Fat Guy

Regarding pot racks, there are any number of DIY solutions but the pot rack I have cost $59 and has been providing me with excellent service for years. It hardly seems worth the trouble to cobble one together yourself. A couple of years after I installed the first one, I added a second one right next to it. Here's what it looks like, though mine is black with stainless grid. This place charges $65 -- it's just a catalog photo I found online -- but similar products can be found for a few dollars less. http://www.stacksandstacks.com/html/696_ce...e-with-grid.htm In terms of the sideboard/buffet and various workstations and such, my one piece of advice to you is to be patient. Don't think of the kitchen renovation as something you have to complete in October. Don't buy anything that's going to be temporary. Wait until you find the right thing for each place -- long-term you'll be happier that way. Tiles are a great material for an auxiliary counter, but if you can get a single piece of stone cut to fit -- some sort of remnant that won't cost very much -- that's by far the best surface you're going to find. I remain to be convinced of the wisdom of butcher block as a countertop material. Even though it's probably the last thing in the world you want to do right now, consider a second coat of paing on the cabinetry.

Re-Store deserves its own thread. What a great place.

I agree the IKEA table would not be the way to go, cost- or aesthetics-wise. I would suggest going to yard sales and flea markets and looking for a piece of furniture that was intended to be a buffet/sideboard and is in totally crappy cosmetic shape. If you get one that was made back in the day, it has a chance of having a finished back. You should be able to find one with all manner of drawers, shelves, and cabinets underneath. Then take that bad boy out in the yard, strip it, paint it, and poly the heck out of the top or, even better, find a piece of stone that fits and glue it on. If the back isn't finished, painting will probably make it look finished enough, plus you can secure a towel bar, knife rack, hooks, or whatever to cover it up.

Great stuff, Jason. Mazal tov on writing a terrific piece, giving some much deserved publicity to a true artisan, and getting placement in the New York Times. For those who want to read it, most of the New Jersey section's content appears online eventually. It just doesn't happen on the day of publication. The New Jersey restaurant reviews by David Corcoran, for example, tend to show up online approximately a week after their publication date. So I'm sure at some point we'll have a link to Jason's piece. Any other way of transmitting it would present a potential copyright problem.

Table A's positioning sounds great. I didn't realize you'd have that kind of width. That's excellent. And if you can get a pot rack suspended up over that table, you'll be golden -- ideal positioning for cooking and prep, since you can work from either side of the table. If you're considering an opening from B to the LR, why not make it a full-on pass-through with a counter that you can sit on either side of? C is an offbeat, interesting, logical choice. To go with the tool chest look, you could also consider putting pegboard above it. Don't forget you will need a place for trash. Always best to design that in, otherwise you wind up with your trash can in an inconvenient place.

I'm negative on anything on casters or anything that swings up or out. If you're a high-impact cook those types of things just aren't stable. People will swear up and down that they are -- they have this special kind of locking caster or this one is really much more stable than the norm -- but if you pound and hammer like a restaurant cook you'll wreck those pieces pretty quickly. I also concur that doors on cabinets are good. If you cook in such a way as to generate a lot of smoke and vaporized grease, you want everything in the kitchen covered or enclosed to the greatest extent possible. Great lighting is expensive. It requires specialized fixtures and a lot of knowledge about positioning and aesthetics, not to mention all the wiring work you have to do, which could also include the need for additional power. What I'd focus on are simple issues of quantity and quality of light. Install task lighting under every cabinet -- every single one and as much as you can cram in there. And replace all the bulbs on the ceiling -- especially the fluorescent ones -- with state-of-the-art warm, natural light bulbs. You will be amazed at how much better the premium fluorescent bulbs are than standard-issue Sylvania or GE, and it's just not a big expense.

Yeah, some sort of baker's rack or multi-level workstation would be ideal. That's a total yard-sale item too -- no need to buy a new one. I'll cast a vote against the over-the-stove microwave. You want a cheap-ass microwave from Costco that you can treat as disposable and replace when necessary. Be sure to do some testing on those cabinets when you paint. You may need to rough up the surface and apply a primer-sealer, or whatever. And remove the doors to pain them, of course.

