with Warwick Shaw, Tantalus Vineyards, Andrew Moon, Tinhorn Creek Vineyards, and Nathan Goltz, Sandhill

Many small restaurants and food companies stand to lose thousands of dollars in revenue. The third and final day of the Great GoogaMooga food and music festival was cancelled earlier this afternoon at at approximately 12:30, with event organizers citing general public safety concerns and potential damage to Prospect Park. While organizer Superfly Presents was quick to issue a statement pledging to refund all Sunday VIP ticket purchases in full, the announcement reportedly came after about a hundred or so of the enlisted food vendors had already set up for the day, and hundreds more festival-goers had converged on the site. You may remember that last's year inaugural GoogaMooga was also something of a disaster, with infernal waits and other unpleasantries that sank all kinds of spirits. And while the food-heavy festival is reportedly expanding Chicago this August, it apparently still hasn't worked out a basic contingency plan for bad weather. Worst of all is that reports from Prospect Park yesterday indicated that a number of the logistical kinks had been worked out, which makes it sadder that a storm system was enough to come along and ruin the prospect of all kinds of barbecued lamb ribs, ice cream cones, pork belly tacos, and Oysters Bolognese. Early reports indicate some participants will lose thousands of dollars in revenue because of this. EV Grieve reports that Northern Spy Food Co. owner Christopher Hille's damage is around $10,000. Allison Robicelli, another vendor, hears more of the same from other vendors. Many restaurants that created custom menus for the event don't even have storage space for the the mostly perishable food — which for the most part cannot be donated to food banks — while other businesses, like Luke's Lobster, are offering enticing discounts today in an effort to recoup the loss of being sent home from the cancelled event. Below is the full list of restaurants, chefs, and shops who were scheduled to appear today. The official call is to go out and patronize these places asap. For any vendors who were scheduled to sling cemitas or duck hash or whatever else today and are now slashing prices to reduce those two or three thousand portions you may have leftover, email us at newyork@grubstreet.com and we'll append it to the full list below. Back Forty Baked BaconLand Baohaus Beecher’s Handmade Cheese The Big Banana Big Gay Ice Cream Blue Marble Ice Cream Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken Brindle Room Brooklyn Soda Works Burger Joint Calexico Caracas Rockaway Char No. 4 Colicchio & Sons Craftbar Crawfish Monica Crif Dogs DBGB Kitchen and Bar Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Dirty Bird To Go Do or Dine Dough DuMont Burger & Shakes Eataly Fatty Cue Free Bread Gwynnett St. Hill Country Barbeque Market James Jeepney Jeffrey's Grocery Joe Joe’s Pub Joseph Leonard Juice Press Kasadela La Newyorkina Landhaus Liddabit Sweets Little Muenster The Lobster Place Luke’s Lobster: $2 off lobster rolls in all its New York stores today. M. Wells Maison Premiere Max Brenner Chocolate Bar Melt Bakery Mile End Mille-Feuille Bakery Cafe Miss Lily's Momofuku Milk Bar Mother-in-Law Kimchi Motorino Nom Wah Tea Parlor Northern Spy Food Co.* Num Pang Sandwich Shop Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors People’s Pops Pig & Khao PizzaMoto Pok Pok Phat Thai Porchetta Pork Slope Prospect Red Hook El Olomega Pupusas Red Hook Lobster Pound* Rippers Roberta's Pizza Robicelli’s Rosemary's Enoteca and Trattoria Salvation Taco Saxelby Cheesemongers Seersucker SlantShack Jerky South Brooklyn Pizza Sun In Bloom The Meat Hook The Meatball Shop* Third Rail Coffee Tia Pol Toro Umami Burger Vinegar Hill House Willow Road Wooly’s Ice Earlier: Here’s What Everyone Will Be Serving at the Great GoogaMooga Read more posts by Hugh MerwinFiled Under: rained out, baohaus, big gay ice cream, cal

[The scene in Prospect Park on Saturday] The people behind outdoor food and music orgy The Great GoogaMooga decided to pull the plug on today's scheduled events because of the horrible weather. They made the official announcement on Twitter at 12:20 p.m., which was just about 90 minutes after the festival started. The vendors had already set up by this point, and now they're packing it in and heading home. Here's the official statement sent out by Superfly: Due to poor weather, the New York City Parks Department, Prospect Park Alliance, and Googamooga have decided to cancel today's festival in the interest of safety and prevention of damage to the park grounds. All Sunday VIP ticket purchases will be refunded in full.It rained for a bit yesterday, but people just ran into the various beverage tents, or they just opened up umbrellas and kept waiting in line for food. Stay tuned for more on the cancellation of day three of The Great GoogaMooga. · All Coverage of The Great GoogaMooga [~ENY~]

