June 2025 IL MENSILE: the month that was

Nature doesn’t have a marketing department

Friends,
 
I’m starting with this happy grab from Dan Buettner. For those who don’t know, Dan wrote the book collating the Blue Zones, areas around the world where people live the longest lives. He was seeking the similarities, not necessarily the science based, molecularly studied reasons, but the anecdotal, cultural connections.
 
Looking particularly to the Mediterranean, the evidence pushes back against the prevailing, teetotalling winds. “If you take an organic wine,” Dan states, “without sulfites, it’s full of all kind of compounds that are good for your gut, that lowers cortisol levels … a little bit of wine every day, especially with a plant-based meal, is a net positive.”
 
Restaurants
 
- Dare I bore you with the 50 Best? Perhaps only to say that glancing through the list I am quite astounded at the sameness of all the dishes pictured. I can’t say there’s much there that tempts me either, except Etxebarri (always Etxebarri). The list is here, if you want to judge for yourself.
 
- It is worth reading about the 50 Best Champions of Change Award given to Bundjalung woman Mindy Woods. “Food for us wasn't just food; it was medicine. It was connection and cultural tools.” Her interview in the Powerhouse Culinary Archive is a firm favourite – she has a beautiful spirit, a firm belief and big energy. In this interview, and in the Archive, she speaks clearly on how lessons from country can be shared and applied to help build a better culinary future, indeed, a better future, fullstop.
 
- Aaron, in Not Drinking Poison, had a little review of Auvergne auberge owners Laura Victor and Zach Watson's Hostel Orfenor, in Brioude – a Chassignolles alternative for “the scrappy, cash-strapped young winemakers who comprise the Auvergne neo-paysan new wave”. I may not be young anymore, but am occasionally cash-strapped and scrappy. I’m keen to check it out.
 
- CNTraveller have a nice little series running on “Where chefs eat”: Nuno Mendes in Lisbon, and the wider Chefs’ Table panel (Jamie, Thomas, Alice, Jose) talking London, Madrid, Paris, NYC and LA. Cute concept, restaurants worth trying.

Producers
 
- Champagne sales still on the decline. Crazy weather events on the up. It’s high (high!) summer over here, and deep winter there, and the papers have gone quiet on producers, most of my favourite writers too. And so instead, I’m going to share the intro to an article I recently wrote about garlic, with a little help from Patience:
 
“Pounding fragrant things - particularly garlic, basil, parsley - is a tremendous antidote to depression. But it applies also to juniper berries, coriander seeds and the grilled fruits of the chilli pepper. Pounding these things produces an alteration in one’s being - from sighing with fatigue to inhaling with pleasure. The cheering effects of herbs and alliums cannot be too often reiterated.” - Patience Gray
 
“The vital bulb! My kitchen could not function without it, I’m not sure my body could either. The glorious release of perfume extolled by Patience is not just found in the crushing, but also when garlic and onion are set upon the cooktop – those early, tantalising promises of the meal to come. And while I can’t avow for its work against depression, there aren’t many vegetables that perform the internal wonders of this humble plant: anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-microbial, garlic has played favourite among our health professionals since the Egyptians were building the pyramids.
 
“There’s a little magic in those cloves too, a witchy way that makes some things delightfully rich in its flavour while others take on only a whisper. Rubbing a raw clove on freshly toasted sourdough that has been doused in olive oil will make the most exuberant garlic bread; a thorough rub around the inside of the salad bowl will only ever be excruciatingly subtle, while the same action inside of your potato gratin dish will do something in between, where the cream mingles with its memory and does something quite special.”
 
I have been writing for this particular magazine for 18 years – that’s the longest I’ve done anything: job! boyfriend! house! – and sadly, this month, they pulled the pin. I admit it occasionally felt indulgent to be paid to write about produce each issue, to write about nature, were there was no obvious financial return to the business. Nature doesn’t have a marketing department.
 
They are taking the work “in-house” which sounds like code for ChatGPT. A sinister thought (but not surprising, read on for Ruth’s thoughts on the tough times afoot for newspapers and magazines). Time will tell, but nature is not getting any richer. We need a solution to keep the non-commercial stories coming.

Words 
 
- Interesting to see the NYTimes go the way of Good Food this month, announcing a move away from the traditional, singular, all-seeing, all-powerful reviewer. Instead they have placed a duo at the helm - Ligaya Mishan and Tejal Rao – along with a little gang of locals around the country. I defer to former NY Times critic Ruth Reichl for her thoughts:
 
“Newspapers employ restaurant critics for one reason: to sell newspapers. And in a time when newspapers everywhere are fighting for survival, the New York Times has opted to capitalize on the growing popularity of restaurant content in an entirely new way. … For those of us who love restaurants this increased coverage is going to be a lot of fun. But that’s not why this news makes me happy. Newspapers have never been more important - or more threatened - than they are right now. I like to think that my home town paper has figured out another smart survival strategy.”
 
- World Arak Day has just passed us by. This nice little love letter to Lebanon’s national drink is worth a read.
 
- The NYTimes wrote an eloquent obituary for John Robbins, who died earlier this month. Robbins’ Dad was one half of Baskin-Robbins, yet despite the ice-cream shaped pool and an offer to take over the business, Robbins turned his back on it all to write a treatise on the importance of good and healthy food, and where that intersects with the environment.
 
Diet for a New America (1987) was so revolutionary its impact was compared with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (‘62). Running the gamut from animal welfare to the environmental impact of factory farming and the implications of it all for human health, his book is said to have sold over a million copies. Robbins describes its message: “that the healthiest, tastiest and most nourishing way to eat is also the most economical, the most compassionate and least polluting.” Read it, not least for the little fairytale ending.
 
- MAD Digest ran an interview with Arielle Johnson, author of Flavorama. Think a new-gen version of Harold McGee, sitting “at the intersection of the kitchen and the lab”. There was some good explanations as to how smell and taste intercept when the food is in your mouth - “Your brain plays a trick on you: you’re sensing smell, but you literally, physically, feel like it's happening on your tongue.”
 
There’s a nice little bit on how that plays out with lemon: “Chances are, you’ve learned to add it only at the end of the cooking process, because otherwise, the dish will taste flat–an outcome that many people believe is the result of heat reducing the acidity. But that’s not true. You're not changing the acidity; you’re boiling off the aroma compounds. So what tastes flat to you is not actually less acidic; it's just flavor without smell.”
 
Contrary to my opening gambit, I’m concluding with some of the good science can do to firm up some of things we know intrinsically, especially: “One of the big problems in our modern systems is that flavor has suffered and nutrition has suffered, and these things are not unrelated. There appears to be some relationship between the flavor compounds in plants, and the nutritionally bioactive ones. The research is still very early, but it  suggests that a lot of flavor compounds are either related to things like vitamins or are vitamins themselves.”
 
Until next month,
 
Libby