The excellent New York Times Wednesday food Section, Dining In/Dining Out, has a couple of articles in today's section of special interest to those of us here on the Left Coast. First, an article by ex-San Francisco Chronicle staffer Kim Severson on Slow Food Nation 2008, Slow Food's ambitious Labor Day weekend celebration of all things slow and delicious. And a tempting piece by Marian Burros about soft-serve ice cream, Stand Back, Mister Softee: There's a New Swirl in Town, that starts with a Bay Area treat -- the soft-serve available at Pizzeria Picco in Larkspur, which also is the source of the luscious-looking spiced-cantaloupe-atop-voluptuous-soft-serve pictured on the front page of the section, and also the blackberry-laden version illustrated online -- and continues its tour with Berkeley's Sketch Ice Cream on Fourth Street, featured among other places in New York and Atlanta. Pizzeria Picco's vanilla soft-serve in a chocolate shell from El Rey of VenezueIa! Sketch's "creamsicle" of white nectarine granita nestled next to jasmine tea soft serve in a cup! I predict long lines -- even longer than usual -- at both.

--Meredith Brody