For Foodies : Buzz

Pabu, the Japanese restaurant inside the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore, is celebrating all things sake this week.

Free sake awaits happy hour patrons on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, writes Baltimore magazine. Thursday, the restaurant will hold a five-course dinner with sake pairings. 

You can read more about the sake celebration here. 

Pennsylvania has its groundhog Punxsutawney Phil to predict whether spring will come early. 

Now Baltimore has its own critter that can forsee future weather. Spice maker McCormick & Co. Inc. will rely on a crab to determine if we'll get an early winter, writes the News Journal of Wilmington, Del. On Sept. 26, the makers of Old Bay seasoning and other spices will make a crab walk the plank into the Inner Harbor, the paper writes.

"If he goes off the right side it will be an early winter. And if he goes off the left side it will be a warm fall," writes the News Journal. 

McCormick recently opened a Harborplace retail location, near which the event will take place. 

Reality TV star and baker Duff Goldman ecently became a gastronomic diplomat, according to a CNN post. 

The U.S. State Department and James Beard Foundation teamed up to establish the Diplomatic Culinary Program which debuted last week. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asks chefs to create American dishes fused with the cuisines of other nations to be served for foreign dignitaries and serve as a culinary ambassador at kitchens around the world.

Goldman will travel to Colombia this fall to lead a cake decorating demonstration for more than 6,000. "When you're cooking with somebody even if they don't speak your language you're still cooking with them," Goldman tells CNN. “We've shared experiences in our careers, in our lives, in our passion of the things that we really believe in." 

Goldman is the former star of the Food Network's Ace of Cakes and recently expanded his bakery to the West Coast with a location in Los Angeles. 

Baltimore Magazine also lists Top Chef runner up and co-owner of Frederick’s Volt Restaurant Bryan Voltaggio as one of the 80 ambassadors.

Berger cookies' expansion into Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia can only be a good thing, right? 

Not according to a Baltimorean who says the cookie is so linked with Baltimore, it can't possibly be truly appreciated by non-natives. 

"Can a city like DC boasting so many five-star restaurants really value this simple cookie?" Andrew Reiner asks in the September issue of GO:AirTran Inflight Magazine. 

"First, there's the look of the Berger, as it's often called, with its leviathan mound of hand-dipped fudge icing atop a cakey wafer. 'A chocolate delivery vehicle,' is how one cyberspace foodie refers to it. The fudge icing is just that ponderous— and inconsistent."

Read the rest here. 

BloombergBusinessweek recognizes the expansion of Baltimarket, a virtual grocery shopping solution for the one out of five Baltimore residents who live in food deserts.
 
Baltimarket originally took food orders in public libraries when it opened in March 2010 but now targets the 16 public housing developments located in food deserts, especially senior centers, BloombergBusinessweek says.

The project allows residents with low incomes and no vehicles, to order groceries, including healthy meal options, without paying a hefty taxi fee to travel to grocery stores across the city.
 
Read more here.

Bryan Voltaggio paired up with his brother Michael Voltaggio of Los Angeles’ Ink to present “Hungover with the Voltaggios” to the Los Angeles Food & Wine Festival.
 
The crowd enjoyed the two brothers for both their culinary skills and comedic relief, according to a recap in Los Angeles Magazine.
 
The Voltaggios exuded the same personality and cooking style as fans saw on Season Six of Top Chef when Michael won and Bryan, owner of Frederick's Volt restaurant, was second runner-up. “Bryan seems happy to play it straight while Michael engages in all manner of wild and eccentric experimentation. Hence, the coffee cake," LA Magazine writes. 
 
The best part about Bryan’ cinnamon swirl coffee cake and dollop of bay leaf ice cream and Michael’s egg yolk gnocchi and bacon is that they’re things you can replicate at home, Bryan tells the magazine.

That is of course, if you have superb culinary skills and liquid nitrogen.

Rachael Ray says Baltimore has one of the nine best Little Italys. In the September issue of Everyday With Rachael Ray, which comes out Aug. 14, Ray mentions Germano's Trattoria and calls the area “a pocket of cozy brick buildings” that “feels like home," writes Richard Gorelick in the Baltimore Sun. 

Last month, local food blogger Dara Bunjon wrote an extremely popular story that highlighted dining destinations on the Charm City Circulator Banner Route.

