Latest news with #Paulette
San Francisco Chronicle
03-07-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Paulette Fono, restaurateur who started the Magic Pan chain in S.F., dies at 90
When Hungarian emigres Paulette and Laszlo Fono opened their first Magic Pan on Fillmore Street in San Francisco in 1965, there was nothing like it anywhere. The Magic Pan was both a restaurant and a novel cooking device that rotated eight crepes over a flame as the main dining room attraction. The Fonos used recipes that Paulette had developed in their tiny Cow Hollow apartment, and the crepe wheel that Laszlo built in his neighbor's garage — and patented. The couple, who had both worked in banking and had no prior restaurant experience, were onto something. Their small storefront restaurant, which featured chairs purchased at a garage sale, was an instant hit, with lines out the door. They opened a second location in Ghirardelli Square in 1967, and even that did not meet the demand. Their concept didn't stop until it had reached more than 40 Magic Pans nationwide, with Paulette in her traditional dirndl as the face and personality of the operation. By then the Fonos had sold the chain to Quaker Oats and moved on to launch a Hungarian restaurant called Paprikas Fono, next door to the Magic Pan in Ghirardelli Square. They then expanded to the growing Stanford Shopping Center on the Peninsula by opening four separate concept restaurants in the 1980s — Bravo Fono, Cafe Andrea, Madame Paulette and Babbo's — offering Parisian, Viennese, Milanese and Italian gelato options in one mall. 'My mother was ahead of restaurant trends by years and years,' said their daughter, Andrea Fono, who grew up in Pacific Heights, working the night shift on weekends at Paprika Fono. 'She designed the kitchens and the dining room and decorated every single one. She really wanted to bring European food to America and share where she was from. That's what drove her.' They worked seven days a week, days and nights, before they closed their last restaurant and retired to their Atherton summer home in 2015, when both were in their 80s. Lazlo died there at age 94, in 2023, and Paulette died there on June 8, at 90. According to her daughter, she was diagnosed with stomach and pancreatic cancer just five weeks before her death. In all, the Fonos had opened or consulted on the opening of 43 Magic Pans and nine other European-themed restaurants without ever hiring a chef. Paulette did all the recipe development, designed all the menus and trained the cooks. After she veered into Italian ice cream by opening Bravo Fono on Fillmore Street in the early 1980s, Chronicle food critic Patricia Unterman went by to try it. 'Fono's ice cream combines the brilliant flavors of the Italian gelato I've tasted only in Florence with the creaminess of American ice cream,' she wrote. 'I've chosen coconut, pumpkin cream and maple nut for the holidays as my favorite ice creams.' The Fonos' restaurants were often featured in Sunset, 'the Magazine of Western Living.' They also got a boost in 1981 when Andy Rooney, the acerbic '60 Minutes correspondent,' found his way to Bravo Fono in the Stanford Shopping Center for lunch and gushed over it in his syndicated newspaper column. 'It must be one of the best places to have lunch in the world,' he wrote. 'They make everything right there, including the bread they put their sandwiches on. They don't fake anything. . . The man and the woman who run Bravo Fono obviously get their kicks out of excellence, not money.' Eva Paulette Belatini was born Nov. 5, 1934, in Budapest. Her father, Laszlo Belatini, was a lawyer who helped the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg get Jews out of Hungary during World War II to escape the Holocaust. After the war, the family was punished for being part of the Budapest aristocracy when Hungary came under Soviet domination. Paulette, as she was always known, was not allowed to finish her schooling, according to her daughter. She met her future husband on the shores of Lake Balaton, where he was training to be an Olympic sailor. 'My father made it through communism with a tan, which few people could do,' said his daughter. Paulette and Laszlo were married in 1954, and when the revolt against the Soviets came in 1956, they escaped on foot. They walked through the forest for days before crossing the border into Austria, where they entered an American-run refugee camp in Vienna. After a few months, they departed for America by ship, under sponsorship of a Catholic Church in Denver. For the train ride west out of Grand Central Station they were each given $5 to see them through, and they decided to share a meal in the dining car. As their daughter retold the story, her mother saw sirloin on the menu and read it to her husband as 'sir lion.' She told her husband, 'America is so rich that they eat lion.' That was their first American restaurant experience, but to stretch their $5 bills, they ended up leaving without ordering — instead surviving on Hershey chocolate bars with almonds. Neither of them spoke English before their arrival in Denver, but they picked it up out of necessity in order to get banking jobs. They were there for eight years while Paulette worked her way up from file clerk to loan officer at Denver National Bank. They might have stayed, but she won the grand prize in a contest at the bank: a trip to San Francisco. That was the end of Denver. As fast as they could make the turnaround, they moved to San Francisco, in the summer of 1964. Paulette left behind a side gig as a caterer at the Vail Ski Resort, where Lazlo had his own side gig on the ski patrol. On the long drive in an Oldsmobile sedan that they bought used, they planned the restaurant they would open to specialize in the crepes that Paulette crafted, using family recipes from Budapest. Their first trip to a bank resulted in a $5,000 business loan. 