Fat Guy

He's entranced with the theory but much of what he says about molecular gastronomy is hard to swallow. I mean, trying to trace molecular gastronomy to Julia Child? Come on.

It makes no sense whatsoever. Gloves get just as dirty as hands. But that's not the point. What are you going to do, start a revolution? If the DOH is breathing down your neck saying put gloves on, just put the damn gloves on. You can't win by refusing -- that just puts you out of business.

I'm working on a book chapter about Japanese restaurants in America (the topic about the book project is here) and was wondering if any of you could help me track down some official Japanese sources on the issue of sushi and pregnancy. For this particular project, I'm not going to be able to use any anecdotal reports ("My doctor said it was fine," "I ate tons of sushi when I was pregnant") or undocumented sources -- and so far that's all I've been able to find online. What I'm looking for is a Japanese government source, or a Japanese medical association source, saying that raw fish is (or is not) safe to eat during pregnancy. Anybody have any leads? English would be nice. Also interested in any studies, statistics, etc. Please post here -- don't reply by PM -- so everyone can see.

Couple of questions: - What are you all paying per pound for cherries, and where? - Am I the only person who gets a little sneezy after eating a large quantity of cherries?

The old saying, "You can't fight City Hall," comes to mind here. I mean, I love Di Fara's and couldn't care less about hats, gloves or a few droppings. But really, what is Dom thinking? That he can just keep ignoring failed health inspections and continue to operate? It's sad that this old-world attitude is going to keep him from operating a business in the new world. Nobody benefits from that. It's not like the government cares if Di Fara's disappears. The loss will be the public's, and his. Suck it up and put on a hat, clean the place up and go back to work. Sheesh.

I'm going to be interviewing Betty Xie, the editor of Chinese Restaurant News, in the near future. I've already got so many questions that I may not even get to all of them, but if you all have anything you'd like me to ask her I'll see if I can squeeze it in.

It looks like a good seminar lineup this year. There's an up-to-date schedule on the Big Apple Barbecue website, where you can also purchase tickets. One nice thing is that this year they've moved the seminars back to the main event site, in a seminar tent. I've heard that several of them are nearly sold out, so now is the time to act -- there are only 100 tickets available for each event. I wish I could go to all of the seminars, but that wouldn't leave any time for eating barbecue! The ones I'm planning to attend are: On Saturday, the 6pm tasting with Danny Meyer, "Barbecued Baloney, Bourbon and Beer." Not only does it look like the best event of the day, but also the 6pm time doesn't conflict with the noon-til-six Big Apple Barbecue hours. On Sunday at 1pm, "Beyond Barbecue" looks likely to be the best barbecue presentation of the weekend, with Lolis Eric Elie, Ed Levine and Jeffrey Steingarten, moderated by John T. Edge. And I'll also be at the panel discussion I'm moderating (this will be my third year as a seminar participant at the event), the last one of the weekend, at 4:15pm Sunday: "Authentic or Ethnic," with Jessica Harris, Peter Kaminsky, Joan Nathan. This isn't a barbecue panel as such, but rather represents a decision by the event organizers to expand the seminars' reach beyond traditional barbecue and Southern food topics.

The same can be said about postmodernism in any artform. Gray Kunz has had one foot in the new paradigm, and the other foot firmly planted in the old, since long before the new paradigm was an utterance. I imagine as a restaurateur he will never be able to make the break necessary to be a real member of the club, just as Robuchon can't. They have already demonstrated, with Cafe Gray and Atelier, that they're constitutionally incapable of truly setting aside the spirit of fine dining. But the type of food, yes, Grayz will certainly serve postmodern haute fusion -- Kunz has always been on the cutting edge in that department.

