Fat Guy

The hot dogs and buns tend to be wrapped up together at most Costcos, but this has no impact on one's ability to use the oven trick. What they do is unwrap the foil and put the whole thing through the oven: foil, hot dog and bun together. It works really well. The lobster rolls they sell in New England and the Maritimes are good. They have much bigger, more identifiable chunks of lobster. That one from Winnipeg looks terrible.

We don't have fries here either. I like Costco fries when I get them in other regions. There are a lot of interesting regional variations. For example up in the Maine/New Brunswick area they have lobster rolls at Costco and they're quite good. Somewhere I may have a photo of one. I'll try to dig it out. I agree that the through-the-oven trick is clever, but I can't take credit for it. I know a guy who does marketing for Costco and he told me about it when I complained about the flaccid dogs and buns.

I'm not positing anything. I'm a writer not a medical researcher. So I can only answer your question by giving examples of what real researchers have posited. For example, Alan Ebringer, professor of immunology at King's College London, posited that vCJD, BSE, etc. could be autoimmune diseases or similar to autoimmune diseases and that the damage could be caused by the body's reaction to an infectious agent. Specifically, the agent he identified was Acinetobacter calcoaceticus. He found that cows with BSE also had high levels of the antibodies that attack Acinetobacter, and that these same antibodies might attack brain cells. So he theorized that "Prions are not infectious particles. Instead they are the breakdown products of damaged nervous tissue." I think George Venters summarized the contrarian position well in his paper "New variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: the epidemic that never was": For all I know -- I don't have access to the really comprehensive databases of medical research unless I'm on assignment for a journal that can get me access -- there are newer studies that are more definitive. But the ones I hear about from time to time seem to have all the same old problems. I'm also not invested in the prion theory being right or wrong. Primarily, my concern is that the levels of proof we had at the relevant times were not sufficient to justify the extreme policy responses. Were we to treat every theory that way, we'd be in big trouble. If the theory turns out to be right in 2010, it doesn't change the prematureness of the overreaction in the 1990s. If it turns out to be wrong, well, that's just going to be embarrassing for a lot of people. And once scientists get so rhetorically and politically involved in their theories that their missions become to advance those theories at all costs they stop, in my opinion, being scientists. Speaking of theories that sound like they rely on "little people" or gremlins or whatever, has anybody stopped to think about how weird the prion theory sounds? All this folding and these inert infectious agents sound a lot more science-fictiony than the much simpler claim that "we haven't found the virus yet." Some observers have likened the prion theory to the "Ice Nine" substance in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle. For years we've believed that all infections come from either bacteria or viruses. It's pretty reasonable to say that when a new infection comes along and it proves hard to understand that we should still devote some serious effort to finding the responsible bacterium or virus, rather than abandon the whole theory in favor of a cool-sounding word like "prion."

I (and, much more importantly, several esteemed scientists whose expertise is in this area) have offered several competing hypotheses, chief among them that the agent is an as-yet-undiscovered virus or bacterium with extraordinary resilience. It can take ages to find the viral or bacterial infectious agent responsible for a disease, and right now we're not even looking for one. Instead nearly the whole relevant scientific community, minus several strong detractors who can't get their work funded, is obsessed with prion research that may eventually turn out to be a wild goose chase. Gary Taubes has made a compelling (to me at least) case that this is not happening for good scientific reasons but is, rather, the result of Prusiner's charismatic and relentless campaign to drive all competing theories out of the TSE ecosystem.

