Fat Guy

The best meal I've had in North Carolina was at Enoteca Vin in Raleigh. It's just a terrific restaurant. One thing I'd add there is that, if you're interested in getting a taste of current national urban upscale restaurant trends (which you seem to be), you should check out the restaurants from the Harper's Restaurant Group, such as Arpa and Upstream. The Harper's group is very much in touch with what's going on in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. The Harper's restaurants don't have the local character of the places Purvis has mentioned, but Harper's brings a lot to Charlotte's table.

I think I'd have rather had just strawberries and cream. That to me would have been appropriate minimalism in keeping with the Momofuku aesthetic: always have some amazing fruit on the menu with minimal garnish to act as a sweet ending for those who want it. But once they add cake, my comparative faculties kick in -- and in my opinion that cake doesn't stack up favorably against what serious pastry chefs are doing today.

I'm going to tell you about the world’s best restaurant. But first a few ground rules: I can't tell you the name or location of the world’s best restaurant. Regarding the name, I've been sworn to secrecy. Regarding the location, I don't even know it. Only the chef, the maitre d’, a few staff members and the restaurant’s driver and helicopter pilot know the precise coordinates. Customers are met on a street corner or at the airport, blindfolded and driven or flown to the restaurant. I also can't tell you the name of the chef, who goes only by the designation, "B". Suffice it to say that he's the one of the world's greatest chefs and that he gave up his position at the best restaurant in the history of New York City in order to devote his full attention to running the world’s best restaurant. Finally, I can't tell you the name of the maitre d’, who goes only by the designation, "M". Suffice it to say that he is the world’s greatest maitre d’ and that he engineered a phony scandal to get himself out of his contract with the second-best restaurant in the history of New York City. When his former customers inquire as to his whereabouts, they are told only that he is now working at a private club. What I can tell you is that the world’s best restaurant is not in Europe. It is, rather, in America. Many customers (myself included) have speculated that it is somewhere in the borough of Staten Island. If you're wondering why you've never heard of this restaurant before, it is because I'm the only culinary journalist ever to visit. This is because I came by my preferred customer status before I started writing about food. Now, every time I show up, "B" reminds me, "No reviews, okay?" It was only after a particularly hedonistic evening and too many glasses of wine that "B" agreed to let me reveal even this much. The world’s best restaurant is an invitation-only operation. Only close personal friends of the chef, the maitre d’ or the other customers are allowed to visit--and even then only after submitting to an extensive background check. I don't want you to get the idea, though, that the world’s best restaurant is aristocratic. To the contrary, you're just as likely to see plumbers and electricians as you are to see the King of Spain (one of the restaurant’s best customers prior to an unfortunate incident after which he was banned from the premises) or Sting (who often provides musical entertainment after dinner). The only requirement is love of food--nobody is kept out for lack of funds. The world’s best restaurant is surprisingly modest and informal. It's in a building that could easily pass for a two-family home in Queens. There's only one table at the world’s best restaurant--a banquet table with 12 seats. Everybody sits together and, especially if you are alone, the maitre d’ tries to place you next to compatible guests. On my last visit, while my wife was out of town, I sat with Nicole Kidman, whose husband was indisposed. She was absolutely charming, highly intelligent and, incidentally, looks even better in person. Dinner is prix fixe, 35 courses (15 of which are desserts). There is one seating, at 3:00 p.m., and meals usually last until around 4:00 a.m. The restaurant is open only on Mondays in order to insure a steady supply of the world’s best waiters (who tend to have Mondays off from their primary jobs). You probably think I'm going to say that there are no menus at the world’s best restaurant. To the contrary, the menu is 300 pages long. You must place your order approximately two months in advance in order for the chef to purchase the right ingredients and contract with the right assistants. For example, if a few people order a sushi course then "N" will usually show up to prepare it (after which, if he is in the mood, he performs an astonishing tap-dancing routine). The restaurant is strictly BYOB, although the sommelier is available to advise on wine and food pairings (he and I exchanged 14 lengthy faxes prior to my last meal). His name is "L" and he claims to be a tenth generation Latour whose ancestors were denied their rightful share of the Domaine by evil cousin Louis. He requests that you send the wines ahead a couple of weeks in advance (you used to leave them in a locker at the Port Authority and place the key in a specific trash can, but post 9/11 they use