One of the big stories in Chinese food, and Asian food in general, and indeed restaurants in general, is that the rate of improvement in small-town America has been incredibly rapid over the past decade or two. My first wake-up call on this was in about 1998, when I was visiting Cave Junction, Oregon. We were going there to visit a winery, and the guy at the winery was giving us directions by phone. "When you drive through the town heading in from the highway, you'll pass the diner and then two Chinese restaurants, one on each side of the road. You want to go to the one on the right, not the one on the left. It has a much better menu." The stereotype, especially held by large-city dwellers, is that the Chinese food everywhere else in America is inedible and generic. I hear it all the time, even from plenty of people in the food press. But it's just not the case anymore. The supply lines have been laid in at the level of medium-size cities like Cleveland and Charlotte, and in all those surrounding suburbs restaurants can get good ingredients -- including fish -- from large Asian markets and suppliers that deal with Asian-operated farms in the US, Asian seafood distributors, etc. Most people who have been talking about these restaurants but not eating at them in the past decade would be surprised at what's out there. Now two things are still true. First, it's still true that the average run-of-the-mill Chinese restaurant in a strip mall somewhere in Middle America isn't likely to have whole steamed fish or any ambitious dishes of that nature. Second, it's true that there's a generic menu that most every Chinese restaurant serves an approximation of. However, the restaurant that has no steamed whole fish will almost definitely have a significant number of shrimp dishes, and also a selection of steamed dishes that include shrimp, tofu and vegetable selections. The slightly better restaurant in the strip mall across the road, where the average dish costs a dollar or two more, is likely to have fish fillets in various configurations -- usually basics like salmon and bass fillets that can be had frozen from commercial suppliers, and also scallops and, if it's an upscale area, possibly a live lobster tank. Of course, somebody has to be ordering this stuff, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to keep it on the menu. In addition, that generic menu is more and more often becoming only part of the overall menu at any given restaurant. So yes, most Chinese restaurants feel obligated by the laws of supply and demand to offer the standard Chinese-American dishes from the generic menu. But a lot of those restaurants then go on to offer an array of other stuff. Needless to say, there are many Chinese restaurants serving undifferentiated crap -- that's the case with all kinds of restaurants, and it's as true in Manhattan as it is in Mobile. But once you cut that bottom layer away -- once you cut away the Chinese-restaurant equivalents of Denny's, Applebee's and the local all-you-can-eat buffet -- you get to another level. And that level exists most everywhere in America now. At that level, you're usually dealing with family-run restaurants with chefs who have decent culinary skills, and there are likely to be at least a few Asian clients as well as American clients who have traveled in Asia. This is true even in some pretty small towns now, and it's certainly true in most actual cities even in the whitest states. So when you're dining at that level, which isn't a very high level and isn't exactly difficult to plug into, you're all of a sudden in familiar territory (familiar, at least, if you're the type of person who's a regular reader of the eG Forums). You're in the universe where, as usual, the restaurant you're in is two restaurants: the one where the tourists eat, and the one where the in-the-know people dine. You just have to be willing to engage a manager and, of course, pay a little extra, and you can get good stuff. Maybe not on the level of the best places in Chinatown in New York, San Francisco or Vancouver, but far, far better than the stereotype would have it. I spent about a week in the Cleveland area last year and collected a lot of information. Many of the restaurants there even have websites with menus, so we can click through to them from here. The generic stuff is well represented, but most of the menus go way beyond that, and in all different directions. For example, Garden Cafe (clearly there's some Taiwanese influence here), has dishes like "Squid with Sliced Pork," "Intestine Pig Blood with Sour Mustard," "Garden Steam Chicken with Scallion," "Garlic Grill Pomfret," and "Seafood Steamed Egg." That's in Cleveland, people. Some more Cleveland examples: Hunan by the Falls has "Salt-Baked Fish," "Sliced Lotus Root Salad," "Ginger-Scallion China Sole (Filet of China sole with fresh tofu, steamed or sauteed in chef Chau's ginger scallion sauce)," "Seafood Fire Pot (shrimp, scallops, tsurumi, tofu, Chinese mushrooms, Napa cabbage)," and a Thai-style satay made with New Zealand green mussels. Pearl of the Orient has "Steamed Salmon (fresh fillet of salmon with asparagus, broccoli, carrots and shiitake mushrooms in a native bamboo steamer)," "Seafood Tofu Vermicelli Hot Pot," and even "Salmon with Peach and Cucumber Salsa." You get the idea. I've been finding menus like these from all over. My most in-depth first-hand experience in Cleveland was at Sun Luck Garden, where Annie Chiu is the chef. This place looks like nothing from the outside. Like so many suburban Chinese restaurants, it's off at the end of some strip mall and the nearest landmark is a Kentucky Fried Chicken. The menu (sorry, it's not online, at least I don't think it is) looks relatively unremarkable. But if you sit with (well, run like hell chasing after) Annie Chiu for a day, you'll hear her making phone calls to all her regulars, "I'm getting mussels for tomorrow dinner, you want in?" Plenty of these regulars aren't Asian. And every night there are specials that reflect a high level of Chinese cooking, yet you'd never know it if you just coasted through a meal, didn't engage the staff, and ordered the generic standards. You can track most of this with other types of Asian restaurants, though a lot of them haven't penetrated as deeply into the country. But in most cities, the Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Indian options are much improved of late.

I grew up on the Upper West Side, but I live on the Upper East Side now. I can't afford the Upper West Side anymore. Soon, all I'll be able to afford is the Bronx.

