Join the good people at Corner Table for the 5th Annual Jazz88 Restaurant Tour Late Night, this Saturday, November 21st. Chef Scott Pampuch will prepare a four-course dinner with wine pairings! It's a 9:30 p.m. seating, and it's limited to 40 attendees. Tickets are still available.  Please follow this link and read all about it.

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Last week my pal Shane sent out an e-mail to his best and most well-traveled buddies. He and his family have had a crazy year and are going to do a big family trip this coming March. So he asked his peeps where they would go for a truly memorable two-week family vacation. Here are just a few of the ideas the six or so of us came up with—and, yes, we set aside the usual Paris-London type of conventional tourism:

+ A Santa Fe-Taos ski/snowboard and cultural trip.
+ Sicily, with a drive down the Amalfi Coast.
+ Bali, bouncing between Ubud and the coast.
+ Morocco, all of it.
+ Paris to Barcelona by car through the Pyrenees.
+ Tierra del Fuego, Chile, especially the Torres del Paine Mountain Park.
+ Laos/Cambodia
+ Vietnam
+ Thailand (making sure to end in Phuket for some beach time)
+ Greece
+ Kenya, including Lamu for a beach stop
+ Samoa, being sure to include Lalumanu Beach
+ A Botswana Safari with Unchartered Africa
+ Ecuador…start in Quito and head to Otavalo for the market and a night at Hacienda Pensaqui, then move on to Sacha Lodge on Lake Pilchicoa

What do you think would be the top three (and don’t just pick from this list, feel free to add on) trips you would want to take with your family?

Minnesotan Todd Macdonald is the new chef at Cru in NYC. Todd’s parents Bob and Sue are two of the most committed supporters of the local food and wine scene that I know of, and they are ardent boosters of great food and chefs around the world. Their son is a talented young man who deserves this shot in a big way. His parents have been to more Michelin-starred restaurants than anyone I know outside our industry, and their blog can be found at andrewzimmern.com.

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Last weekend, I was at the Food & Wine Experience at the Kohler resort in Kohler, Wisconsin, about an hour north of Milwaukee. Make your reservations for next year now, and you'll thank me for giving you the early heads up on this Food & Wine Magazine-partnered event. Jaques Pepin, Ulrich Koberstein, Marcus Samuelson, Jon Ashton, Claudine Pepin, Tory Miller from L’etoile, Adam Siegel from Lake Park Bistro (2008 regional JBA winner), Joe Bartolotta, Hosea Rosenberg, and about a dozen other great chefs (and about 45 winemakers) did an outstanding job teaching classes, performing demos, hosting book signings, and, of course, executing an amazing tasting dinner on Saturday night. Food events of this size are always more fun than the monster-sized events where guests never get to meet the talent and share time with them. At Kohler, all the chefs spent hours interacting with guests and sharing the experience.

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'Tis the season as they say. Regardless of what type of event or fundraiser it may be, local chefs and restaurants are usually a committee's first call for contributions. No group rallies around causes as well as the food world does.

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In The New York Times this weekend, reporter Michael Moss detailed the chilling story
of a Minnesota family's bout with E. coli, one that would make a vegetarian out of anyone. This is why, unless you are grinding your own meat or having a butcher you trust grind whole muscle, you should probably give up eating hamburgers. Makes you wonder what the meat sourcing is for the Twin Cities premium burger joints. I think many of them would proudly tell you the name of their purveyor, and I bet their purveyor would NEVER cop to their alphabet soup of suppliers. If I owned a burger joint, I would post a huge sign telling all my customers exactly where I get my beef from, all the way back to the farm, and anyone who can’t do that should close their doors.

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Over the last six months, I've felt that the food at Little Szechuan has slipped a full notch or two. I may now know why. Dan Luo, the owner of the new Grand Szechuan restaurant in Bloomington, has hired Little Szechuan head chef Luo Guanghe (who was also the head chef of the Teahouse in Plymouth) to run his new eatery. Grand Szechuan holds amazing promise given the guy running the kitchen. You can find the new restaurant at 10602 France Avenue South in Bloomington (at the intersection of France Avenue and W. Old Shakopee Road in the strip mall next to Cub Foods), and the number is 952-888-6507. See you over there tonight for a chili oil pig out! Anyway, let me know what you think. And yes e-mailers, I like Tian Jin in Chanhassen very much, just ate there once though.

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Both the October issue of Bon Appetit and today’s article by Julia Moskin in The New York Times told you what I have been saying for five years on this website. Portland, Maine, is America’s best small city for food, and Rabelais Books is one of the world’s best culinary bookshops.

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Well, let’s be honest. I owe everyone an apology. I was shooting for the last 3 weeks in the far reaches of Indonesia, had no web access and couldn’t update the blog. I hate when that happens on the sites I follow regularly, so mea culpa. 

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With all the news about the new D'Amico Kitchen at the Chambers, it might be a good time to share something I got in my e-mail the other day. Check out these pix of the closing night at Cucina. (Go to Ciao Cucina under Portfolios.) Great stuff.

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