Results tagged “tomatoes”

A new Gourmet article by Barry Estabrook explains how migrant farm workers in Florida often end up in positions of involuntary servitude, essentially over the production of crappy wintertime tomatoes destined for supermarket bins or as garnish for some jumbo/burger/gordita concoction plucked off a dollar menu. That includes most restaurants in New York City—fast food or otherwise—that buy tomatoes; more information can be found here. Estabrook writes about one worker in particular who was locked up and beaten by a handler, but it’s no isolated case: "Law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases" since 1997, and it’s not just the tomato growing industry. The piece has so far provoked a predictable cavalcade of xenophobic comments, such as, "I wish I could feel sorry for them, but when you go to a foreign country illegally, can't speak, read nor write the common language, then you're asking, no, BEGGING to be taken advantage of like this man was."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the Center for Disease Control is looking into other causes of the salmonella outbreak that has affected hundreds of Americans across the country.

Bruni hits Jean Georges' "fringe players," Mercer Kitchen and Vong. Between the two, Vong emerges victorious with one star: "you keep wondering if the food they deliver is really as it should be and all that it could be, if the restaurant is receiving Mr. Vongerichten’s most considered judgments . . ." while Mercer Kitchen rates a mere "satisfactory": Bruni calls their menu an "ethnically indistinct assortment of dishes with enough pro forma salads and...