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Snapshots From Ivan Orkin's Taste of Tokyo Dinner at the New York Wine and Food Festival
[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]
I've been eagerly awaiting the opening of the first New York branch of Ivan Orkin's eponymous Tokyo ramen shop ever since tasting his unique take on them for the first time last year. "I'm sure my story's not any different than anyone who's been stupid enough to try to open a restaurant in this town," Ivan told me as he prepared for the Taste of Tokyo Dinner, part of the New York City Wine and Food Festival that took place all over the city this weekend.
After months of delays, the restaurant is finally slated to open in just a few short weeks in November. "In a lot of ways, the delays were actually good for us," said Ivan's partner David Poran. "It gave us time to really refine the recipes and make changes for the better."
Last night the 74 guests got to taste a few of the items that will appear on the new menu (which will be 30 to 40 items long, according to Ivan, with about a quarter of them being variations on ramen). Take a peep through the slideshow to see what to expect when his doors finally open. It's ramen like you've never seen it.
About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.
Photographer Creates Lifelike Images of American Streets Using Toy Car Models and Forced Perspective
Over his long career of making and building, self-taught photographer Michael Paul Smith has at times referred to himself as a text book illustrator, a wallpaper hanger and house painter, a museum display designer, an architectural model maker, and art director. All of these skills have culminated in the amazing ability to shoot forced perspective outdoor scenes using his extensive diecast model car collection. Something he calls his “quirky hobby.”
For nearly 25 years Smith has been working on a fictional town he refers to as Elgin Park where all of his miniature scenes take place. To make each shot he positions an old card table at scenic points around Boston and positions his minutely detailed cars and model sets on top. Using an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera and natural light he then snaps away, simply eye-balling the perspective to get everything right.
While these are his most recent photos, earlier shots from the collection have gone into a book titled Elgin Park: An Ideal American Town. To learn more you can read an extensive interview over on Fstoppers. All photos courtesy Michael Paul Smith. (via PetaPixel)
155 Years Before the First Animated Gif, Joseph Plateau Set Images in Motion with the Phenakistoscope
Nearly 155 years before CompuServe debuted the first animated gif in 1987, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau unveiled an invention called the Phenakistoscope, a device that is largely considered to be the first mechanism for true animation. The simple gadget relied on the persistence of vision principle to display the illusion of images in motion. Via Juxtapoz:
The phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc’s center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc’s reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture.
Though Plateau is credited with inventing the device, there were numerous other mathematicians and physicists who were working on similar ideas around the same time, and even they were building on the works of Greek mathematician Euclid and Sir Isaac Newton who had also identified principles behind the phenakistoscope.
Courtesy the Richard Balzer Collection
Courtesy the Richard Balzer Collection
The moving image was only viewable through a narrow slit. Via Wikimedia Commons
So what kinds of things did people want to see animated as they peered into these curious motion devices? Lions eating people. Women morphing into witches. And some other pretty wild and psychedelic imagery, not unlike animated gifs today. Included here is a random selection of some of the first animated images, several of which are courtesy The Richard Balzer Collection who has been painstakingly digitizing old phenakistoscopes over on their Tumblr. (via Juxtapoz, 2headedsnake, thanks Brian!)
Fall Tracking: Take a Look Around Gotham West Market, Coming Soon
Way out on 11th Avenue, it's first and foremost an amenity for the residents of the building and its neighbors, but the lineup of vendors could make it worth the trek. As of now the market is aiming to open in early November.
· All Coverage of Gotham West Market [~ENY~]
Facebook decides to allow videos of beheadings in your news feed
Facebook is once again allowing graphic videos of human beheadings to be posted on the social network. It's a controversial decision, and one that's likely to raise objections from some psychologists and parents who claim that children being exposed to such content can have harmful, long lasting effects. In May, the company bowed to pressure from safety advisors and began removing clips of decapitations. But according to BBC News, Facebook now says its users should have the freedom to view (and hopefully condemn) such violent content. That's the same stance Facebook originally held on the subject.
"While this video is shocking, our approach is designed to preserve people's rights to describe, depict and comment on the world in which...
