The Diamond edition Burger King Japan black burger

The last limited edition product to be associated with Burger King that we spotted was the Buffalo Crunch Donut. While it certainly didn’t seem like the healthiest menu option, it made sense given that it came from a franchisee of the Tim Horton’s chain which was recently acquired by the company, and for the fact that a junk food x junk food super junkfood mashup from the two fast food chains wouldn’t be all that out of place.

Not sure this latest burger will make its way onto menus near you anytime soon.

Burger King Japan is rolling out another “Kuro Burger” (“Black Burger”), with buns made from bamboo charcoal, an onion and garlic sauce made with squid ink, beef patties made with black pepper, and black cheese, which is also apparently made with bamboo charcoal. {Kotaku}

The squid ink, onion and garlic sauce doesn’t actually sound so bad, but black cheese? Charcoal buns? Did product developers look at a group of coal miners and go “Yes! That’s what people want to taste in a burger!”?

We can’t be sure that coal miners are having a culinary moment, but inspiration to try this commercially could have actually come from a limited edition burger offered in France more than 2 years ago.

Quick’s “Dark Vador” burger, was actually one of the first to include black buns.

Quick, the French/Benelux equivalent of Burger King, offered a burger with black buns more than 2 years ago (officially the “Dark Vador,” though everyone recognizes it as the Darth Vader burger). {Buzzfeed} The bread is as far as the monochromatic food coloring went, but it generated enough publicity that someone in Japan may have taken note.

If you’d like to taste a charcoal burger, have always looked at bleu cheese and thought “I really wish there were a darker colored cheese,”and have money for a ticket to Japan, the Kuro burger goes on sale for a limited time this month. It is available in a Diamond edition (pictured at top) with normally colored tomatoes, onions and lettuce; the Pearl edition dispenses with any attempt at burger normalcy and eliminates those things for odd-colored food purists.

Bacon has long been the artery clogging ingredient of choice when it comes to snacks that inspire servers to ask “one stent or two?” but for a limited time, anyone who may stick to a meat-free diet can dig into a heartwarming (heartburning?) treat.

“It consists of a pull-apart yeast doughnut that’s dunked in Buffalo sauce and crusted with crushed-up chips. It combines a staggeringly high number of junk-food influences (Buffalo sauce, tortilla chips, doughnuts) while still managing to make sense. The corn-chip strips in the center are decorative, and the doughnut comes in mild and hot varieties — mild is “toned down” with Ranch dressing. {GrubStreet}

Anthony McEachern, who owns four Tim Horton’s outposts in the Syracuse area, put the saucy concoction together for the New York State Fair, which runs through Monday. Inspired by the Buffalo Crispy Sandwich and Buffalo Mac & Cheese which appear on the regular Tim Horton’s menu, McEachern previously brought Cheeseburger and Meatball Sub donuts to the fair. {Syracuse.com}

While he says that the Buffalo Crunch won’t be going on the regular menu, given the fact that Burger King is in the merging mood it may only be a matter of time before someone in product development decides that savory donuts may be worth a second look.

Buffalo Crunch Donut image via As Eaten on TV twitter

While there haven’t been any high profile explosions and fizzles of cronut chains, creator Dominique Ansel has been able to keep a good level of interest in his original New York City bakery. Not one to rest on his dessert laurels, Ansel has a new sweet innovation – canned ice cream.

The “Pop It! Ice Cream Sundae in a Can” ($15) features root-beer and stracciatella ice creams, mascarpone semifreddo, macerated cherries, honey marshmallows and miniature cherry meringues, all packed in a chocolate-lined soup can with a pop art design. The whole thing is sealed and frozen. {New York Post via Jezebel}

If that sounds just odd enough for you to try, unfortunately you’re out of luck unless you’re in East Hampton right this second. The canned sundae is, at least for now, a one-day special offered from a food truck in front of designer Lisa Perry’s East Hampton store. 20% of proceeds from sales will go to City Harvest, a charity that works with restaurants to give excess and leftover food to the hungry, rather than throwing it out (which is standard policy at many restaurants across the country).

Image via: New York Post

Saffron Fix {Kickstarter} is a food ingredient delivery service, like Blue Apron, but what makes it unique is that it focuses on Indian cuisine, and it allows customers to choose whether they want their ingredients to come chopped, grated or sliced.

Co-founder Ankita Sharma says she has seen two contrasting scenarios in the U.S. and India. In India, everyone has access to fresh, Indian cuisine, but here, most peopleâ€s experience with it is at a restaurant. {TechCrunch}

Blue Apron has had success removing the least exciting parts of dinner (grocery shopping and ingredient preparation), and with their Kickstarter project 35% funded, with 46 days to go, it looks like Saffron Fix may have a shot at doing the same for Indian food.

