Fat Guy

I am, by the way, an alumnus of the University of Vermont.

This is a potentially fantastic development. I hope the program will be truly artisanal in its orientation, with an emphasis on making cheeses that compete at a true European level. The US has the ability to make such cheeses but only a tiny percentage of a percentage of a percentage of our production is anything but mass-produced, bland cheese. I hope in particular that this project will provide marketing support and education so that it will be a simple matter for people in New York, Los Angeles, etc., to learn about these cheeses and to get them either from local retailers or via easy online ordering.

It's very difficult to draw authoritative conclusions about eggs and salmonella, or about the differences between Europe and the US on this issue. Most importantly, the data on incidence of salmonella poisoning in humans are quite difficult to gather. We don't really know how many people in the US or Europe get salmonella poisoning each year: people are highly unlikely to self-diagnose it properly, in mild cases (which are probably most cases) people aren't likely to report it or go to a doctor, and there may be cultural differences in the US and Europe that make it even less likely for Europeans to be diagnosed or seek medical attention for gastroenteritis. In addition, it is almost impossible to establish a causal connection between tainted eggs and the documented cases of salmonella that have been recorded. Since everybody in the US and Europe is likely to have eaten several hundred eggs in any given year, and since salmonella can come from scores of non-egg sources, it's difficult to include or exclude eggs in a chain of causation. It may very well be that most incidences of salmonella poisoning stem from the introduction of salmonella during food preparation, and not from the eggs themselves. If that is the case, the focus on egg production, transportation and storage may be misdirected. It's not entirely clear, but much of what I've read about salmonella indicates that the S. enteritidis "phage 4" subtype -- which has been the focus of much attention -- was first detected in European flocks and then showed up in Southern California. Certainly, if there is salmonella in an egg, refrigeration will slow its growth. As between two eggs with salmonella, I'd be much happier to eat the refrigerated one. There is little question that from a statistical standpoint, when you look at millions of people, whatever risk of salmonella is attributable to eggs (assuming there is one) is going to be lessened as temperatures drop. From both a disease and a food-preservation standpoint, refrigeration is simply better than non-refrigeration. Whatever else one might say about the hysterics at the American Egg Board, it's hard to disagree with the science behind the statement that if eggs are not properly handled (and in AEB's scheme of things non-refrigeration constitutes improper handling): "Salmonella bacteria can double every 20 minutes and a single bacterium can multiply into more than a million in 6 hours." Wheares, when eggs are refrigerated, the bacteria just won't grow. Weighed against that, we have the reality that refrigeration is damaging to the flavor of eggs (which is something that safety experts couldn't care less about), and we know that refrigeration encourages vendors to sell older eggs -- that may very well offset some benefits of refrigeration, though not likely on the salmonella front. Washing eggs is also controversial, and there is good support for both sides of the argument: bacteria can be carried by the dirt and feces that can cling to the exterior of eggs, and washing removes those; at the same time there is an argument that washing the eggs removes a protective layer and makes them more vulnerable to the introduction of bacteria post-washing. Personally, I think both the American and European cultures have got it wrong. The widespread American paranoia about eggs strikes me as silly (albeit typical of the hysterical American media- and CDC-driven attitude towards risk), yet I can't imagine any good reason to store eggs outdoors, uncovered, at summer temperatures in open air markets, as they do in much of Europe. That is simply an unnecessarily risky behavior, with no upside to counter the potential downside. I can only make my own choices, and my preference is to buy refrigerated eggs from a high-turnover seller (if you have a look at my eGCI "All About Eggs" FAQ there is a full explanation of how to read American egg cartons in order to know exactly how old your eggs are; in most cases where I tested the system they were quite fresh -- there is little incentive to hold them in inventory) for most baking and other ingredient uses, and to acquire greenmarket-quality eggs -- that have been kept cool but not under commercial refrigaration -- for sunny-side-up and other applications where the egg flavor is front and center. When doing a really big baked goods project, like for a party, I'll use cartons of pasteurized eggs -- this is how most professional pastry chefs I know of prefer to work these days. Cooking eggs through of course destroys salmonella anyway, so all this talk of salmonella and eggs is mostly relevant only to raw and "runny' eggs, although there are still food-handling cross-contamination issues. I don't blame public health authorities for doing what they do, and it wouldn't surprise me if unrefrigerated eggs come into the cross-hairs in Europe on a continent-wide basis just as raw-milk cheeses have. Public health authorities have to look at things on the macro level and adopt mostly one-size-fits-all solutions. They know that even when the risk of something is one in a million, when you create policy for a whole nation or community of nations you will see actual people die from those one in a million risks. That kind of thinking, which is motivated only by a desire to improve the human condition, has its place. However, so does personal choice, which tends to be at odds with public health policy, especially where such policy is mostly speculative. And in food safety circles I would rather see the quest for zero risk be replaced by an imperative to establish a meaningful definition of acceptable risk.

I must concur with the Perlow assessment. These were surely among the best dim sum items I've ever had.

