Fat Guy

It's certainly a gimmick, and one with very limited value. If I want a table for 4 at 8, or a table for 2 at 8:30, the information provided isn't relevant. While it's possible that a phone call can yield a couple of data points that OpenTable can't (e.g, if the restaurant has held back some tables from OT, or if the restaurant isn't on OT at all), OpenTable yields several hundred data points that the phone call method can't -- plus the OpenTable search is built around actual needs (table for 3 at 9) rather than the table for 2 at 8. Not to mention, once the information is out there on Grub Street, how long will it remain viable? With OpenTable, if the reservation is there you can click on it and make it. The point being, if you spent 30 seconds on OpenTable you'd derive a whole heck of a lot more value than you'd derive from this Grub Street feature. Maybe that analysis was overkill, but I have too much respect for Josh to accept that he'll be satisfied with this kind of gimmickry. If he's really interested in providing a useful last-minute-reservations feature, he should do something that adds value. With the power of New York Magazine behind the venture, let them approach restaurants and ask for exclusives on a few tables each week -- then post the availability, either with a code word or, even better, partner with OpenTable to make the process seamless end-to-end.

Grub Street is certainly raising the bar for quantity and breadth (as for quality and depth, that remains to be seen, though they certainly made a good editorial choice in Josh Ozersky aka Mr. Cutlets). I think it's going to be pretty hard for them to live up to the "updated hourly" promise, though. I mean, it hasn't been updated since 3:58pm yesterday -- what is that, 15 1/2 hours downtime as of right now? And yesterday there were 6 entries, so even assuming they only mean "updated hourly during the 8-hour workday on weekdays" they're still not quite hitting the mark. Anyway, they should be updating it as there's news, not on some artificial schedule that encourages reports when there's nothing to report. I'm not sure what the point of calling A Voce, Dona and Country to ascertain the availability of tables for 2 at 8 was. I mean, we're talking about a blog here, which means people reading it are already on the internet. They can just check OpenTable and find out whether there's a table for any number of people at any time available at any OpenTable-enabled restaurant -- including A Voce, Dona and Country. You just select your date, time and party size and OpenTable generates a whole report of every restaurant and when it has tables at your time plus or minus. It's great. (Ted, I hope you'll enjoy the first of John Sconzo's series of eG Forums reports on the ICC/StarChefs event. Also, the ICC event was on the eG Calendar for quite some time before it happened: ICC event on eG Calendar).

There is an RSS feed: http://nymag.com/daily/food/index.xml

Don't overlook Nobu. The Nobu chefs produce wonderfully creative, individualized tasting (omakase) menus consisting of a wide range of raw and cooked dishes. Unlike the tastings at Western restaurants, it's normal at Nobu to be served dishes uniquely composed for you -- each chef does things a little differently. (Of course if it's your first time you'll also want to sample several of the Nobu classics, which are themselves quite creative and extraordinary -- though less unique these days now that they're so widely imitated.) You definitely do better if you sit at the sushi bar and upgrade from the menu prices: the menu lists $80, $100 and $120 omakase but if you specify $150 per person you'll get a longer and more interesting tasting. I've had slightly better peak experiences at Nobu Next Door than at Nobu, though I've had many great meals at both.

Having felt the rising gorge upon reading hundreds of such lists, I've come to the conclusion that they're not even meant to be taken seriously. They're purely commercial efforts: everybody in publishing knows that top-10/50/100 lists, ratings and category-awards sell. Even a relatively obscure website, if it releases a list of the 50 best something (and an accompanying press release) can place a few dozen newspaper stories on a slow news day. In Gourmet's case, it seems cynical to publish such a list when the magazine has made a big deal about moving away from the idea of reviewing restaurants.

Some wines, they make from frozen grapes.

Food Arts magazine has finally launched a website, which includes much of the best content of the magazine. For those unfamiliar with Food Arts, it's a glossy food magazine targeted at the fine-dining end of the restaurant industry. In addition to features about important restaurant openings, trends and people, there are several excellent front-of-the-book news sections: Front Burner, Deep Dish, Birth Announcements, Whisk Around the World . . . it's great stuff. Though it has an industry focus, Food Arts is great reading for gourmets who are simply interested in the restaurant world. Bravo, Food Arts, for making this great resource available online! http://www.foodarts.com

There has been talk of ADNY moving ever since the union exemption expired -- it's inevitable, though the timing still isn't clear. Also, as noted upthread, the premises are inadequate. We'll have to see what they do in the new location. Last I checked, they intended to do Michelin three-star dining plus a Mix-like annex. Eater is saying something different.

