Fat Guy

Boy I am just not seeing the slop-on-plate point at all. Those plates look very professional.

Reality check: I've looked at the nine photos and nothing looks "slopped on to a plate" to me at all. If we're looking at the same photos, those are very correct haute-cuisine platings. The reviews seem to indicate that the food isn't good, but the platings seem just fine.

No appointment at the nail salon. In NYC there are plenty of places where you just walk in. Camping: we've already established that this was after the dinner rush. A neighborhood restaurant bar in Providence is not likely going to fill up after 9pm on Wednesday night. And if by some miracle it does, then yes, that's when you confront someone if there's a camping problem (though my guess is that Chris would have continued to order drinks, maybe some snacks, etc., for the duration). The preemptive strike is unnecessary.

That's the camping argument restated. It doesn't apply in a half-empty room.

A little while back my wife went for a manicure and brought our two-year-old son along to the nail salon. He played with toys on the floor or whatever, and my wife had her manicure. At the end of the transaction, the owner told my wife politely and apologetically that they have a no-kids policy, and requested that next time my wife come alone. No problem. She has been back twice since. If, however, she had shown up and been chased away, I'm sure she would have boycotted the place forever. There's no sign up that says no kids, they don't tell you no kids on the phone, there's no advance warning and it's not something that every person with a clue would automatically assume. I'd hardly call that making an exception to the rule -- it's just a decision to enforce the rule in the least intrusive possible way. The rule happens to be wrong, and I oppose the rule, but if you're going to enforce it the nail-salon people got it right and the guy at the bar got it wrong.

The half-empty issue arises in response to the concern, stated above, about camping -- the potential for a customer to sit forever with one drink, taking up space that could be used by a more profitable customer. In a half-empty establishment, that's simply not a concern.

I thought they were all a subset of tangerines. Here's what the USDA says: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FruitAndT...f/Tangerine.pdf

The "it's the guy's bar, he can do what he wants" statement is simply a statement of fact. I don't think anybody would disagree with that, so long as what the guy wants to do is legal. But "it's the guy's bar, he can do what he wants" doesn't justify the action. The action can still be petty, inhospitable, misguided, etc., even though it's the guy's bar and he can do what he wants. It seems to me that zero tolerance for laptops, in a neighborhood restaurant bar in Providence, is grandiose. The notion that "the zen of the space" demands such a Draconian policy in a half-empty neighborhood bar is in my opinion absurd. I doubt you'd be kicked out of Pegu Club in New York -- arguably the best, coolest bar in the world -- for using a laptop off in a corner at a slow time. I doubt you'd be kicked out of the Gramercy Tavern bar -- I imagine Danny Meyer would chew off his own foot rather than trigger the scenario Chris has described. There's no noise involved; it's not a boom box or even a cell phone. The concern that one laptop user is going to trigger a slippery slope domino effect cascading failure seems a bit much.

So much of the pleasure of bread, for me, is the crust. Given the choice between bread without crust and crust without bread, I think it's no contest: crust rules. Yet, especially in America (well, especially in Asia, but I'm only going to speak for my home country), it's so hard to find crust cooked to a sufficient level of doneness to bring out its true inner excellence. I'm not just talking about Wonder. I mean real bakery bread, pizza from the best pizzerias, bagels from the best bagel shops. The overwhelming majority of these places underbake their crusts. You can find me digging through the bagel bin for the one or two bagels that are dark enough for the crust to develop extra flavor and chewier texture -- the ones that everybody else seems to avoid. You can find me asking for my pizza well-done even at the very best places, because on the whole even they underbake. You can find me at the local bakery shop saying "No, no, that one, the dark one on the left, one more over, no go back, yeah, that one." What's the problem here? Is it an American cultural preference for underbaked, characterless crust? Is it that the bakers want to shave a couple of minutes off their baking times, for some sort of economic reason? Or am I just wrong -- is dark crust actually bad and I'm a freak for liking it?

Dude, you have a car.

