Fat Guy

I'm not sure I understand the comment. I don't know anyone who thinks Union Square Cafe is the real flagship of the operation these days (except in name only), and we all know that Gramercy Tavern is in transition. These comments seemed to me unremarkable. Are you thinking that I'm talking about Union Square Cafe as such? I'm talking about the Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), which is the corporation that manages all of the "Danny Meyer restaurants." (Danny Meyer, though the driving force and most public figure in the operation, doesn't exactly own them; he owns various percentages of them along with partners and investors.) My point is that Bruni has various theories about USHG, an operation that he has no real feel for, and that Eleven Madison Park and Daniel Humm got caught up in those theories instead of getting a real review. Bruni's contempt for USHG -- for whatever reason he's annoyed by Danny Meyer's populist vision of fine dining -- can be seen in his earlier review of Eleven Madison Park. He undermines his early praise for friendly service with: and His current review is to some extent a retreat from and an apology for that failure of comprehension. It's the kind of review you get when a critic isn't significant enough to review significant restaurants.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a nation of fine diners. I suppose France comes the closest, but even there I doubt most people have much experience of haute cuisine. Historically most French people ate the peasant cuisines of their regions.

I was searching on the Orthodox Union website today and saw that there are about twenty imitation bacon products certified kosher by them. I mean, there's everything from "Quaker Instant Grits-Country Bacon w/Imitation Bacon Bits #394" to "Old London Bacon Melba Rounds" to more than a dozen different brands of imitation bacon bits. And these Orthodox Union people are, well, they're orthodox for sure, and in my experience their certification is considered definitive by the broadest spectrum of the orthodox community. So if they're saying all this fake bacon stuff is perfectly kosher, I don't understand how the spirit of the law enters into it. If there is a spirit of the law -- if that's even relevant to Judaism -- the Orthodox Union surely has thought about it and concluded that the spirit of the law has no problem with imitation bacon. And if there's no problem with imitation bacon, what could possibly be the problem with any other simulated product? Bacon is the thing, the most identifiable, big-deal unkosher thing. It's what everybody knows isn't kosher. I'm not observant at all, but even were I to wake up tomorrow and decide to become an observant Jew I don't think under any circumstances I'd feel the need to be more orthodox than the Orthodox Union.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you want to begin to understand American cuisine you need to start by reading 18 books. The Knopf Cooks American series, the brainchild of the brilliant Alfred A. Knopf editor Judith Jones, includes volume after volume on American regional cuisines. It would be conceptually impossible, after reading even just one of the volumes, to say there's no such thing as American cuisine -- unless you're making the point that there's no single American cuisine (which could also of course be said of France, Italy, China, etc.) To Busboy's list of "corn, tomatoes, the peanut and potatoes" I'd add chocolate and capsicum peppers. No discovery of the New World, no chocolate in France, no spicy food in China. However, many of the New World crops are from South America, not the territory that is now the United States. In terms of haute cuisine, there's a global style of haute cuisine that is French-derived (which, historically, is Italian-derived, etc.) and found everywhere from Paris to London to New York to Las Vegas to Sydney to nice hotels in major Asian cities -- a few of the most successful chefs are practicing in multiple cities around the world. But if you dine in several of these cities, you're not going to walk away saying the food is exactly the same in all of them. The local ingredients, approaches and restaurant styles create differentiation. Even Alain Ducasse's restaurants in New York and Paris are identifiably different. America also exports a lot more than junk food, and I'm not just talking about the fact that the pasta in Italy is made from American and Canadian wheat. I mean the top restaurateurs in France and elsewhere look to America for inspiration. They know food, but we know the restaurant business better than anyone. I assure you, if you ask any top chef from any country in the world if American restaurants are serious, you'll have that question answered in the affirmative -- if you don't get laughed at for even asking it.