A typical meal for me would be more like: - 8 fried pork dumplings - 2 wedges scallion pancake - 4 pork spare ribs - All the bits of appetizers everybody else at the table doesn't eat - 2 cups beef lo mein - Deep fried shrimp with honey-glazed walnuts - A small taste of steamed mixed vegetables, just to confirm I still don't like it - Enough ten ingredient fried rice to taste each of the ten ingredients several times - A cup of white rice - A cup of brown rice - Another order of fried pork dumplings - Half a Peking duck - A pint of Starbuck's Java Chip ice cream at home for dessert

"Full of fat" doesn't mean anything in the abstract, though. Lots of things are full of fat such as, well, fat. It has to be attached to a quantity, and CSPI gets the quantity wrong. There's a difference between eating an entire quart container full of fried rice and sharing it with three other people and leaving leftovers, or between eating an entire quart container of kung pao chicken and eating a sixth of it with a cup of white rice, in combination with soup and bits of other dishes. The point being, CSPI doesn't give a crap about what people actually eat. They only care about making headlines. A serious study would take a bunch of people in normal family groupings, let them order from a standard Chinese menu, and see what they eat; then it would see what they eat when they don't eat Chinese food. It's quite possible that in 52% of cases the Chinese meal would indeed be healthier (assuming, for the sake of argument, that the conventional-wisdom of healthful -- low-fat, low-salt, etc. -- is actually right). I'm also not so sure there are countless morons out there who think deep-fried pork with sweet-and-sour sauce is a low-fat, low-calorie option. If anything, there may be some underestimation of how much oil there is in a typical stir-fried vegetable dish. But people underestimate the amount of fat and salt in all restaurant food.

One issue that keeps coming up when I mention to non-Asian people that I’m working on this book is the claim that Chinese food is unhealthy. Back in 1993, and again in 2007, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) generated scores of media reports on this issue. In the September 1993 Nutrition Action Health Letter, an article titled “Chinese Food: A Wok On The Wild Side,” made three comparisons that have remained in the public consciousness to this day (I know -- they are repeated back to me, inaccurately, all the time): - An order of House Lo Mein with as much salt as a Whole Pizza Hut Cheese Pizza - An order of Kung Pao Chicken with almost as much fat as four Quarter Pounders - An order of Moo Shu Pork with more than twice the cholesterol of an Egg McMuffin The article begins, provocatively, “According to a recent report by the Food Marketing Institute and Prevention Magazine, 52 percent of all Americans say that Chinese food is ‘more healthful’ than their usual diet. If only they knew.” It then goes on to debunk this alleged myth with analyses of 15 dishes, concluding that “The average Chinese dinner we looked at contains more sodium than you should eat in an entire day. It also has 70 percent of a day's fat, 80 percent of a day's cholesterol, and almost half a day's saturated fat.” Then, in 2007, the CSPI returned to the well and published “Wok Carefully: CSPI Takes a (Second) Look at Chinese Restaurant Food.” It begins, “Popular Chinese restaurant meals can contain an entire day’s worth of sodium and some contain two days’ worth.” In both 1993 and 2007, the CSPI pieces were not unequivocally negative. They offered advice for reducing sodium, saturated fat, and cholesterol through better ordering and portion control. But these parts weren’t what made headlines like “Chinese restaurant food unhealthy, study says: Menus loaded with sodium, saturated fat and calories — even the veggies” (MSNBC) and “Study: Chinese Restaurant Food Unhealthy: Typical Chinese Restaurant Menu Is a Sea of Nutritional No-Nos, According to Consumer Group” (USA Today) There are, however, several fallacies underlying the CSPI’s conclusions. The so-called study makes the assumption that an entire takeout order of kung pao chicken equals one dinner for one person. Yet there is no evidence that most people eat that way. Rather, it is common for a family to order several dishes and share them – and to have leftovers. The CSPI also doesn’t offer any information about what dishes people actually order in a typical Chinese meal. If a family of four orders three or four dishes, are they all going to be from the “bad” list, or will some be vegetables, shrimp, and other dishes that, along with steamed white rice, balance some of the heavier dishes? Perhaps the most glaring fallacy, especially in the 2007 report, is the emphasis on sodium. It’s astounding that the CSPI, as well as many other groups that should know better, is still railing against salt. At this point, the health claims against salt have been so thoroughly debunked that it’s hard to imagine any research-based organization being unaware that the salt-hypertension connection is a myth. At this point, the only thing that can really be said about salt and hypertension is that a small percentage of the population may be “salt sensitive,” however for healthy individuals with normally functioning kidneys there’s no reason to be concerned about salt. Worse, by steering people away from foods solely on the basis of salt content, the CSPI is discouraging the ordering of lower-fat items like soups. The comparisons to McDonald’s and Pizza Hut are particularly disingenuous. Chinese restaurant menus are huge and they emphasize choice. No American who has turned on a television or radio, read a newspaper, or surfed the web could today be unaware that steamed broccoli has fewer calories per ounce than deep-fried pork. If people want to order healthful, wholesome, delicious meals at Chinese restaurants, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Western fast-food restaurants, on the other hand, offer only token options for the health-conscious, and they’re almost never good.

