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Cambodian Is The Greatly Underappreciated Outlier In Asian Cooking. This Needs To Change.

As a chef, Jorge Luis Hernandez is familiar with many styles of cuisine, from the Spanish-leaning avant-garde offerings at Minibar in Washington, D.C., where he once worked as executive sous chef, to the Filipino-inspired fare at Qui in Austin, where he currently serves as chef de cuisine. But he never so much as touched Cambodian food until one night in September 2013, when he, along with his bosses, chef Paul Qui and Qui’s partner Deana Saukam, stopped in Houston “for what I thought was going to be a quick bite,” Hernandez recalls. It turned out to be one of the best meals of his life. Continue reading “Cambodian Is The Greatly Underappreciated Outlier In Asian Cooking. This Needs To Change.”

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Ramen 3.0: Two Former Chemists Are Engineering A Noodle Soup Revolution

ShibaRamenFINALJake Freed and his Japanese wife, Hiroko Nakamura, probably aren’t the only entrepreneurs racing to establish the nation’s first Chipotle of Ramen. These days, virtually everyone wants to create the Chipotle of Something. But it’s hard to imagine anyone else taking the same approach. They aren’t chefs or restaurateurs or food-service industrialists of any sort. They are both former chemists, and that gives the couple a unique perspective as they work to launch their new restaurant prototype, Shiba Ramen, later this year. Continue reading “Ramen 3.0: Two Former Chemists Are Engineering A Noodle Soup Revolution”

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It’s Cool To Slurp Now

WebIn the old days, your mother would probably scold you for making such horrible noises at suppertime: Slurping your soup was considered poor table manners in polite American society, an egregious faux pas memorably (and quite audibly) sent up in the 1985 crime-comedy Clue. Nowadays, amid the growing influence of Asian food and Asian customs in this country, your dining companions might hardly wince at these loud sucking sounds. On the contrary, they might just join in the ruckus. In some of today’s more fashionable locales, slurping is not merely accepted. It’s downright proper. Continue reading “It’s Cool To Slurp Now”