If you’re familiar with COOK’s boutique, then you know about our private label pantry items, soaps, candles, cookbook collection, and local artisan foods such as Side Project Jerky, Rival Bros. Coffee and Jersey Gina’s Jems. But now there’s something on our shelves specifically for the youngins: The Fresh Food Memory Game, a creative take on the classic family box game that you may know simply as “Memory” or “Concentration.” An added bonus: all proceeds benefit art programs in under-resourced public schools. Continue reading →

Planning is now under way for the 2013 Audi Feastival, an annual celebration bringing together Philadelphia’s top chefs and restaurants to benefit FringeArts. A highlight of each FEASTIVAL is the evening’s  auction — a number of exclusive packages go up for bidding, with all proceeds directly supporting the arts in Philadelphia. The ultimate food-centric experience offered as part of 2012′s auction became an opulent reality in March, when six of the city’s most celebrated chefs created a dinner party to remember for an exclusive group of Philly-based patrons of the arts. Continue reading →

“Use as much profanity as you want,” began Michael Solomonov cheerfully. “F-bombs, totally acceptable. Also encouraged: open-hand body slaps; impromptu high-stakes rock-paper-scissors games; and devious ways to get a man to bend down so you can finger-thwack him from behind. Those are today’s basic ground-rules. Everybody okay with that? Great, let’s get going!”

And so began our final COOK Masters class, with Solomonov in the lead like the naughty conductor of some deranged culinary orchestra. If you’ve read your Bourdain, or marveled at Ramsey’s foul-mouthed locutions on the telly, or even seen Ratatouille, you already know that professional kitchens can be a bit rough around the edges—seething, cursing vortexes of controlled chaos and intense personalities on a passionate mission to craft flavor and beauty. No matter where you eat, the person who cooked that exquisite dish for you is likely to be the type who, say, was once a roadie for Insane Clown Posse, or who could teach you the kind of filthy Spanish that would make his abuela gasp and faint. They truly are a “colorful” lot.

There are plenty of tyrants out there commanding their kitchens with expletives and berating and belittling, but that’s not what I’m talking about with Solomonov. He’s more of a mischievous sort, slinging the shit for fun, of course, but also to build camaraderie and the kind of healthy rivalry that gets everyone to goad everyone else into doing an even better job. The Japanese call this “sessa-takuma,” which literally means people polishing each another by grinding against each other’s hard surfaces. Faster, cleaner, prettier, tastier, better, whatever-er—that’s what gets cooks off, and they take pride in it. Continue reading →