The menu must be appropriate to the room  Like fashion, every detail must be in harmony whether it is designed for a hushed temple of gastronomy or a boisterously noisy neighborhood joint in a college town. It also means (or should mean) being sensitive to the economy: wine and food prices are humbler during hard times.

The menu should be a reflection of what the guests want to eat. This reality check may not always conform with what the cook wants to cook.

Folks want to eat difference kinds of foods at different times of day and on different days in the week.  So is the menus to be sophisticated, elegant, contemporary or trendy, or casual chic,  or country or newish Jewish?

In other words, other words might be better…

When I first moved to Kingston, NY from Manhattan, I was shocked when new friends told me they hadn’t been to the city for years.

Here we have the option to drive, take Amtrak or the Metro North train, or a bus. All are within easy access and relatively inexpensive.  The train ride is particularly wondrous as the route follows the Hudson all the way to midtown.

All the options involve pretty much a five-hour round trip though and the time element is the main deterrent — or was the main deterrent until I was the last person on earth to realize the journey translates into two movies!

Now I have realigned my thinking, I will be doing a whole lot more traveling!

Restaurant critics learn to live in an atmosphere where their presence — if detected — is met with “groveling, and cringing fear and more than occasionally, hostile loathing. But being liked is not part of the job. Honesty is.”  Sometimes honesty though can be quite brutal. Critic A.A. Gill writing in Vanity Fair magazine described an item on the menu f a restaurant that, for decency’s sake shall be nameless: He likened the fish and foie gras dumplings to “fish, liver-filled condoms” and called them “vile, with a savor that lingered like a lovelorn drunk and tasted as if your mouth had been used as the swab bin in an animal hospital.”

That’s telling it like it is, by Jove!

The first qualification for a restaurant critic is to have a stomach of iron.

The second is to be able to write as brilliantly as Alan Richman, Gael Greene, John Lanchester and A.A. Gill.

To get started, start your own restaurant reviewing blog (though you’ll have to pay for your own meals.) Or become one of the thundering herd that contributes to Yelp of other online site that specializes in carping.

We should remember that funerals are for the living.  The most honored survivors walk slowly and mourn from a lectern.  Grieving friends who are held in high esteem are invited to shoulder the casket from outdoors to indoors and back out again.

Others simply sob.

All this heavy-duty emotion is sure to build up a hearty appetite.

Brunch for the Bereaved is a niche market that is assured of growth as the population ages and the inevitable becomes, well, unavoidable.

Restaurants catering to mourners should specialize in tasteful advertising and appropriate interior design.

Chef Shoop is part of a team of oncologists, naturopathic doctors, nutritionists, mind-body specialists and therapists that use a whole-person approach to ensure optimal nutrition for their patients. This approach is based on the fact that cancer does not affect one part of the body but rather the body as a whole — as well as all aspects of patients’ lives.  He says: “Our purpose is so wonderful and beautiful…really it’s about two Ls — loving and listening.”

Note: Personal and private chefs may specialize in a specific health area, for example preparing gluten free meals or tasty food for those living healthily with diabetes.  Even folk yearning to shed a couple of pounds can be helped to slimness with the aid of a personal chef.  Do you remember how much weight Oprah lost? And her cook’s cookbook sold literally millions of copies.n

Reese Schonfeld was a very big shot back then. He was managing editor of United Press Movietone News, Vice President of United Press International Television News. He founded the Independent Television News Association, the first satellite-delivered television news service. With his pal Ted Turner, he created CNN and served as its first President. Today more people watch the TVFN than CNN!

Today close to 100 million households can tune in to the Food Network.  There are stations in Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit and Knoxville.  There are viewers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Monaco, Polynesia and Great Britain.

What is turning this huge audience on to all these American Culinary Idols? It’s Big Boy Mario Batali, the Nasty Bits of Anthony Bourdain and Paula Deen, the Southern Belle who could dare serve grits with grape jelly and red-eye gravy. And Sandra Dee as she concocts a store-bought package of lady fingers, a plastic container of vanilla pudding, a whisper of artificial rum flavoring, a jar of jam and a squirt of whipped topping and declares it “mostly homemade.”

And the Barefoot Contessa who cooks for her well-heeled pals.  And the perpetually smiling Giada (with her revealing cleavage alluring generations of boy culinary students). And the lovely Lydia and La Bella Nigella and sweet Sara M. and  perkily determined EVOO’d Rachael   — American Eye Dolls almost all.

