The Best French Restaurants are in France

From their website: 

Maurice Graham Henry is the founder and sole owner of DininginFrance.com.  He also owns DININGINPARIS.COM which takes users directly to the Paris section of the DininginFrance site.

Maurice inherited his love of France and French cuisine from his father. As a boy, his father would tell Maurice stories about his frequent travels to France, especially about the fine restaurants and the wonderful food he experienced there. His father, an attorney who is also an accomplished cook, would often prepare French cuisine at home when Maurice was growing up.

This background, along with trips to France and an entrepreneur’s fascination with the Internet, prepared Maurice to launch DininginFrance.com and DININGINPARIS.COM in 2001.  Because Maurice recognizes that not all top tier restaurants are to everyone’s personal taste, his primary goal is to help online visitors determine which restaurants with multiple Michelin stars they would personally enjoy visiting for truly unforgettable meals.

In the past five years, the site has firmly established itself as the Web’s most trusted guide to the very best restaurants of France and the best French restaurants around the world.

Making Jam Stirs Up Some Success

cmbsweets was born on a foggy San Francisco morning in a studio apartment sandwiched between the Mission and Twin Peaks.

When Carolina Braunschweig came home from the farmer’s market loaded with a bushel of strawberries, she dipped a few in her morning yogurt. She ate a few more in the afternoon. She gave a basket to her neighbors, and brought a few more to a friend’s house for a barbeque. But there’s only so much a single girl can do with too many strawberries. So she did what any other sensible girl might: grabbed the sugar, one very big pot and a handful of recipes, and out came the first bath of cmbsweets’ jam. Her friends each got a jar; she passed a few on to her unsuspecting coworkers and then brought a batch over to a certain 16th street bar.

The crowd went wild. They wanted more.

Soon Carolina was using that same big pot to cook up apricots and figs and peaches and raspberries and began selling her jam all over town. Now, a year-and-a-half later, cmbsweets’ line of all-natural jams, jellies and sweets includes a dozen flavors — from pomegranate jelly to kiwi-lime-ginger preserves to olallieberry jam— and is available at markets across the country.

While cmbsweets has grown out of Carolina’s studio apartment, its homemade style and flavor hasn’t changed. The company uses only locally grown seasonal fruits, scouring farmers’ markets throughout Northern California for small family farms that offer the freshest, tastiest produce.

cmbsweets’ strawberries, for example, come from Gizdich Ranch in Watsonville. Vince Gizdich’s family has been farming the same piece of land for three generations. The best fruit makes the best jam, and Gizdich’s berries are so good that Sunset Magazine named cmbsweets’ strawberry jam “The Best of the West” in June 2006.

Twin Hill Organic Farms in Sebastapol supplies the fujis for the apple-honey butter, and every batch is sweetened with Wildflower honey produced by Eggman Family Farms in Terra Bella. Kashiwase Farms grows California’s plumpest apricots. cmbsweets adds a touch of almond extract and a bit of sugar to create a jam that tastes as fresh as the fruit off the tree.

All of cmbsweets’ products are made with fruit, sugar and lemon juice— nothing else. Much of the fruit is organic. There’s no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. The idea is to make fancy California food without the fancy California food price.

You can visit this great jam-maker online at www.cmbsweets.com.

Corporate Law + Ethiopian Cuisine = Restaurant Owner

After dining in a variety of Ethiopian restaurants, James Wallace, Esq. was convinced that an Ethiopian restaurant could succeed in Pittsburgh.  Selecting the proper location for a unique “ethnic” restaurant was a primary concern.  Complicating matters was Jamie’s actual occupation:  corporate law.

Undetered, Mr. Wallace followed his dream.

The East End, a neighborhood which was on the upswing of revitalization, provided the perfect location. Jamie purchased a vacant building on the border of Shadyside and East Liberty in June of 2003.

During the building’s conversion from a former retail fur store into a restaurant, Jamie spent time in Ethiopia. The bulk of the artwork decorating the walls of Abay is the result of this trip. Abay opened its doors to the general public on June 8, 2004. Jamie has not had a sound night’s sleep since and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Visit their website at www.abayrestaurant.com.

A Caffienated Career

From Oren’s Daily Roast: 

Oren Bloostein is the owner, CEO, and roastmaster of Oren’s Daily Roast. Oren started the business in 1986 at the age of 29. The idea then was to buy the finest green beans available, roast them fresh every day to the most flavorful degree, and sell them at favorable prices to the customer. Today, this idea remains unchanged.

By adhering to these simple ideas, Oren has become a highly regarded member of the specialty coffee industry; appearing on The Today Show in 1994 to show how to brew the perfect cup of coffee.

An active member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, Oren has addressed attendees at the annual conferences in Seattle and Long Beach.

Midnight Snack? Call Chompz

Some guys at Stanford University noticed that they were always sending someone to In-and-Out at midnight when they got hungry.

One of them got the bright idea to offer the service to their friends.

Chompz was born.

from their “about” page:

WHY are we doing this?We’re seniors. We’re bored. It’s around that time to hunt for jobs, and, well, that takes time and effort. So we decided to bring In-N-Out burgers to campus. We remember when we were freshmen and didn’t have the privilege to simply drive over to Rengstorff everytime we craved In-N-Out, and it sucked.

We probably won’t make much, if anything, from this – a Double-Double costs 2.75 + tax, which amounts to $3 – we’re adding 99 cents to that, hoping that somehow it’ll make up for the gas, extra materials, heating, and effort of us running all over campus. But this is at least fun, and we’ll have something to tell our potential employers when we work for The Man next year.

If it takes too much of our time, we might stop doing this, but we’d welcome anyone else who’d like to help out in the effort to bring In-N-Out to campus! We want to maintain the integrity of what is truly In-N-Out, so we only get what has been ordered, and we never purchase any extra burgers – after ordering the food from In-N-Out, we return directly to campus and deliver the burgers as soon as we can!

We’ll see how long this lasts, but until then, happy chomping!

Sincerely,
Team Chompz
Sam, Nick, and James