Category Archives: Food & Beverage

Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Travel

Steve Taylor From TravelFoodandDrink.com Goes on His Own Culinary Tour Across Europe

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Brno, Czech Republic, February 23rd 2011 — Less than a day after attending the first European Culinary Tourism Conference in Vienna, Austria Steve Taylor the C.E.O. (Chief Eating Officer) of Boston based TravelFoodandDrink.com will be going on his own culinary tour. His focus will be on eating a national dish, or local specialty in each of the six countries he travels through on the train, all within a time frame of less than 24 hours.

This may not be so easy considering he has less than an hour in most of the countries where the train stops. Plus, the temperatures will be near freezing, there will be a language barrier, and he will be carrying his luggage at all times. His culinary tour will start in the pre-dawn hours in the darkness surrounding the train station in Brno, Czech Republic and end around midnight in Ljubljana, Slovenia where the most popular item on the menu at that time of night is a horseburger. Other stops include Bratislava, Slovakia; Vienna, Austria; Szombothely, Hungary; and Zagreb, Croatia.

Steve doesn’t recommend rushing through countries while on a culinary tour, and all of the countries he is visiting are worth spending time in, and discovering their regional foods and the people that produce them. He could have just stayed on the train and not even breathed the air in some of the countries, but decided instead to “taste” every country that he travels through. He also wants to create more of an awareness for an emerging trend in travel called culinary tourism. His website promotes culinary tourism, and encourages those who travel to seek out local specialties, and eat the national dish of the countries they visit. As Steve says “It’s a great way to preserve their heritage and learn more about the people and their traditions, plus you get to eat some great food with an amazing history”. Learn more about the national dishes and local specialties that Steve ate during his culinary tour once his tour is finished on March 5th.

Contact Details: TravelFoodandDrink.com
38 Dustin Street
Boston, Massachusetts
taylorboston@gmail.com
617-584-7577

Business, Consumer Services, Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Travel

Official Ribbon Cutting Ceremony For The Grand Opening of Montecristo Lounge of Hollywood Florida

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We would be happy to have them also attend the official ribbon cutting ceremony taking place 6:30 PM at the same venue. The City Mayor, Mr. Bobber, the executives from Altadis USA will be carrying out the ribbon cutting ceremony.

The event is being sponsored by Altadis USA and Cuenca Cigars. “Altadis USA brands include: Montecristo, Romeo Y Julieta, H. Upmann, Warlock, Siglo, A. Turrent Triple Play, Trinidad Habana Reserve and many others”.

Our goal as a local striving business is to demonstrate to those currently visiting and those that have not visited our city as of yet, that there are local businesses ready to welcome them with open arms. Our city is not only beautiful, but also warm and welcoming to all visitors whether it is locals, neighboring friends from other cities, out of state visitors, and/or international ones. We at Cuenca Cigars and Montecristo Lounge strive to make every visitor/customer our number one priority as it relates to customer service, friendly and professional atmosphere.

This event will give Cuenca Cigars great recognition as well as domestic and international advertisement to the city of Hollywood.

As a final note, our Montecristo Lounge has been able to attract business partners like, Timeless-destinations, Connection for Business, and Mr. Jorge L Rodrigues, MBA Allstate Exclusive Financial Advisor; who are professionals and offer a nice distinction to our business and our customers. The more we attract successful companies and entrepreneurs to our city, the more revenue we will generate for all those surrounding businesses.

Yours truly,
Mrs. Ana Cuenca
Cuenca Cigars and Montecristo Lounge

Contact Details: 1928 Harrison Street, Hollywood, FL 33020.
954-364-7660, Fax: 954-364-7661, www.cuencacigars.com

Food & Beverage

Farmstead & Long Meadow Ranch Winemaker Dinner To Be Held On February 19th On Behalf Of Crushpad

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Jan. 31, 2011 – Scheduled for Saturday, February 19, 2011, the highly anticipated event has already drawn a lot of attention from Crushpad’s client base and friend community, and is expected to be a major success. The exclusive winemaker dinner will take place at 738 Main Street, St Helena, CA 94574, between 6:00 PM and 8:30 PM.

Executive chef, Sheamus Feely, has put together a menu to highlight the food friendly wines created by Ashley Heisey for Long Meadow Ranch.

If you haven’t been introduced to LMR wines, here’s your chance! Their 2007 Cab Sauv (96 pts) was just awarded the #5 spot in Wine Enthusiast’s list of Top 100 wines of 2010.

Farmstead features an authentic farm-to-table menu with many of its ingredients – grass-fed beef, vegetables, extra virgin olive oil, eggs and honey – coming directly from Long Meadow Ranch.

