Fat Guy

Again, sorry if I'm being unclear: I started by offering all the places that have opened in 2005. But the goal is to generate a list of all places regardless of when they opened. 2005 was my contribution, to get the ball rolling -- not the full extent of the desired list, which needs to be a collaborative effort.

Also, great idea to include the relevant eG Forums discussion links. Let's add that as a desired field.

Emma: Sorry to be unclear. That list I started with is only brand-new places that opened in 2005. And I was thinking the overall list would be all restaurants located in New York City that serve arguably legitimate barbecue. In other words, I would draw the line at "barbecue" places that serve baked ribs and rotisserie chicken but would include any place that smokes with wood or tries to emulate that style using other technology.

Actually I can get this going, with many thanks to the research of Paul Lukas of the New York Sun, who did a very good, comprehensive piece on (edited to add: new) New York City barbecue places last month (May 18). I started with his list and I've been fleshing it out with additional information (and could use help!): The Ranger Texas Barbecue Legends Sports Bar 7104 35th Ave. Jackson Heights, Queens 718-779-6948 Owner: Canobio Canalizo (formerly owned by Robert Pearson) Specialties: Pork and beef ribs, pulled pork sandwich on Portuguese roll R.U.B. 208 W. 23rd St. 212-524-4300 Owner: Paul Kirk Specialties: Brisket, burnt ends, pastrami, duck Bone Lick Park 75 Greenwich Ave. 212-647-9600 Owner: Nick Accardi Specialties: Beef and pork ribs Pig'n Out 60 Henry St. Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn 718-522-5547 Spanky's BBQ 127 W. 43rd St. 212-575-5848 www.spankysnyc.com Smoked 103 Second Ave. 212-388-0388 www.smokednyc.com Chef: Kenneth Collins Bar BQ 689 Sixth Ave. Park Slope, Brooklyn 718-499-4872 (edited to add: I have to double check, but I believe all of these places opened in 2005 except for The Ranger, and I believe all use at least some wood except for Bar BQ.)

In connection with the upcoming Big Apple Barbecue Block Party and a panel I'm moderating called "New York City Barbecue - Fantasy or Fantastic?" but also as an independent project that would be of value to the eGullet Society community, Danny Meyer and I thought it would be a fun idea to create a list of all New York City barbecue restaurants and hand it out at the Big Apple Barbecue. Of course names, addresses and phone numbers are most important, but ideally it would list: Name of restaurant Address Phone Web site if any Year it opened (I would really like to list them chronologically) Owner(s)/Chef(s) Fuel source Specialties So, who wants to start? I'm sure if we can get a good list together in the next few days we can get it out there as a little eGullet Society promotion this weekend.

This year, for the first time, the BABBP is being organized by a professional event organizing company that is not the Union Square Hospitality Group (although the USHG is still very much involved and everybody reports to them). I've had some dealings with this company on account of being a moderator of one of the panels and they seem extremely professional. I think these folks have a lot of experience with large events and the logistics problems they present, so while there's a possibility all this new line and technology stuff has been ill-conceived I think the higher likelihood is that it will represent an improvement.

I don't know the specifics of the logistics, but presumably they've got things timed out and organized so that they can have limited preview quantities of food ready throughout Friday evening. Whether that means they have some temporary spots for the apparatus for Friday day (like enough space for Ed Mitchell to smoke one pig), or what, I couldn't guess. In terms of the value, this event doesn't strike me as a value proposition. I'd suggest that, if you're the type of person to whom $150 is no big deal, the Friday event is a nice way to buy yourself some exclusivity and access to the pits, the pitmasters, etc.