Witness the horrors of Pokémon combat through Pikachu's eyes
Imagine you awake one day to find that you're now a Pikachu. You barely have a moment to take in this Kafka-esque plot twist before a Bulbasaur rushes you from the undergrowth, vines undulating with all the menace of a killer who enjoys his work. At first you're outmatched, as the diminutive plant-lizard slices trees in half and flings you around the clearing. He winds up for a devastating Hyper Beam, but you're a bit quicker, and the Bulbasaur is struck by a blinding bolt of lightning, instantly flash-frying his corpse.
Dramatic, no? Director Filipe B. Costa has been making a name for himself with these kinds of perspective alterations. He's also lent his first-person style to The Legend of Zelda, with results that are slightly more awkward than this Pokémon battle, but impressive nonetheless. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that Nintendo will release a game resembling either of those videos any time soon, so consider this your daily reminder that life is a cruel mistress.
Witness the horrors of Pokémon combat through Pikachu's eyes originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
How To Collapse: do slumping sales and an executive exodus spell doom for HTC?
Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC is in a rough spot. Despite positive reviews for its flagship Android devices, profits have been dropping since early last year as the company struggles to compete with Samsung's marketing muscle. And the cracks are beginning to show — several senior figures have left amid reports of internal strife and questionable leadership from CEO Peter Chou. Follow this StoryStream to keep track of HTC's fortunes.
Game over: Nintendo ends production of the original Wii
Nintendo's dream of a motion controlled future is over. Nintendo Japan has announced that production on the original Wii console, which debuted in 2006, has ended, with a statement on the company's site reading simply "production over." The news isn't exactly surprising — Nintendo alluded to it at the beginning of the month — but it's a quiet end for what was once the next big thing in gaming. The Wii's ambitious and intuitive motion sensing controller and games like Wii Sports and New Super Mario Bros. helped the console sell more than 100 million units during its lifetime, while capturing a new demographic outside of the typical gaming audience — mainstream news stories about Wii bowling games in nursing homes were common after...
Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
I've become a huge fan of touch computing. I believe that most things we think of as "computers" will be de-facto tablets, either in our pocket, in our hands, possibly even mounted on our wrists or forearms.
I can't wait for the iPad 5 this week (I'll be ordering three), and my Surface Pro 2 should arrive this week too. Because it is a blazingly fast, modern Intel machine, I like to use the Surface Pro to predict where tablet performance ought to be for everyone in 2 to 3 years. I think of it as an iPad 7.
My main complaint with the Surface Pro is the incredibly lackluster battery life. Granted, this is a classic Intel x86 box we're talking about, not some efficient ARM system-on-a-chip designed to run on a tiny battery. Still, I was hopeful that the first Surface Pro with Haswell inside would produce giant gains in battery life as Intel promised. Then I saw this graph:
So WiFi web browsing battery life, arguably the most common user activity there is on a computer these days, goes from 4.7 hours on the Surface Pro to 6.7 hours on the Surface Pro 2, a 42% increase. That's a decent increase, I suppose, but I was hoping for something more like 8 hours, something closer to doubling of battery life – to bring the Surface Pro in line with other tablets.
Nearly 7 whole hours of WiFi web browsing for a real computer in tablet form factor … that's not bad, right? Let's see how the 2013 MacBook Air does, which spec-wise is about as close as we can get to the Surface Pro 2. The screen is somewhat lower resolution and not touch capable, of course, but under the hood, the i5-4200u CPU and LPDDR3 RAM are nearly the same. It's a real computer, too, using the latest Intel technology.
The Surface Pro 2 has a 42 Wh battery, which puts it closer to the 11 inch Air in capacity. Still, over 11 hours of battery life browsing the web on WiFi? That means the Air is somehow producing nearly two times the battery efficiency of the best hardware and software combination Microsoft can muster, for what I consider to be the most common usage pattern on a computer today. That's shocking. Scandalous, even.
UPDATE: Turns out the Surface 2 Pro was shipped with bad firmware. Once updated, the WiFi adapter enters lower idle power states and this helps a lot, going from 6.6 hours of browsing time to 8.3 hours, a 25% improvement! That puts it much more in line with the rest of the field, at least, even if it doesn't achieve Mac like runtime.
