AP PHOTO/UNIVERSAL ORLANDO RESORT

Calling all Harry Potter fans! Are your kids anxiously awaiting tomorrow’s release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2?

Get them cooking Harry-Potter style to celebrate! Word has it that there are still spaces available for  the “Hogwarts at Hal’s” cooking class at Hal’s Kitchen ($65) next Friday, July 22.

Grab your wands and whip up some Butterbeer, Pumpkin Juice, Cauldron Cakes, Chocolate Frogs, Mrs Weasley’s Rock Cakes, Pumpkin Pasties and Licorice Wands.

Hal’s Kitchen: 206B Johnson Ferry Road, Sandy Springs. 404-847-6991. Online registration available.

–by Jenny Turknett, Food & More blog

– Jenny Turknett writes about Southern and Neighborhood Fare for the AJC Dining Team. She also publishes her own blog, Going Low Carb.

Continue reading Get the kids cooking Harry-Potter style »

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What is Raku: a Japanese restaurant or a Korean restaurant?

It’s Japanese. Look at the menu — a nicely curated list of all the easygoing, snacky items and set meals that everyone in Japan, and everyone who visits Japan, learns to love. The house specialty is tonkatsu, an extra-crunchy pork cutlet that is the Far East’s answer to schnitzel.

Review by John Kessler

Actually, no, it’s Korean. The menu is written in Korean and English, the staff is Korean, and the vast majority of the clientele is Korean.

In fact, it’s a Japanese restaurant for Korean tastes. But all you really need to know is that Raku is a blast — the restaurant you need to keep in mind whenever you go shopping at the big H-Mart Plaza.

This 5-month-old spot is the new venture from the folks behind Honey Pig, the great pork belly grill nearby. Raku doesn’t have the ambition as the far larger and more expensive Honey Pig, which is a destination for an elaborate feast you cook at the table. At Raku, …

Continue reading Raku restaurant review, Duluth »

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Consider this scenario. You spend the weekend with a friend. Your friend plays the gracious hostess and she can cook. She may not have formal training, but she has a palate and the skill to execute her vision in the kitchen. Throughout the weekend, your friend delights in assembling fresh salads, sandwiches and the like for you. She uses produce and ingredients carefully gathered from well-regarded local sources.

Review by Jenny Turknett

That friend is Jenny Levison, known to many as “Souper Jenny.” With the opening of Cafe Jonah and the Magical Attic in Buckhead, Jenny welcomes you into this 1960s home, named for her 7-year-old son, to join her for some “fresh food, coffee and inspiration.” You are invited to make yourself right at home amid cork boards of Jonah’s artwork and black-and-white family portraits of Jenny and Jonah.

Cafe Jonah doesn’t vibrate with quite the same energy as its sister restaurant, Souper Jenny. Instead, you’ll feel a calmer vibe …

Continue reading Cafe Jonah and the Magical Attic restaurant review, Buckhead »

While watching TV last night, I was fast-forwarding through a commercial and saw one that made me stop right in my tracks. Either I must have been seeing things, or those billboard-buying nutbags were a few months off in their prediction of the end of the world.

But no, I wasn’t hallucinating. Subway has introduced a pulled pork sandwich.

I’m not so sure that the sub would make the cut for ole’ Jared’s diets, racking up 570 calories and 17 grams of fat for a 6-inch sandwich. But I’m no health nut, and decided to check it out.

I can’t say that I was terribly enthused when I saw the sandwich artist scoop out a glob of frozen pork-paste and plop it onto my Italian bread. At least one thing Subway has going for it over something like a McRib is that this is actually identifiable as pork, not some reconstituted pork substitute.

This wasn’t as bad as I’d expected it to be, but my expectations were pretty darn low. The pork is mushy, obviously roasted, and has never …

Continue reading Subway debuts BBQ pulled pork sandwich »

Several years ago my father, who is also a health professional, gave me samples of this supplemental organic product called Juvo. He told me that it is a raw food product invented by a Korean doctor that is chock full of good-for-you natural ingredients. I watched my father place a serving — portioned into single serve envelopes at the time — into a sealable container with one cup of soy milk, vigorously shake and then gulp it down.

When he asked me to try one I was hesitant because I had memories of him forcing Ensure milk on me when I was a kid. If you don’t know what Ensure is, it’s basically milk high in calories, calcium and other vitamins and minerals that a scrawny and growing boy like myself needed. The problem was that I hated the taste of milk, especially ones that tasted like medicine such as Ensure.

