Fat Guy

It is certainly vulgar, childish and embarrassing. But more importantly, it's irresponsible.

A few random thoughts: The LA Weekly announcement contains several photos of Gold. I personally have not problem with critics being photographed, however the general mythology in the newspaper business is that, in the interests of anonymity, they wear funny hats and Groucho glasses when photographed. Gold's work for LA weekly has been terrific, and the Pulitzer people are correct when they describe his reviews as "wide ranging," however the clear strength of that wide range is in the cheap eats area. It's interesting and laudable that the Pulitzer people had the wherewithal to acknowledge Gold, rather than a more traditional fine-dining critic. Related to that, I though Gold's work at Gourmet was weak, and I can't imagine why he was considered for National Magazine Awards while there. His work for LA Weekly (as well as his pre-Gourmet work) is orders of magnitude better.

Interesting. I just haven't gotten that vibe from Chikalicious. Maybe I don't fully grasp the place. A few East-meets-West points of interest in the new paradigm places: - Upstairs has a sushi bar - Degustation is attached to Jewel Bako, a Japanese restaurant - Momo-Ssam serves country hams, Noodle Bar serves grits, etc. - If we're including Chikalicious, of course Chika is Japanese

Why did you think that? It sounds like a review of another expensive restaurant with mediocre food - not unusual for a lot of places - especially in Florida. Robyn ← "Hopscotching over a used condom and a pair of old underwear . . . ."

I've seen a Le Creuset glass lid at one of the outlets -- it was part of the wok set -- and it was pretty nice. I didn't realize they made glass lids for other pieces -- I don't see them on the Le Creuset website, so I wonder what's going on there. The problem with the Le Creuset lid I saw was that, just like Le Creuset metal lids, it had that stupid black phenolic resin handle in the middle. Those things are just bad design: they crack easily and they come loose easily. I'm sure this is because Le Creuset wants to keep its whole product line cosmetically coordinated, but metal loop handles are superior.

The event has become too big, too popular, and is never executed well enough because there's no opportunity for rehearsal. These are the facts. At the same time, several of the greatest barbecue pitmasters (Chris Lilly! Mike Mills! Ed Mitchell!) will be in New York City for two days only, serving their barbecue. If that's not worth a hundred bucks and a few hours to someone, that's certainly understandable. But it's worth it to a lot of folks -- thus the lines.

Your best bet is to be or know a regular at a restaurant that uses Four Story Hill's products, and to ask the chef if you can be included in an order. Happens all the time. If you want something close in quality, however, the D'Artagnan products farmed by Eberly and others are quite excellent.

I don't know the specific laws where you are, but as a general theoretical question of property this is probably a situation of custody. In general, in property law, once the property is in the establishment's custody, it's the establishment's responsibility. It's the same as if you'd checked a coat and it had been stolen. At least, that's what you'd argue. Also, the restaurant's insurance policy may very well have coverage for this sort of instance -- something the restaurant won't likely admit or even try to find out unless there's a threat of litigation. If you do choose to pursue this, I suggest you get the restaurant to admit to custody in writing or on tape. Otherwise, it may just be denied. If the owner never claimed the mislaid property it would become the property of the establishment. So there is a potential benefit to balance the potential liability. Proper handling of lost-and-found items is part of doing business. Any place of public accommodation needs to have procedures for this. It's not like this is a huge surprise burden. You'll be doing everyone a favor by pursuing the matter.

Thanks for pulling together all those strands of information, LPShanet. Surely, the new paradigm owes a debt of gratitude to tapas in general and modern haute tapas specifically. I'd say that in North America the other debt is to the East, to the sushi bar as well as to modern izakaya restaurants. Vancouver has played host to several trend-markers in this regard, starting with the first Bin restaurant in 1998 and moving through the more recent izakaya craze. When you look at a place like Momofuku, which so effortlessly juxtaposes Western and Eastern haute tapas styles, it has something much closer to a Pacific Rim/West Coast vibe than anything identifiably Spanish. Although, I wouldn't totally saddle it with a Pacific Rim designation, because it is so firmly rooted in the East Village -- New York is very good at making imported trends uniquely its own. On the dessert front, I'm not sure how well Chikalicious fits into the trend. I see Chikalicious as an improved version of what came before: Finale in Boston, Sugar in Chicago, etc. I'm pretty sure that Finale, at least, predates Espai Sucre, but it's just not the same species of restaurant, and I don't really think Chikalicious is either. Espai Sucre is quite a bit more ambitious than anything I've tried -- it's attempting to create dessert meals, and also using a healthy dose of molecular gastronomy in the process. I'm sure that Espai Sucre was a direct influence on Room 4 Dessert, perhaps not so much on Chikalicious. But Room 4 Dessert, like Momofuku, is as much about a moment as about the food it serves. If one doesn't view these places as complete experiences (and I'm not accusing you of this at all, but rather some other folks who seem just not to get what's going on here), there's no way to comprehend that moment. It's the whole experience of Room 4 Dessert or Momofuku, especially all the interaction with the servers and cooks (in some ways Noodle Bar is more of the moment than Ssam because of its open design), not to mention the customers to your left and right, that make these places what they are.

