Fat Guy

The appetizer problem also occurs because, even if I've eaten a dinner-sized lunch already, by dinnertime I feel as though I MUST HAVE FOOD NOW. Even though I've devoted my life to observing culinary phenomena, I can't seem to get with the program so as to comprehend that the total amount of food in a meal is the starter PLUS the main PLUS the dessert PLUS intermezzos and extras, which, in most restaurants, is already more than enough food. No, instead, before any real food even arrives at the table, I need to eat enough bread so as to insure myself against the possibility that the restaurant will not bring me my food. Not that this has ever happened. I eat out all the time, and it's amazing how they bring the food every single time. And, of course, I need to be completely full at the conclusion of the appetizer course because, as you all know, the rest of the meal doesn't count. This is bad. This topic is too revealing. Some newspaper is going to get a hold of this and the jig will be up. Yes, we're all nuts.

I've only been to Shapiro's twice, but it feels like an old friend. I too first learned about it on a business trip: we were litigating the IPALCO v. PSI takeover case in maybe 1993, and our local counsel took us there. None of us jaded New Yorkers could believe how serious the place was. I've been to New York style delis all over the country, and except for a few in the places where you'd expect them to be good (LA, Miami, etc.), they usually suck. Then we went again in maybe 1998 or so, while on a cross-country drive. In both cases, I was feeling displaced and homesick, so Shapiro's was just what the doctor ordered. I can't think how I'm going to find an excuse to get back to Indianapolis any time soon, but I'd like to just to eat there. My wife, whose name is Shapiro, has been trying to figure out if she's related, but it seems the answer is no.

The first line of my book is: "Some would say I became a food critic to subsidize a restaurant addiction. They would be right."

There's now a press release making the rounds. In terms of the reason for the change it just says Tony Esnault "is succeeding Christian Delouvrier, who is leaving to pursue other independent projects." There's also a paragraph containing Esnault's biographical information: The rest is mostly general background on the restaurant and such.

It seems as though, when Ducasse brought in Delouvrier, it was an experiment -- a bold experiment -- and that someone decided the experiment wasn't working out or that there were better options. Certainly, Tony Esnault seems more like the other Ducasse chefs-de-cuisine than Delouvrier. He's someone who came up through Michelin three-star restaurants and the Ducasse organization, and has also shown himself to be comfortable in the Ritz-Carlton milieu. He's more like Didier Elena than he is like Delouvrier. At its best, the Ducasse organization can produce incredible food, so let's hope the end result of this is that we see mitosis and a great ADNY plus a great new Delouvrier restaurant (perhaps, as he has long wanted, something more rustic). I'm looking forward to dining at both. Still, this does strike me as a poorly planned move -- even if it turns out to be a good move, it will not have been well planned -- and indicative of the Ducasse organization's long history of PR miscalculations with respect to its American operations. Given how many people were caught off guard by this, it seems things came to a head very quickly and there was no opportunity for a well-planned exit strategy. So what could be a win-win situation certainly, at first, looks like a mess. It seems those who drive strategy in the Ducasse organization vacillate between acting like true believers and utilitarian accommodationists. I personally prefer to support true believers -- what attracted me to Ducasse in the first place was his uncompromising dedication to excellence -- but in the end the proof is on the plate.

