Rexfeng

If you’ve eaten in Korean restaurants, you’ve come to expect that after ordering, an assortment of small dishes—called banchan—will be set down in front of you. Many people mistake them for small appetizers, but banchan are actually an integral part of Korean meals.

This virtual handbook of banchan will introduce some common dishes, tell you where to find them in New York and show you how to incorporate them into your next Korean dining experience.

Banchan Rule #1: Eat them alongside your meal

Naomi Imatome, who writes about Korean food for About.com, says that banchan traditionally provide a balance of textures and flavors, which reflect four of the basic elements of taste: bitter, sour, sweet and salty. There should also be a mix of spicy and non-spicy flavors.

This is evident at Hahm Ji Bach, a restaurant in Flushing, Queens, which offers an unusually large spread of fresh banchan. On a recent visit, 12 different dishes were set out for two diners. These included a spicy squash dish that was salty and lightly crisp, mayonnaise-glazed apple and raisin salad, steamed tofu topped with sesame seeds and soy-chili sauce, lightly seasoned, palate-cleansing bean sprouts and a dish of anchovies and peanuts that was slightly sweet and equal parts fishy and salty. If you’re grilling meat, you’ll also receive gyeran jjim, a steamed egg casserole that arrives at the table still bubbling in a stone pot.

Hahm Ji Bach’s banchan rotates depending on the availability of seasonal ingredients. Their special crab kimchi, for instance, is not available during the winter, when crab is not in season.

Banchan Rule #2: There are several distinct types

In namul (aka muchim) dishes, the star ingredient is usually a vegetable that has been lightly marinated or seasoned, then steamed, sautéed or blanched. Dishes seasoned and braised in broth or simmered with sweetened soy sauce until glazed are called jorim. Those that are chopped and stir-fried (often with chili paste, garlic, green onion and other strong flavors) are called bokkeum.

Among the condiments and spices commonly used to season banchan are ganjang (Korean soy sauce), gochujang (spicy, slightly sweet and savory red chili paste made with glutinous rice, fermented soybeans, and salt), gochugaru (red chili powder), a variety of vinegars, garlic, ginger, green onions and nutty sesame oil.

Kimchi, fermented vegetables that are a staple of Korean meals, is another distinct type of banchan. There are more than 300 varieties of kimchi featuring different ingredients, such as young radish, green onion, cubed radish, or napa cabbage with raw oysters. Several types of kimchi are typically included in banchan. (Insider tip: The quality of a restaurant’s kimchi often indicates how good or bad the rest of its food will be.)

At any H Mart, a Korean supermarket chain with locations throughout New York City and New Jersey, you’ll find a dedicated kimchi section stocked with many different sizes and types of the fermented dish—from small jars and mid-size bins to giant plastic bags that can be lugged home and stored for a long time.

Banchan Rule #3: They are usually vegetable or seafood dishes

Korea was predominantly Buddhist (and vegetarian) during the Koryo dynasty (935 to 1392 CE). Consequently, vegetables became central to each meal, and this tradition has continued to influence banchan. In addition, Imatome notes that Korea is a mountainous peninsula full of wild plants and herbs. Vegetables grow well in the country’s climate, so both fresh and fermented dishes are abundant year-round.

The H Mart on Union Street in Flushing, Queens, has several refrigerated sections dedicated to banchan (many of which are vegetarian). Seasoned dandelion greens, seaweed salad, dotorimuk (acorn jelly, a smooth gelatinous food made with acorn starch, which has a slightly nutty and bitter taste) and mumallaengi muchim (spicy stir-fried dry radish) are among the supermarket’s standard banchan options. You can also find stir-fried anchovies (in both hot and mild versions), salted and fermented raw squid, fermented octopus and pollock.

Bring H Mart’s banchan home to pair with future meals or eat some alongside an order at Namoodol, the in-store canteen (conveniently located next to the banchan section).

Banchan trace their origins to Korea’s royal courts, where they were regarded as both a symbol of wealth (higher-status royals received more banchan) and a means of sampling numerous dishes in a single meal. During extravagant feasts, royals often ate at individual tables—large enough to fit an entrée, soup, rice and at least nine different kinds of banchan.

