Fat Guy

Be sure to click through from that page to download the .pdf version of the map. It's a bit more detailed, as I recall. (Edited to add: I'm wrong; I must be thinking of the map that came around with some materials I got from the organizers. I'll see if I can find it.) (Edited to add: I'm wrong about that too, however the older version of the map that I have says Mitchell's name and the new one just says "The Pit.")

I agree that it's a question that can't be settled, but I'm happy to debate it forever because I feel so strongly that challenging meals can be incredibly pleasurable for those willing to rise to the challenge. The thing to bear in mind about Alinea and its ilk is that the chefs are very much focused on hedonistic pleasure. They're not nihilists or perverse postmodernists trying to prove a point like "all taste is subjective therefore we're going to serve dog shit to make that point." They do challenge the diner but all in the context of a pleasurable outcome. However, as with opera or any other advanced art form, the overwhelming majority of people can't just walk into Alinea with no background and enjoy it -- though some people can. But for the most part it's something you build up to over a lifetime of eating. And for some people, it never clicks, which is fine. There are plenty of people who know a whole heck of a lot about music but just aren't into opera. Nothing wrong with that, but when those people say "Opera is just not enjoyable" I think they overreach. It's not enjoyable to them, is what they mean. I found my meal at Alinea (as well as meals at many other restaurants in the vanguard of culinary creativity) to be absolutely first rate and enjoyable in every way. But it did require letting go of preconceptions and giving oneself over to the experience.

That view doesn't take into account any notion of a body of work. But if you hold yourself out as someone whose opinions are worth relying on, it doesn't cut it to say that only what you choose to write about matters. It's one thing if you say, "I have a policy of only writing about things I recommend. I don't do negative reviews." But once you decide to offer actual criticism, it's untenable to say, "I do negative reviews, but not when a person manipulates me into silencing myself." Of course, sure, as a couple of people have mentioned above, none of this is an issue if you're just blogging in a non-serious way and you have no expectation that anybody will rely on anything you say. If it's a friends-and-family blog, okay. If you're writing fiction, fine. But when you take the next step and write criticism, report on factual matters and deliver opinions that have impact, you're an online journalist whether you like it or not because you're writing about the same things journalists write about, you're publishing your work globally, it's being read by real people and it's affecting the lives of the people you write about. You can be sued for defamation, copyright infringement and all manner of other transgressions. Try telling the judge "I'm just a blogger." So if you're on any sort of upward growth curve the day is going to come when you have to make choices about right and wrong, and the sooner you do that the better because you don't want to be stuck looking back and regretting the way you conducted your affairs before.

There's a huge difference between fact-checking and giving the subject of a story editorial input. Fact-checking serves the goals of truth and quality. But that's not remotely what we're talking about in the scenario outlined above.

I can't imagine that I could do as good a job as the La Panzanella people, but then again I've never tried. You go first and report back!

Yes, it seems much more difficult now. At the beginning, I successfully made reservations on several occasions, though between my cancellations and the restaurant's cancellation I only kept one of them. Anybody who had the system down -- click through exactly at 10am and click decisively thereafter -- had a pretty good shot at a reservation. But now, it's very difficult. I've experimented on a number of occasions and always failed. Even today, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, the reservations were gone instantaneously.

I took a look at some archived shots of the La Panzanelle website. The box packaging does appear to be new, though I can't be sure exactly when it came on the scene. It did not appear on the website last summer, though.

A transition period of six or more months seems to me to be typical in this sort of situation, just based on what I've observed over the years. That's why I think the better move would have been to close down for a week or two, a move that significantly compresses the timeline. It's very, very difficult to transition two functioning restaurants, a catering program, a room-service program and a hotel pastry department all while you're hiring lots of new people and otherwise coping. None of that is any excuse for anything less than excellence, but it may help explain why it's still premature to draw permanent conclusions about anything at Country. Sethro, I think that's a bit harsh. It's supposed to be a cafe. The plates in the formal dining room are, I'm sure, more formal.

Editorial direction is completely different from letting the subject of an article set terms. Yes, if you're on assignment for a magazine or newspaper your assignment has a certain editorial scope and style within which you're going to work. But I'm not aware of any serious print publication that shows articles in advance to the people it's covering and negotiates with them about what to include and not include. Of course, it's sometimes hard to tell the truth. And it can be hard to do what's right for your writing at the expense of other people's feelings. That's part of being a writer. There's not a lot of advice available there other than: "Deal with it."