I'm a pathological over-order. I over-ordered on Saturday. I over-ordered on Sunday. I'll probably over-order today. I don't know how it happens. It really is a sickness. I've had terrible allergies from all the pollen in the air the past couple of days, so, for example, last night I decided I'd order some wonton soup from my local mediocre Chinese restaurant, Chinatown East. A quart of the stuff costs $3.50. So, you ask, how is it that half an hour later I wound up with $20+ worth of food? Well, first I thought I better order two quarts. You never know, I could RUN OUT OF FOOD in the middle of Manhattan, surrounded by twenty thousand restaurants and more gourmet stores per capita than they have in heaven. Also, there's the problem that I might not HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT, even though I have enough food in my kitchen to survive multiple apocalypses. So I ordered some spare ribs, some fried dumplings, and then there's that coupon for free cold noodles, oh and maybe an egg roll . . . . There was actually this one time when I was over-ordering from Empire Szechuan and Mary, who takes the phone orders and has known me since I was maybe 10 years old, said, "Why are you ordering so much?" and I said "So I can have some tomorrow" and she said "But I can deliver fresh moo-shu every day." And still I persisted in over-ordering. In fact I resented her attempt to help me. I'm sure I've told the story of the time, when I was practicing big-firm litigation, that two of my paralegals and I knew we were looking at a solid week of all-nighters or at least extremely late nights preparing findings of fact and conclusions of law for one of these trial-of-the-century cases. The firm had accounts with a number of restaurants, and if you worked late you could bill dinner, so we decided, after counting the options, that if we ordered something like three times as much food as we could eat each night, we could in the space of a week sample every item on the menu at the Carnegie Deli. Every night, the food would come -- Carnegie delivers until 4am -- and every night we'd eat maybe a third of it and give the rest to the overnight word processing staff. The food would get delivered, usually, in two cartons -- like the size you'd use to archive legal size file folders. About half of one box would always be filled with plates, forks, napkins and condiments. Carnegie was operating under the assumption that we had ordered food for a dozen people. After a few nights of this, the woman who took the orders finally asked me, "How many people is this for?" When I told her it was for three people, she said, "Mr. Shaw, if you don't mind my saying, yous guys is pigs!" I could go on. I won't. It's too painful. Now, what's for lunch?

The word from the Ducasse organization is that Delouvrier "has decided to pursue other projects and we regret his departure and wish him the best." (Nobody mentioned this, but the timing, almost exactly a year after Delouvrier started at ADNY, was likely coordinated with his contract renewal date.) The new chef de cuisine will be Tony Esnault, a native of Lyon, who worked at Louis XV in Monaco and was most recently at the Ritz-Carlton restaurants in San Francisco and Boston. He has also worked at Carré des Feuillants and Auberge de L’Ill.

Thanks, Monica, for such an enlightening week. We're going to close this journal now, but first I'd like to make an announcement regarding Monica and her future with the eGullet Society. As you know, Monica has been one of our most tireless, loyal and creative volunteers for more than two years now. In addition to hosting the India forum, she has been a contributor to the Daily Gullet and has enjoyed increasing success as a freelance food writer. Perhaps her most significant contribution to the Society was that she was the founding dean of the eGullet Culinary Institute (eGCI). This incredible distance-learning project has been a jewel in the crown of the Society's offerings, and Monica made it happen. Monica is now going to take the reins of another critical project. Starting this month, she will be the leader of our eG Scholarships team. In keeping with the long-range plan we announced last fall, the Society has recently secured commitments from underwriters for two culinary scholarships. And, as the Society's funds have accumulated -- slowly, slowly -- we have reached the point where we will be able to give back some of those funds in order to bring culinary learning opportunities to those who might not otherwise be able to pursue them. We'll be providing much more information about eG Scholarships this summer, as Monica and the eG Scholarships team develop the program. In addition, in order to allow Monica to make the investment of time and effort that the eG Scholarships project will require, she is going to be stepping down as the host of the India forum. She'll still be here as a guide and fellow traveler, but will be devoting herself to the new project. Thanks again for everything, Monica, and best of luck in your latest eGullet Society venture.

This is the same rumor I've been hearing, but I haven't had it confirmed by a primary source so I'm awaiting a return phone call. I'll report back if I hear anything.

If you have my capacity, you have to go into Chapter 7 to feel full at any high-end sushi restaurant. The best strategy I've found is to do a little fusion: get the cheapo lunch at Yasuda plus an individual pizza at Naples 45 from the takeout counter where the pies cost half as much as on the sit-down menu.

I have to get more information about the whole spit roasting thing. The last explanation I heard was that they put it on the menu last year and then the rotisserie broke, and it can only be repaired by someone from Molteni or whomever makes it, so they went along week-to-week thinking they'd get the spit fixed and doing a pan-seared-and-oven-roasted version instead. But I totally forgot to check on Tuesday to see if they had a working rotisserie in the kitchen. A guy was even described to me as the rotissier but I spaced on asking if he was a rotissier without a rotisserie, which is too bad because how often do you get to ask that?

