Fat Guy

Your memory is amazing, and I say that as someone who is occasionally said to have a good memory. It's interesting to me to think about how to count the courses. The range is 17 to 11 depending on what you call a course. If you include the amuse and the dessert amuse, and you count each crudo item as a course, I think you get 17. If you rule out the amuse and the dessert amuse, and you count all the crudo items as one very long, involved course -- which I think you could argue they are, even though they're served in succession -- you get 11. I wonder what the restaurant's official line is on this? I imagine they call it 15 or 16.

I think you could add Little Branch to this list. ← Two people I trust immensely in matters of cocktails have suggested Bobo (and Angel's Share gets mentioned all the time even if it doesn't actually deserve the accolades). In all I have a list of 10 (sneaketer's list of seven plus Little Branch, Bobo and Angel's Share) places that reasonable (albeit possibly ill informed) people have suggested could be top 5, so I think it's useful to look for a top 5 out of that universe. My read on the situation is that nearly every person who has made a study of it puts Pegu, PDT and Death on the top 5 list but that there's a real debate as to the other 2 slots (I'm still personally trying to understand Death but hope to get there). Even if we made it a top 10 list, though, there would be people arguing about whether to include Elettaria or whatever. At what Sam calls the next level down, I'd also probably argue for just about any Union Square Hospitality Group bar operation. They tend to be quite serious about their cocktail programs. (Jim Meehan is ex-Gramercy, I believe.)

It seems to me there are now enough serious cocktail places that we can talk about a top five list (I'm also going to try to write an article on the subject now that it's mainstream enough). So what do the cocktail experts out there think are the five best in NYC? Impressionistically, I love PDT, enjoy Pegu, have had mixed experiences at Death and have never done well at Tailor. But that's pretty much the whole universe of my experience and I don't feel qualified to explain why one place is better than another.

Well, they know me but they don't necessarily love me. As Edsel just noted on the reservations topic, someone has canceled the four-top at noon tomorrow. (Grab it if you like.) And the way I got the reservation yesterday is that someone canceled the four-top the day before. There was also a two-top no-show yesterday. This indicates to me that lunch in this format may be short lived. My guess is that people are thinking "three hours and $330 a head with wine -- no way!" I think the time may be more of a deterrent than the money. There are a lot of people out there who can afford $330 for a meal, but how many of them want to sit on stools for three hours? I think the Momofuku format appeals to people who want four-star food in a quick-service format. So there may be some sort of internal contradiction in a three-hour Momofuku meal. Either way, I'm doubly glad I got to be the one of 36 people per week who will experience it even once.

For those of you who are in Manhattan, I imagine tonight will be a really good night to dine out at super-in-demand restaurants thanks to tropical storm Hanna. Once the rain starts during the day, I suggest calling Per Se et al. to see about cancellations -- the suburbanites will likely bail en masse once there's actual water coming out of the sky. Even if they have no cancellations when you call, mention that you're local and ask for a call back in the event of a cancellation.

I'm slowly remembering bits and pieces. Maybe others who were there can annotate, correct and elaborate: First there was an amuse containing two items. One of those items was essentially pork fat in an edible cup, the other was caviar rolled in an edible wrapper -- this was one of three American caviars we'd see during the meal. Then there were maybe five small courses of raw seafood, including to the best of my recollection hamachi, an oyster with lime and another American caviar, Long Island fluke, julienne scallops, and tuna tartare with yet another American caviar. Next three cold courses: a lobster salad with melon gelee, a beef carpaccio (served with butter bread), and a tomato salad with tofu skin (a couple of the tomatoes were frozen for textural contrast) Then hot food, starting with "bacon dashi," then a small piece of striped bass atop that "egg drop soup" pasta pocket, then the eggplant ravioli with sausage. The signature frozen shaved foie gras torchon with pine nut brittle and lychees. Elysian Fields lamb (an un-Frenched chop) served almost naked, just with a little diced watermelon. Then a cheese plate with two cheeses (Humboldt Fog and a sheep cheese from a place I think they said was in Tennessee and called Blackberry Farm, but in my mind I kept thinking "Knott's Berry Farm"), garnished with among other things a lard-based brioche. Pre-dessert was sorbet strawberry shortcake sorbet. The main dessert was composed of several corn-based variants.