One nice thing about lunch, at least for me, is that if I skip all those things and just have the food plus a glass of simple white wine (say for $10-$15) that I sip throughout the whole meal then I don't feel at all deprived. I still feel that I've had the full experience. And I think it is absolutely okay to say no to every single attempted add-on sale -- no bottled water, no espresso, no nothing -- and just to say to the sommelier or captain, "Hey, I'd love a glass of something economical and tasty with my meal -- what can you recommend?" The one thing I would not skip, however, is dessert. The desserts at Jean Georges are superb and a steal at $8. Also, for the record, I think the wine prices at Jean Georges are roughly in line with the prices being charged at the other four-star and high-three-star places.

One thing we're going to try to do this year that will be a little different is that we're going to make a movie. Ellen Shapiro, Sam Kinsey and I are going to be working the event -- from Friday setup through Sunday knockdown -- with a Mini-DV camcorder. We're hoping, afterwards, to edit together a short (maybe 8-10 minutes) movie about the BABBP for distribution over the web. If anybody would like to assist with the project, we're looking for three kinds of help: 1) If you own a Mini-DV camcorder (we're only planning to work with Mini-DV footage, so it has to be this type of unit) and would like to help shoot "b-roll" footage, we think the more volunteer videographers we can get the better. Please contact me or Sam (slkinsey) privately if you have a Mini-DV camcorder and would like to participate (or if you have a Mini-DV camcorder that you'd like to lend to another Society member for the weekend), so we can brief you on the specifics of the project and work on a shot list for you. 2) If you have professional video editing experience and, even better, access to better equipment than my crummy old PC, we could definitely use some help with editing during June and July. 3) If you work for or own a company that would like to sponsor the project, please contact me or our head of fundraising Steve Klc. Other thoughts: If you're planning to eat seriously, you're crazy not to get a Bubba Fast Pass. I've ordered two of them for my family. If you've got the financial resources, definitely attend the Friday night AmEx event. Also don't forget to check the seminar and events schedules -- there's some interesting stuff going on, and you may find that I'm moderating one of the panels on Sunday. The live music is also a great break from the meat rush.

Lunch in the main dining room of Jean Georges costs $12 per savory course, with a minimum order of two courses. So you can have two savory choices from the menu for $24. Dessert is $8. A full, satisfying, diverse meal would consist of three savory courses and dessert, which would come to $44. The choices at lunchtime are plentiful and excellent. They include house signatures like the scallops with roasted cauliflower and caper-raisin emulsion and the young garlic soup with frog's legs. There are some nice luxury items like morels on the menu as well -- the current asparagus and morels offering is quite exellent (I had it twice last month). There are very few dishes with supplements, and portions are good. Desserts are also a highlight, with each dessert consisting of two contrasting items within a theme (at dinner, the desserts are in groups of four). In my opinion, of the serious New York haute cuisine restaurants, Jean Georges offers the best lunch value in the city by far. It is truly a joy to dine there, and in the great but nearly forgotten tradition of fine restaurants the lunch experience is economically accessible to younger diners and others who don't want to spend $300 per couple on dinner.

In addition to the Bubba Fast Pass, there is also a preview party (for AmEx cardholders) at Blue Smoke the night before that is open to the public. It’s a tasting of all ten pitmasters' dishes, visits with the pitmasters, music from Texas band Chapparel, and escorted tours to the pits on Madison Avenue, where all the pitmasters will be setting up, getting their smokers going and smoking the ribs, whole hogs, etc. Tickets $150: 212-447-7733.

Degustation and a la carte are two of the three options one typically sees in New York restaurants, but the most common thing to see at the high end is prix fixe. The Modern is no different: at dinnertime you pay $78 for an appetizer, entree and dessert from the menu. So it's basically a la carte, but you have to get all three courses. They also have degustation/tasting menus. At lunchtime, they have both true a la carte and prix fixe options.

No question, it's well written. But it's also so far behind the curve it's hard to figure out why such a talented journalist would expend so much energy on it. The play-by-play kitchen report has been done to death at this point. And the New York Times is already in the middle of a huge series on class that runs far broader and deeper than this piece (and even what the Times is doing feels like a been-there-done-that project calculated not to be interesting or newsworthy but rather to win journalism awards).