Aside from the time savings of not having to find a specialty grocer to ensure you don’t end up a spice or two short, Saffron Fix hopes to win customers by offering a simple preparation process.

Personally, I love the flavor of Indian food, but have a low tolerance for hot spices that leave your mouth with a lingering burning sensation. A rare combination, and one that restaurants don’t always seem to understand, or be equipped to accommodate. If you have similar or opposite preferences – maybe you’d like your korma (a normally mild dish) extra spicy – then Saffron Fix could be a great way to pin down exactly what it is that your want more, or less of. The proposed pricing of $30 for a 2-person serving, which covers organic ingredients as well as bread and rice, is also significantly less than a comparable meal at a restaurant.

California, New York and the DC metro area (includes Maryland and Virginia) are the first markets where deliveries will be available.

If you happen to be passing through the Southwest region of France and are looking for a restaurant, you may want to skip Il Giardino in Cap-Ferret if you can’t find anything nice to say about it.

The restaurant sued food blogger Caroline Doudet, who wrote a review titled “The Place to Avoid in Cap-Ferret : Il Giardino” (translated), because her review showed up too prominently in Google searches and was alleged to be hurting business.

French courts demanded Doudet pay 1500 euros ($2,040 USD) for writing a negative review of Il Giardino, an Italian restaurant in Cap-Ferret, France in August of 2013. In the review (cached and translated) she wrote that the restaurant should be avoided and that the boss is a “diva.”

Along with the 1500 euros, Doudet was also charged an additional 1000 euros ($1,360 USD) to cover the costs of the proceedings, making her grand total $3400. {Eater}

The decision of the court was that Doudet had to remove the negative aspect of the headline, but the blogger found it easier to remove the post in its entirety, saying “I don’t see the point of criticism if it’s only positive.”

Though neither the judge nor the restaurant seem to understand how the internet works, several reviewers on Google+ have stepped in with one-star reviews to indicate to the owner that lawsuits against customers aren’t the best way of handling negative reviews, even if a less than tech-savvy judge finds in your favor.

A search for Il Giardino on Google.fr currently returns a cumulative  1.2 star Google+ rating as the top listing, a cumulative 1.5 star Trip Advisor rating as the 2nd result, and a cumulative 3-star rating from French news site L’Internaute.

The 5th result (last visible result before scrolling) belongs to a blog questioning the judgment; it is one place lower than the review which resulted in Doudet being sued.

What wine do you pair with that?

While a slice of cheddar on top of a sandwich, or a bit of Brie paired with a cracker is usually an appetizing sight, the smell of cheese doesn’t have the best reputation. If you’ve ever heard anyone joke “who cut the cheese?” following a less than fragrant moment, then you already know it’s not the best smelling food. Walk into a cheese shop and you might smell a few blocks that make you wonder if someone left their dirty socks in a corner. Walk into an exhibition at Dublin’s Science Gallery and that scent connection would probably be more accurate than you know.

Selfmade is an exhibit that hosts a number of cheeses crafted from cells collected from human bodies. Part art, part science, it’s the work of Christina Agapakis and Prof. Sissel Tolaas, who sampled microbes from human mouths, toes, navels, and even tears to craft a set of 11 unique cheeses. {The Verge}

In their artist’s statement, Agapakis and Tolaas posit that the toe jam (and belly button lint) cheese may improve tolerance for the not so appealing aromas associated with those things.

Many of the stinkiest cheeses are hosts to species of bacteria closely related to the bacteria responsible for the characteristic smells of human armpits or feet. Can knowledge and tolerance of bacterial cultures in our food improve tolerance of the bacteria on our bodies? {Dublin Science Gallery}

While it is nice to get scientific confirmation that some cheese really does smell like dirty feet, we’re not sure that “tolerance” is the first word that comes to mind for a cheese actually made from foot bacteria. Not quite sure what wine goes with toe or belly button cheese, but we’d imagine most people would need plenty of it to come close to being drunk enough to give this a try.

In case you have a really unusual taste palette, the scientist artists who created this do say it’s not a good idea  for human consumption, just in case “toe cheese” and “navel bacteria cheese” weren’t enough of a tip off for you.

Taco Bell, the paragon of haute Mexican cuisine known for such gourmet offerings as the Doritos Locos Taco, is testing a new $1 category, described on a conference call as their low-end menu.