'She had it in half an hour, a check in her hand,' said her daughter. 'They looked immensely trustable. They were enthusiastic and people fell in love with them.' They thought up the Magic Pan name while they were driving on the Bay Bridge. Laszlo had to pull off at the first exit and find a phone booth to call their restaurant's new name into the yellow pages, before the annual phone book deadline. The Magic Pan cleared $185,000, in its first year, selling crepes for a few dollars each. Their crepe wheel patent is still protected and the original crepe wheel still exists, leaning on its side against the garage of their home in Atherton. In all their years of opening restaurants, only one idea failed: going American-style with a Montana cowboy-themed restaurant called 'Big Sky Ranch.' It only lasted a few years in Ghirardelli Square. 'They regretted not putting Fono in the name,' said their daughter. 'My parents had loyal customers who would go to any place with their name on it.' After their retirement, those loyal customers, many of whom had become friends, kept coming over for dinner at the home in Atherton, where Paulette served her paprika chicken. After her husband's death, she started writing a cookbook with her daughter. That project will continue and also serve as a family history of all the trips they took to eat their way through Europe and talk their way into restaurant kitchens to learn the secrets. 'I want to make sure her recipes go out into the world to continue her culinary legacy,' Andrea said. 'Her restaurants were about creating experiences, not just meals, and there were never any corners cut.'
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
How Hurricanes Hundreds Of Miles Away From The US Can Still Be A Danger For Beach Trips
A hurricane passing hundreds of miles offshore this summer means no big deal for your beach trip, right? Wrong. The ocean waters can still be a threat in the form of rip currents generated by distant hurricanes, as we've seen multiple times in recent years. -First, What Is A Rip Current? They are strong but narrow currents that flow away from the beach and pose a threat to all swimmers (even strong ones) by carrying them farther out to sea, possibly resulting in drowning or serious injury. Rip currents can develop at any beach with breaking waves. -How Distant Hurricanes Create A Rip Current Danger: Waves generated by strong winds near the center of a hurricane often propagate hundreds of miles away to the U.S. coastline in the form of swells. The example below shows the swells from a hurricane creating rough waters and a rip current danger along much of the East Coast as it passes offshore more than 500 miles away. -A Deceiving Beach Scenario: So while you might be enjoying a bright, sunny day at the beach in the scenario above, the hurricane-generated rip currents and high surf mean you should stay out of the ocean. -Lorenzo In 2019 A Radical Example: The hurricane passed nearly 2,000 miles away from the East Coast. High surf and rip currents from the hurricane's swells caused eight people to lose their lives from Rhode Island to Florida. -Other Recent Hurricanes: Lee in 2023, Larry in 2021 and Teddy and Paulette in 2020 are some other examples of hurricanes that passed near Bermuda, or even farther east, that still caused deadly rip currents on the East Coast. -Last Year, Too: Tropical Storm Alberto tracked into Mexico in June 2024, but contributed to a rip current death on the Texas Gulf Coast near Galveston. Hurricane Ernesto's track near Bermuda in August 2024 generated rip currents that claimed three lives along the Southeast coast, including Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and Surf City, North Carolina. -Heed Warnings And Forecasts: Anytime you're headed to any beach, you should be aware of the rip current risk each day, no matter whether a distant offshore hurricane is present or not. If in doubt, just stay out of the ocean until you can get further informed. -Ways To Get Informed: There are color-coded flags placed on many beaches each day to communicate the current threat. A green flag (low risk) indicates that strong rip currents are not likely. A yellow flag (moderate risk) means that there is a good chance for strong rip currents and a red flag (high risk) signals that strong rip currents are expected. You can also get a daily rip current forecast from NOAA, and the National Hurricane Center will provide maps starting in 2025 to convey the threat posed by active tropical systems. -What To Do If Caught In A Rip Current: Remain calm to conserve energy and don't try to swim against the current. Think of it as a treadmill that can't be turned off, which you need to step to the side of. Swim out of the current in a direction parallel to the shoreline, or toward breaking waves. From there, swim at an angle toward the beach once out of the current. If you are unable to swim out of a rip current, float or calmly tread water. Once you are out of the current, swim toward shore. Draw attention to yourself by waving your arm and yelling for help if you feel you will be unable to reach the shore. Chris Dolce has been a senior digital meteorologist with for nearly 15 years after beginning his career with The Weather Channel in the early 2000s.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