Hey! Just for that, I have a suggestion for you: why don't you make (and occasionally post an updated version of) a list of all the recipes in the book, so you can mark off who has made what and what's left to be made?

The "Asian alone or in combination" percentage for Fremont is 39.8. However, I guess it's being counted as part of the San Francisco metro statistical area.

Any statistics geeks out there have any leads on where I can find a breakdown of Asian restaurants in America (or US and Canada) by type (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, etc.)? I spoke to the top statistics people at the National Restaurant Association and at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and neither of those organizations collects the information in that way. I've been able to find numbers for some types of restaurants (e.g., Chinese, Thai) but since those numbers come from different sources it's not clear they're comparable methodologically. Any ideas? Also, thought you all might be interested in some additional statistical tidbits on the Asian-American population. This all comes from the US Census Bureau. These are public documents so I'm quoting at length: As a New Yorker, it doesn't feel this way to me, but Asian-Americans are 4.2 percent of the US population. (At my high school, by contrast, it was probably more like 30 percent): A few other tidbits regarding the Asian-American population . . . First, the largest numbers -- almost half -- live in the West: Second, more than half the Asian-American population lives in three states: Third, these are some breakdowns of Asian-American population by state, by city and by metro area. It's kind of interesting how the numbers shift around. For example, New York City has the largest Asian-American population of any city, but when you look at metropolitan areas Los Angeles pulls way out front. Also, the last of the three quotes below, the metro area breakdown, does not come from the US Census Bureau and includes Canadian cities. State breakdown: City breakdown: It occurs to me that I don't even know where Fremont, CA is. I better look on a map. Metro area breakdown: Fourth, regarding mixed-ethnicity Asian-American population:

Thanks for the tip. The jury is still out on Florida. I was supposed to go down there in the fall, but the panel discussion I was to be going for got canceled so I lost my free ride. We'll see what happens. If I make it to the area, I'll see if the owners of Masa's Sagami are willing to talk to me.

I'd love to! It wouldn't be part of this book project, though. This one is limited to the Asian restaurant culture of North America.

I sort of fell out of the Cradle of Flavor today, starting with the best of intentions and ending with an unresolved international incident. I decided I was going to cook my favorite dish from my trip to Singapore: Hainanese chicken rice. But there was no recipe to be found in the Cradle. I wasn’t up to the task of making black pepper crabs (or chili crabs, another Singapore favorite for which there wasn’t room in the Cradle) at 8am, so I decided to look for a really . . . easy . . . dish. I found a promising dish in “telur mata sapi bumbu,” fried eggs with garlic, shallots, chiles and ginger. I took out an egg from the refrigerator in order to let it come up to room temperature (this is an essential step in fried-egg cookery if you want your eggs to come out nicely). The recipe calls for three eggs but I only wanted one. I then thinly sliced a garlic clove, all the while wishing I had the appropriate Microplane product. The recipe calls for frying three eggs in a little peanut oil in a 12” skillet, one at a time. That struck me as inefficient: a 12” skillet should be able to accommodate three eggs at once no problem, indeed most people I know don’t even have a 12” skillet, their collections max out at 10” because that’s what fits comfortably on a standard burner on a 30” range if you’re also cooking anything else on that range. But I wasn’t going to break out the 12” skillet to cook one egg anyway. It just didn’t seem ethical. So I used a 7” skillet. This is me cooking an egg, in corn oil because I didn’t have any peanut oil: My plan had been that, while the egg was cooking for about two minutes I’d cut up a shallot, a chile and some ginger. This is the problem you face if you don’t do your mise en place. Not only was it impossible for me to cut up all that stuff in the time it takes to fry an egg, but also it turned out I didn’t have any shallots, I didn’t have a chile and I didn’t have any fresh ginger. The following minute was as tense as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Ten Days that Shook the World all compressed into the 60 seconds that shook East 93rd Street. I first considered the option of abandoning my egg. After all, an egg only costs like 10 cents, though maybe this one cost 30 cents on account of being Sauder Organic. And this is New York City, where there are three Korean-owned markets within one block of my home (two within half a block) where I could acquire all the missing ingredients easily. But if you live in the northeastern United States you know what the weather was like, and the Depression-era mentality of my grandparents was haunting me on the issue of throwing out an egg. So, I improvised. Shallots: that wasn’t going to happen, however I did have some dehydrated onion powder around. Maybe a shake of that. Sliced red or green chile: I first thought about cutting up a dried chile, but that seemed a bit much for one egg. So I went with some crushed red pepper flakes, and a squirt of Sriracha red pepper sauce. Ginger: none of that around either, but is there ginger in Chinese five spice powder? I don’t know. There wasn’t time to Google it. So I just figured I’d add some of that. Then I thought about other Asian-inflected ingredients that might work, since the Cradle was already rocking so much that the breaking of the bough was imminent. So I also added a little sesame oil, and a dash of black vinegar. The recipe recommends some rice wine vinegar, which I actually had, so I put that in too. By this time my egg was finished and my oil, as recommended, cooling a bit: Also by this time, a small crowd had gathered in the rain outside my window. This group of about two dozen Indonesians and Malaysians was holding placards like “The Cradle Will Fall,” and “Roundeye Go Home,” the latter of which seemed strange because I was at home. I also received a fax from Singapore sentencing me to caning and one from Malaysia sentencing me to death. Before the organizers could get an injunction in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, I proceeded to sautee my remaining ingredients: I then poured the sauce/condiment over the egg, ate it (it was surprisingly tasty) and went back to sleep.

