Fat Guy

The best lobster I ever had was from Point Judith, Rhode Island. Well, the lobster wasn't actually from Point Judith. She (lobster is one of the few animals whose gender is apparent when you eat it) was from the ocean. But the boat that harvested her was based in Point Judith. Does that mean the best lobsters come from Point Judith? Of course not. There are many factors that contribute to the overall quality of a lobster. The time of year and the lobster's molting cycle can make the same lobster taste totally different from month to month. The handling of the lobster after it's caught is also important -- a lobster caught by a day boat and cooked that evening is not going to taste the same as that same lobster after it has spent three months in a FedEx warehouse tank. And of course the way the lobster is cooked makes quite a difference: grilling, boiling, steaming, poaching in butter -- these are all going to make a huge difference. Where the lobster is from? Probably not so important. I know they grow faster in warmer water, but I've never seen a demonstration of how this affects taste. And while diet surely affects taste, it's either not as pronounced as with mammals or there isn't tremendous variation in diet in the different lobster fisheries. Some people think the size of a lobster makes a difference. I don't. In any event, it seems that anyplace the Homarus americanus lives, it can be great or it can be terrible. I think restaurants labeling their lobster as Nova Scotia lobster are just being accurate about the origins of an ingredient. Nova Scotia lobster does not seem more exclusive than Maine lobster to most Americans. Many restaurants will lie about the origins of their Nova Scotia lobster and call it Maine lobster, because Maine is so heavily associated with great lobster. (There are also all sorts of brokerage arrangements whereby Maine suppliers buy and resell Canadian lobsters.) But Canada just has more lobster -- in most years I believe the lobster harvest up there is about twice the size of the Maine lobster harvest.

I remember seeing on a television segment about cheesesteaks that the recipe for Cheez Whiz has changed over time, for the worse. Is there anything to that?

To be clear, enough for 35 eGullet Society members equals enough for 175 normal people.

I went to AdeC at least a dozen times back when it was cool (not because I'm cool, but because cool people made me go) and I was well financed, and I always thought the food was quite good. I actively looked forward to the tunapica (the aforementioned tuna tartare) and the lobster mashed potatoes and often got a whole order of the tunapica for myself so I wouldn't have to share it with five other people. The only time I went there in the past 4 or 5 years, though, both the scene and the food seemed a bit long in the tooth. I'm glad to hear maybe it's on the upswing.

I don't see what the big deal is. I just had fifthmeal and it's only 2:10pm.

It seems that a lot of folks, critics and consumers alike, equate char with excellence. I don't think that assumption holds up. At best, char-broiling (and the resulting char) is a preference among methods of cooking steak. At worst, a charred exterior masks the flavor of great steak. Alain Ducasse, Tom Colicchio and several other top chefs are known for cooking steak using the pan-searing followed by pan-roasting method. They believe, as Ducasse has written in the New York Times and elsewhere, that this kind of cooking -- slower and gentler than char-broiling -- brings out the flavor of the meat rather than the burnt flavor that can result from scorching flames. I haven't been to Craftsteak (I have had the steak at Craft and think it's one of the best in town), so I'm certainly not challenging anybody's claims that the steaks aren't good, however I do think that the reasoning "it's not charred therefore it's not good" is flawed.

The platings are certainly not contemporary trendy, but embarrassing? I respectfully disagree. ← This isn't a question of being "not contemporary trendy." This wouldn't have passed muster at Chanterelle 15 years ago, when the cuisine was already in decline but they were still putting out elegant plates. To me it looks like the way they'd plate up the food at a neighborhood joint that's trying a little too hard to be fancy. There's plenty of room in fine dining for neat compositions, flamboyant compositions, pragmatic compositions and all sorts of other compositions, but there's a basic level of craft that fine dining demands and this doesn't look like it. And what is Kate Zuckerman thinking with a dessert like this? This is someone who is supposed to be a superstar pastry chef, with a book coming out this Fall. But this dish looks like the product of an unattended pastry kitchen. Even allowing for some melting and jostling (though desserts should be designed to survive that), it looks like the sort of dish that restaurants without pastry chefs turn out.

While it's not possible to tell how food tastes from how it looks, I've got to say that the platings depicted in GAF's post are embarrassing. Those presentations are on the level of what you'd expect to see at mediocre neighborhood restaurants, not places that are striving for multiple stars.

