By now you’ve undoubtedly heard about the lifting of Chicago’s ban on foie gras, a feather fight that lasted almost two years. The news has been picked up by news outlets around the world, with stories headlined “Culinarians Rejoice” or “Let Them Eat Terrine” describing self-proclaimed “gourmands” celebrating their right to liver on as if it were the 21st Amendment and the Treaty of Versailles all wrapped up in caul fat.

The thing is, the ban was bogus all along. The no-foie law was loosely enforced, at best: As far as I know, only one restaurant owner—Doug Sohn of Hot Doug’s hot dog stand—was smacked with the $250 fine, and that for defiantly serving foie gras in the form of a liver-laced dog named after the law’s original sponsor, Joe Moore.

I was in Chicago last weekend, just two days before the ordinance was lifted, and spotted foie gras on menus across the city. “All we have to do is call is ‘faux gras’ or give it away 'for free' [and charge $20 for the accompanying toast points],” said one waiter at a well-known establishment, “and the city leaves us alone.”

Since the foie gras ban was enforced as heavily as traveling in the NBA (thank you, Dr. J), nothing really changes with its termination, and nobody really benefits, except for a few self-promoting restaurant owners (see above) and chefs who’ve craftily used the whole ordeal for free publicity. The most bizarre example: Chef Didier Durand, the ban’s most vocal opponent and a talking head in countless news accounts, posed outside of his restaurant holding—what?—his pet duck, Nicolai.

Nobody really benefits, but I can think of one duck who might want to file an appeal.

More of a toaster oven person myself, I never understood the appeal of a toaster—why dedicate so much counter space to an appliance that only does one thing? I prefer using a mini-oven that can roast potatoes and bake a small batch of cookies as well as it can crisp my morning bagel. But Breville’s new Die-Cast Smart Toaster might cause me to convert. Not only does it lower bread like an elevator (seriously, you press a button, and the slices slowly descends into the machine), it actually recognizes the way you toast:

Afraid your delicate challah will overbrown? Press the “Lift and Look” button and the shelf will rise so that you can peek at the slice’s progress, then lower it back down without interrupting the toasting cycle. Wish you could get your English muffin slightly more golden? Press the “A Bit More” button for another 30 seconds or so of toasting. If only boyfriends were this intuitive.

Mike Pierce, the wine director and part-owner of San Francisco’s hip restaurant Maverick, has Bay Area wine geeks buzzing over his atypical Wednesday-night wine seminars. Of particular hype are the wine-and-junk-food pairing challenges. The first class was so popular that he recently started offering them on a monthly basis (the next is July 9). I don’t foresee myself reaching for a glass of Madeira (Pierce suggests the 5-year-aged Cossart Gordon Madeira Bual) the next time I crave a Snickers bar, but my inner wine geek was intrigued by the added challenge of matching a wine to the complex, largely chemically-enhanced flavors of junk food.

Pierce says he has yet to find an unpairable snack (He was nearly defeated when a student dared him to try and match nacho-cheese Doritos. Pinot Gris turned out to be a perfect complement to the glowing orange chips). He asked me to throw out my favorite trashy snacks to see if I couldn’t stump him. He had 24-hours to turn around stellar pairings. Here’s what he came up with:

Classic Cheetos: Verdicchio Di Metallica
why it works: Enough acidity to clean up the cheddar, and a mid-palate weight that married the intensity of the Cheetos. Ultimately, it was the only one of about 12 wines that did not taste awful, in that chemical way, after it chased the Cheetos.
alternate pairing: unoaked California Grenache Blanc
 
Slim Jim: Lambrusco
why it works: Duh. Lambrusco from Emilia Romagna goes great with all salty cured meats, including Slim Jim.
alternate pairing: Sciava, a light, bitter red from Alto Adigo or indigenous Austrian red varietals like Zweigelt and Blaufrankisch.
 
Red Skittles (strawberry): A lightly macerated Rhone varietal-based rosé like the 2007 Verdad Grenache/Mourvèdre rosé from Santa Barbara.
why it works:  The light strawberry-watermelon Jolly Rancher quality of this wine and the tart acidity match perfectly with red Skittles.
 
Green, Yellow and Orange Skittles (lime, lemon and orange): A 2006 dry Muscat or  Muscadelle
why it works: The orange blossom and Meyer lemon aromas and flavors of this wine match nicely with the Skittles' citrusy flavors.

Purple Skittles (grape): A light red like the 2006 Grignolino Del Monferrato Casalese
why it works: The subtle fruit flavors of this wine matched up well with the chemical grape flavor.
 
Cracker Jacks: 10 year or older St-Joseph Blanc (Marsanne and Rosanne)
why it works: The waxy walnut quality of the older San Joseph matches nicely with the caramel peanut and the piquant sweetness of the kernels. Well-made San Joseph Blancs will carry their acidity throughout their life to cut through the snack's sweetness.
 
