Fat Guy

The Bar Room at the Modern.

Dude, I promise that if I find anything embarrassing in your history of 1,500+ public posts here I'll go easy on you. You do the same for me, okay? Please?

When I was a couple of years into being an "internet food personality" there was this troll on Chowhound who went by "Al Pastor" and I just figured the guy's name was Al Pastor. I didn't even get the food reference. And yes, there were folks who felt this was a searing indictment of my abilities. I also used to write without contractions, because that's how lawyers learn to write, so my prose was really awkward and leaden in places. Everybody has to learn. I just hope those who are heaping scorn upon this poor reporter never have to be on the receiving end.

She singled out the Chinese because that was the subject under discussion, not because she hates them for being a race of compulsive gamblers! Anyway, I only read Playboy for the articles.

I understand there's a repulsive racial stereotype that says all Chinese people are gambling addicts, however the fact that rich Asians go to Vegas and blow lots of dough on fine dining is just a fact with no value judgment attached to it -- lots of rich people from lots of races, creeds and colors go to Vegas and fine-dining restaurants have sprung up to accommodate them.

A lot of rich Chinese people go to Vegas and spend a lot of money. What's the problem?

I'm having a hard time understanding what's so controversial about Ruth's statement. Even if I didn't agree with her, I wouldn't interpret it as offensive in any way.

Yes. If you do wind up going to new restaurants, there are some advantages.

That's correct. It's typically either sauteed (thick cross-sectional slices), roasted (a whole or half lobe) or prepared as a terrine, torchon, pate or whatever.

Most foie gras today, especially in North America, comes from ducks, not geese. The goose livers have a somewhat different taste -- based on maybe three samples of goose liver and about five billion samples of duck liver I'd characterize the goose liver as milder but also more complex. In terms of analogies to other foods, I think one of the reasons foie gras is so valued is that there is no flavor analogy (I already used sui generis once today on another topic so I can't use it here). The adjective most often used in food writing to describe the texture is "unctuous," but I'm not sure how helpful that is. In addition to being kind of tricky to cook, there's a lot of advance work that needs to be done if you're dealing with a whole unbutchered goose. For example, the removal of the veins from the liver is pretty tedious. You might want to find someone with foie gras experience and offer up a few lobes in exchange for lessons and tastes.

That describes most newspaper food writers when they start out. Although there is a food-writing program at NYU, and although some people aim to become specialists at food writing from the get-go, most newspaper food writers are members of a newspaper's staff who get a few food assignments and learn on the job. This is the case not only at small regional papers, but also often at the New York Times and other top national papers. The mindset of most newspaper editors is that writing is writing, and that the specialties are of secondary concern because they can be learned. If they bring in actual experts, it's often in a freelance columnist capacity.

Has anybody read the actual article? Do we know if the next paragraph started, "Just kidding"? I thought scientifically a fluid referred to any liquid or gas -- anything deformable.

To focus on that point a bit, I think it's important to emphasize that the aesthetic experience of dining in a restaurant is sui generis. I mean, you take ballet, opera, the symphony, a Broadway show . . . and they're all different than one another but they also share a lot of overarching commonalities. They're all performing arts, there's an audience watching the performance on a stage, etc. A restaurant meal is, first and foremost, something you eat. It's also individualized to an extent that no stage performance can be. Certainly, each member of the audience at the opera experiences that opera in a different way, but they're all watching the same performance -- whereas each person in a restaurant is eating different food, having different interactions with servers, etc. The individual nature of the restaurant experience is something that a lot of folks have trouble grappling with, and some even resent it. But what I keep trying to explain in as many places as I can is that with a little (very little) cleverness you can use this property of restaurant meals to great advantage. You can be the person in the room having a better meal experience than everybody else. I've found that, even among the super-sophisticated eGullet Society membership, most people have never really explored the possibilities of a deep, years-long, dozens-of-visits relationship with a great restaurant. That's the transcendent aesthetic experience that makes restaurant dining my passion.