It's not exactly news that Windows historically doesn't do as well as OS X on battery life. Way back in 2009, AnandTech tested a MacBook Pro with multiple operating systems:
| 2009 15-inch MacBook Pro (73WHr battery) | OS X 10.5.7 | Windows Vista x64 SP1 | Windows 7 RC1 |
| Wireless Web Browsing (No Flash) Battery Life | 8.13 hours | 6.02 hours | 5.48 hours |
That's fine, I knew about this discrepancy, but here's what really bothers me:
-
The Windows light usage battery life situation has not improved at all since 2009. If anything the disparity between OS X and Windows light usage battery life has gotten worse.
- Microsoft positions Windows 8 as an operating system that's great for tablets, which are designed for casual web browsing and light app use – but how can that possibly be true when Windows idle power management is so much worse than the competition's desktop operating system in OS X – much less their tablet and phone operating system, iOS?
(It's true that Bay Trail, Intel's new lower power CPU from the Atom family, achieves 8.6 hours of WiFi web browsing. That's solidly in the middle of the tablet pack for battery life. But all the evidence tells me that the very same hardware would do a lot better in OS X, or even iOS. At least Intel has finally produced something that's reasonably competitive with the latest ARM chips.)
Perhaps most damning of all, if you take the latest and greatest 13" MacBook Air, and install Windows 8 on it, guess what happens to battery life?
One of the best things about the standard 2013 MacBook Air 13" is that it has record-breaking battery life of 14 hrs 25 min (with the screen brightness at 100 cd/m², headphones plugged in and the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and keyboard backlighting turned off). Under Windows 8 the results are more mixed [..] in the same conditions it lasts only 7 hrs 40 min. That's still very high—it's better than the Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A's 6 hours and the Samsung Series 7 Ultra's 5 hours—but it's only half the astronomical 14 hours + that the 13" MacBook Air is capable of.
Instead of the 26% less battery life in Windows that Anand measured in 2009, we're now seeing 50% less battery life. This is an enormous gap between Windows and OS X in what is arguably the most common form of computer usage today, basic WiFi web browsing. That's shameful. Embarrassing, even.
I had a brief Twitter conversation with Anand Shimpi of Anandtech about this, and he was as perplexed as I was. Nobody could explain the technical basis for this vast difference in idle power management on the same hardware. None of the PC vendors he spoke to could justify it, or produce a Windows box that managed similar battery life to OS X. And that battery life gap is worse today – even when using Microsoft's own hardware, designed in Microsoft's labs, running Microsoft's latest operating system released this week. Microsoft can no longer hand wave this vast difference away based on vague references to "poorly optimized third party drivers".
Apple is clearly doing a great job here. Kudos. If you want a device that delivers maximum battery life for light web browsing, there's no question that you should get something with an Apple logo on it. I just wish somebody could explain to me and Anand why Windows is so awful at managing idle power. We're at a loss to understand why Windows' terrible – and worsening! – idle battery life performance isn't the source of far more industry outrage.
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How to parallel park
On Quora, Yishan Wong shares his foolproof technique for parallel parking.
Tags: how toThe directions for parallel parking (that you get from the DMV, or in your driver's ed course) are actually very precise and if you follow them exactly, you will park your car perfectly every time. You do not need to practice, you just need to fucking follow the directions.
A Decommissioned Drydock Hides This Museum Devoted To the Sea
How do you hide a building? It sounds like a rhetorical question, but it was the very real dilemma confronting the architects charged with building a new Maritime Museum of Denmark a few years ago. The museum, you see, is located a few hundred yards away from Kronborg Castle—which serves as the setting for Shakespeare's Hamlet and is protected by law.
Soho's food machine
Here's how Balthazar, one of Manhattan's busiest and most-beloved restaurants, serves 1500 meals every single day.