Manhattan Mini Storage) so that they can be placed upright, allowing the sediment to settle. What really makes the world’s best restaurant the best restaurant in the world, though, is the quality of the raw ingredients. Ingredients are obtained through a secret global supply and distribution network that, in scope, rivals that of OPEC. If you're lucky enough to arrive early for dinner (and if "B" or "M" is in the mood to give you a tour), you'll see all manner of exotic fish, meat, game and vegetables being delivered through the restaurant’s underground tunnel system. Go to any of the world’s top markets (Rungis in Paris, Tsukiji in Tokyo, Hunts Point in New York) and you will see certain items (a particularly nice bluefin tuna, a carton of perfectly ripe raspberries) marked with a small gold circle with three lines through it. This ancient Runic emblem indicates that an item has been set aside for "B"--yet "B" selects only one in a hundred of these samples. The rest are shipped off to second-tier chefs like Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon. I once asked "B" why he doesn't emphasize local ingredients, and his response was, simply, "Fuck that shit." The fanaticism of "B" and "M" for ingredients has led them to produce several items on the premises. "M" was long dissatisfied with the available supply of dairy products so the restaurant acquired three cows a few years back. The restaurant now serves only its own cheese, butter and milk. At one time, two of the cows grew ill and didn't produce milk for three months. Bread was served without butter and there was no milk available for the coffee (the one remaining cow, a red wagyu, provided just enough milk to ensure a steady cheese supply). I won't go into all the details, but it was during this time that the King of Spain committed the faux pas that got him ejected from the restaurant. When you first enter the world’s best restaurant, "M" rushes over, shakes your hand, kisses you on both cheeks and offers you a glass of Champagne (the "Special Cuvee B" from Krug) and says "I am so happy to see you!" (and means it). The guests are permitted to mingle, during which time "M" circulates with his latest cheese creation. People smell and touch the cheese, after which everybody is called to the table. There is one waiter for each guest. He stands behind your chair (at a respectful, unobtrusive distance) and ministers to your every need. Most customers, however, insist on bussing some of their own plates in order to visit with "B" and stretch their legs between courses. There's a lot of tableside presentation at the world’s best restaurant. On my last visit, for example, Nicole and I shared a whole baby lamb. First, "M" walked the live lamb over to our seats for inspection. Nicole and I petted and played with him for a while, named him "Buster" and grew quite attached to the little fellow. We pleaded with "M" not to slaughter the poor thing but "M" was non-negotiable. "It is God’s will," he said reverently, "and now I must prepare him for the journey." We said goodbye to Buster and "M" took him out back. We heard a few cries, a dull thud and then nothing. Nicole, in particular, was visibly shaken. A while later, we were presented with a beautiful rack of lamb, carved tableside. Our next 11 courses consisted of all imaginable parts of the lamb, each prepared in an entirely different way. By lamb course number four, we no longer missed Buster at all. Nicole was kind enough to share her magnum of 1982 Petrus with me (I had brought a Ridge Zinfandel for the lamb courses, but we tasted the two wines side-by-side and agreed that the Petrus was much better). When it came time for dessert, we were particularly lucky in that "B" had just received a shipment of Japanese mountain pears (the best specimens are only available fresh for a couple of days a year). Served four different ways, they were sublime. I will not bore you with the details of the other 20 courses, but they were all equally outstanding. At the end of the meal, no bill is presented, all accounts having been settled in advance of the evening. I do have a couple of complaints about the world’s best restaurant. First, the meals feel rushed. To serve 35 courses (plus the amuse bouche, petits fours, mignardises and coffee) in 13 hours requires the restaurant to bring out approximately one course every 20 minutes. I have spoken to several of the other customers about this, and they agree that the pacing is too fast. Try as I may to convince him, however, "B" refuses to scale back the number of courses or start the meal earlier ("Americans are always looking for the easy solution," he argues). Second, there's tremendous pressure to eat every bite of food you are served. If plates are returned to the kitchen with substantial leftovers then "B" is likely to come out and confront the customers. This is as true for course number 33 as it is for course number 17. Granted, portions are small, but I think the chef needs to realize that some people like to pace themselves. As it stands, customers often resort to bizarre schemes (zipper bags, secret briefcase compartments -- those with prosthetic limbs have a great advantage) to hide the leftovers. Finally, I think the metal folding chairs get a bit uncomfortable after six or seven hours. I'd like to see some new chairs--or at least some seat cushions.

