Fat Guy

Not so much pro and con, Pan. I just feel that at ADNY's prices every dish should be without peer, and I think this particular pork dish is with peer. It's excellent Berkshire pork cooked two ways, the gnocchi are delicious, and you'd be thrilled to get the dish at almost any restaurant for, say, $35. But ADNY has to offer more than that, and I just don't think that pork dish does the job. Delouvrier is tasting or perceiving something special about the dish that Moby and I are not, I guess, but I think he also realizes that it's not his best dish.

I'm not sure I concur with the characterization of the food as simple. There's an aesthetic of elegant simplicity and even minimalism to many of the plates but in reality they are decidedly not simple. Most of the sauces, for example, are dizzyingly complex and take days to make. That's why the cooks-to-customers ratio is so high despite the lack of table turns. At the same time, I certainly would not recommend the lamb or the pork for our kind of people -- in other words for eGullet types who place an emphasis on interesting or unique food. A person to whom $500 means nothing -- and there are a preponderance of such customers at ADNY, which is fundamentally a rich person's restaurant, and more than a few of those customers have unadventurous palates -- should order the lamb because chances are it will be incrementally better than the comparable lamb dish anywhere else. Those who scrape and save to dine at this level should probably focus on some of the less widely available dishes. Actually the lamb dish is so good it's worthy of consideration anyway, but the pork dish is as Moby said a bit one-note. I had a long argument with Delouvrier about the pork dish -- both in the restaurant and in a follow-up phone call -- and I doubt it will be on the menu much longer if it even still is. In terms of selection, what you've got to realize is that ADNY like any restaurant at this level is capable of doing a lot more than what is printed on the menu. If you're a regular -- and you certainly are a regular at ADNY if you dine there more than once a season -- you don't have to worry. Your meals won't be redundant if you don't want them to be. Not at all. At the same time, there are plenty of regulars who do enjoy eating familiar dishes -- it's like listening to a favorite piece of music (sorry for stealing the analogy Pedro).

Where I buy butter it's less than $4/pound, but I agree the base price isn't unreasonable. It's the shipping and the quantity that make it a wacky seeming expenditure. In my experience butter freezes very well -- as well as almost anything. There's a very slight textural difference I've sometimes been able to notice in frozen-then-thawed butter, but it's no big deal.

Just got an e-mail saying ADNY is now on OpenTable.com

This is all I know: "Through January, Cabot Creamery is making its Cabot 83 and Cabot Old Fashioned Whey Cream butters available by mail order for the holiday cooking and baking season. Previously, a trip to the Green Mountain State to visit the Cabot Visitors’ Center or the Cabot Annex store was the best bet for finding these small batch butters. Now, these delicious, higher butterfat butters can be conveniently ordered by calling toll-free: 1-800-639-3198."