These days banchan are commonly shared, but the principle of sampling widely among many different flavors remains unchanged. Thankfully, you don’t have to be dining in a royal court to enjoy this Korean food mainstay.

Hahm Ji Bach
41-08 149th Pl (map)
Queens, NY 11355

H Mart
29-02 Union St (map)
Queens, NY 11354
Other locations in New York and New Jersey found here

Related Reviews: Korean Food	Related Reviews: Vegetarian Dishes	Related Reviews: Flushing Eats

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Has New York wine society experienced its Radical chic moment? Certainly the talk around town about faddish wine behavior might lead you to think so. Sommeliers affecting worldliness by introducing funky, no compromise, aggressive wines into the dining rooms of established, well heeled New York? Maybe it sounds a bit like the more arty side of New York high society trying to seem in touch with their era by throwing parties for extremists like the Black Panthers in 1969 and 1970, when it was the hip thing to do. Leonard Bernstein wasn't the first to throw such a party, but he was certainly one of the last, after being roundly mocked in print in England and in the papers closer to home. Bernstein was made to look like a fool for trying to be vicariously cool.

Recently the New York wine trade was addressed in the same manner by the esteemed writer Jancis Robinson, who reported in the Financial Times that the sommeliers here are obsessed with fads and a desire to acquire the cred that comes from being seen at the hip events with the hip wines. Tellingly, no one publicly disagreed with her take but me, which says a lot about how foolish I am willing to be on Twitter, and even more about the apparent numbers who agree with Jancis that New Yorkers are a bunch of followers.

I don't know what Leonard Bernstein's motivations might have been, but I do know that the recent history of wine trends has been as much about economy as novelty, and that that part of the story has often been left out of the retelling. So what is going on? The underlying reality is phenomenal price escalation. Phenomenal, soaring price escalation that is unmatched in the history of wine in the modern world. What used to be available for a certain price a few years ago is now much more expensive. Against that, you have an end consumer who still wants to spend the same amount on wine that they always have, a number range that essentially hasn't changed for 10 years. Those realities provide a recipe for tremendous flux, the sommelier hopscotch of today.

It is worth spelling out what the parameters are. If these numbers look a little odd to you, that is because they are the wholesale prices, the prices that the restaurant buyer has in mind.

· $8-$22/bottle wholesale has been the standard range for a wine that can be sold by the glass, pre-Coravin

· $8-$19/bottle wholesale is also the lower end of what is accepted pricing for a bottle of wine on the list: the sort of wine that might be drunk at a dinner at a casual restaurant, at lunch at a more expensive venue, or bought for a larger group going through several bottles

· $20-$60/bottle wholesale is the meat of what moves by the bottle at most any restaurant, skewed towards bottom of that range for Brooklyn and more casual dining rooms, and towards the upper spectrum of those numbers for Tribeca, the West Village, the Upper East Side, and some other neighborhoods

· $60/bottle and higher is for wines which are perceived to be rare or of especially high quality, also for wines with age; this is the area where well regarded, luxurious restaurants can ply their trade, and where more casual restaurants rarely do

As a wine ascends through those range of prices, what can happen with that wine at a restaurant changes. That is the key point to understand. What the customer has in mind to spend is pretty much fixed. When you realize that Cru Beaujolais sells for $13 to $25 per bottle generally and up to around $35 bottle for certain bottlings, you can understand its broad appeal at the moment. It hits a lot of price categories. Cru Beaujolais can be sold by the glass at a wide range of venues, but it also currently works as a bottle sell at both casual restaurants (where it might be towards the high end of the price spectrum for a bottle) and more formal venues (where it would be towards the bottom end of the price per bottle range). Consequently, a lot of sommeliers are fans of Cru Beaujolais. It has something to offer each of them. And this is at the same time that other types of red Burgundy, the Volnay and Beaune reds that used to fill this particular niche, are more expensive. But the widespread sommelier love for Cru Beaujolais is recent. Both the 1999 and 2005 vintages came and went without much sommelier support. It wasn't until the 2009s were released that there was an uptick in interest. Before that time, Cru Beaujolais had been mostly a retail staple. The change had to do with pricing. Cru Beaujolais, and also other red Burgundies, had been cheaper before. In effect, Cru Beaujolais had to become more expensive for it to be so useful to sommeliers.