ADF, I went from making a lot of money to making very little -- started out as an attorney and went to being a writer and running a nonprofit organization. I've experienced the condescension, the judgment, the cracks about being unemployed (I make them myself too). I think there are a couple of things going on there: the first is that people who love you are genuinely concerned about your well being, the second is that a lot of people resent you for living your dream. Society wants you to conform. If you come from a middle class background, your peers and family want you to be a professional at a desk, in a courtroom, in a hospital, to live a certain way. That's how your subculture judges success, and only a small percentage of people have the independence to step out of it. As for how to respond, I think it helps to have a plan and to be explicit about it. Where do you want to be in five years? Do you want to have your own restaurant? Let's just assume that's true, that you plan to work at three more top restaurants for a year or two each, and then you plan to go out on your own. If so, make a presentation to your family, just as you would at a business meeting. Say, okay, this is what I've done, this is where I want to be in five years, these are the things I'm doing to get there. Maybe you're planning to take some business classes, or learn basic accounting, whatever (because you haven't likely gone to college, you should explain how you're going to do self-directed education to make up for your lack of a business degree). Explain how you're going to get investors by doing private cooking gigs on the side and by networking with customers and former employers. Explain how the restaurant business is a major growth area -- present statistics from the National Restaurant Association -- that this is what you love, that you're serious about it, that you've thought it through. Prepare your answers to the most common questions ("Don't most restaurants fail?"). And end the presentation with, "And I'm asking for your support." Make clear that you're not asking for investments (at least not yet) but, rather for love and emotional support in your pursuit of your dream. That's the point at which your family has to decide whether or not to get behind your dream. They may, or they may not. All you can do is try.

Why do so many people use spread to mean dip, and dip to mean spread? It seems to me that it should be self-evident -- tautological, even -- that a spread is something you spread on something else, and a dip is something you dip something else in to. So why do I so often see the term dip used to describe a spread like hummus, etc.?

I think my soliloquy, and the underlying half-thoughts, was triggered by a conversation a couple of days ago on a related subject. I was talking to a friend and he was recounting some Asian restaurant discovery or another, and he said, "I knew it would be good because it was full of Asians!" Well, I'm sorry, but that's just a total myth. Some of the worst Asian restaurants I've ever been to have been full of Asians too. Asians are like any other people in the world: a minority are educated foodies, and the rest couldn't care less about the quality of what they eat. There are plenty of restaurants in Asian neighborhoods that cater to almost exclusively Asian customers that nonetheless serve terrible food. One of the greatest ironies is that if you go to a place like East Buffet, where 95% of the food is Chinese and 5% is Americanized Italian-ish stuff like eggplant parmigiana, the only people eating the eggplant parmigiana are the Asians. Likewise, a full parking lot or a line out the door doesn't mean a damn thing. Drive through any suburban strip and you'll see where the full parking lots and long waits are: Olive Garden and Applebee's. It's the same with Asian restaurants: plenty of people, including Asian people, go to what's cheap and convenient, not what's actually good.

