Fat Guy

Saravanaas is good, but it's a vegetarian restaurant. I don't see it as a New York answer to Moksha. What I'd say is that on its best day Saravanaas serves vegetarian dishes comparable to the vegetarian dishes on Moksha's menu. But that's just a small part of Moksha's offerings -- you can't get crab, lobster, shrimp, goat, lamb, etc., at Saravanaas. I simply do not know of any restaurant in New York City that's competitive with Moksha. It's not even a question of best v. best. It's best v. nothing.

Correct. Dried, whole, ground vanilla beans. Much of the flavor is in the seeds, however using the whole ones gives visual bang: it makes things like vanilla ice cream and creme brulee look like they have a ton of vanilla in them. It also has the benefit of being a form of vanilla with no alcohol, which can affect cooking. Some operators will even buy "post-extracted" (sometimes called "exhausted") ground vanilla beans, in other words beans that have already been used to make vanilla extract (sometimes more than once), then have been dried and ground. These contribute a little vanilla flavor but mostly they just look like vanilla flecks -- then you enhance the flavor with extract, perhaps artificial.

I see this all over the place. I think if you Google it, you'll find that many of the online vanilla purveyors have a ground vanilla product on offer.

I've tried to find one in New York City, to no avail.

For what it's worth, I had a strong meal at Landmarc Time Warner tonight. Walked in, got a table right away, told them we were in a rush and got appropriately accelerated but not frantic service, they were nice to our kid, the meal was very satisfying, the space is great and the price was incredibly reasonable. We shared the foie gras terrine, which was textbook. No technical flaws that I could discern (appropriate salt level). I had the hamburger, which was beautifully composed on its platter (generous green salad, crispy fries, a pickle condiment, onions, tomato, everything) and cooked precisely as ordered. A very high quality burger. Ellen had the tuna steak, which was a thick, good piece of tuna seared rare. Can't complain there. PJ had the fish sticks and fries from the kids' menu -- we tried this on a lark (we almost never order from kids' menus) thinking maybe Landmarc would be doing something interesting. But they were sucky fish sticks (pucks really) like you'd get from any kids' menu. Same great fries as from the real menu, though. Blueberry cobbler and three sorbets for dessert -- the tiny cobbler was quite good, but the sorbets while flavorful had too icy a texture and serving them in cones is awkward. They bring free lime-green cotton candy for kids. We had a half-bottle of a pleasant New Zealand sauvignon blanc, from Dashwood. We were in and out in under an hour (again, at our request). Subtotal before tax and tip, for all that food and a half-bottle of wine: $88.

Basic troubleshooting checklist for people who aren't getting the desired result: 1- heavy pot, 2- tight-fitting lid, 3- try a higher temperature setting.

Had a burger at the kitchen counter just now, but I'm going to go back again and try the other burgers -- maybe get a couple of photos -- before posting a report. Just as I was about to leave Waldy arrived and we chatted for a couple of minutes, and I also spoke to big Mike. Apparently the trout situation was ingredient-driven: the bass has been the go-to dish all along, but the day I was in for a preview they had rejected a bass shipment and fell back on trout. I also asked if there was any chance of other nights opening up for the 12-course experience and Waldy was not totally opposed to the idea. One possible plan we chatted about was making it available on a non-Thursday night if somebody wants to book the whole table. Sorry I didn't see the beverage comments before going down. I too think they could tweak the beverage aspect a bit, and I should have pressed that point.

Just a quick note that I've started a planning topic for the NJ/NY food throwdown tour event in January. There's no need to do anything with it until a couple of months from now, however any throwdown-planning-related comments should go over there. Many thanks.

I have to figure that if the demand continues at this torrid pace, the offer will be extended to other nights. ← I think a big component of the attraction for Waldy is that he thinks this is fun. The amount of profit can't be significant. He might not think it's fun to do it several nights a week. That consideration could easily trump demand. There's also a marketing benefit to exclusivity. Also, the small-plates menu served at the kitchen counter on the other nights may very well be more profitable and easier on the kitchen team. We'll have to see what happens. Yeah, I think I'm going to go get a burger.

One of the accounts I read of an earlier press preview dinner than the one I attended mentioned bass in the fish position. I imagine Waldy was switching things around and judging reactions. Likewise, for us the marrow bones weren't split, but in earlier previews they were. Sounds like he's made the right call on both. I was making more of a prediction than a suggestion. This is making me hungry. Maybe I'll try to go in for a burger.

