I had the great pleasure this week of chatting about food, the universe and everything with Mitchell Davis on his Heritage Radio show Taste Matters. It was wonderful chatting with Mitchell, as ever, and great to be back at Heritage Radio; for those who don’t know it, it’s well worth checking out: a local NYC food-based radio network which broadcasts out of a converted container at the back of the fabled Roberta’s Pizzeria in Bushwick. Great programmes with regular presenters such as Mitchell and legendary beer purveyor Jimmy Carbone, with all the latest buzz about what’s going on in the food world here in NYC. Which is a lot. You can listen to my chat with Mitchell here:

My sincere apologies, as ever, for the echoing silence on the blog front…. I have averaged one post every nine months for the past two years, ’nuff said. I really must do better! In any case, I have been inspired to start again because I just spent a great couple of days at the James Beard Foundation Conference in NYC on the Paradox of Appetite. Many inspiring speakers, including Raj Patel, Marion Nestle, Phil Jones, Karen Washington. Many highlights, including:

Claude Fischler on the cultural context of appetite, comparing two descriptions of food culture from the 1930s and 50s: an American describing French, eating habits, and vice versa. The outcome? The Frenchman found the American habit of dining in long rows standing up at a counter utterly puzzling, ‘just as in a stable’, while the American found the French rigidity of always eating the same food at the same time equally perplexing; a lack of variety and adventure that ‘non-Frenchmen associate rather with a zoo’. Conclusion: people who don’t eat as we do, eat like animals.

More anon – but if you want to watch more now, the whole lot is available online here: “>JBF Conference.