| 3.5% | Projected 2008 sales growth for the retail industry (excluding restaurants, vehicle dealerships and gas stations), with 3.2% growth during the year’s first half and 3.8% growth during the second. (National Retail Federation) |
| 2 | Number of operations—an eponymous restaurant and an adjacent Next Vintage Wine Shop—that Chef-restaurateur Charlie Palmer plans to open on the first floor of Bloomingdale’s South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif., in May. (Bloomingdale’s) |
| $14.95 | Menu price at Chef David Burke’s Burke Bar Café at Bloomingdale’s, New York City, for an appetizer of pastrami-smoked salmon with caperberries and honey mustard. (davidburke.com) |
| 1 | Number of plants—the Capparis spinosa, or caper bush—that yields both capers (the plant’s immature buds) and the milder-in-flavor caperberries. (wisegeek.com) |
| 0 | Number of dishes offered at Capers restaurant in Little Rock, Ark., indicated on the menu as containing capers. Appetizers include Pastry-Wrapped Camembert (Camembert, truffled crabmeat and wild mushrooms wrapped in phyllo dough and baked, finished with roasted-red-bell-pepper coulis and served on a bed of arugula) for $7.95. (Capers) |
| 2,500 | Approximate acreage of the French village of Camembert in Normandy. Camembert has 201 residents. (camembert-france.com) |
| 13:1 | Approximate ratio of 2005 supermarket sales of Brie cheese to sales of Camembert. About 10 million pounds of Brie and 760,000 pounds of Camembert were sold. (Information Resources Inc./couco.com) |
| $16 | Price on the lunch menu at Caliterra in Boston for Executive Chef Julia Brant’s Rosemary Chicken Panini (chicken, Brie, roasted red bell peppers and caramelized onions on herb focaccia, served with garlic-and-parsley frites). (Caliterra) |
| 43.8% | Percent of college and university foodservice directors who say panini are increasing in sales on their menus. (R&I 2007 Menu Census) |
| $4.75 | Menu price at Trailroom, a cafe operated by Bon Appétit Management Co. at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Ore., for Eggplant Parmesan Panini with mozzarella and pepperoncini. (Bon Appétit Management Co.) |
| 193 | Pounds of condensed “portable soup” purchased by Meriwether Lewis (shown, at l.) from Francois Baillet, a Philadelphia cook, in May 1803 in preparation for his expedition with William Clark. Lewis paid $1.50 per pound, according to his letters. (National Park Service) |
| $7.50 | Menu price at Philadelphia’s City Tavern restaurant (in a building that dates to 1773) for West Indies Pepperpot Soup with beef, taro root and greens. (City Tavern) |
| 1 | Rank of Nigeria among all countries in taro production. Its 4 million tons in 2005 was more than double the 1.8 million tons produced by runner-up Ghana. (U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization) |
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