Latest news with #Roots
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Restaurants remove ‘king of fish' from menus as prices soar
Chefs are being forced to take the so-called king of fish off their menus, as the soaring price of seafood makes it virtually impossible to turn a profit. Treasured for its succulent flesh and superior flavour, turbot has long been considered among the finest fishes on restaurant menus. Yet it is becoming a rare option for diners following steep increases in the cost of fish and seafood. Tommy Banks, chef patron of Michelin-starred restaurants The Black Swan and Roots, both in Yorkshire, said: 'It's the king of the sea, a beautiful fish. Pre-pandemic, I paid £18 per kilo. Now it can be as much as £65. 'You can't afford to put it on the menu. And if you do… the amount you'd have to charge for it. There's just no value whatsoever. There really isn't cheap or cheaper fish any more. But turbot in particular is just outrageous, and you can't afford to use it.' Mr Banks recently hosted a tasting night at his restaurant Roots where one of the dishes included turbot. However, he said: 'I was giving a 60g sliver, literally a sliver [to diners]. We were like 'Well, we need to make turbot the smallest [dish] because it's so expensive'. It was costing £9 for 60g of fillet.' Adrian Nunn, director of The Upper Scale, which sells fish to consumers and restaurants in London, said many restaurants had stopped ordering turbot altogether, and were using more affordable alternatives – like Dover sole. He said: 'I don't think I've got one restaurant using turbot. They used to and they've stopped, they can't afford to.' Seafood prices have soared across in recent years, with produce such as langoustines also becoming unsustainable to serve in restaurants. Mr Banks said: 'Some of these really luxury ingredients – like turbot, langoustine, lobster, caviar and truffle – you'll only really find in Mayfair now.' However, Mr Nunn added: 'It's not just the prime fish, It's all fish, whether it's frozen or whether it's sardines, mackerel, whether it's turbot, Dover soles, it's all gone up.' Traditional fish suppers have been hit too. According to the Office for National Statistics, the price of a kilogram of white fish fillets has risen by more than 28pc in the three years to January 2025 to hit £20.59. Inflation in fish and seafood has been blamed on steep rises in the cost of labour, shipping and energy – keeping fish chilled or frozen is particularly energy intensive – and the reduction of fishing quotas by international governments. Laky Zervudachi at fish wholesaler Direct Seafoods, added: 'This year we have seen increasing inflationary pressure on virtually all species of seafood, whether it be simple staples like cod and haddock, to the more exclusive species like scallops and lobsters. 'As always, there are many factors that combine to create these increases, not least are a number of precautionary measures that have been taken by international bodies to help preserve fishing stocks around the world.' Adding to pressure is increased demand for fish from Spanish and French buyers, which has driven up the price for British firms, Mr Nunn said. He said: 'We buy in North of England, because there's not so many Spanish and French buyers up there. They'll just outbid us. We'd love to buy turbot at £10 per kilo, but they'll pay £20, £25, £30 so that's it.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Restaurants remove ‘king of fish' from menus as prices soar
Chefs are being forced to take the so-called king of fish off their menus, as the soaring price of seafood makes it virtually impossible to turn a profit. Treasured for its succulent flesh and superior flavour, turbot has long been considered among the finest fishes on restaurant menus. Yet it is becoming a rare option for diners following steep increases in the cost of fish and seafood. Tommy Banks, chef patron of Michelin-starred restaurants The Black Swan and Roots, both in Yorkshire, said: 'It's the king of the sea, a beautiful fish. Pre-pandemic, I paid £18 per kilo. Now it can be as much as £65. 'You can't afford to put it on the menu. And if you do… the amount you'd have to charge for it. There's just no value whatsoever. There really isn't cheap or cheaper fish any more. But turbot in particular is just outrageous, and you can't afford to use it.' Mr Banks recently hosted a tasting night at his restaurant Roots where one of the dishes included turbot. However, he said: 'I was giving a 60g sliver, literally a sliver [to diners]. We were like 'Well, we need to make turbot the smallest [dish] because it's so expensive'. It was costing £9 for 60g of fillet.' Adrian Nunn, director of The Upper Scale, which sells fish to consumers and restaurants in London, said many restaurants had stopped ordering turbot altogether, and were using more affordable alternatives – like Dover sole. He said: 'I don't think I've got one restaurant using turbot. They used to and they've stopped, they can't afford to.' Seafood prices have soared across in recent years, with produce such as langoustines also becoming unsustainable to serve in restaurants. Mr Banks said: 'Some of these really luxury ingredients – like turbot, langoustine, lobster, caviar and truffle – you'll only really find in Mayfair now.' However, Mr Nunn added: 'It's not just the prime fish, It's all fish, whether it's frozen or whether it's sardines, mackerel, whether it's turbot, Dover soles, it's all gone up.' Traditional fish suppers have been hit too. According to the Office for National Statistics, the price of a kilogram of white fish fillets has risen by more than 28pc in the three years to January 2025 to hit £20.59. Inflation in fish and seafood has been blamed on steep rises in the cost of labour, shipping and energy – keeping fish chilled or frozen is particularly energy intensive – and the reduction of fishing quotas by international governments. Laky Zervudachi at fish wholesaler Direct Seafoods, added: 'This year we have seen increasing inflationary pressure on virtually all species of seafood, whether it be simple staples like cod and haddock, to the more exclusive species like scallops and lobsters. 