Todd, you need to come check out Sushi Yasuda here in New York. Chef Yasuda is fanatical about questions of fish handling and storage. From the Sushi Yasuda website: "Yasuda carefully controls the aging process of his fish—an essential part of making sushi. 'Just-caught' fish is not always ideal for being eaten immediately as sushi, and different fish require different methods of refrigeration and storage for preservation and taste." As for the specific claim, clearly it's not applicable to all fish -- for example you're not going to put a 175-kilogram tuna in a tank. I have, however, had fluke that was handled that way -- the few places that I've seen offer it call it "live fluke."

There was a major study in '04 that indicated that E. coli-infected manure fertilizer doesn't present any risk of E. coli in fresh produce. http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/71/5/2221 The more I hear about this case, the more it sounds like the contamination occurred at the washing/processing phase. I'll be interested to read the next round of news stories.

I can buy the ice shards and cloudiness -- even a neophyte like me can easily tell the difference between a shaken and a stirred cocktail -- but dilution seems like a questionable theory. Like johnder, I'd need to see it quantified before I could buy it. Moreover, I often prefer shaken cocktails, cloudiness and all -- my big complaint is that most bartenders don't shake them enough.

Anna, I don't know the answer for sure, but my experience driving through California farm country is that, yes, in some areas there are indeed fields upon fields of only one thing growing at one particular time. I think they arrange it this way for various agricultural and labor reasons. However, we don't actually know that the problem was the irrigation water. It could also have been the water at a processing facility (from some of the articles, I gather that both organic and non-organic brands share the Earthbound processing facility). Or something else. The point being, none of this has anything to do with whether or not a farm is organic.

There shouldn't be any connection between, on the one hand, the presence or absence of organic farming methods and, on the other hand, the presence or absence of E. coli in spinach. Especially if the E. coli comes from the irrigation water, it's likely that many of the farms -- whether or not they're organic -- in a given area (in this case apparently Salinas, CA) are using the same water supply. I think discarding the spinach is definitely the way to go. Although cooking it may very well destroy whatever E. coli is in the spinach at the time it hits pasteurization temperature, there are also handling concerns. For example, if you take the spinach out of the bag with your hands, you can get E. coli on your hands. Then, whatever else you handle in the kitchen is at risk, or you may transmit it hand to mouth. Likewise, you may use a spoon or other utensil on the spinach before it has reached pasteurization temperature, and then you may use that spoon in something else.

It was unintentional satire.

For a long time, Ducasse's books were published by his own publishing company and were sold in the places you'd expect to find them: the cookbook specialty stores, in Ducasse's restaurants and online. This latest seems to be published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang. I guess the STC rep convinced Wal-Mart to stock this title. Not sure why, though.

I've only seen the French edition of this particular title, but overall the Ducasse translations tend not to be particularly well done. I definitely recommend the French originals if you have or can acquire the ability to decode them. Anyway . . . what's up with Wal-Mart carrying the Ducasse pastry book? I mean, that's just a really strange partnership. I could sort of see Target doing it, because Target has a certain sense of style and sometimes makes expeditions into upscale spaces, but Wal-Mart? Must be a quirk of the distribution system.

All kinds of alcohol have a substantially lower specific gravity than water, meaning alcohol is lighter (less dense). So any booze that is mostly water plus alcohol (like vodka) is going to be lighter than water.

Last night we witnessed something at New Green Bo that we were ashamed not to have thought of ourselves: a family brought in a big-ass halibut in a Fairway bag and the New Green Bo kitchen prepared it for them.

Whether or not it has to do with dilution, I've not seen dilution given as the standard reason for stirring instead of shaking. The standard reason that has been given for ages, which Google will support with a zillion hits, is that shaking "bruises" the liquor. I've not heard a compelling explanation of what that means. Maybe it means diluted!

There are some situations where I know in advance I'm going to want pepper. Caesar salad comes to mind. My problem with the third-party peppermill is that you can't control very well how much pepper you get. "Say when" is just about the world's most unreliable system. But to get back to why Nora Ephron's essay is so bad, none of what she wrote is new or interesting information. Her essay wouldn't have been cutting edge ten years ago, and today it's downright pedestrian. Again, I think the Times op-ed page should be ashamed to have printed this drivel, and she should be ashamed to have written it.