A few days ago I got an e-mail from a publicist asking if I'd like some information about and samples of some specialty butters from Cabot. I said “sure” and promptly forgot about it. Today, the FedEx guy showed up with four pounds of butter in an insulated cooler lined with foam refrigerant packs. At that point, I started to focus on the issue. First I went back and tried to figure out why four pounds of butter had arrived. Then I tried to track down the press materials I had been sent. I couldn't really figure either thing out, but I had a stale bagel left from the day before so I decided to toast it and eat some butter. There were two pounds each of two kinds of butter. I decided quite arbitrarily that the best way to taste the butter would be at a warm but not melted temperature, so I toasted the bagel lightly and spread it with a thick enough coating of butter such that the butter would soften considerably but not melt. I spread almost all of each half with one of the two types of butter. I also decided, as a control sample, that I'd put some Land O' Lakes butter from the fridge (Land O' Lakes is considered by many to be the best normal supermarket butter) on a small portion of the bagel that I had set aside. Not that this was a particularly scientific experiment. So, anyway, I tasted the first butter, “ Cabot 83.” This is advertised as a high fat European style butter. I tasted it. It was good. But it didn't blow me away or anything. I had until that moment been fantasizing that this was going to be butter that would take me back to the Old Country. Then again in the Old Country my ancestors were too poor to afford butter and too busy getting killed by antisemites to worry about such things. But at least maybe, I thought, it would taste like the butter in good restaurants in Europe today. Not so. It tasted like American butter but with more fat. I'll get back to this later. I then took a bite of the Land O' Lakes sample, which did bring the Cabot 83 (the 83 refers to the percentage of solids as opposed to water; 83 is substantially higher than the American norm and even a bit higher than the European norm) somewhat into contrast: the Cabot 83 was definitely richer. It also had a “cleaner” taste but I attribute that to its freshness (air shipped from the cow to me) versus the weeks-old Land 'O Lakes (trucked in to a supermarket from Plant Number 555 and sharing my refrigerator's butter compartment with my wife's nail polish). So then I took a taste of the other butter: “Cabot Old Fashioned Whey Cream Butter.” Oh . . . my . . . God . . . I was back in the Old Country! But instead of antisemites I was surrounded by buttered French women in a Michelin three-star day spa! Butter that tastes like butter used to taste, even though I wasn't alive when it tasted that way! Whatever you were saving money for, forget about it. Divert your resources to ordering some of this stuff from Cabot. It will be the best, and probably only, $33.79 you've ever spent on butter. (For that amount plus shipping you get 8 pounds of butter; four of each of the two types I've mentioned.) Eventually I achieved the proper state of motivation whereby I found the press release that the publicist – Brenda – had originally sent me. Here's the deal with the whey butter: “For more than half a century, Cabot has been taking the whey from its cheesemaking and separating out any remaining cream to churn into a very special butter. Cabot Old Fashioned Whey Cream butter, which has over 80% butterfat, also has a slightly darker color and a hint of a cultured flavor.” Okay, so something about this cream that they extract from the whey gives this butter the most remarkable flavor. It's not the sour flavor of cultured butter – this butter isn't actually cultured. Don't get me wrong, I like cultured butter. Until today I'd have said cultured butter is categorically superior to sweet uncultured butter. But today I learned that whey cream butter stands on an even higher rung of the butter ladder than cultured. Then I read up on the Cabot 83, because I was trying to figure out why Cabot sent it to me. “With a richer, more full-bodied taste, Cabot 83 butter is an unsalted butter with 83% butterfat content, higher than either the U.S. norm of 80% or the European standard of 82%. The higher butterfat content of Cabot 83 translates to lower moisture, resulting in better melting and sautéing characteristics, as well as superior performance in stabilizing sauces, clarifying butter and creating delicate desserts.” Aha. So the deal with the Cabot 83 is that it's not “eatin' butter” but rather “cookin' butter.” So I will have to try the Cabot 83 again, but in some sort of culinary application rather than just spread on bread. http://store.cabotcheese.com/#butter Go!

Ellen has an appointment to visit the ADNY pastry kitchen in a couple of weeks in order to photograph some dessert production.

Supply and demand.

I thought Paris's pizza looked awful.

I think the answer to "is it worth it" is an individual one; nobody can decide it for anybody else. But some facts might be helpful. ADNY: • Three courses from the carte (choice of one appetizer, one fish or one meat, and one dessert) $150 • Four courses from the carte (choice of one appetizer, one fish, one meat, and one dessert) $175 • Cheese course $21 • Most tasting menus $225 • White truffle tasting menu $320 Per Se: • Five courses from the carte $135 • Standard tasting menu $150 Le Bernardin: • Three courses from the carte $92 • Standard tasting menu $150 One of the largest factors involved in the price differential is, of course, the single sitting. Only ADNY is following the Michelin model and doing a single sitting -- the others, even Per Se, are turning tables, although Per Se turns far fewer tables than the rest. It's hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison with respect to the food, for a variety of reasons: the individual courses at ADNY tend to be similar to carte items in Michelin three-star restaurants in Europe in that they are fairly extensive compositions, whereas at Per Se the carte items are closer to tasting menu items on the European scale and on the Per Se tasting menu the number of courses is something like double the number you'd get at ADNY while the amount of food is something like half. Both ADNY and Per Se provide quite a few extras especially at the dessert stage of the evening -- Le Bernardin, Jean Georges, and Daniel aren't playing on the same field in that regard. Do you get better food at ADNY? Some argue yes. I am of that opinion. I think the ingredients are better, the preparation is more sophisticated, and the labor intensiveness of the dishes is without peer. Others may have a stylistic preference for the way Per Se does things, which is fine. I do think those two restaurants are in their own league, though, although Le Bernardin is unparalleled as a fish specialist and Daniel or Jean Georges can produce ADNY/Per Se-quality meals for VIPs. Depending on what you're ordering, ADNY costs somewhere between roughly 15 and 50 percent more than the other restaurants that make for reasonable points of comparison. The extras -- like wine, water, and such -- tend to be priced quite high at ADNY as well, so if you run up a tab with extras you will run it up quicker at ADNY. I don't think, especially at the low end of the spread when you're comparing a $135 meal at Per Se to a $150 meal at ADNY -- and probably getting more food at ADNY -- that it's much to scream about. But it's also not really about quantity of food or about a point-for-point percentage-for-quality gap. As with any luxury item, at the margin you pay a lot more for a little more. For some, having the best is worth 50% more, or even 500% more. For some, it's worth settling for slightly less if you can save 33%. It all depends on how much discretionary income you have and how you value this sort of thing. There's also the issue of risk. At any restaurant in the world, on any given night, you can have a sub-par meal. It's like opening old, expensive bottles of wine: it's a gamble. I believe ADNY and eventually Per Se will provide a lower level of risk than most, but the risk is still out there. Any given individual may go to ADNY and have a less exciting meal than what some of the reports here have indicated, and personal tastes can vary. So if the cost of dinner at one of those places represents your life savings or you need it to buy braces for your kids, you probably shouldn't be playing at that table.

