Steven Doyle

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Spring break is running rampant across the country as college students everywhere plan beach vacations to party with fellow students. Copious amounts of binge drinking, casual sex and other activities are typically on the slate and will be the subject of nostalgic conversation for years to come.
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Dozens of movies have been inspired by this time of year, from the classic Gidget films to the untamed Girls Gone Wild DVD's. What is it about spring break that drives this basic animal passion into our youth?

For the answer, I looked no further than the local Chick-fil-A in Allen, Texas as they prepared for their March 3 grand opening. There I found more than 100 people, about half of which were students on spring break. The other half was a mixture of senior citizens and families who oddly enjoyed camping out in the suburbs. The common force that drew them together was one of the most celebrated phenomena you've probably never heard. The Chick-fil-A Grand Opening.

With each Chick-fil-A grand opening, PR people from their corporate office in College Park, Georgia converge to control the crowds and entertain them as they compete for a grand prize. The prize is a year's worth of Chick-fil-A dinners worth approximately $300. To win, you must simply be one of the first 100 people over the age of 18 to successfully camp out at the new store.

The rules are simple. Sign up for the contest at six in the morning, and stay on the premises until six the next morning. What you do between those hours is basically up to you. There is a small bit of controlled activity, mostly centered on the various meals given away throughout the day. There's also a small band set up, and for a period of time, a DJ.

Since Allen has certain noise restrictions, the DJ sounded lame, and he left earlier than at other locations.

One of the first people I met for this grand opening was 19-year old Stephanie Perkins from Florida Gulf Coast University, located in Fort Meyers, Florida. She brought along three other friends as they made this odd spring break journey, stopping in New Orleans for beignets and coffee at the legendary Cafe du Monde, then on to Houston to stay with friends, before finally making their destination: Allen, Texas.

Home to the new Chick-fil-A.

The co-eds occupied their time by playing soccer, ultimate four square (a super-charged version of the elementary school pass time), and snacking on chicken nuggets.

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Well, actually I'm not sure if it advances or diminishes the cause when McDonald's gets involved. Anyway, this from one of their commercials for the Angus burger:

"The bacon beckons like a springboard to paradise."

'Nuff said.

Patrick Michels

A show of buttoned-down professionalism, typical of the restaurant business, at the Seat-B-Clean booth.

The Southwest Foodservice Expo, in the Dallas Convention Center last week, was a sprawling, fascinating deconstruction of the business, as if some omnipotent conventioneer had taken apart a restaurant piece by piece, and laid it all out, labeled, under a grid of fluorescent lights.

Strolling around the convention floor, you could sample wines and cheeses (separately), get a massage, sit on a toilet on a pedestal or (in the booth next door) try a muffin. There were immigration and pest control consultants, stress-reduction experts and political action meetings. Pizza-making, burger creation and espresso artistry champions were crowned, and the Borden dairy cows were the life of the party, even if they barely stood up in their display pens.

This was the 72nd running of the event, put on each year by the Texas Restaurant Association, and it's serious business for chains, individual restaurants, culinary schools and suppliers. Naturally, we visited Tuesday afternoon with an eye more for the awkward, the insane and the profound.

If you're so inclined, follow along on a slideshow tour through the foodservice expo.

Apologies for the delays. The weather forecasts for yesterday evening called for a 30 percent chance of rain, so I spent part of my time in a tunnel at Pizza Hut Park and potential funnel clouds developed. Good thing they didn't say 40 percent--we'd have an F-5 tornado ripping through downtown.

Anyway, when was the last time a real restaurant diner tried something actually cooked by Gordon Ramsay? The foul-mouthed media machine has enough crags and wrinkles in his face to give a fair impression of wadded up sacks tossed in a dustbin, but he had the gall to make fun of an Australian TV presenter:

A photograph of a naked woman on all fours, with multiple breasts and a pig's face, was projected on to a large screen followed by a picture of Miss Piggy, the character from The Muppets.

"That was a close up I took yesterday of Tracy Grimshaw," said Ramsay.

He also suggested that the presenter needed "to see Simon Cowell's botox doctor." 

(Borrowed from the Telegraph.)

After a wave of outrage--which included Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd calling Ramsay a 'low life'--the leather-faced chef apologized, saying his mom had told him to do the down and frown 'sorry' routine. His mom later claimed she had not spoken with him at all.

Way to go, Gordie.

Last week I wrote about slipping standards of service. Most readers blamed lax management and training. But we also received a number of, shall we say, interesting comments from people claiming to be wait staff or former wait staff. Their take? Diners are to blame.

Before I point out the obvious, here's a little food for thought from those folks.

Santian, via Flickr

"Don't fuck with the people who handle your food. They will remember you next time, and they have a lot of anger they want to unleash."

"THANK YOU! for the tip! it won't even pay the tax I am charged for serving YOU! Good thing I have $3.17 in my pocket to put with it so I can go home and sleep 4 hours before I have to get up to go to my other food service job!"

"They make us come to work do all the side work stand around for 4-5 hours make no tips and send us home empty-handed! Who do you cleans the building, yep its us, so when you mess up a bathroom I may be the one who cleans it then brings you your food...Nice thought!"

"And its just not here in Dallas its all accross the country, and other countries as well waiters are the last Legal Slaves on the planet. SO WHERE ARE ALL THE "GOOD SERVICE PEOPLE" they found a better job!"

Words of wisdom from the people who serve you. They are aggressive, work with little sleep, and keen to kill. The obvious? U.S. Army recruiters should approach some of these people. With that much pent up anger to unleash on the enemy, the Pakistan border would be cleaned up in no time.

When Bliss Raw Bar opened last month, it seemed to confirm that raw food had entered swirl of food trends considered acceptable by the mainstream. Although misinformation of the "anything raw is better than anything cooked" sort still exists, most raw foodists have settled on the idea that a diet heavy in unprocessed, raw or gently heated ingredients will yield tremendous health benefits, as well as keeping one's weight under control.

Maybe. A new book, Catching Fire by Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham (reviewed over the weekend by Fred Bortz in the Dallas Morning News), contends that cooking made possible modern humans and civilization as we know it. Wrangham's work also highlights health problems caused by a raw food diet.

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"I'm going to wait until this one gets to court." (Avi Adelman, addressing charges that he violently shoved a woman while trying to get through a crowd on lower Greenville to videotape yet another drunk. As quoted by the Dallas Morning News.)

"No one seems to understand why iced coffee costs so much more than the regular stuff." (GQ magazine, pondering the expense added for steeping water and grounds overnight in a French press. As stated in their June issue.)

"While in many respects [Pringles] are different from potato crisps and so they are near the borderline, they are sufficiently similar to satisfy that test." (Britain's Value Added Tax and Duties Tribunal, presenting their case that Pringles are indeed potato chips. Procter & Gamble UK, makers of the chips--crisps in England--argued the brand isn't a potato chip, as it contains only 40 percent potato flour. Interesting--don't they market them as potato chips over here? Britain's Supreme Court of Judicature decided against P & G, reversing a lower court decision, which had reversed an even lower court decision. At stake? $160 million in taxes. As quoted by the New York Times.)

"Not too thin, not too fat, neither spartan nor gobbed with anything exotic." (Jane and Michael Stern, describing in Gourmet magazine the perfect lunch counter burger. They contend, quite rightly, that burgers people tend to love are approachable, democratic--meaning devoid of frills such as foie gras. As stated in the June issue of Gourmet.)