This is going to be fun. A few early thoughts: 1) I think it's helpful to divide your thinking into the practical and the cosmetic. Sometimes the two categories overlap, as with task lighting. I'm guessing there isn't task lighting installed under those cabinets, and that's certainly a top priority and economical expenditure. But in most cases cosmetic and practical can be divided. a) The floor. Here's an example of a place where you don't actually need to do anything from a practical standpoint. Cracked ugly-ass linoleum is objectively an excellent flooring material. It's good to stand on, it's good if you drop stuff on it, and it does all the things a floor needs to do. Given that you're a real cook on a limited budget, I'd say just forget about doing anything to the floor. Instead, lay down a few brightly colored non-skid mats in the key work areas to provide extra padding when you're standing in front of the sink and stove, and walking into the room. These will draw attention away from the rest of the floor. Same strategy for the countertop: just leave it, and lay down some really nice boards -- a butcher block one and maybe also a marble one -- as semi-permanent fixtures. b) The cabinets. I'm assuming they're not particularly nice wood, though I can't really tell from the photos. Here's a place where you can spend very little money but use some of your own labor to make a major cosmetic change. To wit, I would consider painting them white. 2) It does seem that if you're a heavy user of toaster and microwave you need to commit some of that L to it, but it would make sense to commit as little as possible. Are the toaster and microwave already owned or are they being purchased? 3) For a table I would suggest more of a counter: a long narrow table pushed up into the top right corner of the diagram and running the long way along the right-hand wall. A table but configured as a counter. Preferably you could find something with a backsplash so it could be a usable auxiliary work area for cooking, especially for rolling dough and such. You could even build such an item, which would allow you to template a curved or L-shaped top that makes the turn towards the window such that, when a couple of people are sitting at it, they're not facing the wall but are, rather, partially oriented towards that window. 4) If you did that table configuration you'd still have two bits of space. In particular I'd be interested to know the number of inches between the door and window at the top of the diagram. Maybe it's 30 or even 36 inches and you can put a workstation in there with a usable main surface and a higher shelf. Maybe that higher shelf could even hold the microwave and/or toaster. Underneath might be a good place for the KitchenAid. You'd also have some space near the bottom right of the diagram, which might be usable for something -- ceiling-wise that might be a logical place to suspend a pot rack, if you can engineer it.

There are three particularly noteworthy Kunz signatures that, last I checked (and this was in very early pre-previews), were going to be featured at Cafe Gray: the herbed risotto with wild mushroom fricassee, the braised short ribs, and the red-rice crusted fish.

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Hey! What's a guy got to do to get a report around here?

I ate at many CFNs when I was a kid, but I don't remember that sign -- not that I would, because I wasn't financially aware at the time. In any event, if it was the case -- and presumably somebody at the Times confirmed it before printing the letter -- I wouldn't consider it to be all that radical. I mean, most chain quick-service restaurants don't participate in the culture of tipping. You don't tip at McDonald's, Taco Bell, or Subway. The layout of a typical CFN was a little different in that you got something akin to table service, which is typically the threshold beyond which you can always expect tipping, but as I recall it was a somewhat abbreviated form of service where you just got a limited repertoire of stuff shoved at you while you sat at a counter.

Okay, okay, Pan, I am going to tell the rosemary story and then go to bed and have nightmares and related post-traumatic stress experiences. Back in 1986 when I was a junior in high school I spent Christmas in California at the home of some friends of friends. They were warm, wonderful, generous people who also happened to be excellent cooks. This was the era during which people who could cook French food were referred to as "gourmet cooks." Anyway, for about a week we ate very well indeed. But for Christmas dinner a turkey was prepared according to a recipe from some magazine, probably Gourmet, and the recipe involved the entire rosemary harvest of the state of California. There was rosemary under the skin of the turkey and there were pieces of it sticking out of the skin, making the turkey look like a chia pet or a hedgehog. There was rosemary in the stuffing. And there was rosemary in the gravy. For good measure, a rosemary potato dish was prepared as one of the sides. Well, let me tell you, there is a certain saturation of rosemary beyond which there is no turning back. I ate so much rosemary that, for the next two days, my breath smelled of rosemary, I was burping rosemary, and even my sweat had a rosemary edge to it. My reaction to it became increasingly visceral, so much so that later in the week when I smelled rosemary upon walking into a restaurant I became dizzy and weak kneed and needed to brace myself against a stranger to keep from passing out (nobody in Los Angeles considered that behavior to be the slightest bit odd, though, and she actually wound up inviting me to a party, but that's another story involving a DWI checkpoint and the questionable status of my New York State junior driver's license). To this day, if I get a serious hit of pure rosemary smell I still have that reaction. Even just writing about it has sent me into a mild panic. So please don't ever mention this again. Goodnight.

There's also this whole Midtown culture of power lunch places. I'm not as up on it as I once was but back in the '90s it was "44" and the Four Seasons, and now I hear the Lever House has captured some of that crowd.

