iPhone Foodie Apps

Since the dawn of the iPhone App Store, there have been foodie apps. Recipes, diets, restaurants, you name it, if it relates to food there is probably an 'app for that.' Along with the apps, every foodie, techie, and foodie-techie has their own list of top 10 food related iPhone apps. Now Apple has take the matter into their own hands. Last week's App Store Spotlight highlighted exactly that. Check out Apple's list of top apps for people who love food.

Community Connected: The Evolution of Urban Farming

Watch this short film, and you'll get a good sense of the early days of urban farming, Novella Carpenter, the author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, is an obsessive, anti-conformist personality, who slowly built the vacant lot next to her west Oakland, CA, home into a hotbed for fava beans, tomatoes, chickens, rabbits, and goats. Her work was grungy under-the-radar urban farming. (She looted the dumpsters of organic, Bay Area restaurants for food for her animals.)

In recent years though as agricultural production has grown in densely populated areas throughout the country, urban agriculture has softened its rough edges--and in some cases, even come to represent cache and good taste. The latest issue of the New York Times Style magazine included an entire story on rooftop gardens. The roof of the city's luxurious Crosby Street Hotel hosts rows of heirloom tomatoes, lettuce and herbs--as well as a blueberry patch and coop for Araucana hens (which lay blue eggs). Roberta's, a Brooklyn pizzeria harvests chiles, herbs, tomatoes and beets from the 40,000-square foot rooftop farm it runs in conjunction with Brooklyn Grange, a commercial farm. And the super hip, Ace Hotel is setting plans for its garden too.

As urban farming has expanded, so has the type of product coming out of these gardens. Where fresh produce one predominated, there are more chickens and rabbits. And raising these animals in confined spaces has become easy because of companies like Omelet, which makes urban chicken coops.

Even Boulder has begun to catch this urban agricultural fever. For now, its efforts are personal or small scale. (Eric Skokan of Black Cat operates his own 10-acre farm and CSA. Big Red F restaurant group has a number of window boxes it uses to grow herbs.) But next year, downtown Boulder plans to launch an effort to develop rooftop gardens. We're crossing out finders that this becomes a reality. Just imagine what this might mean for local restaurant--or possibly even First Friday lunch.

Cathryn Olchowy
Culinary Director

Luxury Re-valued: Summer of Street Carts

This summer, the ice cream truck will get a run for its money. Denver and Boulder have finally caught onto the nation's street-truck craze. In addition to Denver's Gastrocart, once warm weather hits, the cities will have cupcake, taco, and breakfast carts, too. Here's a quick rundown of what you should expect to see about town.

Denver Cupcake Truck The sisters behind Park Hill’s Cake Crumbs bakery have launched this mobile sweet-tooth haven. Each day they, and their cupcake man, fill the truck with eight varieties of mini-cakes (the lemon’s delightful)—and plenty of milk. Then, they hit the road.

Pinche Tacos This month, Kevin Morrison—co-founder of the Spicy Pickle and Culinary Council member—will open his homage to Mexican street food on Denver’s 16th Street Mall.

Steuben’s Food Truck The beloved retro comfort food restaurant puts its menu favorites on wheels next month. Watch out for the vegetable oil- and solar-powdered, 1978 Chevy, which will make rounds during lunchtime.

Comida In Boulder this spring, brake for the pink truck of Rayme Rossello, co-founder of Proto’s Pizzeria. From her small movable kitchen, Rossello plans to dish up a variety of gorditas, quesadillas, and breakfast eats.

StreatChefs And finally, the street cart we’ve all been waiting for: Hosea Rosenberg and Michael Rice’s venture. Hosea’s blog suggests his restaurant-truck will be up and running next month—and word around the office, is that the internationally inspired foods are delicious.

Kazia Jankowski
Associate Culinary Director

Break Free Meets Community Connected in Hush Dinners

Imagine this: It's Saturday night. You want to try a new restaurant--and your choices are 1) the neighborhood bistro for its intimacy, 2) the downtown, new spot for the scene, or 3) both. Your answer's number three, right?

This scenario isn’t just stuff of day dreams. Denver’s newest restaurant, Hush Dinner, drops up-close-and-personal chef dinners into hip cool spots (design galleries, art museums, exotic car dealerships). Which means that this month you can enjoy a five-course meal of an up-and-coming chef while testing out sleek chaise lounges. And next month you can try the molecular gastronomy recipes of a chef, like Ian Kleinman, while checking out Ferraris.

This location-less restaurant is the hard work of Phil Armstrong, who most recently worked at SugarToad in the Chicago area and was a partner at the now-defunct Seven on Pearl. The duo currently hosts about five of its donation-only dinners a month in both Denver and Boulder and plans to expand into Aspen and Vail in the next year. Their restaurant is an invite only experience. You can’t simply walk in off the street and join. Instead, you must sign up via the website and await the sign-up.

But the experience is worth it—both for the experimental food, cool locale, and as a rare local expression of both the Break Free and Community Connected Shifts. Hush ignores the convention of a traditional restaurant with a standard address, in favor of offering its diners a chance to meet a chef and try his food uncensored. (No demanding restaurant clientele has shaped the Hush menus. This is a night when a young chef gets to be completely creative.)

Next chance to try one of these unique dinners will be in late May or early June. (The mid-May event is completely reserved.) Word on the street is that the early summer dinner will take place on a Boulder cattle ranch with Longmont’s Terroir restaurant manning the burners. Sign up for the invite list now, if you want to ensure a chance to go.

Kazia Jankowski
Associate Culinary Director

Always On: Food Photography Shapes Technology

Social media has found a new celebrity. Ashton Kutcher and Twitter, please step aside. Kanye and your blog, too. Food is the latest starlet, and it is driving online conversations--as well as the technology that records them. To give a sense of the growing presence of food in our wired lives, here are a few impressive facts.

1) Since 2008, the number of photos on Flickr tagged as "food" has increased ten-fold to more than six million.

2) The most active Flickr photo group, "I Ate This" has more than 300, 000 photos that have been contributed by more than 19,000 members.

3) Nikon, Olympus, Sony, and Fuji now all make cameras with "food" or "cuisine" modes, which allow for up-close shots with enhanced sharpness and color and texture saturation.

4) Grant Achatz of Alinea, Chicago, says that, on average, diners who take snapshots of their food take five minutes longer per course.

5) One of the hottest sites at this year's South by Southwest Interactive conference was Foodspotting.com, a website and mobile app, that allow users to exchange and rate food photos much like the social media site, Foursquare.

So confession time: How many of you snap shots of your meals?

Kazia Jankowski
Associate Culinary Director