To me this would be inappropriate with both print and online writing (which should be treated the same). If you've written what you believe to be true, there's no excuse for changing it because any change will by definition make it something you don't believe to be true. And what does that make you? Every concern you cite -- "I feel bad for him," "I don´t want to ruin my relationship with him, because he could be helpful to me in the future" -- works against truth. Once you focus on truth, all your other decisions become easy. There's nothing wrong with talking to people about being a blogger, but you've got to be able to look them in the eye and say "no" when they try to manipulate you. If the item is being offered for sale to the public, you should feel absolutely free to write about it. Had he taken you in the back and let you preview an item that was not yet for sale, that would perhaps be a different story -- you'd have to use your judgment regarding the value of writing about something that's in the development phase. But the shopkeeper's feelings, your relationship and what he can do for you in the future still would not be relevant considerations. Most of us who write over a period of years have on occasion been tempted to allow sympathy or other improper considerations to cause us to alter what we write. I'm very grateful to those who have stopped me from making this mistake. This is not the same as your situation, but maybe it will help as an illustration: A few years ago, when I was working on my first book, I spent several days in a restaurant kitchen. I spent time in many restaurant kitchens, actually, but there was one in particular that I'm talking about here. The restaurant was boring. After days in the kitchen, I had seen nothing interesting -- nothing that I felt would be informative to my readers. Nonetheless, the chef had been generous with his time, and I felt I owed it to him to write something about the time I had spent in his kitchen. What I wrote was as boring as my time in that unremarkable kitchen. Everything I did to make it seem interesting seemed forced. But I felt I had an obligation to include that material in the book. My sister, who is an editor at the Wall Street Journal, is one of the few people I let see my work before I show it to my real editor at the publishing company. She read these pages and said, "This is just not interesting. You should get rid of it." And I said, "But the chef was so generous with his time!" And she said, definitively, "Your only consideration should be whether this material helps make the book better. It doesn't. Get rid of it." She was right. I got rid of it. And I've carried her words with me, applying them in many different contexts, ever since. So if you're saying "this piece really belongs in my series," I think you have your answer. P.S. Yes, the chef was mad at me. But not as mad as I'd have been at myself if I'd done the wrong thing.

Well, I don't actually know where the increase is coming from -- whether it's something happening on the producer side or something specific to my retailer. In other words, for all I know the stupid bags are still available at $10 per pound and my retailer just switched to the stupid boxes. But assuming increased prices on the producer side I think it would be unreasonable because 1- at $10 a pound for crackers the price of an input like flour is pretty much irrelevant -- it's probably a difference on the order of an increase from 15 to 25 cents for the flour that goes into that $10 (now $13) pound; 2- other bread products I've been buying have not shown 30% price increases; 3- I don't appreciate the sneaky nature of swapping 5-ounce for 8-ounce packages, especially when the 5-ounce package looks bigger at first glance on account of the box (I expect that sort of thing from Frito-Lay, not from class-act manufacturers and retailers); and 4-the last thing I want to do, if the company's costs really do justify a higher price, is pay more for packaging on top of that higher price.

One thing that really irks me about La Panzanella crackers is the packaging. For a long time the store I got them from sold them in 8-ounce plastic bags. This was a stupid way to package large, fragile crackers that needed to be shipped all over the country, placed on shelves by violent stockboys, and carried home in grocery bags underneath cucumbers and cantaloupes. It was always a project to riffle through the bags on the shelf to find the one with all unbroken crackers, and then to get that bag to the register and home without breaking the crackers. Of course, they break the second you bite one anyway, but still. When you're paying this much for crackers you want them whole at least for a moment. Now, an even stupider La Panzanella packaging method has appeared at my local store: the most poorly conceived box I've seen in recent memory. The one advantage of the box is that it prevents breakage, or at least it should. Because you can't actually see all the crackers inside the box, there's no way to be sure. You can see the front cracker, though, because the crackers are still in a clear plastic bag but there are two windows in the front of the box. I shouldn't call them windows, though, because a window implies a windowpane. These are just cutouts with no plastic in the frame. Are you starting to see why this is a bad idea? That's right: once you open the interior bag for the first time, breaking the seal, the box no longer acts to keep the crackers fresh or protected from pests. It has two big holes in it! Worse, and I can't imagine this is just a random occurrence, the boxes appeared at the same time as a massive price increase. Worse, the boxes act to conceal the price increase from unwary shoppers. That's because, while the old bags contained 8 ounces, the new boxes contain 5 ounces. Yet the new boxes are, at my retailer, only a dollar less. So that's $4.99 for the 8-ounce bag and $3.99 for the 5-ounce box. That's $13 a pound.

