Fat Guy

Finally, some real food journalism in the Times. This is exactly the kind of thing a paper with the Times's resources should be doing. Bravo! And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The retail fish sector in the United States is a disgrace. It's going to take years of consumer education and regulatory pressure to get it anywhere near to a state of respectability. In the meantime, I'll be buying Costco's very good we-have-no-problem-admitting-it's-farmed salmon, thank you very much.

Kosher salt is also essential for salting the rims of margarita glasses. Also, because it's not iodized, it doesn't taste like iodine -- there are some dishes in which I think (maybe) I can perceive this difference. If you want to put a salt crust on something, or pickle something . . . there are a lot of uses. But the thing I like most about kosher salt is that the coarse grains are easier to handle. I don't use a salt shaker when cooking -- I use my fingers to add pinches of salt from a bowl or jar. You just have better control over quantity with kosher salt, and it's easier to sprinkle it very evenly over a surface. Other coarse salts, like sea salt, work for this, but kosher salt tends to be more uniformly workable in my experience.

I too thought the segment featuring "The Italian guy" was the best one, but I think the "food is love" message is both shallow and potentially destructive -- just ask anyone with an eating disorder.

This piece, by Rebekah Denn, ran in Wednesday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Many of the segments were shot in Washington state, so there's a strong local tie-in. I fear that may have blinded this particular writer to the many shortcomings of the series.

On-target review by Charlie McCollum in the San Jose Mercury News. He concludes: "Most of the observations between the pieces tend toward the obvious. ("In every culture, eating is a formal ritual,'' says Samuelsson at one point.) Certainly, they don't have much zest and precious little insight." And, thank goodness someone else said it: "And it doesn't help that Samuelsson is not the most effervescent of hosts. He clearly cares about food, but you need spark as an on-air presence to hold together three hours of television." I think he really nails it when he says, "You do have to give credit to the filmmakers for the parts of the series that work -- and for reaching high. The disappointment is that the ultimate goal of "The Meaning of Food'' eludes their grasp, much like a chef who puts together an impressively ambitious menu but fails to execute some of the individual dishes."

There was just a small piece about the Doughnut Plants in Japan in the new food magazine Crave New York. Apparently the doughnuts are so popular that they're being rationed, so you can only buy X number of doughnuts per person -- can anyone local confirm that?

It's different in different places. Check here for an explanation.

I agree with about half of what Jerry Schwartz of the AP says. He's right on the money when he cites, as the primary dramatic flaw in the series, that "everyone knows that food is wrapped up in love, culture and family." The obviousness of it all is indeed excruciating. This doesn't so much take away from the enjoyment of the individual segments, which are mostly fun on their own, as it makes the series feel sanctimonious and pedantic. I would go farther, even. I think the series thesis is patronizing, as is evident from the text of the companion book. The book, which is quite poorly done -- it is a scatterbrained collection of speeches by series creator Sue McLaughlin and mediocre heard-it-all-before food writing by ex-Boston Sidewalk restaurant reviewers Patricia Harris and David Lyon -- explains the basic premise: "everything about eating -- including what we consume, how we acquire it, who prepares it, and who's at the table -- is a form of communication rich with meaning. Our attitudes, practices, and rituals around food are a window onto our most basic beliefs about our world and ourselves." And then -- she really says this -- it continues: "Heavy stuff. I was convinced the topic would make for a fascinating documentary, and set about busily reading and researching." It appears she had a bit of a setback when she "discovered that my personal epiphany about the importance of food was old hat to anthropologists" -- surprise! -- but then, "interestingly enough, it appeared that this awareness of the intense connection between food and culture didn't resonate with many Americans." Then, predictably, things turn anti-American: "Anthropologists got the concept immediately, as did people from other countries. People from Hawai'i . . . got it, but many mainlanders didn't." I think she's about to learn that us "mainlanders" aren't as witless as she thinks, which is why a lot of people are going to find the plodding, repetitive, and painfully obvious thesis of the series to be unremarkable. In the end, it seems to me that McLaughlin is the one who's out of touch with what Americans do, think and know. Jerry Schwartz, however, plays right into McLaughlin's stereotype. One of her points is that "we've become so focused on the physical details of what we're eating -- how it tastes, what it's made of, how many calories or carbohydrates it has -- that we've forgotten about the crucial act of dining: whom we're eating with and why." And indeed, Schwartz's big complaint is that the people depicted in the series are too fat. I kid you not. He writes: "Obesity is the elephant in the kitchen -- obvious to all, but never confronted. A customer in a Chicago breakfast joint says he once weighed 172 pounds, but thanks to the food at the White Palace Grill he now tips the scales at 272. Then, he laughs. If we're talking about the meaning of food, how can we ignore the meaning of eating too much, and eating too much that is bad for us?" Schwartz seems to be aware that, "This is, perhaps, criticizing the series for failing to be something it never set out to be." And he's right, which makes one wonder why he's lodging this particular complaint. And I have no idea how Jerry Schwartz could say, with a straight face, that Marcus Samuelsson is "a very charming host." He may be a charming person. He may be a charming chef. But as a television host, he leaves much to be desired. The camera, not to mention the microphone, simply does not love Marcus Samuelsson. That much of his script is drivel doesn't help either.