Jeanki, I do my major grocery shopping at the Fairway in Harlem (we have a car; they have free parking), and I think people who do a full grocery shopping at the Korean markets (there are plenty of such people in my 'hood) are overpaying and probably not getting very good quality on many items. There are plenty of situations, however, where despite the best laid plans one has to supplement one's weekly grocery shopping. The Korean markets charge a hefty premium percentage-wise, but the convenience supports that premium on a few items once in awhile. If I need a quart of milk or a couple of onions, it's only a dollar more to get those from the local Korean place than it is to get them from a supermarket -- but the supermarket may not be open, or may require an extra half hour of transportation, and supermarkets aren't well designed for people who just want a couple of things. Likewise, if it's 10:30pm (or 1:30am) and I've just ordered Chinese food, I may also want a couple of beers or a Haagen-Dazs dark-chocolate-covered vanilla ice-cream bar or whatever I may want on a whim, and the cost is worth it to me just so I don't have to keep an inventory of all of the 500 things I might want. I'd rather have the Korean place keep the inventory and charge me a dollar each time I take advantage of it. P.S. Gourmet Garage has been a nice addition to the neighborhood but it's rather overpriced and has limited selection. I use our GG much the same way I use the local Korean markets: if I need last-minute, unexpected bread or a few produce items, and GG is open, I'll walk over there and get what I need. But I never do a full grocery shopping at GG -- Fairway is much better for that. Likewise, I don't get my serious bulk staples at Fairway -- I go to the suburbs every month or so for that stuff. (There's a rumor circulating in the 'hood that Costco is building on 116 and the East River -- with parking. If that's true, it may alter my patterns a bit.)

I volunteer to be Kris Yamaguchi's assistant, and also to assist Tammy with day-of expediting. I can fill in other gaps as needed. I'm coming ready to work.

The 24-hour Korean market a block away from my crib has closed. The entire structure is surrounded by plywood boards. There are assorted signs up from every agency from the Department of Buildings to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (only on the Upper East Side is the Korean market a landmark), but I can't make any sense of them. I fear the market is gone forever. Back in the day -- the day being yesterday -- I could amaze my out-of-town friends with instant procurement of chips, dip and Ibuprofen, all at only 400% of the suburban supermarket price. Now, if I want 24-hour Korean market services I have to walk three blocks. The thing about the increase from one block to three is that round-trip it's an increase from two blocks to six. This is important. With the place a block away, I could call in a takeout order to any restaurant, then walk over to the Koreans for stuff like beer and chips and ice cream, and be back before the delivery guy arrived -- plus even if the delivery guy beat me to my home I could see him approaching in time to yell to him and make frantic hand signals indicating that, indeed, the delivery was for me. This new geographical arrangement means I have to re-sequence everything and get all my Korean stuff before I can order the meal. It changes a half-hour, ultra-efficient process into an hour-long imposition. I don't even know the market's name, even though it has been my Korean market since 1991. Surely it was something like Number One Happy Eighty-Eight Deli. I know the names of the other two Korean markets within a block of my home. One is called Patrick Murphy Market, because before the Koreans owned it some guy named Patrick Murphy -- who was not Korean -- did. The other is called the Apple Tree Grocery, though it doesn't specialize in apples or even have a very good selection of them. They both close at 9pm, though. It figures I'd count as my neighbors not only Woody Allen, Paul Newman and Kevin Kline, but also the world's only lazy Koreans.

