[News] Latvians and North Koreans Chow Down

The Australian behemoth News.com.au has a report from a restaurant in Riga with a challenging business plan: It's owned by doctors who've made its ambience all-things-medical. Sit at OR tables, have food served on gurneys, have tweezers and scalpels laid out beside forks and spoons, drink cocktails from test tubes and beakers, etc., and the things on that tray over there that look like tongues, well, they're food designed to look like tongues (and noses, and ears). (Bonus: For "entertainment," deranged-looking "patients" in straitjackets are wheeled around.)
The news is better out of Pyongyang, according to a Tokyo newspaper that has connections inside: Dear Leader finally allowed the first Italian restaurant to open after several years' fits and starts, involving hands-on lessons on pizza prep by some of Italy's best chefs (who had to be basically scanned like astronauts are to make it past North Korean security). But here's the moment of zen, from The Guardian: K.Jay apparently dropped by the kitchen one day to observe an Italian coaching a Korean. The Italian said later that he couldn't be sure it was actually K.Jay and not a stand-in, but the Korean chef, "who had no reason to fib, was, for the space of several minutes, utterly speechless. He said he felt as if he had seen God, and I still envy him this experience." News.com.au /// The Guardian

Today's Newsrangers: David Stratford, Jenny Beatty, Karl Olson