Fat Guy

I agree, John. The photographers are just working with lighting and composition to take the most flattering possible photo. If there's any puffery going on, it's on the part of the stylists. In that regard, it's important to note that, while the professionally styled photos on the left lean towards flattery, the amateur photographs in the right-hand column are likely less flattering than what the eye would perceive under good conditions. In addition, the statement "Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately" indicates that these photos represent post-transportation appearance, not what the items looked like when made. So, for example, of course you have to expect compression of the bread, shifting of the sandwich ingredients and melting of cheese. In many cases, I don't think the purchased product looks all that much worse than the advertising photo: BK omelet sandwich BK sausage, egg and cheese croissant McD Big Mac McD Filet O Fish McD Sausage Egg McMuffin BK Whopper In some cases, it does look worse. Probably the most dramatic example is the KFC Famous Bowl. That one is so highly stylized as to be somewhat removed from what you'll ever experience at a real-world KFC restaurant, though again the dish would look more appetizing if photographed immediately after it was made, before the cheese melted into the mix and everything became homogenized and monochromatic. I think it proves a lot less than it sets out to prove, though.

There's a follow up to the Times story in a blog entry by Frank Bruni (NYT dining critic) today. He writes, again using less than absolute language: The more I consider the story, the more it reads to me like lazy reporting -- the kind that raises questions without really answering them, and that relies on implication rather than fact. Is there such a thing as real truffle oil (white? black?) and if so how can we get it? What about other preserved truffle products? Are they legit? These are the questions the good version of this article would have answered.

I've also got to wonder about the claim that truffles are so hard to preserve. For example, the Times piece states, "The flavor of real truffles, especially black, is evanescent, difficult to capture in an oil under the best of circumstances." Maybe, however I've had plenty of examples of black truffles that were preserved in fat (particularly duck fat and butter) that were excellent. I'm also wondering about all the other preserved truffle products that are not strictly "truffle oil," for example various truffle pastes and butters. Some of these taste quite good to me.

When I was a kid my parents belonged to the Red Dragon Food Co-op on Amsterdam Avenue in New York City. For those of you who have a certain impression of the lovely, families-and-professionals-oriented neighborhood that the Upper West Side of Manhattan is today, rest assured it was nothing like that 30 years ago. Think West Side Story, not Lincoln Center. Anyway, the Red Dragon was exactly as hummingbirdkiss describes the old-school health-food places, except I'd also add that all the produce was wilted, bug-eaten and otherwise scary, the nitrate-free products were all gray, etc. But yes, there were a lot of attempts, even back then, to create health-food facsimiles of mainstream candy bars and snack foods. Still, I don't think the ratio was anywhere near what it is today. It seems to me that the overwhelming majority of foods at a typical organic/natural foods store today are of the processed/prepared/snack-food/candy variety -- in other words most of the foods sold at Whole Foods are not whole foods. At the Red Dragon, certainly most of the foods were whole or one step removed from whole. But there wasn't the domination by junk food that you see today.

There's a story in today's New York Times dining section that seems to claim that all truffle oil is fake. Does anybody know if this claim is true. I'm certainly willing to believe that a lot of truffle oil is fake, but is there really no such thing as real white-truffle-infused olive oil? For example, over the years I've tried several of the truffle products from TartufLanghe sold by the Rare Wine Company. You can see the truffle offerings on page 3 of the October newsletter. I guess it's always possible to be fooled, but I've tasted plenty of real white truffles and these products from TartufLanghe taste real to me. Maybe I'm wrong. The New York Times seems to think so, though there's just enough equivocation and hedging in the story to avoid the full-on claim.

Prepare for a silly irradiation controversy.

If he's going to opine about pizza, yes, it's basic cultural literacy.

That defines "organic by law in the US," but not anywhere else and not necessarily in terms of common sense.

