Fat Guy

Rough morning at Fairway today, on account of a large contingent of amateurs. Usually they don't come out on Sunday AM, but with Thanksgiving coming up there were a lot of clueless husbands with shopping lists blocking the aisles etc. I did make one great discovery, though. It's certainly possible that this has been on the shelf for a decade and I've missed it, but today for the first time I noticed a product called MitiCrema. It's a spreadable sheep's milk cheese from Spain. That is to say, sheep cream cheese. I just had some on a bagel side by side with Ben's cream cheese (excellent, traditional cow cream cheese with no additives) and it was a really interesting contrast: the sheep has great acidity and a rustic texture, whereas the cow is sweet, smooth and mellow -- but not nearly as complex as the sheep. It's in the cheese department near the specialty butters.

In "The Making of a Chef," Ruhlman speaks a bit more in depth about the subject of the neutrality of brown veal stock. There, he clearly explains the position that brown veal stock is neutral, or "has the remarkable quality of taking on other flavors without imposing a flavor of its own." ("The Making of a Chef," page 27.) I understand this is the classical French way of thinking about veal stock, and it seems to be what the CIA is or was teaching, but I'm not sure the contemporary perspective embraces it. The reason a lot of contemporary chefs don't -- as Ruhlman notes in "Elements" -- use veal stock is, as I understand it, specifically because veal stock does contribute it flavor to dishes. Thus, in many contemporary kitchens that use stock they make beef stock for beef dishes, pork stock for pork dishes, shellfish stock for shellfish dishes, etc. Or they go really old school and use jus. There are plenty of chefs out there who would argue, as I would, that veal stock, especially brown veal stock, is not neutral at all -- that all you need to do is make a sauce for fish with it and you'll see that the term neutral is a misnomer. It's more of a "baseline classical French haute-cuisine taste" than an actual neutral taste like MSG. Perhaps it doesn't impose a specific beef taste (and I submit if you make beef stock with mostly bones it doesn't impose much of a specific beef taste either), but it imposes a taste for sure. To use a weak analogy, it's a little bit like a Chinese cook saying soy sauce is neutral. If you're acclimated to tasting soy sauce in a large percentage of your cuisine's dishes, you start not thinking of it as an added flavor, but it's really a baseline Chinese cuisine taste. If you come to America and start adding soy sauce to lobster you're not going to find that audience willing to accept the proposition that soy sauce is neutral. My two cents, at least.

Yes, I've been. The difference between a private club and a neighborhood restaurant bar should be evident even to those who haven't been, though.

My personal experience, while not vast, involves using a fairly significant number of dishwashers in people's homes. I wouldn't state this as a scientific fact, however my strong anecdotal experience has been that there is a tension between "do a great job cleaning even tough loads" and "ecologically sound," if by ecologically sound you mean it conserves water. The European dishwasher paradigm seems to be to use as little water as possible and to rely on various design features to help leverage that water to do a good job cleaning. The American dishwasher paradigm seems to be all about brute force: pour three times as much water in as the European dishwashers use, and spray the crap out of the dishes until they're clean. Unfortunately for the planet, the brute force approach works pretty damn well. I've found that American dishwashers costing less than $500 do a better job cleaning crusted-on food from dishes than $1,000+ European dishwashers. The Bosch and Miele dishwashers I've worked with have been objects of beauty, very efficient, super-quiet, etc., but they don't really blast the caked-on grime out the way a Whirlpool will. There are some energy savings to more powerful dishwashers, namely that they truly eliminate the need for pre-rinsing. One thing I appreciate about my KitchenAid is that I pretty much never have to pre-rinse anything. Just to test the abilities of the dishwasher, I've occasionally put a stainless saucepan in there with overnight crust -- the kind of crust you need steel wool to get off by hand. And it has cleaned them flawlessly. Whereas I've seen, on numerous occasions, dishes come out of fancy European dishwashers with stuff still stuck to them, and on other occasions I've seen people stuck in the habit of pre-rinsing most everything in order to preempt that situation. Also, a dishwasher that can really clean caked-on stuff can be left with dirty dishes in it until it's full -- so you never have to do a quarter-load. Whereas, if your dishwasher is weaker, you have little choice but to pre-rinse or to run it as soon as it's loaded. My KitchenAid is not loud, not ugly, but it is not as quiet or attractive as a European dishwasher. It cost more than a Whirlpool and less than a Bosch or a Miele. I agree that personal behavior has a lot to do with the efficacy of the interior racks. I got really lucky with our dishwasher -- it works amazingly well for the dishes we have and for the ratios in which we use them. I can't imagine being able to anticipate that, even by bringing a load of dishes to the appliance store. Sometimes it's just dumb luck. I believe Consumer Reports disagrees with me, by the way. They've done side-by-side tests where they take various dirty dishes and run them through dishwashers, and they say the Euro-dishwashers hold up just fine. I would take that as more reliable testimony than mine, except that I've found Consumer Reports to be so unreliable in general that I'm actually more inclined to believe my own eyes even on a limited sample set. Also, while Bosch is a European company, the dishwashers are I believe made in North Carolina. There are also Asian dishwashers, most notably LG, but I've never used one.

