After hyping and hyping and hyping the two-hour episode of Iron Chef America, which featured First Lady Michelle Obama introducing the mystery ingredient -- vegetables from her ballyhooed White House garden -- it turns out that we were all bamboozled: The vegetables didn't come from the White House garden at all. That's right: If you were one of the 76 million viewers who tuned in to the show, the vegetables you saw getting sliced and diced were charlatans.
On the subject of bamboozling, the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America is apparently under the illusion that Sarah Palin -- no intro necessary -- is an oenophile. Why else, then, would they call on the ex-guv of Alaska to be the keynote conference speaker at their upcoming alcohol conference in Las Vegas? Oh, wait, they were drunk.
Sheila Lucero, the exec chef of Jax Fish House-Denver and -Boulder, and the talker behind this week's Chef and Tell interview, doesn't mention whether or not the group of guys that goaded her into entertaining a marriage proposal were sauced, but Lucero does poke fun at her colleague, Hosea Rosenberg, while simultaneously extolling the brilliance of Thomas Keller.
Speaking of brilliance, that's what Kate Kennedy found in the charcuterie plate at Z Cuisine, Patrick DuPay's Highland stunner, which Kennedy profiles in her weekly happy hour column.
We suspect that Denver Public Schools won't be adding a charcuterie plate as a lunch choice for their students any time soon (too stereotypically French!), considering the fallout that resulted from DPS offering a lunch menu of "Southern" fried chicken, collard greens and sweet potatoes to honor Martin Luther King's birthday. For the record, Elaine Hall, from the Archives Department at the King Center in Atlanta, has said that "Dr. King's favorite meal included fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, and sweet potato pie." Amen to that.
There's no fried chicken on the menu at Virgilio's, but owner Virgilio Urbano has just introduced a flying saucer-size pizza, along with a brawny challenge to eat the 11-pound monstrosity, a feat that will reward you with an extended belly, 100 bucks, a bottle of wine and your mug on the wall of fame -- if you can down it all in two hours or less without a bathroom break or upchucking.
That's a wrap.
