A new ethnic restaurant concept has come to the Riverchase area, and it’s more than a little different from what we are used to in several ways. For all its quirks, the place is still charming enough to keep me returning. Genghis Grill is the name, and it is a chain franchise out of Texas specializing in Mongolian grill-style dining.

There’s an old joke that says Mexican restaurants all have the same eight ingredients and you just specify in which geometric shape you want them arranged.

Richard Blais, the owner of FLIP Burger Boutique at the Summit, recently won Bravo TV’s Top Chef All Stars competition.

The past few evenings I’ve enjoyed reading the latest book from celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. If you are a fan of food and chefs, it’s a great read.

In the world of fast food, the hamburger reigns supreme, with more chains offering this classic sandwich as their flagship item than any other type of food.

When you walk into MIX the first thing you notice is how open and empty it all seems. A cavernous white space brightly lit by huge windows on all sides, so stark and minimalist you might wonder if they are even open for business quite yet.

The menu said, “handmade pappardelle,” and that was all it took to send me back to a fond childhood memory. Decades ago, my great-grandmother used to let us help her make pappardelle noodles on occasion. Pappardelle are just long ribbons, and couldn’t be much simpler.

The recent spate of icy winter storms in Birmingham triggered the same food mania we have all gotten used to over the years. Every grocery store in the metro area had its shelves stripped of every last trace of milk, eggs and bread.

During the holidays I experienced another example of a strange phenomenon that occurs in a select few restaurants. My wife sent me to Momma Goldberg’s Deli to get stocking stuffer gift cards for our kids who attend Auburn. “Momma G’s,” as my kid’s and their friends call it, has been jam packed at their Auburn campus location for decades now, and just recently opened two locations in the Birmingham area.

Alecia Warnock turned a Christmas gift-giving tradition into a booming food business. The part-time caterer and full-time mother of two started giving friends jars of her signature tomato chutney condiment about two decades ago. Then, one fateful year, she added a new friend to the Christmas list.