To chain or not to chain?

In real life, I do some work that isn't food-related. No, really. So it is that the other day, I found myself reading the latest issue of Fast Company. Tucked halfway through was an article about Darden Restaurants, the conglomerate that owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster, among others.

Despite my well-documented lack of enthusiasm for chain restaurants, I found the piece about Darden and its CEO, Clarence Otis, fascinating. The mathematical acrobatics it takes to run hundreds of outposts of a single restaurant boggle my mind, and I was pretty surprised to hear about the efforts Darden is making to encourage sustainable fishing. After all, it's a bit like Wal-Mart insisting on eco-friendly practices at its suppliers: when you control that much of the market, you can make a serious difference.

This is a hot topic right now; Ezra Klein's IFA post about Ruhlman vs. Alexander is a really interesting take.

How about you guys? Do you eat at a lot of chain restaurants? Why or why not?

Newsflash: that skinless, boneless chicken breast used to be alive.

While the New York Times is no doubt frequently behind the curve (The Omnivore's Dilemma was published almost two years ago), it's still nice to see them spend some words on the chefs and writers who are doing their darndest to make us confront the origins of our food (our processed foods and our meat in particular).

Today they published an article in the Dining & Wine section entitled "Chefs' New Goal: Looking Dinner in the Eye." With his characteristically flamboyant style, Jamie Oliver spent last week educating the British public about the horrors of factory poultry and egg production, something I'd give my eyeteeth to see Martha Stewart (or Sara Moulton, or Ina Garten, or anyone else similarly popular with the average American cook) do. Oliver's shock tactics included, according to the Times, suffocating baby male chicks (as is done daily on egg-production farms) and putting birds in standard battery cages (as is done daily on poultry farms).

I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't think I ever will be. But I staunchly believe that if you're going to eat it, you should know where it came from. You should be aware of the ethical, environmental, and agricultural consequences of your diet.

How cheap is that factory-produced meat, really? Not cheap enough.