Fat Guy

Catty-corner means at opposite corners, though, not on adjacent sides. Since people don't sit at the corners of tables, that could be confusing. I'd be able to figure out what it meant, but I'm not sure everybody would. 12 and 3 might work if the restaurant uses that lingo, however at most restaurants where I've seen the inner workings they use positions 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., clockwise starting from whichever seat is closest to the kitchen, entrance, back wall or whatever that particular restaurant designates as the benchmark. Depending on the way the table is shaped, positions 1 and 2 might be on adjacent sides with the chairs perpendicular to one another, but they could also be on the same side of the table or across from one another.

Would love to get this list updated. What are we missing? Has anything closed? Anything coming down the pike?

In 2005 I tried to assemble a list of all the places in New York City that are relatively serious about barbecue. Not 100% of them use wood smokers. I'm not sure even in a place like Memphis that you'd be able to get agreement on exclusively-wood-smoke as a definition. Most places even in barbecue country are using a combination of gas and wood. When you add the places that have opened in the past couple of years to this list -- Rack & Soul, Fette Sau, Hill Country, Smoke Joint, etc. -- I think you might break 25. But I also think we're talking about a trend -- you can see from the way the list below is sorted that we're talking about a rising curve. My guess is that we'll see new openings for at least a few more years. Then again it's hard to know for sure.

Kampuchea (discussion here) has not yet reached a critical mass of popularity, and especially if you go early it's not likely to be all that crowded.

We'd have to pick apart that 5,000 number a bit in order to understand if it means very much. (I'd like to see the original, the methodology, the definitions.) For example, if you use an inclusive definition, there are surely still several thousand delis in New York. There are three within a block of my house. They're just not Jewish delis along the lines of Katz's -- all three near me are Korean-owned. But then, how many of those 5,000 delis of old were comparable to Katz's or even Jewish (did the WPA count German, Swiss, Italian)? How many made their own pastrami? How many had serious merit? In terms of barbecue places, when we talk about the major openings of interest to foodie types we're only talking about the apex of the pyramid. I can't imagine denying that there has been a boom in this regard -- a number of major openings a year, year after year, for the past five years, says something to me. There are also hundreds of places that serve something they call barbecue, not to mention hundreds more that have barbecue items on their menus. Today's restaurant economy is such that specialization isn't the right way to measure something. You can go to some small cities and they'll have three sushi places, but then you look at the Chinese restaurants, Southeast Asian restaurants and the supermarkets and all of a sudden you find ten times that many places where you can get sushi in that city. So you have to judge both barbecue and deli by how they're penetrating the non-specialty menus. And, I think if you count places like Zabar's and Fairway as appetizing shops there are still a whole mess of appetizing shops in NYC.

Because it's European.

Anna, in my experience the standard recommendation -- and I've heard this from many, many medical professionals -- is three hours. Here's a reference from AstraZeneca's Nexium website: I don't know about everybody else, but there are some other things we occasionally like to do before bedtime that can sometimes involve lying down. So when you add up all that time, and you want to get to bed by 11-12, and you want to have a leisurely meal, a relatively early dinner makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of physical comfort. We had a topic awhile back on the advantages of dining early in restaurants. It's easier to get reservations, you have your pick of tables, they're never out of anything, the restaurant is quiet, you have more of the waitstaff's attention, etc. Growing up, we always had dinner at 6:15pm, at least until I was about 12 and started procuring a lot of my own meals. As a teen and twenty-something, I ate according to a lot of different patterns. For example, in freshman year of college, where you're at the mercy of dining-hall hours, and you go to college in Vermont, you eat pretty early whether you like it or not. When you're an associate at a big New York law firm, you eat late -- very late -- most nights, and then you go back to work. I've always had a natural preference for early dinners, and since having a baby a couple of years ago we've pretty much gone back to 6:15 as the set mealtime at home. That allows enough time to have as leisurely a meal as our son will tolerate at age two, then do bath and stories and deal with various delay tactics before 8pm bedtime. I cook dinner most of the time if we're having dinner at home. For the most part, on a normal evening, I allow 45 minutes: I start preparing dinner at 5:30pm and have it on the table at 6:15pm. My wife and son usually go out to the playground or wherever for an hour or so right before dinner, and I have dinner waiting for them when they get home. If necessary, though, I can make a good-quality dinner in 15 minutes. We always have things like soup, chili, meatballs, ragu and stew in the freezer, so I just put something like that on to reheat, make a salad, toast some bread and we're all set. If I know in the morning that I'll need to make dinner in a compressed time-frame, I can take stuff out to defrost and also make rice ahead of time in the rice cooker. Of course we dine out a lot and also order takeout a lot. Sometimes we have a late dinner (just the other day I went out with a friend for a 10:30pm reservation), it's no big deal, but I prefer early. We're also lucky in that we both work at home (and all four of our parents were teachers) so early dinner has always been do-able in our families. If I wanted to spend three hours cooking dinner every night, I could, and on occasion I do (especially when entertaining) but I prefer to do a full day of cooking once in awhile, stock the freezer, and not spend a ton of time cooking for everyday meals.

