Japan's best bartender does some fancy stuff with ice

@foodporn Japan's best bartender has so much aura🥶 #japanfood #tokyofood #aura ♬ Japanese-style dramatic piano song - スタジオ　Music Rabbit

I enjoyed the movie "Casa Bonita Mi Amor!"

The South Park guys decided to purchase and remodel a Mexican restaurant/mini-theme park in Colorado, and discovered reopening it would be unbelievably, absurdly expensive. It's documented in "Casa Bonita Mi Amor!", which has a surprisingly bittersweet ending.

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Punch posted the list of finalists for its Best New Bartenders 2025

Full list here. I looked up Kenzo Han and Firstborn in Chinatown in LA:

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"Condiment Cow," where the bottles of condiments are arranged like an udder

Still can't embed or link to Bluesky posts without requiring a login. (But can link to images...)

The restaurant "Iris" is housed in a floating orb in Noway's Hardanger fjord

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Iris:

Our location guides every step we take at Iris, and we want our guests to experience the fiord, the mountains, and the ever-changing elements in the same all-encompassing way that we do every day. Here, we have the great privilege of bringing our guests to the ingredients, instead of the other way around. 

The experience at Iris is, quite literally, a journey. It starts with a boat trip from the picturesque town of Rosendal, with a pit stop and welcoming snack at chef Anika Madsen's boathouse on the island of Snilstveitøy. Via the jetty of the floating art installation Salmon Eye, the evening kicks off with a multisensory underwater experience, to culminate in the dining room where stunning views of the fjord and mountain ranges create the backdrop for our set tasting menu.

When the weather allows, the rooftop terrace will set the stage for one of the courses, grilled over an open fire and enjoyed in the fresh air. At the end of the evening, another boat ride awaits, taking the guests back to familiar shores and a comfortable bed in Rosendal.

For us, this is Expedition Dining.

Here's a thorough video describing the experience (the tartare of reindeer heart is particularly striking):

Eatrenalin is a multimedia high end dining experience where you ride in a motorized lounge chair like a character from Wall-E

Also, there's a neon jellyfish display:

Art book celebrating graphic design at small takeout shops and food trucks

"Image Graphics for Small Takeout Shops and Food Trucks" available at Amazon:

A reporter "ate at the Italian restaurant where [George] Santos is often, for some reason, spending exactly $199.99"

Alex Sammon wrote a detailed review for Slate:

Our waiter, one of a battery of older men in white button downs and ties, rattled off a lengthy list of specials—osso bucco, octopus, branzino. I asked him if he had waited on Santos in the past. “I have seen him here, but I don’t know him,” he said. When I followed up to ask if there were any favorites of Santos we could order, he waved me off with both hands. “I’ve never waited on him,” 

...

Santos, it should be said, is really good at spending just $199.99 almost everywhere he goes...This is a really specific skill!

Augmented reality dining

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This is so cool! I wonder if the restaurant will charge you for the “virtual food” served on your plate too.pic.twitter.com/UmAsUcNHIG

— hardmaru (@hardmaru) October 6, 2022

A review from when this was in LA:

At a little over the expected two-hour mark, I left the Ritz-Carlton satisfied, if not gastronomically wowed, with the same sort of starry-eyed exuberance one feels after leaving a good movie at the theater. It might be easy to deride the obviously made-for-social aspects of Le Petit Chef from the outside, but the concept’s unique, experimental animation and whimsical, interactive storyline—each diner leaves with a "certification of completion"—left me simultaneously delighted and impressed by the combination viewing-dining experience. Not every dinner, even for a literal food and drink editor, needs to actually taste amazing to be memorable, and a meal at Le Petit Chef is unequivocally that.

While I wouldn’t recommend Le Petit Chef for hardcore "food people," the power of managed (or low) expectations remains unparalleled, and those who have the disposable income and the desire to check the Downtown dinner series out will find themselves truly, deeply entertained by what amounts to a form of cutting-edge dinner theater. 

The "Submarine Room" at Lost Spirits Distillery in Las Vegas

Lost Spirits Distillery pic.twitter.com/zkbG8X0ppi

— Michael Aiello (@Michael_Aiello) March 29, 2022

Here's a short video about the creations of the submarine room:

And here's a video showing some of the other areas inside:

Finally, the official site. And speaking of meal experiences in Vegas, Eater wrote up Superfrico.

Today's funny posts

what if employers had to pay treatment for their workers that they expose. or paid family leave. or ventilation in schools or or or

all you people know is cops and lawyers https://t.co/9pog8zFh3t

— Bruno 🎄 Dias (@NotBrunoAgain) December 9, 2021

Today's funny posts

EVERYONE, THE CHEF FROM BROS REPLIED TO MY REVIEW AND IT IS JUST AS RIDICULOUS AS YOU WOULD HAVE HOPED AND I AM SCREAMING WITH JOY.https://t.co/XHzrUhS7Gz

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) December 10, 2021

I AM DECEASED.