The problem with the hot dogs is that, while they're of high quality, they're boiled and served on untoasted bread (the bread is also good -- but untoasted). The solution is to convince them to run your hot dog (the whole thing, on the bun) through the pizza oven. When the place isn't busy and you ask nicely, they'll do it. This is how the staff do it for themselves. Then you have a truly superior item. Don't forget that, while they no longer have sauerkraut out in the condiments section, they have it available in little containers behind the counter. In this part of the country (New York metro area), at least, they have two types of mustard available and the "deli mustard" (like Gulden's) is quite good. I also like that they have raw onions available. The relish is poor. Eat before you shop, not after. That way you can have a soda with your food, a refill for walking around and, last thing you do before you leave the store, you refill your soda for the car ride. You'll also make fewer stupid food impulse purchases if you eat right before you shop, and you won't have to deal with having a cart at the snack tables. I agree the Italian sausage is quite good. I think the chicken bake is just awful -- I can't even smell it without getting nauseated. The pizza is good in a bad pizza sort of way. I enjoy a slice on occasion and the crust is tasty, though not really pizza crust -- it's just bread. You do better, value-wise, if you get a whole pizza, but you need a few people with you to make that worthwhile. The pretzels, with salt, are pretty good I think (again, with the deli mustard) -- they only have ones like New York street-vendor pretzels in this part of the country, though. Anywhere else you go, they have those shopping-mall-style pretzels with "buttery topping" and such. I don't very much like the cloying berry sauce on the very berry sundae. I much prefer just the plain frozen yogurt -- it's very good by the standards of lowfat/nonfat frozen yogurt products. But yes, the dipped ice cream bars are about a million times better. In addition, it must be observed that there are lots of free snacks within Costco. You can almost have a whole meal if you play your cards right, and in the bargain you get a free crash course in upper-middlebrow American tastes. It's important for cultural literacy. And, remember also that there are a number of items that you can buy in the back at Costco and then eat up front. So, for example, if you don't like the snack bar items, you can always get a shrimp cocktail platter in the back for ten bucks and split it.

As one of many examples of cautionary tales about scientific overconfidence.

The low-fat study was a great example of a well-designed study, and the researchers who performed it deserve a lot of praise for being real scientists and just coming out with the results despite their probable disappointment. But some of Prusiner's prion studies are just too reminiscent of the studies they do to prove that every substance in the world causes cancer: "We bred a bunch of mice with the special ability to get cancer if you look at them funny. Then we injected them fifty times a day with the human equivalent of a million portions of pure polysorbate 60. And guess what? All the special cancer-prone mice got cancer! Therefore, newspapers should immediately report that polysorbate 60 causes cancer and parents everywhere should chase down their children's schoolbuses this morning and reclaim their lunches."

Because the gels are (or were during the relevant time period) made from cattle byproducts. People were getting cattle byproducts into their systems in many ways, not just by eating beef. So even if it's true that BSE can jump the species barrier and cause vCJD it's not clear that eating beef is the method of transmission (and it almost surely wasn't in the case of the vegetarians who got it). Pharmaceutical gels are just one example. We were talking about cultures above. Apropos of that, fetal calf serum from England was used as a growth medium for many vaccines during the relevant time period. Bone meal was popular as a fertilizer among organic farmers. The water supply may even contain some of this stuff. Yet all the attention has been focused on beef. In addition to the simple explanation that all these other sources would be affected the same way, there's also the possibility that cows and humans could be getting the disease from a common source, like a waterborne bacterium. Sometimes we never find out why a particular disease shows up and then goes away. In addition, detection tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When people die in Zimbabwe and El Salvador, nobody tests them for vCJD.

Because the study was supposed to show the opposite: it was supposed to quantify the benefit of low-fat diets once and for all. Nobody thought it was going to quantify the benefit at zero; the results were a complete surprise to everyone except for a minuscule minority of skeptics who were never taken seriously.

There was little disagreement last week that low-fat diets would reduce heart disease. Nonetheless, the few people who disagreed turned out to be right, at least according to the most comprehensive study ever done on the issue. Part of the reason there was so little disagreement was that it was so hard to get funding to conduct the studies that would disprove the conventional wisdom. In the BSE/vCJD/TSE arena, it's also difficult to get funding for any research that isn't targeted at supporting the prion theory. When Alan Ebringer was trying to get funding to pursue the theory that BSE was an autoimmune disease triggered by bacteria, he had great difficulty being heard above the "prion noise." In addition, that there is probably something in BSE-infected cows that relates to vCJD in humans is one link in a chain of causation, but it doesn't necessarily mean that anybody is getting vCJD from eating beef. Pharmaceutical gels and many other possible mechanisms of conveyance are still in many ways more compelling as suspects (though not nearly as dramatic or media friendly). The basic argument against these findings was summarized in the CIDRAP News article on the study (though the study is often cited as Legname et al, which gives the impression of diverse groups of scientists making independent findings in support of Prusiner's theories, the senior author on that study was actually Prusiner):

When the servers discuss the menu with "guests," I hope they make "air quotes" motions with their fingers as they name each dish.

