By Christina DiMartino

"I wish I had a steer with ten tails," says Michael Lenagar, president and CEO of the family-owned and family-operated Neola Farms in Brighton, Tennessee. That's because what are known as the lesser cuts—meat taken from the extremities and underbelly of the animal—are selling fast. "All chefs want are lesser cuts, including oxtail, short ribs, skirt steaks, flank, and liver." Forty years ago, this trend would not have been particularly newsworthy. Back then people used every part of an animal. An economic boom in the 1980s and 1990s increased the demand for luxury ingredients. High-end cuts were cherished while lesser cuts were ground, stewed, and marinated until they were nearly unrecognizable. Many chefs avoided the lesser cuts altogether because of their association with low-end restaurants.

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By Libby Platus

When Chef Thomas Keller enters the room, there is an air of excitement. This is the chef with more Michelin stars than any other American-born chef. He is the founder of The French Laundry in the little town of Yountville, California; per se, the jewel of New York City; and five other exceptional restaurants. Behind the ruckus of celebrity, Chef Keller is a thoughtful leader who, in his own quiet way, breaks many of the rules chefs are mandated to follow. He doesn't focus on how his decisions will affect sustainability or marketing or getting the best deal. He thinks of one thing: quality. But that single-mindedness, his determination, and a touch of reliance on fate have also worked to produce results in those very areas, while at the same time bringing him a world of success.

SANTÉ: What influences wine selection for the restaurants?
   TK: I've learned I don't know everything. At my first restaurant, I thought I did. I tried to control everything. When I opened The French Laundry, I said, "I'm a cook. I'm going to focus on the kitchen." I found people to do the accounting, run the restaurant, and handle the beverage program.

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By Laura Taxel

A recent report titled A Look into the Future of Eating from the consumer research company NPD Group foresees a growing preference for healthier foods and beverages in the next ten years. Steve Schimoler is way ahead of the curve.

The chef has owned and operated six successful restaurants, developed products for major food manufacturers, and cofounded the Research Chefs Association (RCA), an organization that coined the term culinology to describe the intersection of culinary art and the science of food. For more than 20 years, he has been on a mission to improve nutritional quality while optimizing flavor. At Crop Bistro-Schimoler's upscale-casual Cleveland restaurant that opened in June 2007-the creative American cuisine coming out of his kitchen (and the rave reviews it's garnered from critics and patrons) is a testament to his achievements. "What I do," he explains, "is deconstruct the experience of enjoyment in order to make dishes high in 'craveability' without relying on fat, sugar, and salt."

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By Emily Gold
Santé Associate Editor

At Fair Hill Inn in Elkton, Maryland, farm-to-table is a very short trip. Bypass the front door, and the tidy compact garden unfolds. Strawberries, including heirloom varieties, bear fruit throughout the season. The skeleton of a greenhouse supports creeping tomatoes that frame the myriad beets, carrots, herbs, and greens that spread out below. Hops grow for a local brewer whose beer is featured at a special dinner late in the season. If you keep walking, you'll see the rows of grapevines for making verjus, and a little farther, the beehives. Housemade is a given here; housegrown is a high probability. Most everything else comes from local farms in this agriculturally rich corner of Maryland. Among the most impressive of the restaurant's housemade products are the cheeses, which are presented with artful preserves made from garden-fresh produce.

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Chefs have been privy to the magic of salt for many years. Just a dash during plating makes delicate flavors sing. Salts hail from around the world and, as natural products, reflect the terroir of their place of origin. More and more companies are providing salts with a palette of colors, textures, and levels of salinity to play with. French fleur de sel may be seen as the pinnacle of natural gourmet sea salt, but beautiful products come from places much more unexpected and closer to home, such as Maine. There is the aesthetic pleasure of seeing pale, shimmering crystals strewn over a firm fillet of salmon or the contrast of a red Hawaiian salt cresting the top of a ramekin of butter. An affordable yet unforgettable luxury, gourmet sea salts are an easy way to add fireworks to your food.

NYTimes.com – Ever since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his salt reduction initiative this month, people on all sides of the issue have developed a case of high blood pressure. Some scientists have gone on as though that white powdery substance were the most dangerous biological weapon on the planet. Meanwhile, some chefs and diners have responded as though the city were stationing armed police officers in kitchens and bodegas lest anyone make a move for the Doritos. People, relax. In the right amounts, salt is a fine thing. And as for the guidelines, which focus on "packaged and restaurant foods," they're voluntary. Packaged foods are an easy target, often so gunked up by chemicals that it takes a pile of salt to get any flavor at all. As for restaurants, the salt initiative seems to be aimed atfast-food joints, but salt plays an important role in nicer kitchens, too—the kind where actual human beings cook actual food. "A lot of really great chefs tend to have a heavy hand with salt," said Caroline Fidanza. She ought to know. She's one of the chef-partners at the popular restaurant Saltie in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Original Source>>

NRN.com – Tasting menus were once a bastion for special-occasion diners who really wanted to shell out for something sumptuous. Its down-market counterpart, the prix-fixe menu, was typically a budget offering with mostly low-food-cost items that has long been an important feature in bistros in France. Here in the United States, as the economic mood remains glum, the two types of multi-course meals are starting to merge, and luxury items are being offered more affordably. In New York, at Milos Estiatorio, a Greek seafood restaurant with prices that one patron recently described as "sobering"—where many appetizers cost more than $20 and the cheapest main course is a $39.50 Nova Scotia lobster—a pre- or post-theater, three-course menu is now being offered for $49. That includes appetizers as extravagant as a crab cake with grilled shrimp and main courses including charbroiled lamb chops and Honjake salmon. The latter goes for $42 on the regular menu. A dessert is also included. Original Source>>

NYTimes.com – In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008. The agency said Friday that it had "some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children," and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans. The action is another example of the drug agency under the Obama administration becoming far more aggressive in taking hard looks at what it sees as threats to public health. In recent months, the agency has stepped up its oversight of food safety and has promised to tighten approval standards for medical devices. Original Source>>

Thesun.co.uk – A Top chef has been appointed to bring fine dining into outer space for astronauts manning the International Space Station. German Harald Wohlfahrt has binned the freeze-dried tubes of grub he said tasted like "cat food" and replaced them with delicacies such as braised veal cheeks with wild mushrooms, white bean purees, Swabian potato soup and plum compote. Recognised as one of the greatest chefs in Europe, Wohlfahrt has won three coveted Michelin stars and his restaurant in the Black Forest is a magnet for foodies and celebrities the world over. Astronauts aboard the ISS recently took delivery of his first culinary offerings which, like their predecessors, still have a shelf life of two years. The chef, who has cooked for Bill Clinton, Angela Merkel and Sophia Loren, had to take into account many factors when drawing up menus for astronauts floating nearly 250 miles above the earth. Original Source>>