I can't say I've ever met with the slightest bit of resistance -- not so much as an implied sidewise glance -- when asking for salt at a restaurant. I ask for it probably 9 out of 10 times when I dine at restaurants that don't provide it, and somebody just brings some. I'd rather not have to ask, but it has never been a big deal. In terms of the type of salt, I actually prefer sea salt. Probably that's because I mostly use salt in restaurants on my bread and butter, and in that instance the coarse crystals are nice. I also vastly prefer fresh ground pepper to sawdust. I'd rather have a small individual grinder on my table than have the busboy proffer the pepper, though.

That's because you're assuming the little engine that could metaphor is an obscure cultural reference. It isn't. Presumably, there was a reason you invoked the little engine that could metaphor with respect to this wine bar: something about the place that indicated a kind of determined optimism. If that's the case, you chose a standard metaphor to illustrate it, one that thousands of writers have used in thousands of contexts, including a few in the context of wine bars. For another writer to make the same observation is no more indicative of copying than two writers deciding to use any given fill-in-the-blank metaphor to illustrate the same thing. Could it have been copied from you? Sure. Is it more likely that two writers chose the same metaphor? Call me crazy, but I say yes.

I believe if the salt's packaging bears a hecsher (like the O-U symbol) then a mashgiach (who may or may not be a rabbi) has at least periodically inspected the processing and packaging facilities. However, in looking at packages of salt on the supermarket shelves, kosher salt is no more likely to bear a hechsher than regular salt -- pretty much all salt sold commercially on a large scale seems to have a hechsher. Meanwhile, to be clear, it's not the hechsher or the mashgiach that makes salt kosher. Salt comes to us kosher from the sea or from the ground. It's not like meat, where you have to do something to it to make it kosher. The purpose of supervision is to ensure that it hasn't, for example, come in contact with equipment that, on alternate weeks, is used to make bacon-salt.

Okay, so there are now three scenarios on the table. 1. Some website reprinted one of Carolyn's photos without permission or attribution. That's copyright infringement, plain and simple. (It's also plagiarism, because of the lack of attribution). It seems as though the situation was corrected quickly, and nobody was harmed. 2. The Washington Post ran a story that on its face appears to contain a sentence derivative of Heather's eG Forums post. That's not conclusive: it's entirely possible that the writer of that piece came up with the idea independently, or that the subject matter was written about in several places and therefore common knowledge, or there could be any of several other explanations (a press release, etc.). I think all we can say here, without more information, is that if the writer got that piece of the story from Heather's eG Forums post, there should have been attribution. (From the Washington Post's ethics policy: "Attribution of material from other newspapers and other media must be total. Plagiarism is one of journalism’s unforgivable sins. It is the policy of this newspaper to give credit to other publications that develop exclusive stories worthy of coverage by The Post.") And if not, not. 3. The "little wine bar that could" phrasing does not on its face indicate plagiarism -- not to me at least. The construction is too common to raise that suspicion. It would just get silly if this became the standard for presumptive plagiarism: then we'd have to go back and ask why Pim didn't credit the Boise Weekly and Phoenix News, which used "little wine bar that could" in 2005, ad infinitum. Now, of course, if the LA Times writer did indeed read Pim and repeat that turn of phrase, there should have been attribution -- but there doesn't seem to be any compelling evidence saying that's what happened.

I didn't experience outrage when I read the piece. I experienced pity. Here we have someone who is or was a top-notch writer, presenting a poorly written piece that lacks the insight of the average eG Forums post. It's also sad for the Times op-ed page, which must have been doing someone a favor here. I mean, really, if I had submitted this piece they would have thrown it in the trash and not even bothered to acknowledge receiving it. To expand upon what Mr. The Cook said, in one sense, all salt is sea salt: it's either harvested from the oceans, or mined from underground deposits left by oceans from a zillion years ago. But in the literature there is a distinction made between sea salt and rock salt. Kosher salt is rock salt, not sea salt -- I think most people who have looked into the matter would tell you that Nora Ephron is wrong on that point, though I'm sure she was speaking in a non-technical sense. The differences between kosher salt and table salt are two: kosher salt comes in larger crystals and is not iodized. It's called kosher salt not because it's uniquely kosher (salt is kosher anyway, kind of like water or a potato) but because it's used in the kashering process.