Paleolithic Restaurant Discovered in Arizona

Wow, remember The Stone Age Diet, also known as the Paleolithic Diet or the Cave Man Diet? The idea behind the diet is that humanity evolved to eat fruits, vegetables, and lean meats rather than dairy, grains, sugar, and processed foods. Therefore, the best diet for us today is a copy of that limited menu.

Guessing what humanity ate over tens or hundreds of thousands of years in varying climates and settings is a bit harder than knowing exactly what was eaten, so the various claims for the diets wobble all over the place. I have more references in the link given above.

I hadn't heard of this fad for several years. (And it is a fad diet. There is no necessary reason or scientific backing for it, other than the common sense claims that are sometimes made.) But an Arizona chef has opened a Paleolithic Diet restaurant in trendy Scottsdale.

An article by Carey Sweet of the Arizona Republic splashes a few details.

Some chefs try to predict future trends for their cooking inspiration. Calistro California Bistro chef-owner Devin Walsh is looking back. By about 2.5 million years....

It celebrates foods people ate prior to agriculture and animal husbandry (such as wild game or grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish, shellfish, eggs, tree-nut oils, vegetables, roots, fruit, berries and mushrooms). Not allowed are Neolithic Era foods that evolved from our manipulation (grains, sugar, dairy, beans, and processed foods).

You wouldn't be grazing on mostly dozens of species of plant material with some scavenged raw meat, though. Perish forbid.

For appetizers, Walsh offers chicken or lamb meatballs blended with prosciutto and tomato jam on an almond-meal tortilla. Entrees include salmon over fresh crab and organic-vegetable hash with citrus beets and a dollop of tarragon-mustard or chimichurri pork roast atop sweet-potato mash.

Bees are found everywhere, so "Desserts are sweetened with honey, including poached fruit with house-made granola."

Wait, granola? Isn't granola made with grains?

Never mind. Our Paleo ancestors would find every bit of food in that description odd. And would love, love, love to have the luxury of eating grains, sugar, dairy, beans, and processed foods. Authenticity is a luxury given to the decadent. Enjoy.

AllergyEats.com

I got a great email recently.

As a father of 5 children, 2 of whom with food allergies, I am very aware of the difficulties and anxieties that go along with having to manage food allergies/intolerances on a daily basis. In my experience, dining out has been one of the greatest challenges and sources of frustration.

As a result of this, I decided two years ago to create an easy-to-use online guide to allergy-friendly restaurants for the benefit of our entire community. I am writing you today in an effort to introduce you to this new website, AllergyEats (www.allergyeats.com), with the thought that you might find it a valuable tool to share with your readers.

AllergyEats is a peer-based guide with a database that includes over 600,000 US restaurants. Individuals with food allergies or intolerances can rate any restaurant experience by answering 3 simple questions (adding comments if they like). The process can take under a minute. The answers to these questions are translated into a simple “allergy-friendliness” rating.

Other users can then go to AllergyEats when seeking an allergy-friendly restaurant. By simply typing in the geographic location they’re interested in, users can see a restaurant’s “allergy-friendliness” rating, as well as other useful information where available, such as menus, allergen lists, gluten-free menus, nutrition guides, industry certifications, and more.

AllergyEats is new, having been live for roughly 10 weeks. However, where awareness has blossomed, initial reaction has been fantastic and word-of-mouth has driven many ratings quickly (the Boston metro area achieved over 200 ratings in this short amount of time!). Each additional rating, anywhere in the country, increases the value of AllergyEats as a tool for our entire food allergy community. That is why major food allergy and Celiac organizations have endorsed or become friends of AllergyEats so quickly (please see these tabs on the site)... and there are more to come!

The overall look of the site is great and easy to use. Typing in at least your state and zip code is necessary to narrow down that huge database, but you can search by distance, by restaurant name, and by ten allergens: Peanuts, Dairy, Wheat, Fish, Sesame, Tree Nuts, Eggs, Gluten, Shellfish, and Soy. If you find a restaurant that looks good you can get a Google map and directions.

The problem, of course, is that 99% of local restaurants have not been rated yet. Chains do have very useful links to nutritional information and allergen pages, however.

It's the usual chicken and egg problem. The site would be more helpful if people used it and added ratings, but getting people to use a site with no ratings is a challenge.

That's why Paul emailed me, to get the word out, and I'm glad to help. Go there, rate a few restaurants, and tell your friends.

Massachusetts to Require Food Allergy Warnings

People with food allergies don't want to feel different, don't want to be restricted in where they go or what they do. Yet common sense tells us that restaurants are potential sinkholes of allergens lurking not just in every food but in the utensils used to make the food, even the very air wafting around the kitchen.