Ben and Jerry’s Everything But The… ice cream: 15-to 30-year old Madeira
why it works: It was nice to have a warm dessert wine to contrast the cold ice cream. This flavor has so much going on but the Madeira matched up well with the Heath Bar, chocolate, peanut butter and almonds. An older Madeira works better because you want a lower-alcohol wine with ice cream and the alcohol levels are much more tempered in older Madeiras.

Just in case anyone’s wondering, I was most definitely not on the guest list at Mariah’s surprise wedding to Nick Cannon two weeks ago. But I do know that her wedding cake was awesome because my friend Margaret Braun made it, and she makes the world's coolest, most delicious wedding cakes. And they’re perfect even when she doesn’t know they’re for a wedding—Carey’s peeps told Margaret it was for a video shoot in the Bahamas (Margaret now claims she was  suspicious; most shoots don't specifically ask for every single bit of the cake to be edible). Ms. Braun usually travels with the cakes she makes (she went to Ireland with Marilyn Manson’s cake a few years ago) but didn’t this time. This seems to have been okay: Several blogs reported that Carey was so protective of the cake, she kept it on the seat next to her on her private jet and wouldn't let anyone touch it. I like Mariah even more now that I know she has such good taste in cakes (and takes such good care of them).

For anyone who wants to make Carey’s wedding cake at home, here are the details: four tiers of chocolate blackout cake layers covered in bittersweet chocolate–toffee ganache and decorated with white sugar bows and butterflies and lots of blingy gold leaf. For more details on any of these components, check out Margaret’s excellent book Cakewalk (full disclosure: I helped copyedit the book). Incidentally, that's not the last you'll hear about her cakes: she recently made a big fat cake for the upcoming Kate Hudson/Anne Hathaway movie Bride Wars.

Patrick Watson and his wife Michele Pravda are very good at naming stuff. First was their Carroll Gardens wine shop, Smith & Vine, a name that would make Hemingway proud: simple, direct and packed with information (location plus trade, separated with an ampersand). They took more of a Gossip Girl approach for their next business, a nearby cheese chop called Stinky Bklyn: sassy and smart, with allusions to the txtmsg era and a cheese head’s weak spot.

If Stinky Bklyn is Gossip Girl, then the couple’s latest venture, The Jake Walk, is John from Cincinnati. Its name is obscure—“jake walk” is 1930s slang for the partially paralyzed gait exhibited by Prohibition-era vagabonds who drank Jamaica Ginger, a highly alcoholic (though legal) patent medicine found to be loaded with, whoops, neurotoxins—and, like John from Cincinnati, you’re not quite sure how to describe Jake Walk , except for “singularly awesome” (if you disagree with me about JfC, don’t hold it against Jake Walk).

You can’t simply call Jake Walk “a bar,” because its carefully curated wine list (50 by the glass) is too good—seriously, I think it’s Brooklyn’s best. But you can’t call it a “wine bar,” either: A selection of 120 whiskies and eclectic, pre-Prohibition cocktails says you can’t. And “restaurant” isn’t quite right, though the place is a charcuterie- and cheese-aficionado’s Disney World, with an expansive selection of both. So let’s just call it what it is—a gastro wine-cocktail lounge and charcuterium—and leave it at that.

Oh, I almost forgot: Jake Walk is also the place’s signature drink, courtesy of David Wondrich:

The Jake Walk
Makes 1 drink
Ice
3/4 ounce reposado tequila
3/4 ounce J.M. Rhum Blanc (or other white rum)
3/4 ounce St-Germain (elderflower liqueur)
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
Candied ginger, for garnish
Fill a shaker with ice. Add everything except the ginger and shake vigorously. Strand into a chilled coupe and garnish with the candied ginger.

I've always been majorly inspired by Eloise and wished that I lived in a hotel. But now I've adapted my dream, and not just because the recently-reopened-as-condos Plaza, Eloise's home, is out of my price range. It's just that I've found a whole bunch of Manhattan restaurants that I'd rather live in. There's the obvious benefit of having great food whenever I want. And there's also the groovy environment that so many new places have that makes you feel like you're at the coolest party. First off is the Lower East Side's Allen & Delancey, with its little connecting rooms that mix exposed brick, dark wood, old books and low lighting (The New Yorker's review called it one of the loveliest rooms in town). Second is Elettaria—even though the fake staircase at the entrance isn't very functional, I absolutely love it, and ditto for the cut-off mirrors and paintings and the bright red door at the entrance. But the hands-down winner of my new relocation plan is Bobo. It's set in a sweet West Village town house, and I love everything about the two-story restaurant: the hundreds of photos that decorate the walls, the multiple fireplaces, the huge drapes on the windows. I love the owner, Carlos Suarez, who also acts as maître d’/best party host ever (he comes from a very cool family—his cousin Dolores designed the space). I've also come to love the food, which started off rocky but has gotten really good under new chef Jared Stafford-Hill, who makes excellent ricotta-stuffed ravioli and pork (Berkshire, of course) with sausage and shell beans. It's also eco-friendly—they were very early to the purified (flat and sparkling) water game and charge $1 for all the water you drink all night (that $1 goes to water-related charities). Bobo even has a celebrity clientele (Demi Moore sat at the opposite table last time I ate there) which would definitely raise the profile of parties I'd throw, after I moved in.