Jamie, when you figure out a way to say all that in the space I took to say what I said, in such a way as to maintain the interest of a reader, you can give me coaching advice on how to make my arguments stronger. Until then, let's just face the reality that, as generally wacky as she may be, Joanne Kates got it right this time around.

Take a look at both menus: http://www.luparestaurant.com/menu-dinner.html http://www.incanto.biz/sample_menu.html Sure, they're plenty different. But there are plenty of commonalities. More than enough to make an intelligent comparison. Based on the menus, it would be no challenge whatever to write a meaningful piece comparing and contrasting what the two places do. There's testa and trippa on the Lupa menu, and use of offal is an article of faith for Batali. One restaurant has "Escarole salad with shaved Buddha's hand citron & anchovy" and the other has "Escarole, Walnuts, Red Onion & Pecorino." One has "Ricotta Gnocchi with Sausage & Fennel" and the other has "Handkerchief pasta with rustic pork ragù." I certainly don't agree that Lupa is more refined, based on the menu comparison. If anything, it's Incanto that has the more refined, "gourmet" menu. And within a certain range, contrasts still do double duty as comparisons. It's overly literal and rigid to say that it's impossible to compare restaurants meaningfully unless they're in the exact same category. For example, you could say that Incanto is California-centric and Lupa is New York-centric, so that's a contrast, but within that contrast are comparisons: Lupa supports the Heritage Breeds program, you see chefs from Batali's restaurants at the Union Square Greenmarket all the time, etc.

I think the food at Cafe Gray is fantastic. But having dined there a few times now, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the overall value proposition. So I almost never go to Cafe Gray because -- and I see I'm not alone in this view -- it doesn't provide a value proposition that works for me. That doesn't lessen my appreciation for the food. I think it's excellent. It's just not on my short list of places I choose when I want to buy a nice restaurant meal with my discretionary income. You'll find me having lunch at Jean Georges, or dining at the Bar Room at the Modern -- those are great values. Or you'll find me at ADNY or Per Se, where I don't mind occasionally spending a few hundred dollars for a true peak experience. But as much as I enjoy the food at Cafe Gray, I can't justify spending that money for that food in those surroundings. It's possible, with some work and a totally cooperative partner, to dine at Cafe Gray on a semi-reasonable budget. But once someone in your group breaks ranks and you start building a ticket you're all of a sudden spending $125 per person. You know that at Lespinasse, for $44 at lunchtime, you could get the risotto, the short rib and one of Chris Broberg's desserts. At Lespinasse! In the Lespinasse room, with Lespinasse service, with those spacious tables . . . now that was great value. Of course that was ten years ago. It's not a fair comparison. But I can't get away from it. I think I mentioned the inevitability of such comparisons way back on this topic, and at least in my case they've caught up with me. Value in this context is in part a personal calculation, though. If I had a lot more money -- such that the difference between $50 and $100 meant nothing to me -- I'd probably drop in at Cafe Gray all the time. This is evidenced by the fact that when the occasional wealthy friend says, "Let's go for dinner tonight, I'm paying, but not one of those twenty-course ordeals," I have a tendency to pick Cafe Gray. I disagree that the food is in any way generic. It's one of the few legitimately unique restaurants in town. It's just so overpriced that I don't eat there much on my own dime.

There are most definitely some happy exceptions to the bad-service-in-Canada rule, and they should be celebrated to high heaven.

Just to place those comments in context, I was writing about the issue of tipping and giving examples of why the assumption that tipping equals better service doesn't hold true from an international perspective: France, where there is a service charge, has better service than the US or Canada, where tipping is the norm. (Turning the Tables, page 169)With respect to service in Canada, when I've written (on several occasions) about how weak it is, the Canadian tourism boosters have always bristled and said defensive things like "His sample size is too small." (More than a hundred restaurants in nine provinces of Canada just isn't enough.) They'd be better off writing about how to improve the sorry state of Canadian restaurant service. Certainly, they're only fooling themselves.

Maybe at MIT you could explain to an RA that it's a magnetic induction unit and not really a hot plate, but I'd love to see you try to convince Darcy, my RA at the University of Vermont, of that!