My mother-in-law makes an excellent cucumber salad. First she makes tzatziki. Then she slices cucumbers into a bowl and dresses the sliced cucumbers with the tzatziki. It's great.

I can't imagine it would ever be a blunder to say a few polite Japanese words and phrases to a Japanese-restaurant employee, even if that employee is a 7' tall and black. Seems to me it's always polite, always a sign of respect, always appropriate. But if you're afraid you might insult a Japanese-restaurant employee by saying "domo arigato," you can always just ask, "So, where are you from?"

Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld, writing in New York Magazine recently made the following, I think astute, observation: I read that piece just when I had been thinking about a similar evolution on the Asian cuisine front. It seems to me (maybe someone else figured this out already, but to me it was an original observation) that these mega-Asian places like Spice Market, Buddakan and Tao are the modern-day incarnations of the Polynesian-themed restaurants of old like Trader Vic's and Hawaii Kai. A place like Buddakan is not, of course, anywhere near as kitschy as the Polynesian places were. Then again, in their heyday, I'm not sure the Polynesian places were considered kitschy by their contemporaries. It may very well be that their decor was the equivalent, of that day, of the giant Buddha statue at Buddakan. In any event, it seems to me that these latter-day restaurants, albeit different in many ways from their Polynesian predecessors, play much the same role in the city's restaurant scene. They're part restaurant, part nightclub, see-and-be-seen, high-energy, sprawling, high-concept, heavily produced, unabashedly fun places. Specific cuisines go in and out of style, but perhaps there are archetypes that will always endure. For example, you don't see a lot of German restaurants in New York anymore. I wonder what has replaced them.

Skewers should work just as well as string, so long as they have rough surfaces and are seeded with sugar crystals in the first place. There are plenty of rock-candy skewers on the market -- I've seen them as a fancy coffee garnish in restaurants -- so it's certainly possible and, in many cases I'd think, more desirable than string. I agree with Kayakado that you can just re-seed the skewers you already have and place it in a new solution, and a lot more crystals should form. And yes, an uncovered jar is helpful, because as some water molecules evaporate it should force some sugar molecules out of the solution. It's certainly possible to make rock candy in a closed vessel (crystal formation is not dependent of evaporation, as far as I know), however I think it works better uncovered. Also, you mentioned that you used five skewers in each vessel. Depending on the size of the vessel, that may have been too much. I think it's at least possible that you burned up all the fuel. I wonder how rock candy is made commercially. There must be a way to accelerate this process.

Is "perpendicular" an insufficient explanation? (I prefer to sit this way with my wife -- less head-craning than side-by-side, more intimate than across a table.)

That restaurant owner is really conscientious. He calls customers to make sure they pay the delivery men so he doesn't have to. There's a text box in the manuscript that discusses the Saigon Grill delivery strike and other issues related to the working conditions of delivery men. But you're right, I should talk more about tipping, both at buffets and for delivery. Thanks for the suggestion. If anybody is curious about my practices: at the bottom of the range, for delivery I tip a minimum of $2 no matter how small the order, whether it's $5.95 or $10. After that I go to a fairly straightforward formula: $3 for a $20 order, $4 for a $25 order, $5 for a $30 order, etc. I also do a round-up for the pennies. I think it pretty much always works out to more than 15% and can sometimes be closer to 18%. I make some judgment calls here too: for example if the place is really far away (say 20 blocks, or across town), I'll up the minimum to $5 and the tip to closer to 20%. For buffets, $2 per person minimum for buffets up to about $12. Above that, $3 per person. I'm not sure I've been to a buffet lately that costs above $20 per person, but I'd probably go to $4 per person at some point in the low $20s. It's all absurd, though. The whole notion of "free" delivery is a joke, since you have to pay the delivery man or deal with various forms of retaliation. Just charge me a delivery fee. I'll be happy to pay it, and it will take the guesswork and stress out of the whole process. I don't care if its a percentage or a flat rate or a distance-related calculation. Just figure it out and tell me how much it costs. At buffets, just put a service charge on the bill so I don't have to worry about it. I don't feel like subsidizing all the cheap bastards who tip a dollar for a whole table. It's very difficult to get reliable information on what delivery men make, because both the restaurant and the delivery men have an interest in keeping it secret. The delivery men are always like "We make a dollar an hour," but of course that can't be true -- we know they make several deliveries per hour and are getting tipped in cash time and again. One thing I've learned to do is always have a lot of small bills around the house. Another is always to ask the total from the restaurant while you're on the phone, before the delivery guy is standing at your door. That way when I pay for delivery I can give the exact amount I want to give. There's no opportunity for confusion, misstatement, or a claim that there's no change available.