'As always, there are many factors that combine to create these increases, not least are a number of precautionary measures that have been taken by international bodies to help preserve fishing stocks around the world.' Adding to pressure is increased demand for fish from Spanish and French buyers, which has driven up the price for British firms, Mr Nunn said. He said: 'We buy in North of England, because there's not so many Spanish and French buyers up there. They'll just outbid us. We'd love to buy turbot at £10 per kilo, but they'll pay £20, £25, £30 so that's it.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
With so many weekend events, find out how Philly police are meeting the security challenge
The Brief Philadelphia police discuss security preps ahead of big events in the city this weekend. The Roots Picnic Music Festival is on Saturday and Sunday and Philly Pride Month festivities kick off on Friday. The music festival and the Philadelphia Pride March attract large crowds annually. CENTER CITY - Security in Philadelphia is going to be high throughout the weekend due to all the events happening, with the Roots Picnic Music Festival and Philly Pride Month festivities and falling just days after a mass shooting in Fairmount Park. Heightened security This weekend, tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the Roots Picnic Music Festival and Philly Pride Month festivities, and Philadelphia police are planning a large security presence to match. In fact, Chief Inspector John Przepiorka, the Commanding Officer of the PPD Tactical Support Bureau, said in light of the mass shooting on Memorial Day there will be stepped-up deployment in the Philadelphia Park System. "That will consist of uniformed officers, as well as plain-clothes officers, riding through the parks, checking on the crowd capacity, what the size is – what's going on in the park – is it just kids at play or is there anything nefarious in the works – that kind of thing," said Chief Inspector Przepiorka. "We're going to keep a better eye on the parks throughout the area and again to make sure that people that can go there, can enjoy the park and have a great time, but also to prevent anything from occurring in the future." Planning Przepiorka said security planning for events starts weeks in advance, and sometimes months and even years, depending on the nature of the event. The department goes over deployment strategies for officers, state and federal partners and special operations units. "Sweeps in the morning with our K9 unit looking for anything that may be suspicious. We will then also have our uniformed officers present at the venue site itself, which could also incorporate officers on bicycles to have more roaming capabilities of being in the area, being visible and present," said Przepiorka. Big picture view In addition to deployment strategies, police also collaborate with partners at the Intelligence Bureau on the local, state and federal level to look for any information to help police identify an issue before it happens. "Easy for things to get raucous and out of control, but I think we do a great job of striking that balance to make people feel safe and still able to have as much fun as possible," said Aaron Corpora of South Philly. "I've been to some Pride events and Roots last year as well, and my girlfriend will be here this weekend. She's looking forward to it. She loves the Roots event, so she'll be out there this weekend without a doubt."
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘A lot comes with jumping into that inferno': Questlove explores the burden of Black genius in ‘Sly Lives!'
To follow up his Oscar-winning Summer of Soul, Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson turned his focus on one of the landmark acts featured in that lauded documentary, Sly and the Family Stone. The result, Hulu's Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius), is now in the mix for an Emmy Award. 'I like documentaries that make learning fun. Maybe I'm a natural-born griot,' he tells Gold Derby. 'It just took five decades to get here.' More from GoldDerby Directors open up about identity, risk and emotional storytelling at Disney's FYC fest 'M*A*S*H' star Loretta Swit dies at 87, and more of today's top stories 'Maybe Happy Ending' star Darren Criss on his Tony nomination for playing a robot: 'Getting to do this is the true win' Questlove traces his passion for unearthing and sharing music history back to his early years on The Tonight Show as bandleader for the Roots. "On the first day of The Tonight Show, someone told Jimmy [Fallon] and I, 'Everything that you ever know in your life is going to come out in this job,'' the artist recounts. This formative moment shaped his creative philosophy, one that prioritizes education through entertainment. 'I'd rather educate you than entertain you,' he says. 'But I figured out a way to reverse it, so you're so distracted by how entertaining the presentation is that you don't realize my ulterior motive is always to plant a seed and spark an idea." The idea for Sly Lives!, his exploration of Sly Stone's musical genius, arose while editing a pivotal moment of the band's footage from the Harlem Cultural Festival for Summer of Soul. 'I told my editor, 'Yo, this [performance] is 10 days from Woodstock. This is a dress rehearsal for Sly. In 10 days, he's going to go into hyperspeed.' I told them, 'That's the movie I want to see.'' Fate seemed to intervene shortly after when Common called Questlove out of the blue. 