FOLLOW ME FOODIE: The best thing I ever ate… By Mijune Pak , Follow Me Foodie – WE Vancouver Published: May 17, 2013 10:00 AM Updated: May 17, 2013 10:37 AM I am constantly asked “What’s the best restaurant in Vancouver?”, “What’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten?” and to be honest, I don’t know. How could I? I haven’t tried everything in the world yet. If I tried every single restaurant in Vancouver, maybe I could answer the first question, but even so it would be based on my favourite and not “the best”. Take, for instance, pizza. People are always looking for the best place for pizza and my answer is always “depends”. Do you want Neapolitan style? New York style? Chicago style? Crispy crust? Foldable crust? There are so many variations of pizza; how can I possibly recommend one? And even if I recommended my “best” pizza place, it would be very debatable since it is all based on preference. Taste is not only highly subjective, but purely personal. I am guilty of asking “where’s the best” questions too, particularly to things not relating to food. I always try and put it into context relative to time, place and other things I have tried, but still the question is not the ‘best’ to ask. Whether “best of” lists are used to increase SEO or quickly get the attention of the majority, the word has little substance without context and information to back it up. The once powerful word has little meaning when it is used without passion, integrity and conviction. If you really mean it, then by all means use it — sparingly. - Read the full article Read my full “best of” article for recommendations for unique items which have little to be compared to. See more Follow Me Foodie stories from Mijune in the WE Vancouver: FOLLOW ME FOODIE: The “Forget-Me-Nots” of Vancouver’s restaurant scene FOLLOW ME FOODIE: Wild BC spot prawn season begins

Starting today, Laurent Manrique's French seafood restaurant Millesime is now serving a bottomless punch brunch. For $25, guests will be able to pair a brunch entrée with one of two unlimited drink options, including a strawberry tequila and a vodka lemonata. The new special meal will be available from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays. [Facebook]

Heritage Radio is the food-focused internet radio station that broadcasts from a studio attached to Roberta's in Bushwick. Every week, many of the big players in the food world host and appear on shows, and oftentimes they reveal interesting tidbits about their work. Here's a guide to five notable pieces of programming from the last week: 1) Teaching and Baking with Hot Bread Kitchen: HRN's Daniel Meyer talks to Robin Burger of Hot Bread Kitchen, the bakery and small business incubator that aims to teach women from immigrant communities how to bake and sell delicious bread at NYC's Greenmarket. On the bakery's training program: We've got about eight countries represented in the kitchen, we've trained women from about seventeen to date, and we have about ten different countries represented in our bread. I feel like the number changes fairly frequently because we're taking on new trainees and adding new products. We say that our breads are inspired by our bakers. 2) Ten Years of Food Politics with Marion Nestle: Nutrition and Food Politics scholar Marion Nestle talks food labeling, Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, and the changes in food in the ten years since the release of her seminal book Food Politics. Nestle on some of the changes she's seen: For me, the really big one is to count the number of food studies programs at universities, because when we started Food Studies at NYU in 1996, there was one other place that had something remotely like it, and now every university is doing some kind of food program…and that reflects the really big change which is the enormous interest in food issues that has occurred since then. 3) Bartending to Branding with Charles Hardwick: New York native and bartending veteran Charles Hardwick talks about the sincerity of consulting and representing spirit and how a career in bartending laid the groundwork needed for doing the job honestly. Damon Boelte of "The Speakeasy" talks to Hardwick about proper bartender and guest behavior, changes in the bar scene, and some of his favorite cocktails. Here's Hardwick on his decision to become a bartender: I started off as a busboy, and then I quickly became a food expeditor, and very I was looking at the bartender and I was like, this guy has the best job in the entire restaurant. They just seem to be the person who, you know, they're just dispensing drinks, but they're really in control of their environment, their working environment, and that really appealed to me. I also realized that guests treated the bartender with much more respect and there was a different dynamic there, and to me it just made a lot of sense. 4) America's Next Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli: Alex Guarnaschelli is a woman of many titles: Iron Chef, Food Network celebrity, and chef at New York's Butter and The Darby. She sits down with Dorothy Can Hamilton to talk about growing up the daughter of cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli, and to discuss the important role competition has played in keeping her going: I like the competition shows because they show the human side of people, that they are fallible, make mistakes and they crave being a hero, they crave finding a hero. Even an Iron Chef is kind of a hero, for me. Watching Morimoto make sushi that looks like a stained glass window in a church is just a memorable moment…I think that when you go on television you have to to some extent accept that people are going to pigeonhole you or see you in a certain way. I can't really worry about that provided that I'm ok with who I am and what I'm doing, which is a tough audience, the toughest. 5) CIA Student Protests over Changing Academic Standards: CIA graduate Will Sears and Barbara Lang, formerly of Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, have a spirited debate about the importance of the shifting focus and standards at the Culinary Institute of America. Here's what Sears has to say: One of the arguments is that it's diluting the value, so it's not so much the