When you look at the dollar goalposts, something else becomes apparent: there is a Champagne by the glass problem. Champagne starts in the wholesale market for about $19 a bottle, rock bottom, and quickly goes up from there. That is towards the top end of what the consumer wants to pay for a glass of wine. You have some consumers who are willing to pay more for Champagne, because it is Champagne, and some others who are very much put out by that idea. What to do? The restaurant might offer less expensive sparkling wines from areas other than Champagne, or they might take a less than standard mark up on Champagne. But in general there is always a desire in the market for less expensive Champagne of good quality. The Aube, which is historically a less prestigious area of Champagne production, has been greeted with increased interest from buyers in recent years. Without the fame of other Champagnes, the offerings from the Aube were often less expensive. The Aube is further to the south than the other Champagne regions, and a warmer area as a result. Producers there have riper grapes, and some of them decided to use less of the sweetening dosage as a result. When you look at no dosage Champagnes becoming popular in the States, it can be helpful to consider that the more successful no dosage wines have often come from the Aube, which has been a source of less expensive Champagne. Now that certain names from the Aube have garnered more acclaim, their prices have gone up, and consequently people are more likely at this moment to question whether no dosage is for them.

This brings us back to the consideration of rapid price changes. Cru Beaujolais and Aube Champagne are often small production wines. As one particular producer name begins to establish itself in the market, the amount of wine they have available to sell may not meet the demand of the many restaurant accounts asking for it. This can lead to frequent changes on wine lists, as what is available for sale quickly turns over or becomes more expensive. Someone who is less connected with the vagaries of the wholesale market might see the changes as the sommelier trying to keep up with the latest fad. In reality, they are trying to stock wines at prices their customers want to pay. The frequent switches are exacerbated by the smaller cellar spaces available to restaurants today in a tighter real estate market. The sommelier can't buy a large quantity of a wine when it is available, because they don't have the space to do so. That means more turnover of stock, and a market where the restaurant buyer isn't aging wines so much as buying them for ready sale. It also means that restaurant buyers are affected by the pricing trends of the moment. They aren't insulated with a cushion of wines still in inventory that were bought three years previously, when the market conditions were different. What the sommelier is selling at a given moment is also what the wholesaler is selling at that moment.

So why not buy larger quantity production wines? One reason is that if restaurants do buy those wines, they are faced with a direct pricing comparison to retail wine outlets who have the space to buy wines in quantity, and who leverage that space to take advantage of deep quantity discounts. Larger production wines often have large wholesale discounts available for massive quantity orders. Restaurants can't play that game, and they can't afford to have their customers ask them why they charge so much for a wine that can be purchased for so little at retail. With small production wines they face less chance of that happening. When someone raises the question, as Jancis did, of why certain areas of the winemaking world are ignored by buyers in favor of others, it is worth considering what kind of production levels are common in each. If a country's wine production is dominated by large producers, it is likely you will see less representation at the restaurant level here.

All of this might seem to handicap the sommelier, but it hasn't. In fact, sommeliers have never had more influence with the public than they do now. And this is partly because the sommelier is suggesting a product at a price that the public wants to pay for it. They are demanded to do so by their guests. As prices for many wines went through the roof, many wine critics followed suit. While issuing occasional grumblings about increased expense, they would still give high scores to the wines that were only going up in price. They didn't have to look someone in the eye as they made their suggestion, or sense the discomfort with a price on a wine list. A wine critic sitting alone giving scores doesn't face that resistance. At some point a large swathe of the public opted out, which is why you often see wine critics writing today with the specialized collector in mind. By maintaining a trade in wines offered at prices that people want to pay, the sommelier has become increasingly relevant to the consumer looking for drinking advice. Which is to say that sommeliers aren't obsessed with fads, they are obsessed with the reality of the market. If sommeliers are sometimes dealing with wines at extremes, that is because today's wine market is so extreme.