I've never seen one longer than 20 inches. I bet there's something you could rig up, though, like an oven rack atop a sheet pan. (I do my large quantities of toast in the oven, placing the bread directly on the racks -- the racks even make a few marks if you get the oven hot enough).

I just gave away my grill pan, because over time I came to the conclusion that the grill pan is not a useful piece of equipment. I've found that for any given food item there always seems to be a better way to cook it than with a grill pan. A lot of people grow up thinking the best way to cook a steak or a burger is to incinerate it on a grill, but if you take a little time to learn other techniques you may come to question whether grilling is ever the best way to cook anything. And whe you add to that the fact that a grill pan is a poor substitute for a real grill, it makes sense to start looking at other ways to cook. For steaks, I think the best results come from searing and creating a crust in a regular cast-iron or stainless-lined heavy copper skillet and then finishing in the oven. I think burgers come out better either in a regular skillet or under the broiler. For panini, I use two cast-iron skillets stacked up -- the bottom of the top one acts as the top half of a makeshift panini press.

I was raised by hippie, Vietnam-War-protesting, Upper West Side Jewish intellectual parents (of course they later became neoconservatives) and went to every crunchy granola type of school and camp imaginable -- you know, the places about which the people at the Montesori schools say "That place is really strange!" -- where I led as structureless a life as a child can lead. We did, however, sit down to dinner every single night of the week, as a family, for probably the first 10 years of my life (once my sister went to college and my father had his heart attack, things became more chaotic). I believe as a result, I cannot remember an age at which I would have thought it acceptable to behave badly at the dinner table -- either at home or in a restaurant. I might not have had the zitsfleish for a meal at Taillevent (nor did my parents have the money) but we went out to plenty of restaurants from the earliest ages I can remember and I sat there and ate like a normal person (well, more like two normal people). I have to think that the sitting-down-to-dinner-as-a-family thing explains most of it. There seems to be a very strong correlation between sitting-down-to-dinner-as-a-family and good-behavior-in-restaurants. Of course some kids just don't behave no matter what -- there are these things called genes, and I've seen some parents who appear to be doing everything right but can't get their kids to behave, and some apparently incompetent parents who have very well behaved kids -- but even a badly behaved kid like me was able to shut it off for a little while each day for the sake of food. The other thing I wouldn't underestimate is the example that kids and families set for one another. If you live in a society where kids behave in restaurants, then other kids behave in restaurants, largely because the negative examples just aren't there to follow and the positive ones are. There's a bit of chicken-and-egg to that, but it is the case. Also, I'd suggest that most people writing on this topic do not make a habit of dining at McDonald's in France, where you can see fat French kids behaving in ways that would get you thrown in McPrison in New Jersey. So many of the generalizations here are based on poor samples in two ways: 1) they are based mostly on observation of well-behaved kids, and 2) they are based mostly on observation of the venues where well-behaved kids are likely to be taken.

I'm on my fourth or fifth liter-and-a-half of the stuff. I think it's a huge step forward in Coca-Cola technology. It tastes very similar to real Coke. It tastes nothing like Diet Coke. Real Coke tastes good. Diet Coke tastes awful. Therefore Diet Coke with Splenda is good.

Most of the time, I just find perfumes annoying, but now that it's spring allergy season I'm extra sensitive. I can just handle the pollen in the air, but if you add one more thing on top of it -- cigarette smoke, cats, perfume -- I start sneezing like a maniac. On Saturday night we went out on the Upper West Side pre-Lincoln Center and the symphony/opera/ballet-goers were wearing tons of perfume/cologne/whatever. I started sneezing and just couldn't stop. I took a Benadryl and got it under control about 25 minutes later, just in time for our concert.

