Couch Potato Cuisine

You’ve got to admire the chutzpah of Chef Miles, who also calls himself Cheffy Baby or sometimes the Culinary Mercenary. What other graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and winner of a James Beard award for television food journalism has also been food editor of Creative Loafing Magazine? Cheffy Baby is on a worldwide tour (actually, it seems to consist of 23 U.S. cities plus Toronto) promoting Florida grapefruit and demonstrating five-second gourmet dishes.

Delightful Book Sale

One of the largest cookbook auctions in history was held Tuesday Oct. 2 at Sotheby’s in London. On the block was Swedish chef Tore Wretman’s lifetime collection of more than 1,000 books dating from 1480 to the present.

The highest prices went for a first edition of the 16th century writer Bartolomeo Scappi writings and for “Le Pastissier Francois” (1655), attributed to the great La Varenne, which fetched $31,580 apiece with Jacques Vontet’s 1647 book on carving meat and fruit close behind at $29,730. All three top bids came from the Swedish University of the Culinary Arts, the Restauranthogskolan, which ended up buying more than a third of the Wretman collection.

The sale was expected to raise around $650,000 but actually brought in $814,355. Hans Dyhlen of Sotheby’s Stockholm office stated, “We are delighted with the overwhelming result of today’s sale.”

Lone Wolf: The Starbucks of Cigars?

Action film stars Chuck Norris and James Belushi have announced the December opening of the Lone Wolf Lounge, a restaurant-bar-cigar club. The Lone Wolf, located near the famous Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, will feature wines, liquors, snack foods (tapas, salads, desserts) and, above all, cigars.

“This is about entertaining and being convenient,” said Michael Dunne, vice president of operations. Well entertaining and convenient if you’re in Dallas, you might say, but we observe that they’re referring to it as “the first Lone Wolf Lounge.”

FIVE SECONDS IS CQ//