Peter Meehan wrote a nice review of Zoma in today's New York Times "$25 and Under" column. I agree with his characterization of the difference between Zoma and most of the other local Ethiopians:

I think the Bar Room deserved all the praise Bruni gave it, and more (it's not as though he exhibited any actual comprehension of the food), and I eat there all the time and love it, but I've got to agree with Sneakeater that the star rating is silly. I can't imagine Gabriel Kreuther or Danny Meyer thinks the Bar Room is a three-star restaurant. I'm not even sure they'll be happy for the rating after the euphoria wears off, because people are going to be showing up with three-star expectations and getting, yes, amazing food, but not a three-star experience -- and that's just going to lead to disappointed customers. I also feel like it shortchanges Daniel Humm and Eleven Madison Park. They deserve not to be caught up in Bruni's half-baked theories of the Union Square Hospitality Group. And I think, again, as in the previous review of Eleven Madison Park, Bruni is handicapped by the fact that he hasn't done enough homework to make authoritative comments on the Union Square Hospitality Group as a whole. Yes, it's a lot of work to do that, but if he doesn't want to do the work he should shut up about it and just review the restaurants. Has he dined at Bread Bar or at Gramercy Tavern's Tavern? Those would be the places to hit in comparison to the Bar Room at the Modern. That's an actual category worth writing about, especially since the Union Square Hospitality Group pretty much owns the category.

They were always around when I was growing up in New York City. There is in fact a salmon croquette recipe in the New York Times Jewish Cookbook. I think the prevalence of this dish has got to do with, as you suggest, the widespread availability of canned salmon. I mean, what besides croquettes can you do with canned salmon that you can't do better for less money with canned tuna? You look at the salmon canners' websites and they have all these recipes that sound just awful -- "Asian-Alaska Salmon Noodle Soup" -- but salmon croquettes can be tasty.

Those things are good, however they're as they'd be served in France not here -- in other words they're mildly flavored versions. I'd go more with French and Mediterranean stuff. One place to focus is on the lunch specials, which sometimes include a very good cassoulet.

I think a fundamental question here is whether the kosher dietary laws are literal or symbolic. To take this to the logical extreme, skip forward to a science fiction scenario where all our food is created out of lab-grown protein or whatever. At that point, there's a choice to be made: either the kosher dietary laws are no longer relevant, or we have to avoid putting lab-grown protein that looks like dairy on the same plate as lab-grown protein that looks like meat.

It's a tricky neighborhood. Number 4 above, called El Paso, is quite good Mexican by New York standards (in other words, good not great). They have two branches, the other being farther up in El Barrio (Lex 103-104) -- it's not related to the El Paso on Houston St. I don't think there would be any problem there -- Ellen has had the filete a la Veracruzana (pan-seared striped bass fillet with salsa Veracruzana -- diced tomatoes, onions, caperr, jalapenos, cilantro and white wine -- served with rice and vegetables, $17.95) and enjoyed it. You can pull up a menu on Menupages. Falafel Express is a pretty good hole in the wall, but is carb heavy. There's a new takeout health food/soup/salad place, Salata, that's good but you need to have a place to sit and eat the food. The Sinai neighborhood is kind of a world unto itself, so to get away from that scene you have to go either south or east (west is Central Park, and north there isn't much within walking distance.) The cluster of best restaurants in the neighborhood is south, on Madison between 92nd and 93rd. This is the heart of the Carnegie Hill dining scene -- there are about seven restaurants on that block. Pascalou -- French bistro -- probably has the best chef of all of them, and at lunchtime there are some good deals. Then there's east, on Lexington and Third (there are basically no stores or restaurants on Park because of the way it's designed as a boulevard of grand residences). You're only talking about two half-avenue blocks to get from Madison to Lexington, and another half-avenue block to get to Third (Madison and Lexington are extra streets on the rectilinear grid -- if you went with normal avenue spacing it would just be Fifth, Park aka Fourth, Third) yet to a lot of the Sinai people it's a huge psychological barrier to walk the three minutes. The must-try newish place on Lexington, at 100th, is called Food, however it's only open for dinner, at least that was the case last time I checked. Once you get to Third Avenue you have a significant concentration of restaurants -- it's similar to Columbus Avenue in the 70s: the restaurants go on and on and on, with several per block. The block between 93rd and 94th is particularly dense with restaurants. Isohama is the best Japanese in the neighborhood, in my opinion. Kinsale Tavern has a great beer selection -- they have 30 beers on tap -- and far-above-average bar food. Barking Dog Cafe is nice. All that said, Pan, I can tell you that you'll be happiest if you can prevail upon your friend to walk the 15 minutes to Wu Liang Ye on 86th.