Juvo, however, isn’t bad at all. It tastes like ground cereal or regular Cheerios to me. According to Juvo’s website, the company takes a selection of organic raw food …

Continue reading Juvo, natural raw meal »

As I was reading this CNN eatocracy article, I navigated to the provided website link for Duluth restaurant Seo-Ra-Bul, the restaurant and interview setting for the article.

I clicked on the restaurant homepage’s four separate links. I learned things and grew hungry.. But then I fell into a trance.

I can’t keep my eyes off the trailing fish graphic that my computer mouse controlled on Seo-Ra-Bul’s website. It leaves ghostly trails which stretch loooooonnnnnnnger the faster I move my mouse! And it’s so flexible! It zigs when I zig, zags when I zag!

Clearly it doesn’t take much to entertain me. Somebody please slap me I can’t stop.

- by Gene Lee, Food and More blog

Continue reading Distracted by a fish »

“I’m hot.”

“Can you pick me up?”

“When are we gonna be finished?”

There are some lessons we just have to teach our children. One of those lessons in our house is to know where and how your food grows. So, I set out on an adventure with my kids — one I thought would be fun. It’s blueberry-picking time.

The berry bushes, dripping with dozens of green, pink and purple berries in various stages of ripening, stand in long rows awaiting purple plucking fingers. We would fill our pails with fat blueberries bursting with juice as visions of cobblers, pancakes and fresh jam danced in our heads.

Okay, that’s the highly-romanticized image of the blueberry picking adventure I had planned. That’s the dreamy scene that played in my mind to a jaunty soundtrack. That was before we got there.

Each child, armed with a bucket, headed for the field. We carefully selected a row and marched to the middle where the attendant told us the bushes were loaded with the ripest fruit. …

Continue reading It’s blueberry-picking time in Georgia »

Dunwoody’s Old Hickory House, 5490 Chamblee Dunwoody Road, has had problems keeping temperatures cold enough on one of its serving stations and was marked down during a recent food service follow-up inspection.

Manager Ted McWilliams said a kitchen bar holding lettuce, tomato, onion and other items for hamburgers wasn’t keeping the food temperatures down, even after they placed pans of ice underneath. Cold-held potentially hazardous foods must be maintained at 41 degrees or below because of the risk of bacterial contamination.

Some cheese, potato salad and cut melon had to be thrown out because their temperatures were too high, according to the inspector’s report.

The restaurant had no time controls or temperature documentations, and the inspector advised them to keep container lids closed when not in use and to check the food temperatures throughout the day.

During its previous routine health inspection, Old Hickory House was marked down for temperature control …

Continue reading Restaurant inspections, Dunwoody’s Old Hickory House »

For those lamenting the closing of Spanish restaurant elBulli, the restaurant that has topped Restaurant Magazine’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants five times in the last decade, there are many behind-the-scenes accounts emerging. Will these insider reports help demystify elBulli, which will soon transition to a culinary think tank?

Recently, John Kessler detailed The Sorcerer’s Apprentices by Lisa Abend, an engaging book that tells the story of the restaurant from the perspective of the stagiaires (interns). Now, according to Eater.com via The Telegraph, elBulli’s chef Ferran Adrià has signed a deal with a Hollywood producer to turn this book into a movie. It will be filmed in elBulli’s kitchen with the restaurant’s chefs working amongst actors. Adrià describes it as “something between The Social Network and Ratatouille.”

Additionally, a documentary on Ferran Adrià and elBulli will also soon make its debut. The film, elBulli: Cooking in Progress, will be …

Continue reading Unveiling the mystery of Spanish restaurant elBulli »

(image courtesy of Northwest Cherries)

In honor of  National Rainier Cherry Day (July 11), Westside’s Bacchanalia is featuring dessert dishes incorporating Rainier cherries that hail from the Pacific Northwest. For the next two weeks or so, the menu will consist of sweet-tooth friendly options such as Rainier cherry baked Alaska, toasted meringue, Rainier cherry sorbet and cherry covered chocolate lime cake.

This is a nationwide event with one participating restaurant from all 50 states. Below is the press release:

“In celebration of National Rainier Cherry Day on July 11, Northwest Cherries has commissioned one iconic restaurant in each US state to create a unique menu featuring Rainier cherries. This famed cherry is regarded for its crisp bite and pale yellow flesh bursting with exceptional sweetness.

Coast to coast, Northwest Cherries is making sure everyone has the opportunity to indulge this once-a-year treat. From Rainier cherry-infused cocktails and brews to Rainier …

Continue reading Bacchanalia’s cherry menu for National Rainier Cherry Day »