Fat Guy

There's such a thing as a grilling cook-off?

So I can just do what I do online: act important, boss people around, do nothing.

I've just made travel plans so I will be attending. Sign me up for wherever I'll be most helpful/least destructive. P.S. Staying at Best Western University Plaza in Evanston.

I just made my third successful visit to Artichoke and I'm starting to appreciate the product a bit more. The regular (Margherita) and Sicilian pies are really not where the action is. Which is not to say they're bad. They're way better than what you get at the average slice shop or most any Manhattan slice shop nowadays, but they're not special. It's the original-recipe "white" (no tomato sauce) pies with dip-like toppings that are unique and arguably justify the humiliation of the line. The artichoke pie is, well, think of the hot artichoke dip served at many a 1970s social gathering, as well as at retro parties held nowadays. It's one of those gross foods that you nonetheless keep going back for more of. Now imagine applying a very thick layer of that dip to a very substantial pizza crust and just baking the heck out of it. The dip oozes around the bumpy surface of the crust. It's runny, frightening and strangely delicious. There's also a new pie that uses what is basically 1970s -- or maybe more like 1980s -- crab dip as the basis of the topping. The application is a little less obscene than in the artichoke scenario, and they pull the crust a little thinner, but it's the same idea as the artichoke pie just with crab. It's also possible to avoid the wait entirely by ordering a whole pie by phone about half an hour in advance. Indeed, the whole-pie orders are part of the reason it takes so long to get a slice (that and the profound inefficiency of the staff, the physical plant and the ordering-and-payment system). A nice testimonial: Ami, the manager at Momofuku Noodle Bar, told me that his staff orders a couple of pies from Artichoke several times a week.

If we'd been comped I'd have said so. The bill came to $325.13 with tax (2 x $100 + 2 x $50 + tax), before tip.

No. We didn't "meet" in that sense. The reservation was in my name, however it's not clear that he knew or cared. He did recognize and acknowledge the person I was dining with (somebody in the industry), but that didn't seem to affect anything as far as I could tell. (Edited to add: for a few minutes we watched Chang compose two orders of the egg-and-caviar dish, and he was so incredibly meticulous that I thought, oh, he's definitely trying to impress us or at least my guest; then that order got picked up and taken to two other customers; later, our egg-and-caviar order came down the line -- I think from one of the other cooks because I didn't notice Chang preparing it -- and was recognizably less well put together.)

I had an excellent meal and meal experience at Ko tonight. If it's possible to generalize from my early snapshot and tonight's snapshot, I'll say the restaurant is very much moving in the right direction. The notion of a service-free restaurant seems to have been abandoned. A woman introduced herself as the beverage director, the servers (more of them than before) were attentive and really knew about the wines, and overall there was much more confidence and poise among the front-of-house staff than what I experienced before. Still nothing approaching the level of service I'd expect at a three-star restaurant, but plenty skilled and friendly enough to avoid having service be a negative for the restaurant as I thought it was before. My chef interaction may have been atypical, because David Chang was working the line tonight and was at the station in front of me. I'd never met him before. He was utterly charming and engaging, in the way cooks need to be if they're going to act as servers. I also watched the other cooks interact with the customers farther down the counter and it seemed there was a lot more of an upbeat, positive dynamic than what I saw before. And the menu was a winner. I didn't bring a camera or a notebook and there's no printed menu, so I'm going by memory here, but I think the meal was: A trio of amuses -- little heirloom cherry tomatoes, a pork rind, and that English muffin thing -- all pretty forgettable. I think the English muffin could be worked into a better amuse -- it could be the base of a good amuse, maybe topped with some actual pork. But that was the only sign of life in the amuse trio. Fluke (raw) with buttermilk-poppyseed dressing. This sauce is a Ko classic and deserves its permanent spot on the menu, whether it's with fluke, scallops or whatever. It's great. Tofu-skin-wrapped morels and Louisiana crayfish tails in a vibrant spring pea soup. The crayfish in particular were fine product. An overwrought and ultimately unsuccessful (though components of it were promising) dish of escargots, pasta, ricotta foam (or some kind of fresh cheese foam) and various vegetables. It was a one-dimensional dish -- not subtle, just flat. A failed attempt at a deconstructed lasagna. The "smoked" egg and caviar dish with soubise onions etc. that has been so widely reported on here. I would prefer a runnier egg (I have the same complaint about the current asparagus dish at Noodle Bar), but it's still a delicious dish. Trout with I guess you'd call it bacon sauce. They take a hunk of bacon and cook it in a pressure cooker with aromatics, then puree the result. It works. The dish pushed right up to the limits of the acceptable salt frontier but stayed just in bounds -- actually a lot of the dishes at all the Momofukus do that. The frozen, Microplaned foie gras with lychees. Another Ko classic and deservedly so. The sake paired with this course -- no I don't remember the name -- was a triumph. The slow-cooked, then deep-fried, then sliced short rib. I like that it's a big, honkin' portion, making for a grand finale to the savory portion of the menu. Very few tasting menus resolve themselves so satisfactorily. The best sorbet I've had since Claudia Fleming left Gramercy Tavern: cantaloupe, capturing the essence of the fruit with startling realism, served over a wonderful salty praline goo. The last course was a remarkably weak dessert. Like, an order of magnitude less delicious than the fried apple pies which were only okay to begin with. There was a smear of avocado puree on the plate and a slice of a two-tone custard-type thing topped with crunchy bits of something. Not good. The menu was well worth $100 by any standard other than the standard that notes it used to be $85. There are three wine pairing options: $50, $85 and $150. I got the $50 option and found it to be as good as I needed it to be. I'm sure there are some nice wines in the more expensive pairings, but I was none the wiser as I enjoyed my cheapo pairing very much. I can't think of a restaurant that gives you as good a pairing deal for $50. My only serious gripe (aside from the various idiotic policies the restaurant maintains): the stools are ridiculously uncomfortable for 2+ hours of sitting and should be replaced with comfortable bar stools with backs. There's enough space to do that and no good excuse not to.

