Food for Thought

By C.J. Hirschfield

Over the course of a week, two Fairyland staffers attended two very different food events.

One was work related: Café manager Amber Swanson perused the annual Winter Fancy Food Show held in San Francisco, where we scout for new and healthy options for our café.

The other event—thankfully—was not work related: Our communications manager, Nancy Friedman, journeyed to Los Angeles for the Disgusting Food Museum exhibition.

Where do these worlds meet? Possibly in a product we’re considering for sale in our gift shop.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Eating the Impossible

By C.J. Hirschfield

A classic dry martini, a retro wedge salad with bleu cheese, and a burger. That’s what I enjoyed for dinner after a tough day last week. Something old, something new. The “new” was that my burger was the highly-touted “Impossible Burger,” the disruptive vegan patty that will soon be manufactured by Impossible Foods in East Oakland, providing up to 80 new jobs. I enjoyed my meal at KronnerBurger on Piedmont Ave.; the burger is also on the menu at Umami Burger in Uptown.

Impossible Burger had been in the news last week. The New York Times reported that the Food and Drug Administration, which had been asked by Impossible Burger to confirm that the patty’s secret sauce was safe for human consumption, had “expressed concern.” The sauce is made from soy leghemoglobin – “heme” for short – which is found naturally in soybean plant roots and created in the company’s laboratory.

Spicy, Sweet, Creamy, Crispy

By C.J. Hirschfield

Last week, two of Fairyland’s finest attended the 42^nd Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. Featuring 1,400 exhibitors from around the world and “80,000 exciting specialty foods and beverages,” the event was not for the faint of heart – or stomach, for that matter, since samples are the name of the game.

One aisle in one of the halls at the Fancy Food show in Moscone Center.