The Birmingham Business Journal, it seems, can go months without having anything about the city's restaurant business, but a recent issue had two articles.

One was a look at whether Birmingham could become one of the cities to have its own Zagat Guide. As the article notes, "Birmingham has begun to make a name for itself on the culinary scene." Highlands chef/owner Frank Stitt is up for a national chef award from the James Beard Foundation, with Hot & Hot's Chris Hastings up for the regional award that Stitt won several years ago. "But despite the accolades and recognition, there is one status symbol of culinary success that has eluded the Magic City: the venerable Zagat guide," says writer Ty West. The guides feature the results of customer surveys and is regarded as a "food and travel bible."

A Zagat's representative told the BBJ reporter that the company considers several factors to determine if there is demand for an area, including the number of reviews online at www.zagat.com, plus requests or petitions from members or from an area's culinary industry. Daniel Briggs, who runs daniel george restaurant in Mountain Brook with co-chef and co-owner George McMillan, told the BBJ that while the city is experiencing an increase in second- and third-generation chefs who are branching out from the area's established restaurants to start their own, he's not sure if the city could support its own Zagat guide just yet. Tom Robey, executive chef at the Veranda on Highland, said he believes the city will be able to support a guide in the next few years.

The other BBJ article was an interview with Robey, who became executive chef at the Veranda on Highland after spending 18 years at the Commander's Palace restaurant in New Orleans. A few tidbits: One of the things that sets Veranda apart from other restaurants in the area is its Sunday jazz brunch. When asked about his cooking style, he said, "I get the best ingredients and I let them speak for themselves. I don't feel a dish should have 17 different adjectives to make it a great dish." Favorite food at home? Grilling and a lot of Italian food (he grew up in New Jersey so ate a lot of Italian-American food. My follow-up question would have been, what's his favorite Italian restaurant in town?).

Tired of the McDonaldization of the world, of foods so full of chemicals and preservatives and high-fructose corn syrup you can't even taste the real food? Slow down with the Slow Food movement. 

Slow Food was founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini as a response to the opening of a McDonald’s in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome. Petrini recognized that the industrialization of food was standardizing taste and leading to the annihilation of thousands of local and regional food varieties and flavors. "Slow Food" is about encouraging small growers and artisanal producers, protecting the environment and promoting biodiversity. It's also literally about slowing down and enjoying food, friends and family. Today, Slow Food is active in over 100 countries and has a worldwide membership of over 80,000.

So how do you "live slow"? Take an interest in where your food comes from -- for instance, go to a farmer's market in the summer and talk to the farmers. And take time to slow down and to enjoy life with family and friends. "Every day can be enriched by doing something slow," says the Slow Food web site. "Making pasta from scratch one night, seductively squeezing your own orange juice from the fresh fruit, lingering over a glass of wine and a slice of cheese -- even deciding to eat lunch sitting down instead of standing up."

The local chapter, or convivium, of Slow Food hosts events, some for members only and others open to the public. On Thursday, February 7 at the Café at the Botanical Gardens there will be a gathering of local Slow Food members from 6-8 pm. Slow Food Regional Governor Tom Montague and a farmer, Bill Keenor, will speak about Slow Food. If you're interested in joining, this is a good opportunity to learn more, says Pardis Stitt, the local chapter contact.

Looking ahead, on Thursday, April 17, Alabama Environmental Council's Green Tie Affair will be a joint event with Slow Food Birmingham, with several local chefs using local food sources. And on Sunday, June 8, Jones Valley Urban Farm and Slow Food Birmingham will co-host an event at the Gardens at Park Place, where four or five local chefs prepare an early supper for 150 guests.  

If you're interested in joining Slow Food Birmingham, here's an e-mail link for more information.

When we were at V. Richard's recently, we were struck by the display featuring locally roasted coffees.

Red Mountain Coffee Roasters, the "first-born child" of O'Henry's Coffees in Homewood, has been around since 1995, but it's strictly a wholesale business. They do custom roasting and blends for numerous coffeehouses, bakeries, specialty markets and restaurants, which generally receive their beans two to 14 hours out of the roaster. While you won't see the name "Red Mountain Roasters" in the retail market, you can buy O'Henry's coffee beans at O'Henry's Coffee locations, online at their web site, and at some retail locations such as Bruno's, Piggly Wiggle, Western and V. Richard's.

