The Bufala Roams

Lioni Bufala is the first company to manufacture genuine bufala mozzarella in this country. The curd is made in Italy from water buffalo milk; then it’s frozen and shipped to Brooklyn and Los Angeles, where Lioni completes the traditional process of melting and stretching the cheese. As a result, you can have your bufala (regular or smoked) as quickly as a day after it’s made. Available at the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, Cheese & Pasta in Santa Monica and the Gourmet Gala in Pacific Palisades.

World’s Steepest Beef

Balducci’s, the New York gourmet store, sells Wagyu beef from Japan, supposed to be the most tender in the world. “Wagyu beef is so exotic, so tender, so richly flavored,” breathes the catalogue, “you’ll keep chewing it just to savor its taste.” At $109/pound plus $5 shipping, you bet you will. At least the order call is toll-free: (800) BAL-DUCCI.

Moose and Squirrel on a Roll

Rocky and Bullwinkle, cartoondom’s most famous flying squirrel/moose team, now appear in Taco Bell commercials with the theme “burgers are boring.” In other burger news, Jack in the Box reports with relief that the excitement about food-borne illness spread by some of its Pacific Northwest branches has died down a bit; half its lost business has come back.

Invention of the Benz Filter

In Good Taste, the magazine of the Specialty Coffee Assn., reports that the cone-shaped paper coffee filter was invented in 1908 by a German housewife named Melitta Benz, who used a sheet of blotter paper and a perforated brass bowl to remove grounds from her husband’s coffee.