Yet, the supermarket beef is probably much fattier. Interesting.

According to John Mariani, "Upon opening in New York in 1986, the Le Cozes kept the Paris original going for a while but closed it when it became impossible to maintain both at their self-imposed high standards." Also, Eric Ripert recently did two restaurants for Ritz-Carlton in Grand Cayman. Not named Le Bernardin, though.

You can accept whatever you like. I accept none of it. But that doesn't change what it means. The basic definitions of the kosher dietary laws belong to the few who keep those laws. Once we're in that range of possibilities, sure, there's room for differentiation. But I'm aware of no permutation of the law that says it's unkosher to eat Tofutti ice cream with lamb because Tofutti ice cream is an imitation of a dairy product. And if there is such an interpretation out there somewhere, I'd say it fails on the law's own terms -- not because I don't believe in it, or because everybody gets to decide for himself, but rather because there is a body of law we can look at to evaluate a new claim like that. Moreover, "marit ayin" is neither part of the dietary laws nor a property of food. Were it to apply at all, it still wouldn't apply to someone sitting home alone eating a Tofutti ice cream and lamb sundae in front of the TV, so it's not about the kosherness of the food -- it's a separate issue.

There's no central authority that defines what it means to be a vegetarian, yet you'd have to be kind of ridiculous to go around saying you eat beef but you're a vegetarian because everybody gets to decide for himself what it means to be a vegetarian. If words have no meaning, there's no point in using them. It's somewhat possible to accommodate vegetarians who do or don't eat eggs and dairy, though it confuses the term and introduces the need for hyphenation (ovo-lacto-vegetarian). It gets really hard to follow when you include people who eat fish, but you can still hyphenate (pesce-vegetarian). But when you create the category of "bovi-vegetarian," the "vegetarian" part no longer means anything. Either way, I don't think it has anything to do with the conversation we're having here. I think this conversation assumes that we're talking about kashruth as determined by traditional sources. Nobody else is affected by the answer to the question of whether you can eat Tofutti ice cream with lamb, except maybe Ferran Adria.

Jack, if you're talking about issues around the edges of kashruth, such as "cholov Yisroel" milk certification, or if you're talking about specific points of controversy, such as whether sturgeon is unkosher because the fish lose their scales as they mature, then sure you can argue that there are varying interpretations. But pork? Shellfish? Mixing meat and dairy? These aren't gray areas. To say pork is kosher is to deprive the term kosher of meaning, which surely plenty of people would be happy to do but that doesn't mean it makes any sense. People who think pork is kosher because they eat it, because it's up to them to interpret things however they want and all interpretations are equally valid, are having a different conversation.

I'm sure we have plenty of folks around here who can dig deeper into the science of it, but if the meat is dry it's usually because it's overcooked -- you can braise for too long and that's what happens.

But Jack, they're not saying scallops are kosher because they eat them. They're saying they don't believe in keeping kosher therefore they eat scallops with impunity (like me). When they say they keep "their own form of kashruth" they're talking about a completely different thing -- they don't actually think or say they're keeping kosher by engaging in that practice, and if they do say it they're quite confused. It's like, the other day I was coveting my neighbor's wife, but I didn't say "Oh, the ten commandments have changed, my ten commandments are different, to each his own!" It was more "So I'm breaking a commandment; I don't really care because I don't believe in that commandment; sue me; whoever wrote that commandment didn't live in my neighborhood."

In New York the rule is 1 minute.

