For Hannah Chung, at least one element of her parents' culture was something of an acquired taste.
Kimchi - a pungent blend of fermented vegetables and spices - is a staple of the Korean table, and is typically offered amid a series of banchan, or free side dishes that are meant to accompany and complement the main dish.

But for Chung, it was a dish that made her feel removed from the dominant culture, not included.

"I actually rebelled against my parents by refusing to eat kimchi sometimes, and I've actually found out that that's a super common experience among second-generation Koreans," she says.

"I got made fun of for all the foods I ate," Chung, a second-generation Korean-American, recalls. "I didn't want to invite my friends over to my house because my house smelled like kimchi and Korean food, and it was really embarrassing for me."

Read more at Eatocracy's new home on CNN.com

Last August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an ultimatum: Food manufacturers had one year to make sure any "gluten-free" products met FDA requirements.

That deadline is up. To use the "gluten-free" label, products must now have an undetectable level of gluten and cannot have any ingredient containing wheat, rye, barley, or any their derivatives.

If manufacturers continue to use the "gluten-free" label without bringing their food up to scratch, they will be subject to regulatory action from the FDA. (Some foods, such as pasta, may still be on shelves legally for a while if they were produced before the ruling.)
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Editor's note: The Southern Foodways Alliance delves deep in the history, tradition, heroes and plain old deliciousness of Southern food. Bernie Herman is the department chair and George B. Tindall Professor of American Studies and Folklore at UNC-Chapel Hill. He lives in Chapel Hill and on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He wrote this essay for the place-themed issue #52 of the SFA's Gravy quarterly.

The Bayford Oyster House extends over the shallows of Nassawadox Creek, abutting the channel where the tides of the Chesapeake Bay ebb and flow. The heart of the two-story wood building, erected around 1902, serves seasonally for shedding soft-shell crabs. During the rest of the year it functions as a storage area, stacked with soft-shell crab floats, blue plastic drums crammed with gill nets, and the flotsam of fish and eel traps, blue-crab and peeler pots, floats, line, and salt water–worn hand tools. The creek side of the oyster house fronts a working dock where watermen land their catch. The landward side abuts the one-story shucking hall and office, added when the business was in full swing through the mid 1960s, before disease struck the oyster beds and shucking operations closed. The old post office and store stands next door, remembered by Bayford denizens for its bear-paw sandwich of hard cheddar and rag bologna on a sugar-glazed bun.
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Caviar is the new condiment.

From tacos and flatbread to pasta and burgers, caviar - those shiny little balls usually passed on a small spoon by a white-gloved waiter - is shedding its stuffy image and lending a highbrow take to a regular meal.

"It's about sharing in that little taste of luxury," said Wesley Holton, executive chef of "Rose. Rabbit. Lie." at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
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