Most of the classic, Old New York places like Peter Luger and Katz's (and of course Rao's) get their fair share of New York royalty. So do all the best restaurants -- anyplace that's top-tier haute (especially Daniel) or that's the best in its category (like NY Noodle Town but also the best Japanese places et al.). Then there are the Elaine's-type places that have their followers. But there are also some lesser-known places that appear to be just regular old neighborhood restaurants but are nonetheless packed to the gills with the glitterati. For example, in my neighborhood there's a totally unremarkable "Northern Italian" place called Vico, on Madison Avenue between 92nd and 93rd. When I walk the dog in the early evening I see heavy hitters there all the time -- Ralph Lauren, Paul Newman, Woody Allen, Kevin Kline (not to mention my favorite celberity of all, Burt Young aka Paulie from Rocky) and respective spouses -- or at a couple of other equally unremarkable restaurants on that same block. It's just, for a variety of reasons, a block where a lot of famous people dine out casually on a semi-regular basis. And those are just the people I recognize. If, unlike me, you know what all the famous producers, politicians, and captains of industry look like you'll spot a lot more folks than I ever will.

I'm pretty much an olfactory omnivore when it comes to food. There are very few exceptions (see below). I like the smell of most anything cooking. It makes me happy. My main negative reaction is to rosemary. Please don't make me tell the rosemary story.

Robyn, I've forgotten when you're coming and what size party you are, but there's a lunch reservation showing up on OpenTable for October 10 for 4 people. In general the most powerful search on OpenTable is the "Next available day" search because it will give you every available reservation for a given table size within a four hour time slot on the next 30 consecutive days all at once. So if you do that for Per Se you can see lunch reservations for 4 people on the 10th and 29th right now, and I'm sure if you adjust the parameters other reservations will appear.

Pan for mayor.

I see that more and more, Marcus, as I uncover the older collections of Times reviews. Even allowing for context, perspective, and contemporaneous expectations and tastes, it's undoubtedly true that back in the day an offbeat, not-very-attractive, seemingly run-of-the-mill restaurant with an awesome kitchen could get four stars from a Times critic. And I think what Mimi Sheraton said about what four stars means to her, and about four stars meaning something different for every critic, was very illuminating -- how could it not be, given that she and Craig Claiborne invented the New York Times reviewing system? But I also think it was inevitable that the system would evolve in the direction of Michelin's wholism, wherein the top rating implies as much about style as about cuisine. I'm not aware of any mainstream star-type system -- any major paper, Mobil, AAA, you name it -- where the pure food school of thought has held sway in the long term. With respect to the Times at least, I believe that's because of the institutional aspect of things. When Claiborne and Sheraton were the Times reviewers, they were the institution. They were the first, and they set the rules and the tone. They were also massive personalities -- perhaps the biggest in the history of restaurant reviewing, with Gael Greene also going on that list. Moving forward, though, the Times needed to make restaurant reviewing about the institution of the newspaper and not about the institution of any one critic or a founding generation of critics. From the perspective of the Times, and I think this serves the cause of good journalism as well, the restaurant reviewing standards have to be about more than just the individual critic at any given time. If it's just what the critic thinks, then your institution is only as good as your critic and there's no larger, immutable, historical standard you can appeal to in order to explain why Amanda Hesser's restaurant reviews were so bad -- after all, they reflect how she felt. For an institutionally oriented paper like the Times, that's untenable -- as untenable as not having checks and balances and regulations to guide government officials -- and it destroys the sense of continuity that is such a point of pride for the Times. So now, without question, we do have a system with a life of its own and we do have expectations and standards that are inherited from each previous generation of critics. When William Grimes or Frank Bruni -- neither of whom has the individual institutional aspect or blinding personality of a Mimi Sheraton -- come into the system, their jobs are to work within that system and it's a big deal when they make even minor modifications to it. That being said, the system does need to be dynamic and evolving, because the New York restaurant culture is dynamic and evolving. It's a question of balance.

Mr. Cutlets for mayor.