Russ, I had a similar reaction. I think for me the concern is the emphasis on nomenclature, as if jargon is important in and of itself. I think that view tends to elevate form over substance, and also can when taken too far (which I don't think has happened here) be exclusionary and pretentious. I'm inclined to believe the substance of this restaurant review may also suck, though.

You're hung up on this music analogy, but we're talking about restaurants. Once you accept that with very few exceptions restaurants get better over the course of the year after opening, once you accept that as a general rule each time you visit the same restaurant your experience improves, the case for patience and focus is clear cut. I've done this both ways: I've been a restaurant reviewer and visited every major new restaurant to open over a period of years; and I've also been, as I am now, much more like a normal consumer because most of my writing is not about individual new restaurants anymore. I assure you, I eat better now and my meals are more interesting than when I tried every new place, so much so that I now routinely reject invitations to try new restaurants FOR FREE. Yes, when I was trying all the newest places I was exposed to some interesting stuff, but the best of it could have been had, and had better, a year later. Yes, I missed out on Gilt, but I still haven't heard anybody argue that I missed out on this incredible thing, plus if people had been saying that then I'd likely have gone anyway. In the meantime, by visiting a small number of restaurants many times each, I've had many wonderful dining experiences that just aren't available to first-timers.

Certainly, there are instances where restaurants are better when they first open than they are a year later. But in my experience that happens one in twenty or thirty or more instances. So it's not a particularly good bet. I don't think I'm just advocating a balancing act -- I'm advocating a heavy bias against new places. There are ways to overcome that bias, for example 1- the place is not expensive (so there's little financial risk), 2- you go for a meal that's not expensive (Restaurant Week, lunch, some sort of promo), 3- some rich friend is paying, 4- you want to support the culinary avant garde or some other worthy something, 5- you have so much money you don't care. Or you could have any of a bunch of non-food reasons for wanting to go, but then don't kid yourself into thinking that you're going for culinary reasons (as in, getting the best possible meal).

You've defined saltiness with great precision here, but what a few of us are trying to say is that it's still a matter of individual perception: two different people are likely to have different perceptions of the point at which "the taste is vibrant - enhanced - but you don't taste the salt itself." Indeed, the same person can define that point differently depending on what he or she has been eating over the previous week or so. I've got to agree with jgm's statement that "I can't imagine how anyone cooking for the public these days, could get salt right for every person, every time." I'd modify it to "I can't imagine how anyone cooking for the public these days, could get salt right for every person, ever."

The rule definitely needs restatement following this discussion. Perhaps we can handle this the way the mathematicians dealt with the work of that wacky Russian recluse.

Right now in our freezer we have three bulk items: chicken soup with matzoh balls, meatballs in tomato sauce, and a chicken stew of sorts (chunks of boneless chicken, carrots, onions, stock, white wine, maybe some other stuff). At another point in time you might find another soup variant, meat sauce instead of meatballs, and a beef stew or similar. These are the things we eat when it's 8pm and we still haven't figured out what to have for dinner. We store them in individual portions in plastic containers or zipper bags, depending. Ten or so minutes in the microwave, in the meantime boil some pasta or make some rice, and we're all set.

I have a similar situation with Danny Meyer's restaurants here in New York. I tend to go to them early. I'm not sure I'm making the right culinary choice, though. I go early because I'm a fan, because I want to be involved early and because I want to support what I consider to be a worthy organization. Also, because my chosen profession is culinary journalism, I have to stay on top of new places more than I would otherwise. But a year later, at every Danny Meyer restaurant ever to open, the food and service are always a lot better. Two recent examples are Blue Smoke and the Modern. When Blue Smoke opened, I liked it, but it was full of problems -- so much so that a year later they were chasing down customers they had alienated early on and asking for another chance. Now, Blue Smoke is quite good -- I think one has a far better experience there today than at the beginning. The Modern was really good when it opened, but having watched it for a year or so now I can say with confidence that it is an order of magnitude better today than when it opened, both in terms of food and service. There are a lot of reasons one might want to go to a newly opened restaurant, but in the overwhelming majority of cases a great meal isn't one of those reasons.