This season is much improved over last, although last night's episode was probably the weakest of the year on account of the absence of the most interesting new character: Logan. I thought, however, that the pork chops were brined in bourbon and saltwater. Wasn't there a comment that it sounded like a cleaning solution or something? I just erased it from the DVR so I have no way to check.

If your friend eats oysters, definitely do Bowen's Island. It's one of the greatest culinary dives on the planet. Hank's seafood, mentioned above, is a great compromise place with no compromises: you can get everything from basic fried fish to some pretty elegant stuff (Frank McMahon, the chef, trained at Le Bernardin). I especially like the "Low Country Bouillabaisse." Peninsula is the best restaurant I've visited in Charleston, and you might be able to sell it to your friend as a steak place. They do have a filet, a ribeye, and a New York strip, served steakhouse style with everything on the side. That tends to satisfy the picky eaters. Meanwhile you can get the more interesting food. Sticky Fingers has pretty good barbecue ribs and makes for a nice lunch.

Who told you that you need to pay $500 for a "secure connection"? A $50 Linksys router can support dozens of sessions with state-of-the-art encryption, though you'll probably just want to opt for the ease of an open network and let the individual users know that firewalling their PCs is their responsibility.

It's important when doing a renovation to have a plan. Right now, there's a huge open question regarding whether or not a wall is coming down. That should really be decided first. Once that piece of information is nailed down, a number of other decisions will flow from it. For example, if a wall comes down thus making a lot more space available, it's silly to sacrifice 6" to go from a 30" to a 24" range. A 24" range is too much of a compromise if you have room for a 30" range. Likewise, the entire layout and all the visibility vectors of your kitchen will change radically if you open up a wall. Your cabinetry decisions will have to change, you may opt for a dual-use counter and pass-through or an island, etc. One thing I can assure you of, though: if you do a renovation without a clear and comprehensive plan it will cost you twice as much in the end.

They've been in California for something like 15 years -- I have a friend in LA who must eat there 5 times a week -- but they're new to this area. I think it's one of the better chains.

Sophisticated by the standards of a Roman orgy, maybe!

So Bill Peet must be very new, because the guy from Firebird was still the chef as of the time of the Grimes review: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...75AC0A9659C8B63

I'm not sure how long Bill Peet has been at Cafe des Artistes. The restaurant's website www.cafenyc.com contains a fairly complete chef bio but doesn't actually specify a start date.