I had never heard of Cucharamama until it was posted on this topic, so at least in that respect I'm glad I started the discussion (my hot-dog knowledge is also now infinitely richer). But let's dwell for a moment on the current evolution of the claim: that there are only a couple of examples of places that support my thesis. First of all, I think -- giving the advocates the benefit of the doubt -- that we've listed more than two places: Cucharamama (I take no position here) Moksha Mithaas Mitsuwa White Manna Insert name of hot-dog place Super H-Mart Foodmart International That's not including the whole Ironbound field trip. Secondly, that list of eight is not by any stretch our final list. Arguing a couple of days into the topic that the list is too short is like saying every child is short. I think we'll see several other places -- especially Asian variants -- emerge as we continue the discussion. And there are whole categories of food upon which we haven't touched. Third, that's just the list of places so far that we're saying beat New York City. Above, I gave a list of several species of restaurants that can be found in New Jersey. So, for example, those who are really interested in getting a handle of the hot-dog culture are not going to sit around saying they'll only go to a place that meets the narrow criterion of "best." They're going to want to sample across the board. I think it can clearly be said that anybody living in New York City who thinks that, by eating hot dogs in New York City, he or she has read the whole book on the subject, is sorely mistaken. Ditto for several other categories of food.

One of the things I've found with most so-called "American Chinese" dishes is that they derive from Chinese dishes -- they're not actual American inventions but, rather, evolutions (or devolutions in some cases). It's not that egg-drop soup, egg foo yung, et al., don't exist in China.

Thanks Jon. Hey Brian, I do have a request. First, let me clarify that if anybody tries to use the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor train to get to Edison for Indian food on Oak Tree Road, you should not go to the Edison stop. You actually want to get off at the Metropark stop, which is two stops sooner than the Edison stop. That's the stop that's within walking distance of the core Oak Tree Road places. It's about a 42-minute trip from New York Penn Station -- you save a little time over Edison. Also worth noting: if you live downtown you can take PATH to Newark Penn Station (for those who are unfamiliar with the nomenclature, both New York and Newark have Penn stations, so you have to specify) and pick up the Northeast Corridor train there, continuing on to Metropark and Edison. So it's not necessarily required that you go to New York Penn Station. I used to do this all the time when I would go to Princeton from downtown -- same train. Which brings me back to you, Bryan. Can you suss out the best walking route from the Metropark station to Moksha/Mithaas/Ming/Moghul (they're all in the same place)? I'm pretty sure if you walk up Magnolia to Oak Tree always staying on the left side of the road you can do the route -- which is about a 15-minute walk -- using all streets that have sidewalks. Can you confirm or deny?

Nathan, how were the wines? Also, was there opportunity for interaction with Waldy? Did you give him a hard time? I was looking forward to a thorough test of his social skills.

The "Hong Kong" volume in the Lonely Planet World Food Guides series, by Richard Sterling and Elizabeth Chong, has a page (page 55), including a recipe, devoted to egg-drop soup. It begins:

