While the media remains fascinated by what the presidential candidates are eating — or maybe even more so what their running mates are eating — restaurants and bakeries are trying to predict the outcome of the election based on sales of political-party-themed dishes.

Starting in October, SusieCakes, a Los Angeles bakery that specializes in classic American comfort desserts like whoopee pies and layer cakes, will be selling Red State Red Velvet cupcakes and RNC elephant sugar cookies to Republican sweet tooths, and Blue State Vanilla Cupcakes and DNC donkey sugar cookies to Obama supporters. SusieCakes will be conducting informal polls at its three locations to determine which candidate will win based on sugar sales. The results will be revealed on Election Day.

Abroad, the French are obsessing over two things: burgers and the U.S. presidential race. At Paris’s Hotel Concorde La Fayette, chef Laurent Belijar created special candidate-themed burgers for his menu at La Fayette Bar.

The O-Burger, a nod to senator Barack Obama and his birth city of Honolulu, is made from curried beef and topped with pineapple carpaccio and coriander-flavored shrimp. The Elephant Burger is made of ground lamb and pays homage to senator John McCain’s adopted state of Arizona with Southwestern ingredients like guacamole and a side of nachos and salsa. Guests vote for their preferred burger, and chef Belijar will announce the best-seller on Election Day.

 

 

Last week I blogged about the owners of Paris’s Hidden Kitchen, Braden and Laura, who are road-tripping across the U.S. before returning to France to open a new restaurant. Here, Braden shares highlights from their all-American road trip. The couple created their eating itinerary around the foods they craved most after a year in France.

Polly’s Pancake Parlor, Sugar Hill, NH
“Polly’s has been serving up pancakes and sticky maple products since 1938. We got there around noon on a Tuesday, and the wait was over an hour. Once we did sit, the pancakes arrived three at a time, with three more served fresh after the last bite of the first round.”

Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe, Boston
“Potatoes coated in burnt skillet fat, thick western omelets and cheesy steak bombs keep regulars coming back.”

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, New Haven, CT
“The coal-fired-oven crust, shucked-to-order white-clam pizza and Foxon Park birch beer cannot be explained in earthly terms—it’s better explained by a local Yale freshman as something similar to a discourse on the philosophy of Aquinas.”

The Anchor Bar, Buffalo, NY
“Since the advent of the buffalo wing at the Anchor Bar in 1964, Buffalo style has shown up in a sickening number of varieties: buffalo shrimp, buffalo chicken fingers, buffalo catfish. The most refreshing aspect of the Anchor bar is the utter lack of buffalo anything-else. The menu is heavy on Italian classics like lasagna and eggplant; the wings get their own page.”

Hot Dogs, Chicago
“Our plan was pretty simple: to sample the old (Superdawg), the new (Huey’s) and the popular (Hot Doug’s) in successive order. Hot Doug’s has funky combinations (chorizo on a pretzel bun) and cheap prices ($1.75 for the Chicago dog). Huey’s was a bit like getting a burger from Boulud. Superdawg, an old-school drive-in with 1950s Vegas style and giant dancing hot dogs on the roof, delivers all-beef dogs with the Chicago fixings stuffed into a bright blue box and surrounded by crinkle-cut fries.

The hottest table in Paris this year was arguably Hidden Kitchens, an “underground” restaurant inspired by Naomi Pommeroy’s Sunday Supper in Portland, Oregon. Braden and Laura (they keep their last names a secret), a superyoung Seattle couple, moved to Paris and started cooking Sunday dinners in their apartment for 10 to 12 privileged guests at a time, mostly expats and food-obsessed, restaurant-blog-reading visitors. An e-mail would be sent the day before the meal revealing their address. The 10-course feast centered around dishes showcasing American ingredients and flavors and French techniques. Chef Daniel Rose of Spring and star chef Guy Savoy were among their first customers.

After serving 1,287 people and more than 12,000 courses, Braden and Laura are spending the summer road-tripping through the U.S. before returning to Paris to move into a larger, more grand space on the Palais Royal, right near the Louvre. The new restaurant will open in December with the same menu concept, and Braden says they’ll keep the name Hidden Kitchens even though this new restaurant won’t be a secret. One tip: Start booking now.

