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Buffalo wings are now a staple American dish, bottles of Tabasco and Sriracha sit nestled between salt & pepper on countless restaurant tables across the country, and BBQ sauce seemingly gets hotter by the year. Our love affair with capsaicin, the chemical compound that makes peppers hot, is obviously growing but how did it all begin and what's fueling its meteoric rise?

Hot Sauce Nation: America's Burning Obsession written by Denver Hicks & released just several months ago provides an in depth e

It's official: gastronomy is overtaking gambling as Vegas' highest grossing attraction. Most of us want a sure bet these days and our palates rather than the comp card increasingly drive the buying decisions. Thanks to celebrity chefdom and farm-to-table ethos, our awareness of fresh ingredients and demand for exquisite dishes prepared by culinary artists has risen meteorically.

Venetian-Palazzo, a raging culinary flashpoint on the Vegas strip boasts the highest number of James Beard chefs togeth

Walking tours are wonderful especially if they have a specific topic and cover only a small area.  Thus it is with “Burgh Bits and Bites” tour of Pittsburgh’s Strip District.  At one time the Strip District, located along the Allegheny River, was home to many mills and factories that later became an area of wholesalers of fresh produce and meat with restaurants to serve shift workers at any hour of the day. Things change and today most of the produce industry, manufacturing plants and mills ha

One important lesson I learned during my visit to St. Simons Island was how difficult it is to promote the use of locally sourced ingredients even in a region awash in native seafood, fruits, and vegetables. The more people seek out and demand better quality food, the easier and more cost-effective it will be for local purveyors to compete with mass produced mediocrity. The King and Prince, an historic resort on Georgia's coast is pulling out all the stops reaching out to local growers and culti

Fans tuning into the new Top Chef Masters' season starting tonight should also check out Curtis Stone's upcoming weekend pop-up appearance at Carnevale, Venetian and Palazzo Vegas's summer-long revelry. Sign up for one of Stone’s two 4-hour wine dinners and a quick flight to Vegas gets you up close and personal with this Aussie chef who taught Conan O’Brien and Meredith Vieira how to cook.

A champagne reception followed by a 5-course pop up dinner starts each night at 6 p.m. All based on recipes

We stumbled upon a very detailed step-by-step, illustrated guide on how to "crack, crunch and suck out the best bits" of Shanghai hairy crabs, on CNNGo. Couldn't have stopped for a second to wonder why on earth would anyone eat anything that looks like a mitten, from another planet.

A hairy crab is not exactly the prettiest creature to crawl out of Yancheng Lake into your plate, but they are certainly the most sought after, at this time of the year. When a slight chill can be felt in the air, an

The line on South Street wrapped around the corner. Once inside the chrome facade it continued to snake around in Disney-ride fashion. Each person mumbling to themselves as they tried to memorize their order. The line moved along one timid customer at a time. Each one blurting out their selection, as if on the soup-nazi episode of Seinfeld. “One, provolone, mushroom with" (The 'with' referring to onions). 

The line bumped forward. This placed reeked with the essence of grilled beef.  Jim's Steakh

via Hg2

Next time you’re in Russia’s capital and require an adventure fix without leaving the big city, go for an urban expedition at central Moscow’s Ekspeditsiya, whose roaring open fire, pine tree, canoe, running stream beneath the floor, and real rescue helicopter will whisk you on an eponymous expedition to the wilds of Siberia. And so should chef Leon Ek’s menu: disguised as a photograph album of all kinds of awe-inspiring al fresco adventures, it offers the traditional food of Russia’s Ar