As of several days ago, the list was: That has all along been a conservative list -- the one that only touches on best-in-category places where there's a pretty high level of confidence that NYC has nothing competitive. Of course, my opinion is that it's absurd to make that the cutoff. The only reason I'm engaging in that particular list-generation exercise is to establish beyond reasonable doubt that there are NJ food destinations that meet the criterion of being outright superior to their NYC equivalents. Only one such place would have to exist in order to prove that hypothesis. Five days ago, we listed eight and people are still saying we listed none, or two, or otherwise exhibiting list-blindness. Moreover, in the days since then, there have been several proposed additions to the list (Sabor Peru, Santouka, tomato pies, etc.) as I said there would be. Needless to say, these require further investigation, and some may be false positives -- as may some on the original list. But the list is growing, and will continue to grow over the next several months as we start getting more data points. I think what can be said of your list is that it describes some people's alleged criteria for determining "worth it." It doesn't describe mine. And I'm not sure it accurately describes the real-world criteria of how people choose dining destinations. Since it's impossible to set forth a set of criteria that are accurate with respect to everybody, I think a category-based approach to the taxonomy of NJ restaurants makes more sense. To summarize those categories, which I proposed last week: 1. Restaurants in Northern New Jersey that are better than any comparable restaurant in New York City. 2. Restaurants in Northern New Jersey that are comparable quality-wise to New York City restaurants but offer a variant that is not available in New York City or that is superior to the New York city equivalent. 3. Places in Northern New Jersey that are as good as places in New York City, and do not necessarily offer unique experiences, but are among the small handful of best places in their categories. 4. Neighborhood-based Northern New Jersey experiences that can't be matched in New York City. 5. BYO. 6. Shopping. Different people are going to value the different categories differently. I happen to think every one of those categories makes for a worthwhile destination. I can see ruling out 3 and 5, but as for the rest, I think the list based on them would easily number in excess of 100.

An unusual factual tidbit: Julian Medina, the chef at Toloache, is Jewish. I note this because Hanukah is coming up and he's running several Mexican Hanukah dishes on the menu during those eight days. For example: - A trio of latkes including potato-jalapeno latke with horseradish crema, zucchini latke with tomatillo-apple salsa, and Mexican ricotta latke fritter with chipotle and agave nectar glaze - "Tacos de brisket" -- Negra Modelo-braised brisket tacos, tomatillo salsa, avocado, horseradish crema

I've been meaning to circle back to this comment. I think Stew Leonard's may very well produce the best cow's-milk mozzarella in the region. Or, at least, it's on par with what you get at Casa Della Mozzarella near Arthur Avenue and Alleva in Little Italy. It's certainly better than Fairway and the various other NYC gourmet markets. The guy in Yonkers who does the mozzarella is amazing. He pulls it to a beautiful texture, especially the small knots. That seems to be the fundamental point of differentiation among mozzarella specimens: the technique. Because the underlying ingredients are pretty much uniform. Most everybody gets ready-made mozzarella curds from one of a few large commercial suppliers (I'm not aware of any retail establishment that makes mozzarella from actual milk) and fabricates the mozzarella from there forward. I finally had a chance to sit down with loaves of Stew's sourdough and "9 Whole Grain" breads and really check them out and taste carefully. They're not as good as good artisan bakery bread, but they're quite good. Certainly, a cut above what you can get at supermarket bakeries.

I can't imagine ever being bothered by someone else writing on a laptop computer. Not even at Louis XV, no less a neighborhood place in Providence. It strikes me as a petty, out-of-touch move to alienate a customer on that basis. Surely the owner has something better to do than exercise his inalienable right to make arbitrary and capricious rules for his half-empty bar.

Nor have I. What I believe I've noted is that, for a population that claims to be dedicated to food, New York foodies as a group are surprisingly reluctant to invest a couple of travel hours to broaden their culinary horizons. I compared that to the attitude of the LA foodies I know, who think nothing of that sort of travel. I regret it if the term "lazy," by which I meant disinclined to bother with the inconvenient (we're not talking about the biblical sin of sloth here), is being interpreted by anyone as an assault on his or her character.

You most certainly are mistaken. Here's what I said in post number one: And Sam, when I referenced an inability or unwillingness to relate to someone else's priorities, I was noting that, because you seem unable to relate to the priorities of someone who would travel that extensively for food, you've chosen to accuse me of disingenuousness. And you've continued to do so. I'm afraid I can't assign a very high priority to answering your posts when you persist with such accusations. [insert standard list of previously established arguments here.]

I didn't go to Princeton University, but I've spent almost as much time there as if I had. In high school, my best friend lived there, and he went to college there, so I've been down to Princeton on the train literally a hundred or more times. After 9/11, when some of the WFC buildings got wrecked, my sister (who works for the Wall Street Journal) relocated to Princeton along with many other employees. So I've been there a lot. Princeton is not a great eating town. People in Princeton who are serious about eating take in a lot of their meals in places like Trenton and Edison. Conte's Pizza, 339 Witherspoon Street, behind the medical center building, is the one place in Princeton that I'd put up against serious competition in major cities. You'll have to investigate the hours, however -- last I checked they didn't open until around 4 on Saturdays. Here's the recent review from the New York Times.

