Fat Guy

I was thinking of the phenomenon of blogs that are updated many, many times throughout the day with the absolute latest in NYC dining info. There several NYC dining blogs that are updated daily or less than daily, but the Eaters and Grub Streets are updated pretty much hourly and have a uniquely newsy/gossipy function that seems to me to distinguish them from all others. Which reminds me, I really have to look into this Serious Eats NY blog to see what's going on there.

Well, there are various levels of observance. Needless to say, we drove to synagogue and engaged in other activities that day that more observant Jews would not approve of. So there may be a range of answers here. But as I understand it children are not required to fast until they reach the age of bar mitzvah (13). I believe starting at age 9 they're supposed to do a partial fast. There are also prohibitions against sick people fasting (if it will endanger their health), and I believe women who have recently given birth are not permitted to fast.

It's an MG restaurant in a Westin in Denver, from what I've read. The chef's name is Ian Kleinman. Here's an article about the place.

A little while back, looking at our son's nursery-school calendar (his nursery school is in a synagogue here in New York City), we noticed that the confluence of Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Columbus Day and his unusual Monday-Tuesday-Thursday schedule meant that from two Tuesdays ago until the following Thursday he would have no school. An even happier coincidence: our Gastonia, NC-based friends, who have a beach house in (on?) Oak Island, NC, would not be using the beach house at that time. So, with the 14-hour drive being the only barrier to an autumn vacation at the beach in North Carolina, we set off for the Cape Fear Coast. The nearest urban center (though it is hardly urban) to Oak Island is Wilmington, so we did some Googling and found not one but three synagogues in town. Ellen called each and learned that at least one, B'nai Israel, had a nursery school attached to it and therefore would be doing a children's service on Yom Kippur in addition to the regular adult service (for those unfamiliar with the liturgy, the Yom Kippur service is hard-core and all-day -- not do-able by a three-year-old). The woman on the phone was very welcoming and also invited us to join in the break-fast after sundown. Wednesday night just before sunset we grilled some burgers and had our last meal before the Yom Kippur fast. We spent some time at the beach collecting shells Thursday morning and then drove into Wilmington. Congregation B'nai Israel, we learned, dates to 1898 and has 211 families in its membership. Out front of the synagogue are several seriously old magnolia trees. A leaf from one of the trees fell and hit me on the head and almost gave me a concussion. By noon I was pretty thirsty (the Yom Kippur fast is comprehensive: no food or beverage from sundown to sundown) but was doing okay on the appetite front. My bodily reserves of fat could probably sustain me on a transatlantic voyage in a life raft, but I need water like everyone else. In between the children's service and the break-fast, we visited two lovely museums in Wilmington (the Wilmington Children's Museum and the Cape Fear Museum) and fed PJ (little kids, sick folks, et al., are not supposed to fast). I was envious of his pizza. We returned to the synagogue at 6:30pm, ravenous. The service, which was supposed to end by 7pm, ran late and the shofar (ram's horn, blown like a trumpet during the high holidays) wasn't sounded until about 7:30pm. I was about ready to pass out by the time we were led into the social hall for a break-fast prepared by the synagogue's sisterhood. Long tables were laid out with a cornucopia of breads, salads, spreads, locally smoked salmon and beverages. There was also a groaning board of desserts at one end of the room. As I walked from our table to the dessert buffet, several times, people would call out to me, "Are y'all the folks down from New York City?" (Word had traveled.) We sat opposite a lovely couple from Cincinnati, Bernie and Judy, who had chosen Wilmington for their retirement. In addition to the expected transplants, there were members of the synagogue who were real Southerners. One particular character, who told us he was third generation in that congregation, was going around whispering to his buddies, "I got some ribs on the grill. They'll be ready in about an hour. Come over." Revived by the break-fast, we headed back to Oak Island. A few days later we decided to spend another day in Wilmington. This time our objective was lunch at Wilmington's only kosher restaurant (yes, it's surprising that there is even one), a nominally Moroccan place called Nagila. Apparently at dinnertime there are servers and other trappings of a restaurant, but at lunchtime the chef-owner, an Israeli-born gentleman named Shai Shalit who seems out-of-place enough in Wilmington that it causes me to wonder whether he's in the witness protection program, cooks and serves all the food single-handedly. You get your own beverages and otherwise participate in the service of food. Prices are quite low. "The restaurant doesn't support me; I support the restaurant," said Shalit as he sat outside with us after the meal, smoking a cigarette and talking about his family's pita bakery in Brooklyn. (He also seems to broker diamonds via cell-phone while working in the restaurant.) The food at Nagila is astonishingly good. Shalit bakes his own pita. He does just about everything himself, in part because he's a perfectionist (he alluded to being a cook at a fancy hotel in Israel before coming to the US) and in part because local availability of kosher products is limited. If he didn't bake his own pita, it's not like he'd be able to get it from a local bakery. He starts prepping at the crack of dawn. I had lamb meatballs, which were juicy and delicately spiced, served with a variety of Middle Eastern salads and spreads including absolutely first-rate hummus. Most of the other lunch customers appeared to be local workmen who arrived in pickup trucks with the names of sheetrocking, plumbing and other contracting companies printed on the doors. We also had dinner with local food-writer Liz Biro, who it turns out had recently written a newspaper story about Nagila.

