Chicago school bans homemade lunches, the latest in national food fight

Students who attend Chicago's Little Village Academy public school get nothing but nutritional tough love during their lunch period each day. The students can either eat the cafeteria food--or go hungry. Only students with allergies are allowed to bring a homemade lunch to school, the Chicago Tribune reports.

"Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," principal Elsa Carmona told the paper of the years-old policy. "It's about ... the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke."

But students said they would rather bring their own lunch to school in the time-honored tradition of the brown paper bag. "They're afraid that we'll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won't be as good as what they give us at school," student Yesenia Gutierrez told the paper. "It's really lame."

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Bidding Frenzy for Tickets to Eat at Next in Chicago

Taking equal inspiration from Wrigley Field scalpers and the city’s grittiest pawn shops, food- and cash-obsessed Chicagoans have started a vibrant trade in tickets to a new restaurant, with bidding in one case hitting $3,000 for a group of seats overlooking the kitchen.

The cause of this amateur online auctioneering is Next, the newest offering from a local celebrity chef, Grant Achatz, whose acclaimed restaurant Alinea usually has a line. But that’s nothing compared to the frenzy currently engulfing Next, which opened Wednesday with a policy that eschews reservations by phone. Instead, diners purchase one-time-only, all-inclusive tickets — dinner, drinks, tip, gawking — for one set price that begins roughly in the $45 to $75 range.

It is that set price — and, presumably, the food — that has led to bidding wars by diners desperate to order from a menu that requires at least a year of high school French and a gastronomic dictionary (Caneton Rouennais à la Presse, par example).

As first reported by Eater.com, dozens of tickets have been offered for resale, ranging from $500 (a table for two, on a Wednesday at 9:30 p.m.) to six times that for a table for six at the chef’s elbow. (That seller later decided to keep the seats.)

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CIA Names Bocuse Chef of the Century

COLLONGES-au-MONT d'OR, France — Seven men in white toques and long aprons bend to their tasks, one scooping hunks of butter into a saucepan simmering on a huge stove, another flicking grains of the ground French red pepper piment d'Espelette from a spoon onto a pyramid of crayfish, a third sprinkles parsley with his fingers.

"Seventeen minutes," one cries out. "A little pepper," says another. "Did you taste the brioche?" asks "Monsieur Paul."

It is minutes before the lunch hour in the heart of the temple of French gastronomy, the kitchen of Paul Bocuse. The final touches of another three-star meal are executed with military precision.

Bocuse, whose Auberge du Pont de Collonges just outside Lyon has maintained its three stars in the Michelin Guide for 46 years, credits a deceptively simple recipe for that success — good produce fresh from the garden, a superb kitchen staff and happy diners.

"It's the client who runs the house," says Bocuse, a man credited with transforming the role of chef from invisible artist to celebrity. Yet "Monsieur Paul," as he is known, praises everyone but himself for his accomplishments. And he bows to Lady Luck.

This week, the credit is returned when he is proclaimed Chef of the Century by the Culinary Institute of America during a reception in New York.

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Goose Island's John Hall promises commitment to creativity won't change

Beer geeks are already wringing their hands that the sale of Goose Island Beer Co. to Anheuser-Busch -- better known as Budweiser -- will compromise one of craft beer's leading lights.

But Goose founder and Chief Executive Officer John Hall said the brewery's commitment to interesting and creative beer, like the recently released Pepe Nero (a black saison) or the upcoming Big John (a stout aged with cocoa nibs) will not change.

"They didn’t buy us to change what we’re doing," says Hall, who will remain as CEO.

If AB was going to water down the product, "I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have worked 23 years to build what I have to (throw) it away in five minutes."

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U.S. thirst for wine passes that of France for first time

The long-held place of France as the top market for wine in the world fell to the U.S. last year, according to data released today by wine industry consultants Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates.

Shipments of wine to the U.S. from producers in California and other states and countries increased 2 percent to a record of nearly 330 million 9-liter cases last year from 2009 (see chart), the Woodside-based firm estimated in its periodic The Gomberg-Fredrikson Report. That amounted to a retail value of $30 billion, an increase of 4 percent in that timeframe.

Wine shipments in France totaled 320.8 million in the fiscal year 2009-2010, according to the report.

California wine made up 61 percent of U.S. wine volume sales, or 199.6 million cases worth $18.5 billion at retail. That was an increase of 1 percent from 2009 sales. California’s total wine shipments worldwide to all markets in the U.S. and abroad (including exports) were 241.8 million cases, up 2% from the previous year.

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