Fat Guy

As I understand it, the general Chinese-American menu of today is heavily influenced by the 1970s. There was very little Asian immigration to the US for much of the 20th Century, with the exception of Korean War brides and such, but the 1965 Immigration Act really opened up the borders and further relaxation in the 1970s accelerated the process still. The 1970s were sort of a golden age for Chinese-American restaurants. This is a fun article from the Washington Post titled "Who Was General Tso And Why Are We Eating His Chicken?." If you take General Tso's chicken as emblematic of the Chinese-American cuisine of the 1970s then this story (which is one of a few possible explanations in the story) probably has a lot of analogs with respect to other dishes: There are regional differences in the standard menu, as well as regional differences in the way standard dishes are prepared, though some of the menu differences are just nomenclature differences (same dish, different name) and there's a substantial core of dishes that remains pretty solid from coast to coast. This also from Betty Xie, explaining how the menu gets propagated:

Okay, difficult was an overstatement. What I should have said is that chop suey is not nearly as prevalent these days as dishes like General Tso's chicken, which probably didn't exist until the 1970s. It's also not nearly as popular. The trade journal Chinese Restaurant News tracks the popularity of Chinese-restaurant dishes and according to editor-in-chief Betty Xie today the most popular Chinese restaurant dishes in North America are: Egg rolls Pot stickers (dumplings) Wonton soup BBQ pork Hot and sour soup Sweet and sour pork Beef with broccoli Kung pao chicken Moo shu pork Mongolian beef Chicken with cashews Orange beef General Tso’s chicken Lemon chicken Sesame Chicken Fried rice And the dishes that have been trending upwards in popularity most vigorously in the past decade: Peking duck Siu mai Har gao Char siu bao Lettuce wrap with shredded chicken Ma Po tofu Summer rolls Many of the dishes, on both lists, weren't really available here until the 1970s.

If you own the property you should be able to do better than 5% profit. But, if you own a desirable piece of commercial property you can probably make more money by being a landlord to Applebee's than you can by running a restaurant yourself -- and it's a lot less stressful.

Hey, I didn't say greatest bargain in the country, just in the city. You can buy an entire furniture store in High Point these days for what it costs to dine at Per Se, so it's not really fair to compare North Carolina prices. Also, isn't Jujube an Asian place? The Asians are all over this style of dining, with sushi, izakaya and tapas-like variants for the other Asian cuisines. The West is like fifty years behind, so much so that if you serve white-people food at a counter like, you know, that Robuchon guy does, then everybody says you had an original idea.

Here are the other two kitchen counter menus. On nights other than Thursdays, this is the small-bites menu: And this is the lunchtime burger menu that's offered at the kitchen counter:

Waldy gave me a menu to scan and post, and I think I finally got it sharpened up enough to work at this image size. You may recall, above, the way the kitchen counter was set when we were seated. That folded up piece of paper has the long, narrow menu printed on the other side.

Until the moment I saw the actual pricing information, I assumed it was in the neighborhood of a $150-per-person meal, and I absolutely did not imagine any scenario in which it would be priced under $100.

When the meal was over, Waldy asked if this was the sort of experience we'd want to repeat, and I said I was willing to repeat it right then and there. You really have to travel to Minibar in DC to have a non-sushi experience like this one, except the cuisines are vastly different. Still, Minibar is the only other publicly available non-sushi dining experience I've had that was stylistically comparable. The nice thing about the Beacon experience, though, in addition to it being in New York, is that the food is so accessible. At one level it appeals to foodies in search of an interesting experience, but it's also a great introduction to higher-level dining for people who aren't particularly well versed in that milieu. I have two friends from out of town, for example, who are fine-dining doubters, and this is definitely where I'm going to take them if they ever manage to be here on a Thursday night. It's the kind of experience that really helps prove the point that serious cuisine can be fun, relaxed and unintimidating.