Yes! Restaurant-wise I've only been to Dae Ga but others I've walked past or read about are So Kong Dong, Hanil Kwan, Doo Rae Myun Ok, Surakan and Pyung Yang Mandoy. Can't vouch for any of them -- though So Kong Dong is recommended widely -- but the point here is that there are lots and lots of walkable Korean places in Fort Lee. A lot of these places are, I think, pretty recent arrivals, so it's possible that when you worked there the Korean business density was less. I also see several other businesses on Google Maps that I've never heard of but that look like they must be restaurants -- someone more familiar with Fort Lee than either of us will have to say. There's also the Fort Lee branch of Bon Chon Chicken. Then there's the Korean-Chinese place, called Great Wall, and the Korean bakery named, oddly enough, Bakery Parisienne (I've been there and enjoyed it). All of those places are within about a 5-minute walking radius. There are also various Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asian restaurants and non-restaurant shops in the easily walkable downtown Fort Lee area. A few blocks farther out -- maybe a 10-minute walk -- is Yiga, which is the top place on my Fort Lee to-do list right now, because both friends and a recent New Jersey Monthly article recommended it for nine treasures. I'm saving it for when I don't have the car available, because Fort Lee is one of the few New Jersey destinations (Hoboken, Newark and Princeton being the others where I've sometimes made the choice to use public transportation even when I've owned a car) where public transportation is often preferable to driving. That New Jersey Monthly piece I just mentioned was titled "Seoul Mates" (groan) and lays out the Fort Lee situation pretty well: and There is also discussion of Palisades Park in the piece.

It used to be -- may still be -- that McDonald's in the US automatically put ketchup and mustard on hamburgers in the West but just ketchup in the East.

I wouldn't characterize being able to order whatever you want and being able to send it back if it's overcooked as "leeway." Rather, a home and a restaurant are completely different situations. Some of the rules of social interaction should apply in restaurants: be nice, say thank you. And some shouldn't: you don't need to bring a hostess gift, you don't need to eat whatever you're offered. A home is not a place of public accommodation. This is not just a legal difference -- as in, you don't have to make your home accessible but if you don't make your restaurant accessible you'll be in violation of the ADA. It's also a fundamental difference in the relationship: you're a paying customer. No, that doesn't give you license to do anything. But it gives you the reasonable expectation of a whole package of accommodations that you wouldn't and shouldn't expect in someone's home. If you want to have control over your guests, invite them over to your house. Don't open a restaurant. And remember, even in a home situation, there's a guest and there's a host. As a host, I would never in a million years ask a guest in my home not to use his or her laptop computer. Not even if that guest opened the computer right on the table during dinner. I want my guests to be comfortable. I assume any guest who does that has a good reason. The only way I would ever intervene in such a situation would be if my other guests took me aside and said they were seriously disturbed by the presence of the computer. Of course, good guests would never do that in the home.

I am planning a trip but not for the eGullet Society. For my laptop computer gaming group.