I think the "judging restaurants on what they set out to achieve" thing can be a very useful tool or it can mark a descent into relativism. It's probably better to rephrase it as "realistic expectations." In other words, you have to know something about a restaurant's fundamentals -- price point, various stylistic aspects, type of cuisine -- and have a basic grasp of what similarly situated restaurants are able to pull off in order to evaluate it in a meaningful way as opposed to some sort of deconstructionist exercise. The issue of meaningful comparison is related to the issue of expectations. It's challenging to the point of meaninglessness to compare a steakhouse to a Korean Buddhist vegetarian restaurant -- the only reason you'd do it would be as part of a humor piece. Although, if you're in the business of rating restaurants on a 100-point or four-star or whatever scale then you do wind up trying to make such comparisons with a straight face, but it's more at the level of description: these two restaurants, though totally dissimilar, are both very good, very fancy and have excellent service therefore they're both three-star establishments. That being said, I just don't think "How do you decide whether an Istrian restaurant trumps a Roman one?" is a particularly difficult challenge. I also think it's important, when talking about the theory of evaluating restaurants, to accept that we're not robots and that restaurant criticism is a lot more impressionistic than these multi-tiered, formal reasoning models.

We were trying to make hollandaise and the ten-step (nine, actually, on this unit) control just wasn't working out. One setting was too low and one was too high. We had to keep switching back and forth endlessly. With a gas flame, you can dial it in exactly -- and you can also lift and lower the saucepan a little in a pinch. Plus on a gas range you can use copper, which is best for that kind of delicate saucemaking.

I'd probably do the same were I not fully invested in anodized aluminum and, to a lesser extent, copper.

The only reason I go to nice restaurants is so I can brag about it. What, you people go for the food?

Ducasse has a restaurant in Beirut -- one of his most interesting ventures, no less: Tamaris, a dessert restaurant. This to me is a telling demonstration of that city's culinary promise. I'm mindful of Mr. Rogov's points, but you can analyze any country and explain why it shouldn't have good restaurants. To me it's amazing that any business can even open in Europe given all the red tape, yet plenty do -- including so many of the world's best restaurants. I'm sure Israel is nowhere near being able to support a large number of great restaurants, but surely Tel Aviv could support two or three restaurants at the Michelin two-star level. Unfortunately, we just had to cancel a March trip to Israel on account of family stuff so it will be awhile before I get to check up on the scene (haven't been since 1990).

Somewhere along the way, historically, the old British quart got translated to 40 American ounces (it is actually 40 imperial ounces). Because there are 20 imperial ounces in an imperial pint and 40 imperial ounces in an imperial quart, the imperial ounce is smaller than the American ounce even though the imperial quart and pint are larger than the American quart and pint. In Canada they still use imperial ounces so if you go to the website of the Canada Border Services Agency you will see that you're allowed "40 ounces (1.14 litres) of liquor."

All Clad LTD is aluminum with a stainless core, so the stainless is probably too far from the cooktop to work -- it's really the outer layer that needs to be magnetic in order for the field to get going. All Clad Stainless is another matter -- that will work with induction just fine.

One of the most frequent complaints I get in my inbox (other than "you suck!") involves variants of the scenario where a customer orders a recited special at a restaurant where the average entree price is $20, the bill comes and the special turns out to have cost $40. It happens so often that for many customers it has become a stereotype that defines what specials are all about. So I would think any restaurateur would want to take action to preempt that situation and the fear of that situation. I prefer just to be given a menu with everything on it. When I look in a restaurant's window and the menu says at the top "Joe's Restaurant Menu for 14 March 05" I immediately assume it's a serious place. I don't think I've ever had a bad meal at a restaurant that dates its menu every day. Second best is a printed specials list. A blackboard is okay, though inconvenient. Recitations are awful, but if they're going to happen they should include the price of every item. The only instance in which I think recitations are a good idea is when there's a very limited quantity of a special item -- like there's one fish in the kitchen good for only a few portions. But even that should be coupled with a printout of the specials that aren't likely to be eighty-sixed. This is an effective selling tool: you have a menu, you have printed specials and then the server says, "And by the way, we have just a few of X available, prepared in Y manner. It's wonderful. It's $20." Watch that item sell out in ten minutes.