Catesby Holmes, one of our colleagues at sister mag Travel + Leisure, weighs in on this unlikely collaboration:

“Naked Chef” Jamie Oliver has teamed up with Match.com in the UK, the original online yenta, to establish a forum for food lovers to meet, mingle and turn up the heat (and not just on their stainless steel ranges). Jamieoliver.com/dating has related articles like "Making the First Meal for Your Partner" and "Food to Make You Fall in Love." Hey, even if you don’t find The One, at least you’ll get a good meal out of it.

 

Like every teenage girl in America today, I'm super-excited about seeing the new movie New Moon, based on the second book in the Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer. When Bella Swan (the heroine of the saga) is not being hunted by bloodthirsty vampires or obsessing about her hottie vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen, she's often in the kitchen making home-cooked meals, like Super-Crispy Fried Chicken (pictured).

Find more Recipes for New Moon Fans here.

As a self-described brownie expert (I think my salted fudge ones are the best), I’m always looking at the competition. In Sam Sifton’s review of the new Oceana in the New York Times this week, he talked about the desserts but for some reason didn’t mention one of my favorites from pastry chef Jansen Chan, the Chocolate Custard Brownie. (In New York magazine, Adam Platt called it a “New Age mille-feuille”). Chan says he has updated the dessert from the one he served at the original Oceana by taking the chocolate cookie crumbs that used to line the plate and instead using them in a warm, creamy sauce. Chan first called this version his 2.0 brownies; he’s since amended that, calling them brownies 7.0 (for the most recent Microsoft operating system) or Snow Leopard (for the Mac people).

 

I’m a compulsive researcher when I travel, so about two weeks before I flew to London I e-mailed my plugged-in chef, design and wine friends there to find out where I absolutely had to eat. Princi was at the top of everyone’s list. This chic Milanese bakery chain from prolific restaurateur Alan Yau and baker Rocco Princi (often called the Armani of bread) recently opened its first international branch on Wardour Street. Princi is like the Italian version of Belgium's Le Pain Quotidien, with a minimalist-chic interior designed by Claudio Silvestrin (the creative mind behind the design of Georgio Armani stores and the Museum of contemporary art in Turin). Like LPQ, the focus in on insanely delicious baked goods, like buttery brioches and slightly chewy, olive-studded breadsticks. Thick squares of focaccia-style pizzas, such as zucchini with parmesan and egg, get warmed up in the wood-fired oven. There's also a full bar. I'm a firm believer that a city can never have too many fantastic bakeries, so I'm hoping Princi starts to pop up around the world, just like LPQ has.

I’ll be blogging this week about discoveries from my recent eight-day trip to London. The city was buzzing with pop-up restaurant/design projects, ambitious new hotels and hip new British comfort food joints. One of my favorite finds was at the Berkeley hotel, which just introduced the fall/winter collection of its super-popular Prêt-à-Portea (the menu changes every six months to reflect the new fashion season). This haute-couture-inspired tea service features edible designs inspired by Christian Lacroix, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior. Adorable confections include a Roger Vivier chocolate boot cookie, a Mulberry "Bayswater" white-chocolate-and-coconut-truffle "it" bag and a cinnamon Burberry Prorsum trench-coat cookie with a caramel belt and buttons. All are served on Paul Smith china alongside a proper cup of English tea.

Top Chef Season 3 almost-winner Dale Levitski is opening his new restaurant, Sprout, tomorrow (November 13) in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Well, reopening it, since it’s a month-old place that already lost its original chef. “On a whim, I took over a week-and-a-half ago,” says Levitski. “It’s like a real-life version of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.” Sprout is not the place he was planning to open—that would be the multimillion-dollar, never-happened Town & Country. Sprout’s menu will be French-American, three courses, $60, and it will not list dishes, only ingredients: “There will be lots of questions for the servers.” Levitski will serve dishes that he previewed at his former restaurants, La Tache and Trio, like foie gras–stuffed quail with root-vegetable hash and brown butter–foie gras hollandaise. “It screams fall,” Levitski says. (With dishes like that, I'm going to wish him good luck shedding the 20 pounds he says he’s gained during his downtime.)

Levitski’s plans for Sprout don’t stop at the restaurant. The bar next door, where Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money with Paul Newman was filmed, is being reopened by the owners of Small Bar; Levitski would love it to be a place for people to have a drink while they wait for dinner at the 30- to 40-seat, no-reservations Sprout. In fact, he’s in discussions to make that happen.

