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TIME: Almanac 1993
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TIME Almanac 1993.iso
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123190
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1992-08-28
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FOOD, Page 52MOST OF '90
Most Favored Vegetable. No need to limit yourself to a red
from Colorado or one of Idaho's browns. What about Yukon Gold?
Or Peruvian purple? We're talking serious potato now -- the
bulked-out veggie that conquered the culinary world in 1990. At
power luncheries, a favorite appetizer of the glitterati was a
spare baked potato. But you could get it boiled, fried,
duchessed and, most of all, mashed.
Best Food on the Road. Not so long ago, most U.S. hotel
meals seemed designed to horrify any gourmet. But in 1990 the
top-rated hotels in the first Zagat U.S. Travel Survey of more
than 1,400 inns, resorts and spas all boasted superb cuisine as
well as superluxury accommodations. So what if few but foreign
tourists can afford them?
Best New Dining Concept. One of the earliest harbingers of
economic recession wasn't longer lines at soup kitchens. It was
the sight of trendy restaurants frantically begging for new
customers by lowering prices, simplifying menus and advertising
themselves as -- code words of the '90s -- cafes, grills,
bistros or trattorias.
Soundest Dietary Restriction. The 1990 Nutrition Labeling
and Education Act mandates standard definitions of such terms
as light and lowfat, bans misleading claims and requires food
producers to list the amount of dietary fiber and saturated fat
in raw seafood, fruit and vegetables as well as on most
packaged-goods labels.
Latest Immortality Elixir. Not so long ago, the secret
ingredient to lower cholesterol was oat bran, which proved to
be no more or less magical than low-fiber grains. In 1990 health
nuts got hooked on canola oil, which is made from rapeseed.
Enough! cried Julia Child. "If fear of food continues, it will
be the death of gastronomy in the United States."
Best Wine Buys. Alsatian whites and Chilean reds. The
fruity, bone-dry Pinot Blancs and Pinot Gris from Alsace are
still quality bargains from France. For everyday drinking,
Chile's suave, uncomplicated Cabernet Sauvignons couldn't be
beat at $3.99 and up.
Least-Sparkling Water. It wasn't Perrier's year. First, lab
tests found traces of benzene, a potential carcinogen, in
samples of the green-bottled bubbly. Then the French government
forced Perrier to drop the words naturally carbonated from its
European labels. ("Naturally" had earlier been deemed a no-no
in the U.S.) Evian has now supplanted Perrier as America's
top-selling imported bottled water.
Biggest Turkey. TV's most obnoxious chef is a would-be comic
whose series appears on the Discovery Channel. Pasquale Carpino
of Pasquale's Kitchen Express yowls snatches of operatic arias
as he demolishes eggplants and describes his recipes in a
tootsie-frootsie accent that was barely funny when Chico Marx
used it.
Biggest Brewhaha. Long the target of unions and
minority-rights groups, Coors Brewing Co. acquired a new enemy
with its popular promo for Coors Light, featuring a haunted
house and the slogan "It Isn't Halloween Without the Silver
Bullet." The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence
described the ad's subliminal appeal to underage drinkers as
"chilling."
Priciest Slab of Cholesterol. Japan's richly marbled Kobe
beef, from beer-fed cattle, was featured for the first time on
the menus of a few U.S. restaurants. For $100 or so, you could
order an inch-high steak weighing 14 oz. to 16 oz.