When was beer invented?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Beer is one of the most popular beverages in the world, with nearly every country having its own local lager. In the U.S. alone, the overall beer market in 2023 totaled $116.9 billion, and breweries shipped out 192 million barrels of beer. But the ice-cold, bubbly beverage we know today didn't always exist. So when was beer invented? The answer traces back thousands of years. But there's still some mystery surrounding the exact origins of beer, and the beer of ancient times probably didn't taste anything like what you're used to today. "We don't actually know exactly how [beer] was discovered," Tate Paulette, an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University, told Live Science. "Partly because of the kind of evidence we have, it's unlikely that we're going to get that kind of answer." Because humans discovered fermentation so long ago, it's difficult to find evidence of exactly where beer-making began, Paulette explained. Much of the evidence comes from organic-residue analysis, he said. Using this technique, archaeologists can identify the chemical signatures of grain fermentation on ancient ceramic or stone vessels. Researchers have found strong evidence of beer brewing as far back as the Neolithic period (10,000 to 4,000 years ago), when agriculture took root, in sites all around the world. Kirk French, an assistant professor of anthropology at Penn State, pointed to 9,000-year-old sites in China as the best evidence for ancient beer brewing. At the Qiaotou archaeological site in southeastern China, archaeologists found residues of plants, yeast and mold on ancient pots near human skeletons, suggesting that they once contained a beer-like fermented beverage. Analyses suggest that the beverage those pots contained also included rice, tubers and fungi. Another site in China from the same time period, Jiahu, also contains bronze vessels with chemical signatures of grain fermentation, as well as residues of rice, honey and fruit. French said the Jiahu site contains the most foolproof evidence of ancient beer because the chemical residues were found in drinking vessels. There are even older potential instances of beer brewing, but the evidence isn't as strong. That's because analyses of the older sites rely on residues found on cookware, which also could have been used to make bread or porridge; both foods involve a small amount of fermentation and can leave the same chemical signatures as beer brewing. Related: Why is alcohol used to preserve things? One of these older sites is an 11,000-year-old cultic feasting location in Turkey. At the site, named Göbekli Tepe, researchers found large stone kilns with residues of ground grain. Although these kilns also could have been used to grind grain for bread, one of the researchers argues that the finish on the stone suggests the grain was ground coarsely, in a manner more appropriate for fermenting beer or making porridge than for baking bread. Some archaeologists have proposed that beer dates back even earlier, to a 13,000-year-old cave near Haifa, Israel. There, researchers found starch granules in pits taken out of the bedrock that could indicate fermentation. But again, it's possible these stone pits were used for making food rather than drinks. "It's totally possible (and maybe even likely) that they were making beer," French told Live Science in an email. But ultimately, he said the evidence is too ambiguous to make a conclusion. Paulette said we likely will never know the exact date that humans brewed their first batch of beer, though emerging evidence continues to push the potential date back further and further. Both experts agreed it's unlikely that beer was "invented" in one place and spread from there; rather, fermentation was probably independently discovered by different groups of people throughout the world. Though it's still a mystery exactly when and where the first beer was made, one thing is clear: Ancient beer would have tasted quite different from a modern lager. For one, it would have been sour — a flavor resulting from both yeast and lactic acid bacteria fermenting the grain, Paulette said. It also may have been thick and unfiltered. That's because the process of ancient beer brewing began with a mixture of ground grain and water, and the remaining sediment wasn't always filtered out after fermentation. Paulette said there is some written evidence of "strained" beer in Mesopotamia. But more often than not, imagery and artifacts from the period show that people drank beer through straws with filter tips, suggesting that the beer itself was unfiltered. In ancient times, beer was also likely drunk shortly after it fermented; otherwise, it could quickly go bad and develop harmful mold or bacteria. Because of this, ancient beer was likely relatively flat and not particularly high in alcohol, unlike our bubbly, boozy IPAs. And without refrigeration technologies, beer was definitely not ice-cold. RELATED MYSTERIES —How many bubbles are in a glass of beer? —Does wine help you live longer? —Is it safe to drink moonshine? French said the beers we know and love today are only about 500 years old. "They really start in the 1500s, with the Czech beers and German beers," he explained. This is when lagering — the process of cold-fermenting beers that creates a clear, crisp and bubbly beverage — was developed. As Germans migrated around the world in the coming centuries, they brought this brewing technique with them. "That's why, if you've traveled a lot, it doesn't matter where you go in the world — you can find your basic lager," French said.