They weren't when it first opened, though—which is the relevant point of comparison. ← Except that was 2004 and this is 2008, and Per Se wasn't using some other online system -- it was just not doing any online bookings for the first few months (then it started releasing some tables to the OpenTable web service).

I'm not sure I advocated using Per Se's system, however just to examine the claim: If you really want to determine whether there's an available reservation at Ko, you need to spend 24 hours a day looking for cancellations. With the Per Se old-school system, you could put your name on a waiting list. In addition, the 60-90 second claim assumes you're already at your computer, have precise schedule management, etc. I've found more realistically that it's about a 15-minute commitment. Plus, you have to be at your computer or you need a robust mobile device (my mobile browser can't handle the Ko site), whereas you could call Per Se from your cell phone. You could also, if you were at your desk, just leave the hold music on your speaker phone and do other work, whereas with Ko it's a more active commitment. Moreover, I don't think an online system and a phone-in system are mutually exclusive. Doesn't Per Se make some reservations available on OpenTable?

I think the basic answer is that such market mechanisms are widely perceived as inhospitable. Which doesn't really make sense given that, in the end, the customer is paying anyway, and given that hotels and airlines use all sorts of experimental pricing schemes, but that's the way it is.

Maybe, but there are some special circumstances: 1. As you noted, it's for charity. 2. The reservation is open-ended as to date and time. 3. Only one was made available this way. (Given number 2, it would be impossible to do them all this way.)

I have no strong opinion on which is better, but I do think people often confuse vaporized grease with wood smoke. When you cook something quickly on a grill, most of the "smoky" flavor comes, I have been repeatedly assured by people I trust, from the drippings hitting the coals, flavorizer bars, what have you, vaporizing and rising back up towards the grill surface. Last year I blind tasted some hamburgers cooked both ways and absolutely could not tell which were which. They both tasted "smoky." In terms of longer cooking, I was pretty surprised when I learned that Ed Mitchell -- one of North Carolina's leading pitmasters -- uses Kingsford charcoal to barbecue his whole hogs. But the proof is in the pudding: he makes excellent stuff.

Bittman has a very general response to his critics here: I think of Mark Bittman as the Tom Friedman of food: he's a great explainer. Usually he does a public service by this approach, and there are few people in the world who can digest and synthesize information so effectively. But once in awhile he's so glib that he jumps right off the intellectual cliff.

I just realized for the first time that the place is called Bridge because the owners' last name is Bridge. I always just assumed it had something to do with one of New York City's many bridges.

Have you tried adding MSG?

Noticed a couple of other things today: 1. The confirmation screen now says not only that you're limited to two reservations per week, but also that the limitation includes cancellations. So that should limit those of us who like to play with the system. 2. The cancellation procedure now requires that you log in to they online system, which should prevent another ambiguous Gael Greene situation.

I've been back several times but I guess I don't count.

NP data point: I thought Frank Bruni captured something in today's review of Terroir and Gottino.

Two minor things I've noticed: 1. Bridge Kitchenware is moving from Manhattan to New Jersey. 2. Alan Richman, in his GQ piece, named White Manna one of the "20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die."