One other transportation option worth noting is the GWBBS. That's the George Washington Bridge Bus Station. For people who live along the A subway line, the subway shoots up to the GWBBS with impressive alacrity. If you stand at the north end of the train, you can step right into the pedestrian passageway that connects the 175th subway station with the GWBBS. The travel time from the GWBBS to Fort Lee is 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes. That's right, folks. 5 minutes. The fare is $1.35. The buses run with great frequency, because there are several routes out of GWBBS which have Fort Lee as their first stop. So schedule-phobes don't have to worry -- they can just show up and there will be a bus soon enough. The GWBBS is a great resource for uptowners who don't want to do the New York Penn Station or PATH thing. My wife has cousins in Teaneck and when she has taken the bus there from the GWBBS the travel time has been 12 minutes. Fort Lee is a walkable town with sidewalks and most of the restaurants clustered in a relatively small area. I'd say it's not as worthwhile as visiting Manhattan's Chinatown and more worthwhile than visiting Manhattan's Little Korea. But that's where the issue of going once comes in. Let's say you're someone who lives on the West Side of Manhattan, making your opportunity cost of travel to Fort Lee pretty damn low. Let's say you've been to Chinatown many times and Little Korea a few times, but have never been to Fort Lee. Well, I think instead of going to Chinatown or Little Korea another time, you should go to Fort Lee. I've had outstanding dim sum at Silver Pond, I think Mo' Pho is terrific for Vietnamese, I'm sure some New Jersey people can give a full rundown of the best Fort Lee places, and just walking around and seeing all the Korean signs and bakeries and such is great fun.

If there's enough light to write with a pad and pen, there's probably enough light such that a laptop screen won't be a beacon. Given that this is a restaurant bar, not a cocktail lounge, I doubt the light level was so low as to make a laptop screen a big deal light-wise. But Chris has been there, so maybe he'll say.

Mike, it's all de minimis compared to world hunger, but we have this here Society because we care about de minimis things like service in restaurants. Rona, Chris was not a guest in someone's home. He was a paying customer in a place of public accommodation. It's simply not the same at all, and you must know Chris wouldn't have started this topic if a friend had asked him not to use his laptop in a home hospitality setting -- not that he would have been using the laptop in the first place.

A word about transit schedules: I like them. They mean you know when your train or bus is coming. Of course, all New York City bus and subway routes have schedules too. It's just that the schedules are so unreliable nobody bothers with them except for people who commute at 4:45am -- the only time of day when the printed schedules really hold. Service is frequent in rush hour, so you don't need to worry about the schedule then, but on many lines at many other times of day or night one can wait a painfully long time for the right bus or subway. But when schedules are reliable, as they have in my experience been on the New Jersey Transit trains, you can plan around them so you're not standing around waiting an indeterminate length of time for the next train. When I've gone to Princeton by train (same line as Edison/Metropark), I've never felt constrained by the schedule. Especially on routes where there are two trains an hour or more, I find it more convenient to have a schedule than to show up and wait for a random amount of time. I wait 15-20 minutes for New York City subways all the time outside of rush hour. That wait is pretty much unavoidable unless you luck into a train. Even with 30 minutes between NJ Transit trains, you basically never need to wait 15-20 minutes because you can safely arrive 5 minutes before the scheduled departure. That means you can continue your shopping, browsing, coffee, etc., until it's time to go.

Wait a second. What possible value is there to not naming the place? The forums are chock full of posts by members naming restaurants where they had negative customer-service experiences. You may have a personal preference that such complaints be made generally and anonymously, but that's certainly not a community preference or rule here. When a member has tried to work it out with management (here, Chris was confronted directly by the owner) and has a complaint that raises issues of general interest (here, that is most certainly the case), it is preferable to name the restaurant. It's difficult to have a discussion like this one without being able to refer to the specific restaurant. By naming the place, Chris gives everybody the opportunity to say, "I've been to this place and I think laptop use there would be totally inappropriate," or "I've read up about the place online and it seems ridiculous that they'd force that choice on Chris." I believe Chris has been as transparent as possible here. I'm very pleased that we provide a forum where members can take concerns of this sort into the court of public opinion. There was a time when the average citizen would have had no recourse but to suck it up. Today, restaurateurs need to be aware that the next person they treat poorly may be an active participant in online discussions, or a blogger, or both. And I'm proud of the fact that the eGullet Society community in most cases fully explores both sides of an issue, as we have here. It so happens that Chris and I agree here, but you may have noticed that other members of our team, like Charles, disagree. We are all better off for having this discussion. I think you can defend the owner's position, as the majority of people posting on this topic have, without accusing me or Chris of having ulterior motives. That being said, I think it's far more productive to focus on the issue at hand than to look for conspiracies and agendas. To me, it is amazing that anybody would think the better move was not to allow Chris to do his writing and then mention to him afterwards that the restaurant prefers no laptops. I think the no-laptops policy is ridiculous, but the key issue for me is the profound lack of hospitality displayed in the scenario Chris has described.

