Mikey & Zone 7 - Behind the Scenes.

Zone 7 - Winter from Brian Hedden on Vimeo.

Serving Cage Free Sauder's Eggs.

As part of our ongoing efforts to serve the best (healthiest, tastiest, sustainable & local) ingredients possible - we're proud to serve exclusively cage free eggs.  

Fresh. serves only Sauder Eggs, a 4th generation family-run egg producer from Lititz, PA.

From saudereggs.com:

Cage-Free chickens are raised in a stress-free environment and are not in cages. They are kept in large heated and air-cooled growing houses where they can roost and socialize freely, participating in their chicken behaviors and pecking orders, and laying their eggs in dark, quiet nests.

Mexican Tortas.

I heard you're serving a mexican-style torta - that's awesome! PS - What's a torta?

Dense, filling and delicious a Mexican torta is a sandwich traditionally layered with beef, pork or chicken, cheese, mayo, avocado, lettuce and tomato. Defined by adaptability as much as recipe - the torta reflects the best ingredients of the region in which it’s served.

The one seemingly unbreakable law of the mexican-style torta is French bread, either telera (soft round rolls) or bolillo (torpedo shaped with a crust) perfect for texture and maintaining outside containment.

French bread on a Mexican sandwich - how did that happen? As with most history - actual events & myth married forming legend; leaving torta history in the hands of the teller. Our crackerjack research team has a hunch the torta is an indirect result of France's 1862 Invasion of Mexico. At war thousands of miles from home, French soldiers saw no need to deprive themselves good bread; building bakeries & introducing techniques long outlasting the invasion.

Ever wonder what you were celebrating on Cinco de Mayo? Of course you already knew it was Mexican militia men prevailing over the French at the Battle of Puebla which is why you always serve tortas at your Cinco de Mayo parties.

Mexican torta...there's others? South America, Italy, Philippines and even Mexico serve what's referred to by locals as a torta, with ingredients, technique and style unique to their country or regions within the country.

Why you care. You're playing the deserted island game with foodie friends - pick torta and free yourself from endless theoretical culinary monotony. Then drop your impressively extensive torta knowledge all while watching their faces knowing you're winning friends and influencing people.

Easier Being Green.

BIG thank you for supporting Fresh. By choosing a GRA certified Green Restaurant you're helping to make a difference - recognized in the letter below from Environmental Defense Fund, National Resource Defense Council and the Surfrider Foundation.

Who knew doing the right thing could taste so good?

Most revolutionary cookbook you've never seen.

What happens when a Cambridge quantum theory cosmologist collaborates with a futurist on a cookbook? What if they got real crazy & invited an award-winning nature photographer to contribute and a former Chief Technology Officer from Microsoft tagged along? What if they were all one person and his name was Nathan Myhrvold?

After earning a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics at Princeton, working with Stephen Hawking on curved spaced time and quantum field theory at Cambridge and serving as chief technology officer for Microsoft, what's left to accomplish? Turns out write a cookbook.


Typical of Myhrvold, it's not a typical cookbook. A 6 volume 2,400 page revolution described by luminary chef and molecular gastronomist Ferran Adria as changing the way we understand the kitchen. And for $625 Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking can be yours. In March. Probably - the date has been pushed several times.
(Notice the preview pic only had 5 volumes)

Learning of Myhrvold and Modernest Cuisine in Saveur I was intrigued, determined to purchase a copy. Until I saw the price. Holy wow. Why so expensive? Turns out the high cost is pretty simple if only midly less frustrating. With a custom laboratory/kitchen designed and built for the research and a staff of 20 researchers - they had to write the book on writing the book. And then publish it themselves. And the Myhrvoldian cherry - he developed new photographic techniques to document the research contained in the book.

From the book's site: In Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet—scientists, inven­tors, and accom­plished cooks in their own right—have cre­ated a six-volume 2,400-page set that reveals science-inspired tech­niques for prepar­ing food that ranges from the oth­er­worldly to the sub­lime. The authors—and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab—have achieved astound­ing new fla­vors and tex­tures by using tools such as water baths, homog­e­niz­ers, cen­trifuges, and ingre­di­ents such as hydro­col­loids, emul­si­fiers, and enzymes. It is a work des­tined to rein­vent cooking.

Also worth checking out - The Modernist Cuisine blog.

With postings on Inside the Lab with the team, sick photos like this one of a cutaway wok while cooking, or you just want to check out a high speed video of The Leidenfrost Effect - should keep you occupied while you're saving.

The Pad Thai Cutaway fea­tures a halved wok con­tain­ing siz­zling hot oil, noo­dles, and the dish’s other components.

All Filler no Killer?

Ever wonder how they can pay the chihuahua so much & still afford to sell a $1 burrito?

From Tacobell.com
"We're cooking with a proprietary recipe to give our seasoned beef flavor and texture, just like you would with any recipe you cook at home."

Remember when grandma used to use her special autolyzed yeast extract & soy lecithin recipe
with the silicon dioxide and sodium phosphates?

Ingredients for Spicy Beef from Tacobell.com
Beef, Water, Seasoning [Isolated Oat Product, Salt, Chili Pepper, Onion Powder, Tomato Powder, Oats (Wheat), Soy Lecithin, Sugar, Spices, Maltodextrin, Soybean Oil (Anti-dusting Agent), Garlic Powder, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Caramel Color, Cocoa Powder (Processed With Alkali), Silicon Dioxide, Natural Flavors, Yeast, Modified Corn Starch, Natural Smoke Flavor], Salt, Sodium Phosphates. CONTAINS SOYBEAN, WHEAT