Fat Guy

I have in the past picked up that fishy smell from Canola, but not recently. I think it's something the Canola people have been working on. I think it has to do with alpha-linolenic acid content, glucosinolate, oxidative stability, sulfur content or something. I'm pretty sure it can be manipulated out of the equation. I should add, I've been paid money by the Canola Council to give a presentation at one of their past annual meetings, though the presentation wasn't about Canola oil as such.

I said in the US. And we're not talking about photographing people. We're talking about photographing food. I'm aware of no belief system anywhere in the world that is offended by food photography (other than the one expressed in the opening post of this topic).

Some other things I learned: Quail eggs are really hard to crack without breaking or getting shell chips into the egg. Cracking four dozen is a real hassle. So crack them into little ramekins before cooking. Better, get two pretty girls to do it for you. Goose just doesn't taste all that great, even when you smoke the heck out of it and slice it thinly. The Vita-Mix is one of the greatest kitchen tools imaginable and truly can pulverize anything. Randi's Nicoise-esque salad really redefined the Nicoise possibilities for me. I'm hoping someone posts a photo because it was such a spectacular dish. Leah and Dick distributed some informative literature about the shrimp dish they prepared. Maybe they'll post it. They also distributed a ton of literature to accompany the Niles tour. Dave Hammond was a veritable font of information regarding the Maxwell Street Market. I'd love to get some links to work he's done on that topic and post them here.

For a long time I was using grapeseed oil as my exclusive non-olive-oil cooking oil, because a really good chef recommended it. The cost of the oil wasn't an issue for me. If you're not deep frying, the amounts are so small the difference in cost over time is minimal. One day I needed some oil and, on account of the way the place I shop is organized, I would have had to do some backtracking to get the grapeseed oil so I got some corn oil because it was there. It cost almost nothing and it worked just as well as grapeseed. If anything, it's less "sticky" than grapeseed oil, which in my experience tends to film up a bit. And, while it may be my imagination, it seems to be the best oil I've used for popping popcorn both in terms of performance and flavor. So I've been using corn oil ever since. For deep frying too, on the one or two occasions a year that I deep fry something. I actually favor the taste of peanut oil but so many people think they're allergic to it (as I understand it, even people with peanut allergies shouldn't have a reaction to commercially refined peanut oil) that I've followed the lead of many restaurants and eliminated it from my pantry altogether.

I'm going to take partial, secondary-source credit for this innovation. There came a time in the afternoon when the small grill was still heating up and Randi's swordfish still needed to be cooked and it became clear that doing all that chicken on the grill would make the ETA on that course something like 4am. As luck would have it, however, in late June Edsel and I had been sitting at the counter at Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York City and had watched the cooks preparing chicken wings. They started the wings by giving them a hard sear on the plancha on both sides, then they transferred them to a saute pan to finish in the oven -- or at least that's what we remembered. So I said to Edsel, "Why don't you do the chicken the way we saw them do it at Momofuku?" Thus, chicken and waffles "Momofuku style" was born.

You get pretty much the same information from a photograph whether it's good or not. The world's greatest photographer and I can both photograph a dish in a restaurant and, while his will be nicer, as long as they're both in focus both will convey most of the same information about the dish. I'm not sure either of those qualifies as a ban or prohibition. I think if those incidents occurred in the US the appropriate response, before even looking at the freedom-of-press issues, might be, "Okay, please show me the clearly posted signage that says no photography."

Perhaps you'd care to name a few.

There's a distinction between the artistic and informational value of a photograph. There can be a tremendous amount of information in a bad amateur photograph, even though that photograph may have little or no artistic or creative value. There is a long tradition in professional news media, of using raw amateur photography when it happens that an amateur was the only person to catch a live event. In addition, the lines between professional and amateur have blurred in the era of blogs and digital media. A lot of folks haven't quite caught up with the implications of the new era of citizen journalism, but there's no way to unscramble the eggs now that anybody with an internet connection and the right information can bring down a president.

It's a new product that is, I believe, available only at Sam's Club (which is where nxtasy and I went for staples). From the manufacturer, Pinnacle Foods: I thought it was just as good as any other standard pure maple syrup, and it was a really good value -- I think $12.99 for the quart maybe.

Under US law restaurants are "places of public accommodation." This is a good basic definition from ADA law:

I started doing a little legal research on this issue. This research is only relevant under US law, however this is an interesting summary from USA Today: The article also contains some links to more technical legal sources.

I wonder, given that restaurants are places of public accommodation (in the US, that is), whether a photography ban runs up against a First Amendment freedom-of-press issue if the photographer intends to publish the photos.

Are you talking about restaurants? I know of no restaurant other than Momofuku Ko that bans photography (as opposed to banning just flash), so I'd be interested in other examples.

We use CamSquare (that's the trademark for the Cambro square containers) clear containers for lots of stuff: dry-goods storage, refrigerating stock overnight to defat, etc. As a home cook it's not worth the trouble to me to have some of the clear and some of the white, even though the white ones are cheaper. I like knowing that every Cambro I have can be treated the same, can accommodate hot liquids, is see-through so I don't have to label it with masking tape . . . . So I just have a bunch of the clear ones with the regular lids. I order from Bigtray.com. They're great. I'm actually thinking I might order a couple more this week.