Peter, I think that's sage advice, but I'd add a caveat: there are a lot of pitfalls for the dabbler. For example, you really don't want to get into trying to bow to Japanese people, save for a simple nod of the head. The tradition of bowing in Japan is so subtle and involved that you can commit all sorts of faux pas. Not to mention, you could spend all day stuck in an endless loop of bowing if you don't get it right -- or maybe you'll just be written off as a poseur. You also want to be careful, in all these languages, that you don't try to say "Good morning!" but actually wind up saying "Go fuck yourself!" But I think you're right: attitude is key. If you don't take yourself too seriously, people won't take your mistakes too seriously either. Maggie, I'm going to say no on Cambodian. I know predicting restaurant trends is a fool's errand, but there are a few factors we can look at to understand why some Asian cuisines are popular in the United States and other aren't. The most important issue is, of course, population. There are actually three sets of population statistics that are important to look at. First, you have the raw number of people who are actually of a given ethnicity. That's important because it represents customers, restaurant workers and supply lines. Second, you have the number of people who are partly from that ethnicity -- groups that have been here longer, or or otherwise culturally predisposed to intermarriage, are going to have a higher percentage of mixed population. That sort of assimilation helps to promote culinary culture to some extent. Finally, there's the foreign-born population. Ethnic restaurants are largely run by first-generation families. The life-span of restaurants is not long -- most restaurants don't last the adult lifetime of a human. And the second-generation Asian-Americans just aren't as interested in being in the restaurant business, or if they are in the restaurant business they're attending the Culinary Institute of America and working at Daniel. Population figures are so fundamental to the popularity of Asian cuisines in America that you find for the most part that restaurant popularity and population rankings are in lock step. The most interesting situations are where they aren't. So, for example, five of the top six Asian populations in the United States are: 1. Chinese 2,734,841 (this number goes up a bit if you also add Taiwanese) 3. Indian 1,899,599 4. Korean 1,228,427 5. Vietnamese 1,223,736 6. Japanese 1,148,932 Those are the numbers if you add all the people who are both mixed and not mixed, in other words if you include in the figure for Japanese-Americans anybody who is any part Japanese. There are no other groups that come anywhere close. If you go to number 7 on the list, you fall off by a factor of five and get 206,052 (that’s Cambodian, by the way) and it’s downhill from there. If you look around at Asian restaurants in America, you’ll not be surprised by that list. Chinese cuisine, at least the standard Chinese-American menu that you see most everywhere, is so mainstream and established that, according to a recent National Restaurant Association study, it’s viewed similarly to the other two most popular ethnic cuisines: Italian and Mexican. “Italian, Mexican and Chinese (Cantonese) cuisines have joined the mainstream . . . . those three cuisines have become so ingrained in American culture that they are no longer considered ethnic.” There are, according to the Chinese Restaurant News trade journal, 43,139 Chinese restaurants in America right now (by contrast there are 12,804 McDonald’s). There are really only two big surprises as far as I’m concerned. The first is, you may have notice that I left off number 2. Do you want to guess what number 2 is -- the second most populous Asian group in America? Quick. Try. It’s Filipino. There are 2,364,815 Filipino-Americans, so on a strict population formula there should be more Filipino restaurants than Indian restaurants, more than Japanese . . . yet there are very, very few Filipino restaurants in America. So that’s a situation where we have to start looking beyond population statistics in order to understand what’s going on. A lot of people have tried to explain the lack of Filipino restaurants in America, and there doesn’t seem to be one authoritative explanation. There are a few factors we can point to, though. Perhaps the most prominent Filipino chef in the country is Cristeta Comerford, the White House Executive Chef. Only about a week ago, there was a story in the Philippine News about an exhibition dinner she prepared in Washington, D.C.: So those are a few factors: not a major restaurant culture back in the Philippines, cooking not widely considered a legit career in that community, the group as a whole prefers home cooking. But I think there are other issues as well. One is marketing. We don’t like to think of ethnic cuisines as being the result of marketing – it flies in the face of our notions of realness. But you can be sure that Japanese cuisine would not be where it is today were it not for concerted marketing efforts at many levels, from both corporate and government sources, both formal and informal. I can’t even imagine how much money Kikkoman has spent promoting Japanese cuisine each year for the past several decades. Nobody is doing anything like that for the Philippines, and Comerford is not going to accomplish that alone. Also, for cuisines to settle into the mainstream, there need to be a few dishes for tastes to coalesce around. There doesn’t yet seem to be a Filipino equivalent of Pad Thai, though there are some legitimate candidates – delicious dishes that should be more popular but just aren’t. Speaking of Pad Thai, Thai cuisine is the other major outlier on the list. There isn’t a particularly significant Thai population in the US. The Thai population number is just 150,293. Yet Thai cuisine is quite popular here. So, again, we have to look beyond the simple population numbers to try to understand why. One issue is that Thai restaurants aren’t necessarily Thai. When you add the Laotian (198,203) and even Hmong (186,310) populations to the Thai population the numbers are more significant. American involvement in Vietnam is also a significant factor, because so many Americans became exposed to Thai and Laotian culture during that time. Moreover, Thai cuisine is quite popular worldwide, so that trend may have some impact in the US. And I also think, in part, that Thai cuisine has been the right cuisine at the right time. It’s perceived as healthier, lighter, more vibrant than the standard Cantonese-influenced Chinese-American cuisine that’s dominant here. So it’s no surprise that Thai items have found their way onto a lot of Chinese restaurant menus in America, the same way sushi has. If you look at the foreign-born population numbers, they confirm the China, India, Korea, Philippines, Vietnam numbers, whereas the exception there is Japanese. There are not as many foreign-born Japanese still coming over. I actually think the story of Japanese cuisine is a little different than the others, because so many of the key restaurants here were developed, for example, to feed the high-end business traveler. But the Japanese have been in the US in significant numbers for a very long time, so even though there are not as many new immigrants from Japan the cuisine is entrenched. I’ve heard it’s quite difficult for Japanese restaurants to find Japanese employees, which is probably why you now see many other Asians and even Mexicans working in Japanese restaurants, and you see the rising demand for Japanese food being met not by Japanese restaurants but by Chinese restaurants and even Western supermarkets. Certainly if one had to make a mathematical prediction it would be that, some day, some way, Filipino cuisine has to reach critical mass here. It feels like a long shot, but the numbers don't lie. If someone cracks the code to creating Filipino restaurants with mass appeal, it could happen. Cambodian, well, despite a couple of hundred thousand Cambodians in America, the cuisine just hasn’t been gaining much traction. In a major Asian restaurant market like New York City, we have only 1.5 Cambodian restaurants right now. The .5 I give to a place called Cambodian Cuisine. It’s currently closed, in the process of relocating from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and maybe that will actually happen (if so, it’s good news for me because the new location is supposed to be right near my house). The other one is called Kampuchea Noodle Bar, a new-ish place on the Lower East Side. I’m actually supposed to be spending a little time with the chef, Ratha Chau, later this month, so I’ll try to report back on that. But even the most ardent fans of Kampuchea Noodle Bar aren’t really calling it a Cambodian restaurant. It’s more “inspired by Cambodia.”

In this area, there are cherries from somewhere in California pretty early on in the spring, however it's only towards the end of May that they seem to come on full force. Last weekend we were visiting some friends and they had the first batch of Costco cherries, which seemed to be from California. I tasted a couple but they weren't ready for prime time -- I could tell that by looking, before even tasting. Today, however, the cherries at Costco in Yonkers looked pretty good, so I made my first cherry purchase of the season. They were not fantastic -- the ones from California usually aren't in my experience -- but they were quite good. I have a somewhat baroque procedure for eating cherries, which I picked up from an acquaintance who spent some time working at Le Cirque under Daniel Boulud. Cherries, as those of you who are fond of cherries might agree, are in the category of fruits that taste good cold. I've always felt this way. As much as I like to eat them the second I buy them, I think they're more rewarding after a sojourn in the refrigerator. Anyway, the trick that came down from Le Cirque via Adam Perry Lang (who is now a well regarded New York chef in his own right, but at the time was a Culinary Institute of America student on externship, when I was in a law school study group with his roommate) is this: once the cherries are washed (I use a fruit-and-vegetable wash and multiple rinses), you put them in a stainless bowl with a bunch of ice cubes and you toss them around. When you serve them this way, the flavors really pop. I'm looking forward to the ones from Washington -- they should be at my local Costco soon enough.