Sure he can aspire. The Velvet Tango Room in Cleveland aspires, and succeeds. It's a true cocktalian destination with a significant wow factor. Not that I had any trouble using my laptop there to instant message Janet Zimmerman: "You're not going to believe this place . . ." But this place in Providence is not, according to everything I've been able to read about it, even remotely in the category of VTR, Pegu, etc. It's a neighborhood restaurant with a bar area. I guess Chris was just the wrong kind of neighbor. On the tangent: the restaurant has had more than its fair share of defenders here, and the owner is welcome to respond. The word is out: no laptops, we want a certain atmosphere. That may very well appeal to some people, in which case this is great publicity for the restaurant. For me, it's a clear sign that when I go to Providence this place isn't going to be on my short list.

Ghostrider: thanks for all the excellent train intel, and shame on me for being a doubter. Nathan: I don't think you're lazy. I just think if you spent half as much energy on taking a trip to New Jersey as you've spent on making excuses not to then you'd get a good meal out of the deal. LPShanet: thanks for bringing up the ill-fated Venue. Awhile back I noticed the young James George Sarkar (Chef James) popping up at the molecular gastronomy events and in the literature, and I made a mental note to visit Venue. I was stupid to wait. I need to spend more time in New Jersey.

This is my point about grandiosity. According to Merriam-Webster: "grandiose - characterized by affectation of grandeur or splendor or by absurd exaggeration." This guy has a neighborhood restaurant in Providence and is acting like his bar area is Pegu Club at the cocktail hour instead of a half-empty neighborhood restaurant bar in Providence after the dinner hour. Please.

Actually, that's the owner's position, and the position of everybody who says the "his place, his rules" truism ends the discussion. My point is that Chris was treated inhospitably, that there was no justification for doing so -- as in a good reason, not the "his place, his rules" power play -- and that it is simultaneously grandiose and petty to care if one person in a half-empty bar is using a laptop computer quietly in the corner.

I don't think you're going to find a credible, definitive answer to that question. It's possible to say what Escoffier's recipe for demi-glace was, but in contemporary culinary usage one can arrive at demi-glace by at least three paths and each of those paths has branches. First, you can do the classic Escoffier method or any of a number of variants. Second, you can simply make a strong reduction of meat stock. Third, you can make something in the neighborhood of a quintuple-strength stock/coulis by repeated remoistening. You'll find professional sources (e.g. James Peterson) referring to all three of those things, and more, as demi-glace.

Drama is in the eye of the beholder. If we accept the facts as presented here, my summary is simply accurate. He certainly has done that! Chris wanted to write in a casual, relaxed environment, but was not allowed to do so. I agree. Chris does not harbor that mentality at all.

