Newk’s Evil Chocolate Cake I am on a diet. A diet is a serious problem for someone in the restaurant business. It also poses a predicament with my second day job— being a food writer— which requires, at a minimum, eating a lot of food and then writing about it. There are several food items [...]

Three Mississippi Girls (and one man) The holiday shopping free-for-all has begun. The retail craziness used to start the day after Thanksgiving, these days shopkeepers begin gearing up the week before Halloween. No one knows what effect the economy will have on this Christmas season, but one thing is for sure: Whatever happens in 2009, [...]

Free My Fine-Feathered Friends!Tuducken… the campaign begins Thanksgiving is almost here and anyone within 100 miles of the Louisiana border will soon be hearing long-winded and glowing tributes to one of the world’s strangest culinary oddities— the turducken. A turducken is deboned turkey, which has a deboned duck stuffed inside it, and just in case [...]

Haggis I have often written that if I ever visited Scotland, I would eat haggis. I have never been to Scotland, but I can now say that I have eaten haggis.Yesterday, my family and I attended the 23rd Scottish Highland Games and Celtic Music Festival on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A friend was competing in [...]

Hibachi My family eats at the neighborhood hibachi restaurant, often. Actually, what we Americans have come to know as “hibachi” is actually teppanyaki-style cooking. A hibachi is a small, portable grill like the ones I used on my apartment balcony during a very lengthy and tenuous college career.Teppanyaki-style cooking is done on a flattop griddle [...]

LAS VEGAS— What is a family man who doesn’t drink, doesn’t gamble, and has trouble staying up to watch David Letterman doing in Las Vegas with his wife and kids? Two words: The Beatles. I have pulled my second grader and sixth grader out of school to travel to Las Vegas to see Cirque du [...]

Working for the Mouse ORLANDO— I am in Walt Disney World as a visiting chef of the EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival. Through the years I have been a frequent guest of The Mouse. I have enjoyed the parks with-and-without kids and had a great time doing the stuff one does down here since [...]

Catfish In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine there was an extensive article on catfish. In the article I learned that the Catfish Institute, located in Jackson, Miss., has chosen a new name for the catfish— Delecata. As new made-up names for fish go, I guess “Delacata” is as good as any, though I would like [...]

Doggie Bags After 28 years in the restaurant business, one of the most consistent customer behaviors I have observed is with doggie bags. A majority of restaurant patrons are embarrassed to ask their server for a doggie bag. I have never been able to figure out the tentativeness on the customer’s part, but it’s real. [...]

The Mac Attack The holy grail of kid cuisine is macaroni and cheese. When I wrote my second cookbook, Deep South Staples or How to Survive In A Southern Kitchen Without A Can of Cream of Mushroom Soup, I needed to include a macaroni and cheese recipe to complete the theme for updated home cooking. [...]