Mmm. Grapefruit granita. The best thing to do, I think, is just leave a tip, as you did. At most restaurants at this level, the tip will go into a pool and be allocated however the restaurant allocates it. Whether Scott is part of tip pool, I don't know, but if he isn't then presumably he's paid a somewhat higher wage to compensate. The thank-you note was a really nice touch, though, and I'm sure it was worth more to Scott than an extra $20. Well, I shouldn't speak for Scott, but it would be worth more to most restaurant managers I know.

I agree, and would add a few points: First, proper salting of many dishes requires the addition of salt before, during and at the end of cooking. Salt added at each of these phases has a different effect on the final flavor of the food. If you take one teaspoon of salt and add it to a stew at the end of cooking, it will not taste the same as if you divided that teaspoon into thirds and added a third before, during and after cooking. Second, it's very difficult to perceive accurately how much salt is in a dish, because salt has different ways of combining with food throughout the cooking process. I've had plenty of food that didn't taste all that salty, but the next-day bloating test revealed that it actually was; and vice-versa. Third, one's palate becomes acclimated to a certain degree of saltiness. I've found almost uniformly, for example, that the food in restaurants in France is overtly saltier than in the United States. At my first few meals on a trip to France, all the food tastes really salty, then I adjust. When I return to the United States, everything tastes undersalted until I readjust. Likewise, people who eat low salt diets at home perceive restaurant food as too salty, whereas people who eat a lot of salt at home don't as much. Fourth, it's common knowledge in the restaurant business that customers react well to as much fat, sugar and salt as can be packed into a dish. For most consumers, the reason restaurant food tastes better to them than the food they eat at home is because it has more salt, is made with more cooking fat and has more sweet components (including white sugar more often than people think) than people are likely to use at home. This is the same reason a lot of people like processed snack foods better than home cooking, Big Macs better than homemade hamburgers, etc. Restaurants know they need to pump it up to industrial levels of fat, sugar and salt in order to compete for the attention of the average consumer's palate. Fifth, I dine out quite a bit and can remember only a handful of dishes over the past decade that I thought tasted truly oversalted -- as opposed to within the reasonable range of how much salt a restaurant should be using. I've definitely experienced undersalting a lot more often, doubly so in people's homes.

If you're trying to argue that I'm not really interested in food, you may be making the least persuasive argument ever to hit the screen around here!

I don't think the person who dines at 100 different restaurants is necessarily any more interested in food than the one who dines at one great restaurant 100 times. Good restaurants are ever-changing, and your 100th meal is likely to be a lot more interesting than you first (because you'll get better and better treatment, access to off-menu items, etc. each time you return). But of course that's not what I'm advocating. What I'm saying is that if you have 100 meals out, it's a better bet to have -- just as an example -- 10 meals each at 9 places you think are awesome, proven and reliable, plus 10 meals out at carefully selected new places that show a lot of promise than it is to have 90 meals at 90 new places and 10 meals at places you know are going to be good. Not only will you eat better overall, but also you'll achieve the benefits of being a regular at the places where you repeat.

I did miss it. I like Paul's cooking a lot, but it wasn't worth $500 to me to see if the new concept was going to work. Nobody was telling me "You have to go to Gilt, it's awesome!" I might have readjusted my thinking if that had been the case, and certainly I'd have been happy to accept a magazine assignment that required eating there, but while I feel a little regret at not having eaten there I don't feel $500 worth of regret. I don't think the music analogy is particularly compelling, for quite a few reasons, chief among them that music doesn't get better after a year, but also because if anything the analogy should be between a restaurant and an orchestra. The dishes are the individual peices of music -- some old, some new. And you're damn right I don't spend my concert dollars on seeing untested orchestras perform!