The most surprising part of Bruni's comments is that he seems to be saying he has never had pizza at Patsy's in East Harlem. In response to a suggestion from a reader that he try Patsy's, he says, "I can’t promise this reader I’m going to be able to get there in the near future . . ." That to me is a staggering knowledge gap, tantamount to never having been to Katz's, Peter Luger or Papaya King. Patsy's is on the short list of places you need to visit to establish baselines for excellence in the most important NYC food categories. It sounds like Bruni needs some remedial dining education before he breathes another word about pizza.

And it's frozen, held and served differently. I think Sam's original statement was on target. The shorthand explanations -- e.g., "Gelato is made from milk not cream" -- tend to be incomplete.

I don't really understand how the regulation change is pushing supply. The regulation change says that 100% of feed for organic-milk-producing cows now has to be organic (as opposed to 80% before). How does that act to increase supply?

The book in question is "Good Bread is Back: A Contemporary History of French Bread, the Way It is Made, and the People Who Make It," by Steven Laurence Kaplan. The reviewer seems not to be particularly well informed. He doesn't even seem to acknowledge that the author, Steven Kaplan, is arguably the pivotal figure in the revival of French artisanal bread. And comments like "it is either badly written or badly translated (or both)" are not particularly helpful.

I do think it's worth noting that the gelato at Otto is probably better than anything you can get in an NYC gelateria (though I haven't tried the Grom product), but that's sort of like saying the bread at Daniel or Per Se is better than the bread at any bakery. It's an interesting piece of information but sort of a mix-and-match when it comes to ranking like kinds of establishments. I was more hoping to establish a gelateria pecking order, not one that includes all the restaurants and packaged supermarket products (whether they come from the same vendors or not). If we are going to discuss restaurant gelato, though, let's make a real list, not one with just one restaurant on it.

Most? I imagine Ciao Bella with its factories on both coasts does a substantially larger restaurant business than Il Lab out of that one little shop. If you're talking about high-end restaurants only, plenty of them make their own, and yes, some buy.

I think the olive oil gelato at Otto is amazing, but I'll move to exclude Otto from consideration here. Restaurant gelato is a different animal. I don't know of any official definitions of gelato. Maybe they're out there, but I haven't seen them. I know ice cream is rigorously defined by the USDA and that the 10% milk fat minimum is the cornerstone of the guidelines. But that doesn't mean something isn't gelato if it has 10% or more milk fat -- it just means it's ice cream too. Gelato seems to me to be a somewhat flexible concept. After all, it's just the Italian synonym for ice cream, glace, etc. There's a general stylistic difference, but also some overlap. While we can point to 4-8% as the standard range, the milk fat percentage is only part of what gives Italian-style gelato its character. There's also its density, due to having less air incorporated into it than ice cream tends to have -- that's part of why gelato, even when it has only 4-8% milk fat, tastes quite rich. The way it's held and served is also important to the experience. Real gelato freezers are not the same as ice-cream freezers. Also, because gelato has been trendy in the US for 25+ years now (starting in California in the early 1980s), it's probably necessary to acknowledge an American style of gelato. I think the Ciao Bella and Il Lab products lean much more towards the American style, whereas Cones and, presumably, Grom, lean more towards the Italian style.

You seem to have a definition in mind. Perhaps you'll share it?

Okay, see, I need a lot more help. I've never heard of "Diary of a Foodie" (or many of these other shows), I don't know what channel it's on or when, I don't know what it's about, I'm very suspicious of any show that makes "foodie" claims, etc. Can you help me out here?

Admit it: when you go shopping, you grab a few extra produce bags, or brown paper or plastic shopping bags, or twist ties. This is the place to fess up about your kleptomaniac supermarket habits. I'll start. I used to be a minor offender. Up until 2001, I would only take bags that were technically earmarked for the groceries I was buying. This was mostly an efficiency thing: I wouldn't bag a lot of my produce at the store, but later I might bag it for efficient division at home. Then we got a dog. Well, you need a lot of bags when you have a dog in the city. It's just the reality. So I would grab a few extra bags each week. Then we had a baby. You get the idea. Yes, I know I could buy bags. But we're talking about mental illness here. Tell all.