Roughly one in 10 people who enter Balthazar orders the steak frites. It is far and away the restaurant's best-selling dish, and Balthazar can sell as many as 200 on a busy day. A plate of steak and potatoes requires a tremendous input of labor if you're going to charge $38 for it. At a smaller restaurant, cooks are typically responsible for setting up their own mise-en-place -- preparing food for their stations -- before each service begins, but at Balthazar, things are necessarily more atomized. The fries, for example, go through numerous steps of prep, done by a few different people, before they wind up on a plate.
Step 1 begins at about 6:30 a.m., when Diogene Peralta and Ramon Alvino, the prep cooks in charge of potatoes, each grab a 50-pound case of GPODs, from the Idaho company that sources Russet Burbank potatoes, known for their consistency, and place a massive plastic tub on the floor behind them. This morning, Alvino is flying, his left hand's fingers imperceptibly rotating the potato between upward strokes of the peeler, blindly flipping the naked spuds over his shoulder into the tub. I pull up my phone's stopwatch to time him for a minute, treating each potato as a lap: his slowest is 10.7 seconds, his quickest 6.4. Alvino, a shy man from the Dominican Republic, has been doing this same job for 15 years. "Like anything else, it was difficult at first," he says, but he caught his rhythm after a couple of months. Peralta has been at it for 14 years. Today, they will peel and chip about 600 pounds of potatoes. (Since russet supplies are short in late summer, Balthazar stockpiles thousands of cases of potatoes in a New Jersey warehouse.) Next, they will soak them in water that must be changed three times in order to leach out starch. The potatoes that are peeled today won't be fried, actually, until tomorrow, and then refried -- but that's another guy's job.
What an intricately designed system; even the menu is designed to drive profit.
Tags: Balthazar food NYC restaurantsPhotos: Two New Banksy Pieces Up On West 24th Street
    
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Sweatpants Gourmet: 24 Great Restaurants That Also Deliver
Now you can enjoy Mission Chinese Food on your couch.
This week, Mission Chinese Food began offering delivery to any and all Sichuan-pepper-heads who are lucky enough to live in the delivery zone. But it's hardly the only class-A restaurant that will dispatch its food right to your door. In fact, it's simple to eat a spicy duck laab salad, Khachapuri, or a Porchetta sandwich in your PJs.
Kin Shop
Delivery Zone: From 18th Street to Bleecker Street, between Seventh and Fifth Avenues.
What to Order: The Massamam braised-goat curry, with fried shallots, mustard greens, purple yams, and toasted coconut is one of Harold Dieterle's signature dishes. Make sure to add the spicy duck laab salad.
Bun-Ker
Delivery Zone: From Myrtle Avenue to Fresh Pond Road, between Metropolitan Avenue and Broadway.
What to Order: The Underground Gourmet named this Vietnamese restaurant in Maspeth the best new cheap-eats joint, calling the roasted portobello bánh mì (with Havarti, smoked Gouda, and basil-peanut pesto) "the kind of whimsical concoction that defines this moment in high-low cuisine."
Parm
Delivery Zone: From E. 8th Street to Broome Street, between Sixth Avenue and Bowery.
What to Order: All of the parm sandwiches are outstanding, of course, but the sleeper hit is the house-roasted turkey sandwich. The $5 pizza knots will help you meet the minimum charge.
Mimi's Hummus
Delivery Zone: From Ocean Parkway to Ocean Avenue, between Parkside Avenue and Avenue H.
What to Order: The Underground Gourmet awarded this Ditmas Park spot four (four!) stars for its Israeli cooking. Get the warm fava-bean hummus with lemon-garlic dressing.
Mission Chinese Food
Delivery Zone: From E. 3rd Street to Grande Street, between Bowery and Avenue B.
What to Order: Thrice-cooked bacon's always delightful, but if you feel like eating healthily at home, Danny Bowien's now offering four vegan dishes: Mongolian long beans, braised pea leaves, Taiwanese potatoes, and red braised eggplant.
Tacombi at Fonda Nolita
Delivery Zone: From E. 8th Street to Grand Street, between Sixth Avenue and Essex Street.
What to Order: Tacos don't travel well (Pete Wells agrees), so Tacombi packages ingredients separately and lets you assemble them yourself. Be mindful: Crispy fish will probably get soggy, so opt for the pork belly or sweet-corn-and-poblano-pepper fillings.