Cafe des Artistes doesn't get much play here on the eG Forums or among foodie types in general. But it has long been an important New York institution, and is becoming more so as kindred restaurants like La Cote Basque, Lutece, Le Cirque, La Caravelle, and the Rainbow Room close or evolve to become unrecognizable. As the customers who dined in rotation at many of these places find their choices increasingly limited, Cafe des Artistes has a growing share of a shrinking niche. Not that Cafe des Artistes is exactly the same as the classic New York French and Continental restaurants. It has more casual roots -- viewed from the vantage point of an era when casual meant what formal means today -- and is loosely in the cafe category as opposed to the restaurant category. These divisions have so little meaning today it's probably not worth harping on them, but there is an air of Bohemian casualness at Cafe des Artistes that cuts against the formality one would expect in the La Caravelle genre. We went pre-opera, which isn't the best way to enjoy a meal at a good restaurant, but two hours felt like a full turn anyway because there aren't elaborate and time-consuming presentations of amuses, palate cleansers, or petits fours. I enjoyed one of the most attractive dining rooms on the planet, relatively competent service, and mostly classic food based on good ingredients. Exceptional dishes were steak tartare, "salmon five ways," house-made charcuterie, rack of lamb, ribeye steak, and yellowfin tuna (the one thoroughly modern dish, a seared and sliced loin -- but good). Unexceptional dishes were a goopy and one-dimensional cassoulet, and all the desserts. I hadn't set foot in the restaurant in ages, but the food has definitely improved. The chef, a gentleman named Bill Peet who among other thing spent 15 years at Lutece and bears an uncanny resemblance to Steve Klc, is doing a good job.

Ed Shapiro and I have no such mood-inconsistency problems, because we have a bad day every day and are always cranky.

Ed Shapiro agrees with you.

I hope I didn't say anything like that, since it's not what I believe. I don't consider myself to be a restaurant reviewer, no less one who gets it right any percentage of the time. Colloquially, I sometimes call myself a food critic or reviewer because it's easier than explaining the taxonomy of different kinds of culinary journalism, but like Holly Moore I'm much more interested in general food writing that may include some dining crticism as a component than I am in restaurant reviewing as such. Indeed, most of my restaurant reviews from the 1990s possess many of the (I contend) flaws I've been pointing to here. I still have my "Ed Shapiro" credit card and I still get mailings sent to Ed Shaprio by Ducasse, Union Square Cafe, and others. I dutifully wrote about food, decor, and service in the standard fashion. My perspective on restaurant reviewing was more free to develop after I stopped doing it, and I wouldn't likely go back unless some sort of amazing opportunity presented itself, and perhaps not even then. In terms of reviewers who I think have done a great job in the recent past, I've been naming names all along: David Rosengarten, Thomas Matthews, and I'll trade any recent Times critic for Michael Bauer, warts and all. Bill, maybe I don't know what is meant here by "indentifying" with the readership, and I know it wasn't you who used the word. When I said "Critics' sole identification should be with the cause of excellence in cuisine," what I meant is not that a critic should ignore the audience or do anything less than try to write excellent, entertaining reviews that the audience will connect with but, rather, that serving the audience demands independence not only from the industry but also from the whole audience.

Critics should speak to the publication's subscribers, without pandering to them. Critics should teach without lecturing or engaging in solipsism, but should not compromise their beliefs. Now what's this about not addressing restaurateurs? Critics speak to multiple segments of the audience. In any form of criticism -- film, art, literature, drama, music, dining -- it is entirely normal for a critic to address some comments to the industry, or to make comments calculated to be read a certain way by industry people. It's part of the project, part of a critic's body of work, to try to push the industry -- whether that industry is Hollywood or Broadway or the restaurant industry -- towards doing better, to try to push the non-industry readers to greater knowledge and appreciation, and also of course to provide practical information and entertainment.

"But I buy at Alexander's . . ." Sorry. But seriously, I shop at Barney's and even live near Barney's. I also shop at the next level up from Barney's, because Barney's is still somewhat mass market compared to my tailor or some of the Madison Avenue boutiques like Seigo where I get my limited edition Japanese silk neckties. And I go to Sripraphai all the time. In fact I have been to Sripraphai and Ducasse on the same day, because I love good food, and I'll keep doing all of the above until they drag me off to debtor's prison. But I'll still have my fish pants. And I don't think Sripraphai should have been reviewed. So there. Like Busboy, I think I'm done for awhile, not because I don't love you all but because this has become repetitive. See you next time Frank Bruni screws up.

Bill, I think you're lumping together two types of recognition. A good writer of course writes for an audience and must always remember that audience. But a journalist's job sometimes requires that he or she tell that audience things it doesn't want to hear. (Not that the audience is monolithic, but let's skip that for now.) I believe the critic has an ethical obligation to write what he or she believes, even if 100% of the readers disagree. The needs, if not necessarily always the wants, of the readers demand nothing less. And you can disagree with your readers without forgetting them -- it's called education.