So this $24 meal, it's not available at dinnertime? What does the meal consist of? How much does the same meal cost at dinnertime? [Edited to add, in light of your edit:] So this is a $24.07 Restaurant Week offering that has been continued through the year? The last couple of times I've been for lunch I've ordered one of the sushi combinations. These run from around $20 to $34. But I'm not sure they're lunch-only. They may just be on the menu all the time. Not sure. Menupix has a Yasuda menu reproduced but I'm not sure if it's a lunch-only menu, dinner-only menu or both. http://www.menupix.com/nyc/restaurants.php...ighborhood=%25#

I haven't seen a Yasuda dinner menu in so long, I don't know how it differs from the lunch menu. How does it differ? Are the individual sushi pieces more expensive? Are there combination platters available at lunchtime that aren't available at dinnertime?

Yes, the real standouts not only in price but in quality and diversity of offerings. For example, at Jean Georges -- one of the very best restaurants in the country -- it's 71.429% cheaper to go for lunch than dinner, and you're able to choose from the entire menu (minus a couple of dishes with supplements). I doubt there's any restaurant that can beat that offer when you factor in quality, diversity and savings, but I'm looking for the ones that get close. I haven't been in awhile, but when I was more active in that neighborhood the best thing going was Dimple's $7.99 Indian, vegetarian, kosher buffet. Not sure it works for this list, though, because Dimple is so cheap anyway it's not like you save a ton of money.

I haven't been to Winnipeg in about five years but I ate very well there: Terrific pirogies and sausages at a Ukrainian restaurant called Alycia's. First-rate dim sum at Kum Koon Garden. Indian at East India Company, both the buffet and the menu, were strong. Edohei's sushi far exceeded expectations. De Luca's Italian Grocery has a lot of good prepared foods. La Vieille Gare was a wonderful old-school French place, and cheap. Also had an impressive meal at Scot McTaggart's Fusion Grill. (All on the same day, by the way . . .)

I wish they did it at 5:30. In any event, they kind of have to accommodate people who are coming after work at Midtown offices. So the 6:30-7:30 hors d'oeuvres hour works well with that schedule. You don't really start eating dinner until almost 8pm, and it goes until about 10:30pm. Two other great little extras I forgot to mention: the spiced coleslaw and the cheddar-cheese biscuits.

Simon, the strategy you've outlined would be dishonest. It would be a willful misrepresentation of your intent. Perhaps paying the penalty would compensate the restaurant financially for the no-show, however it wouldn't allow the person who could have occupied that intentionally-left-empty seat to dine at Per Se.

I've initiated some correspondence with the company and will let you all know where it leads.

That experience is entirely consistent with the Batali-Bastianich way of doing things. Every place they've opened has had excellent food and hit-or-miss service. Hit-or-miss as in, it can be excellent (right up there with the best service in town), or it can be just awful (condescending, self-important and incompetent), and they really don't seem to think it's a priority to address that inconsistency. It will probably take some sort of economic contraction to get them to wake up and say, hmm, we better focus on the service end of the business. Then again, their places may be recession-proof, because they tend to be priced so reasonably.

This was definitely the best Chowder I've been to. All the food was spot on -- it can't be easy to do 270 lobsters without overcooking them -- and the formula has been refined each time I've been such that it's now just right. One thing I particularly love about the Chowder is that you always get more than has been promised in the pre-event literature. Tonight some of the unadvertised extras were wonderful little fried-clam sandwiches served as hors d'oeuvres (I ate so many of them that I could have left before the meal and still been feeling stuffed now at 1:30am), a stellar warm fingerling potato salad with a variety of different types (including purple), the fruit platter of tree-ripened locally picked stone fruits (especially these great little yellow plums), and the new Chowder dress code for the hostesses (bikini tops and red skirts -- the hostesses at Beacon are all great beauties, and one of them is actually the current Miss New York). We were in the press group, but I think at the market rate the Chowder is an excellent value. It seems to me that there are subsidies in place from some of the restaurant's suppliers, who are thanked on the menu. It's hard for me to imagine getting a meal like this, with all that food at that quality level and with unlimited beer and spiked lemonade, for that price without some externalities lowering the tariff. [edited to add some details]

Excellent. Thanks again, Hiroyuki, for making me look like I know what I'm talking about.

Hmm. Okay, we should try to get to the bottom of that. I thought grana just meant any hard cheese suitable for grating. That's why I keep using specific vocabulary -- "Parmigiano-style" -- rather than just saying "grana." I could save some keystrokes otherwise. I got an email just now from someone who attended the American Cheese Society annual meeting this past weekend, and said there was a Parmigiano-style being tasted that won first place at the US Championship Cheese Contest. Not sure about the absolute level of quality of this product, of course (I've tasted a lot of crap in several cheese categories that has won gold medals in North America), but I guess someone is at least trying to do something in this style. It's called Sartori Reserve SarVecchio Parmesan. I'll try to learn more.

(Maybe we need a new topic on Chinese-American noodle nomenclature)