Say, what? Indian Chinese food? Think saucy. Think chop suey. Think sweet-and-sour with a chilli kick. Indian Chinese cuisine is said to have originated in Calcutta in the early 1900s – dishes cooked by Hakka immigrants that were gradually adapted to local Indian tastes. Today, Indian Chinese cuisine has spread all over India – and to much of Malaysia and Singapore too – but you won’t have to

Flare-ups Have Been Eliminated--The unique, patented design of SABER grill’s cooking grate and IR emitter prevents flare-ups that char meat and create dramatic temperature fluctuations. The last time I wrote a review about an infrared grill I ended up feeling the need to take a few of the nice things I wrote back after a several months of use.  I promised, myself, that I wouldn't make the same mistake again.  I would not write a review before I  made sure I had completely taken the grill through a complete test. I also decided I would test some of the "claims" the manufacturer made in their literature and on their website. The biggest claim, as far as cooking is concerned, is right up at the top of this post.  "Prevents flare-ups" and "temperature fluctuations" are two huge claims.  I wanted to know if they were just "marketing department" speak or fact.  The last time I tested an IR grill that made the "prevents flare-ups" I discovered it wasn't all that true, when the grill caught on fire, so it was important to me that flare-ups didn't happen. The plan was to cook some of the fattiest food items I could get.  I've grilled bacon, pork belly, chicken with the skin off and an untrimmed and nice piece of brisket with the fat cap still on. I was amazed I didn't get one flare-up. True to the claims by Saber the fat vaporized as it hit the diffuser underneath the grates.  It smoked, sometimes it smoked a lot, but no flare-ups. It is fantastic. In the picture to the left you can see the design and how it works.  The grates sit on top of the diffuser.  This keeps the drippings off the burners. It works as promised. The design also channels airflow away from the food being grilled.  This helps to keep, whatever you're grilling, from drying out.  The claim "mistakes like overcooking or charring a piece of meat will be a thing of the past" is just too much for me to believe.  This one is just the marketing department speaking here.  Nothing will keep you from overcooking a piece of meat.  I was going to test this but decided wasting a piece of meat wasn't worth it. One of the most useless features on most gas grills is the thermometer in the lid of the grill.  I've always wondered why the manufacturers want to tell a backyard grillmaster what the temperature is in the top of the lid, it makes no sense at all.  Why aren't the thermometers at grate level where they are actually of some use? I was actually happy to see grate level thermometers on the Saber. But, do the thermometers actually work? That's the question I wanted to answer.  I started the grill, set the three zones to "low" heat and walked away for 3 minutes.  When I came back I took the pictures above of each of the three thermometers.  All three of them read 250 degrees. I was impressed.  The temperature eventually went up to almost 400 degrees but the three thermometers were in sync the entire way.  The next step was to test how close to the actual temperature they were.  Using a wireless thermometer I found the Saber thermometers to be within 15 degrees of the actual temperature.  Pretty good in my book. Using some canned biscuits I next tested the grill for variations in grate temperature. The thermometers at the front of the grate showed uniformity but what about between the front and back of the grates.  I used a BBQ smoker trick to look for any variations.  I placed canned biscuits on the grates and closed the lid for 4 minutes.  You can see that the biscuits are the same height.  If there were differences in temperature the biscuits would be different sizes.  So, we've got temperatures that are the same over the entire grill surface. The illustration to the right shows some of the best features of the Saber Grill.  From the 304 Commercial Grade stainless steel to the no-flex lid the Saber is designed and built to be a cooking machine.  It really does cook well.  I've enjoyed using it every time. There are a couple of features that I'