We received some new information today about the broadcast dates and times for The Meaning of Food. Apparently the Thursday "feed" is not universally used by the PBS member stations, so you'll have to check your local station's schedule to find out when it will air in your market. Here in New York City, on Channel 13, the first two episodes air Sunday, 10 April 2005, at 3:00pm and Sunday, 17 April 2005 at 3:00pm. To find out your local air times, you can go to The Meaning of Food site and click near the bottom left where it says "Program Air Time: Broadcast time in your region." If you can't find it, send me a PM -- I now have the complete list of air dates and times but it's too large to post here.

I'm envisioning some sort of horrible communist restaurant where all customers must be treated exactly the same. What? Julia Child came back from the dead and wants crepes but they're not on the menu? Screw her. All our customers get exactly the same treatment. She can have the chicken fingers.

Hear hear. Just a quick note, because perhaps I wasn't explicit enough about this in the main text: The Meaning of Food airs nationally in the US (and anywhere else where you can pick up a US satellite feed that has a PBS affiliate) on PBS starting this Thursday and continuing on consecutive Thursdays: 7, 14 and 21 April 2005. I was sent an advance DVD of the series -- similar to an advance copy of a book that might be sent to a book reviewer -- so I was able to watch it and write about it in advance of the broadcast. I hope you'll all watch the first episode's premier on Thursday night and come back here to share your observations.

I'd like to state for the record that although I've written for the Daily Gullet, made an announcement about it and otherwise been involved at the margins, I had next to nothing to do with its reconception, relaunch and revitalization. And that's not for lack of trying. I had a meeting with Dave and Marlene where I tried to tell them what to do. They gave me a stern lecture on the meaning of delegation and sent me packing with a polite, "See you on August 3; in the meantime, please query us if you'd like to submit an essay for consideration."

At the top of every page of the eG Forums, on the right-hand side, is a link to RecipeGullet (between the Daily Gullet and Help links).

Today we launched the redesigned Daily Gullet webzine, and unveiled a new look for the RecipeGullet service. We've also added a new eGullet Society portal page as an entry point to our webspace. With this revival, the Society strengthens its commitment to support not only food discussion (as it already does in eG Forums), but also the craft and art of food writing and illustration, by seeking out and publishing talented authors in the field, regardless of their established credentials. In addition to a new look and new technology, the Daily Gullet has a new direction. The eGullet Society already provides the internet's finest food discussion; the new Daily Gullet strives to be an equally distinguished voice in magazine form. Under the stewardship of editorial director Dave Scantland, and thanks to the dedication, hard work and enthusiasm of our international volunteer staff, the Daily Gullet will be propelled to a higher level of achievement and influence. The new eGullet Society portal page will feature listings of hot topics in eG Forums, current offerings from the eGullet Culinary Institute, a section of up-to-date food-related media topics called MediaWatch and listings of new recipes in RecipeGullet. The portal is the tip of the eGullet Society iceberg. As for RecipeGullet, we look forward to the continued growth of this unique collaborative online cookbook, with recipes tested through extensive trial, error and thorough discussion. The strength of RecipeGullet is its synergy with the eG Forums, eGullet Culinary Institute and other Society endeavors. As a result, its recipes can be subjected to scrutiny, amplification and potential variation by Society members -- beginners, advanced home cooks, and seasoned professionals. Clear instructions, illuminating techniques and thoughtful ingredient lists are just some of the benefits that distinguish RecipeGullet from standard online recipe databases. RecipeGullet is also at the forefront of education about weight measures for solid ingredients, and offers a powerful proprietary data entry algorithm that converts plain language recipes into formal ingredients lists. The Daily Gullet and Recipe Gullet were put on hiatus late last Summer as eGullet.com transitioned to the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting and promoting a broad spectrum of activities concerning the culinary world. The reappearance of these two important features, coupled with last month’s start of the eGullet Culinary Institute spring semester, represent the much awaited completion of this reorganization. Since its founding in 2001, the eGullet Society has grown from a handful of dedicated and like-minded individuals to a global organization with more than10,000 members representing a diverse group: professional and amateur cooks; food and kitchen equipment producers; writers, diners and consumers. The Society today sponsors the leading online food and food-related discussion site on the internet (eG Forums) and comprises, as part of its energetic agenda, an online cooking academy (the eGullet Culinary Institute), regularly scheduled interviews and discussions with the movers and shakers of the food world (eG Spotlight special appearances), a recipe database (RecipeGullet) and an online literary journal (the Daily Gullet). Future plans include community outreach, expanded educational opportunities, and a scholarship program for budding culinary and culinary writing talent. All of this costs money. We were able to service our first few hundred members from an old Compaq web server on the floor of Jason Perlow's basement. Today we are serving more than 3,000,000 pages a month to more than 10,000 members and many times that many non-member readers. These costs do not exactly increase arithmetically: we are near the maximum capacity of a single web server, even a very powerful one, and despite state-of-the-art compression and cache management we will soon need to lease a second server, doubling our technology costs. We also must pay more for redundancy and security, and some of our advanced programming needs can no longer be met by our volunteer staff (though many of them can be) so we have to pay contractors to perform some of these services by the hour. Our other ambitious programs also require funds, especially our scholarship program. Much of what we do rests on the shoulders of our volunteers, but if we want for example to provide video clips with eGullet Culinary Institute courses we are going to need to invest in equipment. And it's expensive just being a not-for-profit organization: when we eliminated commercial advertising from the eG Forums we made a short-term revenue sacrifice that we will need to make up, and although we maintain exceptionally low overhead we can't escape the fact that the daily expenses of increasing demands on our infrastructure are mounting. If you are not already a Society Donor, we hope you will take a moment to become one. If you are already a Society Donor, we hope you will consider an additional gift. Most of all, we hope you will enjoy the new Daily Gullet, RecipeGullet and eGullet Society portal.