'He said, 'I own the life rights to Sly Stone. … You wouldn't be interested in that, would you?'' Questlove recalls, still awe-struck by the coincidence. 'That's when I knew Siri or somebody from the government was listening, because there's no way Common could've heard my exact conversation about wanting someone to make this movie — and it lands in our lap.'' Hulu In Sly Lives!, Questlove aims to showcase the cultural impact of Stone. Despite creating timeless classics like 'Dance to the Music' and 'Everyday People,' Stone's legacy is often overshadowed by what Questlove refers to as self-sabotage. 'There's footage in the film where Parliament-Funkadelic is on stage with him, and it's surreal. It's like, 'You're literally the teacher of all this, Sly, but you're now cosplaying a costar in the world you created.' "I tell people, after the seventh year, Sly drops the baton and the person that comes along the road and picks the baton up to finish the mission will actually be Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson will do, 10 years later, what was going to be expected for Sly to do after Woodstock, which was become this mega huge star beyond the stratosphere. But there's a lot that comes with jumping into that inferno, and that's what we learned in this film." Questlove posits that part of Stone's struggles stem from the weight of responsibility attached to his brilliance and success — a theme he makes central to the film's title. 'It's not just your journey, it's the burden of carrying 20 other people with you," he explains. 'Our level of success is way different than mainstream success because there's so much more that comes with it — there's people in your past that you might feel obligated to take care of. Sometimes it gets to be too much. It's understandable why some people break at the seams." It's the burden of Black genius. Despite the challenges, Stone's innovations are undeniable. Questlove marvels at how many of Stone's contributions to music shaped the industry, from pioneering multi-track recording to conceptual music videos a decade before MTV's advent. 'Even in that medium, Sly was ahead of the game,' he emphasizes. Questlove was intentional about serving three distinct audiences with Sly Lives!: 'There's the first-generation Sly Stone fans, anyone born around 1940. Then there's my generation, who learned about Sly through our parents — or through hip-hop. And finally, there's the people who don't know who Sly is at all — and you have to make sure they're covered, too.' 'For me, my sweet spot was always with the hip-hop heads,' he says. "You might be aware that Arrested Development's 'People Everyday' is 'Everyday People.' You might recognize the drums from 'The Humpty Dance' as 'Sing a Simple Song.' You might have some sort of hip-hop-adjacent, 'Oh, that LL Cool J loop is definitely Sly Stone.' You might be that person. Any chance that I got to throw a bone to hip-hop heads, I took." The documentary also indulges Questlove's passion for rare musical treasures. With access to Stone's vault, the filmmaker unearthed unreleased alternate takes and versions of hits like 'Thank You for Talkin' to Me, Africa' and 'Everyday People.' But fitting the entirety of Sly Stone's genius into a single film proved daunting. 'There are trillions of Sly genius stories,' Questlove admits. One such story, ultimately left on the cutting room floor, highlights Sly's remarkable real-time creativity during an urgent re-edit of 'Stand!' after testing it at Whisky a Go Go in 1969. 'Sly was a little disappointed that people weren't losing their minds to his new single,' Questlove recounts. 'Then, a girl he was with gave him the inspiration, saying, 'It's 1969, man. We need a get-down part.'' "Sly literally wakes the band up as the club is letting out at 1:45 a.m. and says, 'Get to the studio now. We made a mistake!' And they get to the studio and they work on what we now know as the ending of 'Stand!,' and he calls up Columbia the next day. He's like, 'Destroy all the 45s. We have a new ending. Forget that version.' They're like, 'We already printed it up.' So there's about 40,000 copies of the original 'Stand!' out there. I was lucky to find one." On June 5, Hulu will debut a new version of Sly Lives! with Questlove and Joseph Patel offering insightful, humorous and often confessional commentary on the making of their documentary, Sly Lives!, and the film's theme, the burden of Black genius. Meanwhile, Questlove has another documentary in Emmy contention this year: Ladies and Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music. Like Sly Lives!, it also began with a phone call. Lorne Michaels, SNL's iconic creator, approached him with a simple question: Would Questlove help tell the story of SNL's musical history in time for its 50th anniversary? 'It was almost to the point where I thought, 'Wait, do you even know who I am? How did I get here?'' Questlove laughs, recalling his initial hesitation about the iconic 17th-floor meeting with Michaels. What started as a simple plan to catalog the '50 greatest musical performances' on SNL became a transformative project. 'By the time I chose my 30th clip, we weren't even at 1988 yet. I knew I couldn't fairly choose just 50 performances. So I spent a year and a half watching 939 complete episodes of SNL." The laborious process enriched Questlove's understanding of the show's musical evolution. 'It was fun, though,' he admits. 'I enjoyed it.' Through Sly Lives! and Ladies and Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music, Questlove reaffirms his belief in the transformative power of music storytelling. Whether revisiting Sly Stone's forgotten innovations or cataloging SNL's greatest performances, Questlove invites audiences to see these moments with fresh eyes. Yet, underneath the entertainment, a deeper mission remains — to spark ideas, build bridges through music, and honor the unyielding legacy of Black genius. Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) is now streaming on Hulu, and Ladies and Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music is on Peacock. Best of GoldDerby 'I cried a lot': Rob Delaney on the heart and humor in FX's 'Dying for Sex' — and Neighbor Guy's kick in the 'zone' TV directors roundtable: 'American Primeval,' 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,' 'Paradise' 'Paradise' directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra on the 'chaos' of crafting 'the world coming to an end' Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Child Actress from 'The Day After 'Breaks Down Sobbing While Rewatching Bombing Scenes in the 1983 Nuclear War TV Movie
The landmark 1983 TV movie The Day After showed viewers the aftermath of a fictional nuclear strike in Middle America It remains one of the highest-rated TV movies of all time The new documentary Television Event explores the making of the filmThere's an old saying that goes like this: "If there's a nuclear war, only two species will survive: the cockroaches and Cher." Thankfully, that theory has yet to be tested, although a 1983 ABC television movie called The Day After painted a vivid and terrifying what-if nuclear Armageddon scenario. The newly released documentary Television Event goes behind-the-scenes of the Cold War-era television classic, which presented an alternate (and to many at the time, seemingly inevitable) reality in which a nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union leaves two cities — Lawrence, Kans., and Kansas City, Mo. — flattened. Both real-life cities were chosen as settings for the telefilm because of their proximity to numerous missile silos. The Day After was initially intended to be a four-hour miniseries airing over two nights. It was also meant to put the fear of God into viewers... literally. Ed Hume, the film's credited writer, reveals in the documentary that "Silence in Heaven," a phrase he pulled directly from the Bible's Book of Revelation, was the original title of his screenplay. Television Event, directed by Jeff Daniels (not the Emmy-winning actor, but the maker of activism-minded documentaries like Mother with a Gun) reveals that The Day After filmmakers wanted to make a movie in which big-name performers wouldn't overshadow the message. Stars like Donald Sutherland, Blythe Danner and Roots actor George Stanford Brown were passed over in favor of two-time Oscar winner Jason Robards, John Lithgow and Steve Guttenberg. Much of the cast of extras and actors in some larger roles were handpicked from among locals in Lawrence. Ellen Anthony, who played Joleen Dahlberg, the youngest daughter in one of the featured families, was one of the chosen. She appears in the documentary and shares her memories of being cast in the movie and filming it. "We surrendered our innocence," she says. "We surrendered that to this larger goal. We were going to do something very serious." At one point, Anthony is seen watching the movie's harrowing bombing scenes and breaks down crying. 'That's really hard for me to watch. Because that's… It's really hard for me to watch," she says, as tears fall down her cheeks. "Because that's my town, that's my child..." She stops in the middle of the word and closes her eyes before trying to go on. "I'm sorry, I can't see it right now.' 'Those locations were the locations of my childhood," she continues. "The group of students that you see vaporized was my actual fifth-grade class. That's hard to watch. That's really hard to watch.' That was the case for many of those who saw the movie, which remains one of the highest-rated TV films of all time. According to the documentary, 67% of the people in the U.S. watching TV that night — some 100 million people total — watched The Day After. Following the movie, ABC aired a special edition of Viewpoint in which ABC news anchor Ted Koppel comforted viewers by reminding them The Day After was just a movie, but also warning them that what happens in the movie could happen in real life. 'It's sort of necessary to pick up a glass of water and say, 'OK, well, wake up now," Koppel, 85, says in an interview filmed for the documentary. "We're gonna talk about this, but that movie — you know it was a movie, right? It didn't happen. And everything is OK for the time being.' ' That episode of Viewpoint included an appearance by then U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, who assured viewers that the events of the movie would never happen in real life. Thought leaders of the time, including former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, Carl Sagan and former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, took part in a panel to debate the merit of the film. The Day After, which was also shown in Russia and in Hiroshima, Japan — where the U.S. dropped an atom bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, hastening the end of World War II — had a lasting effect. In his memoir, Ronald Reagan, who was president when the movie aired, wrote that it left him 'greatly depressed.' Television Event posits that the movie 'led to the biggest decline in nuclear weapons in history.' "The Day After was an important thing," Nicholas Meyer, who directed the TV movie, says near the end of the documentary. "And people realize, in retrospect, just how important it was — certainly the most valuable thing I've gotten to do with my life to date." Television Event is now playing in select theaters, including Film Forum in New York City. Read the original article on People