I guess I don't understand how, for example, "Spit Roasted Amish Chicken with Spring Root Vegetables Mango, Green Curry and Coconut Risotto" is more interesting than "Herb/stuffed free-range chicken roasted, morels and asparagus in a light cream sauce (for two people)." It has been at least a decade since combinations like mango and coconut risotto could be said to be unusual. I'd personally be a heck of a lot more interested in eating the morels and asparagus. And who's to say which dish underestimates American palates? You could make just as convincing an argument that the locus of underestimation is to be found in the need to throw strong flavors like curry and sweet ingredients like mango into the dish. Several years ago I had a discussion with Ed Behr about the nature of culinary risk-taking. What he pointed out was that you can take a risk by serving a dish or a combination that's new or unusual -- that's one kind of risk-taking. But the other kind of culinary risk-taking is to serve morels and asparagus and hang your reputation on being able to do those better than anybody else. Now I'll be the first to say that not every meat dish at ADNY is the best example of a given animal. But the current menu is in my opinion stronger than last year's spring menu. And having had the best meal at Jean Georges that I've ever had at Jean Georges on Monday, and having had morels with asparagus there and at ADNY on Tuesday, I've got to say that in mega-chef head-to-head competition ADNY has better morels, better asparagus and a better sauce. You could add some curry to the sauce to make it different, but I'm not sure that makes it more interesting. As we've discussed before, a lot of this comes down to ADNY knowing its customers. They sold five chickens on Tuesday night in the time I was there. That's a lot of chicken when you consider it's a dish for two and they did something like 60 covers. They also sell a heck of a lot of steak. They don't sell nearly as much "Golden squab breast, apple/artichoke fricassée, salmis and olive jus," which while probably the most interesting meat dish (to use what I think is your set of assumptions about interestingness) is not necessarily as appealing to any American restaurant's clientele (or to me for that matter) as a really great steak. There's also probably an issue of menu nomenclature here. ADNY's menu descriptions are, against the prevailing menu trend, short. They're designed in almost every case to fit on a single line of the printed menu. You just can't fit "Bacon-Wrapped Vermont Rabbit Saddle Stuffed with Black Trumpets and Sage Braised Rabbit Leg with a Spring Vegetable Casserole and Mostarda di Frutta" on the ADNY menu. The ADNY rabbit dish is described as "Saddle of farm-raised rabbit, aromatic herbs, crunchy vegetables, slowly braised shoulder." What is that description, about half as long? The thing is, the rabbit at ADNY happens to be stuffed with foie gras -- it's just not something they point to in the short menu description. Just in terms of the factual points, and I may need to follow up with more information: I definitely didn't think much of that dish. But it has been replaced by first one and then another really nice pork dish. The current one is a whole chop, and there's an interesting (along the lines of the raw and cooked asparagus) garnish of "shredded and fondant swiss chard." I'm still not ever planning to order it, but it's no longer meat-and-potatoes. It's now spit roasted lamb with spring vegetables and, yes, jus -- but jus is Ducasse's big thing; he's the master of it. As with jus, turbot is one of Ducasse's exalted core ingredients. The turbot I had on Tuesday was a "steak" rather than the bone-in cut they were using before, and the Champagne sauce was a thinner, translucent (almost transparent) sauce, not the opaque white sauce that adhered to the previous turbot dish. The dish felt right -- it didn't feel like they had just swapped in one ingredient for another like they did when they added that big red prawn to the dish. By the way, for anybody who is contemplating a meal at ADNY in the near future, I strongly recommend the current tasting menu. It's one of the most satisfying I've ever seen at the restaurant. It contains three of the best dishes I've had at ADNY: the green peas with crayfish, the sauteed foie gras with lemon chutney, and the veal Matignon with asparagus and morels. There's also an unassailable scallops-with-caviar opener. Maybe I'd see if it's possible to do a substitution for the salmon course -- they're pretty accommodating and it might be possible to get a split portion of the bass, which is dynamite.