Braden updated me from the road as he and Laura ate their way through Minneapolis, Chicago, Buffalo, New Haven, Boston, New Hampshire and New York City. So where do expats eat when they come home? Next week, he will give F&W an update on his cross-country eating itinerary. His one clue: “We are testing our cholesterol limits with big greasy breakfasts, hot dogs, buffalo wings, huge stacks of pancakes and giant deli sandwiches.”

Last week, when I visited British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley—an up-and-coming wine region a five-hour drive east of Vancouver—the jaw-dropping views made me want to ditch cramped NYC and permanently perch myself on top of one of its hillsides. Or at least have a picnic and take dozens of shots with my camera. Note: The best views are at Gray Monk Estate Winery, known for its delicate Pinot Auxerrois, and at the supertiny Arrowleaf Cellars, which conveniently has red picnic tables overlooking the Okanagan Lake. But the best fusion of wine and sights on my trip was at the grand Mission Hill Winery, with its sprawling Spanish-Moderne buildings (including a 12-story bell tower), Chagall tapestry and crisp, peachy Grand Reserve Chardonnay. And yes, there’s an awesome view of the vast Okanagan Lake, and, new this summer—with that view as a backdrop—food and wine–themed movies like No Reservations and A Good Year playing in its outdoor amphitheater in the evenings.

I just flew in from four days in British Columbia, but I feel like I've come back from a mini-tour of East Asia—foodwise, anyway—minus the major jet lag. My friends and I started most of our mornings in and around Vancouver with a lazy dim sum breakfast—how I'd opt to start all my mornings for the rest of my life if there were eight dozen hours in a day. While we ate our way through several dim sum spots (both Cantonese and Shanghainese), my favorite was Shanghai River, in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond. I watched cooks in a glass-enclosed kitchen roll out superthin dumpling wrappers to make soup-and-minced-pork-filled dumplings and had two bowls of creamy soy bean soup filled with deep-fried dough.

Our evenings were usually dedicated to Japanese food, including that odd East-meets-West Vancouver hybrid, the Japa Dog. When we visited the street vendor, there was a line of Japanese tourists with cameras slung around their necks waiting to try one of the daikon or dried-seaweed-topped hot dogs. At the sprawling Tojo's, I ordered omakase; more than any of my sushi I liked my cooked dish of pan-sauteed halibut cheek in an orange rind sauce. But what might have been the most surprising dish of the trip was my last: the almost-black ramen broth at Motomachi Shokudo, the new restaurant by Vancouver's ramen king, Daiji Matsubara, whose original noodle house, Kintaro, is just a few doors down on Denman Street. The cause for the disconcerting color: bamboo charcoal, used as a digestive supplement in Eastern medicine. Whether the charcoal soup's healthful properties were real or myth, it was unexpectedly delicious, with fresh noodles, tender pork, and chewy bamboo shoots.

 

The plight of the honeybee is all the buzz this year, with its mysteriously dwindling population getting a mention in the new M. Night Shyamalan movie, The Happening, and inspiring Häagen-Dazs to create a honey-flavored ice cream and fund bee Colony Collapse Disorder research.

The August issue of Food & Wine pays homage to the bee with eight delicious, honey-centric recipes and a primer on the best single-varietal honeys on the market.

Fairmont has also jumped on the save-the-bee bandwagon. In June, more than 100,000 bees checked in to the roof of the Fairmont Royal York hotel in Toronto. The hotel partnered with the Toronto Beekeepers Cooperative to create a rooftop apiary to house three hives, and the hotel’s executive chef will be sourcing his honey straight from the roof.
 
Fairmont also plans to add bee colonies to two other Canadian properties this summer: the Fairmont Algonquin in St. Andrews and the Fairmont Winnipeg.

I'm off to Vancouver tomorrow to meet up with some close friends—and to eat the ridiculously good Asian food I've been hearing so much about. Tops on my dream list of restaurants to try is Tojo's, which F&W Best New Chef 2005 Tyson Cole of the Japanese-inspired Uchi in Austin once told me has "the most exquisite, innovative and challenging sushi" in North America. My other recommendations are coming from F&W's annual Go List and the April 2007 Where to Go Next Vancouver, as well as from my old college roommate, a Chinese-Canadian Vancouverite whose palate I always trust. Another indispensable resource I had to share: "...An Endless Banquet" blogger and F&W writer A.J. Kinik's "Vancouver Diary" series, which has entry after entry of all sorts of crave-inducing spots, like ramen bars and steamed bun shops.

