This Week on Good Food: Sitting in Bars with Cake, Russian Tailgating, Chipotle’s New TV Show

Image by Audrey Shulman

Can you find love in a bar if you bring cake? Anya von Bremzen tells us how to drink vodka like a Russian, and Chipotle announces a TV show aimed at industrial farming.

Highlights from this week’s show:

1. Sitting in Bars with Cake–Audrey Shulman is the author of Sitting in Bars with Cake, a blog that chronicles her attempt to meet that special someone through what she calls ‘cakebarring,’ the act of bringing freshly baked cakes with her to bars.

2. OkFarmer? Online Dating for Farmers Only–Online dating has grown in popularity in recent years, leading to the proliferation of more niche dating sites to cater to specific lifestyles and interests. One such dating site, Farmers Only, is as the name implies, specifically for farmers, and has a tagline that reads ‘City Folks Just Don’t Get It.’

3. How to Tailgate Like a Russian–Anya von Bremzen is a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure and her most recent book is Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, a food memoir about growing up in the Soviet Union. In honor of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, von Bremzen tells Good Food how Russians tailgate, including how to properly drink vodka, and what Russian hors d’oeuvres to pair with it.

4. Market Report

Barbara Spencer of Windrose Farm discusses the drought’s impact on her crops, and how the combination of dry and cold weather caused her two month absence from the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market.

Chef Dreux Ellis of Café Gratitude tells Laura Avery about escabeche, a spanish-style pickle.

5. Farmed and Dangerous: Chipotle’s Debut TV Show–Chipotle, the popular burrito making chain, is starting a new television series on Hulu that takes aim at industrial farming. Evan speaks with Mark Crumpacker the Chief Marketing & Development Officer for Chipotle.

6. Jonathan Gold Reviews Acabar–Jonathan Gold is the Pulitzer Prize winning food writer for Los Angeles Times, and this week he reviews Acabar, a newly opened “grand neo-Moroccan lounge-restaurant” in Hollywood that elevates the can of sardines. Click here for recommended dishes.

7. Trout and Drought–Stafford Lehr is the Chief of Fisheries for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He discusses the effects of the drought in California on trout and salmon populations.