Two things I've recently learned about Allan Benton's pork-tastic products from Madisonville, Tennessee:

1. When a bunch of 2008 F&W Best New Chefs get together to eat Momofuku Ssam Bar's country ham tasting—various hams from different producers sliced paper thin accompanied by bread and chunky apple butter (both extraneous in my opinion)—the Allan Benton plate is the first to clear.

2. When a bunch of F&W staffers mill around plates of Benton country ham and lusciously thick-cut, fatty, smoky bacon, they find all sorts of ways to eat the pork, including with their fingers and ingeniously wrapping the bacon around chunks of peanut brittle (a crunchy, more decadent version of the bacon-wrapped prunes at the Spotted Pig in Manhattan). And yes, the plates clear up superfast, too.

I just returned from a trip to the fabulous Ventana Inn and Spa in Big Sur, California. Its restaurant, Cielo, has a great cocktail list that included a few drinks I had never seen before. Listed under the category Fantastic Floats were three made with beer and sorbet. The best was called Belgian Delight, a pint of Hoegaarden topped with a scoop of homemade orange sorbet. Simple, refreshing and original, it will be my go-to cocktail this summer.

In the May issue of Food & Wine, Rob Evans, an F&W Best New Chef 2004, shared highlights from his honeymoon—a 25-state motorcycle trip (he rides a 2000 Triumph Tiger, and his wife, a BMW GS650).

Over the course of a month, Evans and his wife covered 7,000 miles of national parks, eating in small towns throughout the West and Midwest. Experiences at places like the North Fork Brewery, a brewery, beer shrine, pizzeria and wedding chapel on Mt. Baker Highway in Deming, Washington, and Binkley’s, a fine-dining restaurant with a shockingly good tasting menu in Cave Creek, Arizona (“I would fly from Maine just to eat there!” says Evans), inspired him to reinvent Hugo’s, his fine-dining restaurant in Portland, Maine, to reflect the direction he feels American dining is headed. “The trip didn’t influence my food, but it did influence my perception of the dining experience,” says Evans.

The new Hugo’s opens its doors tomorrow. Evans tossed the table linens in an effort to lose the “poshness” and create a more comfortable atmosphere. He’s also added a snack menu to the prix fixe format that was previously offered.

Evans is particularly excited about the new bar area. A silent, flat viewing screen hangs behind the bar, allowing customers to watch as chefs prepare their food in the kitchen. “We’re combining the two hottest concepts, the feel of an open kitchen and the visual pleasure of watching food being created, without the negative aspect of a loud dining room. It’s the open kitchen of the new millennium,” says Evans.

Newish Seattle resident and restaurateur Michael Hebb (formerly Hebberoy) has struck again: Last Friday, he quietly—for him, anyway—opened up Fish Fry, a tiny fish shack on Pike Street in Seattle. 

Where it is "The same spot as the beloved Frites, in between the rock club Neumos and the bar Moe, on Pike Street on Capitol Hill."

The concept "I did some One Pot dinners there and got inspired. Mike McConnell (of Caffe Vita and Via Tribunali) and I decided that what was missing in Seattle was perfectly fried fish. So Fish Fry is fresh fish primarily from local fishermen fried in a simple, light batter, served with handmade sauces based on pickles and preserves."

The space "It's mostly a stand-and-eat place. One whole wall of the establishment is covered with pickled cabbage, carrots, asparagus, and chile peppers."

The chef "Monica Dimas, formerly of Le Pichet and Campagne."

How it's involved with its neighbors "The whole menu, like battered and fried oysters and Pacific snapper, is also available next door at Moe."

What happens when Hebb, former Best New Chef Matt Dillon and rocker Jack White get together "We just had a Fish Fry One Pot meal in the basement of Neumos prepared by Matt Dillon and Monica Dimas for Jack White and the Raconteurs and Birds of Avalon. Matt cooked battered and fried whole radishes, handmade cous cous and a fish stew with blackened capers and nettle salsa verde. Jack White was a bit wary of the nettles. He asked for a steak."