I'm not sure what would make bo luc lac authentic or inauthentic. It's just about the simplest dish out there, and there are so many acceptable variants that it's hard to imagine an inauthentic version short of one made with salmon and chocolate. Beef cubes, a basic Vietnamese fish-sauce-based marinade, some greens, etc. -- it's no big deal. There are a lot of dishes on the Saigon Grill menu that suck, because that's what people want. They must be the largest purchaser of bell peppers in the city -- enough with the bell peppers in every dish already. But the dishes that they do well they do exceptionally well. Statements like "New York Vietnamese food isn't good" or "New York Chinese food isn't good" are rarely accurate. Certainly, the average example of any cuisine -- Chinese, deli, sushi -- is going to be bad in any city. But there is excellent Chinese and Vietnamese food to be found in New York. It's a question of knowing both where to go and what to order, as is typically the case with Asian restaurants in America. I've had Asian food in nine provinces of Canada. I know what it's like. Toronto does not have better Asian food than the best New York places in any category I know of. Vancouver is the one place in Canada that outshines New York, in a couple of categories of Chinese food -- not all categories, however. The Sichuan food in New York, for example, is superior to anything I've had in Vancouver. I'm sure Sydney has great examples of everything Asian, since it's basically in Asia. The place you really want to be in North America for all this stuff is Los Angeles, by virtue of sheer population density of the relevant ethnic groups, but New York also acquits itself well on account of large Asian populations and a sophisticated client base. You have to be willing to seek out good Asian food in New York, however. That means a willingness to travel to the non-Manhattan boroughs and to Northern New Jersey. The farthest you can travel in the New York metro area is about half the distance you'd travel for the average meal in LA, but New Yorkers aren't as calibrated as Angelenos to that sort of commuting. I would suggest, however, that anybody who hasn't sampled a variety of Asian cuisines extensively in Northern New Jersey simply does not have an adequate basis for comparison or generalization.

Of the chefs running upscale chophouses in New York I've long felt that Waldy Malouf was uniquely talented, however until now he has not had a suitable venue in which to strut his stuff. Beacon is a solid restaurant, but it is what it is: a well-conceived chophouse targeted at a Midtown business crowd. My favorite meals have been the special events, like the Beefsteak and the Chowder. The regular meals I've had there have been well executed but hardly exciting. Waldy invited me in tonight for a preview of a new concept he has come up with, called the kitchen counter. Down in the restaurant's pit (that's what they call the dining area down a few steps that overlooks the wood-burning hearth and open kitchen), Waldy has installed a long, narrow counter that seats six people. The counter is formed out of an approximately six-inch-thick piece of mahogany (there's a companion piece in the front bar area), and all six seats face the kitchen. The kitchen counter is serving three purposes. At lunchtime you can drop in for a burger at the kitchen counter -- there is a new burger menu that has various options (regular burger, tuna burger, sliders). The beef is Niman ranch and the grill is wood-fired; I hope to get down there at some point soon. In the evenings, on most evenings, there's a small plates menu with most items between $5 and $10, and a few in the teens. The there's "THURSDAY NIGHTS @ THE KITCHEN COUNTER." Each Thursday, Waldy is going to offer a 12-course meal with complementary wines. You can book the whole table of six, or you can come in smaller groups and be paired up with other people if the numbers work out. It's a single sitting, and begins at 7pm with a cocktail (everything is included in the price) and the first course in the bar area. The cocktail was a "smoking Kir royale," basically a Kir royale with a small piece of dry ice in the bottom of the glass -- it creates a smoky effect that lasts for several minutes. With the cocktail, we were served lobster fritters with saffron and tarragon, with a Sherry vinegar dipping sauce. Were we not looking down the barrel of a 12-course meal I'd have eaten 40 of these. As it was I settled for my allotment of two and spent the rest of the evening thinking about them. Note the cool A-frame fork device. We were then led down into the pit and seated at the kitchen counter. Waiting for us were small platters at each setting, with two slices of watermelon radish on a pincushion-type plate. We were encouraged to snack on radishes (served with butter as in dive bars in France) while Waldy explained what was to come. He had a chopping block set up directly in front of the kitchen counter, showed us the whole watermelon radish and talked about the kitchen counter and the menu. To each platter was added a slice of Beacon's excellent mushroom pizza on a miniature wooden peel. Next, two of Beacon's signature wood-oven-roasted oysters with mignonette and herbs, served with Leffe blonde ale from Belgium (which had also been poured with the pizza). These warmups were all delicious, but from this point on the food got more interesting and diverged from what you'd typically get at Beacon. The next course was a single massive scallop, seared rare, with cabbage, apple and jalapeno. Our table had a dedicated waiter, but Waldy was also very involved in the service. For the courses plated in the kitchen, Waldy ran a couple of plates each time. Later there would also be some tableside service. The next course was a small, hot-smoked trout fillet with fennel and chervil, in a vinaigrette. This is probably the only course I'd excise from the menu. While good enough, it wasn't up to the level of the other dishes. I imagine this one won't make it out of previews, as a couple of people at the table only ate about half. This is Michael Smith, who is Waldy's chef de cuisine, preparing a course. This photo was taken while seated at the kitchen counter -- the distance is maybe ten feet to the pass. This was really good: a single kabocha (Japanese pumpkin/squash) raviolo with capers, butter and sage. The scallop, trout and ravioli were served with 2003 Arcadian chardonnay from California, which was a good match with the food if not a particularly interesting wine. At this point guests are invited to take an intermission, wander around, check out the ovens, use the restrooms, whatever. The next phase of the meal consisted of four meat courses. First, roasted squab with huckleberries, salsify and Brussels sprouts. This is the best squab dish I've had in several years, not only because the product itself and the pairing were excellent but also because the wood oven creates a beautifully crisp skin while leaving the interior moist and medium-rare. Second, a marrow bone with garlic, horseradish and toast. Waldy set the horseradish on the chopping block in front of the table, then shaved some onto each plate at the table. The first two meat courses were paired with a delightful 2004 pinot noir from Domaine Moillard. This was the best wine of the evening and after the meal we went back and polished off the second bottle. Third meat course: short rib with foie gras, served over grits and acorn squash. This dish was mostly assembled tableside on the chopping block. Fourth and final meat course: Kobe beef. This was real Kobe beef imported from Japan. We were each presented with a rectangular platter containing some chanterelles and a hot stone that had been in the wood oven for several hours. Waldy placed a piece of the gorgeously marbled Kobe beef on each stone and we were asked to let it cook only on one side, just until it was cooked rare. It was amazing. There was enough for each person to repeat the process several times -- the stone stays hot for about half an hour according to Waldy -- and our mushroom supply was topped off as well. Those last two meat courses were served with 2001 La Selvanella Chinati Classico, which was a tasty wine but not up to the standard of the pinot noir that preceded it. This is the point at which you're supposed to eat it, just as it becomes buttery but still maintains all its deep beefy, fatty flavor. That was it for meat. After that, the pre-dessert was excellent quince sorbet with roasted grapefruit: Finally, for the main dessert, a chocolate souffle with smoked vanilla ice cream. Smoked vanilla ice cream? According to Google, Waldy is not the first to do this, but it was totally new to me. He puts several vanilla beans in a skillet and sets it off to the side of the wood oven for a couple of hours. The beans get smoked and charred, and they're finished off at higher heat. They're then ground and added to the ice cream base. The flavor is like an old favorite that you've never tasted before: smoke and vanilla are natural complements and I'm surprised I've never seen anybody do this before. You're probably asking how much a meal like this will cost you: 12 courses plus wines and cocktails (not to mention beer), a lot of attention from the staff, a unique experience. Guess how much. Go ahead. $85 per person plus tax and tip. I kid you not. Move over Gray's Papaya, step aside lunch at Jean Georges. Thursday night at the kitchen counter at Beacon has got to be the greatest dining bargain in the city right now. I strongly suggest you book a spot before the price goes up, although Waldy says it's his intention to keep it at $85 for the foreseeable future because he's trying to make some new friends. There is one sitting, at 7pm, on Thursday nights only. There's a special number -- not the restaurant's main number -- for reservations: 212.332.0508.