I was thinking this morning about the aesthetics of restaurant exteriors. When the Time Warner center -- a gigantic upscale vertical shopping center occupying the first several stories of an office building complex -- opened in Columbus Circle in Manhattan, it met with a lot of resistance from died-in-the-wool New Yorkers. Not only do New Yorkers consider themselves anti-mall, but also there was the double insult that this particular mall would be home to some of the most ambitious restaurants in the history of the city, most notably Masa and Per Se. "Nobody will want to eat in a mall," was the standard refrain. A few years later, these restaurants have prospered beyond anybody's expectations, and the refrain has evolved to, "I hate eating in that mall." This mentality is a close cousin, I think, of the general Western preference for restaurants that look pretty on the outside. Especially when it comes to nice restaurants, there's an expectation that the exterior will represent the interior and the meal to come. Contrast that with Asian restaurant culture, which seems to have no such hangups. For example, the office tower at 211 East 43rd Street is one of New York City's most nondescript, a relic of the functionalist period when great efforts were made to design buildings just ugly enough to be ignored without being remembered. But the basement of 211 East 43rd Street, where most buildings stockpile their trash and tend to the boilers, lies a Japanese restaurant so full of character that it stands as one of the great proofs of the "Don't judge a book by its cover" maxim. I learned about Saka Gura awhile back, when Tom Colicchio, then the chef of Gramercy Tavern (and a man of few words), whispered in my ear that "Saka Gura is where I eat Japanese," I cleared my calendar, ditched my deadlines and hailed a cab. After walking up and down 43rd Street, from Second Avenue to Third -- three times -- I finally asked the security guard at number 211 if he knew where Saka Gura was. "Basement," he said, bored. I followed a trio of mini-skirted Japanese twenty-somethings down the fire stairs and through a humble wooden door, and there it was: Saka Gura -- A thoroughly Japanese subterranean expat hangout, faithful in every detail right down to the American jazz music and the awful paper lanterns. The bar offers more than 200 varieties of sake, the Japanese brewed rice "wine." Saka Gura is well documented in the Japanese-language guidebooks and Web sites, but only gets token American press attention -- usually whenever sake is the hot topic of the moment, for a moment. In Asia, moreover, it seems that nobody gives a second thought to restaurants in vertical malls in mega office complexes. Where else are they going to put restaurants in cities like Tokyo and Singapore, where the population density makes Chicago look rural by comparison. In Asia, it seems the attitude is that the restaurant experience begins only once you enter the restaurant. This aesthetic has carried over to the New World. Traveling around North America, time and again I've encountered wonderful Asian restaurants in the most unappealing locations, like Sun Luck Garden in a Cleveland strip mall ("turn left at the KFC"), or China 46 in a former Greek diner in a Day's Inn motel parking lot on Route 46 in Ridgefield, New Jersey, or Sripraphai in Woodside, Queens, New York, where from the outside it's hard to tell if the restaurant is even open. Conversely, I've had some memorably awful meals at places where all the money must have gone into the exterior design, rather than into ingredients or trained kitchen staff.

I've noticed a wide range of approaches here. At one extreme, you have people like my wife, who will scale a twelve-foot-high produce display with an ice-axe and crampons in order to get to a nectarine at the back that looks promising. At the other extreme, you have people like my mother, who takes the six nearest nectarines and moves on. And you? Related thought: I've noticed that at a lot of markets in Europe they don't let you pick your own produce. The person selling it picks for you. That seems like an awful lot of trust to place in the seller. Then again, companies like FreshDirect and other online grocery services by definition need to use the European model, and a lot of people seem willing to support it.

The dish that comes to mind here, for me, is fugu. I mean, the whole traditional fugu experience depends on the knowledge that it kills a percentage of the people who eat it.

The worst is when that happens and 1) you're actually not a good cook and, 2) you have to make the dinner at someone else's house and, 3) they're the only rich people in America without a mint-condition/rarely-used 48" Viking range, instead they have a ratty 30" Magic Chef from the 1970s that can't even boil a big stockpot full of water in less than an hour, because they give all their money to charity.

The new scallop preparation -- Maine diver scallops sliced thin, with dried seaweed sprinkled on top, with a salad of pickled Washington State cherries and lettuce, and a pool of creamy sweet-tart lemon puree -- is outstanding. One of the better dishes in the history of Momo-Ssam, and a great way to start off the meal. There's a new country ham -- "Burgers' Smokehouse Ozark Country Cured Ham," from California, Missouri -- that, while delicious, just isn't as good as the Benton's. There's basically no reason ever to depart from the Benton's, which I think competes with the world's best pork products. I love the mustardy "gravy" they serve with the country hams, but the two small pieces of bread are out of proportion to the big plate of ham -- they should give about six slices. The fried baby artichokes are almost as good as the Brussels sprouts were, but not quite. Although, this is a more elegant dish, plated in a coherent manner (as opposed to the undifferentiated bowl of Brussels sprouts) in a pool of walnut puree with a couple of anchovies draped over the row of fried artichokes (from Satur Farms). Sugar snap peas in "country ham broth" -- actually more like bits of country ham in a reduced stock -- are a good share item. I wouldn't suggest eating a portion of them alone, but everybody should have a handful of them. I'm still not entirely sold on lamb belly. The Momo-Ssam rendition is quite a bit better than the one at Degustation. At Degustation it was like eating a piece of lamb fat, whereas the Momo-Ssam version has more meat to it, and the Swiss chard and radishes provide nice contrasts of bitter and crunchy. Still, I think unless you like lamb belly this dish isn't going to convert you. I wonder if the lamb belly trend will last. Pork belly is a lot better. There's a new dessert: "Tristar Strawberry Shortcake." I've read about the Tristar strawberries but this was my first time knowingly tasting them. Highly concentrated, small strawberries, served over a small round of plain shortcake with a healthy dose of whipped cream. Good, but I think they should probably just give up on dessert unless they're going to have a serious dessert program. The new midnight closing time is apparently a staffing issue -- the kitchen crew was burning out from the 2am close, which makes for a very long, intense shift when you include prep starting mid-afternoon. It's not quite enough hours to justify splitting into two shifts, though, so they just shortened the shift a little.