The cost of the dinner is $90 per person, which covers food & wine, tip & tax (the entire payment will be collected at the restaurant). The winemaker dinner is a great opportunity to enjoy wonderful wines with delicious foods, so hurry up and reserve a seat – space is limited!

To sign up for the event, please visit: www.crushpadwine.com/event/farmsteadwinedinner

If you have any questions about the event, please contact Hayden Moulds: hayden@crushpadwine.com

About Farmstead Restaurant

Farmstead restaurant showcases the seasonal, ingredient-driven American farmhouse cooking of executive chef Sheamus Feeley.

Housed in a former nursery barn, the 110-seat restaurant is a casual, social culinary hub revolving around a central open kitchen with booth and central seating, community dining, and a full bar. Farmstead features an authentic farm-to-table menu highlighting local, sustainable and organic ingredients at their peak freshness.

The wine program at Farmstead restaurant features Long Meadow Ranch’s elegant and balanced wines, as well as other domestic and international wines selected by Chris Hall to complement the restaurant’s American farmhouse cooking.

For additional information, please visit: www.longmeadowranch.com/Farmstead-Restaurant

About Long Meadow Ranch

Long Meadow Ranch is a 650-acre historic ranch nestled high atop the Mayacamas Mountains above the Napa Valley, and the home for award-winning wines and handcrafted extra virgin olive oils – as well as grass-fed beef, eggs, and heirloom fruits and vegetables. Long Meadow Ranch’s extraordinary food products have been featured by America’s top chefs.

The leading vision at LMR is to make wines as food – to create world-class wines that truly complement a meal using sustainable, organic farming methods. The award-winning, earth-formed, wine and olive oil facility and the adjacent moist, cool caves allow the team at LMR to produce handcrafted wines and olive oils entirely on their own estate under carefully controlled conditions. Led by winemaker Ashley Heisey the LMR staff is committed to pioneering modern approaches to their centuries-old crafts.

For additional information, please visit: www.longmeadowranch.com/About-The-Ranch/About-The-Ranch

About Crushpad

Crushpad is a custom wine making service with locations in Napa Valley and Bordeaux, with a growing database of over 5,000 clients including wine enthusiasts, professional winemakers, fine–wine retailers and restaurants. Crushpad specializes in small–lot, luxury wine production from world–class vineyards in California and Bordeaux. The founders, managers and promoters of the project are wine industry veterans and technology industry refugees determined to liberate winemaking from its traditional stereotypes of impossible wealth, expansive chateaux, and golden retrievers.

Since 2004, the company’s main strive has been to inspire and empower clients to bring their own contribution to the art of quality custom wine making by providing them with the education, support and material means needed to accomplish that. On a broader scale, Crushpad’s mission is to help people from across the country turn their passion for wine into a business and help them connect with folks with similar interests.

For many years, Crushpad has been giving the world numerous highly acclaimed wines created at Crushpad Bordeaux (Le Dôme, Les Astéries, Le Carré, Vieux Chateau Mazerat and Château Laforge), as well as the popular Napa wine variety and an extensive range of award-winning assortments sourced at California premium vineyards (Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Merlot, Sangiovese, and many more). In addition to that, the company holds wine blending sessions on a regular basis and has recently launched the third version of its groundbreaking winemaking tool Crushnet, which enables clients to create their own boutique wines at Crushpad while providing them with a comprehensive list of useful features.

For additional details about the company, as well as its offer of products and services, please visit www.crushpadwine.com

Contact Details:

Crushpad
3105 Silverado Trail
Napa, CA 94558
Phone Number: 1.707.637.8821
Email : hayden@crushpadwine.com

Consumer Services, Deals, Food & Beverage, Home & Garden, International Trade, Internet & Online, Retail, Shopping

Last minute Valentines gifts added at Fine Food Store

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The Fine Food Store has expanded the product range for the forth-coming Valentines Day offering a new selection of gourmet food baskets and mixed chocolate Valentine’s gift sets.

David Porter Managing Director of The Fine Food Store says, “At The Fine Food Store we firmly believe that Valentines Day is an extremely important day on the calendar. It is the perfect day to show your appreciation and your love towards one another. Through out the year it is very easy for loved ones and married couples to take each other for granted, and for some people showing love and affection can be difficult, so valentines is the perfect day to show your true feeling towards one another without the need for justifying your self.

It is also the ideal opportunity to extend your feeling towards someone you would otherwise dare not ask, a romantic card, chocolates and a bottle of Bubbly goes a long way in showing someone how much you really care.

The finefoodstore.co.uk is taking the lead in luxury Valentines offerings this year with a new collection of Valentines chocolates. Over the last 6 months we have sourced an exquisite collection of chocolate gifts from across Europe and in particular Belgium the home of luxury chocolates. We believe these luxury Valentine’s chocolates to be exclusive to The Fine Food Store, with our collection being contemporary and classic in appearance with amazing tastes.