You're wrong, but since I perceive my own time to be so much more valuable than yours I won't be offering you the courtesy of a reply. It might take me too much time to answer your follow-up arguments, which would also be wrong, but I can't possibly be bothered to dignify them with a response. I'm just too busy. So I'll just say you're wrong, and you'll just have to live with that. Sorry.

Kathi, there are a few websites that are notoriously exclusionary about the content they'll allow, however there are also print journals that don't even publish letters to the editor (most famously, the New Yorker was like that for most of its history). The reality is, however, that the blogs and discussion forums that would have limited a reply such as yours number approximately one. The other 20,000 or so food blogs and food sites out there would surely have allowed it as entirely routine and matter of course. Corrections policies are mostly a print media thing, because the format of a threaded discussion like this allows for corrections to be appended on topic. If you noticed something inaccurate on an eG Forums topic, you could have (and still can) just add a post clarifying. I'm not familiar with the specifics of the instance you're citing, but that's the easiest way to do it. I should add, I send corrections to the New York Times on occasion and they're usually ignored. The claim that print newspapers correct every error of fact is simply not right. Editors are pretty clever about explaining -- wrongly -- why a given error is not an error, and there's no appeals process (no, the public editor won't usually bother with such minutiae) so those decisions are final even when wrong. Finally, of all the rhetorical dirty tricks, I'm shocked, amazed and disappointed that you'd attempt to preempt meaningful argument by claiming: Nonsense.