Stovetop pan roasting Slow stir frying Flip frying Pan griddled Sauteus interruptus

I had no idea that was going on over there at Serious Eats. So I guess that makes four in the category. That's too many for me to read.

Look at the Serious Eats home page and tell us how much New York City dining content you see.

We now have three major "blogs" (the scare quotes are because I'm not sure the classic criteria of blogs apply) chronicling the New York City dining scene: Eater (headed by Ben Leventhal and part of the Curbed network), Grub Street (part of New York Magazine online), and the new Feedbag (from former Grub Street editor Josh Ozersky, who is now at Citysearch). Each of these blogs, every weekday, provides up-to-the-minute information about restaurants, chefs, et al., in New York City. There are a number of other New York dining blogs out there, but these three seem to be a category. We don't really have a topic to discuss the blogs in this category, and their occasional mention seems out of place on the New York reviewing topic, so I thought I'd start one here and now to track the goings on with Eater, Grub Street and The Feedbag.

Okay, so sauteing is technically when you keep stuff moving in the pan almost constantly. But there are a couple of things I cook -- mushrooms, home fried potatoes -- where I put them in the pan, let them sit unagitated for a couple of minutes to brown and crisp on whichever side is in contact with the pan, then toss as in a saute, then let them sit more, and so on. What's the name for that?

Also in this month's Chicago Magazine there's a piece indicating that two restaurants -- Avenues and Graham Elliot -- now fall into this category: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine...paving-Avenues/

McCrady’s in Charleston. O's Steak & Seafood in Denver. That Varvary place in Moscow sounds interesting. Whatever Richard Blais is doing at any given moment. And let us not forget Interlude in Melbourne, and Tapas Molecular Bar in Tokyo.

RecipeGullet is back up and running, as seem to be all our web services. Please PM or email me, Dave the Cook or chrisamirault if you notice anything else amiss. Many thanks.

Right, the key issue is the diameter of the pot. If you simply get a taller pot that has the same diameter as the old pot, you'll get more capacity for other uses without altering that great fit for poaching. If the larger pot also has a greater diameter, that's a different story and you might not be happy with it.

Two dinners is a common practice among food journalists who focus on dining. If you're traveling to a city and you have only limited time to get a good overview of the restaurants in that town you have little choice but to double (or triple) up. I used to have the physical capacity to do this sort of thing with little forethought: no heartburn or other discomfort, no need to limit consumption, and near-complete disregard for pacing. Now as I near 40 I can't just shovel two big meals (or even one) down my throat and expect to have a decent night's sleep afterward. Current strategy is: 1-Make the first reservation at the earliest possible moment (even if that's 5pm) and the second reservation late (after 9pm). 2-Avoid (or only taste) bread and any other non-essential extras. 3-Only eat about half what's on your plate and only taste desserts. 4-Order lighter fare (no short ribs unless they're the signature dish, in which case eat only part). 5-No wine, or just a glass. 6-Skip breakfast.