That’s right, if you’ve ever walked into a Taco Bell and thought “I wish there were something available for less refined palates,” the company understands your need.

Ironically, there are already $0.79, $0.89 and $0.99 items mixed into the existing Taco Bell menu, so the $1 low-end offerings will actually come at a higher price tag than some of the menu items currently available.

{via Business Insider}

The Egg White Delight and Big Breakfast with Hotcakes from the McDonald’s breakfast menu

Would you like to be able to order an Egg McMuffin at lunch time?

The question is getting some big buzz because McDonaldâ€s CEO Don Thompson said heâ€s entertaining the idea.

And, well, when this mega restaurant chain is involved, itâ€s also because there are a lot of people out there who might like to order a McMuffin or a Sausage Burrito at noon or at dinner time.

But for those who might be salivating at the thought, don’t hold your breath. {Christian Science Monitor}

So, if all day breakfast is such a growth opportunity, why hasn’t it happened yet? A blogger quoted in the article suspects it might be something about supply and demand – if you can have your Big Breakfast all day, you won’t want it as much as you do when you have a limited time to get it.

We think the answer is a bit more logistical: more menu items means more prep time. A place like Denny’s or IHOP can get away with it, because diners are generally already seated and would find a 5-10 minute wait reasonable. The person going through the McDonald’s drive-thru might not.

Foodspotting’s best ranked pictures for New York

In a move that is so logical, we’re surprised it didn’t happen earlier, Foodspotting  – an app and community for sharing food photos – announced today that they’re being acquired by OpenTable.

When we founded Foodspotting, driven by our love of obscure dishes like okonomiyaki, Ted, Soraya and I set out to bring a dish-centric dining guide into the world and watch it grow. We raised some money, grew our team to ten (plus alum), and built a community that catalogued over three million dishes. Today, towards the same end, we’re so happy to have found a great home for Foodspotting where our site, app, and community can continue to thrive while our entire team continues to focus on making your dining experiences awesome.

Weâ€ve already been working closely with the OpenTable team as partners: In addition to making restaurant reservations via Foodspotting, you may have seen Foodspotting photos from select restaurants popping up on OpenTable. But we both realized we could create smarter experiences if we could integrate more deeply by, for example, recommending dishes when you make reservations to enabling restaurants to showcase their best dishes. We look forward to augmenting your dining experiences with Foodspottingâ€s recommendations to forge the shortest path between you and great food! {Foodspotting}

And for the juiciest part of any deal, on to the numbers!

$10 million: the reported price of the acquisition

$1.25 billion: Current OpenTable (NASDAQ:OPEN) Market Cap

$3.75 million: the amount raised by Foodspotting prior to acquisition

10: the current number of Foodspotting employees

3 million: the number of photos Foodspotting currently has in its database

The only surprise in today’s announcement comes with the relatively small price tag. Foodspotting will continue to operate independently of OpenTable, and existing employees will stay on board, which is encouraging for existing users since the normal process is to buy a team for talent and shut the actual product down. So while it does appear that Foodspotting was purchased for its team, keeping the app going is an indicator that the community and product were targets as well.

Which brings us to the acquisition price. With a $3 million series A, the company was very likely valued at more than $10 million. A $10 million purchase wouldn’t be considered a great success for later stage investors, though they probably did get their money back. Stories of the difficulty startups face in trying to raise later stage rounds abound, so even if the result was only break even financially, in the current fundraising climate this was probably not the worst option for Foodspotting’s founders or investors, and a possible explanation for the timing.

Not 7500-years-old cheese, but probably not far from what it would have looked like. Photo credit: imafoodblog

In a discovery that had the potential to smell worse than whatever ancient artifacts are in the back of your refrigerator, scientists have recently come to the conclusion that 7500-year-old pottery discovered in Poland was used to make cheese. In case you’re wondering, various reports put the oldest wine somewhere between 1600 and 3000 years old – meaning the party didn’t really get started until quite a few centuries later.

Though there is no definitive test for cheese, Richard Evershed at the University of Bristol and colleagues found large amounts of fatty milk residue on the pottery shards compared to cooking or storage pots from the same sites. That suggests the sieves were specifically used to separate fat-rich curds from liquid whey in soured milk in a crude cheese-making process. {Huffington Post}

Apparently, lactose intolerance was a common trait among adults of the time, so cheese gave them the ability to get some of the nutrients with less of the lactose. Scientists believe the cheeses produced from the discovered pottery would have the consistency of a soft cheese like ricotta, and a strong stench. Which means there’s a good chance the phrase “who cut the cheese?’ has been part of human society longer than you ever could have imagined.