The Zod experience has long been on my must-do list, and I've had two close encounters that got canceled. I've got to prioritize it higher. Zod is the one chef in New Jersey I've repeatedly and recently heard this sort of commentary on by people whose opinions, like Eddie's, I hold in the highest regard. And it brings up an interesting historical point about haute cuisine in New Jersey. It seems that since the 1970s there has been a succession of New Jersey chefs cooking at the apex of the craft. In that sense, Zod is arguably the Otto of the 21st Century. By Otto, I'm referring to pseudonym of the chef famously profiled by John McPhee in the New Yorker in the late 1970s. With his loving 25,000 word portrait of Otto, McPhee set off a near riot in the food community. The search for Otto was relentless, and he was finally outed by Mimi Sheraton and Frank Prial. Incidentally, they thought the food sucked, but then again the stories told were that the reclusive Otto sabotaged their meals to avoid good publicity. Otto was assumed to be in New Jersey because McPhee lived in Princeton, but turned out to be a couple of thousand feet over the border in Milford, Pennsylvania. His name was Alan Lieb. The New Yorker piece by McPhee is not, as far as I know, available online. It is, however, in McPhee's anthology, "Giving Good Weight." It is well worth reading -- I'd say it's one of the best pieces of English-language food writing ever. Here's a story from Time magazine, written at the time, about the whole brouhaha. In the 1980s and 1990s, Hans Egg -- who is still at the Saddle River Inn but seems to have been left behind by culinary progress -- enjoyed a measure of prominence among gourmets. The meal I had at Saddle River Inn at the height of the restaurant's arc was one of my peak culinary experiences. Then there's Craig Shelton at the Ryland Inn. It seems his arc reached its apex around the turn of the century. Ryland Inn is one of the few restaurants to receive the "Extraordinary" designation from David Corcoran, one of the Times regional restaurant critics, who I believe is the best of all the restaurant critics in all the regions covered by the New York Times (including New York City). The other chef arguably in that category (also with an "Extraordinary" rating) is Nicholas Harary of Nicholas. Which is to say, at the haute-cuisine end of things, there has long been interesting, unique stuff going on in New Jersey. And I imagine this will continue. One remarkable thing about these chefs is that they've pulled off their accomplishments with very little support from New York City. Again, to compare the calculus of New Yorkers to that of residents of another city, look at the restaurant landscape of Paris and France. Paris has a whole lot of great restaurants, Paris has many residents who don't own cars, yet Parisians routinely travel outside of Paris to eat. Restaurants operating at high levels all over the French countryside depend on Parisians (and international visitors) making pilgrimages in order to stay in business. They couldn't function with only local audiences.

USDA organic does not mean made in USA. It means certified organic under USDA standards. There are scores of USDA-approved certifying agents all over the world.