Strawberries, blackberries, ripe peaches and broccoli are the ones where I've noticed that, if you don't rinse them very carefully and quickly, you get veggie wash taste. Which is not bad, mind you. It's citrusy -- it basically tastes like you squeezed a little lemon juice on your blackberries. There's no soap flavor at all.

A few thoughts here. First, I don't know that it's realistic to expect a group of 10 or 12 to engage in a single, real-time conversation. At that group size, if it's one conversation, you're really talking about people taking turns at public speaking. While that may happen at business meetings, it's not really the way people interact in an unregulated, casual setting. So, I don't think your table shape is necessarily to blame for the pockets of conversation. I think that's going to happen at any table, no matter what shape, when you have a large group. Second, while I love round tables, the bigger they get the less efficient they are. A round table that seats 6 or 8 is very efficient. One that seats 10 or 12 has a lot of dead space in the center that nobody can comfortably reach from a seated position, and the people across the table from one another are nearly as far away as they'd be at a rectangular table seating the same number of people. Third, I'm a fan of the lazy Susan and think it deserves wider adoption, however it's definitely a commitment. It's not something you're going to take on and off the table. Also, I find that too many people size their lazy Susans unintelligently. You need enough space between the edge of the lazy Susan and the edge of the table to accommodate large plates surrounded by wine glasses, otherwise as the stuff spins around on the lazy Susan it knocks into people's glasses. Finally, one table configuration I like a lot is the wide rectangle -- wide enough to accommodate 2 chairs on each end. That way, to seat 12 people, it only needs to be long enough to accommodate 4 chairs on each of the long sides. And that shape gives a nice amount of space in the middle for platters, pitchers, etc., but any given item is still within reach of several people. Way back when, in Vermont, we had a square table that would seat 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 and it had two leaves that would lengthen it into a rectangle that would seat either 2 + 3 + 3 +2 with one leaf or 2 + 4 + 4 + 2. Given that you have a square dining room, this might be a good design, if you can find one or have one made.

I'm wondering, though, how dish soap would do on more delicately textured fruits like peaches and blackberries, or on vegetables like broccoli. Rinsing off the smooth skin of a lime is sort of like rinsing off a plate, but some produce has a lot of nooks and crannies.

I've flown economy class from New York > Frankfurt > Singapore and back, and the food was mediocre. Not as absolutely terrible as what you'd get on an American airline, but not particularly good either.

It's interesting to me that the traditions of food photos, samples/sculptures, and lengthy dish descriptions have never taken hold in Western restaurants. I sense there may a Puritanical impulse at play here, as in a feeling that pictures and other representations of food are somehow sinful. The term "food porn," used to refer to beautiful photographs of food, would seem to indicate that this is the English-speaking world's sentiment. I assume there is no equivalent phrase in Asian cultures. Western culture has even rejected lengthy descriptions of dishes. Restaurants are routinely derided in the Western food press for listing the sources of ingredients and details of preparation beyond the simplest phrases.

Holly, were there choices for the various courses? I'm surprised at the degree of emphasis on Western food, so was wondering if there were Asian choices as well.

That video is pretty much the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I can't believe the guy goes to the trouble to paint the coral-colored striations on the piece of fake shrimp before covering it in the fake tempura crust. And I love that the title is "The Making."