Our latest designs in chocolate gift packaging certainly offer the wow factor one would expect from a luxury gift. With sensational colours, styles and innovations with fine Valentine’s chocolates; they give the perfect opportunity to show how much you care.

The Valentine’s gifts are available for last-minute online shopping at http://www.finefoodstore.co.uk/ with 48 hours delivery,” David concludes.

Food & Beverage

Naked Wines offers antidote for January blues

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Blue wine drinkers offered chance to lift their spirits

Online wine retailer Naked Wines , which supports independent winemakers from around the world, has launched a beat the January blues campaign, following the most depressing day of the year.

Together with Portuguese winemaker Mario Negreiros , they’re offering customers the chance to win a free trip to the Douro region by answering the following question:

Im feeling a little blue and I think I deserve to win a trip to visit Mario in Portugal because

Mario, who was discovered by a group of Naked Wines customers on a recent ViniPortugal buying trip, will be judging the entries and looking for the most miserable and deserving winner.

Entries so far include a plea from an aspiring wine writer, a customer who’s been out of work for a year and a skint wine lover who’s posted a video entry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJIeRWKYRxY

The competition runs throughout the rest of January with the winner will be announced during the first week of February.

To post an entry or to find out more about the prize, which includes free flights, free accommodation, free food and a free vineyard tour, visit http://www.nakedwines.com/januaryblues

Food & Beverage

ViniPortugal takes UK wine drinkers on buying trip

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UK wine drinkers invited on buying trip to Portugal.

A group of UK wine drinkers have teamed up with trade body ViniPortugal to source a new wine for online retailer www.nakedwines.com

Naked Wines, launched in December 2008 by Virgin Money and Virgin Wines founder Rowan Gormley, invites their most active customers to pick their wines rather than employing a wine buyer.

Rather than us tell customers what they should be drinking, they tell us, explained Rowan Gormley.

They accompany us to trade fairs and wherever possible, come on buying trips with us too. We also send them samples of all the wines were thinking of stocking before they go on sale.

Our customers leapt at the chance to head out to Portugal with ViniPortugal, and after tasting hundreds of bottles, they’ve picked out a superb new wine for the site.

Tnia Branco Oliveira from ViniPortugal added:
It’s great to get producers and customers together to share their passion for wine. The process of exporting a wine to the UK can typically take months, but by introducing both ends of the chain, and empowering the consumer to choose, the process is a lot quicker. Were delighted to see a new Portuguese wine for sale on Naked Wines, and we hope their customer buying team will be back to select more!

The wine they selected was the Negreiros Douro 2007, produced from grapes which were originally sold to Cockburns Port. Winemaker Mario Negreiros, who inherited his vineyard from his grandfather in 2002, has produced a short video to celebrate the new partnership:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wks7Ai8ZWNY

Winemakers looking to break into the UK can find out more about Naked Wines atwww.nakedwines.com/suppliers

Food & Beverage

Top Party Food Trends for 2011 from Top Private Chef

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These are the hottest foods and beverages to serve at your gatherings this New Year according to Chef Garrett, catering expert who specializes in personal chef services in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, CA – January 12, 2010 – Chef Garrett Hamilton wants to make sure every party host has the chance to dazzle his or her guests this New Year, even if they don’t hire a private chef. Los Angeles area residents have turned to him for countless parties, both large and intimate. This seasoned private chef service has a few suggestions to make any party special.

These are some of the biggest party trends for 2011 to make sure your soirees sparkle:

Cocktails with Fresh Fruit: With the current increased demand for seasonal produce, cocktails with fresh fruit are hotter than ever. Try pear vodka and champagne garnished with fresh pear slices.

Local Meat and Fish: Whether you’re serving beef, chicken or fish, your guests will look at it their meal in a whole new light know when they knot main dish was sourced locally. Sustainable meat and seafood are among the biggest trends that are hopefully here to stay.

Overindulgent Sides: Some of the most popular side dishes of the moment are also some of the most decadent comfort foods. Dishes like Brussels sprouts topped with brie and garlic butter or baked macaroni and cheese with gruyere and bacon are hot sides that guests will eat right up.

Fruit Pies and Mini Desserts: People love seasonal fruits and vegetables right now, and they also still love mini foods. Although cupcakes are still hot, fruit pies are also emerging as a hot dessert item, especially if you can make a miniature version and combine both trends!

Chef Garrett is an experienced and diverse caterer in Los Angeles. The LA area residents can learn more and inquire about his services at www.homepersonalchef.com.