 

Superhip Brit designer Ilse Crawford is constantly innovating. Her latest obsession is reinventing the idea of the coaching inn, which offered travelers in the mid-17th century a place to eat and sleep. Last year I stayed at her first such property, the Olde Belle, outside of London in Hurley. And I just spent the weekend at her second, the Crown Inn, about 40 minutes outside London in Amersham. Crawford has modernized the bed-and-breakfast, combining a cozy place to spend the night with an enticing, comfortable restaurant that's perfect for having a cocktail or a superfresh, farm-to-table dinner. Imagine if New York City's Spotted Pig gastropub added rooms upstairs—that's basically the Crown. It features incredible design juxtaposing the modern (flat-screen TVs and funky white-fur throws for the rocking chairs) and the historic (Room 12 has a section of hand-painted wall dating back to the 1500s), with smart touches like Aesop body soaps and Welsh wool blankets. Rosie Sykes and chef Mark Bristow are in charge of the food and make a satisfying breakfast spread for guests that includes homemade breads and sesame-hazelnut granola, chocolate muffins, eggs and hash. The chalkboard dinner menu changes daily, and some regulars convinced me to try the hearty beef-and-ale pie with a pint of local hard cider. I'm hoping Crawford brings the concept to the U.S. next.

I just met with Skip Bennett and Shore Gregory from Island Creek Oysters—a co-op of sorts that farms oysters in Massachusetts’ Duxbury Bay. With them was Erin Byers Murray, a former Boston magazine and Daily Candy editor and occasional F&W contributor, who has spent the last eight months farming oysters and chronicling all the dirty details on her blog, Shucked.

She’ll be done with her yearlong apprenticeship in March, but she admitted she's tempted to stay longer—it's a really exciting time at the company. Skip and Shore have just returned from Zanzibar, Tanzania, where they’re working to set up sustainable shellfish farms for protein-starved villages. If it works, they want to try similar models in other countries.

The work they’re doing in Africa, they explain, is a way to give back to a community that’s entirely different from their clientele: “Our oysters are sold at every three-star Michelin restaurant in the U.S.,” Skip says.

Today, Erin will be hanging out at one restaurant Island Creek supplies: a little NYC spot known as Per Se. To get the full “farm-to-plate” experience, Erin will watch the cooks there use Island Creek's oysters to make chef Thomas Keller’s signature Oysters & Pearls dish. Then after a chat with the staff about oysters, Skip, Shore and Erin will have Per Se's full tasting menu. Sometimes, it’s good to be a farmer.

February 6, 2010, is a little ways away, but its worth noting on your calendar because it’s the day of Mario Batali’s Super Bowl Super Brunch in Miami Beach (and the day before the big game). Batali is co-hosting the brunch with Phillies All-Star pitcher Jamie Moyer; as his co-chairs he selected a few guys named Jimmy Fallon, Emeril Lagasse and Jimmy Buffett. Tickets, as you might expect, have Super Bowl prices: $1,000. But but but: There's a super-deluxe brunch buffet, cocktails, Batali cooking demos and other sorts of live entertainment. And proceeds go to the Moyer Foundation’s Camp Erin (for children who have had to deal with death) and the Mario Batali Foundation (which empowers kids). Batali can decide the menu—as of this moment it includes eggs in purgatorio and balsamic Bloody Marys. But he can’t choose the teams he’ll see in the Super Bowl. He’s rooting for the Giants, Saints, Colts and Broncos. Especially the Giants. Are he and Jimmy Fallon both Giants fans? “Huuuuuuge,” he says.

The Economist is not usually the magazine I turn to for feel-good stories. But as an unrepentant chocolate-eater, it was heart-warming to see their recent profile on Nestlé, “The Unrepentant Chocolatier.” Specifically, Nestlé plans to become the “world’s leading health, nutrition and ‘wellness’ firm.” Yippee! But how will they do that? By making chocolates and other products “functional,” i.e., adding micronutrients, like iron and zinc, to foods. (Their claim: This is different than controversial genetically modified foods, because they’re adding healthy ingredients; “no weird stuff,” they say.) Nestlé’s plan is to make every one of their products healthier. How great for me if I can start saying that I’m eating all those Toll House cookies for my health.