Fat Guy

So I found the article: http://www.bergenrecord.com/page.php?qstr=...Xl5NzE3ODg0MQ== My reading of it is that Fairway NYC is older: and I do think the New Jersey Fairway has a strong argument, though. They're taking a reasonable position as to the geographic scope of their business area. It's not one of these cases where a store opens 100 miles away. This is 11 miles away, with the exact same name.

Is the Fort Lee Fairway really older than Fairway on Broadway and 74th? I think the Fairway on Broadway and 74th is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary.

In my lifetime, I've seen at least a hundred people pick up the bone at Peter Luger and gnaw on it, without incident.

It seems to me you've made the case for him being derelict. To widen the scope a bit, we've now seen the several precedents for quick re-reviews, covering just about every permutation (2 times in 9 months, 4 time in 5 years, 3 quick re-reviews under Bruni): Union Pacific Daniel Bar Room Craftsteak Masa Marika So, with the lack-of-precedent objection clearly overruled, what are we left with? The question becomes: was Ducasse more or less worthy of a re-review than the above examples? And it seems that Ducasse was more worthy of re-review than every restaurant on that list, and an order of magnitude more worthy of re-review than Marika, Craftsteak or the Bar Room. Ducasse was the only luxury restaurant in New York that could be seriously argued to be better than Per Se. It may have been the best restaurant in the history of New York. While the Michelin guide is a bit of a joke, a three-star rating is still significant. Even a critic who doesn't agree with all that should at least be able to comprehend the significance of the place. Ignoring it was the worst of several options.

If I wrote something about it, I don't remember it, and I also have found that much of the time the barbecue places make false claims about their methods. For example they say they use 100% wood, but then you go look at their smokers and they have gas lines running in. Which is fine: if you use gas for heat and wood for flavor you can make good barbecue. Just don't tell me you're doing something else. Julia Moskin in the New York Times wrote the following in 2003, which is not quite clear but here it is:

I don't know that it's a "why" question. It's simply the case that the best barbecue places in barbecue country serve the worst, school-cafeteria-level, squishy, preservative-filled white bread. It's as much of a part of the tradition as super-low-quality, ultra-sweet iced tea.

Also, if you have a great relationship with a restaurant, and you're looking to get a whole fish and a little time to plan ahead, you may be able to convince the chef to order one for you along with the restaurant's order. I wouldn't try to make a regular thing of it, but on occasion, sure, it's something some restaurants will quietly do for their best customers.

The retail fish situation in New York City, albeit better than in most cities, is pretty grim. For this reason, I do most of my fish eating in restaurants. It's very difficult to get fish retail that's as good at what you get at a good New York restaurant. The Greenmarket fish vendors offer excellent quality. That's one of the only situations where you as a consumer have access to pretty much the same fish that places like Gramercy Tavern are serving (no, there's no retail solution for getting fish as good as what Le Bernardin or Sushi Yasuda is serving -- forget about it). There are some caveats, though. For one thing, you have to get there at the crack of dawn to have access to the best specimens and selection. For another thing, the selection is going to be very limited -- you can't show up with an agenda; you have to go with what's available. And for still another thing, you're going to pay. By the way, for Greenmarket vendors, my recommendation is the brook trout from Max Creek Hatchery, which Mike Anthony at Gramercy Tavern turned me on to. Just superb. Anyplace else you go, you're going to be dealing with a lot of unpredictability. The Lobster Place and Wild Edibles do have some excellent fish (if you get lucky, you may get some fish that's the same as a restaurant's order for that day; then again you may be getting the B-level stuff a day or two after the restaurants skimmed off the A-level), as do the premium gourmet markets like Eli's, as does Citarella. But unless you're buying whole fish, and even then, there's no amount of cleverness that will guarantee you good fish. A lot of people think they can identify a good fish filet while staring at it, but that's nonsense. (Food-miles fanatics stop reading here.) Also, don't forget about mail order. Everything I've ever had from Browne Trading has been amazing -- fully on par with what good restaurants serve. There are several excellent online lobster vendors, though you can also get good lobsters in Manhattan -- that's one of the few products that tends to be pretty reliable at retail. Other things that tend to be okay at retail are clams, mussels and farmed fish (salmon, tilapia, etc.) or anything that has been frozen at sea. In Chinatown I've had too many disappointments, so at this point I stick to the occasional crab purchase at the times of year when the fish stores have barrels of live crabs out front. You can also get sushi-quality fish at some of the Japanese markets in the area, but you'll pay quite a lot per pound, so that's only worth doing if you're actually preparing sushi or sashimi in small quantities.

It's supposed to be!

Not quite within a year, but Daniel was reviewed on 30 July 1993 and 11 November 1994. Masa was reviewed on 2 June 2004 and 29 December 2004, in a year when there were probably more noteworthy high-end openings than in the year Ducasse closed. In both of those cases, the reviews were from different critics (Burros/Reichl, Hesser/Bruni), however at the same time there had not been a major change in the kitchen at either place. I can understand not wanting to re-review a restaurant just because of a chef-de-cuisine change -- you can't just allow all restaurants to demand re-reviews simply by firing their chefs -- but here there was a major shift in the cuisine as well and we're talking about arguably the best restaurant in Bruni's territory. It doesn't matter who complains, or who experiences it as unfair -- as a critic you have to keep up with what the leading examples of the state of the art are doing. And if Bruni never even ate there -- that's unconfirmed -- then that's outright negligent.