About Chef Garrett:

The chef’s passion for cooking came at an early age of 10, watching his brother (Chip Ulbrich – Atlanta’s Finest Dining), while he was attending an apprenticeship for Rockefeller Resort hotels. Soon he realized he was learning as well, and his passion for the culinary arts had begun. Chef Garrett’s entire culinary training came from his 15 years experience on the job. He has worked with some of the most talented chef/owners and plenty of unheard of chefs and cooks as well, so he knows how to treat clients and staff. He has a natural ability to infuse unique flavors into everything from the most ordinary of dishes to the most complex. Some of the chef’s more notable positions include Executive Chef at Bentley’s Restaurant in Woodstock, VT, and Sous Chef at Quaterdeck Restaurant and Contrast @ the Commons in Cape Cod, MA. He has also opened three restaurants from initial staging.

Food & Beverage

Popularity Of Juicers Growing Among Health Conscious Consumers

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December 26, 2010 – With health being such a primary focus of so many people around the world today, there are many schools of thought competing. One sensible solution that a lot of people are embracing in an effort to live healthier lives is being chosen due to its sheer convenience and exceptional taste. Yes, juicing is now emerging as a key health building activity for people from all walks of life today. What used to be the domain of pro athletes and pioneering natural health enthusiasts is now the domain of average people looking for a simple, effective way to lead healthier lives. With the availability of such highly effective machines as the quiet, home friendly masticating juicer, many are finding that since they do not have to endure high levels of noise, this juicing trend might just be for them. Once they taste the results of the more efficient juicing machines that are quite a bit more advanced than those sold at discount retail chains, they fall in love with the juice quality these cutting edge machines are capable of producing.

Natural juice enthusiasts say that it really only takes one cup to win over converts to these new juicers because taste is the most obvious feature that people fall in love with. However, nutrition experts are quick to point out that the benefits of the nutrition in from the juice made from a twin gear juicer or other more recent model are even more powerful. With the ability to preserve the integrity of the nutrients with fruits and vegetables, these juicers are able to deliver the strongest benefits of those foods in an easier to consume way that ends up wasting far less of the nutrition that might otherwise end up discarded or destroyed during the cooking process. As consumers grow more savvy, they are coming to see that these machines can help them end up throwing fewer fruits and vegetables away because they can put them to use quickly instead of waiting for the time to prepare them in the traditional fashion.

Any person that wants to learn about the variety of juicing machines available today should take a look at the Fresh Start Juicers store and resource center available online at http://freshstartjuicers.com or, if they prefer, they can call the toll free number 1-866-95-FRESH between 9 AM and 4 PM Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday.

Business, Food & Beverage, Travel

Preston Hotel Barton Granges Restaurant Nominated For Top Dining Awards 2011

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January 10, 2011 – Barton Grange’s The Walled Garden in Preston, Lancashire has been nominated in the Hi-Life Dining Awards.

The highly respected bistro will compete against some of the UK and Ireland’s best restaurants for the highly coveted Dining Award in the Best Overall Restaurant category.

The Preston Hotel will now have to sit and wait for the 100,000 members to cast their deciding votes.

Ian Topping, Managing Director at Barton Grange Hotel, said: “We have put a lot of time, effort and money into updating the Walled Garden, making it a much more ‘now’ Bistro Wine Bar and are obviously delighted to have become recognised as one of the top restaurants in the North West.”

The awards ceremony, in association with Secured Mail, will be presented by BBC Northwest Tonight presenter Gordon Burns, and will take place on the 28th January at The Hilton Deansgate, in Manchester.

Lisa Lund, Commercial Director of Hi-Life, said: “The calibre of entries this year has been exceptionally high, with a number of new business members of Hi-Life taking part, which is great to see.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the entrants for taking part and wish all the finalists the very best of luck for the big night.”

The Hi-Life Dining Awards started in 2000 and recognises the best of the UK’s restaurant talent.

For more information on Hotel Preston Barton Grange and its Walled Garden bistro, visit www.bartongrangehotel.com or call 01772 867 070.

Business, Food & Beverage

World first: Naked Wines discovers perfect wine match for Australian humble pie

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England’s Ashes victory inspires UK wine merchant to get creative.

UK online wine retailer Naked Wines claims to have discovered a unique Australian food and wine match, which aptly coincides with England’s emphatic Ashes win.

With sales of humble pie soaring over the last week, we put our thinking caps on and came up with the perfect case to compliment the popular Australian dish, explained Rowan Gormley, Founder of Naked Wines.

And despite the Aussies dismal performance on the cricket pitch, this delicious food and wine combo more than makes up for it.

To promote the unusual match, and to celebrate England’s victory, Naked Wines are running a Wilting Matilda promotion for today only, offering every one in four customers the chance to win a free case of wine worth £120.

To find out more visit www.nakedwines.com/wiltingmatilda

And for good Humble Pie stockists, please get in touch with Jock Harvey, one of Naked Wines cricket-mad Australian producers.