We wound up going to the recently relocated No. 1 East Restaurant at 41-27 Main St. I'll definitely be going back -- I think it took at least this one trip and will probably take another to learn about ordering. We were going to a game at Shea so we came in around 5pm when there were very few customers. By 6pm the place was full of customers and, if we had seen what they were ordering, we would have been able to point and query and learn a lot more. Still, we had some hits just through basic dumb luck. We ordered all the available dumplings, three kinds in all, and they were amazing. Particularly noteworthy were the spinach dumplings, which were packed full of fresh spinach and the best vegetable dumplings I've ever had. The pork soup dumplings were as good as the best I've ever had. The pork fried dumplings were probably not as good as at New Green Bo, but probably better than at any other restaurant I've tried in New York. The thing about all three types of dumplings was that they all seemed to have been made moments before being cooked -- they had a fresh, clean, caring, handmade look, feel and taste to them. The restaurant is apparently known for breakfast food, so this probably fits in to that picture. The scallion pancakes were unlike any others I've had. Usually you either see a deep-fried thin pancake or a thick, breadlike pancake. This was a thin, breadlike pancake -- kind of halfway between a traditional Chinese-American restaurant scallion pancake and a flat bread like pita. As far as I could tell, these pancakes were meant to be used as a vehicle for other food, but we just gobbled them down straight with a little of the sauce from the dumplings. Of the entree-type dishes (we only got three, as there were only two of us), by far the best was the shredded pork with dried bean curd. The pieces of dried bean curd were long and thin, like the shreds of pork. It was great. I'd like to go back and try some of the other shredded pork dishes -- there are a few permutations. Less successful was the eel with scallions. We had something of a miscommunication here -- we wanted live eel, but there was none available, but we didn't really comprehend that, so this dish was made with frozen eel. It wasn't terrible, but on my best day I'm not a true eel-lover so I only like it when it's exceptionally fresh. This was just okay. The big disappointment was the pepper crusted scallops. I imagined the scallop equivalent of salt-and-pepper shrimp, but this was more like the scallop equivalent of sweet-and-sour pork with a lot of pepper added. It had too much breading, a weird orange sauce and was plated bad-Chinese-restaurant style surrounded by a ring of steamed broccoli. I guess we inadvertently stumbled into the tourist portion of the menu for that one. We felt stupid for not ordering some of the live crabs from the tank up front. Also, once the die-hard local customers showed up, we saw that the most popular items were the soups and various casserole-type dishes, so that's an area of the menu to explore for sure. Also, several people ordered pea shoots, which looked great, and some of them had the pea shoots with shrimp. Mmmm.

The rule of thumb I've heard from many barbecue aficionados is 1/3 meat yield based on carcass weight. Because it's a festive occasion you'll want to create the appearance of abundance. My suggestion would be that you grab a couple of extra shoulders and cook those as well. That way you'll have plenty of extra meat, just in case.

A mercurial online acquaintance pointed me to this blog, by the employees of a power company in Flushing. (Be sure to read the description of the blog at the top.) The Shanghai place they recommend down towards the bottom -- No. 1 East Restaurant aka Peoples and People -- sounds very promising, as does Szechuan Gourmet (the first one mentioned). http://www.kepcopower.com/blog/flushingrestaurants.htm

What are the best restaurants (and why) in Flushing Chinatown right now? Yangtze River, my former favorite, seems to be gone. The scene there seem to shift rapidly. What's the best current info?

Vadouvan, I'm not sure why you're asking if I've been to the restaurant when you know I haven't. More importantly, nothing anybody has said on this topic has given me the slightest urge to go there the next time I'm in Philadelphia -- which as far as I'm concerned means Ms. Lucey's review has not been challenged in any meaningful way beyond gratuitous literary nitpicking. I'm also not sure why you're steadfastly refusing to relay any information about the restaurant beyond "the food is better than reported." The thing is, you're asking us to condemn Ms. Lucey's review based on what it says, but what it says is hardly scandalous. So maybe, I was thinking, the problem here is that the review is just wrong. But nobody has made that case either. So I don't see what the problem with Ms. Lucey's review is. Based on what has been said here and what Ms. Lucey's review says, it sounds like there's a lot of whining and a big collective chip on the shoulders of Ms. Lucey's detractors, but nobody has made a particularly compelling case. If you created a work -- such as a piece of writing or a dish in a restaurant -- surely you'd demand greater specificity and a better argument on the part of your critics.

I'm certainly willing to believe that there are lots of bad critics in Philadelphia. There are lots of bad critics everywhere. But Ms. Lucey's review, the one in question here, is not a bad review. I read hundreds if not thousands of restaurant reviews from around the country every year, including as a judge for the AAN awards, so I have many points of comparison. Ms. Lucey's review wouldn't win any awards, but it's not a bad review. Vadouvan, I'm still not clear on whether you've dined at Mantra or not. If you have, wouldn't it be better to refute the critic's opinions with examples based on your experience at the restaurant, as opposed to attacking the person as clueless, lame and skewed? Certainly, you haven't made that case based on the example you chose to provide. Your substantive argument -- that she should have focused on the abomination of fried sushi -- doesn't hold up under casual examination. The quotes from her companions aren't about handbags or pop culture, they're about the food -- so any objection to them is purely one of style. It seems to me that if you're going to publish an attack on a critic in a public forum, you should be prepared to support it -- not protest the pointlessness of online discussions just because someone doesn't accept your point of view.