A few of my colleagues were dining tonight at Alinea in Chicago. Some others were headed to the 12-course Thursday-night dinner at the Kitchen Counter at Beacon. I went to Rickshaw for dumplings. My experience was mixed. At its best, Rickshaw is making delicate, artful dumplings at a level way above most in the city, and in that context the prices are very reasonable. At its worst, the dumplings are flawed and lukewarm, making them a poor value. I don't really think the five-for-a-dollar dumpling places in Chinatown provide a meaningful basis for comparison to what Rickshaw is doing. It's sort of a category error to compare them. The five-for-a-dollar places serve delicious dumplings -- I love them and have eaten thousands -- but they're rustic, street-food dumplings. What Rickshaw is aspiring to is a much more refined species of dumpling. It's chopped liver versus foie gras. We ordered six of every type of dumpling -- there are seven varieties altogether. The cost is $5.55 for six dumplings, and $7.77 for nine dumplings. The dessert dumplings are $1.50 a piece or three for $3.50. All the savory dumplings are available either steamed or pan-fried. You can get them simply as dumplings with a paired dipping sauce, or you can add a salad or have them served in soup ($3.33 extra). There are also three small side dishes available: edamame, miso soup and chili-sesame noodle salad. The place (we went to the original 23rd Street location; they've also just opened another location near NYU, which is what triggered my interest, but traffic was terrible today so we diverted to 23rd Street). Some overall observations: The people working the counter -- that is, the order-takers and order-providers -- are sub-par. Below the already sub-par level of New York City behind-the-counter workers in general. The cashier was eating while taking orders, was uncommunicative and was neither helpful nor nice. The order-assemblers were messing up a lot of people's orders and not being nice about it. Nobody was out on the floor cleaning tables as they were vacated. It was a federal case to get a plate, or the bathroom key. The actual cooks working the line, which is in full view behind a glass wall, were super-friendly and seemed totally on top of their jobs. But not the service staff. The dumplings are presented in flattened, stylized versions of the old paper-box Chinese takeout containers. They're quite attractive, and each one bears a big red label, nicely designed, saying what species of dumpling is within. However, the boxes are not entirely workable as eat-in containers. You really need a plate in order to be able to work with the dipping sauce, which is jammed into the dumpling-crowded boxes. Plates, however, are not provided by default. There are nice wooden chopsticks, heavy-duty plastic forks, and totally flimsy plastic Chinese-style soup spoons provided at the napkin area. The restaurant is very stylish, hip, modern and busy. The most remarkable thing by far about Rickshaw is the incredible lineup of dipping sauces. These are light-years ahead of what anybody else is doing, at least anything I've seen. They're simply brilliant. Every one is matched to its dumpling with a keen eye towards complementary flavors. These sauces are very high quality, complex sauces and add a lot of value to the experience. The main problem with Rickshaw is temperature control. They have so many types of dumplings always at the ready that it's a crapshoot whether they'll be fresh and hot, or lukewarm and wilting. This is a very unfortunate state of affairs. They really need to rethink the workflow. In terms of the dumplings specifically: 1. Pork and Chinese chive with cabbage, ginger and scallion (with soy-sesame dipping sauce). We got these pan-fried. This is the one selection that's directly comparable to the five-for-a-dollar downtown dumplings. They compare somewhat favorably, I think, but I wouldn't order them again -- they're not what Rickshaw brings to the city's table. The wrappers are very delicate. The cabbage component of the filling kind of takes them in the direction of Korean mandoo flavor-wise. The dipping sauce is simple, focused, excellent. 2. Chicken and Thai basil with lemongrass, glass noodles and carrot (with spicy peanut dipping sauce). We got these steamed. Needless to say, here Rickshaw departs entirely from what's available at the five-for-a-dollar places and moves into the category of serious dim sum operations like Dim Sum Go Go. This is a really smart combination, the spicy peanut sauce could be enjoyed alone it's so good, and if the dumplings had been hot they would have been superlative. As it was, they were still pretty good. 3. Szechuan chicken with chili and white soy beans (with chili-soy dipping sauce). Steamed as well. I'm not sure I get this combination. The white soy beans add nothing but an unappealing chalkiness. The other chicken dumplings are much, much better. I'd like to try these pan-fried some time -- I think that would make a difference, because these are more towards the rustic end of the spectrum. Good dipping sauce, though. 4. Peking duck with shredded cabbage and scallion (with hoisin dipping sauce). Pan-fried. These are good enough, but the description creates an expectation that isn't realized in the dish. The filling is basically a duck meatball. Again, terrific dipping sauce. 5. Shrimp with sweet jicama and scallion (with wasabi miso dipping sauce). Steamed. Probably my favorite dumpling, and my favorite combination of dumpling and sauce. Again, not hot enough, though. 6. Seasonal vegetarian, currently being made with Chinese mustard greens and five-spice tofu (with "Asian herb" dipping sauce). Steamed. If you like the bitterness of mustard greens, you'll probably love these. I thought they were unpleasantly bitter, though. I'd like to try them in the other seasons -- the pea-shoot/shiitake combination sounds more to my liking. Again, a great sauce. 7. Chocolate "Shanghai soup dumplings," made with melted Callebaut chocolate in a black sesame mochi wrapper. I've got to give Rickshaw credit for this dessert. It's a bit gimmicky, but great fun. I'm not a huge fan of mochi, but this is a good use of the product. The chocolate is of good quality. They are an absolute mess to eat. We also ordered the chili-sesame noodle salad but they forgot it, and by the time we figured it out we didn't want to go back to square one and get more food -- thus is the way of dining with a two-year-old. But boy, you should have seen PJ's face when he saw those big steamers full of dumplings.