Oda House
Delivery Zone: From E. 23rd Street to Houston Street, between 6th Avenue and Avenue D.
What to Order: On a cold day, this Cheap Eats pick's Khachapuri (traditional Georgian cheese bread) will be rich and comforting. The Chakapuli (grass-fed slow-cooked lamb) is also excellent.
Cómodo
Delivery Zone: From 14th Street to Battery Park, between the Hudson River and Allen Street.
What to Order: If it's lunchtime, order one of the Latin American restaurant's excellent tortas — made with chipotle-braised pork shoulder, grilled vegetables, or pulled chicken.
Motorino
Delivery Zone: East Village: From 23rd Street to Prince Street, between Ninth Avenue and Avenue C. Williamsburg: From N. 12th Street to Wallabout Street, between Kent and Union Avenues.
What to Order: Definitely get either the Cherry-stone clam pie or the one with Brussels sprouts and pancetta, even if your friends insist they want plain ol' cheese.
Porchetta
Delivery Zone: From 20th Street to Delancey Street, between Bowery and Avenue D.
What to Order: Sara Jenkins's Porchetta plate, with beans, cooking greens, and Porchetta meat, is pretty much the perfect meal. Throw in a side of crispy potatoes (with "burnt ends") to take it to the next level.
Kutscher's Tribeca
Delivery Zone: From Horatio Street to Barclay Street, between West Street and Broadway.
What to Order: Matzo-ball soup for lunch is always a good call. Plus: You can get a side of hand-cut duck-schmaltz fries!
Beyond Sushi
Delivery Zone: From E. 23rd Street to E. 4th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Avenue A.
What to Order: Vegan sushi doesn't sound too appealing, but the Underground Gourmet promises this place is a "godsend." The Spicy Mango roll, with black rice, avocado, mango, cucumber, spicy vegetables, and toasted cayenne sauce, is a standout.
Katz's Delicatessen
Delivery Zone: From E. 14th Street to Reade Street, between Broadway and the East River.
What to Order: What's better than staying in your PJs on a Sunday and eating a potato knish and pastrami sandwich? Absolutely nothing.
Burger & Barrel
Delivery Zone: From E. 8th Street to Grand Street, between Sixth Avenue and Bowery.
What to Order: The award-winning "Bash-Style" burger — with onion-and-bacon jam, pickles, American cheese, and special sauce — is delightful, of course. But don't overlook the chickpea-based veggie burger, which has received serious praise of its own.
El Toro Blanco
Delivery Zone: From E. 8th Street to Canal Street, between Varick Street and Bowery.
What to Order: Skip the tacos and opt for a hearty entree, like the enchiladas with pulled roasted chicken, and the vegetarian empanada.
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
Delivery Zone: Harlem: From 110th Street to 155th Street, between 12th and Lenox Avenues. Larger orders can be delivered almost anywhere in the city.
What to Order: The "Sweetheart Deal for Two" includes a full rack of dry-rubbed, slow-pit-smoked ribs, and four homemade sides. Now that's a perfect date night.
Fatty Crab
Delivery Zone: From 20th Street to Leroy Street, between West Street and 6th Avenue.
What to Order: Watermelon pickle with crispy pork is a Fatty specialty, and it's a good deal for $17. Throw in a dark-chocolate Fatty Bar, made with roasted almonds, chile, and sea salt, for dessert.
Frank
Delivery Zone: From 19th Street to Grand Street, between Park Avenue South and Avenue C.
What to Order: This East Village mainstay turns out stellar homemade pastas, but on Thursdays only, you can order the lasagne verdi special. a Chrissy Teigen's leading the cult following.
Mile End
Delivery Zone: From E. 14th Street to Canal Street, between Sixth and First Avenues.
What to Order: All-day breakfast means you can order a smoked-meat-hash plate and whitefish salad on a bialy whenever you damn please. Freedom!
Peels
Delivery Zone: From E. 10th Street to Delancey Street, between Broadway and Avenue A.
What to Order: Nobody wants to deal with the jam-packed brunch scene here, but the breakfast food is awesome. Avoid the two-hour wait and order flapjacks and shrimp and grits to your door.
