Stanton Champion

I have this weird problem with Coke Zero (that’s the American Coke Zero, which may be different from international branding).  This version of Coca Cola differs from Diet Coke because it contains a different sweetner: Acesulfame Potassium (also known as Acesulfame K) instead of Aspartame.  The problem is, it tastes like lime to me.

To put this in perspective: for me Coke Zero tastes and smells like Lime Diet Coke.  Seriously.  I can’t tell them apart.  I’ve also tasted this effect in Diet Coke with Splenda, another drink that contains a different combination of sweetners that includes Splenda and Acesulfame K.  It’s like Diet Coke with a slight limey flavor.

I can think of a couple of reasons for this.  One is that Acesulfame K really tastes like lime to me for mysterious reasons.  I’ve never tasted the sweetener alone, so I don’t know for sure.  The other possibility is that I can’t taste Acesulfame K at all, meaning I’m picking up too much of the other acid flavors in the drinks.

Anyone else have experience with this?

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Over lunch at a recent conference, I noticed that the catered cakes actually had serial numbers!

What you’re seeing is a flat chocolate shell sitting on the back of a piece of mousse cake. Look carefully at the bottom left of the chocolate:

Yes, that’s a serial number (sorry for the blurry iPhone photos). What’s not shown is that the chocolate also had a brand label printed on somewhere else. Neither of these things belong on fine food, which is what this purported to be.

Serial numbers help with inventory tracking and things like that, but that is rarely customer facing. Seth Godin had a recent post about serial numbers, but his best advice was simply “Think hard about whether you need a serial number at all.” Diners do not care that your desserts have inventory tracking codes that help you or your suppliers find them more easily. They just want to be wowed by taste and presentation.

This cake should never have left the kitchen.

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For anyone who watches Hell’s Kitchen on Fox, you’ll learn two things:

1. Fox loves creating drama
2. Gordon Ramsay is a badass

If you haven’t watched the show, here’s the deal: A bunch of chefs all get together in a kitchen where they compete against each other for a reality show style prize. Each week, one of them is voted off the island *cough* kitchen, while the last one standing wins their own restaurant (for a year). The catch is that during each episode Gordon Ramsay screams at them incessantly while they’re cooking, and there’s not so much voting as just Gordon picking whomever he hates the most.

Ramsay is what makes the show so great. He’s been awarded twelve Michelin stars. Twelve! The man could probably setup shop in a cardboard box and get a Michelin star. He’s absolutely passionate about food, quality, and customer service. Watching him run a kitchen is like watching a true master craftsman do what he does best.

The contestants are a different story entirely. Every week the two teams compete in a challenge, someone wins, someone loses, and the losers have to perform some kind of punishment. Most of the time, the punishment is extra prep or kitchen cleaning. These punishments are almost always related to a typical restaurant task, but the amount of griping from the losers is usually insufferable. You would think that they had to clean septic tanks or something. They’re almost all chefs, yet none of them have passion for what they do!

If you love food, then you should love being with food. You have to do extra prep? Great! You love food and that’s what chefs do! You have to go pick vegetables from a field? Great! Thomas Keller grows his own produce for The French Laundry so that he can always have the best food in the kitchen.

Be passionate! Losing on Hell’s Kitchen should be like winning.

By the way, if you want to watch, you can catch episodes on Hulu. In fact, this gives me an excuse to try Hulu’s embedding feature. Here’s a nice video of grown men throwing tantrums because they have to go pick food from a field.

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With everyone talking about food prices, I thought it might be interesting to do a little poll:

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The reason I ask is because of this article that somehow made it on CNN earlier today and has now slunk back to the blog where it belongs. In it, the author writes about how the price of iceberg lettuce has risen:

Organic mixed greens? Fancy leafy greens? Those handy-dandy bags of pre-washed salad mixes? Sure. But, iceberg lettuce? I am outraged!

Oddly enough, I had no idea what lettuce cost or what it historically cost when I read that post. A quick survey of my coworkers revealed that those who had families knew fairly well while those who did not were completely off.

Vote and then read to see if you too are outraged by the high price of iceberg lettuce.

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