Ever feel like your life is a never ending conveyor belt of groceries? I know, I know, and so do the employees of the Northern Cambria Giant Eagle. Join them on the lowest rung of the ladder in E.R. Barry’s latest piece of short fiction for the Quality/Quantity issue of Block Club. The dreary, infinite grocery belt was one of my favorite illustrations to work on yet.
- Julie
My son attends UVM and introduced me to Vermont Fresh Network, a collective of farmers, food producers and chefs. They work together to build the Vermont food and farm economy. Wishing other communities would take their lead.
Photo courtesy of Vermont Fresh Network’s Facebook.
- Marilyn
This week, our friends in Pittsburgh have officially re-opened their conceptual takeout restaurant.
We posted about Conflict Kitchen a couple months back, when Tim, Brandon and Steve finished a new website for the eatery, and again when I featured the restaurant’s former East Liberty takeout window in Block Club magazine.
Conflict Kitchen was founded in 2010 by Carnegie Melon professors and alumni and offers a rotating menu of food from countries with which the United States is in conflict. They began serving Iraqi cuisine. Iranian food followed, then Venezuelan. Cuban cuisine came after that.
The re-opening once again highlights Iranian culture, serving an extended menu of Persian food.
If you’re in Pittsburgh, make sure you stop by Conflict Kitchen’s new location in Schenley Plaza, at the corner of Schenley Drive and Roberto Clemente Drive.
- PS
Our seriously awesome friends from Pittsburgh food blog eatPGH are currently on their way to Austin, TX to present at this year’s SXSW Interactive Conference!
These four young ladies will be giving a presentation called Eat. Blog. Publish: Internet to Paper Hit, focusing on building an audience from the ground up through social media, and becoming a trusted source of information for a community.
While harnessing the power of the Interner is key, Sarah, Mandy, Julia and Laura will wax on the importance of good ol’ fashioned networking. Yes, folks: talking to people.
Peep the details:
Eat. Blog. Publish: Internet to Paper Hit
Sunday, March 10, 2013
12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Courtyard Marriott
Rio Grande Ballroom
300 E. 4th St.
The girls will also be talking about the local food in Austin on a live broadcast on Sunday at 5 p.m. EST with Crystal Esquival, author of Food Lovers’ Guide to Austin: Best Local Specialties, Markets, Recipes, Restaurants & Events. More info on that here.
After their TV broadcast, catch the girls signing books at the Austin Convention Center in the foyer of Ballroom D from 6 to 6:20 p.m.
If you’re in the area or attending the festival, make sure you check our friends out!
- PS
So we’ve been in the midst of developing a website for our friends at Conflict Kitchen down in Pittsburgh, PA. The idea behind Conflict Kitchen is that they only serve food from countries with which the United States is in conflict. The restaurant rotates its menu, decor, look and packaging every six months. They have previously served Cuban, Venezuelan, Afgani and Iranian foods. It’s a pretty interesting way to start a conversation about a subject which many folks may consider to be sensitive. You learn a lot about another culture over food and we want to help keep that conversation going after you’ve left the table.
We were approached by Co-Director of Conflict Kitchen, Jon Rubin, to help redesign their website. The site is currently off getting programmed and this is a little sneak peak. We wanted to keep the site very minimal, allowing for the functionality, colors and patterns to take center stage. We drew inspiration stylistically and functionality from several sites that both Jon and us Block Club folk thought would work well for their site: krystalrae.com | danielhopwood.com | coworkchicago.com
Looking forward to seeing it live, and believe me we’ll let you know too.
-Tim
We are in the final stages of rebranding a local restaurant that is definitely an institution here in Buffalo. As I started to think about this project, it was easy to get lost in the seemingly infinite amounts of food-related design out there. I have a folder overflowing with beautiful restaurant identities and mouthwatering food packaging, but here is a taste some that really struck me.
Stay tuned, we are excited to be unveiling our latest work soon!
- Julie
We’re close to wrapping the January issue of Block Club right now, in which we talk about comfort. It has been my goal for the last year to narrow in on subtleties and interpretations of our new broader themes. So when we began to discuss what might be in our Comfort issue, I set a permeable loose impossible guideline that we avoid the clichés (isn’t that always a goal?) of this comfortable topic.
I’ve clung to this macaroni and cheese comparison in most of my conversations about the issue. “Let’s think beyond mac and cheese,” or “I want to go deeper than mac and cheese. You know? Comfort from within.”
And then, last week, I made* macaroni and cheese. And it was heaven. Gooey, warm, smooth, creamy, rich, reminiscent of every babysitter dinner ever worth remembering. It was just about perfect. I wanted to marry my bowl. I Googled getting a marriage certificate for a food wedding.
While we’re still not doing a mac-and-cheese (or cheese-and-mac?) story, let it be known: internal, soul-searching comfort is necessary, but external, textural, luscious comfort is just as real. Just as legitimate.
Proof that we can’t avoid wanting what makes us happy.
Stay tuned for BCM30/Comfort this January.
-Ben
It’s obscene what happens when a box of Paula’s Donuts enters this office. We all just turned into donuts.
Speaking of, remember this?
-Ben
Some sweet and simple color palettes from Raw Color’s identity design work for food stylist Franke Elshout.
- Maggie
This is an absurd commercial for McDonald’s.
-Ben
Kelly Pratt is a design student and an enthusiastic sandwich lover, turning her love for food into a tasty type of art through Stately Sandwiches.
- Maggie
French art director Emilie Guelpa recently created these beautiful Pantone-inspired dessert tarts for French food magazine Fricote. Guelpa curates the delightful French blog Griottes, and it’s more than worth a bookmark - if not for the gorgeous food photography, then for the fact that she greets readers with the ever endearing, “Hello, mes petits lapins!”
Pinterest user? Check out Guelpa here.
- Maggie
Who wants some fresh guac? Wait…what? Check out this amazing stop-motion video by New York-based animator Adam Pesapane.
-Steve
This is the coolest use of a QR code I’ve ever seen. Read more at The Atlantic Cities.
-Ben
“We don’t run the same type of features as glossy magazines because frankly we’re just not going to do as good of a job. Our magazine plays to our strengths. The point — if there is one — is that there’s still room in print for lateral movement, and I think there’s an audience for it, too.” -Chris Ying, co-editor of Lucky Peach, a new food magazine
Diner’s Journal has a great interview with Ying and his cohorts wherein blogger Jeff Gordinier details his rules for magazine making.
-Ben