Isn't that the thing I broke one of your Riedel glasses with?

You're asking about "hand over fist"? That means basically "as fast as they can," and derives from the way a sailor climbs a rope.

For as long as I can remember, it has been on the Upper West Side, usually in the 80s. The deal is that they find a vacant store -- a bankrupt pharmacy, a shoe store whose owners have fled to Liberia, a defunct grocery -- and the do a short-term rental for a few weeks. They completely fill the place with Passover items ranging from the predictable to the wildly improbable, and they sell them hand-over-fist for cash to Jerry Stiller.

Don't get me wrong, Mitsuwa is a really nice place, but I've been going there a few times a year since back when it was Yaohan, and compared the its former state of glory it is now a ghost town. Much of the business has gone over to the two nearby Hanahreum stores in Little Ferry and Ridgefield because their prices are so much better and they have such high turnover -- I'll be surprised if Hanahreum doesn't just buy Mitsuwa one of these days.

Pink Salmon. That's definitely the one downtown from me on Madison, just up from Pain Quotidien. There's another one, or at least there was, uptown from me on Madison, near Mount Sinai. I'm pretty sure the one over by the 86th/Lex IRT stop is called Jumbo. I wasn't aware that JAS sold actual raw fish. Maybe there are some JAS stores that do and some that don't? I thought JAS was mostly where you go for nori and the other dry goods needed for sushi.

I'd be very interested to learn about cooperative sashimi-quality fish-buying groups for home cooks, but I've never heard of them. I'd be reluctant to try the Fulton Fish Market without specific expertise in this kind of fish purchasing; ditto for any Chinatown or standard Western fish market. While I'm sure a knowledgeable purchaser could find suitable fish for sushi at a variety of places from Fairway to Chelsea Market to Chinatown, that strikes me as an experts-only venture because you're likely to find mostly fish that isn't suitable for sushi and sashimi mixed in with a small amount of suitable (and unlabeled) fish. Instead, I'd opt for the tried-and-true Japanese markets, as well as the Korean markets that service a Japanese clientele. Katagiri near the 59th Street Bridge is the place where our Japanese acquaintances buy all their fish for sushi and sashimi. Even better, if you're willing to schlep, is Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ (although the store has seen better days and seems ripe for new management). The Hanahreum stores are Korean and have good sashimi-grade fish selections -- unfortunately the one on 32nd Street in Manhattan is not on par with the two in Northern New Jersey. Sunrise Mart near Ninth Street is also used by a lot of folks. If you go to the web site of the Japanese consulate you'll find a list of recommended markets, though not all of them sell fish: http://www.cgj.org/en/q/q7_list.html There also seem to be little places here and there around the city -- for example there are a couple I pass by on Madison Avenue whenever I walk around the Upper East Side, and also one on Lexington near the 86th Street IRT station -- that are hybrids of takeout sushi places and small fish markets. I don't have any specific recommendations, though I'll now remember to make a note next time I'm walking around. On occasion, though not in this context, I've had luck buying products -- like a whole cod -- directly from restaurants for cash. It might be possible to get a Japanese restaurant to do this for you, though it's one of the most closed sectors of the restaurant business. But maybe if you were a regular at a place, they'd do it for you as an occasional favor.

Ah, the Passover store! I hope I'll see Jerry Stiller there again this year. I'm determined to sample more products this year than I have in the past.

Thanks to Adam Gopnik's review in the New Yorker, I have designed my new business card: STEVEN A. SHAW Dining Expert "a queer expertise, a self-evident specialization" By appointment only

Richard Gere.

Thanks. The on-sale date for the book is August 16, and there will be signings, readings, parties and such throughout September (in the NY Metro area), October and November (in various places around the central and eastern states). I won't have exact details and dates for awhile, though.

Many thanks, Ron. Yeah, the fall is going to be completely nuts. It occurs to me, you all should feel free to PM or e-mail best wishes to Ellen ("Ellen Shapiro" or ellen@byellen.com), but I'll get uncomfortable if everybody chimes in with congratulations here on the book topic.