Since Grub Street has multiple authors and the piece was unsigned and in the second person, we can't say for sure that Mr. Cutlets wrote it, but he probably did. In any event, I thought the primary target of ridicule was the inability of a few folks to let go of the car point: Of course, I never made an assertion. I cited statistics. A majority of New York City households do have cars, and about a quarter of Manhattan households do. Apparently the percentage is lower on some people's miniature home planets within the city. In any event, it's a red herring. There's public transportation to many of the key places in New Jersey (e.g., Mitsuwa, which people seem to agree is a worthy destination, even as they deny that there are any worthy destinations). Grub Street then goes on to make the risible assertion that because Mr. Cutlets once wrote 150 words on restaurants near Newark Airport, and because unnamed members of the Grub Street staff have unspecified "serious roots" in New Jersey, that they have the requisite expertise to declare "when it comes to eating and eating well, a New Yorker would be nuts to cross the river just for a meal." (Unless, of course, it's to write about restaurants in Newark.) Yeah, I take that a lot more seriously than I take John's post. The piece concludes: Spoken like people who have never traveled. I assume the Grub Street folks have traveled and don't believe a word they're saying -- that it's just posturing -- but just in case they really are so sheltered that they believe "there is in New York all that food can afford," I'm going to issue a challenge: On 26 January 2008, my van will be waiting at 11am at a location to be announced, near the Lincoln Tunnel entrance. I have a seven-passenger van. Passenger number one will be me, the driver. Passenger number two will be my bulldog, Momo. Passenger number three will be a delegate from Grub Street, if Grub Street accepts the challenge. We'll see if a neutral member of the press wants to join for the purposes of coverage, so that may be one seat. The other three or four seats will be distributed by lottery to eGullet Society members. We'll start with the South Indian lunch buffet at Moksha in Edison. We'll eat from the buffet so nobody can accuse me of rigging the meal. We'll have some desserts at Mithaas. If I can get somebody from the Mehtani Group to show us around the other properties (Moghul, Ming) we'll do that. We'll take a quick spin on Oak Tree Road and then we'll head north. We'll visit a few ethnic mega-stores, probably Super H-Mart, Foodmart International and Mitsuwa. Then, having had some time to digest, we'll descend upon White Manna. And after that, if the group can handle it, we'll hit a hot dog place selected by John. If the answer to the question "Are these places unique and/or superior to the comparable New York City experiences" is yes, then everybody goes online and eats crow. If I fail to convince you, at least you got to spend a day in New Jersey with Momo. I'll post all the details and criteria on a planning topic in early January.

Apparently they're now booked through February 2008 for Thursday nights. Looking forward to the reports from tonight's group.

If your contention is that people love free stuff, well then of course I agree with that. But if your contention is that people become food bloggers to get free stuff, there's no doubt in my mind that you're wrong. And I'd be pleased to debate that with you on a topic about that. Not on this topic, which is about something else, though.

Blogs are niche products. A food blogger is speaking to a food audience about food only. Newspapers are for general audiences. The food writers get fired if they only speak to foodies. When a food blogger tries to increase relevance, the way to do it is by being more relevant in the food world. When a newspaper tries to increase circulation, quality food content is not typically a consideration. Even at the most elite newspapers, like the New York Times, the critics are under a clear mandate to try to appeal to non-foodies, and their work suffers for it. In the newspaper world, rarely. Perhaps at the top of the heap, there's some room for quality. The reporters at the Times and WSJ are the aristocrats of the newspaper world, and are indulged somewhat in the pursuit of focused quality -- as long as it doesn't do too much to jeopardize general-audience readership. But for the thousands of newspapers below that level? With a few bright-light exceptions like Purvis's food section they publish mostly unreadable, supremely low quality crap. And, as noted above, the priority isn't quality of food content. Hobby = for the love of it. That's a good thing. And I don't know of a single food blogger who does it for the free goodies -- that's more of a bonus. Same with newspapers.

That strikes me as a huge leap of faith based on outdated notions of what happens in the publishing business (not that those notions were ever true). Perhaps the person with the contract from Knopf is a better writer, though more likely he's a celebrity using a ghost writer, but when it comes to something like culinary judgment the imprimatur of an institution -- especially a newspaper -- means next to nothing. Who gave the imprimatur? It wasn't an institutional committee of food experts. We've already established that in many cases it's a business decision meant to sell papers, with not a care for the quality of food writing. Empirically, we know that many newspaper critics are complete duds. At least bloggers need to convince food-knowledgeable people of their relevance, otherwise they have no relevance. Professional writers only have to convince editors -- editors who don't necessarily know anything about the subject matter.