What to do? Keep those with allergies out of restaurants? Nobody wants that. What about listing the complete ingredients of every food on a menu? Not practical unless you plan on replacing short, cheap printed menus with electronic books to cover the hundreds of pages of fine print necessary and be updatable every time an ingredient changed.

Massachusetts is planning on a middle course. A story by Stephen Smith in the Boston Globe revealed that the Massachusetts state Department of Public Health will vote in April on whether it should require restaurants and their workers to be better informed about allergies and respond when customers mention their allergies.

Although most peoples' immediate reaction might be, "of course they should," statewide regulations are notoriously bad for getting "shoulds" correct.

What will Massachusetts require?

Every menu in the state would be emblazoned with this admonition: "Before placing your order, please inform your server if a person in your party has a food allergy."

Oh. You'd never have thought of that on your own, I'm sure.

This one sounds a bit better.

thousands of restaurant workers would undergo training and then return to their kitchens, sharing lessons on how to prevent dishes from being contaminated with allergy-inducing ingredients.

Wow. Thousands of trained workers. Can't complain about that. Until you find out that Massachusetts has 17,000 restaurants that the regulations will cover. (None of them fast food restaurants, BTW. They would be exempt for the time being.) Those thousands amount to one per restaurant.

By next January, at least one worker from each restaurant would be expected to undergo training, which largely involves viewing a video Tsai helped create. It would be up to local boards of health, which are responsible for assuring that restaurants abide by food safety laws, to monitor whether establishments are complying.

It's not clear from the article what happens if that one trained employee leaves.

As for the rest of the staff, the regulations "would force restaurants to plaster a food allergy poster on the kitchen wall."

Wow, again.

A slightly more reassuring part of the article is this section:

Suzanne Condon, director of environmental health at the Department of Public Health, described how restaurant staff should respond when a customer reports an allergy to peanuts, for example. "The server is supposed to notify the staff involved with the preparation of the food that a member of the party has a food allergy," Condon said.

That not only means making sure there are no peanuts in the dish the diner has ordered. It also means being vigilant that the utensils and surfaces used in the preparation of that order have not been exposed to peanuts.

That's better, certainly, at least from our point of view as consumers. How feasible this is in a busy restaurant is harder to answer. In a world in which peanuts are forbidden from entire airplanes and school cafeterias because of the danger of accidental contamination, how can a restaurant that uses peanuts in dishes keep them totally separate from all foods?

The regulations introduced yesterday reflect the handiwork of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association and the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network. The Legislature and Governor Deval Patrick broadly endorsed the concept last year by adopting the Food Allergy Awareness Act, leaving the specifics to the Department of Public Health.

Dr. Michael Pistiner of Leominster, who treats patients every day with food allergies, helped develop the regulations. Still, he said yesterday, diners who know they have reactions to certain ingredients must be their own best advocates.

"This is really a ground-breaking law," said Pistiner, an allergist affiliated with Children’s Hospital Boston. "But people with food allergies are still going to need to be vigilant and choose wisely."

Of course, and I would have ended this post with a similar homily. The nicest thing I can say about Massachusetts's plan is that it is a first step that might spark more awareness. It's not a solution in any sense. We have a very long way to go before allergens in restaurant food are properly addressed.

Zilli's Cooking Empire

Aldo Zilli holds the world record for the most times a pancake is flipped in 1 minute. He flipped it 117 times in the minute.

What more do you need to be a Celebrity Chef in the modern world? Oh, very well. He's also appeared on One Man and His Hob. Still not impressed? Then you're probably not British, where Zilli is a one-man industry. One Man and His Hob featured him traveling around the UK, doing outdoor cookery on his portable hob, stove to you and me. That's in addition to his appearances on various other cooking shows and Celebrity Fit Club.

And his restaurants, like Zilli Fish and Zilli Cafe. And now Zilli Green.

Award winning Italian chef and restaurateur, Aldo Zilli will launch his new and innovative vegetarian restaurant, Zilli Green in Soho on the 14th February 2010 - the first ever Italian vegetarian chef with a fusion mind from across the world.

His former flagship restaurant, Signor Zilli will be entirely remodelled and re-branded to celebrate Aldo's commitment to healthy living. What's more, it will reinforce the message that vegetarian food doesn't have to be dull or tasteless - but exciting and delicious with quirky flavours and combinations. The menu will be an experience to share

Head chef, Enzo di Marino, one of the UK's most exciting, talented up and coming vegetarian chefs (who trained in the Abruzzo region of Italy before working internationally, including Japan) will create a wide selection of quality seasonal dishes with vegetables naturally sourced from trusted local producers (and prepared in a dedicated meat and fish-free kitchen). Observing Aldo's ethos of producing great tasting healthy cuisine with a contemporary twist, Zilli Green features dishes inspired by travelling the world. ...