There are also rabbit and foie gras on the appetizer menu, and another foie gras dish and veal on the tasting menu. But Moby, it's a spring menu! What is he supposed to put on it? Wild hare? There isn't very much available in the way of game right now, unless it's frozen. Do you have in mind examples of seasonal meat menus -- not tastings but menus with actual main courses -- that are more adventurous? Are you just thinking the offal content should be increased? You've got to bear in mind that we're not talking about Per Se or El Bulli here, where they're putting out twenty small plates with a few bites of food on each. These are really substantial dishes that you're expected to work on for half an hour. Under that regime, there's always going to be a lot of emphasis on meat roasted on the bone, which, in the end, is to me the most flavorful thing. I think the more adventurous parts of the current menu, however, are in the fish area, for example the sea bass with baby squid, sea urchin and lobster coral emulsion, and the sole with razor clam "au gratin." I've got to assume the majority of customers on any given night are taking the $175 option of 1 starter + 1 fish + 1 meat (+ 9 desserts), and that the menu was designed for balance in that regard. PS I was just in the other day and will report about some of the new dishes soon.

I've eaten there three times since London left. The first time gave me hope: service was the best it ever was, and the food was on par with previous visits. The next two visits saw slippage in both food and service (decor, especially those horribly uncomfortable chairs, was unchanged). I'm pretty much finished with the place.

What we know is that the phone has been disconnected, because I called the number and that's what the recording said. I also sent an e-mail to Ed Mitchell, trying to find out what's going on. I'll certainly report back if I hear anything.

I would think a whole roast chicken, basted with herb butter, would make for a very nice presentation with asparagus and morels. Take those pan juices -- which will be a combination of natural jus and herb butter -- and fortify them with a little glace and wine and maybe shallots and hey why not a little whipped cream, and you're all set.

This has been the greatest week of my life in terms of asparagus and morel consumption -- kind of a perfect storm of asparagus and morels. I had asparagus with morels at Jean Georges on Monday, and then I had them at Alain Ducasse New York on Tuesday. Don't hate me. Anyway, the lesson I took away from seeing the way two of the country's top restaurants treated asparagus and morels is: keep it simple. Both dishes were wonderful, but both were minimalist: at Jean Georges it was a riff on the traditional cream sauce; at Ducasse the asparagus and morels were an accompaniment to roasted veal, so they were enhanced with a veal jus. That would be my vote: roast some veal, make a jus, and serve the asparagus and morels with the veal and jus -- and maybe a little butter and whipped cream for good measure. (If you have Delouvrier's book, Mastering Simplicity, there's the basic morel-and-asparagus recipe minus the veal.)