· All Wine Coverage [~ENY~]

The Cook Islands have gained the reputation of being a place where assets can be hidden from business partners, litigants or former spouses.

Android: Believe it or not, one of the best ways to find great deals on Ebay is with auctions that have misspelled words. So a "Xbox Connect" instead of an "Xbox Kinect" might just go for a lot lesser since fewer people search for that. Eaby makes it easy to find such items on Android.

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Lots of Canon deals at Amazon
Amazon is having a one day sale on Canon gear. Most notably, the Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L II for $1699 after Canon’s $300 mail-in rebate.

Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L II at Amazon $1699 | Canon Deals at Amazon

If you prefer, B&H Photo has matched the deal at Amazon on the EF 24-70 f/2.8L II. This deal gives $300 off instantly, with another $300 via mail-in rebate with Canon.

Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L II at B&H Photo $1699

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Hakoom, one of the more prolific and visible trophy hunters in the PlayStation Network, just broke through to level 100—a rank that requires a user to win some 30,000 trophies. Three others have also breached the 99 barrier, thought to be the limit when PSN instituted trophy support back in mid-2008.

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Bitcoin is a digital currency that has increased in value in US$ by 900% over the past six months. Jason Kuznicki says Bitcoin is definitely a speculative bubble and has three graphs to illustrate his point. I found this one particularly interesting...it plots transactions vs. total Bitcoin market cap:

This chart shows a dramatic reduction in the total number of transactions, irrespective of size, per dollar of bitcoin's market cap, from December 2012 -- December 2013. In absolute terms, market cap has generally gone up, and the number of transactions has mostly just bounced around a lot. The total value of bitcoin is going up, but it's mostly getting parked rather than being put to work. Apparently there just aren't a lot of appealing ways to spend bitcoin, anecdotal news stories to the contrary notwithstanding.

Instead, an increasing amount of bitcoin's putative value (as measured in USD) is being squirreled away by larger and larger miner-investors. It's not fueling a diversifying, all-bitcoin economy: if it were, transactions would be keeping up with or even outpacing market cap, particularly if bitcoiners came to rely increasingly on bitcoins and decreasingly on dollars for day-to-day purchases. That's very clearly not happening.

The Wire's Omar Little once said to Marlo Stanfield, "Man, money ain't got no owners, only spenders." Bitcoin seems to have the opposite problem. (via mr)

Tags: Bitcoin   currency   economics   Jason Kuznicki   The Wire

Stu Maschwitz:

Christmas is coming. Here’s how to take some good photos.

In a nut: buy a low-end DSLR body and a $100 fast 50mm prime lens. That’s been good advice for anyone with an interest in photography for decades (minus the D in DSLR).

Yes, it's true people: the city's most coveted foodstuff can be delivered to your doorstep anywhere in the United States beginning...now! Dominique Ansel has partnered with gourmet food delivery website Goldbely to bring the Cronut to the masses not fortunate to live in New York City. Don't get too cozy, though: shipping is only available for this weekend. [ more › ]

Down for some Nacho Cheesier Pizza Hut or Cooler Ranch KFC? If the evil geniuses who brought us Doritos Tacos Locos have their way, we'll be seeing a lot more chip-and-chain combos in our future. PepsiCo, parent company of all your favorite stoner foods from Cheetos to Fritos, announced plans yesterday to use their products at chains like Pizza Hut and Buffalo Wild Wings as they did with Taco Bell. The brand also makes soda, of course, and have inked a deal with BWW to serve exclusively Pepsi products at the chain's 975 locations in the U.S. [ more › ]

Borderlands 2 is attempting the Herculean task of exciting people about QR codes. With its new LootTheWorld mobile app, Gearbox Software (Borderlands, Brothers in Arms and, er, Aliens: Colonial Marine) is turning any barcode or QR square into in-game ...