Mithaas presents a good opportunity for a real test, because pastry items can travel. We should be able to engineer a situation where we pick the best Indian pastries in New York City and compare them side by side against Mithaas pastries. Let's try to do that. Not that I think the pastries one can carry home in a box are the sum total of what Mithaas brings to the table. The experience of going to Mithaas, taking in the Indian music videos playing on the big plasma screens, settling into the stylish, modern lounge furniture, checking out the young Indian couples on dates -- that's what I love the most about the place. But let's say you're right, that Mithaas is not categorically better than the best New York City Indian pastry place. Does that mean a trip to Edison is not worthwhile? Let me phrase the question this way: would you be willing to say there is no reason for a New Yorker to visit Oak Tree Road ever, not one single time? That if your relatives didn't bring you there, you'd think going there -- even one time -- was a complete waste of time? To me, taking such a position would be inconceivable even if I didn't think Oak Tree Road had any specific restaurants that were better than their New York City equivalents. That would be like saying "Restaurant X on the Upper East Side has better Chinese food than any restaurant in Chinatown, therefore there is no reason ever to go to Chinatown." Or, "The Chinatown in Manhattan has lots of good restaurants, therefore it's a waste of time to go to Chinatown in Flushing, ever. Nope, no reason to go there even once." Mind you, I think Oak Tree Road does have superior restaurants and shopping to anything in New York City, but even if it didn't I'd say it's an essential foodie day trip. Not every day. But once, absolutely. I feel the same way about the Ironbound. I haven't done enough eating in the Ironbound, enough comparison of Portuguese versus Portuguese (though I will say that the Portuguese I've had in New York City, even at Alfama, has been unimpressive, and I've had better every time I've been to the Ironbound, which admittedly is only four times that I can remember -- plus I've made a couple of trips to the Amboys and such where I've also had rewarding Portuguese meals). But the Ironbound is still an amazingly rewarding trip, and it's easy as heck to get there on the PATH and to do everything you need to do on foot. This description of the Ironbound from an old New York Times story makes the point better than I can (definitely worth reading the whole story, even though it's a bit out of date): Now come on. If that's not a compelling case for visiting the Ironbound, if that's not enough to make a foodie (or anybody) think, hey, I should really check this place out -- well, then I don't know what to say. Again, you get there by PATH, which is pretty much just like the New York City subway system except it goes to New Jersey. It takes just a few minutes to get to Newark (Lower Manhattan to Newark via PATH is 22 minutes and costs $1.50 -- you can even pay with the pay-per-ride Metrocard). When you get out of the PATH station in Newark, you are within very easy walking distance of all the key Ironbound places. You don't need a car, you don't need to spend hours in transit, you can go as easily as you can go to all sorts of places right in the city. And everybody should go once, because it would be a shame to miss out on such an incredible cultural resource so close by and so accessible. And it's not like Oak Tree Road, where at least you can say, well, New York City has Jackson Heights so that's enough (even though I think Oak Tree Road is a whole different ballgame). Because New York City doesn't have a neighborhood that's remotely equivalent to the Ironbound. I submit that both Oak Tree Road and the Ironbound constitute exactly such compellingly unique experiences. I also don't get why you're writing off food-shopping completely. I think the testimony here about Mitsuwa in particular has been pretty damn compelling. Even if you don't cook Japanese food, even if you don't buy a single thing, it's still a great food-culture experience (a veritable compellingly unique experience) to get on that $2 bus from Port Authority with all the Japanese-American shoppers, visit Mitsuwa Marketplace, gaze upon the awesome inventory of Japanese stuff, have a bowl of ramen, take the bus back and call it a day. I can't imagine anybody doing that and saying, "Nope, complete waste of my time. I'm never leaving New York City again." Now White Manna, that one I don't think is so easy to get to without a car. It's very close by car -- we can sometimes achieve times in the neighborhood of 30 minutes door-to-door from the Upper East Side to White Manna -- but I think you need a car, or someone with a car to take you, or an employer with a lax attitude about car-service vouchers. I mean, I do see NJ Transit bus stops out in Hackensack, but I imagine there's enough switching and scheduling to make it not worth doing on public transportation. But I do believe that White Manna is yet another compellingly unique experience that New Jersey has to offer New York. White Manna is like the genetically superior version of White Castle -- it's what White Castle would be like if White Castle did everything right. Hand-formed sliders cooked on an ancient griddle with sliced onions pressed right in, served on miniature Martin's potato rolls (placed atop the patties on the griddle so as to be heated and seasoned by the vapors rising up) in a Deco jewel box. It was built for the 1939 World's Fair. It's a glorious piece of American culinary history just a few miles away from New York City. Do I think it's worth making a road trip to New Jersey solely to visit White Manna? I don't know. I'm pretty sure I've done it, but I know I'm a freak. The thing is, you don't have to do it that way, because White Manna is spitting distance from the H-Mart in Little Ferry, and from a bunch of excellent non-food shopping that New York City doesn't have (Ikea, Target), and you can hit Mitsuwa with a minor detour, and you're within easy reach of a couple of John's hot-dog picks, and there's Brooklyn's Coal Oven Pizza operated by the nephews of Pasty Grimaldi which has the best stromboli I've had in the tristate area, etc. Or, if you're going to the Poconos or anyplace like that on I-80 you just take the Hackensack exit and make a White Manna stop, then continue on your way. So yeah, I think it's worth figuring out a way to do that trip once.

Freakazoid: the guy has a day job running a school; he has already said there were constraints against writing at home. So he sought out a place of public accommodation where he could have a beverage and write on his computer. It happens all the time. It may be convenient for the casual checker of email to close up his laptop, but for Chris it was manifestly inconvenient: it was the antithesis of what he needed to be doing -- so much so that he felt he had no workable option other than to leave. Bars can indeed be wonderful refuges, and later that evening Chris found one that was a wonderful refuge for him. But Loie Fuller was not a refuge for Chris. It was a place where he was unwelcome, uncomfortable and inconvenienced -- all unnecessarily.

I concur that veal stock is a great force multiplier. In my experience, however, for the home cook, beef stock is about as useful as veal stock -- and it's usually easier to gather the ingredients. Veal is almost a specialty item, whereas beef is plentiful and cheap at every level of supermarket. Home cooks are also more likely to have leftover beef bones and trimmings than they are to have veal bones and trimmings. A combination stock is also quite workable for the home cook: a combination of beef and poultry bones and trimmings, kind of like an Italian brodo.

Chris had work he needed to get done, which means leaving was his only option. How is that any different?