Don't worry. The Long Island, Westchester and Connecticut topics are coming. It's amazing how many people are saying "the one place that's worth the trip is X. It's the exception to the rule." When you add those up . . .

Nathan is correct. I should have said the only excellent Bombay-Chinese restaurant in the region.

Most restaurants everywhere suck, so by definition we're talking about the anomalies.

No, this is a mischaracterization of my positions. ← How so? You've casually accused me of mischaracterizing your positions and of disingenuousness, but haven't justified either allegation. Indeed, after claiming I mischaracterized your position, you went on to state the same position! Nor is your example on point. You've tried to prop up the argument about "inexhaustible culinary possibilities" by pointing to one of many cocktail places, which only a die-hard fan of the cocktail niche would consider essential. What I said was that New York has a small number of best-in-category places -- that the description "inexhaustible culinary possibilities" ignores the reality that once you cut the list down to the very best then New York City is a very small town. The list is small enough that, from my perspective, if you add a few New Jersey places to the places in Queens and Brooklyn then they're just as essential for at least one visit as Sripraphai or Di Fara's. Since you are a die-hard lover of cocktails, however, you might want to check out SM23 in Morristown, also Mehtani-owned, with its Grant Collins-trained staff and Asian-influenced cocktails (e.g., giant Japanese-style ice spheres, apple-and-thyme martini, etc.). Probably not worth a trip for the average person, but maybe worth it for someone who really wants to cover all the interesting cocktail ground in the region. Then again, since the trip can be combined with dinner at Ming -- the only Bombay-Chinese restaurant I know of in the region (particularly strong lamb offerings) -- it could be a worthwhile outing. An hour on the train from Penn Station, goes very close to the restaurants (they're in the same complex, same ownership). Or get a friend to drive you, as you've noted I've done for you many times to other destinations in New Jersey. It's really no big deal. The disingenuousness claim is particularly bizarre given that 1- you haven't evidenced a sufficient factual basis to engage in a discussion of public transportation to New Jersey, 2- I've taken public transportation to New Jersey to eat many times and for combined eating-shopping-visiting day trips probably on the order of 50+ times, and 3- I did so plenty of times while working 3,000 hours a year as a lawyer. An inability or unwillingness to relate to someone else's priorities doesn't establish disingenuousness. There's not much else I can say without repeating the same arguments I've already established. I believe they already respond fully to your post, so that's it from me on this tangent. Rest assured, though, I am being absolutely straightforward in everything I say here. And I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're being straightforward when you say "I stipulate that it may be a shame that I haven't been exposed to the pinnacle of South Indian food."

If I understand it correctly, Sam's position is that even if there are X number of restaurants in New Jersey that are categorically superior to their New York City equivalents, it's still not worth going to them because New York City "is so rich in culinary possibilities that it is inexhaustible to any other than the very most dedicated epicure." New York City has a lot of good restaurants, I agree, but it has quite a limited number of best-in-category restaurants. Rather, I think what Sam's statement indicates is simply his preference for pizza over South Indian food. My contention is that Moksha is as superior to the best New York City South Indian as Sally's and Pepe's are to the best New York City pizza. So, assuming I'm right about the food-quality issue, if you think it's worth a trip to New Haven for Sally's and Pepe's but not worth a trip to Edison for South Indian then that's a personal preference. Moreover, at least there's good pizza in New York City. It seems to me that to say: is to get it backwards: if you have to go all the way to New Haven to get something that's a few percent better or slightly different than what you can already get in New York, that's something you only do if you're a pizza fanatic. If you simply can't get a serious South Indian food experience in New York City, and your only choice for getting one is to go to Edison, then that's a far more powerful argument for going to Edison than having a few-percent-better place in Edison would be. It's easy to close oneself off to a cuisine like South Indian cuisine, because it seems abstract and "other," but to do that seems a shame. As much as I love pizza, I've got to say that by any objective measure of sophistication, complexity, depth, etc., one should take South Indian cuisine more seriously than pizza. I'll stop repeating the following arguments from here on in. You can just assume they're added to every post I make: 1- The car issue is a red herring because plenty of public transportation is available. We've been mapping out the train, bus and walking routes. That excuse just doesn't work. 2- Making a day of it is a great idea and something I've advocated all along. 3- It should be evident by now that the "there are only two places" argument is an inaccurate representation of the discussion we've been having. For one thing, the most pared-down list is eight places so far. For another thing, we are at the very beginning of generating the list. And for still another thing, even if there were only two places then they would be two places well worth visiting.

No no, not too late at all. We have all day.