The pilot of Asiana Flight 214 didn't understand the plane's auto-throttle system, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) told press after conducting interviews with those involved in the accident. Lee Kang-kuk, the pilot in charge of the flight, set its throttles to idle, mistakenly believing the computers would keep the plane above the minimum speed set for landing, and ultimately causing the July crash at San Francisco International Airport.

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What are these baristas not telling you?

The coffee chain bought a bunch of carbonating equipment to serve its spiffy new "handcrafted" sodas, which are now being being rolled out in stores in flavors called Golden Ginger Ale, Spiced Root Beer, and Lemon Ale under its "Fizzio" line, Quartz reports. But there's already a genius off-menu Starbucks drink hack out there that involves the carbonators, if you just know how to ask for it: Apparently, baristas will put bubbles in "most things" on the Starbucks menu, including iced teas and coffees; all you have to do is ask for your venti whatever "carbonated." (Or, ask for "coffeezzy" and see what happens.) The company confirms it cannot give Frappuccinos and espresso drinks the Fizzio treatment, but the rest, as they say, is fair game. Nothing will ever replace Manhattan Special, but this is pretty cool. [QZ, Earlier, Related]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: coffeezzy, fizzio, off-menu items, secret starbucks menu, starbucks, the chain gang

Priding itself on being més que un club (more than a club), FC Barcelona has been extremely selective about the names of sponsors it places on its shirt. For a long time, the team didn't even have any advertising on its uniform, but now it's moving with the times and "pioneering" a new ad location: the inside of the shirt. A new global sponsorship deal between Intel and FCB will see the familiar "Intel Inside" logo emblazoned in a strategic spot inside the Barcelona jersey.

There's a broader partnership at play here, with Intel providing the Barcelona squad with the latest 2-in-1 devices and other tech to turn the Blaugrana "into one of the most technologically advanced football clubs in world." Though the financials of the deal have...

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Google has announced that Gmail will soon display images contained in email messages by default. "You’ll soon see all images displayed in your messages automatically across desktop, iOS and Android," writes John Rae-Grant, Gmail's product manager. This is a major change over Gmail's previous approach, which required users to specifically grant permission before any images loaded. Google says this precaution is no longer necessary because Gmail will now serve images through Google’s secure proxy servers, cutting off any risks associated with outside servers. The new changes will come to Gmail on desktop first; mobile apps won't show images automatically until "early 2014."

"Your messages are more safe and secure, your images are...

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China's notorious smog problem is crippling the country's airplanes. A mere 18 percent of flights depart on-time from Beijing Capital International Airport, with thick blankets of smog triggering chronic delays and cancelations. Now, the government has come up with a plan to adapt to the problem: require pilots to hone their abilities to land in low-visibility conditions.

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Instagram Direct would let users send private photos and videos to their friends.

A cafe in Nice, France charges rude customers five times more for a cup of coffee than those who say hello and please.

"A coffee" will set you back €7, according to the sign, while "a coffee please" is a little more affordable, at €4.25.

If you want keep your expenses down, and stay friends with your local barista, however, the best option is "Hello, a coffee please," which will only cost you €1.40.

The manager says that although the pricing scheme has never been enforced, customer civility is up. Cheekiness is on the rise as well:

"Most of my customers are regulars and they just see the funny side and exaggerate their politeness," he said, adding "They started calling me 'your greatness' when they saw the sign."

(via eater)

Tags: economics   food   France

New California health department rules could mean a Sriracha shortage until mid-January. According to the Los Angeles Times, the state's Department of Public Health is enforcing stricter rules that mean the hot sauce (along with Huy Fong's chili garlic and sambal oelek sauces) must be held for 30 days after between production and shipping. While so far, there are no details about how new this policy is or what caused the change, it means that Huy Fong won't have new stock until next month, company COO Donna Lam told the San Jose Mercury News. "We're backordered as it is but now we have to tell customers we aren't sending anything until mid-January."

According to the LA Times, the delay isn't a direct result of an order last month to p...

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People of Earth, dreamers of the universe and possible alien organisms of the beyond: you can swim like Scrooge McDuck in a Swiss bank vault in real life. Like, literally swim in money. This is incredible. A bank safe swimming pool filled with 8 million Swiss coins is being auctioned off to the highest bidder who wants to fulfill every person's childhood (and adult) dream of swimming in money.