As soon as the service tech shows up, a broken appliance will start working again. As soon as the service tech leaves, it will resume being broken. (I don't work in a restaurant, but have seen this happen in several places where I've trailed.)

The opening of Grom on the Upper West Side presents, I think, a good opportunity to look at the state of gelato in NYC in 2007. So, what are our current thoughts on the merits of gelato old and new? Ciao Bella, Il Laboratorio del Gelato, Cones, Grom . . . what's the pecking order and why?

Though I love television dearly, I rarely watch food programming. Except for the bits and pieces I've caught while changing channels, I haven't seen any of the current crop of Food Network shows, and I don't even know what food programs are on the other channels. So I'm asking, from the perspective of someone who has no current experience with food television and who is interested only in high-quality programming with meaningful food content, what should I be watching? Is there anything great out there, or is it really all as bad as the snippets I've seen on the Food Network?

One thing I wanted to say is that pastry chef Ben Roche deserves special recognition. You don't hear his name nearly as often as you hear Homaro Cantu's name, however Roche is certainly responsible for his fair share of the pleasure of a Moto meal. (Alana, I wish I had enough experience/perspective to start a topic on the state of molecular gastronomy and the culinary avant garde today, but alas I haven't been to enough of the key restaurants.)

A few years ago, $10 a stem would have been a great price even for C-level Riedel, however stemware has come down in price so much that $10 a stem is now more than you need to pay for really good glasses. You should be able to find the Spiegelau Vino Grande glasses for more like $7 a stem (sets of 6 for around $42), or less if you can figure out a way to get a bunch of them from a restaurant supplier. If you watch Amazon they often put these on sale with free shipping. And I have a slight preference for Spiegelau over all but the top-of-the-line Riedel glasses.

So I just got back from a trip to Chicago where, among other things, I checked out the All Things Organic trade show. The thing that struck me most about the exhibits, and also that I notice whenever I visit the organic section at my local market (Fairway in New York City), was what a high percentage of the organic food industry's effort seems to be focused on creating junk food. You name just about any junk food, and there's now an organic equivalent. Every kind of snack crisp, cookie, candy and frozen convenience food has been reproduced. Of course, the grains are organic and there are various artificial ingredients omitted. I suppose organic junks foods can in many cases be a little more healthful than their conventional equivalents. Maybe evaporated cane juice is just a little less terrible for us than high fructose corn syrup -- or maybe not. But doesn't this emphasis on junk food cut against the whole organic philosophy, to the extent there is one anymore? Isn't the idea for foods to be natural and good for you?