Otto
Delivery Zone: From 26th Street to Broome Street, between Seventh and Third Avenues.
What to Order: Yes, the pizzas are only so-so, but the $5 vegetable sides are fantastic — and hearty enough to turn into a full meal. Even better: Order a pint of olive-oil gelato.
Schiller's Liquor Bar
Delivery Zone: From East 14th Street to Canal Street, between Lafayette and Avenue C.
What to Order: Keith McNally offers solid moules frites and rotisserie chicken at his Lower East Side French spot, and you'll save money by drinking your own booze at home.
Tea & Sympathy
Delivery Zone: From 30th Street to Canal Street, between the Hudson River and Broadway.
What to Order: Shepherd's pie is going to become even more appealing once it's snowing outside. This British eatery also offers a vegetarian version with creamy mushrooms.
Hill Country
Delivery Zone: From 42nd Street to 14th Street, between Eleventh and Second Avenues.
What to Order: For $27, the Pitmaster Combo "for one" includes a quarter pound of brisket, one pork spare rib, one beef rib, a quarter-pound chicken, and any two sides. Choose the sweet-potato-Bourbon mash and the Longhorn cheddar macaroni and cheese, and don't share.
Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart
Filed Under: grub guides, a salt & battery, beyond sushi, bun-ker, bunker, burger & barrel, comodo, delivery, dinosaur bar-b-que, el toro blanco, fatty crab, frank, hill country, katz’s deli, kin shop, kutscher’s tribeca, mile end, mimi’s hummus, mission chinese food, motorino, new york, oda house, otto, parm, peels, porchetta, schiller’s liquor bar, tacombi, take-out, tea & sympathy
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Siri Response Times
I was listening to the latest episode of Accidental Tech Podcast, and they had a segment about Apple’s seemingly institutional inability to get online services right. It made me think about this anecdote from Marissa Mayer back in 2006, as relayed by Greg Linden:
Marissa started with a story about a user test they did. They asked a group of Google searchers how many search results they wanted to see. Users asked for more, more than the ten results Google normally shows. More is more, they said.
So, Marissa ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%. Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it?
After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds.
Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction.
If a half second difference made people search less on Google, imagine how much less people are using Siri given that its response times are often multiple seconds long. I think the single biggest improvement Apple could (and really must) make to Siri is to make it faster. And that’s exactly the sort of thing Apple has never really shown the chops for.
This might be the weirdest —or at least the most surreal—gun in video games.
This might be the weirdest —or at least the most surreal—gun in video games. The freak-science invention in Scale lets you shrink and grow just about anything the game’s world. The indie title looked awesome every time we’ve seen it and now dev team CubeHeart has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help get the game done.
DealBook: Plea Agreement Could End SAC’s Advisory Business
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Breadth of modern slavery exposed by sobering new report
Nearly 30 million people across the world are currently living in slavery, according to a report published Thursday. The inaugural Global Slavery Index, compiled by the Walk Free Foundation, estimates the prevalence of slavery in 162 countries, based on both internal research and data from UNICEF and the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons report. According to the report (PDF), slavery is most prevalent as a percentage of the population in Mauritania, Haiti, and Pakistan. India, China, and Pakistan are among the countries where slavery is most prevalent in absolute terms; together with Nigeria, Ethiopia, and five other countries, they account for more than 75 percent of the world's enslaved population.
Walk Free was founded...
'Calvin & Hobbes' creator: 'I don’t think comics have ever been more widely accepted'
Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson rarely gives interviews, but this month he sat down with Mental Floss for a long interview about his work and his life after Calvin. As in previous interviews, Watterson maintains there are no new comics in the pipeline. He says Calvin's rush of success "created a level of attention and expectation that I don't know how to process," and he has no interest in repeating the experience. At the same time, Watterson sympathizes with the clamor for more Calvin. "You can’t really blame people for preferring more of what they already know and like," Watterson says. "The trade-off, of course, is that predictability is boring. Repetition is the death of magic."
Cocktail Science: What Makes a Great Mocktail?