I'm still recovering from and processing today's lunch at Momofuku Ko. A few initial thoughts: It's extensive. You get a lot of courses over a three-hour marathon eating session. I lost count around a dozen. It's not overwhelmingly heavy food, though. The restaurant has really embraced the idea of lunch food. For example, the first many courses are cold: various crudo items (which are to be served on beds of crushed ice, but the serving vessels were not in house yet) and a carpaccio. I thought all of those were fantastic. The leisurely pace and relaxed service vibe are very enjoyable. Other than the signature frozen-shaved foie gras torchon and a few individual components of dishes, there is no overlap with the dinner menu. There are positive and negative aspects to rewriting the menu this way. On the plus side, the tasting menu is more of a wholistic experience, evolving over three hours from crudo and carpaccio to more substantial savory food and culminating in some fabulous Elysian Fields lamb then moving on to cheese and dessert. On the minus side, despite the number of dishes being greater than at dinner, it has fewer smash hits than dinner. There are some smash hits, to be sure, like the "egg drop soup" in one of the dishes (the egg-drop soup is in a pasta pocket and oozes out when you cut into it, sort of a riff on Shanghainese soup dumplings) and a dish with mini eggplant ravioli and sausage that beautifully summarized the Momofuku aesthetic. One marked contrast is the egg. At dinner, the egg-and-caviar dish is rightfully a signature. The dish we had at lunch -- a fried egg (deep-fried, I believe) -- was markedly inferior and likely to be transient. There's bread. At one point they bring out a fresh-baked roll with butter rolled into it, and later on with the cheese course (there is a plated cheese course, and it's quite good) they do a lard-infused brioche. Both delicious. It's expensive. $160 for the food and $95 for the wine pairing, which is the only wine pairing offered. When you add in tax and tip, it works out to well over $300 a head. I think the food was totally worth $160 but maybe next time I'll have water (I imagine this is one potential difficulty with the lunch pricing structure -- the way to get out for under $250 a head is to drink water so I bet people will do that). I didn't have a camera (they're banned, don't you know) and didn't want to break up the flow of the meal with note-taking, so I can't give a list of every dish. There were other members there, though, so maybe we can collectively reconstruct it if anybody cares.

I also can't imagine traveling for Bar Veloce, and I haven't been to Vespa, but I think both Bar @ Etats-Unis and Taste/W.I.N.E. are very good wine bars with tasty victuals. And don't forget Accademia del Vino. Seriously, when was the last time anyone was at any of these places? Quite simply, there are no Spotted Pigs, Bar Veloces, or Solexes anywhere, in any part, of that huge neighborhood known as the upper east side. ← That depends what you mean by "anyone." I've been to just about all of them in the past year. More to the point, those restaurants tend to be busy, which is in part the explanation for their longevity. Though not as busy as Sfoglia over on Lexington (unless you count brunch at Sarabeth's, which is Momofuku busy). I'll be the first to agree that the downtown restaurant scene is pretty amazing. But the excellence of that scene is due to a relatively small number of establishments. Uptown, downtown, all around the town, most restaurants suck. And then there are a few good ones. Downtown has more of those, but there are more uptown than most downtown people (or even uptown people) often assume.

Again, the UES is huge. To look at it as a matter of community districts, compare CD8 to CD3. The UES is physically larger and has a substantially larger population than the LES, EV, Alphabet City and Chinatown combined. Well, CD8 includes Roosevelt Island but I doubt that affects anything. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/lucds/mn8profile.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/lucds/mn2profile.pdf I think the UES has to be looked at as having many parts. There are three or four distinct north-south zones (divided by 72, maybe 79, and 86) and a pretty clear east-west division along Lex or thereabouts. Then there's Carnegie Hill, which has sort of its own personality. If you all look through a Zagat index, just for orientation, you'll be surprised how many restaurants there are on the UES that you forgot about.