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Here's a (very) random sampling of some of the things in the works at the massive new Maison Ladurée coming to Soho in early 2014. From now until the opening in mid-January, Racked NY will be posting updates with exclusive behind-the-scenes photos of the progress at the second outpost of this glitzy Parisian import, because 'the fashion industry, as a whole, cannot get enough of these macarons."

The new Ladurée will be a much bigger operation than the small Upper East Side shop, where there's only room for a pastry counter. The Soho outpost, billed as "the most beautiful location in the world," takes up the former Barolo space, and will include a full-service restaurant and a large outdoor area, as well as a retail shop. From Racked's first glimpse, the place is currently buzzing with wine tastings, construction workers crawling into pipes, and pastry testing. The last of these raises a question: Will Ladurée continue to ship those iconic macarons in every day from the Paris or will it start to make them in-house?
· Macarons! Wine! Ribbon! Here Comes Maison Ladurée Soho [Racked NY]
· All Coverage of Maison Ladurée [~ENY~]

As of yesterday, you can download the newest version of a mod called Project M for Super Smash Bros. Brawl that improves the game so much, it practically seems new. But how do you get it to actually run on your Wii? Good question.

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Remember echochrome? Cute PlayStation puzzler that had you guiding a little figure around increasingly-complex maps? Monument Valley is like that. Only a lot prettier.

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Watch as a trio of trials riders zoom across rusty old bridges, up rocky mountains, and down dry water slides on skinny-tired road bikes. An eye-popping collection of tricks.

There's a bit of a backstory to this video. It's a sequel to a similar video performed solo by Martyn Ashton. In the middle of filming this sequel, Ashton broke his back during a demonstration and is currently paralyzed from the waist down. Friends and fellow trials riders Chris Akrigg and Danny MacAskill stepped in to help Ashton complete the video. (via digg)

Tags: Chris Akrigg   cycling   Danny MacAskill   Martyn Ashton   video

Nintendo has a deal for those that don't have spare Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk controllers left over from the last console generation. The console manufacturer's online store now includes refurbished versions of the peripheral pack for $20, a savings of $10 on the normal price of the accessories.

Nintendo is offering the controllers in three colors: white, black and blue. Nintendo launched the Wii Remote Plus in November 2010, combining the gyroscope tech from its Wii Motion Plus add-on with the Wii's standard Wii Remote controller. Nintendo's refurbished goods may include "minor cosmetic blemishes," but are guaranteed to be fully functional and include Nintendo's standard 90-day warranty. Given that games like Wii Sports Club and Super Mario 3D World can use the controllers, the refurbished set may prove to be a good investment for Wii U owners.

Nintendo offering refurbished Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk for $20 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 11 Dec 2013 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ravi Somaiya and Leslie Kaufman, reporting for the NYT on a string of “viral” stories that garnered millions of page views, all which stories turned out to be false:

“The faster metabolism puts people who fact-check at a disadvantage,” said Ryan Grim, the Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post, which reposted the fictional airplane tweets, the letter to Santa and the poverty essay. “If you throw something up without fact-checking it, and you’re the first one to put it up, and you get millions and millions of views, and later it’s proved false, you still got those views. That’s a problem. The incentives are all wrong.”

Think about that. The guy who allowed all three stories to run says it’s a problem and the incentives are all wrong. I’ve been saying for years that page view-based advertising is a corrupting force. This is where it leads.