Sky News
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News
Upskirted, assaulted, accused of faking their music skills: Why female DJs need to be 'bulletproof'
To see Koven's Katie Boyle perform live is beyond impressive. Hailing from Luton, she is one of the most influential women in drum 'n' bass today, an artist who pioneered the art of singing live while DJing. Although she's now been doing it for 12 years, her vast knowledge doesn't silence the trolls online. "There is a real bad misogyny online against women," she says of the industry, with plenty of critics refusing to "believe they're doing what they say they're doing, and that's been quite a hard thing to combat". Koven is a duo. In the studio, Boyle collaborates with producer Max Rowat; live, she performs and mixes alone. They have just released their second album, Moments In Everglow. While both Boyle and Rowat are equally involved in making tracks, a minority of very vocal fans still refuse to accept she does anything other than sing. "I will always be accused of the male half doing more on anything to do with technology," says Boyle. "The amount of comments [I get] to say, 'she didn't make this'. No explanation as to why they think that it is, just purely because [I'm] a woman, which is just mad." While Boyle loves performing live, there are moments, she admits, where being one of the few women on the scene can feel unsafe. "I've had some awful incidences," she says. "I had someone run on stage and completely grab me, hand down my top, down my trousers, while I was on the stage, which is crazy because you think that's happening in front of an audience. I mean, this guy literally had to be plied off me. "That was when I did think, 'I need to bring someone with me to most places'. I didn't feel safe travelling around by myself." 'You get trolled for everything' Sadly, Boyle isn't alone. Over a 30-year career, DJ Paulette has scaled the heights of dance music fame, playing throughout Europe, with a residency back in the day at Manchester's Hacienda. "Let's just say I have two towels on my rider and it's not just because I sweat a lot," she jokes, miming a whack for those around her. "I've spent time in DJ booths where I've had a skirt on and people have been taking pictures up my skirt. People think upskirting is a joke... and I got fed up with it." Wearing shorts, she says, she still ended with "people with their hands all over me". Now, she sticks to trousers. "But we shouldn't have to alter the way we look for the environment that we work in." She admits, in order to stick it out, she's had to bulletproof herself. "You get trolled for everything, for the way you look - if you put on weight, if you've lost weight." Not only is the discourse towards female DJs different online, she says, she has also been repeatedly told by those working in the industry that because she's a woman, she has a sell-by date. "I went for dinner with three guys... one of them said to me, 'you know Paulette there is no promoter or organiser who is ever going to employ a black female DJ with grey hair', and they all laughed. "That was them saying to me that my career was over, and I was in my 40s. At the time, I felt crushed... I think it really does take women who have a real steel will to make their way through." 'I will not stop talking about it' As the great and the good of the dance world gather in Ibiza for the industry's annual International Music Summit, with dance music more popular than ever there is of course much to party about. But for BBC Radio 1 broadcaster and DJ Jaguar, one of this year's summit's cohosts, some serious conversations also need to be had. "You can get off the plane and look at the billboards around Ibiza and it's basically white men - David Guetta, Calvin Harris, and they are incredible artists in their own right - but the women headliners, there's barely any visibility of them, it's awful." She adds: "I will not stop talking about it because it is the reality." Trolling and safety are also big concerns. "You're in these green rooms, there's a lot of people there, drinking and doing other things... and I've walked into green rooms where I felt incredibly uncomfortable, especially when I was a bit younger. I was on my own, it's like 2am, and you have to watch yourself." Male DJs don't have the same stories She says she has female friends who have had drinks spiked when they were DJing. But her male friends? "They don't have the same stories to tell me." Creamfields, arguably the UK's biggest dance festival, is emblematic of the gender imbalance. It remains one of the least representative festivals in terms of female artists, with last year's line-up more than 80% male. Laila MacKenzie, founder of Lady Of The House, a community that supports and tries to encourage more women into dance music, says the talent pipeline problem isn't helped by the current discourse online. "There is a real damaging factor how people can be really nasty online and really nasty in the media and how that actually may discourage and demotivate women from stepping forward into their talent," she says. In reality, for so many women working within dance music, the trolling can be so unpleasant that it's drowning out the good. "There is so much positivity and so many lovely and supportive people," says Boyle. "But unfortunately it feels like the negative and the toxic energy is just louder sometimes."