I tend to echo Mimi's suspicions about the hidden agendas and consequences, intended or not, of the Slow Food approach. Certainly there is a need for technology in agriculture -- the world can't be fed without it -- and dogmatic fidelity to tradition inevitably takes its greatest toll on those who traditionally have been oppressed: women, the poor, and ethnic minorities to name a few. Most dogmatically inclined organizations, moreover, follow the predictable pattern of telling the moderates that they're not dogmatic and telling a completely different story internally to core supporters. Slow Food does some terrific things: the effort to catalog and preserve species and recipes, the guidebooks, the events, and the general defense of quality and sensuality in cuisine. But Slow Food is also at its core, despite weak protestations to the contrary, the culinary wing of the anti-globalization movement, with strong anti-agribusiness, anti-chains, anti-corporate, ecological, staunchly traditionalist, and other agendas. Some agree with these agendas and some don't, and of course there is a range of opinions in between -- but I think supporters and opponents alike can agree that it is a questionable practice for Slow Food to try so hard to avoid admitting what its agendas are, and instead to portray itself as just being warm, fuzzy, and about enjoyment of food and thinking a little more about it. Certainly, most members of Slow Food think that's what the movement is about. And Slow Food USA is clearly less ideological in this regard than the parent organization. But I think it's unfortunate that at its core an organization that does a lot of good work and provides a lot of enjoyment to gastronomes has an agenda that it doesn't seem to want its members to focus on.

Coming at this from the perspective of someone whose career involves at least making an effort to know a lot about food, if I'd never been to Europe I'd probably say someplace in Europe, but since that's not my situation I can't imagine picking anyplace other than Japan. I can't even think of a distant second-place candidate, not for someone in my situation at least. As much as I'd love to explore the cuisines of every European country in depth, not to mention China, India, various Southeast Asian nations, Mexico, and more, Japan is the biggest gap in my experience right now and would be the priority.

Hi Mimi. Welcome to this eGullet Q&A. I think it's going to be a great one. I really enjoyed reading Eating My Words and was wondering what kinds of reactions you've been getting to the book. Any controversies, hate mail, or stalkers? Any reviews you thought were wrong-headed or vindictive? Anything you'd like to tell us about the book that hasn't been said before? Tell all!

The eGullet Society is proud to welcome Mimi Sheraton for this week's Q&A. Although she requires no introduction, we thought a few background facts might be in order. Mimi Sheraton grew up in Brooklyn in a very food-oriented family. Her mother was a great cook and her father was in the wholesale fruit and produce business in Washington Market. She studied marketing and minored in journalism at NYU, and then began writing home furnishings copy for an ad agency, after which she became a home furnishings copywriter for Good Housekeeping magazine. She attended evening classes at the New York School of Interior Decorating (now called Design) and for about eight years was a home furnishings editor on Seventeen and House Beautiful’s supplement division. Gradually she began to write about food, and became a research consultant to Joe Baum at Restaurant Associates when the company was planning the Four Seasons restaurant. She later worked on other RA projects such as The Towers Suite, Zum Zum and Trattoria before turning full time to food writing. She traveled widely on research assignments for RA, for articles, for a travel guidebook called City Portraits and buying samples of folk art for the Georg Jensen store in NYC. During those trips, she took courses with various cooks and chefs, most especially in Denmark, Cambodia, Lebanon and Turkey. She took courses both at The China Institute in NYC and Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She was a restaurant critic first for Cue, then for The Village Voice and freelanced on food and travel for many magazines such as Mademoiselle and Town & Country. For five years, she was a contributor to the original New York Magazine under Clay Felker and did her first big story there: “I Taste Everything in Bloomingdale’s Food Dept.” It was then the hottest gourmet food shop in town, and she reported on 1,196 products. She went to the New York Times in 1975 as a food reporter, became the restaurant critic in 1976 and stayed until the end of 1983. After that, she was a contributor to Time, Vanity Fair, Code Nast Traveler and New Woman. She has also written for Vogue, Eros, Avant-Garde, Food & Wine and still writes freelance articles for the Times. Mimi Sheraton has written 15 books, including The German Cookbook: A Complete Guide to Mastering Authentic German Cooking, Is Salami and Eggs Better Than Sex? Memoirs of a Happy Eater (with Alan King), The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World, and most recently, the memoir Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life. She has consulted to New York University Hospital (now Tisch) on patient food and has made a special study of school and other institutional food. For five years, she also curated exhibits on the popular arts for a gallery owned by Hallmark Cards that used to be on 5th Avenue and 56th Street, now the Fendi store. Such exhibits were usually based on food, decorating or folkcrafts. She won a J.C. Penny-Missouri journalism award for work in New York Magazine and a Front Page award for a Times article. One of her books, The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup, won both the IACP and James Beard awards, and she won a Beard journalism award for a Vanity Fair article on the Four Seasons’s 40th anniversary. She is married to Richard Falcone, a retired importer, and lives in Greenwich Village (where she has lived for 60 years) in a brownstone. They have one son, a lawyer married to a lawyer, and one granddaughter. Photo of Mimi Sheraton in her Greenwich Village kitchen, by Ya-Roo Yang

Sometimes a cuisine is just a cuisine.