Fat Guy

I recently received galleys of a new book by Steve Jenkins, to be published in July by Ecco (a HarperCollins imprint). It's called "The Food Life: Inside the World of Food with the Grocer Extraordinaire at Fairway." There are also several recipes by Mitchel London. The book is very interesting, though not particularly well written. There's a lot of good information about Jenkins, Fairway and innumerable foods. Also lots of photos.

I'd say that most sushi places in the United States -- other than at the very top level -- make various handling mistakes. Not to mention the rice is lousy. So yes, a top sushi chef could come and take the same salmon that True World Seafood sells to everyone and make a much better piece of nigiri sushi than you get at the sushi counter next to the Mongolian barbecue counter at the local pan-Asian place on Route 28.

Are there such big differences? I'm not well traveled enough to say it authoritatively, but the fish I get at similarly situated sushi places seems pretty much the same to me everywhere I've been in North America. In other words, my sense is that the upper-middle-market places everywhere are getting similar fish to one another (though of course there are many more such places in New York than in, say, Cleveland). The crummy places are getting similar fish to one another. The Chinese buffets that have sushi on the buffet are getting similar fish to one another. Etc. At those levels fish for sushi is a global commodity and you can bid on it and get it anywhere, so it would follow. Of course there are better and worse restaurants per category, but I get the sense that's mostly due to factors like how much the owners care -- not the basic availability of ingredients. The ingredients differentiation seems to me to appear at the higher levels of the business, where seriously talented sushi chefs intersect with seriously well moneyed clients. There you find that each place has a rather distinct supply structure set up, and the different fish taste really different. Places at that level are also using a lot more fresh stuff than at the lower levels.

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Also the apple pie is deep fried in lard, and I think pork appears in some of the other dishes -- I'm sure somebody is tabulating that now. But I agree, there are two claims here: Ko's food is heavy; and Ko's food is limited by its devotion to pork. I've been discussing the latter. I have some thoughts on the former too, which I'll get to.

From the standpoint of the logic of the argument, that's not relevant. The point is that it wouldn't make the restaurant any more or less creative or even "limited," except to the extent that any restaurant that serves less than everything in the universe is limited. To be "limited" in a meaningful sense the restaurant would have to be diminished somehow by its dedication to truffles. But Ko is not diminished by its use of pork. Ko's use of pork is part of what makes the restaurant so good. I think if you ask a hundred chefs "What's the most diverse ingredient, with the most culinary possibilities," you'll hear "pork" from a whole lot of them. Chang didn't come up with the diversity of pork. It's well established in various cuisines and sub-cuisines (charcuterie, etc.). Rather, he's running with it in a very bold -- some would say politically incorrect -- manner.

Regardless, if a chef serves a truffle tasting menu nobody assumes the menu is uncreative simply by virtue of having truffles in every dish. Rather, in order to judge the creativity of the menu, we have to look at how the truffles are utilized. Two chefs could do truffle tasting menus, and one menu could be totally dull and unremarkable while the other could be brilliantly creative. And if that chef did a small-format restaurant with a set menu, and served only brilliantly creative truffle menus all season long, it wouldn't make it any less creative.

I don't think it would be like that at all. Not unless Eric Ripert had already developed and become acclaimed for serving a cuisine in the idiom of salmon, with reference to cultural precedents for elevating salmon to the status of a culinary organizing principle, utilizing all parts of the salmon in a creatively diverse manner: using it as a cooking fat, using the skin as an amuse, using various parts of the flesh cured and cooked in a variety of ways, making stock from it, etc. Which is not to say every dish at Ko contains pork. If you asked for no pork you could probably still eat at Ko (I'm tempted to try it), but your experience would be atypical because pork is such a central ingredient. But the notion that this style is somehow creatively limited seems illogical to me. Creativity isn't a question of how many ingredients you use. It's a question of how you use them.

One interesting note there is that most of the places mentioned in that list -- at least Bofinger, Julien, Terminus Nord, La Coupole and Brasserie Flo -- are operated by the Groupe Flo. This makes me wonder whether the Parisian concept of the brasserie is something historically derived or something invented by a restaurant group. Of course it could be a little of both. I'm also wondering about a place like Benoit. It calls itself a bistro but seems borderline. L’Amis Louis too.

