Great Food Items

Here are two great news items for members of the PLO [Philistine Liberation Organization]:

1. Twice in the past week, I have had the terrific Angus Steak sub from Subway. It is very good for sub-shop fare.

2. Also, in Canada at least, McDonald's is celebrating its 50th anniversary with specials on double burgers and double cheeseburgers. For the full grease effect, I recommend the double cheeseburger plain, which is how I used to eat them when I worked at a McDonald's during the summer of 1961.

I expect that some readers who saw the subject line of this piece wondered if I was going to refer to something by Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution. He has tastes a bit different from mine, however, running perhaps more to these:

WORLD'S 'TOP 10 RESTAURANTS
1 The Fat Duck Bray, Berkshire, UK
2 El Bulli Montjoi Spain
3 The French Laundry Yountville California, US
4 Tetsuya's Sydney, Australia
5 Gordon Ramsay London, UK
6 Pierre Gagnaire Paris, France
7 Per Se New York, US
8 Tom Aikens London, UK
9 Jean Georges New York, US
10 St John London, UK

The Fat Duck, owned by Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal, also won the Best Restaurant in Europe category.

The eatery offers three menus including a £37.50 lunch menu boasting fig purée with red wine, pumpkin risotto with hazelnut and rosemary, braised belly of pork and poached halibut.

A three-course a la carte menu costs £67.50 and offers customers crab with roast foie gras, oyster ravioli with goats cheese and truffle, saddle of venison and best end of lamb.

But for £97.50, guests can enjoy snail porridge, sardine on toast sorbet and smoked bacon and egg ice-cream.

Snail porridge. Sardines. Yum.

And the snails are probably from Bosnia, of all places.

Those succulent, juicy snails you order might not have been plucked from the rolling hills of Tuscany or the Loire, but rather the valleys and mountains of Bosnia.

"These are healthy snails. No chemicals or pesticides. This is a perfect environment for them and probably why they are popular," says Mr Lucic. He proudly shows me some of his specimens, which have only recently emerged from winter hibernation.

But despite the physical attributes of the Bosnian snail, the cheap labour costs and the high unemployment situation are also key factors in the rise of Bosnian snail farming.

Well I'll be..... Relative factor prices and endowments play a role in determining comparative advantages --- again.

[thanks to Brian F for the two snail links]