Two beliefs I try to bear in mind when thinking about these sorts of decisions: 1. Kids are highly susceptible to the forbidden fruit phenomenon. I have seen, time and again, enforced health-food regimes backfiring against parents. So one thing I promised myself was that, as a parent, I'd never allow any edible food to acquire forbidden fruit status. 2. Most "unhealthy" foods are harmless in moderation. Eating McDonald's every day: probably not a great idea from a nutrition standpoint. Eating McDonald's once a month: who cares? As part of an overall healthful diet, there's plenty of room for occasional junk.

Union Pacific was reviewed on 26 November 1997 and 5 August 1998 -- the second review was titled "A Short Trip From Promising to Polished."

The most noteworthy oversight was Ducasse. Here you have a place that got three Michelin stars under Tony Esnault and had very strong positive buzz from people who knew what they were talking about, yet Bruni never reviewed it -- did he even visit at any time when Tony Esnault was chef? I think it deserved four before Esnault, but I guess I could see somebody disagreeing based on consistency, maybe. But under Esnault, Ducasse was the very definition of a four-star restaurant. Me, were I in Bruni's position, I'd also have the Modern on the four-star roster. I think it's one of the very best restaurants in the country, and has all the elements in place -- it's just waiting for a serious critic to champion its way of doing things. I might have four-starred Alto too.

For me, Blue Smoke, Daisy May's and Dinosaur are the principal repeaters, which is not to say they're flawless. I haven't been to all the new places yet, though.

The Southern Hospitality menu claims they have a "Smoke Shack" and that the pulled pork is "Smoked Slow for at least 12 hours." What that means exactly is beyond the realm of my knowledge. http://www.southernhospitalitybbq.com/ In terms of defining a barbecue restaurant, I think there are 1- the bullseye places -- in other words the places that serve mostly barbecue and sides and do their smoking in the same kind of commercial pits that a lot of barbecue places in the barbecue belt use (needless to say nobody in New York is doing true open pit barbecue, nor are most places in barbecue country -- though some are), 2- the places that have intersection with the bullseye -- such as a place that has a smoker but only serves three barbecue items on a menu of all sorts of other stuff, and 3- the fake barbecue places where they use no smoke or they use a mild wood-chip-driven process that doesn't do a whole heck of a lot. I guess there's also 4- ethnic places that do smoking of one kind or another that you wouldn't necessarily call barbecue but that could arguably qualify under traditional definitions (pastrami, tea-smoked duck, whatever), and also 5- misnomer barbecue places that serve things like "Korean barbecue" and other grilled, griddled, rotisseried, etc., meats.

At the recent Heartland gathering in Cleveland we used my large Gray Kunz sauce spoon to sauce a couple of dozen plates of braised goat. (photo copied from the Heartland gathering report topic)

There's a Bloomberg review (linked to from Grub Street) today of two new restaurants that serve barbecue: Johnny Utah's and Southern Hospitality. Not sure how legit they are in terms of smoker technology and such. Anybody know more?

It is, however, true.

P.S. There's no content yet, but the website is http://focolarenyc.com/

No taste of alcohol.

I'm pretty sure -- a least this was the deal as of a million years ago, when I last ate at Hearth -- that there are only three seats at the pass.

If your preferences are calibrated towards heavily charred steaks, Craftsteak (and Craft) is always going to seem off. That's because Tom Colicchio's opinion of what makes a good steak is not char-oriented. He uses the French method of cooking steaks, which is a light sear and a slow roast. Even with the "new and improved" ovens at Craftsteak, you're not going to get a really charred steak. The point of Craftsteak is the quality and diversity of the meat: you can get meat and permutations of meat there that other steakhouses simply aren't offering. I would never recommend Craftsteak to people looking for the stereotypical steakhouse experience; I would recommend it to exactly the opposite group.

The vegetable sides at Peter Luger are French fries, German fried potatoes, baked potato, creamed spinach, and broccoli. Peter Luger has a very limited menu. You go for the steak, because it's the best, most consistent steak I know of anywhere. You don't really go for any other reason, though there are a few other nice elements like the bacon and the lunch menu. Yes, you can ask them not to slice your steak, however if you do that you won't be getting it the way the restaurant typically serves it. If you're going to buy in to the Peter Luger experience, it's not necessarily the best idea to start your first visit with special orders. There's a ritual to it: the steaks are broiled and buttered a certain way, the slicing causes some of the meat juices to mix with the butter and generate a sauce on the platter, the platter is propped up on one end so the sauce accumulates at the other end. That's the way a Peter Luger steak is meant to be cooked, sliced and served.

There is no actual focolare cooking (hearth/fireside cooking) going on at the place. It's just the name they chose.

It's also a fallacy to point to someone's blog entries as evidence of amateurish writing. That would be similar to pointing to someone's message-board posts as evidence of the same. If you're going to evaluate someone's carefully outlined, crafted and edited writing, you have to find an example of it before you can evaluate it -- and you may not find that on a blog, which is typically a first-and-only-draft, off-the-cuff medium.