Fat Guy

So we were just cleaning out a cabinet and came across a whole mess of hot sauces from, I'm pretty sure, Honduras (Saba is in Honduras, right?). One is called Don Julio, and I'll have you know it's "100% Caliente!" Another is D'Olancho Anejo ("Mejor Sabor!"). Also, there's Dona Zene. Then there's one called Tremenndo, with two "n"s. Maybe that one is from El Salvador. Anyway, I'll have to do some tasting, but I imagine these cover at least the Latin end of the hot sauce spectrum. Hot sauces don't degrade too much over time, do they?

It has been somewhere between five and six weeks now, and today I checked in again on my extracts. Still judging only by aroma, they've come far. They still have a long way to go, but most of the awful industrial aromas I was getting before are gone -- especially in the rum and whiskey versions (the vodka one still smells a little toxic). So, agitated and replaced, to be checked on again whenever.

The only one I know of on Mulberry is the aforementioned Tasty Dumpling, but who knows? These places seem to open at the rate of real estate brokerage offices.

I was talking to a manager tonight at a restaurant that uses the NYC-blue side towels. He said he thinks that the blue towels are actually white bar mop towels, and that what happens is that after several hundred washings they flatten out and become useless as bar mops but acquire superior properties as towels for kitchen use. So they dye them blue and they become the side towels for cooks. I haven't yet confirmed this, but this guy says he's going to connect me with the laundry service. We'll see where it goes. If you never hear from me again, check in Long Island City.

Another bad photo, but it's a real-life illustration of what one would do with a Le Creuset pot. This is a piece of brisket that has been braising on the stovetop for about two and a half hours. The flame is on. So this is the worst-case scenario -- you get less condensation in the oven, I've found. As you can see, while there's some condensation and also some greasing up of the glass, there's still plenty enough visibility (even with the reflection of the flash) to tell how fast your simmer is and what your meat looks like. Needless to say, with a metal lid you'd have to remove it every time you wanted to check. I've even found that, in the oven, if I position the pot right, I can look through the oven door, through the lid and ascertain the proper simmer without having to open the door no less the lid.

Finally made it by Glendale today. They have three shapes available: a traditional pretzel shape, a stick and a round roll. I chose the round roll because it looked particularly appetizing. I got two of them, and as I walked out of the shop I noticed that the bag was warm. Much to my surprise and delight, the rolls were still warm from the oven. So I ate one. It was fantastic. Due only to my undying loyalty to the eGullet Society, I preserved the second one long enough to photograph it:

The company is based around here (New York metro area) so we see them at many of the better stores. The Meyer lemon flavor is terrific. I would also suggest you try the grapefruit -- it's probably my favorite of the ones I've tried. I drink so little soda that, to me, the cost isn't much of an issue. For someone who drinks a six-pack a day it might be more relevant.

Wine doesn't really have the acidity needed to make a good vinaigrette-type dressing, so if you want to do a wine-based dressing you'll want to be sure to compensate by adding something like lemon juice for acidity.

A side note: you may have noticed soupsister's post above. As you can see from her signature line, her name is Judy and she's with the Terra Spice company. Based in Indiana, Terra Spice provides many top restaurants with spices. More relevant to this discussion, however, Terra Spice is a source of retail quantities (as opposed to the 50-gallon drums this stuff usually comes in) of so-called industrial ingredients -- the chemicals that are in use at every restaurant in the molecular gastronomy orbit. Terra sells things like calcium lactate gluconate, four varieties of methyl cellulose, and sodium alginate. Terra doesn't officially do individual sales, but if you just call them up (number on website) they'll most likely accommodate you.

The message on schwa's voicemail says the restaurant is closed 1-15 April and will be reopening on 16 April. For what it's worth, 16 April is a Monday.

Professor Margolskee, in addition to being an academic researcher, is the founder of a private corporation, Redpoint Bio, which focuses on commercial applications for bitter blockers and taste enhancers.

If a restaurant chooses not to accept credit cards, and loses sales as a result, the servers lose tip income. They benefit from the credit card arrangement in lock step with the restaurant. Though credit card tips provide fewer opportunities for tax evasion.