A selection of classic palette cleansing desserts with a healthy twist includes Dairy-free tiramisu cake, Peach and mango crème brulee and an eclectic range of organic ice-creams. Organic wines and freshly squeezed juices will also feature in the downstairs bar.

Another release says that "While all the dishes are vegetarian, individual menu items are also labeled as vegan, vegan option, and gluten free when appropriate."

High end vegan cuisine seems to be rarer in the UK than it is in the larger American cities, so this is a welcome trend.

Dairy-Free Restaurant in St. Petersburg. Not the One in Florida

In a sign of how quickly and incredibly change can come to a society, a popular restaurant in St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, formerly Petrograd, formerly St. Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire and home to the tsars, has similarly undergone as complete and as dramatic a transformation. It is now kosher and dairy-free.

Jews left Russia by the millions after a series of pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th century. Judaism, like other religions, was suppressed in the Communist period. Millions perished in the Holocaust, millions more have emigrated since the founding of Israel. As a result, no more than 1 in 600 Russians today are Jewish.

So a Kosher restaurant in St. Petersburg is startling. And given the fledging capitalist society that is brewing there, economically foolhardy.

Owner Mikhail Mirilashvili doesn't care. He's doing it as a service to the remaining Jewish population. An article on Lubavich.com explained the unusual gesture. According to the proprietor of the 7:40 restaurant, Abram Israelashvili,

"Our goal is not to earn as much money as possible, but to make kosher food available to all Jews of St. Petersburg."

The restaurant, meat-based and dairy free, now bears the kosher certification of the city’s Chief Rabbi and Chabad representative, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Pewzner.

During the 17-day switchover, explains Israelashvili, "we washed and scrubbed every square centimeter of the restaurant. We 'blow torched' our metal cookware. We had to replace all of our dishes and china ware, and replace the old stove."

The restaurant, now closed on Shabbat, and features entrées priced 30-40 percent below prices on the old menu. Though the restaurant is expected to eventually break even, Mr. Mirilashvili sponsored this mission, he says, as a way of helping local Jews adopt Jewish practices and make kosher dining at home and when eating out, a way of life.

I wouldn't have known where to send you to find dairy-free dining in Russia. Now I have a recommendation.

Gluten-Free While Eating Out

Vanessa K. Bush wrote a long and interesting article about gluten-free foods at QSR Magazine.com. Eating gluten-free also often means eating dairy-free as well, since celiac disease can damage the lining of the intestine where lactase is made.

Bush noted that many restaurant chains now finally are beginning to cater to special diet needs.

Lone Star Steakhouse, for example, makes recommendations on its menus geared specifically to the gluten-sensitive. Suggestions include ordering mesquite grilled steaks and chicken without seasoning or lemon butter; ordering burgers and sandwiches without a bun, steak fries, or seasoning; choosing the baked sweet potato without butter or cinnamon; and ordering salads without dressing, croutons, tortilla strips, or bacon. The Macaroni Grill offers suggestions on its menus for a number of food sensitivities, ranging from egg and fish allergies to gluten-free, advising those with wheat sensitivities to avoid baked items like croutons and biscotti and certain seasonings.

She mentioned several desserts as well, but all appeared to have milk in them except for Chinese upscale chain PF Chang, which "has a Flourless Chocolate Dome served with fresh berries and raspberry sauce." That sounds dairy-free but I would doublecheck.

It's a good article, covering a lot of ground, so take a jump over to QSR, a specialty magazine for the restaurant industry that has a deeper take on food subjects than a lot of generalist sites.

Coping with Allergies Guide for Restaurants

The prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA) (yeah, go ahead and make the jokes: they've heard them all) has a multi-page guide for dealing with allergies and intolerances on its web site. It's good reading for anyone connected with running a restaurant or other business that deals with serving food to the public. The guide is itself a summary of information but it's still much too long to summarize here. Please take the time to read it through.

A few statistics quoted were so interesting that I have to share them with you, though.

Three Dangerous Myths

In a 2006 survey of 100 dining establishments, researchers at the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine identified a list of commonly-held misconceptions among restaurant operators that could prove dangerous. Among them:

24% believed that consuming small amounts of an allergen is safe. It isn't. Even minute quantities can cause a reaction in sensitive individuals.

35% believed that fryer heat destroys allergens. It doesn't. Allergic-provoking substances can remain behind in fryer oil to contaminate foods, for example.

25% believed it was safe to remove an allergen such as shellfish or nuts from a finished meal. It's not. Trace amounts left behind when food or plates have made contact with allergens can cause trouble.

Ignorance about allergies is unfortunately rampant in this country. Heck, in all countries. Ignorance is dangerous. Bad enough when you apply it to yourself. Far worse if you spread it to a vulnerable public. Read and learn.