Then along came Higher Ground Roasters in nearby Leeds, which sells wholesale, direct on its web site, and through local retail outlets such as V. Richards, Tria Market and even Publix. Higher Ground roasts exclusively Fair Trade, shade grown, organic coffees of specialty grade.

Primavera Coffee Roasters in Cahaba Heights has a retail shop where they sell their precisely brewed coffee as well as coffee beans and related items. They also sell online or by phone, and can be found at V. Richard's. It's the brainchild of Brett and Havilah Burton and their colleague Holly Rodricks. Coffee purists, they don't offer flavored coffees, and want to educate customers about coffee. We recently tried one of their "Cup of Excellence" coffees, and it was amazing. You can read their blog going all the way back to 2004 and 2005 and their time in Guatemala learning first-hand about growing, roasting and brewing coffee before they started the Birmingham roasting business.

One of the newest on the scene, which we also found at V. Richard's, is O'Kafes. Kirk Summers and Erin Isbell started o kafes! (pronounced “oh-kah-FESS”) coffee roasters in 2005 with a mission to bring environmentally-friendly, socially conscious (or “sustainable”) coffee to the central Alabama market. They offer premium Fair Trade coffee from around the globe and are a fixture at the Saturday Pepper Place Market in the summer. In addition to V. Richard's, you'll find O'Kafes at Red Rain in Homewood and Sojourns on 3rd Ave. North, or you can order online. And in a few months, you'll be able to visit their new retail shop and roasting facility in the Martin Biscuit Building at Pepper Place and enjoy freshly prepared coffee drinks as well as buying the beans to take home. They're taking over the current Amani Raha space, and hope to be open in mid-May.

One of the benefits of locally roasted coffee (besides supporting local businesses, which we're all for), is that freshness is key. The Primavera coffee we bought at V. Richard's indicated it had been roasted only a couple of days previously. Contrast that to the Starbucks I bought on sale at the grocery store about the same time in late December, which said "May." I don't know if that meant it had been roasted last May or was supposed to be fresh till next May, but either way, that's hardly what I'd call fresh, when you compare it to what you get locally!

Check out this blog post from Gourmet magazine about Southern cheesemakers. John T. Edge notes that typically, when Southerns have talked about cheese, "we have been more likely to talk pimento cheese ... But that was then. This is now."

He praises the cheese from two Southern operations: Sweetgrass Dairy, in Georgia (goat cheese pictured, left), and John Folse's Bittersweet Plantation, in Gonzales, Louisiana.

Closer to home, I found two notable cheesemakers in Alabama: Sweet Home Farm, in Baldwin County, has been singled out on Emeril's blog, on Cheesebyhand.com, and in the Stockman Grass Farmer magazine.

A Southern cheesemaker success story is Fromagerie Belle Chevre in Elkmont, Ala. The business and their award-winning goat cheeses have been written up in publications ranging from Food & Wine and Gourmet through Vogue and Business Week. Their cheeses can be found at upscale stores such as Whole Foods and Dean & Deluca, or through their web site.

It's much easier to find good cheese in Birmingham than it used to be. A number of restaurants now offer cheese plates, and V. Richard's, Tria Market and Whole Foods all have wonderful cheese counters. The selection at Whole Foods is larger, but if you go to V. Richard's or Tria you can sample the cheese you're interested in before you buy.  

USA Today reports that "from Seattle to Houston, Los Angeles to New York, Denver to Chicago, $40 entrees are practically as common as cloth napkins at an increasing number of restaurants. ... and then some. Macaroni and cheese with shaved white truffles sells for $55 at Waverly Inn, the New York hot spot partly owned by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter."

This doesn't seem to have hit Birmingham too hard, at least not yet. Plaza III has a couple of their larger cuts of steak at the $40 level, but it seems like otherwise the top prices are in the mid-$30s -- and there are still many "bargains" to be had in the low $20s and even in the upper teens.

Speaking of prices, much was made of the $18 burger at a couple of local restaurants in a recent article in the Birmingham News, but how about a $23 PB&J? Check out this post at the blog at Epicurious.com. 

(Oops -- Thanks to "Big Daddy" for pointing out a typo in my original posting -- that's an $18 burger, not an $8 burger.)