Lobel's, the preeminent Madison Avenue butcher, makes the following claim in the online "Official Lobel's Guide to Meat." Does prime meat really taste any different from choice after three and a half hours of braising? Also, assuming there are differences, why would the prime be better for braising? Prime steaks are better because of their marbled fat, but the whole point with braising cuts is that you create tenderness through long, slow cooking. Thoughts?

My argument isn't individual, Jack, and I've got no dog in this fight. I'm neither religious nor the slightest bit kosher. I have no particular lore. If you want to say there is no official Judaism and therefore everybody's personal interpretation of the religion is equally valid, then there's no reason even to have this conversation. If there is no law, how can there be a spirit of the law? But if we're talking about the laws of kashruth as defined by those who really keep those laws, we can make quite a few generalizations, because there are enough shared assumptions to do so. I also disagree that "Virtually all foods can be said to be kosher for x% of Jews but not for the rest." I think most Jews wouldn't say that, just because they eat pork, pork is kosher. Rather, they understand that pork isn't kosher, and that they just choose not to obey the law.

I think to say that a facsimile of a non-kosher product violates the "spirit of the law" is to assume that the spirit of the kosher dietary laws involves deprivation. Keeping kosher isn't really about deprivation. It's about fulfilling commandments. Again, I didn't get much support here, but these things are binary: substance X is either 100% kosher or 0% kosher; it can't be 34% kosher. Disagreement about a given substance doesn't change that -- once you select your authorities and your practices, the rest is binary. Judaism is largely action based -- you get credit for every action that fulfills a commandment whether you want it or not. If Bacos are kosher it doesn't matter if they look, smell and perform in blind tastings exactly as real pork bacon does. That's not what makes them kosher or not kosher.

I'd be reluctant to accept that sequenceless service is a preference of the younger set. Follow the money. It's simply more profitable and convenient for restaurants to offer this sort of service. Saying it's what the people want is a suspicious claim under those circumstances. Were I to believe that restaurateurs were just dying to serve food in order, but that younger customers were complaining about it, then that would be one thing. But I think it's more accurate to say that young people will tolerate it and have even come to associate it with cool places.

The way I see it, any opening that introduces a new restaurant concept is by definition a test of that concept. And such tests are cheaper to conduct in Chicago and Philadelphia than in New York.

On another topic oakapple commented on the "clones of concepts first developed successfully somewhere else" that have been opening in New York City of late. The restaurants he cited as examples were: Per Se, Masa, Buddakan, Morimoto, Lonseome Dove, Gordon Ramsay, Craftsteak, L'Atelier Joel Rubuchon. I'd add a few others. Ducasse, now on hiatus, was I think the first big-deal import of the current crop. This place Sfoglia around the corner from me is an Italian restaurant that apparently came to us via Nantucket. Etc. It's not strictly a new phenomenon. Nobu and Le Bernardin are both imports, and there are earlier examples I'm sure. Big deal French chefs have tried various projects here before, such as the ill-fated Alain Senderens project at the Parker Meridien. Also, cloning may not be an accurate metaphor because these restaurants can be quite different in their New York incarnations -- French Laundry and Per Se won't easily be confused. Needless to say, the lower levels of restaurants (e.g., Hard Rock Cafe) have been doing this for ages. Still, there does seem to be a recent cluster of imports large enough to constitute a trend. Perhaps one reason for it is the high cost and high risk of developing restaurant concepts in New York City -- it may be more economically viable to test concepts elsewhere and then bring the best ones here. There may also now be less resistance to imports -- recent patterns of development seem to involve bringing in national chain stores and generally trying to nationalize New York City. I should say I'm not necessarily opposed to that, if it's kept at a reasonable level -- I like having access to both the best of New York and the best of everywhere else. Any other speculation, comments, etc.?

I'm sure if you dined at Bread Bar 50 times (I'm sure I have, in fact) and you ordered Goan avocado salad and pulled lamb naanini, you'd get the avocado salad first and the naanini second all 50 times. ← Tonight, on visit 51, they came out in reverse order. Scottie, were you toying with me?