Yes. There have been many defamation lawsuits against bloggers in the US (a USA Today article quotes one source as saying 50 of them in 2005-2006), as well as elsewhere, and last year for the first time a blogger actually lost one. I don't recall one involving a food blog, but I don't know the details of every action. Certainly, people threaten to sue us all the time, which is why we carry liability insurance.

Have you tried medium-high heat plus butter? Several chefs recommend that method, and achieve excellent results. From an article in Nation's Restaurant News last year, by Florence Fabricant: Also: It's very difficult to convince people online or just by citing references -- even though Alain Ducasse and Tom Colicchio are people worth listening to. But I've demonstrated this method several times for friends and they've always been amazed at how it shatters their preconceptions of steak cookery. We've been talking about this in eG Forums discussions since 2002, when Alain Ducasse and Florence Fabricant first published the method in the New York Times. Here's his original article and here's the first of many eG Forums topics where this has been discussed. Try it. Really.

That reminds me of an old New Yorker profile of Donald Lau of Wonton Food Inc., the most influential writer of fortunes for fortune cookies. In the 1980s, when Wonton Food Inc. bought the factory that is now the global epicenter of fortune cookie production, Lau -- the accounts payable manager -- was drafted to write the fortunes. He told the New Yorker magazine: “I was chosen because my English was the best of the group."

I think Chinese-American cuisine, like most cuisines, contains several elements. I'd point to three main ones, historically: first, traditional Chinese regional dishes prepared pretty much the same way as back home with perhaps very minor variations; second, dishes modeled after traditional Chinese regional dishes but adapted on account of ingredient availability and economic circumstances; and third, dishes adapted to Western palates. I think -- based on what I've read and on eating Chinese food in nine provinces of Canada -- that Chinese-American and Can/Chinese cuisines are nearly identical, with the variations being not sufficient to justify a distinction (no greater than the variations among US states). I do think there are commonalities among the hyphenated Chinese cuisines of all the English-speaking countries but I think there are enough differences to say that Chinese-American is not the same as Chinese-Australian. I haven't done historical menu comparisons on that point, however. Certainly, though, most of the other hyphenated Chinese cuisines -- like Cuban-Chinese or Bombay Chinese -- are distinct in significant part from Chinese-American cuisine. I also think a lot of this depends on when you date it. Chinese-American cuisine dates back to the 1840s. All three of the components I mentioned above would have seemed quite different -- perhaps unrecognizable -- back then. What arose much later, post-Immigration Act, is basically a different Chinese-American cuisine in every respect. Indeed, we speak of chop suey but today it's difficult to find it in a restaurant. Meanwhile, all this stuff like General Tso's chicken was popularized in the 1970s. Nor were the Chinese people who came in the 19th Century necessarily from the same parts of China as the ones who came in the 20th.

I think I covered both of those points: the number of visits per review and the overall number of restaurant visits per week. Most newspaper critics are dining out 1-2 times per week total for their jobs. Most newspapers budget for either 52 or 104 meals out per year for the restaurant critic. That's not a high bar for an amateur to clear. That's a misconception about New York. If we take the Zagat data as a rough guideline, New York is exactly average in terms of dining-out frequency of 3.3 times a week (that's also the US national average). Texas puts New York to shame: Houston is 4.2 times per week, and Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin/Hill Country are both 4.0 times per week. That's for people who participate in the Zagat survey, not the whole population, of course. I don't know the numbers for Montreal. New York has a very high degree of food-media saturation and a lot of the most widely read bloggers are professional-amateur hybrids. If you take someone like Andrea Strong, she's filing one full-length review every week, week-in-week-out, like a newspaper critic, and she's also visiting all the new places -- I imagine she's out most nights. She has also written for plenty of newspapers and magazines so she's not a pure amateur. Marc Shepherd, who posts here as oakapple, is a real amateur, and on his blog he posts with great frequency as can be seen from the dates on his entries. He dines out quite a lot, as do many eGullet Society members who don't even have blogs -- Nathan, for example. And to touch on an earlier point, these people most certainly are visiting the new and the old. This is not, however -- at least not to me -- an empirical examination of the quality of blogs (or the much more embarrassing question of the quality of professional restaurant reviews in most cities). The issue, for me, is whether a critic appointed by a newspaper is inherently more qualified than a self-appointed critic. I think the answer is simply no. The empirical data -- that there are bloggers out there who are more knowledgeable than many professional critics -- helps prove the point. But the point stands on its own, regardless.