I guess it's also a question of temperament. There are people for whom that experience would have utterly ruined the evening and created a deterrent against ever venturing that far afield again. We were lucky to have a group that just used the time to gab and didn't wind up scarred by the delays. I've also resolved, for future weeknight ventures, to be more aggressive about pursuing the public-transportation alternatives. Of course I've also spent hours trapped on New York City subways, sitting in Manhattan traffic, etc. But yes, the farther off the city grid you go the greater your risk of getting trapped.

Last night I had a pretty rough New Jersey experience, demonstrating some of the risks of travel to the Garden State. I was taking a reporter and a photographer to Moksha in Edison in an attempt to prove my point about the categorical superiority of New Jersey South Indian. Moksha performed admirably, however the traffic situation was insane. I left my apartment on the Upper East Side at 6:30pm and fought my way into Midtown to pick up my traveling companions, then we dealt with traffic getting to and through the Lincoln Tunnel. Then, at the Turnpike tolls, there was a major accident -- police, fire, ambulances, tow-trucks, helicopter circling overhead -- right where all the cars enter the Turnpike. It created something on the order of an hour-long delay. We got to Moksha in Edison at 9pm. Then, on the way back, the Turnpike was closed -- closed! -- just before the Lincoln Tunnel exit. So us and a lot of other irritated people were redirected to the Holland Tunnel along the 1/9 truck route. I dropped my passengers in two locations and got home around 1:30am. The food was really good, though. And, happy ending: when I got home a guy was just pulling out of a parking space on my block on the good side.

That's correct. It should be in most B&N and Borders stores as well as many independent bookstores (the book was just chosen as an "Indie Next Pick," which means many independent booksellers will stock the title) and, of course, you can get it from Amazon -- you can even order it now from Amazon and it will ship for the on-sale date.

A nice article about the book popped up today on the Wall Street Journal's website: "Rules for Dim Sum -- and Then Some."

Maggie took the Daily Gullet to heights none of us could have predicted or expected. Regular appearances in the Best Food Writing anthology, the highest editorial standards . . . all of us who believe in and support the eGullet Society can be proud of her accomplishments. We are in her debt. Thank you Maggie, from all of us.

For the past week or so we've experienced an unusual amount of downtime, and last night we had a complete failure of the primary hard drive on our server. This morning the eGullet.org website and database were migrated to a new server, a process that took several hours on account of the size of our database. We are back up and running now, but there may be some residual issues. We are working on them. (It's also possible that some overnight posts were lost in the shuffle, but if so it's a very small number.) With relish,

Chris, I'd love to hear more about the tasting. Did you buy in to the superiority of dry-aged over wet-aged beef, and what did you think of the Wagyu?

I've seen the term used here and there. They sell something by that name, for example, at Russ & Daughters. It's also a brand name, though I have no idea whether EMP is using the brand or is just referring to the method (whatever the method is). http://www.balik.ch/en/products/rauchlachs.htm http://www.russanddaughters.com/pr_salmon.html

I finally had the cumin lamb at the fabled Bay Ridge place (Grand Sichuan House) and it was indeed excellent. It is, however, a barely comparable dish to the cumin lamb at Szechuan Gourmet. The seasonings are similar but the Grand Sichuan House version is, as stated on the menu, lamb with cumin sauce. It's a wet dish, not smothered in sauce but generally moist. Whereas, the Szechuan Gourmet dish is a dry dish with crispy lamb slices dusted with cumin. I'd hate to live in a world without both.

Yes but events aimed at the public can vary in gravitas, ranging from the highbrow content the 92nd Street Y provides to total garbage. Ditto for events targeted at professionals.

I'm very much looking forward to reading your reports, Chris. In particular I'll be interested to see your take on the overall level of seriousness of the events.