The Mid-July Bulletin
The biggest talking points of Culinary Arts Month so far
Apart from honouring cooks, bakers and chefs for their creative expression through the medium of food — celebrating their innovative recipes, techniques & concepts — this month, we’ve perused some interesting opinions on future food curriculums and restaurant tech.
Let’s dig in!
National Culinary Arts Month
Since 2002, Culinary Arts Month has been celebrated in July. In the recent past, cooking and dining have developed into celebratory and expressive art forms, rather than mere acts of necessity.
Over the years, the way we cook, dine, and celebrate food has grown from cooking out of pure necessity to becoming a form of creative expression and art. The Culinary Arts involve a plethora of intricate activities from flavour combinations, plating & presentation and food science to restaurant management, food safety and food science.
Let’s take a look at how various institutions are honouring culinarians this year.
- THE NATIONAL RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION (NRAEF)
To celebrate this month, we are highlighting some of our former ProStart students, as well as chef educators that have left an impact on our program. Keep an eye out every week for a new post featuring one of these talented people! If you are looking to celebrate this month, be sure to shout out your favorite chef or restaurant and why you appreciate their skills and accomplishments! If you particularly enjoy a dish- tell them why you keep coming back for more. If you are a chef, show off your culinary talent! This month is meant to honor and celebrate all you do. If you’re new to the culinary game- don’t be shy! Try a new recipe or kitchen tool. Perhaps watch your favorite cooking show. Or go out to your favorite restaurant and order something new! Show off your favorite dishes with the hashtags #MadeInProStart and #NationalCulinaryArtsMonth.
Learn more, here.
- MIC FOOD®
This celebratory month promotes the awareness of professional cooks and chefs, as well as their contributions to the new culinary trends and the world of fine dining. And although we tend to celebrate culinary arts and our chefs every day of the year, today we are recognizing Chef Mikel Anthony, from Chef’s Roll Test Kitchen series.
Chef Mikel Anthony is the man behind so many of the incredible recipe videos you’ve seen on our Instagram, like his most recent creation: Boniato Ice Cream with Candied Pecans. The Puerto Rican chef can create anything from a taco to an elevated taco, with a fine French technique. From a traditional Caldo de Pollo recipe to innovative Yuca-Shrimp Chips, Chef Mikel Anthony has wowed us time and time again with his skill, technique and creativity.
The organisation also put together a list of their top 10 recipes from Chef Anthony, which were created using their Big Banana® and Tio Jorge® products.
See the full list & more, here.
- LITERARY HUB
“To observe National Culinary Arts Month, I recommend taking yourself to your favorite restaurant, sitting down with a large plate of whatever you love best, and perhaps bringing one of these food memoirs along as a dinner companion,” says writer Katie Yee. Her wonderfully curated list includes titles like Kwame Onwuachi’s Notes from a Young Black Chef and Anthony Bourdain & Laurie Woolever’s World Travel.
Read the whole piece, here.
The Race To Create A Future Food Curriculum
Michael Wolf of The Spoon’s latest article — Schools Around The World Are Racing to Create Future Food Curriculum. Here’s Why it Matters. — sheds light on what is an undeniably pressing topic. In similar vein to what the American university system did, as launchpads for the tech company’s that comprise Silicon Valley, the fact that almost all food companies are embracing new technologies to create alternative forms of meat has led universities around the world into a race to create curriculum and innovation centers. The food workforce of the future is imminent.
In the U.S., future food activity is popping up at schools from coast to coast, with notable efforts that include UC Berkeley’s Alt Meat Lab, a cellular agriculture course at Tufts, CRISPR courses at Harvard and ReThink Meat courses at Stanford.
But it’s not just American schools. Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University has launched an alternative protein course called “Future Foods — Introduction to Advanced Meat Alternatives.” In Israel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem launched a pilot course titled “Cultivated Meat and Plant-Based Meat.”
So what’s driving all this interest in future food in the halls of academia across the globe? According to long-time future food pioneer and lecturer Ron Shigeta, one of the main forces is advocacy organizations.
Groups like the Good Food Institute “are leveraging money from ethical vegans and others interested in animal welfare,” Shigeta told me. “They are offering incentives to schools and programs, as well as driving the economic incentives by helping grants come through. This is happening in Davis, CA, Singapore and elsewhere.”
Read the full article, which goes on to give a comprehensive insight into the subject via the views of Ron Shigeta and Amy Huang (who heads the Good Food Institute’s efforts to encourage the academic community to embrace alternative protein education), here.
Bots, Bitcoin & More
Restaurant Business’ Joe Guszkowski is back with yet another fascinating tech roundup. Here are some of the highlights:
On robot delivery:
Think about it: On city streets, autonomous robots have a lot to navigate: busy intersections, people, cars, etc. On a college campus, there are fewer obstacles, so the service works better and more safely.
“It all comes down to complexity,” said Diego Varela, COO of robot delivery company Kiwibot, which is intently focused on the campus use case for its four-wheeled, semi-autonomous bots.
There’s also the matter of efficiency. It makes more sense for a car to fulfill a delivery of 2 to 4 miles than a robot, Varela said. But for deliveries of 1 mile or less, like those on a college campus, the fixed costs of traditional delivery make that job much more expensive. That’s where robots can fill a need.
“There’s definitely an opportunity to upgrade [college] foodservice, and I think robot delivery could be an option,” Varela said.
On establishments accepting bitcoin:
B. Hospitality, which operates five restaurants in Chicago, will use cryptocurrency payment processor BitPay to allow guests to pay with bitcoin, bitcoin cash, wrapped bitcoin, ethereum and dogecoin, along with several forms of stablecoin, which is crypto linked to U.S. currency. BitPay will convert those payments to dollars.
A number of restaurants, most notably the Landry’s group, have begun accepting bitcoin and other forms of crypto in an effort to give customers more flexibility in how they pay. Investment in cryptocurrency has surged recently, but overall adoption in the U.S. remains low.
Read the full tech roundup, here.
Please reach out to aman@dashin.in for any feedback or clarifications regarding the content of this article.
