Fat Guy

Correct. 10:30. For those staying at the Marriott: I had no trouble calling the desk to extend checkout by an hour, to 1pm -- makes the logistics of departure much easier.

I've also got to say, the Chubby Cook was an amazing venue for this -- you can see from the photos how capacious and well-appointed the kitchen is -- and Scott and his crew were incredibly gracious and generous hosts. Many thanks to them and to Nancy H for making it all happen. http://thechubbycook.com/

I don't have the iPad anymore so I don't have all the details of each dish handy, but a summary is: - Amuse bouche of pork belly and cornichon, by our host Chef Scott - Kerry Beal's larb - Dave and Janet's roasted-red-pepper-soup shooter with aged-gouda crouton - Kris and Tom and my yellow-watermelon and beet salad with spice-roasted chickpeas - Ronnie's mega salad - Chris Hennes's bratwurst with cabbage and apple, Edsel's modernist mac and cheese, and Sam and Joyce's carrot stew ala Thomas Keller - David Ross's stir-fried pork with red bean paste and black vinegar over crispy rice noodles - Assorted desserts including Chef Scott's lemon cups and Kerry Beal's modernist lemon curd I'm sure the individual cooks can flesh out details.

I basically wasn't able to snap a single photo between the time the amuse was served and the time desserts went out. So what I have mostly are some shots from the West Side Market and prep. But here they are. The West Side Market. Afternoon prep. Jeff Meeker's bologna sliders. Bacon crostini, I think these came from Ronnie and his crew but I didn't witness their genesis. Kerry Beal's profiteroles with modernist lemon curd chocolate cups.

We are en route to the Chubby Cook. Kris and Tom and I will be making watermelon, beet and roasted chickpea salad. If anybody can bring a couple of aprons so Kris can keep her white pants clean that would be great. Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk

Great. I'll call you if there's a problem. Can we use your iPad today for expediting? Or can someone else bring one?

I think you said you were picking David up at 11:10? If so does that make 10:50 at the dinosaur logical?

What about a quicker focaccia than your normal? Or what about purchased afternoon bread and something by you for dinner? Pizzas? Lavash? I know you can do something amazing. I can help, not that that would help.

I'm planning to arrive with the family at University Circle (Natural History museum) at around 10:30 this morning. Is there anyone who is going to be in that vicinity who can drive me over to the farmers' market (I think they are not far away from each other)?

Tom, I know most of your breads utilize an overnight preferment, but are there recipes in your arsenal that don't? Maybe it's not too late to get some Red Star and have bread ready 8 hours from now? I'd rather eat your worst bread than anything from a bakery.

Some photos from yesterday. The Dim and Dem Sum truck. Ellen and PJ got to go inside. Dinner at Greenhouse Tavern was excellent. The stools were uncomfortable (I am not anti-stool but these were bad), the place was loud, there were some flaws with some of the food (the "world-famous vegan doughnuts" will go down as the weirdest dish of the trip), but overall this food was the highest-level stuff we've seen in Cleveland on either trip. The pig's head platter, which doesn't look nearly as impressive in photos as in person, was one of the most awesome dishes I've ever seen anywhere. A couple of the photos below need extra explanation: one shows the braids of garlic hanging from the restaurant's ceiling. Another shows Dave ("the Cook") forking some meat out of the pig's head. The rest delineate the dishes from the menu.

That pig head was no joke.

Just to reiterate one thing Nancy mentioned at dinner tonight: If you are cooking a course for tomorrow's dinner, we are going to have a planning meeting at 2pm at the Chubby Cook. You can come earlier but please do be there by 2, or have at least one member of your team there at that time. We need to schedule the service times for each course, figure out who needs what serviceware, coordinate use of any equipment that will have to serve more than one purpose, ensure that we have enough person-power, and make a shopping list for a run to the supermarket (things like frying oil, flour, etc., we will get at the supermarket not at the market markets).

I don't think it will be possible to keep up with the pace of events, posting-wise, but here are some bad photos of what has happened. Shoeing the horse yesterday, and the truck the guys showed up in. Lunch at Pura Vida was great, especially my chicken-salad-sandwich with grapes and almonds, in a cool lunch box presentation. Snacks at Fahrenheit. I agree, I preferred these pizzas. Pizzas and other good stuff at Lolita, I think the chicken livers were the dish of the night. A tasting menu at Dante.

We arrived in Massillon, OH, on Monday afternoon and have been hanging out down here (about an hour south of Cleveland) with some long-time friends we don't see enough of. We'll be driving up to Cleveland midday tomorrow, after we watch a guy come to shoe our friend's horse. We're having lunch at Pura Vida with our Cleveland CVB contact, and I'll be at Fahrenheit at 5.

I love this stuff. I'm probably not supposed to, but I think it makes things like burgers taste much better. So I'm wondering, is it bad? And also, is it possible to reverse engineer something better?

I like the 10:30 time, or even 11. But 10 seems kind of early especially if there is to be a tour before. Not that my vote should count given my poor record of being able to commit.

Isn't there something between these two?

I can definitely use a ride on Thursday evening. Friday evening too.

I really like this direction. I wonder what might be a good variant with a less starchy vegetable or vegetables (for low-carb people) and some boneless/skinless frozen filets of white something-or-other.

I'm in the same boat as Ronnie: I'd like to come to Sunday brunch and would like to bring the family but there is some uncertainty with respect to the necessary departure time. Earlier timing helps but is not an absolute guarantee. I'll get it sorted out as soon as I can.