If your premise is that NYC residents are lazy and Jerseyphobic, it's an awfully weak argument if a single Indian restaurant an hour away is the best you can come up with. Most of the other examples given thus far are of the "cheap eats" variety. I don't think I'm lazy because I decline to rent a car and travel 2 hours roundtrip so that I can have a terrific $8 bowl of noodles somewhere. ← The threshold for a destination-worthy restaurant is different for everybody. I personally don't think twice about a two-hour round trip for a best-in-class bowl of noodles, and the price of the dish to me has little to do with its destination-worthiness. (I'll skip the part where I reiterate the arguments about combining it with shopping, being able to use public transportation, two million cars, etc.). If that kind of culinary adventuring is not your cup of tea, so be it. I'll try not to be disappointed.

That's a great start. I think it would be great if we could get New York foodies just to those three destinations. Empirically, however, I disagree with your assessment of the Oak Tree Road dining scene. I've personally spoken to plenty of customers who've come for destination dining. Several restaurant managers have confirmed this. Have you seen the parking lot outside Moghul on a weekend night? Those people aren't stopping by after shopping. That's an Indian-American destination-dining mob scene you're seeing there, drawing from all over the region.

That's a red herring because you can just take the train to Edison (49 minutes), or have a friend with a car take you. And yes it's worth making the trip, which is why I've done it so many times and which is why Moksha is full of Indians who've come from far and wide for a taste of Bangalore and the surrounding regions. Why else would I be championing the food scene in New Jersey if it wasn't worth it? I don't live there, I'm not moving there, I just love to eat there. But of course the two million New Yorkers and quarter-million Manhattanites with cars don't maintain them solely to go out to eat. We personally maintain our car for a variety of reasons: because public transportation isn't pet friendly, because my wife is from Connecticut and we visit the inlaws there a lot, because we take long road trips often enough that rentals wouldn't be economical and, yes, because it gives us better, more convenient access to interesting food than we'd otherwise have. We've been car owners and non-car-owners at various times over the past 16 years (maybe half and half) and when we haven't had a car we've used public transportation, rentals, borrowed cars and taxis to go to most of the same places. Car TCO for us is about $7k/year -- including the car -- and that's the last word I'll say about the car excuse issue. Next: my challenge to the persistent doubters.

First I must give a not to two excellent Shanghainese places that have closed: Shanghai Tang in Flushing, where I had one of the best Shanghainese meals I've ever had, and China 46 in New Jersey, where we've held several eGullet Society Chinese New Year dinners and which for a long time was a regular weekend brunch spot for my family. Luckily, China 46 plans to reincarnate somewhere -- across the street from my apartment would be nice. Anyway, the reason I mention that is because my point was about depth of Shanghainese choices in the area. I was going to give a number but when I got to 20 I stopped: there are more serious Shanghainese restaurants around here than you can shake a stick at, and about a dozen at which I think, armed with good advice and a modicum of experience, I could order an excellent Shanghainese meal for a group. More excellent Shanghainese restaurants have opened, had great runs, and closed in New York City than even exist in most other North American cities that are known for Chinese food. I'll skip over Evergreen and Joe's several branches, because I assume you're familiar with them and there's a ton of data out there anyway. The two Our Place restaurant are, I think, among the most consistently underrated restaurants in town. When the kitchens at the Our Place restaurants are on (which admittedly is not always) and with good ordering (we haven't gone into this on the current topic, but it's worth noting that the Chinese-restaurant experience can be highly dependent on one's ordering strategy) the food can be tremendous. Turnip pastries, bean curd with crabmeat and spinach, lion's head meatballs, all excellent. Ed Schoenfeld consulted for the owners, many of whom worked at some of the best Chinese restaurants in town prior to opening Our Place. Not cheap, though. Here's Eric Asimov's review. I'll try to circle back and start real topics on some of these restaurants down the road. Our Place Shanghai Tea Garden 141 E. 55th St. 212.753.3900 http://ourplace-teagarden.com/ Our Place Cuisines of China 1444 3rd Ave. 212.288.4888 http://ourplaceuptown.com/ M Shanghai Bistro & Den has a ton of personality. I was going to do a profile of the place for my book but there was too much New York material as it was. The reason I thought you'd particularly dig it, Pan, is that it's in the "home cooking" category. Particularly good are the vegetarian dishes, e.g., "Sautéed Morning Glory in Tea Sauce." Very reasonable prices. M Shanghai Bistro & Den 129 Havemeyer St., Brooklyn 718.384.9300 http://mshanghaiden.com/ Liberty View is I think the only good restaurant recommendation I've ever had from Adam Platt. I don't think he ever did a review of the place; he just mentioned it in a best-of roundup. What he said, with which I agree 100%: Liberty View 21 South End Ave. 212.786.1888 I don't think the restaurant has a website, none that I could find anyway, but the menu is on the New York Magazine website.