What happens when two Bay Area food bloggers meet up in Chicago to go to a four-star restaurant? A great number of posts describing an amazing dinner.

Fatemeh at Gastronomie posted about several of the courses:

Hot Potato, Cold Potato
Lamb
Mango
Dungeness Crab
Salsify
Hearts of Palm
Asparagus with Egg Yolk Drops
PB & J
Snap Peas

And you can read Joy's version of the same dinner on her blog, Confessions of a Restaurant Whore.

This post is a few weeks old, but if you haven't had a chance to read Cheap Food in Cheap Places by Shuna, I would highly recommend it. The post was a follow-up to her review of Cafe Gratitude here on Bay Area Bites. When a commenter criticized Cafe Gratitude for being too expensive, Shuna wrote an excellent response which garnered a lot of discussion via comments.

Having the desire to earn a living so that one can pay others a living wage is not, by my standards, yuppification or gentrification.

Our privilege helps us to have unreasonable expectations. I have been working in restaurants for almost 15 years and I can count on one hand the amount of owners who run a decent business.

Cupcake Bakeshop by Chockylit features a recipe for Vietnamese Coffee Cupcakes that are inspiring even to this non-baker.

When it comes to coffee flavored cakes, what one typically finds are mocha type concoctions (coffee and chocolate) or tiramisu type desserts (sponge or lady fingers doused in coffee). I haven't found many examples of coffee-flavored cake batter outside of these two options. In lieu of an existing recipe, my approach would be simple - substitute strong brewed coffee for the liquid in a basic cake batter.

Wondering what to do with your springtime artichokes? Sam tells us how to trim and prepare them, Brett tells us to braise them, Derrick tells us to fry the hearts, and Michael tells us to grill them.