Blog Posts by GQ Magazine

Pietro Criscuolo, chef-owner of Dongió in Milan, makes his meatballs quickly. Photo by Fred WoodwardBy GQ

Pietro Criscuolo makes meatballs, he waits for nobody. Not even a reporter desperately trying to jot down his recipe. Criscuolo, 71, is standing in the middle of his family's Milan restaurant, Dongió, and is performing something of a meatball clinic.

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He cracks two eggs onto a mound of ground beef, tosses in a few spoonfuls of bread crumbs, adds plenty of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, a touch of salt, some more Parmigiano, a few more bread crumbs, and then kneads the mixture until all the ingredients are well integrated. Every now and then, he looks up at me, smiles with his big droopy eyes, and says something in Italian that I can't understand.

I'm having enough trouble keeping up with him as he speedily rolls out about forty polpette. Although truthfully, there is not much to be confused about. As Pietro's son Antonio says in somewhat broken English, The simpler the recipe, the better the taste. And Pietro's recipe is indeed

By Austin Leslie, fry cook, Jacques-Imo's, New Orleans, GQ

Frying chicken is the culinary equivalent of shaving with a straight razor: Anybody can take a whack at it, but with an unsteady hand it's a messy, dangerous affair.

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Austin Leslie, a New Orleans food-world fixture for more than forty years, says most people are scared of the fryer. Scared of the skillet. So they stand wa-a-a-y back here, he says, illustrating with an invisible chicken leg. That way the grease won't pop 'em.

Chicken falling from a height of even an inch or two loses its coating of egg wash and flour in the splashdown. Then you're working with inferior chicken. I never drop the chicken, Leslie says. Even when I'm angry, I never drop the chicken.

Serves two to four

Ingredients
• 1 1/2 cups peanut oil, for frying
• 1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk
• 1 cup water
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• Salt and freshly ground white pepper
• 1 chicken (3 1/2 pounds),

By Stan Parish, GQ

"Family meal" takes place every night in restaurants everywhere-from temples of molecular gastronomy to the s---ty grill joint where I cooked in college. It's a pre-service ritual in which the staff eats a hearty lo-fi supper before the first seating shows up and all hell breaks loose. The dishes are usually simple to make, but they need to satisfy everyone from the pastry chef to the busboy.

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Put another way, family meal is exactly what you want when you have a crowd to feed. If football season means your house will occasionally be overrun with dudes, you're looking for a dish that'll keep people fed without chaining you to the stove for the first half. And by week three, everyone is sick of pizza and wings.

This one-pot family meal comes from Osteria Stellina in Point Reyes Station, California. More specifically, the recipe comes from cook Margarita Carmona's grandmother. Margarita worked at a now defunct Mexican

The editors of GQ and Wired collaboratively explore technology that pushes the limits.

By Julieanne Smolinski, GQ


It's often been said that variety is the spice of life, which means some pretty depressing things for monogamy. Namely, that being with the same person forever, sexually and romantically, is sort of the equivalent of eating your favorite food every day. Most people love rice, but not as their only option.

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I firmly believe that you can have rice every day, if you mix it up. (I mean this literally if you live in certain Asian countries or are severely impoverished and have a hotpot). You can keep the flame alive, in the bedchamber and the heart chamber with minimal effort. The key is remembering to do little things for your wife or longtime girlfriend or life partner that keep her surprised and sexually interested- almost to the point of wariness. I know that remembering to be unexpected seems counterintuitive, which is why it's important to plan your spontaneity with laser precision.

I've assembled some tips to

By GQ

You don't want to spend your mornings tucking and folding, so here's the secret to simplifying an otherwise tedious task: Ditch your flat sheet and sleep with only a soft duvet-which is how the Europeans do it. Come morning, just follow these four simple steps to give your bed a relaxed yet refined look.

1. Make space. Clear off all pillows, throws, and anything else that's on your bed. You need space to work.

2. Toss your duvet. Do this while standing at the side of the bed-preferably the side that's closest to the door. (It's a colossal pain to make your bed look perfect from every angle, so just focus on the one you'll be looking at most often.) You want the duvet to be off-center at this point, so aim high and long: Short it at the foot of the bed and give the side opposite you some extra length. This will make the duvet easier to adjust in the next step.

3. Fine-tune. Staying where you are, tug the duvet toward you until the side edge is parallel to the floor and the duvet

By Alan Richman, GQ

1. Make sure your sommelier really is one. Now that the dangling silver cups are out of fashion, it's hard to know if the guy bringing the wine list to your table is a sommelier or a guy from the catering department. Taking wine advice from an amateur is like buying a Rolex from a guy selling them out of a briefcase.

2. If you're the host and don't want to get into a monetary discussion at the table, call ahead and give the sommelier your budget. He should find it a welcome challenge.

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3. If the restaurant has no sommelier, try working with the waiter. If you say, "I'd like a juicy red for $40," and his response is a dull stare, ask him to send somebody around who's familiar with the list.

4. Regarding points two and three: Sommeliers are sick of waiting on wine simps. One of them said to me, Customers have got to grow more hair on their backs.

5. Beware the sommelier who recommends pairing the eight-course tasting

By Mark Byrne, Sean Fennessey, Jessica Glavin, Mark Anthony Green, Stelios Phili, Andrew Richdale, Eric Sullivan, and Dennis Tang, GQ

Thirty years ago, a fledgling startup network called MTV launched, completely altering how we experience music. What was once about sitting around listening to records, transformed into a platform for visual iconography. In honor of the anniversary of that dramatic shift, GQ partners with VEVO to celebrate the most stylish music videos ever.

See the full list of stylish videos at GQ.com