Do people actually use Corian cutting boards? Corian is mostly used in kitchens as a countertop material, not a cutting board material. Only pastry chefs regularly work directly on Corian, as far as I know, although Corian is fading fast as a result of the rise of Silestone and other superior products. My workhorse cutting boards are poly in a 17 by 14 inch size. I have four of them. They cost almost nothing, so every few years I just replace them. I wash them in the dishwasher with the rest of the dishes after each meal -- they fit on the left, right, and front of the bottom rack so I can run three of them through the dishwasher at once if I have to and they hardly even take space away from the rest of the dishes. This is effectively zero maintenance burden, yet I can't believe there's any treatment you could give to a wood cutting board that's anywhere near as effective as sterilization in a dishwasher. Incidentally I have Corian countertops and would never do any work directly on them. But I wouldn't work directly on any countertop material ever. You can easily replace cutting boards when you ruin them. Countertops, you're stuck with.

There are all sorts of explanations commonly given, mostly involving "cogeners," but when I researched this several years ago for an article I found that the most reliable sources said that most of the lore of hangovers is not supported in fact. I spoke at length to a very smart guy named William Shoemaker, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut Health Center (home to the federally-funded Alcohol Research Center), who said that there may be some things that slightly affect hangovers, but that total alcohol consumption is so clearly the overwhelming factor that the contribution of all other factors is quite minimal.

Either way, somebody from eGullet will make a formal written request for these documents. Is Naomi Campbell a member? If not, I'll ask someone else to do it.

According to the Lawyers Alliance for New York, "organizations that make 990's available through internet posting are excused from disclosure." The IRS page you linked to is consistent with that interpretation: "Making documents widely available satisfies the requirement to provide copies of the documents." The lack of current documents on Guidestar probably changes all that, but fundamentally if you make your 990s available online you shouldn't have to give them to reporters who show up in person demanding them, and reporters shouldn't be implying that you have somehow violated the law by not giving in to their demands.

My perception is that there has long been widespread dissatisfaction with the way the foundation conducts many of its activities. In too many ways, the Beard organization comes across as being more about its own infrastructure than about doing good for the culinary community by fulfilling its mission to enhance American cuisine and perpetuate the memory of James Beard. Of course it is very important for organizations to ensure their longevity, but that should not be an end in itself. And if there is a scandal at the James Beard organization, we should learn as much as possible about it because so many eGulleters support that organization directly and indirectly in so many different ways. If any good comes of this, it will be that this chink in the Beard foundation's armor will make people in the culinary world less afraid to speak out regarding the flaws in that organization's operations. In a similar way to how Zagat maintains something of a stranglehold over the restaurateur community, Beard has set itself up such that most culinary professionals will not criticize it publicly, even though I've rarely heard any culinary professional say anything flattering about the organization in private. At the same time, the Daily News story is poor. It is short on facts and long on innuendo. And it's not even clear to me that the foundation was required to give that reporter its form 990. My understanding is that if you publish your form 990s on the Internet you don't have to provide them in response to individual requests. The Beard organization, like many not-for-profits, publishes its 990s on Guidestar. Then again, the most recent one or two don't seem to be on there yet.

What an amazing tutorial. I'm going to buy a watermelon this weekend and practice.

There are quite a few justifiable points and perspectives that have been raised here, but I wonder if the Times as an institution actually has any interest in clarifying, refining, or improving the system. It would seem that the answer is no. Frank Bruni probably has some sort of idea regarding what the stars mean to him, though whatever his theory is becomes less coherent with each review, but it doesn't seem that in the past decade there has been anybody in a supervisory position to provide overall guidance. Now, we don't even have Asimov writing $25 and under consistently. It seems they'll just let anybody in the circle of regular food section contributors do it in any given week. So under those circumstances it would be not only academically suspect but also downright reckless to start awarding stars when in any given week the review could come from Eric Asimov, Dana Bowen, the Lee brothers, Amanda Hesser, Sam Sifton . . . The scary thing is that the average eGulleter is thinking a lot more and a lot more intelligently about the Times reviewing system than anybody at the Times seems to be anymore.

You can do exactly that.

I didn't take any of those photos! They're from Starwich's portfolio; I've got no idea who actually took them.