A producer from WNYC radio (that's the NPR station in New York City) got in touch with me and we taped a segment about the NY/NJ issue this morning. It should air in the morning one day later this week, and I'll try to post about that if I get advance notice -- if not, it will be on the website afterwards. She's also going to join us on the NJ field trip in January, recorder in hand, for a follow-up story. Anyway, I promised I'd give WNYC a list of recommended New Jersey food destinations for their website and was hoping I could get a little help. This isn't a list strictly conforming to the "better than NYC" criterion. I'm just looking for one or two places per category to recommend in New Jersey: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Southeast Asian, Italian, Spanish/Portuguese, burger, hot dog, etc. I think I've got a few of those categories covered from personal knowledge, and a couple of others I can get from posts on this topic. I could use help with: 1 - What's the best NNJ Chinese now that China 46 is on hiatus? 2 - What's the best NNJ Japanese? 3 - What's the best Portuguese and/or Spanish place in the Ironbound? 4 - What's the best NNJ Korean restaurant? 5 - What's the best Southeast Asian (Thai, Vietnamese, etc.)? 6 - What's the best Italian-American red-sauce place, and the best Italian market? 7 - Anything else not yet mentioned on this topic that simply must go on a NNJ best-of list targeted at NYC residents.

No way am I giving you Chola as South Indian! A restaurant that serves chicken tikka masala doesn't get to call itself South Indian -- once you do that at best you get to call yourself pan-Indian (unless you have a full South Indian menu with just a token chicken tikka masala offering for the white people -- kind of like the salmon at Peter Luger). Chola has a couple of sub-sections of South Indian dishes on its menu, but it's not in the same ballpark as Moksha. You'd have to combine Saravanaas, Chola and the varous Dosa Huts and Diners just to be able to assemble an NYC-based South Indian menu that's close to what Moksha is doing. And even if you combine all those menus you still won't find (at least I haven't found) an example of nandu puttu (steamed crab salad with pepper, coriander, and cashews), malla yetti neerulli (lobster with tomatoes and shallots) or, for better or worse, satukal soup (lamb trotters soup) or tippili and pavakkai kozhambu (pepper and bitter gourd curry). That's not even getting into stuff they'll do for banquets and in other special-order situations, like mutton and dozens of additional specialty vegetable, salad, bread, etc., offerings. And I want to emphasize that you don't have to be a billionaire or the author of a book about the restaurant in order to get the off-menu stuff; the restaurant makes the offer publicly, right up front: "Our Chef has a splendid repertoire of dishes besides those in this menu. Should you wish to explore, our Chef would be delighted to guide you thru this gastronome experience." Granted, there are some vegetarian dishes at Saravanaas that you can't find on the Moksha day-to-day menu, but we're talking about what you can get in New Jersey that you can't get in New York, not vice-versa. This is all aside from the quality issue, which is more a matter of opinion -- I do think the food at Moksha is better but that's of course debatable. But the availability issue can be established factually. I firmly believe that Moksha is a more ambitious South Indian restaurant by an order of magnitude than anything in New York City. The research, travel and training they've done on the dishes of the four southern states (Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala) is exhaustive. The "trappings" (in other words, the fact that it's a really nice place) are perhaps beside the pure food point but I wouldn't write them off as an irrelevant part of the experience. I'll readily say that Moghul and Mendhi (the Mehtani-owned North Indian properties) are not better than several places you can find in Manhattan and probably not hitting highs as high as whatever Suvir and Hemant are doing at the moment (setting aside the issue of Tabla, which I think is a category-beater in its way) -- though I'd still classify Mehndi (the new property in Morristown) as worth a trip for the curious. I didn't become a fan of Moksha as some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy because they comped me a few meals and the publicists' four-year-old daughter is adorable. I chose to chronicle the Mehtanis (I had plenty of choices closer to my apartment) because I tried Moksha, Mithaas and Ming (we haven't even talked about Ming yet, or SM23 for that matter) and was blown away by what they were doing, and felt like I had plugged into a world of Indian cuisine that mainstream diners were missing. If I didn't believe in the product, I wouldn't have spent a year driving back and forth to Edison and Morristown over and over again to write about it -- writing doesn't pay that well, and those places are skirting the outer edge of even my acceptable food-schlepping radius. I wouldn't be on the phone with other writers saying, dude, you've got to come to Moksha with me. I wouldn't be issuing potentially embarrassing throwdown challenges like I have here. The reason I'm dwelling on Moksha, rather than moving on to other examples yet, is that I want to establish some firm, core examples of the NJ/NY thesis before building from there. So, you'll have to forgive me for being nitpicky about Chola and Saravanaas -- they're good restaurants too and I don't mean to take anything away from them and what they're doing. But Moksha is distinct.