For awesome sushi, lunch at Yasuda is such a great deal. For fancy French-ish that doesn't cost a ton, lunch at Jean Georges is without peer.

I think if you compare the UES to the very best restaurant neighborhoods in the city it comes out behind, but it's a lot better than plenty of neighborhoods. Debating the point beyond that would get into a lot of specifics, which I'm willing to do, but I think that generally it's hard to say the UES is a worse restaurant neighborhood than, say, Chelsea. One issue that makes comparisons complex, though, is that the UES is so large. It's the largest residential neighborhood in the city pretty much any way you define it. So one person's UES is not everybody's UES, whereas everybody in the EV lives within walking distance of every restaurant in the EV as well as Alphabet City and the LES (to the extent those are even different neighborhoods). I mean this morning I walked from my apartment near the corner of 93rd & Madison (the Carnegie Hill part of the UES) over to a doctor on 70th east of York. That's a long friggin' walk -- took me about 45 minutes -- and I could have kept going and still been on the UES. Downtown I'd have traversed like six neighborhoods. So, you know, if someone lives in the approximate area you're describing then that person isn't in any way my neighbor. If you walk out my door you're on one of the most densely packed restaurant blocks in town: Bistro du Nord, Pascalou, Vico, Island, Joanna's, Sarabeth's, Table d'Hote, Square Meal, Ciao Bella -- that's all on or near Madison from 92nd to 93rd. A one-block span. Every one of those is pretty good and if you take advantage of timing you can get some good values at some.

But I think Vinotas's generalizations -- both about the UES and other neighborhoods -- are wrong.

I'm not trying to hide the ball and will be glad to discuss UES restaurants on a topic about that (I think a few exist). The reason I mentioned Naruto is that I think it demonstrates the entrenched downtown bias in food coverage at most every level from bloggers to MSM. Naruto is okay, but that's not the point. The point is that if Naruto had opened up the block from Momofuku Noodle Bar, or on Fourth Avenue, it would have been a story. But it's totally unbuzzed, and I think location has a lot to do with it.

I've had two variants of the buttermilk-poppyseed crudo: one with scallops and one with fluke. I think that sauce is a signature item but the fish used varies with availability. The amuse typically includes three items: the English muffin and the pork rind have remained the same since opening and the third item rotates with what's at the Greenmarket.

There is one UES opening mentioned in the Times preview piece -- Opus, 1574 Second Avenue (82nd Street) -- though it sounds kind of awful (gluten-free pasta and pizza).

Another possibility is that new restaurants open on the UES all the time, but just don't get much attention especially in preview issues of magazines like New York and Time Out that cater to a clientele that won't go above 14th Street. For example, Naruto Ramen opened last year on Third Avenue between 90th and 91st Streets, and in general the Upper East Side has a number of restaurants catering to the Japanese expats so many of whom live up around here. If a new ramen place opens in the East Village it's immediately chronicled in media outlets far and wide, offline and on, yet you rarely if ever hear anything about Naruto Ramen.

I think you may be going on the first day of lunch, so I wouldn't expect there to be much information beyond the Eater post about friends and family: http://eater.com/archives/2008/08/koboom_t...ch_set_list.php

The menu evolves with time and available ingredients. What you'll probably find is 1- some signature dishes unchanged (egg-and-caviar, frozen foie), 2- some changed components of dishes (X raw fish with buttermilk dressing, where X may have changed from scallops to fluke), and 3- some brand-new dishes.

They're only doing it 3 days a week, 1 sitting. That's 12 people a day or 36 for the entire week. And it's Fri-Sat-Sun so work schedules may not be as much of an issue.

Another benefit is that bacon in the oven seems to be a tidier way to cook.