I don't know whether or not Artichoke uses Polly-O mozzaralla, but I wouldn't be bothered by it. In the hierarchy of pizza cheeses, Polly-O ranks fairly high. Most pizzerias won't use it because it's too expensive. They use a pasteurized processed cheese food product called "pizza cheese." Polly-O, however, is a reasonably high quality low moisture mozzarella with no artificial additives -- just milk, vinegar, salt and enzymes. In addition, most of the "fresh" mozzarella being sold at gourmet stores and fancy pizzerias is Polly-O/Kraft as well. Those stores don't buy actual milk from farms and convert it into mozzarella. They buy tubs of prefabricated mozzarella cheese curds, heat them up and form the balls of mozzarella on premises. Kraft is the leading mozzarella cheese curd supplier. The product is called Polly-O Gold Curd if you want to get hold of some. Back to Artichoke, I'm pretty sure it's a blend of cheeses on those pies. I think someone wrote that it's four cheeses. In any event, there are different styles of pizza and the heavy, topping-laden style of Artichoke (or Chicago-style pizza) doesn't even work with high-moisture mozzarella (buffalo or cow). You need a low-moisture mozzarella and, while I prefer a couple of other brands to Polly-O, I think Polly-O is fine.

A couple of additional observations -- I can't be sure but I think this is what's going on -- that may help would-be diners: - It seems that some time around 6am every day they lock down the system and open it up at 10am. If a cancellation comes in during that time frame, my sense is that it shows up when the system opens back up at 10am. So if you play the 10am game be on the lookout for the occasional green check-mark in a column other than the far-right one -- especially the far left, because same-day cancellations are the most common kind. There's likely to be less competition for that green check. - We've heard some reports here of people getting to the 60-second confirmation page but then losing the reservation due to system malfunctions. From this I hypothesized that, assuming this is a common problem, at exactly 10:01am every day there should be green checks showing up. And indeed the two times I've tested this hypothesis there have been. So don't give up just because you don't see any green checks. Be sure to refresh at 10:01am -- something might come back into circulation.

As I've already noted, it seems from my limited experiments that the most reliable way to get a reservation at Ko is to hang out on the website all day and all night, hoping for a cancellation to pop up. This system nearly guarantees a reservation but requires that you attend to it all the time. Real-time online reservations technology is about a decade old. I believe OpenTable launched in around 2000, and I think there was another (now defunct) company doing it around then too.

Totally anecdotal observations by me: I've seen far more significant price increases at grocery stores than at restaurants. I have a fairly consistent weekly market basket throughout the year that hovered around $100 for a decade or so, then went to $150 when we had our son and stayed there for a couple of years. But it has recently broken $200, without any real change in contents. Meanwhile, most of the restaurants I frequent have either not raised their prices at all or gone up just a dollar a dish. Assuming my observations are correct, I don't think rising food costs can explain why people would want to buy more stuff in supermarkets. If anything, in an equation with no other variables, people would be eating out more. I think there are other variables, however. For one thing, eating out at any but the crappiest restaurants is as an absolute more expensive than eating at home. For another thing, general economic woes mean people are motivated to seek the least cost solutions on balance. And for still another thing, the general mood of economic hardship (less equity in people's homes, fear of future inflation) leads to a climate of austerity in which dining out -- especially at fancy restaurants -- just feels wrong to many people. I imagine for suburbanites gas prices would be another issue (for city dwellers using public transportation to get to restaurants, it's not really an issue). You only have to drive to the grocery store once a week, whereas you have to drive separately to every restaurant. In addition, urban restaurants are hurt because people don't want to drive all the way in from the suburbs just for dinner. A lot of suburbanites in the New York metro area have told me that between gas, tolls and parking in a lot it now costs well over $50 just to get from the suburbs to a Manhattan restaurant's door.

yeah, they started that about six months ago. I think you'll find discussion of it way back on the thread. ← The tasting menus I've seen have consisted of all stuff from the regular menu, not different dishes. It has been a while, though.

I happen to love the arctic char but I know enough to know that not everybody will love this dish. Well, there's going to be someone out there who won't like any given dish, but I think the idea when making recommendations to first timers is to come up with the short list of dishes that people are most likely going to love. Well, we have to define our audience: we're not always talking about dishes that will be pleasing to the general population (though the pork buns probably would be anyway); we're talking about food-knowledgeable people who are serious enough to discuss the matter online. So, I still think the pork buns and pickles are must-orders. If I had the authority to do so I'd overrule spaetzle_maker on the chicken. Not only do I think it's a great dish, and not only have I successfully used it to deflower several Momofuku virgins, but also I think it speaks loudly to what Momofuku is about: an amazing ingredient flawlessly prepared at a level higher than what even fancy restaurants are doing; bold flavors that nonetheless let the ingredient shine; an effortless casualness barely masking the underlying culinary virtuosity at play; a crowd-pleaser for a very high-level crowd. For the same reason I'd include the fluke on the short list but not the char. Even though I personally might like the char better, I have more confidence in the fluke. Prawns and grits are also a must-include. For most groups of two, we're already done now. The steak, which I love, is so weighty I'd only recommend it for a group of 4+. Ditto the kimchi stew. Same with the sweetbreads. The dish is amazing, but that's a lot of sweetbreads.