I recently returned from a trip to Vieques, a dreamy 21-mile-long island off the coast of Puerto Rico. As on many islands, good fresh food can be hard to come by, but I managed to find two spots I’d go to again and again if I could:

1) The year-and-a-half-old open-air El Quenepo restaurant in the tiny southern coastal town of Esperanza is intensely focused on local ingredients—somewhat rare in the Caribbean and tricky on such a small island. The night I was there, they made a lightly sweet, super refreshing (albeit blue!) cocktail using ginger and lemongrass grown in the backyard. The extra peppery arugula as well as many of the other greens on the menu are grown on the island or at a co-op farm on Puerto Rico. The seafood and fish come from local fishermen and is showcased all over the menu. My favorite dish? An elegant version of mofongo (a Puerto Rican staple made with mashed and fried plantains or other starchy vegetables) stuffed with shrimp and lobster in a sweet-and-slightly spicy criollo sauce (148 Calle Flamboyan, 787-741-1215).

2) Across the street from El Quenepo, a young gregarious local fries up Puerto Rican arepas at his beachside stand, Hubba Hubba, starting around 1 or 2 in the afternoon until about 11 at night. While his arepas are still warm and crispy, he splits them and stuffs them with vinegary seafood salads—like octopus, conch and shrimp—studded with tomatoes and olives. At $6 a pop, they’re a perfect post-swimming snack. For a balanced meal, grab a can of locally-brewed Medalla beer from the bar next store for $1.35.

Boston’s South End keeps getting hipper. Every time I return to the charming neighborhood in my college town, I discover new chocolate shops, design stores and restaurants.

Last weekend I was in the city for the Red Sox game (and Celtics celebration), and even though I was craving a Fenway frank, I made time to swing by the much-buzzed-about South End restaurant the Beehive. The space and concept were inspired by and named for a 1920s artists’ residence in the Montparnasse district of Paris, and the downstairs truly feels like an artist’s studio, with live music performances and local art hanging on the walls. Despite the fabulously designed interiors, my friends and I were lured outdoors to a patio table because we wanted to try the new “urban picnic” menu.

My friends and I were handed a list of about a dozen simple yet delicious-sounding items, and after much back and forth, we checked off the Sicilian tuna with artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes, Manchego cheese with honey, tuna tartare and seasonal red cherries. Within minutes, our server dropped an oversize picnic basket on our table. Tucked inside were adorable glass jars containing each of our dishes, along with two butcher-paper-wrapped French baguettes. After a round of Beehive juleps (made with two rums and a drop of honey) arrived, we passed around jars, taking forkfuls from each and battling for the last scoops of our favorites (there aren’t plates, so things got a little messy, which was part of the fun). It was the perfect prelude to a game—satisfying, yet not so overwhelming that I couldn't make room for my ballpark dog by the sixth inning.

Maybe you, too, thought you knew how to order great sushi: Pull up to the bar with your friend (and his unlimited credit card), mutter the word "omakase," and unleash the magic of putting yourself in the chef's hands.

Here's another way. I went to lunch at 15 East recently with writer Trevor Corson to catch up and talk fish (we went to the same high school, and Trevor's the author of two great books on seafood: The Secret Life of Lobsters, and The Zen of Fish). Trevor chatted up the chef in full-on Japanese (he spent several years in the country) and learned some surprising news: "he asked us not to order the sushi," Trevor reported. The chef felt his time and palate were both too limited during the busy, shorter-menu lunch to really show off. He asked us to come back at night, when the broader fish selection would allow him to put on a proper omakase show. Instead we ordered a tart mountain yam salad, the famous octopus and a few other tasty, sushi-free starters.

Now Trevor is providing this service for hire. You, too, can have a sushi whiz talk you out of ordering any sushi.

I'm only kidding. Trevor is perhaps the country's first sushi concierge (www.sushiconcierge.com). For a reasonable fee, not only will he chat with the chef and find out what's good, but he can also show you how to eat your nigiri properly (dipping it fish-first into the wasabi-free soy sauce then downing it in one bite), fill you in on the history and biology of the seafood, and make funny jokes about lobsters in their boudoirs. You don't have to live in NYC, either - for a slightly larger fee, he's willing to travel.