Food news antipasto

Olivia Potts has judged food awards, including World’s Original Marmalade Awards and the Great Taste Awards, the “big kahuna of UK produce awards.” While she thinks that there is merit highlighting small producers, Potts wonders if overall these food awards are worthwhile. “Taste doesn’t necessarily defy analysis, but that analysis is almost retrospective, a breaking down of why something is good or not,” she says.

When Soleil Ho transitioned to a columnist role at the San Francisco Chronicle, it left a void in the restaurant critic position. The newspaper announced this week that Bay Area native MacKenzie Chung Fegan would take over that position. Fegan was a senior editor at Bon Appétit magazine and will begin her new job as restaurant critic at the beginning of next year following maternity leave.

In an interview with Ashley Lee of the Los Angeles Times, Padma Lakshmi explained the reasons behind her recently announced Top Chef departure. She says that many factors went into her decision including the work she’s been doing on her James Beard Award winning show Taste the Nation. Padma also talks about some of her favorite – and not so wonderful – memories from Top Chef.

Fans of Trader Joe’s know the pain of the miniscule parking lots that are in place at many of the store’s locations. If you’ve ever wondered why the lots are so cramped, head over to Food and Wine, where Jelisa Castrodale digs into this phenomenon and other TJ related topics. The reason isn’t any nefarious plot to make people get in and out more quickly, but instead has to do with more mundane issues. FWIW, if you go to the Rochester, Minnesota location of Trader Joe’s you will find one of the largest lots to grace one of these markets, and the widest aisles to boot. It’s a TJ paradise.

A protest against a new Danish law adding a tax on trucks carrying heavy loads took a food-related turn last week. Someone spilled loads of potatoes onto both sides of the bridge that links the island that is home to Copenhagen to the rest of Denmark. The spuds left a slippery mess that endangered drivers on the heavily-traveled bridge. Another incident of potatoes on the road occurred the same day on the Jutland peninsula.

If you were to name some of the US South’s favorite pies, a few classics probably come to mind: pecan pie, chess pie, peach pie top the list for me. So when Southern Living asked the question of what Southern pie is the most searched for on the internet, I confidently (and wrongly) guess chess pie. Hop over to Southern Living’s site to find out the correct answer (it’s none of the three mentioned above).