I guess I don't see the problem with most of those examples of tip splitting. If a sommelier is out on the floor pouring wine and is paid by the hour, why shouldn't he or she be in the tip pool? And who is supposed to pay the credit card fee? It's certainly generous if a restaurant chooses to pay it, but that shouldn't be a requirement. If a customer leaves a $100 tip and the credit card company charges $3 to process it, it's entirely reasonable for the servers to get $97. As a legal matter, you can't share tips with the kitchen, but as an ethical matter I would have absolutely no problem with it. By using a service charge instead of gratuities, Per Se is able to include BOH staff in the pool.

Okay, so far: -Tru -Avec -Naha -Custom House and -We're not exactly certain about schwa -- how can we find out for sure? -Trotter's is open the occasional Monday

As I mentioned in the opening post, santo_grace reported on the schwa topic that the restaurant is now open on Mondays:

Sounds like Molteni, or possibly Bonnet. The ones I've seen have been finished in stainless, but I believe both companies produce blue, red and other colored units too.

Most of Chicago's top restaurants seem to be closed on Mondays. Sometimes, however, one needs to plan a good dinner out on a Monday -- perhaps for business, or an important occasion that falls on Monday. So, what to do? I've heard that schwa is open on Mondays now (the website doesn't reflect it, but santo_grace reported a shift to a Monday-Friday schedule on the schwa topic). I know Charlie Trotter's opens a few Mondays a year, when certain conventions are in town or whatever. What else? I'm talking about ambitious cuisine, not steakhouses and other places that are likely on seven-day schedules anyway.

I don't think it has to do with expectations, at least for me it doesn't. As someone who has dined at the Bar Room a lot, I can say that I think it took a dip right when it got the three-star review. I don't know if it's back to original form yet -- I was about to go the other night but had to cancel. Also, there was a change in executive sous chef (that's who runs the Bar Room kitchen on a day-to-day basis) towards the end of last year, from the opening sous, a gentleman named Willis, to Ari Bokovza. I wouldn't be surprised if it took a few months to get everything back up to speed -- that's pretty normal.

On the experimentalcuisine.org website, there's a "Future Workshops" page. The planned workshops are divided into "Origins and Development" (examination and demonstration of the work of This, McGee, Adria, et al.); "The Science of Food" (discussion of food science); "The Culture of Food" (how culture shapes ideas about food); "Experiential Cuisine, Restaurants, and Multi-Sensorial Performance" (dining-oriented sessions led by Will Goldfarb); and "Practical Application: Developing A Food-Based Science Curriculum" (oriented towards elementary-school students). Some of the descriptions list pretty specific plans, e.g., "Yeliz Utku, graduate student in chemistry, will present her recent findings on the development of an unusual lyophilized (freeze-dried) material prepared from coconut milk." Others are more general. Needless to say, in most cases when new groups announce such plans they revise them substantially over time. So it's not clear that all these events will actually happen, or that others won't. But the list gives a good look at the group's vision, and the academic weight and resources of NYU are strong indicators of long-term support.

To reiterate, since the overwhelming majority of Frank Bruni's readers (it could easily be 99%) will never eat at the restaurants in question, an overly narrow focus on consumer-oriented dish-by-dish analysis would not necessarily hold the interest of that readership.