What started as a group of seven like-minded food lovers in August 2001 has grown into a global organization with more than 13,000 members and a volunteer staff of dozens. Today we are pleased to announce the first group of new volunteer staff since we reorganized as the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. Susan Fahning (aka “snowangel”) will join the team as a Cooking forum host, and will also be a RecipeGullet administrator. Susan Burgess (aka “Susan in FL”) will be hosting the newly created Florida forum, as well as joining the Beer forum team. Arne Salvesen (aka “Daddy-A”) will be taking on the Vancouver, British Columbia, and Western Canada forum. Marsha Lynch (aka “Zilla369”) will join the Food Media & News hosting team. Chris Amirault (aka “Chrisamirault”) will be joining the team hosting the General Food Topics forum. Yetty Sharief (aka “spaghetttti”) will be handling the Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific forum. Charles Sweeney (aka “busboy”) will be joining the DC & DelMarVa team. And finally we welcome Ted Niceley (aka “tan319”) to the Pastry & Baking forum hosting team. This new group, which brings the size of the eGullet Society volunteer staff to 54 (not including the many non-staff volunteers who help with the media digests and other tasks), is a collection of extraordinary individuals from around the world. They've chosen to dedicate their time to this organization and community not for money, power or even fun (they all know how thankless the administrative work can be around here), but because they believe in what the eGullet Society stands for: the advancement of culinary knowledge. In addition, we've deployed several of our current staff in new positions. Current hosts Pedro Espinosa (aka “Pedro”), Lucy Vanel (aka “bleudauvergne”), Ron Kaplan (aka “Ronnie_Suburban”), Alberto Chinali (aka “albiston”), Dave Solomon (aka “melkor”) and Stanley Santos (aka “SobaAddict70”) are becoming Society managers. And several of our hosts are taking on additional forums. Alberto Chinali (aka “albiston”) is adding Elsewhere in Europe to his portfolio. Mary Baker (aka “Rebel Rose”) will be joining the California team. Jason Perlow will be working on Adventures in Eating. Stanley Santos (aka “SobaAddict70”) will be helping with General Food Topics. And Samuel Kinsey (aka “slkinsey”) will be joining the Cocktails and Fine Spirits hosting team. You can read the short biographies of all our volunteer staff on our updated Meet the Team page. We hope you'll join us in congratulating, welcoming and helping these new volunteers in the execution of their duties. The eGullet Society is an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff. Although we hope to be able to add some paid administrative staff when our budget allows, the foundation of the organization will remain all-volunteer. As our membership and reach expand, we reach the limits of our human resources and find that we must expand the team or stagnate. Even with this incredible group joining the team, there is much we still can't do because we just don't have the people (or the money, but that's another issue). You can help. There are many ways to volunteer, not just as a host or manager (those duties are quite time consuming, and not well suited to most people's schedules and preferences). Reach out to any host or manager and volunteer to do one of the media digests, organize an educational event in your area, submit a weekly greenmarket report or let us know if you're a graphic artist, computer programmer, educator, librarian, accountant or publicist willing to contribute some of your professional services. There is much to be done. Finally, a big thank-you to our eG People team for making all this happen. At this point the eGullet Society is essentially a medium-sized corporation (a not-for-profit one, but a corporation nonetheless) and we have our own equivalent of a personnel or human resources department, headed by the tireless Marlene Newell (aka “Marlene”). Every one of our new team members has been through a rigorous process of interviewing and induction, and receives ongoing training. Those who toil behind the scenes, administratively, get the least thanks and acknowledgment of anybody in the organization, so thank you very much to them for all their hard work in getting us to this point.

But Genny, objectively, it doesn't always come out in the wash. Maybe in a given relationship it does, but overall when you look at the world of dining relationships there is often someone who gets screwed if the bill is split down the middle -- the non-drinker in the group, for example. In such a situation, I think it's quite reasonable to have some sort of standing arrangement by which the non-drinker pays less than the others in the group. It actually seems unjust to do it any other way. Likewise, if one person is always bringing the wine and bearing that expense, I think it's reasonable to adjust the allocation of cost accordingly. In the Shaw scenario (David Shaw and I are not related, by the way), it seems the choice is between splitting the cost of the wines or not having the wines at all, because no matter how generous he is in spirit he says he can't afford to pay for everybody's wine. Fine. If everybody in the group is happy with that arrangement, who are we to question its propriety?

I have an acquaintance who does it that way. He has an incredible wine collection and he'll get a bunch of people together for dinner at a restaurant to have a meal and drink great wines, and the group splits the cost of the wine. He's not profiting from the venture -- he's just trying to cover some of his costs. So long as the arrangement is disclosed up front, I have no problem with it.

You don't go to Sushi Yasuda to purchase fish by the pound. You go to experience Yasuda's skill. He slices the fish however he believes will be most flattering to that piece of fish. He doesn't do it to save money -- if he thought he should serve bigger pieces, he would. He'd just charge whatever he needed to charge to make his food cost, and his customers would gladly pay. Having had sushi pieces in many sizes, both larger and smaller than Yasuda's, I personally think he has zeroed in on the closest thing that can exist to an optimal size for fish slices. Working from the assumption that a piece of sushi should be eaten -- comfortably -- in one bite, I think most sushi in town is unpleasantly large. In terms of the quality of Yasuda's fish, time and again direct comparisons -- including once when I visited most every top sushi place in the city in the space of about three days -- have led me to believe it is in a very small elite category within the New York sushi scene. This is also supported by the objective evidence: for example, ask people in the seafood business about Yasuda and they'll tell you he uses the best (just as if you ask people in the meat business who has the best beef they say Peter Luger); also all you have to do is look at the incredible care with which he handles it or read about his uniquely rigorous selection, butchering and curing processes. I don't know that Yasuda's fish is meant to "impress" or be "interesting." It is what it is. If you buy the best available in the market on any given day, you butcher it with expertise, you handle it with great care and you slice and present it peerlessly, how much more impressive and interesting do you need to be?