I have a lot of respect for Santamaria, however this criticism seems utterly off base and without foundation. For one thing, elBulli is simply not responsible for the introduction of additives to the food supply. Industrial food producers are responsible for 99.99999% of chemical use, and molecular gastronomers for maybe the other .00001%. For another thing, as with any fancy restaurant, a meal at elBulli is a special -- perhaps once in a lifetime -- event. Claiming it's hazardous to your health is no more rational than claiming that an abundant meal at, say, Santamaria's restaurant, is going to make customers obese. And for still another thing, Santamaria's health claims are clearly just a surrogate for his real concern: he doesn't think food should be art ("Cooks should not be preoccupied with creating sculptures or painting pictures with their work. A table is not an art gallery") and he's opposed to most modern culinary creativity. Well, that's fine. He doesn't have to be a creative artist. His food can be delicious in its own right. But that's no reason to slander Ferran Adria.

Just the other night I was thinking that if I all of a sudden had to live off the land, and I managed to catch an animal, I'd have no clue what to do with it to turn it in to usable meat. Thanks for bringing me one step closer.

I thought the sausage plate was attractive enough -- the draping didn't bother me, and I really liked the schmear of mustard against the black Staub tray -- and the other dishes I tried looked nice enough to me (I guess the photos speak for themselves one way or the other). Willis is responsible for room service and banquets as well as the two restaurants. I believe he's the executive chef of the hotel.

In the new Fairway book, Steve Jenkins says they use olive oil. I also examined several of the barrels this morning, and tasted a bunch of olives, and it looked like olive oil to me. I'll keep looking into the matter. Maybe one day I'll run into Jenkins and be able to ask him.

The upstairs menu I grabbed yesterday had a pretty diverse set of offerings, with 5 starters and 11 mains (or 5 mids and 6 mains, depending on how you order). Also 4 savory courses on the tasting menu that are not replicated on the main menu. So that's 20 savory dishes, which is about right for a fine-dining restaurant of that size I think. I can't speak to the quality of the food, though. I do think there's still a transition in progress, and that it was perhaps a tactical error to keep the restaurant running straight through the transition. Even a week-long closing could have given the kitchen team the time needed to open with a full-on redesigned and vetted menu. I think the Cafe menu is also still a work in progress, but apparently farther along than the upstairs menu.

Regarding frozen fish, it can be excellent (though it often isn't), however freezing has also created a lot of uniformity in the sushi world, because it eliminates issues of distance and time. It also in many cases eliminates issues of handling. When a sushi chef is dealing with whole fresh fish there's a whole process of breaking down and working with the fish that comes into play, whereas the typical frozen shipment consists of industrially pre-portioned blocks of fish -- so the sushi chef at the all-frozen-sushi restaurant level mostly just winds up slicing fish and forming pieces of sushi. As for "sushi grade" fish, if a typical American retailer is selling it I don't place much stock in the claim especially since there don't seem to be any formal rules governing the use of that designation. However, within the food-service industry there are all sorts of gradations of fish and terminology that professionals use to communicate quality and that chefs rely on.