The Experimental Cuisine Collective is a group, formed by Will Goldfarb, chef-owner of Room 4 Dessert, and members of New York University’s departments of nutrition, food studies, public health and chemistry, that “seeks to use scientific principles and experiments to produce advances in cooking.” In other words, it is a manifestation of the molecular gastronomy movement. I am, apparently, an honorary member. Today was the group’s inaugural event, a symposium titled “Experimental Cuisine: Science, Society, and Food.” It was a small-venue event (only 100 invitations were extended, mostly to chefs, academics and media) in NYU's Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò on West 12th Street. The keynote speaker was the French food scientist Hervé This. I had never heard Professor This speak, and was until today only familiar with him from the English translation of his book, “Molecular Gastronomy.” While the book contains a lot of interesting information, I actually found it a bit aggravating. Perhaps it’s my typically American attitude, but I much prefer the organized, in-depth presentations of McGee. In the This book, more questions are asked than answered, and the playful tone of the essays gets to be a bit much. As soon as This started speaking live, however, his charisma and enthusiasm won me over (as well as most members of the audience). He is a truly gifted public speaker, for which he gets double credit since he was speaking in English, which is needless to say not his native tongue. The playfulness, the questioning, they all came across in a completely different way when experienced live. He was like the fantastic chemistry professor you never had. At one point, he asked for a chef and a scientist to volunteer from the audience. Franklin Becker, executive chef of Brasserie in New York, volunteered to make mayonnaise while another volunteer (a chemistry professor) observed. The stated goal of the experiment was to demonstrate the effect of lemon juice on the color of mayonnaise, however it never got that far. Instead, as soon as Becker picked up an egg, Professor This shifted into Socratic method and started peppering poor Chef Becker with a million questions and challenges. It was amazing to see a great mind deconstruct something as seemingly simple as mayonnaise. Even the choice of whisk was questioned: “Why did you choose that whisk?” “Because I liked the handle.” “You don’t beat the mayonnaise with the handle, though, do you?” Professor This spoke for almost an hour. The next speaker was Robert F. Margolskee, a professor of neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He gave a detailed presentation on the state of scientific research on taste receptors. He explained, as best he could to a non-scientific audience, how the different types of taste receptors work. And he discussed several experiments he and others are conducting with enhancers and inhibitors, which he thinks are going to be critical to the future of food science. For example, a sweetness enhancer could take a tiny amount of sugar and make the taste buds perceive it as a lot of sugar. So you could make a bottle of Coca-Cola with one teaspoon of sugar, but it would taste exactly like Coca-Cola. Or, you could use a bitterness inhibitor to make bitter foods (and pharmaceuticals) less bitter. Wylie Dufresne, chef-owner of WD-50, spoke about the practical application of molecular gastronomy to cooking. He narrated along with a DVD of a trompe l’oeil dish of “lentils” and “carrots” made from mole and papaya respectively, and served with foie gras. Dufresne turned out to be an engaging speaker, and he also passed out snacks: samples of his version of Funyuns, along with real Frito-Lay Funyuns for comparison. The last presentation was by the multitalented Mitchell Davis, vice-president for communications of the James Beard Foundation, and a cookbook author, teacher and academic. He endeavored to place molecular gastronomy and the culinary avant garde in historical context. His presentation was quite thorough, with tons of historical and contemporary references, and he moved through the material with incredible speed in order to stick to the conference schedule. The theme that resonated the most with me was that experimental cuisine has been with us in various forms for a long time. He put several quotes up on the screen without attribution, and they all sounded incredibly modern as though they could have been written about Ferran Adria or culinary modernism, but they turned out to be from Careme, Escoffier and other figures from culinary history. Finally, all the speakers sat for a panel discussion moderated by Florence Fabricant of the New York Times. I’m not sure there was much point in the panel discussion. I think it would have been preferable for the individual presenters to take questions from the audience at the conclusions of their talks. But Ms. Fabricant did a good job, and she needed to because Professor This is kind of a force of nature and is not exactly easy to harness. Afterwards there was a reception at Room 4 Dessert, at which I ate a ton of sugar on an empty stomach. It seemed that all in attendance (it was like a who’s who of the New York culinary scene, plus me) were pleased with the event and looking forward to more from the Experimental Cuisine Collective. I’m pretty jaded when it comes to seminars. I reject most invitations because I know they’ll be boring, the speakers won’t be well prepared and the method of presentation is usually inefficient (five hours to get what you could get from eG Forums posts in 20 minutes). But Will Goldfarb promoted this event so enthusiastically, I had to check it out. And I’m glad I did. It was a great afternoon.

There are plenty of restaurants, particularly ones where recent immigrants comprise the whole staff, where some or even all of the tips go back to the restaurant's owners. It's totally illegal. However, that doesn't mean Telepan is doing it -- we just don't know.

I'm also wondering if the fact that clams are mostly pre-purged now has anything to do with the difficulty of reproducing the old flavor.

Right at the beginning, I think.

Also, I forgot to mention pureed clams as a thickening ingredient. I saw this done in one restaurant kitchen: a bunch of cheap clams in the food processor. (It was also the Ducasse/Psaltis method for thickening clam chowder at Mix in New York, though they used razor clams.)