My two recent FreshDirect experiences were quite positive. Normally, we buy all our groceries in person and we enjoy doing it. We also have several advantages over normal New Yorkers: we're both self-employed so we can make our schedules work out so as to allow us to shop at off-peak hours on weekdays; we have a car so we can shop for staples in New Jersey or Westchester and we can go to Fairway Uptown whenever we want; and it's my business to stay on top of what's in all the markets so the time and expense of gourmet exploration is, in part, professional research. A couple of months ago, however, I had one of those times when a number of deadlines converge and I wind up working as hard as a writer as I ever did as a lawyer at a big firm. One of the things I had to do, in the middle of everything else, was test ten recipes for Cooking Light and, soon after, recreate those recipes for a photo shoot. And there just wasn't any time to do all that shopping. As I was totally freaking out, I took the dog out for a walk and noticed several of those FreshDirect boxes in the recycling area out front of the building. A few hours later (okay, I'm slow) it occurred to me that I could order all that stuff from FreshDirect. So I did. Twice. Putting in the second order was particularly pleasurable, because a week after the first order all I had to do was click one thing and FreshDirect delivered all the exact same stuff as I had ordered the first time around. The delivery guy was courteous. And the prices were pretty good -- more than Fairway; less than most Manhattan supermarkets. Quality-wise, the level overall was quite good. There were strengths and weaknesses, as in every market, and they were not entirely what I would have assumed. Vegetables, in particular, were surprisingly good: things like mushrooms, zucchini, etc., were really nice. Fruit was not as good as if you picked it by hand. Meats were outstanding, I thought -- I've never gotten such nice short ribs at Fairway, and the chickens were terrific. It seems they are certainly working hard to overcome the handicap of not being able to allow people to hand-select their products (and one advantage they have is that a thousand old ladies aren't handling the produce in the bins every day). They are also incredibly gracious about returns/credits for unsatisfactory products, so you have to factor that in as part of the strategy.

I concur about the lunch in the Jean Georges main dining room, but Nougatine is in my opinion a substantial step down. I would certainly choose Gramercy Tavern over Nougatine.

When we started talking about FreshDirect, the online grocer, in 2002, the big question was: how long would it last. Now it seems the question is: does anybody go to the grocery store anymore? At some of the larger apartment buildings, especially the ones with large young-professional populations, I see a FreshDirect truck (or trucks) sitting outside making deliveries nearly all day every day. The FreshDirect trucks are now an entrenched part of our urban landscape. Of course, so were the trucks from UrbanFetch, but FreshDirect does seem to be thriving. Recently, I started receiving circulars from an operation called Best Yet Market. This appears to be a small chain of Long Island supermarkets that is getting into the online ordering and delivery business. I believe the delivery area in Manhattan is currently the Upper East Side only, with expansion planned for the summer. The big thing this operation seems to be offering over FreshDirect is same day delivery (with FreshDirect, it's next day delivery). Like FreshDirect did, they're offering $25 off your first online order. http://www.bestyetmarket.com/ Are there other operations competing in this market? Is this the future of food shopping? Or will people always prefer to see, smell and feel their produce before buying?

They are not available for sale. The advance-reader copies are uncorrected proofs, printed on cheap paper with soft covers, and they have lots of little mistakes in them (some of which are pretty awful). They're just intended to be used by media for pre-publication coverage, and then discarded. At this point, I can't even get enough copies to give one to each of the people who helped with the book.