I don't know whether or not it comes out better on a rack but it would have to be a substantial uptick in quality to make it worth the inconvenience. The beauty of the simple on-tray oven method is that it's so convenient and efficient yet it produces excellent bacon. That's why I prefer the method to the stovetop even when cooking for a small group. As Maggie has written, even if you're just cooking six slices they're not going to fit well in a single skillet on the stovetop (though I have a an old square Griswold skillet that can just handle that many slices -- not that I'd ever cook just six slices of bacon), so the oven method is preferable in all normal bacon cookery scenarios.

The other day we were over at some friends' house for breakfast. We were preparing a feast: pancakes, eggs, home-fried potatoes, toast, and bacon. They have a four-burner DCS range. It's actually the exact one I have at home, which was strange to see in someone else's kitchen (first time for me). Over two burners went the griddle for pancakes. The third burner had the skillet for the potatoes. And burner number four was reserved for the scrambled eggs. Toast would go in the toaster. That left the bacon. My friend's plan was to cook it on the griddle, then clean the griddle, then do the pancakes on the griddle. I said, "Why don't we do the bacon in the oven?" He looked at me like I had two heads. But he consented. I turned the oven to 325 degrees (F). I took a half-sheet pan and laid the bacon strips out very tightly packed -- overlapping a bit in places -- so that a one-pound package of sliced bacon fit on the tray. I put the whole thing in the oven and waited. After about 15 minutes -- and during all this time we were able to make stuff on the stovetop -- I opened the oven and turned each piece of bacon over with a fork. By now the bacon had shrunk a bit so it no longer overlapped. Back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so. The bacon was ready around the same time as all the other food. I took the tray out of the oven and put it on the counter on a couple of cork trivets and took the pieces off to dry on paper towels. At the table, my friend's wife, who was not involved in the food preparation, asked "How did you get the bacon to come out so good?" Another convert to bacon in the oven. Not only is bacon in the oven incredibly convenient and efficient -- it leaves your stovetop burners free and if you have room for three half-sheet pans in your oven you can cook three pounds of bacon at once no problem -- but also the bacon comes out great. I'm not really sure why. Perhaps being surrounded by warm air is better for the bacon's flavor development than the unilateral heat of a stovetop skillet. Perhaps the oven just enforces the low-and-slow approach better than the stovetop. Or perhaps it's because, all of it cooking at once, the bacon comes to the table "fresher" than multiple batches in a skillet or two. In any event, bacon in the oven is the only way to fry.

The reasons lunch at Jean Georges is so desirable are: 1 - It's a huge bargain -- you get a reasonable facsimile of the dinner food (albeit with fewer luxury ingredients) for less than half the price of dinner and for an objectively low-low price by the standards of fine-dining restaurants. That's because Jean Georges can barely get people to eat lunch there -- the restaurant basically has to give the food away at break-even. 2 - There's flexibility in ordering. You can have a three-hour, many-course meal experience if that's what you want -- yet you'll still pay less than you would for dinner. 3 - The room is beautiful in daylight, even more so than at night. 4 - The pace of service is relaxed. Which of those 4 things could be true at Ko?

Maybe, but I think it's more likely that the lunch decision proceeded directly from the facts on the ground. For one thing, the "lunch hour" is much shorter than the dinner hour, so it's not really possible to do multiple sittings in the Ko format unless you're sitting people so late into the afternoon that you run up against dinner. For another thing, it's politically difficult to raise the dinner price but there's so much demand for Ko that they have to figure out ways to allow people who are dying to spend more money to do that. And for still another thing, the lunch reservations are -- like the dinner reservations -- essentially being given out at random. So it's not like some self-selecting group of super-foodies will all of a sudden become the Ko lunch club. I bet it was considered but decided against. Anything less than the full experience would likely be resented by customers. Remember, the overwhelming majority of Ko customers eat there once. The demand situation is such that offering a half-experience at lunch would just be annoying to those who know they'll not return any time soon.

The Slow Food website lists Corby Kummer as a member of the Slow Food USA advisory board. The Times piece describes him as "Corby Kummer, a food columnist, book author and Slow Food board member." So while he is indeed not a director, the statement in the Times may not be factually incorrect.