How this place completely escaped my notice, even though I've been in its extended neighborhood for 16 years (since 1991), and even though it has been in business for 35 years (since 1972), I do not know. I actually had a close friend living on that block for many years, and I must have walked by the restaurant 300 times and never noticed it. I was invited to celebrate a friend's birthday there and, when I got the invitation, I was like "What the heck is this place?" Upon arrival, the first person I saw (totally unrelated to the party) was a friend from law school who lives in the East 60s. He was there with his wife and two-year-old girl. "Oh, we come hear like twice a week." Then we saw another couple we know, and they were like, "We used to come here all the time when we lived in the neighborhood; now we drive in from Westchester whenever we can." Now, don't get your hopes up. Malaga is not El Bulli. I'm sure nothing about the restaurant or the menu has changed much since 1972. The food is not fabulous. But it is quite satisfying. Wonderful homemade potato chips, addictive chorizo, shrimp covered in copious amounts of garlic sauce, mariscado (mixed seafood) with a green sauce (parsley, onions, Sherry and garlic) I wanted to put on everything else. The only really weak dish I tried was the paella, which was just not worthy (bland rice, no integration of flavors) -- though it perked up a bit with the addition of some green sauce from the mariscado. Portions are pretty big, and I would recommend treating it a bit like Chinese food and coordinating a whole-table order so you can mix and match from a few different dishes. We had to leave before dessert, but the desserts we saw looked mediocre. Malaga Restaurant 406 East 73rd Street (just East of First Avenue) New York, NY 10021 212.737.7659 http://www.malaganyc.com

So I was at a Spanish restaurant the other night and they brought out a big stainless platter of garlic bread. We were admonished not to touch the platter, because it was very hot. Indeed, it was very hot (any time I'm told not to touch a plate because it's too hot, I touch it to see how hot it is). However, it was a long table, so it was impossible for the people at one end to reach the platter. I folded up my napkin -- a red cloth napkin -- and used it to grab the plate. Everybody was alarmed. "Careful!" "That's not going to work!" etc. Of course it worked fine. Indeed, everybody conveniently forgot that when the waiter brought it out he was holding it with an identical napkin, folded. This was not the eGullet Society crowd, but the fact that they didn't even believe a folded cloth napkin could function as a viable alternative to a pot holder reminded me of how very young and fragile the revolution is.

This is a watershed event in the history of food writing: the first-ever Pulitzer for food criticism.

This year's Big Apple Barbecue Block Party will be on 9 and 10 June 2007. For complete details please see the calendar entry. Please use this topic for food-related discussion pertaining to the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, past, present and future. For past coverage, please see the following topics: Big Apple Barbecue Block Party 2003 "Live" from the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party '04 Big Apple Barbecue Block Party '05 2006 Big Apple BBQ Block Party: let the drooling commence And don't forget: The official eG TV Big Apple Barbecue Video Foodcast

Agreed, although restaurant selection is important too. Many restaurants are so soulless and generic that the only way to improve your experience is to go there a hundred times and fight a huge uphill battle to get them to make the good stuff and then serve it to you. This may be a workable strategy if you move to a bad restaurant town and it's your only option, however if you're traveling the better bet is to select places where there are at least signs of life.

I concur. The Sausage & Egg McMuffin (this is the current official nomenclature, though it used to be Sausage McMuffin with Egg, which is still used on the nutrition facts sheet, and the actual people in the restaurants say "Sausage Egg Mac") is a really nice breakfast sandwich. I abandoned the Egg McMuffin (with inferior Canadian bacon) about a minute after I was introduced to the Sausage Egg Mac. The thing I don't like about fast food breakfast menus, however, is that it's almost impossible now to get the regular food in the morning. It used to be that you could go to McDonald's whenever it was open and get fries. Now you have to wait until late morning. I love some of the 24-hour McDonald's places on the interstates out West, where you can get both menus all the time.

I'm not sure either one of those statements is entirely correct. It is worth noting that there are types of food poisoning that can survive heat. However, I would not go so far as to say that toxins are the big concern in the world of foodborne illness. There may be types of food poisoning from toxins of which I'm not aware, but my understanding is that the big one is staphylococcal food poisoning. It is indeed caused by toxins produced by the staph. And it's quite common. However, it tends not to be serious. According to the National Restaurant Association: There are also a couple of other types of food poisoning in which toxins are implicated, like Clostridium perfringens and Clostridium botulinum. But the big categories of dangerous foodborne illness, like E. coli, salmonella, listeriosis, hepatitis A and Norwalk virus are not toxin-related. In terms of refrigeration souring the stock, I've never heard of that and have never experienced it.