I don't think it's a pork restaurant. There aren't a lot of "pork dishes" the way you'd have fish dishes at Le Bernardin. Rather, the style of cooking simply utilizes pork products is many contexts: as garnishes, broths, cooking fat, etc.

But pork is the idiom in which Chang works. He utilizes that ingredient the way some French chefs utilize truffles and foie gras (or veal stock). And you can certainly find restaurants at the highest level where there are tasting menus with most courses containing either truffles or foie gras. Indeed, people pay a hefty premium for that.

I thought there was as much variety as one could possibly expect while still being able to attribute a definable style to the cuisine. I also thought the creativity quotient was substantially higher than at just about any restaurant outside of the molecular-gastronomy subset.

In honor of its 75th anniversary, Fairway is selling its house-brand olive oil for $5.75 per liter. (It's normally $8.99.)

Molly O'Neill, writing in the New York Times in 1996, says something similar regarding the form of the bistro and the brasserie. However, even more than a decade ago, she notes culinary convergence: I'm curious, though. Felice, you've given a clear, concise statement of what I'd call the formal distinction. But does that distinction hold up in fact? I'm asking, because I don't know the answer: are there restaurants in Paris calling themselves bistros that are really brasseries, and vice-versa? Or do restaurants in Paris without exception honor the formal distinction? There does not seem to be agreement on that point.

Okay, dumb question: if brasserie cuisine is supposed to be Alsatian, why is the signature item at so many brasseries a massive platter of fruits de mer? I mean, isn't Alsace landlocked? And what about other brasserie standards such as, say, steak frites? Is that in any way Alsatian?

As of pretty recently steak for two was $83.90.

At the top of my list of overlooked cookbooks would have to be James Beard's "Theory and Practice Of Good Cooking." Published in, I believe, 1977, the book is organized by cooking method. Chapter titles are Boiling, Roasting, Braising, Baking, etc. Within each chapter are sections on applying that method to various main ingredients. The recipes in the book flow from that structure -- they're not isolated, one-off instructions but, rather, illustrations of technique. It's truly an ahead-of-its-time book.

I'm also wondering about Paris. I haven't been in a few years, but last time I was there I got a strong sense of convergence as well. In particular, there was a lot of apparent menu convergence: the actual food being served at bistros and brasseries overlapped so much that there was no clear distinction in genres. I did think, however, that the bigger places were still calling themselves brasseries and the smaller places were still calling themselves bistros.

Those seem to me to be the classical definitions, Mitch, but what I'm wondering about is the assumptions (if any) underlying current usage. For example, if you go to the Balthazar website it doesn't call itself a brasserie. In point of fact, the home page says "Balthazar serves traditional bistro meals from breakfast through late-night supper." I've also seen many, many other references to Balthazar that call it a bistro, for example this one from the Independent, a UK newspaper: Also, from the New York Times: Other data points: Artisanal Fromagerie & Bistro, the Bistro Laurent Tourondel (BLT) restaurants, db bistro moderne . . . .

What's the present-day, working distinction between a bistro and a brasserie? How about between bistro and brasserie cuisine? It seems to me that outside of France the terms are used somewhat interchangeably. How about inside of France?

I believe they started around February. Not sure when they finished. (If you notice a renovation and don't post about it, did it really happen?)

The big dumpling news for spring is that Dumpling House on Eldridge has just undergone a gut renovation and expansion to approximately double its old size. It's downright luxurious now. In exchange for a small price increase (dumplings are now 4 for $1 instead of 5 for $1; the beef sandwich is now $2 instead of $1.50), there are now tables, computer-printed order tickets with numbers that they call out, and a brand-spanking-new food-prep area behind a glass wall. Product is the same as before.

I was in the neighborhood so I stopped in yesterday afternoon just before opening to sample the liver pate and head-cheese terrine sandwich. A very fine charcuterie specimen.

Noticed on Eater, apparently JJ Rachou is still making the cassoulet: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/200...french-classic/

I tried to get a reservation for tonight and was told they had nothing until 10:15. Not even an early-bird table before 6pm, which I'd gladly have taken. I guess somebody is eating there.