Hey, we know you enjoy a stiff old-fashioned or an extra extra extra dry martini as much as the next imbiber, but sometimes going for the hard stuff just isn't an option. But that doesn't mean you want to get stuck slurping on cranberry juice and soda water either. Wouldn't it be great if you could sip a mocktail that looks and tastes just like the real thing?
Today, we'll look at the science of how alcohol actually tastes, how to mimic it, and whether this is a good idea. Later this week, we'll look at the flavors that appear in great spirits and how to mimic them with some actual recipes.
The prevailing knowledge seems to argue that you can't recreate the taste of alcohol without actually using it. Is that true?
Let's step back. Maybe a better first question would be:
What, exactly, does alcohol taste like?
The answer to this question may not be as obvious as you think.
Sure, any whisk(e)y aficionado will be quick to point out that aged spirits contain notes of caramel, vanilla, cloves, and dozens if not hundreds of other aromatic notes. Got it.
But, what about plain old ethanol? Here's what we know:
- Most people associate the taste of high-proof alcohol with "that burning sensation." Scientifically, this is known as a trigeminal sensation and you feel it through your pain nerves rather than through your taste buds.
- Ethanol also has a "drying" effect at high proof. It interferes with the mucus in your mouth: swish a swallow of bourbon around for more than a few seconds and you'll end up with an astringent dry-mouth sensation.
Does low-proof alcohol taste different from high-proof?
First off, it's important to remember that a minority of drinkers are bona-fide supertasters who perceive alcohol in any dosage as much more bitter than everybody else.
With that being said, the research shows that at 10% ABV, alcohol is universally described as "bitter" while many tasters also called it slightly sweet.1
What effect does the "somewhat bitter and slightly sweet" taste of alcohol have on a low-ABV drink? Not a whole lot, as it turns out.
Consider, for example how nonalcoholic beers are made. "Near-beer," as it's endearingly referred to, begins life as normal beer. Bottlers then distill out any alcohol using a vacuum...
...And that's it. They just take the booze out and sell the remaining liquid as-is.
Even brewers of high-quality near-beer don't bother adding flavors back in to replace the lost alcohol. Beause, as Gizmodo put it, alcohol "gives [beer] that dryness, and it can accentuate some of the sweet flavors in the malt, but alcohol doesn't really add any flavor itself."
[1] Bitter and sweet components of ethanol taste in humans
How to simulate alcohol
We've established that alcohol tastes tingly, drying, bitter, and sweet.
To recreate these effects in a nonalcoholic drink, we simply need to add ingredients that produce the same effect.
- The best analog for alcohol's burn comes from spicy ingredients such as ginger or chilies. Although the compounds involved are different*, both stimulate the same nerve that alcohol affects.
- Astringency is harder to replicate. At home, the best option is oversteeped black tea, which contain naturally-occurring tannins that replicate the astringency of alcohol.**
- Oversteeped tea is also one of the few readily-available ingredients I've tried that can add a respectable amount of bitterness to a drink. Most cocktail bitters use herbs like cinchona or gentian that are harder to come by. To make oversteeped tea, use twice as many teabags as you would normally use and simmer the tea for 10 minutes.
* Capsaicin is responsible for the spice in chilies. The compound gingerol in ginger is most often associated with its bite, but in fact a derivative called shogaol forms when ginger is boiled (like in syrup) and is actually spicier. I've compared fresh ginger juice vs. boiled syrup, and it's pretty noticeable—and cool.
** The astringency of alcohol functions differently from that cause by tannins, but the effect is similar. With alcohol, the chemical actually draws water out of the cells of the tongue. Tannins, on the other hand, bind with the proteins that make mucus feel "wet," which then makes your tongue feel more dry.
Does a good mocktail need to taste like alcohol?
If you've been following along, you may have concluded that you should be brewing up a batch of bitter, spicy, slightly sweet tea the next time you serve as designated driver. Gross.
But, there's no need to do that. That's because the true allure of alcohol isn't really derived from its own taste characteristics, but rather how it interacts with other compounds to create otherwise unattainable flavors.
Think of bitterness, astringency, and spice as creative ways to accent an already tasty mocktail, to add lend the slight feeling that you might be sipping an actual cocktail.