There's a pretty articulate defense of Telepan posted by a server here. In part: (Seen on Eater)

The New York Times yesterday did a more detailed piece on the Asian restaurant delivery labor situation. One interesting bit of information:

Here's the thing: if everything else is equal, then BTU/hr ratings are a good measure of performance. For example, if you get one of those ranges with four burners, where one of the burners is 16,000 BTU/hr and the others are 10,000 BTU/hr, then the 16,000 burner is going to heat a pot of water significantly faster than the 10,000 burner. When you compare two different ranges, however, all things are not equal. The BTU/hr rating is only a very rough indication of what kind of practical power you're talking about. Everything from burner design to burner-grate material to calibration can make a huge difference in what you experience as a cook. The type of cooking you're doing can also make a difference.

I wouldn't make any assumptions about the value of the information. Let me illustrate with an anecdote: I was at a "well known fine dining restaurant" a few years ago and had a similar "can't quite put my finger on why" disappointing experience. It just seemed like absolutely everything was one notch lower than it should have been. I wasn't going to mention anything, because I didn't really have much to say, but then I got an email from a manager saying, "How was your meal?" And so I replied that it was good but not great, that something felt off. And then I heard back that it had been a disastrous day at the restaurant: several call-outs, screwed-up deliveries, the steam system malfunctioned (therefore the steam-jacket kettles, aka giant stockpots, weren't working), the wrong bread delivered, etc. And the reason the manager had asked me how my meal was is that she wanted to know if customers had noticed. So that information -- that I had noticed something -- turned out to be valuable to her in the performance of her job. Which means I should have offered it up unprompted, because how often is a manager going to email you to ask for that kind of information?

Just to be clear, there's a difference between spoilage and contamination. In most introductions to food safety, you're taught that food can look, smell and taste fresh and delicious, but still be contaminated and therefore a vehicle for food poisoning. For its part, spoilage is basically what happens when something gets old. Refrigeration generally retards spoilage, as do various other technologies. But most fresh foods -- maybe not raw, dead shellfish, but most foods -- can be left out for a day or more (often much more, as in the case of an apple or a grapefruit) without spoiling. It's possible for food that's quite fresh, however, to become contaminated by bacteria. So, your stock is just not likely to spoil in eight hours. It may, however, grow harmful bacteria, which may be odorless, colorless and flavorless. Beef stock is, indeed, used in labs as a medium for growing bacteria, because it provides such favorable conditions. It's true that boiling will kill bacteria, so if you're only serving the stock to yourself and you're comfortable with the risk then sure, boiling is an option. I wouldn't suggest serving it to a restaurant full of people, though -- you never know if every bit of what you're dealing with has reached the right temperature. Cross-contamination is also a fear. That being said, I've left stock out that long and used it -- I can't recommend it, but I've done it.

It applies to American cuisine too. Most diners have the same menu (with minor regional variations), etc. The reality is that in any segment of the restaurant business conformity is the rule. Very few places break away from it, in part because of the risk involved, and in part because of customer resistance, but also because there's significant effort and input required to invent rather than copy.

Assuming there are distinctions -- handling, slicing, specifications -- that make the same type of salmon from the same supplier different, the problem with every comparison I've heard of is sample size. Even if a resource-heavy publication like the New York Times does a product comparison, it tends to be based on one sample from each establishment. But when you're dealing with a natural product, with variation from fish to fish (especially if it's wild-caught), and with differences in slicing technique from person to person even within the same store . . . well, you would have to work with a lot of samples from each place in order to do any sort of meaningful comparison of ACME fish versus ACME fish. Edited to add: Rubin Caslow, 86, Leader of a Smoked-Fish Dynasty, Dies

The Herald review, by Victoria Pesce Elliott, is pretty rude. I don't even understand the context of "Walking into the futuristic, water-themed oasis from gritty Northwest 14th Street provides the first of many mind-blowing contrasts that make an evening here so disappointing. Hopscotching over a used condom and a pair of old underwear, we cross a sturdy moat and make our way through a corridor of waterfalls along a glass walkway set over Mediterranean-blue water." I'm hoping she means the condom and underwear were outside the restaurant, in which case it seems gratuitous to mention them, kind of like "There was some dog shit outside of [any restaurant] in [any city], quite a contrast with the inside, where there was no dog shit." Anyway, my question is this: the name of the restaurant is "Karu Restaurant & Y." What's the "Y" about? Is it part of a YMCA?

In many, many restaurants -- maybe even a majority -- I see in use the same design of stainless steel water pitcher. It's a large cylinder with part of the top flared out to act as an open spout. Over the top of the spout, there's a flat piece of metal attached that narrows the opening in order to prevent chunks of ice from pouring out. There's just one problem with this design: it doesn't work. Well, it works in that it prevents large chunks of ice from pouring out. But it also prevents water from coming out in sufficient quantity to fill all the glasses on an eight-top in less than an hour. As a result, almost uniformly, servers use the side-pour with these pitchers. In other words, instead of pouring from the spout, they pour from the side of the pitcher -- ice and all -- thus totally defeating the purpose of the stupid design. Am I the only person who wonders why these pitchers are still made, and why restaurants still buy them?