Back in January I started a topic called "Gaming the Chinese Buffet." I posted some of my strategies, and several eGullet Society members posted theirs. I thought I'd post the revised version, incorporating quotes from a few folks, here. +++ Gaming the Chinese Buffet Like them or not, buffets are -- at least in much of North America -- a popular means of experiencing Chinese and other Asian cuisines. They certainly have their advantages in terms of economy and diversity: for usually less than $10, you get to try as many items as you like (and as much as you like). The drawbacks tend to be lack of freshness (stuff sitting on steam tables for too long) and, often, low quality. To a great extent, however, your fate is in your hands: you may never have an excellent meal at a buffet, but your strategy at the buffet can mean the difference between a bad meal and a good one. As I did the research for this book, I ate at more of these buffets than ever before in my life. I started the journey believing that I'd simply exclude buffets from my research, but in town after town it became clear that this form was dominant, and that the real question isn't "buffet yes or no" but, rather, "how do I get the most out of a buffet?" Here are a few of the strategies I've accumulated along the way, both from my own experience and from tips gathered from buffet die-hard acquaintances (especially those who post to the eG Forums at www.eGullet.org), with the aim of maximizing quality, value, and even nutrition. Timing is key. At any buffet there's a life cycle to the meal. The best time to go is almost always right at the beginning of that cycle, because the food will be at its freshest. If the place opens at 11:30am for lunch or 5:00pm for dinner, that's your first choice of when to go. The best situation to be in is one where you arrive and the buffet is just in the process of being set up, so that over the next half hour or so you get to see all the new food come out. Another good time to go is at the peak of the meal service, because there will be the most turnover of food at that time. The worst time to go is towards the end of a meal service, when it's dregs all the way. Seek the high ground vantage point. Where you sit can make a big difference to your success at the buffet. If you can, get a table that has a good view of the part of the buffet containing the hot foods. It's also helpful to be close, though for comfort's sake you want to be at least one row of tables away from the buffet corridor. Let the kitchen guide your meal. Flexibility in the sequencing of your meal is essential. It's not about when you want dumplings. It's about when the fresh, new, hot dumplings come out from the kitchen. Sometimes you're going to get your dumplings at the beginning of the meal, sometimes at the end and sometimes you have to be willing to dispense with dumplings because the fresh ones just didn't become available while you were in the house. I have, on many occasions, gone back for a freshly replenished savory item even after I've had dessert. Fried foods are always the top priority -- they degrade rapidly on the buffet. Dishes of a soupy nature hold up the best -- that what you should be eating during the down time. Many trips, small quantities. Loading up big plates with tons of food -- sometimes I see people two-fisting it -- is just a bad idea if you want the best of the buffet in the best possible condition. You've really got to commit to the idea of making a lot of trips to the buffet. I think of my first trip or three as mostly exploratory: I'm trying to determine what's good. (If you've been to a given buffet many times before, and the offerings are always the same, you can of course skip this step.) I may very well taste the smallest available portion of every item on the buffet that isn't self-evidently terrible. There are often surprises. Once I figure out where to focus my eating, I can start prioritizing based on freshness. In some extreme instances, where you find yourself at a buffet that only has two or three good items, take as much as you can of those when they're fresh -- and resist the temptation to eat anything else. Press on to the way back. My friend Anne Crosby in Florida offers this advice: “The best food is the most relatively distant from the buffet line that it can get. Don't stumble and fill up on the cheap door stops, but rather walk to the farthest serving point, and work your way back to the table.” Bigger is better. Ellen Terris Brenner, an online acquaintance in San Diego, advises “At buffets, size definitely does matter -- the size of the establishment as a whole, that is. My current favorite here in San Diego seats a huge number of people, and the staff is extremely efficient at replenishing all the food those people hoover up, resulting in high food turnover an a high degree of freshness during most of their hours of operation.” A related point: choose a popular restaurant; buffets need a critical mass of customers in order to be able to offer a wide variety of good, fresh stuff.) Speak up. Of all my online contacts, the most supremely talented