Via @reddit. pic.twitter.com/D0BzckzNhI

— Geraldine (@everywhereist) December 9, 2021

Funny story about a disastrous meal at a Michelin starred restaurant where 12 of the 27 dishes were foams

Everywhereist (lots of photos):

“These are made with rancid ricotta,” the server said, a tiny fried cheese ball in front of each of us.

“I’m… I’m sorry, did you say rancid? You mean… fermented? Aged?”

“No. Rancid.”

...

Another course – a citrus foam – was served in a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth. Absent utensils, we were told to lick it out of the chef’s mouth in a scene that I’m pretty sure was stolen from an eastern European horror film.

...

When a server reprimanded me for eating. These reconstituted orange slices (one per person) were a course. I asked if I could eat the real orange that had been served alongside it (we’d all gotten one, and I, at this point, was extremely hungry). “Yes,” the server said, annoyed. “But you aren’t really supposed to.” He let me have two segments and then whisked the fruit away.

The NY Times looks at restaurants serving high-end mozzarella sticks

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NYT:

The dish arrives as a pair of golden-brown rods, just like what you might see at a fast-food chain. Except that they come topped with caviar and cost $28.

(Eater's review of this particular restaurant in NY.)

Nightmare eye doctor storefront is actually the entrance to a speakeasy

Street art or street dentist / eye test thing? 🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/Fi1tlDuXex

— Edward Lawrence (@EP_Lawrence) September 5, 2021

UPDATE. I walked past and IT’S ACTUALLY A SECRET BAR! AWESOME!!! pic.twitter.com/85AoDDmKMt

— Edward Lawrence (@EP_Lawrence) October 10, 2021

A former Michelin inspector describes how he got hired and what is was like traveling the world

Luxeat:

Usually, I had to dine alone, for breakfast, lunch and dinner…

...

What people don’t understand fully, your 10 meals a week, you are probably lucky to get one starred restaurant a week or a star contender, and the other meals are pretty mediocre. And that’s kind of a drudge. And you get into awkward situations, when at the end of you finishing your region, you have an extra restaurant to go to where you haven’t factored it in. So you do dinner at 6 pm, and you do another dinner at 8 pm. So it’s lunch, dinner and dinner.

San Francisco restaurant operator horrified when the $72 fried rice dish he created as a joke became the only thing anyone wanted to order

SF Chronicle:

He expected that most people would see it and chuckle at the gall, then order the pho.

...

To really land a joke, you have to commit to it, so Lam did. He sourced premium red king crab claws from a Japanese supplier; caviar from the California Caviar company and Tsar Nicoulai. His beef was from a high-end ranch that fed its cattle on olives, granting their meat more umami flavor and healthier fatty acids. He studied the art of fried rice with friend and colleague James Yu, who produces ideally fluffy and crisp wok-seared fried rice at his restaurant, Great China, in Berkeley. Lam’s team picked the meat from king crabs, snow crabs and Dungeness crabs and used the shells to make a stock, which they turned into a concentrated, multispecies crab essence that was folded into butter. 

...

It didn’t help that they didn’t make any money on the fried rice with all of its premium, market-rate ingredients, or that customers would only order that and nothing else on the menu. The Lily team started sensing that their biggest draw was taking the business somewhere they didn’t want to go.

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A New York City celebrity sommelier has been accused of setting several outdoor dining structures on fire

The Daily Beast:

[He] has worked as a sommelier at several major New York City hotspots [and] was awarded the “Best New Sommelier of 2016”

...

[He] has been arrested after allegedly setting several outdoor dining structures ablaze on at least three occasions this year.

New York restaurants Masa and Per Se will offer $800 tasting menus

Eater:

Wine is extra. That means dinner for two can easily hit $2,000 at either venue

...

earlier this year, Masa received the maximum allowable grant of $5 million from the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, the U.S. government’s chief lifeline to the struggling hospitality industry. Approximately 65 percent of New York state restaurants who applied for that program did not receive funding. 

Top Chef's new winner was fired in December for "'harassment of an employee"

Eater:

on the Friday morning after the episode aired, Statesman reported that [the chef] “admitted to having a consensual sexual relationship” with a female staffer during the summer of 2020. When he returned to the restaurant after filming the series in the fall, he cut down her work hours “based on her performance,” but “continued to communicat[e] with her in an unprofessional manner.” He likened his actions to reprimand the employee as “bad decisions” that were “discriminatory.”

...

Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi addressed social media comments about [the chef] with a tweet last night, writing, “As someone who has been sexually harassed, this topic is a serious one and merits openness.” She claims that the show wasn’t aware of the allegations against [the chef] and calls for the show’s network channel Bravo to investigate what happened.

Meanwhile:

From Olympian to 'Top Chef' finalist: How Dawn Burrell's athletic career fueled her culinary stardom

...

Before becoming a chef and emerging as a breakout star on Season 18 of “Top Chef,” Burrell made a name for herself in track and field, where she represented the United States at the 2000 Summer Olympics.

...

Burrell was inspired to take up track and field by her older brother, Olympic gold medalist and two-time world-record holder in the 100M sprint, Leroy Burrell.