Rats on the salad bar? Thank God It’s Food

[Click here for the web version of this email]( Friday, 11 January, 2019 "What is the best restaurant in the world? It doesn't exist. There are some restaurants with stars that are empty, and others without any that are full." Pierre Koffmann to The Guardian [Sponsored by Pick n Pay]( [THANK GOD IT’S FOOD]( [Breaking Bread with Daily Maverick]( By Styli Charalambous, Daily Maverick CEO [Food is Life. Not only the way we sustain ourselves but also as the centrepiece around which we live our lives. We celebrate with cake, we break bread with friends – and foes. We braai enough that the hijacking of a heritage holiday goes unnoticed. It affects our health, our mood and our environment – our present and our future. Thank God It’s Food, the latest newsletter publication from Daily Maverick, will journey through South African culture, cities and towns and societal issues through the vehicle of food. Join us once a week as we serve you food journalism that matters. We can’t guarantee you’ll lose weight riding along with us, but we do come with a zero-calorie promise that junk food like Zuma and Trump will be banned from this particular menu. Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash]( [GASTROTURF]( [Trends & Tendencies: The death knell for pretentiousness on a plate]( [By Tony Jackman]( [There’ll come a time, and it won’t be too long now, when we will look back at this era of foams, gels and boil-in-a-bag (sorry, sous vide) the way we scoff about former foodie fads such as the Nouvelle Cuisine phase of the 1960s and onwards which, though it was meant to celebrate the lightness, freshness and simplicity of a plate of food, dissolved into an excuse for restaurateurs to put as little on your plate as possible while in no way reducing the price of your meal out. Photo by Fabrizio Magoni on Unsplash]( [Read more]( [Adspace]( Explore these unbeatable deals from Pick n Pay. [Click here]( [CONVERSATION PIECE]( [There’s a rat in mi salad, what am I gonna do?]( By Tony Jackman [Here’s a topic for the dinner table. ‘Food Lovers Market – the heart of Good Food’, the slogan for the popular food franchise boasts. To which they might add, ‘as any discerning rat can attest’, after rodents were observed, and videoed, in two Food Lovers Market stores this week. Photo by Ive Erhard on Unsplash]( [Read more]( [... AND THERE'S SNAKE IN MY LEMONGRASS]( [Hong Kong is a treat to taste buds serving up anything frompoached salmon and mash to some of the best dim sum and bamboo noodles. If you happen to be there during the cool and rainy winter months, the only way to warm yourself like a local is with some slithery stuff. Carien du Plessis tried snake soup so that you don’t have to.]( [(IN)DIGESTING FACTS]( [‘Highly processed food is a form of pollution’]( By Rebecca Davis [Science writer Leonie Joubert looks at food a little differently to most of us. In a number of publications over the last five years, Joubert has argued that our understanding of concepts like hunger, food security and nutrition is often a bit, well, nutty. From smug metropolitans who think obesity is a sign that people are too well fed, to impoverished mothers feeding their infants Stoney’s ginger beer to make them strong, Joubert prescribes a diet of cold, hard facts.]( [Read more]( FOOD BITES Eat this, Cape Town: Joburg has been listed 29th in a directory of the world’s “healthiest cities”. The compilers found 145 “vegan option” restaurants, 32 spas and seven health food shops. Said travelsupermarket.com: “Known to most as Joburg or Jozi, this glorious sunshine city ... has a number of successful urban-renewal projects boasting hipster cafes and eateries.” Owners of beer boeps beware – here comes “gut-friendly food”. The popularity of pickling and fermenting vegetables has ignited a trend for “gut health”, with bbcgoodfood.com and other experts predicting that focusing on prebiotics and probiotics will be a Big Thing in 2019. That beer belly might not be due to drinking too much beer — it might just be the result of evolution. Humans put on two kinds of fat, reports Bloomberg – visceral fat surrounds vital organs, and subcutaneous fat is found on limbs and hips. Biologists believe visceral fat is meant to protect vital organs from infection. “Dry January” could keep you drinking less later in the year. Sussex University researchers found that a break from alcohol could have a host of positive side-effects. Following more than 800 “Dry January” participants, they found most were still drinking less in August 2018 than in previous years. Bloomberg Poke bowls are predicted by bbcgoodfood.com to be a mainstream food craze in the near future. These everyday Hawaiian dishes are described as “essentially sushi without the fussy presentation”, “endlessly customisable” – and cheap. Stellenbosch hosts street soirees on 16 and 30 January, with food stalls and wine from local cellars – R100 gains you access, a glass and 12 “wine-tasting tokens”. The “communal parties” happen from 6pm to 9pm (weather permitting) in Drostdy Street. Food vendors charge for their nibbles too. Food news for Daily Maverick’s Thank God It’s Food? Email Tony Jackman on jackmanwrites@gmail.com [DINING: Obrigado for the music]( [If you’d blindfolded me, bundled me into a helicopter, flown me for hours and pushed me through the front door into Gosto, I would've thought I was in a vibey and ultra-hip restaurant in the Big Smoke. Joburg or Cape Town, maybe even Hong Kong or London. But Clarens? No, not even the Swiss one. Clarens, Orange Free State.]( [COOK: paella by the sea]( [Tired of repeated, long-winded stories of his “Spanish Paella”, Gordon Wright's family got him a serious paella pan for Christmas and insisted he break it in with a proper, Kenton-style paella. (The result: Not much you could call Spanish but plenty of Eastern Cape style.)]( [how wine will change in 2019]( [The wine world can change faster than you'd think; 2018 was beset with trade wars, Brexit instability, and climate-change-driven weather events. All this made some wine regions winners, others losers, while investors scored big time: Fine vino outperformed stocks and bonds, according to Liv-Ex. Bloomberg]( Explore these unbeatable savings from Pick n Pay. [Click here]( Featured Recipes [Kenton-on-Sea Paella]( [Braaied fish with zingy salsa]( [W]([atermelon with chilli gremolata]( [R]([oast veg, feta & barley-stuffed peppers]( [Crisp Fried Calamari Rings]( [Strawberry & Mint Cordial]( [Adspace]( Special New Year deals from Pick n Pay. [Click here]( [FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO A FRIEND]( [Fb] [Tweet] [Link] [Yt] Copyright © 2018 Daily Maverick, All rights reserved. You are receiving this mail because you are awesome and on the Daily Maverick Thank God It's Food subscriber list. [Getting too many emails from us? Manage your preferences]( [Unsubscribe](