I was lucky enough to visit Alinea and Moto in the same three-day trip. I wish I had the power and the funding to send every eGullet Society member to both restaurants back-to-back. It was one of the great culinary experiences of my life. Whereas Alinea strives for something akin to a Michelin three-star experience, Moto is much funkier. It has already been noted that it’s on a stretch of meat-packing warehouse buildings way the heck out on Fulton where the curbs are about three feet high, it feels like you’re walking into a contemporary art gallery or the shop of a designer who’s so famous he doesn’t have to put anything in the window, the interior has an industrial edge, there’s Buddha-Bar-esque music playing (Alinea is music-free). The servers are downtown (one of them actually looks like he should be a close relative of Wylie Dufresne), enthusiastic and have a great sense of hospitality. There are many Asian influences and witty postmodern riffs on American comfort food, and the beverage program is free-wheeling, incorporating beer, sake and some unusual wines. An evening at Moto is great fun. The edible menu came on a parmesan crisp with a little microgreen salad propping up one end. It was really tasty. It doesn’t technically count as a course – verbally they say 18 courses for the big tasting menu, but in print it’s 20 and if you count everything it’s more like 22 -- but it’s a refreshing, whimsical amuse. The first official course was the “nitro sushi roll,” which was actually more of a tartare. The fish was opa I believe, and it would have been a great dish even if only served the normal way. However, after the dish was presented, a server brought a vapor-spewing saucepan to the table and scooped out a bunch of liquid-nitrogen-frozen pellets of sesame oil to garnish the dish, elevating it to another level: The next course, called “Italian food” on the menu, was a pair of cold soups, one of which tasted like pizza and the other like Caesar salad. The Caesar salad one was particularly successful. This dish was paired with Unibroue’s 2005 vintage Chambly beer – probably the best pairing in an evening of many great pairings. A beet cake was garnished with beets and bacon bits as well as beet sauces: The “gin & tonic fizz” was prepared at the table. There was a small amount of liquid in the glass, and then another liquid was pumped in from a gigantic syringe that made me think along animal husbandry lines. When the binary components combined, the beverage fizzed up. Ramp and goat cheese snow, presumably another dish owed to liquid nitrogen: This dish, called “tombo & miso,” was great – the miso soup, standing alone, was one of the best I’d ever had, and it was paired with a beautiful piece of fish. The fish was sitting on a metal grid that I eventually realized was frozen. As the fish spent more time in contact with the metal, the bottom of it took on a frozen texture. I had seen these utensils at the Cooper-Hewitt museum during the “Feeding Desire” exhibition, but had forgotten that they were designed by Homaro Cantu. In this presentation, there were herb sprigs tucked into the spiral, giving a whiff of herbs with each bite. The dish, called “caramel apple with bacon,” was served on an intimidating metal contraption that held the utensils suspended in the air. The pork was under the apple: This mysterious item was placed on the table and set on fire. Actually some compound on the plate was flammable and was ignited with a blowtorch at the table, giving the appearance of the black stuff being the result of the fire. This became the centerpiece for a few courses, before being combined with a dish later. A little palate cleanser of lemon, basil and pickled cucumber: A bouillabaisse-like stock with clams and some weird noodles was, like the miso soup, a fine example of its kind, given an unusual edge by the noodles. “Jalapeno and cilantro” This dish, called bbq pork “with the fixin’s,” was one of my favorites. The black things from the middle of the table were finally revealed to be pieces of white toast colored with squid ink. You use it to sop up the barbecue sauce. There was also a sort of granulated white-bread garnish. “Chicken fried mac-n-cheese” – the pieces of macaroni were crispy, and I think the white stuff was a cheese powder. Probably my favorite dish – the one I’d like to be eating right now – was the “steak and eggs.” This had a hash-brown cube, a quail (I assume) egg cooked into the shape of a cube with a just-set yolk, a few slices of beef and streaks of bacony sauce. The transition course, on the left was white chocolate mixed with cheese and rigatoni-shaped tubes made from fruit; on the right, under the crisp, were apples. This dish, called “3 cotton candy stages” consisted of deep-fried cotton candy, a cotton-candy truffle-type candy, and a piece of edible paper flavored like cotton candy. Also, in the background, they put down the “carrot cake planet” at this time, but it was not supposed to be tampered with until later. “Flapjacks prepared tableside.” They brought out a portable antigriddle – a very, very cold sheet of metal – and “cooked” a “flapjack” on it, which was then plated up in a spoon that held some excellent maple syrup. The carrot cake planet had been softening up for a bit, and collapsed dramatically when touched with my spoon. The “cherry bomb” was three preparations of cherries, including a cherry cola sorbet. “Doughnut soup” was, indeed, a soup that tasted like doughnuts. The final course was trompe l’oiel “chili-cheese nachos” made from various fruits and sweets. Definitely sent the brain into overdrive, because the disconnect between the visual and the flavor was so dramatic. At the end of the meal they also gave a printed (on regular paper) menu: And these were the wine pairings for the evening: