by Claire Lassam | Presenting Scout’s weekly Food Media Omnibus, a collection of links to the local and international food stories of the day…

The New York Times looks into the history of the Boulevardier – the marriage of a Negroni and a Manhattan (I was sold as soon as they said “1920′s Paris”).

The LATimes finds tasty hot house tomatoes, which is all kinds of shocking.

Out of the 500 odd recipes published last year, Saveur rounds up it’s favorites.

I deeply and passionately love fried chicken, and so does Bon Appetit.

Ned Bell gives out his chowder recipe in Van Mag.

Mia Stainsby learns about coffee, which is fantastic except for the slurping (I hate slurping).

Yet another reason to buy locally: 34 states have listeria contaminated eggs. I have trouble imaging that any of those states don’t have chicken farms. The Huffington Post looks into it.

Andrew Morrison falls head over heels with the food, service and look at Black & Blue, but loathes the soundtrack.

The North Shore News waxes poetic about honey.

Korean wings beat the more BBQ varieties in Alexandra Gill’s tastes. She finds them perfect at the Happy Day Metro House.

In Food52′s cookbook-off, the amazing Montreal restaurant, Joe Beef, wins.

Lastly, TheKitchn talks about what Fair Trade means, and asks if it exists any more.

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Claire Lassam is a baker, blogger, and freelance writer based in East Van. She has been cooking and baking her way through the city for nearly five years, working in restaurants ranging from Cioppino’s to Meat & Bread. She currently toils at Beta 5 Chocolates and runs the baking blog Just Something Pretty.

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It’s time for eggnog! Design Sponge shows you how.

If eggnog is not your thing, Alexandra Gill shows you a few holiday drink fixes from Vancouver’s top barkeeps.

The New York Times talks about one of my favourite chefs of all time, Yotam Ottolenghi, and he turns out to be just as cool as I hoped he would be.

Andrew Morrison feeds a cold in The Westender.

Not surprisingly, thekitchn makes fudge look cute.

The North Shore News gets excited about the Chilean Wine Fest.

The Province gets philosophical about the meaning of culture and food.

Get ready for latke season with this simple gravlax recipe in the Vancouver Sun.

The rise of citrus fruits is examined in The LA Times.

Bon Appetit tells you what you’re doing wrong when you cook rice.

If your trying to stick to a budget this Christmas, check out Saveur’s edible DIY gifts. Tequila hot sauce, anyone?

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Claire Lassam is a baker, blogger, and freelance writer based in East Van. She has been cooking and baking her way through the city for nearly five years, working in restaurants ranging from Cioppino’s to Meat & Bread. She currently toils at the soon-to-open Cadeaux Bakery in Railtown and runs the baking blog  Just Something Pretty.

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Come see Alexandra, Anna and I discuss what we do in an informative Q&A out at UBC this Monday night. Funds raised from the night go to the KidSafe Writer’s Room, a great program for East Van kids designed to build literacy skills through mentorship and creative writing. Tickets are here, and they include chow and a copy of Anna’s new book, Back To Baking.

by Claire Lassam | Alexandra Gill is pleasantly surprised by Vancouver bakeries in the Globe and Mail.

The North Shore News tells you all you need to know about the Cornuccopia Festival in Whistler.

The Province talks to Dale MacKay about takeout pizza and zip-lining.

The American Academy of Hospitality Sciences gives a big nod to the Loden Hotel with a Five Diamond Award, a Chefs Plate Award and Medallion Award to chef Marc-Andre Choquette in the Georgia Straight.

I’m not entirely sure what Bonfire Night is in the UK, but apparently candy apples are a tradition, and I do love candy apples, even though The Guardian calls them toffee apples.

I was on the Urban Rush television show again today and hosts Michael Eckford and Fiona Forbes were ribbing me about working two nights a week as an expediter at Gastown’s L’Abattoir (if you didn’t already know, I’m there researching for a Vancouver magazine story on restaurant service that is due this Spring – please be sure to say ‘hi’ if you come in). Anyway, I didn’t take offense. They were just kidding around.

Still, having invested a bucket of my own sweat in the place since opening night nearly two months ago, I’ve grown quite proud of the restaurant, especially the people who work there. So when I heard that both my colleagues at the Globe & Mail and the Vancouver Sun had come in for reviews while I was off traveling, indulging in my real job (the same as theirs), I couldn’t help but feel nervous. What if it’s bad? What if it’s fucking terrible? Oh my God, I thought. We’re going to get anally raped and crucified.

Since many of you aren’t restaurant wonks (please don’t change), let me tell you about Alexandra Gill, Vancouver’s food critic for the Globe & Mail. Of the five or six paid restaurant reviewers in town, she is by far the most feared. I’d put the number of people in the local trade who like her column at about 17 out of 40,000, and I’d wager that 10 of those are either drug addicts, liars or probably both. But they all read her.

She might pen a dud every few months (most weekly critics do), but damn it if there isn’t always an entertaining flick of the knife, a slash that leaves a mark. When she really sinks her teeth into a restaurant’s jugular, it’s the ultimate schadenfreude sundae. Even when I love the restaurant that is being torched, it’s as mesmerising as watching a cheetah take down a Thompson gazelle in slow motion. First comes the run and then the turn. Once you see the claw hitting the ankle and restaurant’s center of gravity falter, it’s all blood and dust from there. I imagine she’s exhausted after writing her best. Panting. Too spent to eat. And at the end of every read I don’t know whether to burn the paper or keep it in order to study how she does it.

While she doesn’t have the power to break a restaurant, she sure can make the people who work in them angry. She’s even made me angry at times, but only when I think she’s gone too far. For a few years – when I had a hotter head – I wasn’t all that kind to her. Why? Because – gasp – she spoke her mind, kept her own counsel and could give a damn about what anyone thought of her. I’ve written wholly reactionary words about her over the last five years, none of them nice. To be honest, I’m quite sure that some of them were downright awful.

So when Paul Grunberg, L’Abattoir’s owner, told me that she was writing the review, my sphincter involuntarily tightened. I felt the fear, the very same that most chefs and restaurateurs might feel whenever she calls to “follow up with a few questions”, only it was amplified, like ten-fold. I very quickly convinced myself that, despite the obvious merits of the restaurant (which she would ignore), she was going to take every backhanded thing I’d ever written about her and use this golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to slam it all back in my dumb, smug face. Yes, and with a big fuck you and a steaming turd on top. I was a liability to the restaurant, a walking time bomb. And she was holding the detonator. How could I have ever been so plum stupid to have set the hard-working people of L’Abattoir up for this? What a total asshole.

But she’s the pro and I’m the child, given to wild delusions fed by my sometimes Herculean sense of self-importance. Of course she loved it. She wrote almost the exact same review I would have done if I wasn’t polishing the restaurant’s glassware and trying not to get in anyone’s way. She probably had no idea I was working there. She could probably give a fuck, really.

Phew.

Mia Stainsby’s review comes out late tonight in Sun. Naturally, I’m convinced that it will be hand delivered by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that it will be terrible, and that it’s somehow all my fault.