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News ..............................................5 Ad Index .......................................22 www.kitchenwarenews.com Passing on the Flame of Culinary Inspiration Continued on PAGE 5 Continued on PAGE 8 Continued on PAGE 14 Continued on PAGE 11 BY MICAH CHEEK While most of us in the suburbs think about food storage in terms of handling leftovers, spillproofing and looking nice on the countertop, camping enthusiasts and folks living in wooded areas in the North have a different set of priorities; namely, keeping all those giant, vicious bears away. Unlike trying to find a container tall enough to hold the spaghetti, the stakes get higher in bear country. It can be tough to find a container that is both airtight and looks decent, so how in the world do companies manage to design coolers that can hold off a hungry grizzly? Small Batch Cast Iron It turns out that this is a question that can be answered, which is why I found myself talking one day to Randy Gravatt, Container Testing Coordinator at The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana. Gravatt has what might be coolest job ever. He takes coolers and trash cans, fills them with peanut butter and dog food, and hides the containers for rescued bears to find and try to pry open. The end goal is to certify the products bear-safe, ensuring that no wandering grizzly in the wild could get ahold of the food inside. "The visitors love this testing, and they love it because they underestimate the power and strength of a bear. So they're out there watching for perhaps over an hour, a 400-pound grizzly bear trying to get in," says Gravatt. "They're just relentless. Where the public perhaps could have thought, 'I thought that bungee cords would keep them out.' It has the padlocks, but they're chewing a hole through the product, and it's just blowing people away." The bears have even worked around latches set deeply in holes that only thinner human fingers can get into. These carefully designed mechanisms sometimes can't stand up to brute strength. "So the bear did not chew a hole in it, but he crushed it like an accordion BY LORRIE BAUMANN With just three tables inside the 900 square foot store and a few more out on the sidewalk outside when weather permits, Marché has become a gathering place for local residents who make it a place to meet during lunch breaks or a stop for a glass of wine and a cheese plate while they're on their round of the nearby shops in Glen Ellyn's historic downtown. "We definitely have customers for whom this is their spot," says Founder Jill Foucré, who opened the store in November, 2015, as an offshoot of Marcel's Culinary Experience, the kitchenware store two doors down the block that she opened in 2011. In the cheese cases that took the place of clothing racks after Foucré bought the former clothing store and gutted it to make her specialty cheese shop, Marche regularly offers about 100 cheeses. About half of them are imported, but for the domestic half of the selection, General Manager Daniel Sirko emphasizes the world-class cheeses made in Illinois' neighboring states. He's made his entire career in the specialty food business, opening Pastoral, Chicago's iconic cheese and charcuterie shop, and then moving on to operating in a couple of foodservice establishments before he got a phone call from Foucré, who asked him to come and help her open a cheese shop in Glen Ellyn. "We seek out farmstead artisan cheeses when we can," he says. "If there's a cheddar f rom California or Wisconsin, we're more likely to go with the Wisconsin cheese." About half the cheeses in the case belong to a core that Sirko keeps in stock year-round, while the remainder are more seasonal. The store's single best seller, though, does come from California. It's Cypress Grove's Humboldt Fog. "It's so recognizable, and so delicious," Sirko says. The store also offers a range of Manchego cheeses, GENERAL NEWS n PantryChic 8 SMALL ELECTRICS n Breakfast Appliances 21 THE PANTRY n Healthy Condiments 18 MADE IN THE USA n 15 THE KNIFE RACK n Knife Robot 20 BUYER'S GUIDE n Spatulas and Scrapers 17 TRADESHOW CALENDAR n Upcoming Shows 22 H o u s e w a r e s R e v i e w KITCHENWARE NEWS A Community of Cheese and Wine Smarter Than The Average Bear BY LORRIE BAUMANN Jill Foucré founded Marcel's Culinary Experience in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, with the idea that she was starting a recreational cooking school and also paying tribute to the grandfather whose cooking career had long inspired her interest in food and its preparation. Her grandfather Marcel was a chef in France who emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1920s. He arrived in New York and made his way to Lowell, Massachusetts, where he opened a restaurant. Eventually, he adopted a more itinerant career – working at the Massachusetts beach resorts in summers and following the snowbirds to Florida for the winter season. Foucré herself inherited some of that love for cooking. "I love to cook from scratch. I mean scratch- scratch," she says. "I'm more of a cook than a baker. The precision of baking eludes me sometimes." When she roasts a chicken, she saves the bones for stock, and she's been known to roast a whole pig in her back yard for parties. "That was before I was a retail store owner," she says. "I try to cook intuitively when possible. I tend to be a recipe cook, but I'm trying to do better." Marcel's, opened by Foucre and her husband, Bob Bye, in 2011 in a 125-year-old building that has VOLUME 23, NUMBER 7 JULY 2017 n $7.00 BY MICAH CHEEK Even in a world of advanced nonsticks and lightweight aluminum saute pans, cast iron maintains a strong presence for functionality and strength. There is a whole internet subculture dedicated to finding and restoring vintage cast iron, in part because vintage cast iron was polished to a smooth finish after being cast. This increased the cast iron's nonstick properties, but significantly raised the cost of production. Gradually, consumers turned to less expensive options with a rougher, more pebbly texture. Now, consumers are looking for higher quality cast iron with a more refined surface. One cast iron producer, Stargazer Cast Iron, was started out of an interest in vintage cookware. "I got into cast iron as a hobby, I was collecting it and obsessing with it," says Peter Huntley, Chief Executive Officer of Stargazer. "I thought I had something to contribute here. Even with the vintage ones, there were some design changes to be made, so that 's where my design came f rom." Huntley used his background in both design and dinner ware industries to build his ideal pan f rom the ground up. One big factor was the smooth surface that older designs had. "I had experimented at home with different materials. It seemed attainable to me. It seemed like the kind of thing that should be done in production rather than the end user having to," says Huntley. "The surface finish is what got the ball rolling, but we've made THE PANTRY: CONDIMENTS AND SAUCES SEE PAGE 18 GADGET OF THE MONTH: PANDERNO SEE PAGE 22 SMALL ELECTRICS: BELLA ROCKET SEE PAGE 21

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