I had lunch a couple of weeks ago in San Francisco at Perbacco with two friends, a New York magazine food editor and a prolific, award-winning cookbook author. When I joined the table, the place was humming — every chair filled, waiters bustling around. “There’s no recession, here,” I commented, looking around the room. To which they both replied that people of a certain income group are immune to recession and for them, life goes on.

Not so fast. Not long after that lunch, I saw a survey reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that found the rich are doing some belt tightening, too. The paper pointed out that Unity Marketing, a firm that monitors the luxury market, said its Luxury Consumption Index was at the lowest ever in January. The company’s survey found that 39 percent of the well-heeled would spend less on luxury goods in 2008 than before (16 percent would spend more). Whether or not that includes food purchases and restaurant dining is to be seen.

Meanwhile, all is not well in the restaurant world. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal’s “Weekend Journal” led with a story on “Cutback Cuisine” — how restaurants. even the luxury ones, are managing food costs by menuing more pastas, reducing portion size, using lower-cost ingredients and getting rid of low-profit entrees. [more…]

When my mother was a young, she worked as a clerk in a grocery store. All the goods were stacked behind the counter and the customers handed her a shopping list. My mom gathered the items, rang up the sale, then had the groceries delivered.

We grew up in the age of supermarkets. Mom, armed with her weekly shopping list, was only too happy to push the grocery cart through the aisles and pick up what she wanted, instead of having to wait for someone to get it for her. And the supermarket offered tremendous variety, unheard of in the grocery stores of her youth.

Today, the supermarket is only one of the many places we purchase food. The options for the consumer are staggering, with more types of stores selling food every day creating a battle for market share and the need for each type of retailer to stay on top of their game. [more…]

People are usually surprised to find that I wasn’t born with a wooden spoon in my hand. That I was not interested in cooking — no I actually detested cooking — until I became food editor of Co-Ed, a now-defunct teenage magazine for students in home economics, published by Scholastic in New York City.

It just goes to show, anybody can become a foodie. [more…]