Mary Beth Marsden of 1090 AM WBAL Radio asked Bunjon how she got the idea for the story and to name some of the highlights of her culinary tour on wheels. The journey took her from Locust Point to the Inner Harbor. You can listen to the interview here. 

Bunjon authors the Dining Dish blog and is the Baltimore Dining Examiner for Examiner.com 

Fans of the hit TV show Seinfeld might remember that certain foods got special attention on the comedy. 

There was the soup from the "Soup Nazi," black-and-white cookies and muffin tops. 

Actor Larry Thomas, aka the "Soup Nazi," has featured all of these foods and more on a food truck that visited different cities, including Baltimore Aug. 6. The Seinfeld "No Food For You" food truck gave away the food for free at the Maryland Science Center.

It already stopped in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Read more in the Baltimore Sun and USA Today. 

Baltimore came out on top in more than one Battle of the Beltways. 

Not only did the Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Nationals but the city bested its rival at A Taste of Two Cities, a food truck competition held Saturday at the Westport Waterfront. It was organized by food truck owner Damian Bohager. 
 
First place went to Baltimore’s Gypsy Queen food truck, followed by the Red Hook Lobster truck of D.C. in second and Baltimore’s Miss Shirley’s truck in third.
 
A panel of six judges, three from each city, determined the winner. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a big supporter of Baltimore’s food trucks, presented the Mayor’s Cup to Gypsy Queen.
 
The People’s Choice awards, which were decided by competition visitors via text, went to D.C.’s the Cajunator and Baltimore’s Souper Freak. 

Read more about it in the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post. 

Did you ever watch an episode of Ace of Cakes and think "hey, I could do that?"

Well it's now time to put your hubris to the test. 

The so-called bad boy of baking Duff Goldman is opening Cakemix in Los Angeles. It's DIY for the bakers, the Los Angeles Times reports. 

"Cakemix is for anyone off the street who wants to go wild with a tube of buttercream. By decorating a cake, that is," the Times writes. 

You get to choose between a 6-inch or 9-inch cake and then get fondant, buttercream, edible spray paint and the help of an on-staff decorator. 

Cakemix is opening this month next to Charm City Cakes West, his L.A. outpost of the Remington bakery featured in the Food Network show.  

You can read the entire story here. 

Andrew Zimmern spent three days eating through Baltimore’s finest fare for his Travel Channel show Bizarre Foods America this week.  Baltimore will be a part of the show’s seventh season, which begins airing sometime this fall.
 
Zimmern’s Baltimore stops included Chap’s Pit Beef, Hollins Market, Lexington Market, the Arabbers' Carlton Street Stables, and Woodberry Kitchen. He also spent time on the Eastern Shore and in Baltimore County, where he tweeted that Ellicott City restaurant Shin Chon “is one of top ten Korean BBQ experiences in America. A must for anyone who loves food. Major discovery.”
 
Read more about Zimmern’s in the Baltimore Sun story.

The June 6 opening of Maryland Live at Arundel Mills mall got plenty of attention in local newspapers and TV outlets. 

It also caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal, which found the 4,750-slot machine venue unusual for its being on the site of a suburban shopping mall.

"Malls have become popular additions to casino complexes in Atlantic City and Las Vegas ever since Simon Property Group, which owns Arundel Mills, opened The Forum Shops as an extension to Caesars Palace on the Last Vegas Strip in 1992," the Journal writes in the article. 

The opening of Maryland's third slots parlor was marked by traffic backups on Interstate 295, celebrity-chef Bobby Flay -- on hand for Bobby's Burger Palace -- and feuding between executives in Anne Arundel and Prince George's Counties amid talks of a casino at National Harbor.

Open Table has selected 100 best brunch spots in the country. And on that list is Gertrude's, John Shields restaurant at the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

It's one of two Maryland restaurants on the list. The other is Mrs. K's Toll House in Silver Spring. 

You can see the entire list here. 

Maryland's largest slots casino, developed by the Cordish Co., has set a June 6 opening date. Restaurants at the 4,750-slot-machine venue will include Bobby Flay's Burger Palace, the Prime Rib and Philips Seafood.

"State analysts project that Maryland Live!, once it is fully operational, will generate more than $400 million a year in slots revenue — nearly half of which would flow to state education programs under current law," writes the Washington Post. You can read the rest of the story here.