From the Grand Sichuan menu guide:

Tonight I walked by a typical urban hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant and, as I glanced at the photos above the menu board, I thought about how great it is that so many Asian restaurants show photos of the food. It makes so much sense as a way to remove much of the ambiguity from the ordering process. I particularly love the photo book at the restaurant Sripraphai, in Queens, where they have a photograph of every single dish on the very long menu. Without that book, I'd have never figured out that dish O2, "Chicken with ginger sauce over rice," is the same as the popular Singaporean/Malaysian specialty of Hainanese chicken rice. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a sculpture worth? The Japanese have taken the visual representation of food to the highest level with their glossy plastic replicas. There's a store in New York City, or there used to be one, that specializes in plastic food. Does anybody remember the name of that place? Or are there any great stores in Japan that have websites I could check out? Then there's the Grand Sichuan book, from Grand Sichuan International Midtown in Manhattan. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the Grand Sichuan book actually is several thousand words (5,039 to be exact). I'm not sure the book exists anymore, given the closing of the Midtown branch. I have, fortunately, preserved a copy (of the version that used to be online, though it's not exactly the same as the physical book) and will post some quotes below. Photos, models and encyclopedic descriptions are just some of the things Asian restaurants do that all other restaurants should do too. I also think any restaurant that serves family style should copy the Asian-restaurant practice of having a lazy Susan in the middle of the table. And, of course, every restaurant everywhere should give out hot towels.

They can be from a restaurant, from the home kitchen, from a market, even from an airplane. What are the three best potato dishes you've ever had? Mine: 1 - The chicken-fat-infused roasted potatoes from the bottom of the rotisserie, at just about any outdoor market in France. 2 - David Bouley's pureed potatoes, at restaurant Bouley in New York City, similar to the legendary Robuchon potatoes but with some subtle differences. 3 - Belgian-style frites, anywhere they're properly made. (Honorable mention: Munchos)

A post by GlorifiedRice got me thinking: I have occasionally contacted food companies (I mean like cereal and snack food manufacturers with customer service departments, not some small producer where the owner answers the phone), either via their customer service phone numbers or via email, and it seems most or all of the time I receive some empty-headed, useless response. Has anybody else had this experience, or the opposite, or something else?

Jews moving away from the Lower East Side (which historically includes Alphabet City, the East Village and parts of Chinatown, Little Italy and NoLIta -- when I was in high school in the mid-1980s we actually referred to our East 15th Street location as the Lower East Side, though 14th Street was probably the more generally accepted dividing line; East Village was a term invented by realtors and took awhile to become a mainstream designation) is part of it, but lots of Jews still live around there, especially where the Second Avenue Deli was, and for the past several years I'm sure the LES Jewish population has been growing not shrinking. In addition, you have neighborhoods like the Upper West Side where the Jewish -- including religious Jewish -- population is quite dense and has been trending denser for some time, but the traditional Jewish restaurants have been closing there too (the main exception being Artie's, which is probably the only serious Jewish deli to open in New York City in my lifetime). So I think it's more than a question of population shift. It's also got to be a question of what that population is eating. Even on the Upper West Side, where we've seen a whole mess of kosher restaurants open, we're not seeing Jewish deli and dairy restaurants. We're seeing Dougie's BBQ, because even observant Jews who only dine at kosher restaurants aren't supporting the serious delis. Pretty much across the board, the culture has moved on from those foods as mainstays and now sees them as occasional indulgences.

I don't see the attraction of uniformity here, when you can have a variety of textures instead.

One thing you can do to up your yolk ratio is discard half the whites. Those who don't like egg salad may just have an anti-egg-salad preference. Or, they may never have had good egg salad. Cold, overcooked egg mush -- rubbery and slimy at the same time -- with an alarmingly high percentage of bad mayonnaise is as representative of good egg salad as Sizzler's "Petite Lunch Steak" is of a USDA Prime, dry-aged porterhouse. I urge anybody in that position to try a freshly cooked (not overcooked, no green yolk) egg, still warm, lightly chopped/mashed with a fork with some good mayonnaise, salt and pepper, so there are some big chunks, some smaller chunks and some nearly pureed parts.