I didn't pay much attention to Willis Loughhead when he was at the Bar Room at the Modern, even though it was -- from its opening until around the time he left -- one of my favorite restaurants in New York. While he was there, I just operated under the assumption that he was a sous chef overseeing Gabriel Kreuther's menu in the Bar Room kitchen. It wasn't until after Willis's departure, when I started noticing slippage at the Bar Room, that I realized he might have been more than just a sous chef. My subsequent discussions with people I trust have indicated that Willis was responsible for a significant share of the Bar Room's magic. Still, you will find no mention of Willis in the three-star review of the Bar Room that ran in the New York Times in January of 2007. This is in part because Willis left before the review ran (though I presume the meals Frank Bruni based the review on were largely on Willis's watch) and in part because Kreuther, as the executive chef of the whole operation, gets credit and blame for whatever happens in the restaurant. Nonetheless, when you take into account the totality of the circumstances, you basically have a chef who earned three New York Times stars without ever having his name mentioned. So I'd have to say that earns Willis Loughhead the title of "Best Chef You've Never Heard Of." The Bar Room may very well be back up to par, but I have no opinion on the matter. I haven't been back lately. But I did have the chance to visit with Willis today at Country as part of his low-key blogger-directed charm offensive. I don't think the restaurant really wants to push PR to print media, because it already holds three stars from the New York Times so a re-review has far more downside than upside potential. I was there during the day so, after a tour of both kitchens and some discussion with Willis, I only sampled Cafe items. I tried five dishes, selected (and paid for, thanks) by Willis. Enough to get an idea of what's going on at Country. Enough to want to go back. Anyway, here's what I tried: That's the assortment of house-made sausages from the charcuterie section of the menu (called the "butcher block"): the light-colored fat one is pork sausage with raclette (cheese), the skinny ones are merguez (lamb) and the dark fat one is morcilla (aka blood sausage). All three were superb, and the morcilla and pork-with-raclette were the best examples of their kind I've had. There's also an arugula salad with pickled vegetables and a schmear of mustard on the plate, which is a swell looking Staub cast-iron tray. It's a lot of food, very high quality, and the retail on it is $21. One of Willis's goals is to give good value at the Cafe and, while Country will never be a cheap restaurant, I do think these dishes are very fairly priced all things considered. This here is the hamachi crudo (raw yellowtail) served over a disc of caramelized watermelon, topped with avocado, greens and elderflower vinaigrette, and garnished with totally unnecessary out-of-season cherry tomatoes. Aside from the tomatoes, though, the dish is awesome. Excellent hamachi, and the watermelon (which is cooked under a weight on the plancha) is a real surprise. You might not even guess it was watermelon, it's so deeply caramelized and transformed by the cooking process. Actual retail price $15. Grouper with chorizo, hearts of palm, tomato and asparagus. The winning pieces of this dish are the chorizo and the fish fumet that's the basis of the sauce. I like the combination of mild white fish and chorizo -- they used it to good effect at the Modern -- but I know from experience that this won't be everybody's favorite dish. I'd call it good not great. Fairly priced at $26. This I thought was absolutely first rate: asparagus risotto with escargots. It's a massive portion of nice, loose, al dente risotto, served with spears of asparagus, escargots, braised endive and beef jus. This dish alone could be lunch, for $18. We chatted a little bit about the various schools of thought on risotto, and like me (my view on this has evolved over the years but this is where I am now) Willis prefers a looser, soupier texture. The rice is par-cooked before service, and finished on the pickup, but it comes out really well -- and you don't have to wait half an hour for the dish. Finally, the Country burger, on a house-baked sesame bun (all the bread is baked in house) with pepper-and-onion relish. The remarkable thing about the hamburger is the deep beefy flavor, which comes from a huge assortment of parts of the cow being used in the mix. Country is buying whole cows from a farm in Rhinebeck, NY, using the premium cuts (filet, strip, etc.) in various dishes and grinding much of the rest into hamburger. I might prefer a coarser grind, but the flavor is great, as is the composition. It also comes with really nice, and nicely presented, fries, for a total of $18 -- note that the perspective in this photo makes the burger look way smaller than it is: Here's Willis with some of the meats he's curing in the wine room: And here's a really bad photo I took of the bar from a table in the Cafe. The reason I'm posting it is to give an idea of the soaring space one enjoys at Country.

Of course exclusivity adds to the perceived value of a product. That's practically the definition of exclusivity.

They serve six plates in Gramercy Tavern's three-course meal: 1-amuse; 2-appetizer, 3-entree, 4-dessert amuse, 5-dessert, 6-petits fours. Given that in ko discussions we're counting a single pork rind, that mini English muffin and the pre-dessert sorbet as courses, each of those Gramercy Tavern courses should count in the comparison -- not to mention the Gramercy Tavern appetizer, entree and dessert plates are full compositions with a number of components that, in a tasting menu format, might have been broken out (e.g., "Glazed Duck Breast & Leg Confit, Braised Fennel, Swiss Chard and Parsnips," "Rack of Pork & Braised Belly, Baby Turnips and Adirondack Blue Potatoes," "Sirloin & Braised Short Rib, Tuscan Bean Purée, Brussels Sprouts and Black Olives"). In addition, you get full bread service, which you don't get at ko (and which is an a la carte menu item at Ssam Bar), so I'd argue the number is seven ko-equivalent courses not including any soigne items that might get added. Plus you get service, chairs, a human to answer the phone, an actual pastry department, etc. (edited to add menu examples)

I wonder if the cover average is lower. Most people seem to be spending nearly as much on beverage as on food. I imagine that after tax and tip a lot of folks are leaving $180-200 per person at ko. Needless to say it all depends on which restaurants you compare it to, but in any event the $85 number is only one number in the matrix.

People seem to be tipping normally, even though they get less and worse service at ko than at regular restaurants.

Updated seminar schedule:

Something with goat seems essential. Also, you could surely derive a dish from "Stone the Crows." (Chicken under a brick?)