Eat your links

-Eating lavender makes you girly.

-NYT sneaks extra grub into the business section: rich people like to eat fancy French food for the fancy, not just for the eating. Actually, it's about economists studying food, and they adopt the stuffy name "Society for Quantitative Gastronomy."

PERHAPS the French complain about McDonald's because they find it so hard to buy their best food at affordable prices. A meal in a Michelin three-star restaurant in Paris can cost $300 or $400 a person, not including wine.

How could food become so expensive? To answer this and other questions, the inaugural meeting of the Society for Quantitative Gastronomy was held in May in Bordeaux, France. The society, founded by a group of young French economists, is bringing scientific measurement to bear on food markets. Their message is that status and image--not just food--play an increasing role in high restaurant prices.

(A disclosure: I am a longtime advocate of ethnic dining--see my discussion at www.tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com--and spoke at the society'’s conference in May on "How Did American Food Get So Bad?"” So the results presented at the meeting confirmed my belief that many of the tastiest meals are entirely affordable, at least if we know where to look.)

(A disclosure would be "I spoke at the conference." That's not a disclosure; it's an editorializing plug for the author. Via Kottke.)

-The Food Avant-Garde's Enabler: a Pete Wells story about a French Culinary Institute project to set up a lab for the development of molecular gastronomy ideas (via foodite). Equal time for the other side: epi-log is against the whole technofood movement: "I feel--and hope--it will go the way of the eight-track cassette." Put that in your thermal circulator and heat it to 135!

-Hungry: why Montreal is better than Chicago. Oh, Canada.

-For Bastille Day today, a local French bistro, Elliot's, is giving a complimentary glass of Champagne to anyone who sings the French national anthem. No word what they give you for running a few steps ahead of an Italian, turning on your heels, and ramming your head into his ribcage as he strides toward you. (Local food news as always via the dish.)

Finally, some television:

-Come Witness Our Grand Gesture!!!. Everwood fans have set July 21 as the date of the ferris wheel extravaganza. If you're in L.A., go and shame the suits at Warner Home Video into releasing the rest of this excellent show on DVD.