Here's the challenge, from some friends in the Midwest I'd like to help out: I'm looking for a few good fish dishes that will work for people who are 1) landlocked such that the best fish available locally is probably the frozen product at Trader Joe's, 2) not inexperienced but not highly experienced cooks, and 3) interested in fairly straightforward/non-elaborate recipes. Any ideas? The first thing that came to mind for me was fish tacos.

I have some really dumb questions and forgive me if they've been answered. I really have been subscribed to the topic and have read the posts as they've come in but my brain can't contain all the information: 1. What should I do to RSVP to the various events? 2. Do we know what the menu is for the Sunday lunch, or do we have some indication of what the meal will be like? I'm trying to vet it for the family. I will be at all events starting Thursday night. I think Ellen and PJ may come to the food truck, may hang with us during Saturday meal prep (but not stay for the dinner), and may do Sunday lunch if it's appealing to them.

I'm pretty sure the impetus for him returning to the US was that Ducasse said, "We need you in New York."

One year ago Didier Elena returned to New York City to take over the kitchen at Adour, the Alain Ducasse restaurant in the St. Regis Hotel. Who is Didier Elena, you ask? He is in my opinion one of the handful of best working chefs in the United States, with perhaps the lowest profile of any chef at that level. Now 40 years old, he has been a Ducasse team member for most of his life, and was the opening chef at Ducasse's first New York Restaurant, at the Essex House hotel. Even for those who lived through it, it's easy to forget the vitriol and hostility that surrounded that opening. It seems silly in retrospect: the prices, then thought to be so high, were just not all that bad by today's standards; and the formality of the place was more enjoyable than horrifying. At the time, I was just getting started in the food-writing field and the misguided reactions to one of the best restaurants in the history of the city really galvanized my thinking about the state of the dining culture. In 2000 I wrote an opinion piece, "Culinary Correctness," offering my take on the cultural reaction to that restaurant. For the past decade I have not really been arms-length from Ducasse. In reporting on the original Essex House restaurant I spent a total of two weeks in the kitchen there, working closely with Didier Elena and most specifically with one of the line cooks Doug Psaltis. Doug's brother Michael later became (and still is) my literary agent. While I wouldn't count Ducasse as a close personal friend, I have broken bread with him and his wife Gwen. So when I say I think my recent meal at Adour was earth-shattering, I may not be the most objective observer. On top of being a Ducasse loyalist, the restaurant would take no money for the meal. In my 30 or so visits to Ducasse restaurants in New York and Paris, including 5 visits to Adour, my guess is that about 1/3 of those meals have been comped. That being said, my fundamental conclusions about the excellence of Ducasse's cuisine were reached before I ever met the guy or enjoyed any sort of special treatment. Whatever one thinks about Ducasse's original New York fine-dining restaurant at the Essex House, it's probably the case that it would not be an appropriate restaurant for Great Recession New York. Adour, at a lower price point and with less formality, made perfect sense as the next step for Ducasse. The problem was, as I experienced at a totally delicious but ultimately bittersweet meal, Adour started out by trying to be as much like the Essex House as possible. Since it was not possible, at a lower price point and with less staff, to be fully on par with the Essex House, Adour felt like it fell short of the mark. It was, let's say, 75% as good as the Essex House -- an amazing accomplishment in many ways for the opening chef Tony Esnault -- and for those who enjoyed the Essex House that was unsatisfying. Now with the arrival of Didier Elena the restaurant has shifted gears. Elena is older and wiser, he has suffered personal tragedy and has gained a lot of perspective. Under him, Adour has stepped out of the shadow of the Essex House and become its own, completely different restaurant. I don't think there is a better use of sea urchin anywhere I've tried it than Elena's house-made fettucine with fennel, garlic and creamy uni sauce. But it's not just the deep flavors of the dish that are noteworthy, not just the first-rate products and execution. It's the dish's soulfulness and, in at least a sense, rusticity. Elena's father was a fisherman, so he grew up on and around boats. When his father would bring up urchins, the family would remove the meat and mix it with pasta and butter. The dish as served at Adour is a fine-dining version of that childhood memory, and it feels that way. While it is attractively plated, it is not ornate. While it has a great balance of flavors, is it simple and focused on just a couple of flavors (urchin and butter). It is a triumph in so many ways. The other dish I had that I thought rivaled the urchin was lobster with roasted sweet corn in a curry infusion. I remember at the Essex House noting that not a single dish on the early menus included corn -- which is such a strongly American ingredient. This lobster dish at Adour, though, is a full-on engagement with corn. It represents a different mindset. I didn't have a real camera with me but I took a couple of cell-phone photos just for information purposes. The first one is the urchin and the second is the lobster. For those who have experience with Ducasse's restaurants, the haute-rusticity of these dishes will really stand out. In the mid-1990s I ate fairly often at Lespinasse, when Gray Kunz was the chef. The restaurant was in the same space at the St. Regis as Adour now occupies, though it looks completely different. Amazingly, four of the original Lespinasse waiters are still there (the St. Regis is unionized). I think the Adour service team is quite talented, if much smaller and leaner than what we experienced at the Essex House. Adour has a wine focus, and the list is deep. The food is designed to pair well with wine, thus the emphasis on focused flavors. The pastry program at Adour is very impressive. The desserts reflect a strong commitment to seasonality -- our tasting of desserts was an avalanche of rhubarb and berries. The macaroons are as good as macaroons get. Adour has not had the buzz of many of the hot new restaurants of the past few years. But I think it's better. I'd be very interested to hear what people's experiences have been.