Irish Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Best of Everything by Kit de Waal: Navigating the ups and downs of life
The Best of Everything Author : Kit de Waal ISBN-13 : 978-1035404797 Publisher : Tinder Press Guideline Price : £20 The epigraph to Kit de Waal's The Best of Everything is drawn from JM Barrie's Peter Pan: 'Try to be a little kinder than is necessary.' Good advice, surely, but difficult to follow at the best of times, let alone to apply towards those whom you hold responsible for personal tragedy. That de Waal's protagonist returns again and again to this philosophy – sometimes in spite of quite understandable resentment and despair – is a minor miracle of empathy. This character, Paulette, is a young St Kittitian working as an auxiliary nurse in 1970s England. She has a man whom she loves, as well as dreamy soft-focus expectations for her future – a wedding! A honeymoon! A house! – all of which come crashing down in the opening pages of this deceptively engaging and engrossing novel. Because Denton, Paulette's evasive boyfriend, will never be coming home. In his place, his best friend finds his way into a distraught Paulette's bed, and a baby soon follows. As does another child, a white boy from a neighbouring street who has an unexpected connection to Denton's fate (in a clever touch, Paulette's son ends up nicknamed Bird but in actuality it is this other boy, Nellie, who is very much the cuckoo in the nest). Yet any hint of soap opera which such a sketch might suggest is offset by de Waal's exceptionally controlled writing style. Indeed, her prose is practically invisible with little in the way of formal indulgences or flashy fireworks on display (something which mischievously undercuts Paulette's page one desire to see 'rockets and Catherine wheels'). One would be forgiven for interpreting this simplicity – which is actually very hard to achieve – as meaning the novel sits more towards the commercial rather than the literary end of the spectrum. However, this would be a mistake. The craft here is undeniable, clearly visible not just in the subtle evolution of characters such as Bird and Nellie, but in how de Waal manipulates the passage of time across scenes and decades alike (admittedly some of the flashbacks to St Kitts feel a little rough-edged, but her use of forward momentum is a masterclass in showing and telling as appropriate, one from which any author could learn). READ MORE The novel further possesses a steely thematic spine as domestic tableaux are interwoven with the author's characteristic concerns. Among the most recognisable of these are a mixture of Caribbean and Irish immigrant influences, an honest look at race relations in Britain, a commitment to working-class representation, and a knowledgeable perspective on how easily children can fall through the social safety net. De Waal writes authoritatively on all these issues, drawing on both her own upbringing and on her professional background in the Crown Prosecution Service (here one intuits why she was so drawn to the Peter Pan quotation). Nonetheless, her incorporation of such material into The Best of Everything is always through Paulette's eyes and, consequently, it all feels alive rather than merely didactic. Aiding this, and further grounding the novel in its historical moment, is de Waal's three-dimensional depiction of a Black woman's experience of '70s and later '80s England, with Paulette striving to maintain a fraying link to her heritage (symbolised by memories of her grandmother) while also keeping one eye on the tenuousness of her family's future. It is a delicate balance, one imperilled by the exhausting need to perform in non-threatening ways in order to navigate the racist landmines of white society ('Try to be a little kinder than is necessary' takes on additional and more defensive connotations in this light). [ The Celts: A Modern History by Ian Stewart - an extensive work overlooking several essential studies Opens in new window ] Yet while she carries more than her fair share of familial and social burdens, Paulette is neither a saint nor a saviour. She is too real for that. If anything, she possesses something of a self-destructive streak and makes bad decisions on more than one occasion, at times wallowing – often quite realistically – in despair and obsessive behaviour. That said, the character also rallies repeatedly against these slings and arrows in a manner which makes The Best of Everything a very satisfying read. Because de Waal is too astute a writer to deliver just misery fiction; no, this is realism in the truest sense, with both disappointments and promises alike reshaping Paulette's life in unexpected ways. The result is a carefully paced story of a woman facing a myriad of challenges in order to tenaciously carve out space for herself and her unexpected family. One is inclined to cheer her on throughout.