I see two references to her boyfriend in that review, and one to a friend named Howard. Big deal. It's normal for a reporter to report conversations -- it has nothing to do with the principle of hearsay, because she was at the meal, tasted the food and is just giving credit to the source of a comment. And I think plenty of people other than sushi neophytes have respect for Morimoto, Nobu and the hundreds of other examples of sushi chefs serving fried maki that you can pull up on Google. So you've eaten at the restaurant? What did you have? Why was it better than the review said? The reviewer has made her case. Why not make yours? Give me a mediocre restaurant review over a mediocre restaurant any day. At least you don't have to eat the review, at least you get some information out of it and at least it's free.

I was curious about this review, given all the vitriol it has inspired. I was expecting something ludicrous, indefensible, idiotic. Actually reading the review was a real letdown. It was fine. I don't see the problem. There's nothing wrong with referencing what the other people in your group said about a meal, it's not convincing to claim that she should have gone off on how sushi shouldn't be cooked (in the past decade, panko- and tempura-style sushi have been firmly established as part of the genre -- and there has long been cooked sushi, like eel and shrimp), and a few generalizations are always going to be necessary in a short review (the word limit is hardly the reviewer's fault). The writing is fine, the restaurant doesn't sound very good and there's nothing in the review that hints at it being a fantastic restaurant where the reviewer just didn't get it. Has anybody dined there? Is it totally, indescribably great, or do the "Baby Bombay Burgers" and the "Sir Real Salmon Nori Roll" suck? If the latter, then the review probably conveys the right information.

Consider freezing a quantity of them for later use.

Zabar's and its ilk tend to have pickles in three strengths: new, half-sour and sour. All of these types of pickles differ from what you'd typically see in the unrefrigerated supermarket selection, in that they have a lot of crunch and snap. They also lack the sweetness of a lot of mass-market pickles. They're typically sold either out of bins/barrels or in refrigerated jars. Jasie's procedure looks right for about a three-quarter sour pickle. Generally, I think the computation is overnight for new pickles, 2-3 days for half-sour pickles and 10+ days for full sour pickles. When the pickles reach the desired "doneness," you refrigerate them and they'll hold for a week or two if you're lucky. I'd also recommend adjusting the spice mix a bit, because the old New York kosher-style pickle flavor profile involves a few flavors in addition to garlic. The list is typically garlic, dill, whole peppercorns, bay leaves, mustard seeds and coriander seeds, I think.

Some stats from the event organizers: o 3,576 lbs spare ribs o 1,902 lbs rib tips o 2,292 brownies o 4,407 lbs baby back ribs o 4,110 lbs baked beans o 12,953 cups beer o 3,048 lbs beef brisket o 25 organic whole hogs o 7,027 bottles soda o 5,752 lbs pork butt o 64,680 slices bread o 4,915 bottles Fiji water o 2,649 lbs pork shoulder o 41,520 potato rolls o 1,486 glasses wine o 2,100 lbs sausage o 3,813 slices pie o 250 bags charcoal

FWIW, Orville Redenbacher says to start with all the ingredients in the pot: http://www.orville.com/R05-perfect_pop.jsp...ecipes#electric So does Jolly Time: http://www.jollytime.com/fun_tips/tips2.asp However, the Popcorn Board says to heat the oil first and test on a few kernels: http://www.popcorn.org/frames.cfm?main=/en...m&usernav=flash (The Popcorn Board also says pre-salting will toughen the kernels)

What's the reasoning behind heating the oil before adding the kernels? I always add everything cold and heat it all together.

There are three big factors that come in to play when you pop on the stovetop: 1 - Choice of pot. There are some pots that just are not well suited to popcorn making. You want to stay away from anything with a thin bottom. The pot that works best for me is an 8-quart thick-walled anodized aluminum (Calphalon) stockpot. The slow, even heat is ideal for popping. Quick, uneven heat, like you get from cheap lobster pots, will give you burnt, small and tough kernels. The shape of the pot matters mostly from the perspective of having enough vertical space to contain the kernels -- the tall stockpot shape is ideal for this. 2 - Level of heat. This is something that requires trial and error. I mean, medium heat on my stove isn't the same as on yours. By the way, gas stoves are much better for popping popcorn, because they don't cycle on and off like electrics. If you use electric, the thick-walled pot becomes even more critical. 3 - Quality of popcorn. This doesn't necessarily mean overpaying for a brand name. Around me, the best popcorn is also almost the cheapest -- it comes by the pound in the bin-food area of a local market. But if you get some really crummy stuff, you'll find that it just doesn't pop well, no matter what you do. Popcorn also doesn't have infinite shelf life. There are some other issues, for example the right amount of oil (there's a lot of leeway here), type of oil (I use corn oil), quantity of kernels (a single layer covering the bottom) and shaking often enough.