That list of qualifications disqualifies most professional restaurant reviewers, and qualifies plenty of online discussion participants and bloggers. Indeed, any serious list of qualifications that doesn't rely on self-fulfilling notions of print-media imprimatur is likely to exclude most of the people who have the print-media imprimatur and include many people who don't. Still, it's a bit of a futile exercise to list qualifications when there simply are none. I'm not even sure most of the items on that list constitute qualifications. They're more like criteria. But to me, the only meaningful criterion for a restaurant reviewer is: does he or she write good reviews? I also think if we unpack some of the qualifications on that list we find some interesting details. For example, both Lesley and Daniel have said that frequency of dining out is important. I agree that dining out a lot gives perspective, however the overwhelming majority of newspaper critics base their reviews on either one or two restaurant visits. Only the New York Times and a minuscule, elite group of publications have the budget for three or more visits. And most reviewers write one review per week. They're freelancers or reporters who cover other beats. They're not like Frank Bruni, writing reviews based on five visits and keeping an online diner's journal about unreviewed restaurants. So in total they're dining out as little as once or twice a week for their jobs. I personally know several dozen amateurs who dine out between five and seven times a week, and a few who dine out closer to ten times a week. Not including breakfasts. The average Zagat survey participant reports dining out 3.3 times a week. On the whole, lawyers and investment bankers who are interested in food probably dine out a whole heck of a lot more than most newspapers' restaurant reviewers. They're also better-traveled, drink better wine, etc. Moreover, very few newspaper critics come to the table with vast dining-out experience. The the extent they ever acquire such experience, it's something they acquire on the job by doing the job. If you compare newspaper critics on the day they're hired to highly involved online discussion participants and bloggers, you'll surely find that the online amateurs are vastly more experienced. That's true even at the level of Frank Bruni and his predecessor William Grimes. Eventually, they acquired inimitable experience, but the public had to endure a year or two of on-the-job learning first. That's hardly a qualification. That's just seniority, which has little to do with merit.

I've been thinking about this issue of me handing out appointments, and I think there may be a more legitimate way of doing it than just having me bestow bogus credentials. Rather, I'm going to get with my colleagues here at the Society and we're going to publish a list of guidelines -- things like if you get a comped meal you have to disclose it in your writing (basically, the guidelines our volunteers are already required to adhere to) -- and if you sign off on those guidelines you'll be able to display a credential in your eG Forums posts as well as on your blogs and elsewhere. This will take a little while to engineer, but I'll note it here when we're ready to roll.

That's correct, UE. Bruni got the hierarchy right.

I don't really think they're comparable books. Dorie's book is a general text covering a broad spectrum of desserts. Claudia's book is very specific: it tells you how to make the desserts of Gramercy Tavern. I also wouldn't describe it as overhyped, given that there are so few copies in existence.

I think the Bar Room and Perry Street both have enough of the trappings of fine dining to cross that Bruni three-star threshold. Although they're casual, it's a studied sort of casualness in the style of DB Bistro Moderne and the like. Neither has the true casualness of Ssam Bar. In addition, the Bar Room in particular (though Perry Street has many of these features too and it's worth noting that Jean Georges was recently renovated and now happens to look a bit more like Perry Street) benefits from shared services with the Modern: an extensive Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence wine list, a space that should be the envy of most any other restaurant in the city, serviceware from elite Scandinavian designers, Union Square Hospitality Group oversight of service, very expensive Danish Modern furniture, a real pastry chef.

Texas, too. But I really wouldn't write off Northern New Jersey or present-day non-Chinatown New York City. The Baxter street places achieve a certain level of mediocrity, punctuated by occasional highlights, but they're not the whole New York Vietnamese scene. There are also at least three good places I've tried in Elmhurst, Flushing and someplace way out in Brooklyn, not that I can keep their names straight.

Michael Huynh of Bao and Mai House is Vietnamese. Simon and Michelle Nget, the owners of Saigon Grill, are refugees from Cambodia -- I believe they're ethnically Vietnamese but I'm not positive, though I'm certain they're not Chinese. The best Vietnamese food I've had in the metro area, however, has been in northern New Jersey. K.T. Tranh, the owner of Saigon R and Mo' Pho, is Vietnamese and her mother was some sort of chef to dimplomats over there.

The French Laundry is a registered service mark, on file with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. (French Laundry is also a trademark of Mervyn's, a Minnesota-based women's clothing company. And a dry cleaner, and a laundry detergent . . .). This is a fairly complex issue, and when disputes arise they're rarely decided in court -- usually, the party with the larger legal budget intimidates the other party into changing the name without a judge ever ruling on the matter.