[Photo: @tipsforjesus/Instagram]

On the condition of maintaining complete anonymity, Eater National interviewed the mysterious mega-tippers behind TipsForJesus. Over the past three months, they have been dropping tips in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at bars and restaurants across the country, and they've been documenting their gift-giving on Instagram. Just last week, they hit up The Smith, The Nomad, and Bo's. The whole interview is an absolute-must read for anyone interested in this strange phenomenon. But here are five important facts, gleaned from the Q & A:

1) The TipsForJesus tippers have been doing this for 10 years. They just started documenting it on Instagram recently.
2) Although the Post claims that the Bo's waiter identified former PayPal VP Jack Selby as the person who paid last weekend, Eater has seen the receipt and the tipper, at least at Bo's, was not Selby. (Obviously, Selby could have possibly been there, but he did not pay.)
3) There is no plan or schedule for the tipping. The spokestipper tells Eater National: "We always tip pretty generously, but the tipsforjesus-sized tips are unscripted. There aren't any rules really."
4) TipsForJesus has no religious affiliation.
5) The TipsForJesus tippers do not plan to stop anytime soon.
· Q&A With TipsForJesus, the Mystery Mega Tippers [Eater National]

All signs point to the end for Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, the mini dumpling takeout empire co-founded by Anita Lo and Kenny Lao (Lo severed her ties to the place four years ago). A tipster writes in that the original Flatiron location was "completely out of vegetables" on Friday, and now there's a "For Rent" sign in the window and a message thanking customers for "ten great years." A recording on the answering machine at the 23rd Street location confirms: "Our Flatiron location is now closed. For more information, please visit us at twitter.com/rickshawbar."

A look at that Twitter feed yields just a couple of vague hints at the status of the chain. Yesterday it was offering free dumplings to anyone who would, "Come by our store before we close at 4 p.m. for our staff party and give the cashier a high five!" This morning Rickshaw tweeted: "10 years! Thank you New York. We love and appreciate everyone that's spent time with us. :)" This makes it sound like the whole operation, not just the Flatiron, is dunzo. Right now, no one's answering the phone at the Midtown outpost, and a Yelp review dated today says that there are "Public Auction" signs on the door there and the "furniture and kitchen equipment was being hauled away." The restaurant's Seamless account is also dead. No word yet on the current status of the truck or the Times Square Kiosk.
· All Coverage of Rickshaw Dumpling Bar [~ENY~]
[Photo: Facebook]

DICE updated Battlefield 4 on PC this week to address a number of server and client crashing issues. The developer patched the game yesterday, addressing "one of the most frequently occurring client crashes" in addition to other bugs related to frame rate and collisions. The update rectifies one particular bug where players were able to be shot while behind cover and changing their characters' stance, as the transitions between poses would occasionally lead to a "multiple frame desync."

Among the other fixes introduced in this week's patch is the issue of grenades bouncing back from containers with open doors. Additionally, DICE fixed a bug that awarded teams a win in a round of Defuse mode by killing every attacker without disarming the bomb, providing it was disarmed in the previous round. The developer issued patches for Battlefield 4's PS4 and PS3 versions last week following EA's statement of commitment to fixing the game's numerous issues. DICE already patched up a one-hit-kill glitch in the game on both PS4 and PC.

Update: Additionally, DICE rolled out a Battlefield 4 issues tracker thread in its official forums. The forum post includes a rather large list of problems in the game, the platforms each issue affects and their statuses. The status sections include three levels: "investigating," "fixing" and "fix live." The developer noted that the issue tracker is not a comprehensive list of problems in the game, and that while it has always maintained such a tracker behind the scenes in its projects, this is the first time it opted to make it public.

Battlefield 4 PC update addresses server crashes, frame rate issues [Update: Issues tracker added] originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 10 Dec 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It'll tumble for ya.

The Guardian reports that up to one fifth of the weight of frozen chicken breasts sold throughout the U.K. at supermarket chains is actually just water and other additives brought in to bulk up the meat in a process known as "chicken tumbling." Suppliers are importing meat from Brazil that's already treated with salt and corn oil in some cases, then are "'tumbling' it with water and water-binding additives," using a machine that is basically a glorified concrete mixer. The result is frozen chicken that weighs in at between 15 and 18 percent in added water, and it's perfectly legal meat at that: The paper reports that so long as it's labeled as a "preparation" or "product," tumbled chicken passes regulatory muster. Proud chicken tumblers defend the practice, which can be used to turn 100 kilos of meat into 165 kilos in no time at all, by arguing it makes the meat "more succulent." [Guardian via Daily Mail UK]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: chicken little, chicken, chicken tumbling, meat, water-added