buffet eater is surely Mark in New Jersey. Mark is the Babe Ruth, the Bobby Fisher, and the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of the buffet. Not only does he have a superhuman capacity for eating, but also he has the uncanny ability to turn any buffet into his own private Bacchanalia. His best piece of advice: “The best way to get the least-plentiful (i.e., premium) items is to ask. And I wouldn't wait a long time to do it either. I mean, if you assume that the lobster or the Peking duck will be coming soon, you may wind up waiting 30 minutes and then wishing you'd asked sooner. If I don't find what I came for, I ask immediately. And I find that asking the runners does no good whatsoever -- they merely carry out what the kitchen prepares. The only thing that helps is to identify a manager (at the larger operations), or the person who seems to be in charge at the smaller ones, and to ask them. I also find that at the first request, you may be told ‘it's coming,’ without them conveying any message to the kitchen at all. But I'd also tell you that if the item you requested doesn't come out within a very few minutes, to present yourself to that person and let him (or her) know that the item never appeared. This always works for me. I certainly don't wait more than five minutes before I ask again.” Go with people who like to eat as much as you do. In the hierarchy of buffet indignities, nothing tops being rushed out by your friends who just don’t care about food, or are on diets, or have someplace they need to be. Getting the most out of the buffet requires the cooperation of the group, a shared sense of purpose, and a mutual understanding that there are no rules: for example, everyone at the table should feel free to get up at any time in order to snag a tasty morsel. Use a garbage plate. An eG Forums participant who goes by the handle “friedclams” turned me on to this trick: “Eating strategy for hot or cold items which have reside of some kind (shells, bones, etc) must include taking an extra garbage plate back to the table.” This has really improved my enjoyment of buffets, because it allows me to maintain a tidy eating plate and segregate out the castoffs. Don't eat a lot of rice, noodles or other carbs unless they're really good. Fried rice and lo mein are rarely all that good, and they fill you up when you could be eating different, better food. (Not to mention the restaurant is hoping you'll fill up on carbs, thus keeping the food cost down.) Don't overlook fresh fruit for dessert. Most of these places have a decent selection of fresh fruit on the buffet. You have to select carefully -- often there's unripe melon or whatever -- but when it's good it's good. Most other dessert items are likely to be terrible. At the Chinese buffet, good health and good value often go hand in hand. Everybody loves a bargain. Since everybody at a buffet pays the same price, the way you create a bargain is by getting the most for your money. It so happens that many of the most wholesome, nutritious items on the buffet are also the ones that carry the highest food cost: fish and shellfish, fresh vegetables, sushi (a fixture at most big Chinese buffets these days), simple grilled and made-to-order items. It’s a win-win situation, for you. Finally, some buffets require special strategies because they're so elaborate. The really extensive places may have a half-dozen active cooking and carving stations, or special nights when they feature seafood. In such cases, the made-to-order and special items are often (though not always) the best. Chinese buffets are not the only Asian buffets out there. Indian buffets are extremely popular, and we’re seeing more and more hybrid pan-Asian buffets offering dishes from Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia and beyond. All the advice given here applies equally to these other types of buffets. Remember, a buffet is a system in which the participants exercise a tremendous amount of self determination. The most facile person at the buffet is going to get the best meal. That person should be you.

I hope I'm not the only one who's ecstatic that the cherries have started arriving in full force, at least they have in the markets in the New York area. How much do you love cherries? Express yourself. What are you going to do with them? Just eat them until you're sick? Cook something? Where do you get yours? Where are they from? How do they seem this year? Let the wild cherry rumpus start.

It's just a normal Chinese restaurant. You order a bunch of dishes and they plop them in the middle of the table.

My Polder timer/thermometer is on its last legs, so I'll be interested in the results here, though I think I'm committed to a unit with thermometer probe, which radically limits my choices. Richard, one thing to be sure of is that whichever timer you get should have "count-up." I've seen ones that don't, which seems like a major design flaw to me. Count-up, meaning that after your 14 minutes or whatever have elapsed and the timer gets to 0:00 and beeps, it then starts counting up so you know how long past T you've gone.