Yep. First child. For those of you who might be interested in getting an early look at Turning the Tables, I wanted to let you know that my publisher, HarperCollins, has just announced that it is giving away 25 Advance Reader Editions (AREs) through its First Look program. These are the same paperback bound galleys/proofs that went out to book reviewers earlier this year. In order to have a chance of getting your hands on one, you have to make your request by 30 May 2005, they pick the 25 recipients on 31 May and you have to agree to send in an informal review by 1 July. If you're interested, please go ahead and fill out the request forms at: http://www.harpercollins.com/firstlook/title.asp?titleid=254

I'm not so sure I agree with that. Supreme Court decisions have general and immediate applicability. I believe that if you're a state and you have a law on the books that treats inter- and intra-state direct shipments of wine from vineyards to consumers differently, that law became unconstitutional the second the Supreme Court announced its decision this morning. It may be that some states have quirky laws that don't clearly fall within the terms of the decision, and those would be subject to follow-up litigation, but if there are other states with laws similar to New York and Michigan's laws, those laws (or, rather, parts of laws) are now, I believe, void.

Not likely. States are given broad authority to regulate alcohol sales by a constitutional amendment. You can't really contest an amendment. The case that was just decided was special, because you had a constitutional amendment allowing states to regulate alcohol sales, but you also had the interstate commerce clause saying that regulation of commerce can't be discriminatory as between inter- and intra-state commerce. So there was an internal conflict in the Constitution that needed to be resolved one way or the other.

The reason it may seem odd, I think, is that this is not the type of case that typically receives high-profile coverage. People form their opinions about the Supreme Court based on a few well-publicized cases, mostly civil right cases. But this is an example of an actual business-as-usual case for the Court. In such cases, where there aren't any civil rights issues at stake, most of the justices have a record of voting diversely, based on the arguments and precedents. But even in civil rights cases, there is the occasional Thomas/Scalia split, such as in the Title VII case of National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Morgan. Here I think what happened was that it was truly an ambiguous situation: it all depends on how you prioritize the commerce clause, the amendment and the precedents. I could easily see any justice voting either way on this one.

We're looking at next week for posting the submission guidelines. (Dave is away on business right now).

Exactly. The ruling, based on a cursory review of the sources, simply says that states must give equal treatment to in-state and out-of-state producers. Still, as a practical matter, I imagine the key states like New York are not about to ban in-state shipping, so it is effectively a big victory for the producers that want to ship to other states.

I don't think it's really possible to equate the adjectives used to describe the regional section restaurant ratings with the stars given by the New York City reviewer. There are several key points of differentiation between the two types of reviews. For example, the New York City reviewer is a solo reviewer, his full-time job is to review New York City restaurants, he operates in one of the top restaurant markets in the world, and he dines out ten times a week (or more). The regional section reviewers, for their parts, usually share the burden so there isn't really an oeuvre to look at, they are typically doing it as a side gig, they operate in mostly suburban markets where most of the better restaurants wouldn't even get reviewed in New York City, and they dine out maybe once or twice a week. Presumably, these are some of the differences the Times editors have looked at when determining not to assign stars to restaurants reviewed in the regional sections. So I would simply say that "excellent" means "excellent for this market; comparable to the other best restaurants in the state." Otherwise, you're going to get into trouble when you try to compare restaurants on a star basis. When you consider that Alain Ducasse and Bouley have three stars, and that Cafe Gray has two, and that it's hard to come up with names of New Jersey and Connecticut restaurants that play in that league, you're left with mostly one-star and no-star equivalent restaurants with the occasional two-star and maybe a couple of restaurants in the whole state that could be considered for three. Which is not to say you can't get delicious food in New Jersey, Westchester, Connecticut, et al. You can. There are some categories, such as several of the Asian cuisines, where the food in New Jersey is arguably better than in New York. But those are places that aren't shooting for stars. On the whole -- with possible exceptions for Ryland, Nicholas, and maybe a couple I haven't heard of -- even the most ambitious places aren't offering the level of experience of a luxe place in the city.