Next week, we'll look at some of the complex flavors that develop in spirits and how to add those complexities to some innovative mocktail recipes.
In the meantime, what's the most innovative nonalcoholic drink you've tried?
About the author:Kevin Liu likes to drink science and study cocktails. Wait, that's backward. Ask him geeky food and booze questions on twitter @kevinkliu. While you're at it, check out his book about cocktail science.
The NoMad Is Selling White Truffles at Cost
Casual.
A rep from Will Guidara and Daniel Humm's NoMad writes in to say the restaurant is currently selling four grams of white truffles for $32 (and eight grams for $64), which is zero markup. There's also an option to have them added to tagliatelle or risotto, which would total at least $49 a bowl. Move quick: These babies are on the menu now and only available until the restaurant runs out.
Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart
Filed Under: truffles!, deals, new york, the nomad
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Square Cash
Walt Mossberg reviews Square’s new super-simple cash-by-email service:
Here’s how Square Cash works. Say you want to send $47.12 to your sister. You just compose an email with her email address in the “To” field and, in the “CC” field, you enter “cash@square.com.” In the subject field, you enter the amount you’re sending — in this case, “$47.12.” You can leave the message body blank, or add a note explaining you’re sending the money and why. Then, you just press Send.
If this is your first time using the service, Square will email you a link to its service, where you’ll be asked to enter your debit-card information. This is required one time only. In seconds, Square verifies the debit card and checks that you have sufficient funds, using existing, routine Visa or MasterCard procedures, and sends an email to your sister. (Square says it never knows how much is in your account, and it encrypts your card number.)
Seems almost too good to be true — not least because there are no fees at all. If I send you $25.00, you get $25.00.
‘And Steve Said, “Fuck You Guys, Do Whatever You Want. You’re Responsible.” And He Stormed Out of the Room.’
Chris Fralic:
10 years ago today, Apple did something extraordinary, but it didn’t seem like it at the time. Like the story of a butterfly flapping its wings and eventually causing a tsunami halfway around the world, this had a profound impact on the trajectory and fortunes of Apple over the next decade. It’s something you don’t often hear about, even from fervent Apple watchers, but it was the day “Hell Froze Over.”
On October 16, 2003, Apple launched “the best Windows program ever” — iTunes for Windows.
McCarren Park Pool Ready For Ice Skating Rink Transformation
After over a year of anticipation, the McCarren Park Pool will turn into an ice skating rink this winter! The NYC Parks and Recreation Department and the Open Space Alliance announced that the McCarren Rink will open on November 15—and there will be a holiday market and food market, too. [ more › ]
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I Have Seen the Future and It's a One-Handed Magnetic Zipper
Under Armour is making the bold claim that it's finally "fixed zippers." And while its innovative new Magzip feature probably isn't going to change the entire world, it's still a vast improvement to clothing technology that hasn't evolved in in almost 100 years. It's also voodoo magic.
Om Malik on Angela Ahrendts
Good piece by Om Malik:
That said, I think the biggest challenge and perhaps one that could prove to be her Achilles heel has less to do with her capabilities and more to do with how Apple works.
First, she is not Ron Johnson. And she is definitely not John Browett. She is Angela Ahrendts, and she is a rock star.
She hobnobs with rock stars, hangs out with models and graces the covers of magazines. She is the personification of a media celebrity CEO. She is a woman who seems to have it all. She is used to being the center of attention and being able to access reporters and give interviews. She is not the nameless, faceless functionary that Apple loves and makes sure that they remain anonymous.
Anonymous isn’t quite the right word, but it’s true that Apple has a distinctly quiet executive culture.
Republicans Back Down, Ending Crisis Over Shutdown and Debt Limit
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Tim Cook celebrates Cupertino's approval of Apple spaceship campus
Tim Cook has a small reason to celebrate today, as Apple was finally given approval by the Cupertino City Council to build its new "spaceship" campus. "Our home for innovation and creativity for decades to come," Cook says of the campus in a tweet. Apple still has a long way to go before it'll be moving in, however. Should construction go as scheduled, the new campus won't begin holding Apple employees until sometime in mid-2016.