A little while ago I took some photos at a restaurant and posted them here. I received not one, not two, but three thank-you emails from representatives of the restaurant. These weren't such great photos, and my comments about the restaurant were mixed. Most restaurateurs and chefs are absolutely thrilled to see photos of their food online, in part because they get little or no mainstream media coverage. The mainstream, old-line media tend to cover only restaurants that are new or somehow iconic. The coverage tends to involve photography when the restaurant is closed, or in the kitchen under professional lighting. The ability to take photos at the table with a small, portable camera and publish them worldwide for free is quite new and is, combined with blogs and online communities, a foundational change in food media just as blogs have redefined political coverage. It's a leveling phenomenon. No longer do Gourmet and the New York Times get to decide whether a restaurant becomes known. Any amateur with a camera and a persuasive voice can do it. Ironically, my recollection is that David Chang's restaurants were originally snubbed by mainstream media and that his rise to stardom was initially on the backs of bloggers. Amateur, in-restaurant food photography can also help police culinary plagiarism. It can allow restaurants in out-of-the-way places to achieve global fame. Only El Bulli can get books published with professional photos of every dish they serve every year. For the other 99.99% the way the word gets out is through a more organic process, which is greatly aided by photos.

I'd allow a couple of days for the photos to pour in. Folks had to travel home, go back to work, etc.

Asking the manager/owner guy is a good start, as is asking your server to double-check with the kitchen. Being a regular helps too. I don't think they much care about language or race. If you're white and a regular you outrank an Asian newbie.

About half the time I'm there they claim to be out of it. I think, however, what they actually do is ration it. Because I've seen them reverse the claim upon cross examination and I've seen some people get it while others are told it's 86d.

Last night we reserved at PDT on the early side and needed a place nearby where we could walk in for dinner. We didn't want to make a reservation because we weren't sure how long we'd be at PDT. I was with friends who didn't want to go back to Noodle Bar -- they like to try new things -- so the restaurant database rattling around in my mind generated Back Forty as an option. We walked through Tompkins Square Park and checked out the new dog run, then were able to snag what appeared to be the last empty table at Back Forty just before 8pm. This meal was far more successful than our earlier meal there. Almost every dish was quite good and delivered in one way or another on the simple, ingredients-driven promise of the restaurant. The fresh ricotta standing alone is superb, but is even better on account of being paired with honey (also some honey comb), roasted nectarines, assorted berries and tiny crostini. Even better is the unprepossessingly named "market vegetable salad," which contains mustard greens, cherries, beets and a yogurt-dill sauce and positively demanded that I try to replicate it at home. Almost as good is the bean and cherry-tomato salad, whose only flaw is that there aren't enough tomatoes in it ratio-wise. The mushrooms baked in parchment are excellent as are the pork-jowl nuggets. Perhaps because we ordered so gluttonously, the kitchen also sent out some succotash, which turned out to be the mother of all succotash. Two of our group had the trout, which was I think the best dish on the table. One of us had the lobster-and-crab salad on buttery excellent toasted challah, which puts to shame the lobster salad on a poor-quality hot-dog bun that's prevalent in New England. I had the grass-fed burger again, which I liked again. The fries are still too limp and still need work. The blueberry pie (more of a crumble) is worth ordering, but the best dessert we tried was the "stout float." It's a glass of stout with vanilla ice cream, blackberries and blackberry-rum syrup. You have to let it sit and melt a little to enjoy it, but once the ice cream and the stout start to integrate it all really clicks.

Saw Bourdain and his crew taping at Burt's Place on Sunday night.

I haven't had a noodle dish at Noodle Bar in a long time for two reasons: 1- they're too filling, so they take away from my ability to order other stuff, and 2- what Andrew says (the soup and noodles themselves are mediocre; I just eat the other stuff, which is excellent). So maybe I'd modify Andrew's statement to say Noodle Bar would be significantly improved by eliminating noodle soups from the menu, just as Ssam Bar has been improved by marginalizing the ssam concept.

Well, as I said originally: Then again some companies emerge from Chapter 11 and go on to succeed. We shall see.

Even the auditory component of the cell-phone objection doesn't hold up all that well. I can understand being upset by the electronic ring or by someone yelling into a phone, but as long as the person is speaking at a normal conversational volume level I don't (and more importantly shouldn't) care whether he's talking to his tablemates or the babysitter. People talk in restaurants. Indeed they yell. This happens whether or not there are phones in use. The comparison between phones and smoking is particularly weak because smoking is a physical nuisance -- actual smoke that is likely toxic -- whereas the reactions to cell phones and cameras (if they're used with restraint, i.e., no yelling, ringing or flashing) are purely psychological. I think it's safe to say that for any given international superstar chef the closest most people (in the universe of interested people) will come to that chef's cuisine is images: the El Bulli books, or TV shows, or whatever. A blanket rejection of food photography makes no sense. Whether consumer-blogger-amateur photography is a special case is the only debate worth having. Me, I like having access to amateur photos of people's actual dinners. It's useful information -- the more the better.

I think back in the day there was probably a lot in common between White Castle and White Manna burgers. The differences today primarily pertain, I think, to scale and modernization. White Manna is a single establishment and is still making sliders according to what I understand to be the procedure that was also in place at White Castle stores long ago: the ground beef is not frozen and it's made into small balls for portioning; the griddle cook takes one of these balls and puts it on the griddle then covers it with thinly sliced onions; when the burger is flattened and flipped with the metal spatula, the onions wind up integrated into the meat; the bun is placed on top for the last bit of cooking; then everything is assembled. Today, unfortunately, White Castle uses frozen patties of inferior quality, reconstituted dehydrated diced onions that to me have a distinctly chemical taste and, I should add, terrible buns (White Manna uses the very good Martin's potato roll product). So it's kind of like the difference between a legitimate pizzeria and, say, Domino's: both pizzas may be just dough, sauce and cheese, but there are so many differences in product quality and procedure at each step of the pizza-making process that the two end results are pretty much entirely different foods.

Just for precision's sake, the exact quote from David Chang is "It's just food. Eat it."