The food network is shamelessly derivative.  Science channels are morphing into the food channel. So are the travel programs and adventures in survival. Competition is hot. Quick.  Who can make the best ice cream while marooned on a blazing tropical island where there are no utensils and ingredients, (don’t even think of using the palm  oil).  You have just 30 minutes before the scheduled arrival of 2,602 Carnival Cruise line passengers.  The winner is…pause…pause…wild applause for the Instantly Iced Sandy Snapping Turtle Smoothie.

Who’ll take the cake for transporting turrets of spun-sugar from here to there without dropping it?  Who will be the judge of the judged?  Who will deliver forth the next incandescent banality?

Paddy Chayevsky, who wrote about the television as mass madness wouldn’t have believed just how completely mad the medium has become. We have traveled light miles from the simplicity of the Pillsbury bake-off. We remember our beloved Julia who inspired three generations to just go into the kitchen and cook.  How we yearn for Jacques and the Galloping Gourmet, (but not the frugal one.)

The genie is out of tube and we are spending way too much time searching for the next Aladdin with a new lamp to rub.We don’t want to watch anything remotely serious or educational. Just bring on the new game, the new competition. The new STAR.

If the job of celebrity TV chef appeals to you, first take media training, then try to get a start at a small television station, then study giraffes so you will be able to stand head and shoulders above all others.  Bam!

Yesterday I received this revealed secret: “If there’s anything I would love to do more than eating, cooking or cycling, it’s talking. I love talking.

How terrific.

A radio show!

It could be a proposal for a one-minute slot or a 30-minute program.

How to get started?

Address your proposal to the radio station manager describing your idea in one short paragraph: i.e. Food & Drink Magazine on the Radio is a lively, half-hour weekly radio program that celebrates the enjoyment of food and drink.

You will interview cookbook authors, food business entrepreneurs, chefs, restaurateurs, food truck owners, farmers and physicians, nutritionists, safety regulators, beekeepers, bread bakers and critics. On the menu too are those responsible for feeding school children, hospital patients, the military, astronauts and those working in the kitchens of federal prisons, museums, zoos and caterers of grand parties. And when our guests don’t come to talk to us, we will go to them, even if the journey takes us to kitchen of the QM2 or The White House. Late-breaking culinary news is heard here first, along with interviews and reports from the fascinating people who work in the food arena to reports on new products, openings and closings and  of the American food chain — from the farm to the store, from the skillet to the plate.

Send a sample audio tape with your proposal.

Who might be interested in accepting your proposal. Local radio station managers and college radio broadcasters.

National Public Radio invites guests to read their essays for local or national audiences. A colleague at the CIA contributes a quiz program on NPR. It’s totally brilliant.

What is your expertise and can you translate it to this media? It is a wonderfully challenging thing to do…even possibly…a career.

Keep talking…And listening. (Some folk’s idea of listening is to talk louder…)

Carving up a whole animal whether a whale or an ox or a suckling pig or the Thanksgiving turkey has always expressed not only the interconnectedness of the family — and in a wider context — the community, but also the hierarchy of each member of the group. The carver is traditionally the head of the household whose responsibility it is to assign various cuts of the protein and to determine the size of the serving.

The Monk’s Chicken

A man of the cloth was invited to carve a chicken for the family meal. He cut off the head and handed it to the father, as he was the head of the household. He served the neck to the mother because she supported the head. The wings were given to the “flighty” daughters while the sons received the feet, as they were the foundation on which the next generation would stand. That done, the carver ate the rest of the bird himself.

The role of the butcher can be interpreted in many ways. Some confine themselves to simply butchering the language.

One year the management forgot to factor in an agreement about corkage fees. Collectively we drank so many bottles of wine, that a successful event was plunged into near bankruptcy. I was President of the group and had to go to the bank with my begging bowl, even agreeing to take out a second mortgage on my house to keep the organization afloat. We soon regained our balance and have remained solvent ever since. (It helped to whisper that Julia Child was a member.)

The IACP is an important association in many ways. Not only for absorbing so much new information about our industry, but for making new friends and reconnecting with old ones. I firmly believe a personal network is more valuable than money in the bank.I already have plans to press into service many contributors to my new book…little do they know!

Will you be there?

The first was a brown egg in an egg cup.  The top had been removed and inside was a miniature soufflé.

The second egg was not an egg at all but was also nestled into an eggcup. The cook had molded an outer part of white vanilla ice cream and inside; “the yoke” was a passion fruit sorbet.

The third egg was also a pretend one.  It was a “fried” egg in which the white was formed from white chocolate and “yolk” was an apricot mousse.