On the way to Starwich today -- a journey that required the M96 bus, the C train, and an almost three long avenue walk (the far West side is just about the most inconvenient part of Manhattan to my home) -- we perused our fill-in-the-bubble card that we had saved from the previous visit. This gave us just enough time to design several dozen theoretical sandwiches and salads, all of which we wanted to eat. We were loaded for bear when we arrived. Ellen stuck with her planned order: a salad with turkey, artichoke hearts, frisee, yellowfoot mushrooms, heirloom tomatoes (seriously, legitimate ones), and red beets. I changed my mind a few more times, filled out a card, and ordered turkey and slab bacon on challah toast with romaine lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, and gruyere. There's hardly anything I can think of that I would have done to make my sandwich better. If I had done all the mise-en-place myself I would have maybe cut the turkey thicker, or maybe not, but I doubt overall that I would have bothered to obtain the level of ingredients that these guys are using. Apparently Amy's is custom-baking the challah in an elongated sandwich shape just for Starwich. The bacon is quite thick and cooked just right. The turkey is real turkey breast thinly sliced. The tomatoes are excellent; totally Greenmarket quality. Good Gruyere and crisp romaine lettuce. Ellen's salad was also terrific. After the place emptied out we lounged around on the couches and had coffee (they use Illy). We also sampled some of the Route 11 potato chips they're selling, which are super-crunchy small-batch chips from Virginia. The oatmeal cookies made at Starwich are also quite tasty. A few additional sandwich and salad photos . . . This is the black olive crusted seared tuna salad with daikon sprouts, scallions, mizuna, toasted sesame seeds, and sweet carrot ginger dressing: This one is the thinly sliced bresaola salad with celeriac, gruyere, watercress, baby turnips, and herbed vinaigrette: Here we have the stuffed pequillo salad, which is pequillo peppers, goat cheese, serrano ham, baby greens, white asparagus, salsify, heirloom tomatoes, and sherry-shallot vinaigrette: Next, the thick cut slab bacon and avocado sandwich with read oak lettuce, "melted" tomatoes, and roasted garlic pesto on sourdough bread: Finally the "young vegetable gratin" with zucchini, patty pan squash, tomato, eggplant, manchego, and black-olive jalapeno emulsion on 5-grain bread:

"Why, oh why?, Why do we run upscale restaurants?" Because, Lou, you believe in excellence. You're an idealist and you're pursuing a dream. I'm sure you could make a lot more money in another line of work -- so could many of us -- but then you wouldn't be you. Keep doing what you're doing, come to us for moral support any time, get those publicists working for you (and their initials better be KD and FS), and most of all keep treating your customers like honored guests. What the chains can't replicate is you.

(I've added sandwich and salad photos to my first post on this thread.) (Starwich is in no way whatsoever connected to Starbuck's.)

I know Amazon.co.uk sells the Russell Hobbs 9926. Is this the level of product you're after?

(I've added a couple of images of the Starwich interior to my first post on this thread)

Oh see that just ain't right! Jim Leff, the Chowhound community, and the New York Times's audience deserve a proper citation.

Yet another example of an inadequate citation by The New York Times: Name the guidebook, people. Chances are, the Times is talking about Jim Leff's The Eclectic Gourmet Guide to Greater New York City. So why not say so?

On the Starwich punch card I have here, the breakdown is: Breads: 7 Meats: 16 Seafood: 7 Cheeses: 14 Vegetables: 27 Dressings/Sauces: 25 Fruits: 11 Nuts/Other: 8 That's a total of 115. There also seem to be some ingredients that are on the menu-sandwiches but not on the examination form, like the pimento-rosemary aioli on the soft shell crab BLT. Obviously the vegetable and dressings/sauces categories need to be somewhat more engorged in order to accommodate a serious salad-making operation than they'd have to be if they only served as sandwich toppings or if Starwich treated salads as an afterthought. There are really two questions surrounding the 130 ingredients: 1) can customers handle it; and 2) can the restaurant handle it. With respect to number 1, I just don't see the problem. Customers can completely and utterly opt out of the choice system by ordering any of 18 predetermined sandwiches and salads from a menu board. Those who want more choice can have it. And the nice thing is that if you create a sandwich you like the smart card system allows you to do it only once and have it remembered for all time thereafter -- meanwhile I don't know of any other establishments that are doing anything with cards beyond using them as debit and point-accumulation devices. Ordering and paying in advance via Web, phone, or fax allows you to pick up or have your sandwiches delivered, effectively reducing the transaction time to zero. In terms of number 2, there's an empirical record that can be established by looking at how many ingredients various types of restaurants need to deal with. Here's a standard New York City diner menu. Would anybody like to count the number of ingredients that need to be kept on hand to accommodate a diner's customers? But hey, I'm not Starwich's lawyer, so it's not my job to defend the place ad infinitum against increasingly theoretical objections. I'll be back with more comments when I've eaten more stuff!

I'm a bit surprised at the negativity of the reactions. Maybe tasting some food at Starwich or experiencing the amenities and services will add some perspective, but it seems to me that an ambitious sandwich operation should be right up most eGulleters' alleys. It will be interesting to see how this all evolves, now that so many early negative predictions are on file. I suppose the safe bet is always that any restaurant will fail, since most do, but to be in Starwich yesterday you wouldn't in a million years have thought you were in a place that needed to worry. Maybe I'm an anomaly, but am I the only person who has ever gone to a sandwich chain and said, "You know, for a couple of bucks more and without being geniuses they could easily make delicious sandwiches instead of the crap they're serving here"? Since I've had that internal dialog about a million times, I welcome the opportunity to pay $9 for a delicious sandwich instead of $6-$7 for a mediocre sandwich. Cosi has already shown that it's possible to be successful in 12 states selling sandwiches in this price range, and Starwich simply serves better sandwiches -- with more choices -- than Cosi. Early in the history of Starbuck's plenty of people said the prices were too high and there were too many choices for the average moron to comprehend, yet today the average moron is spending $4 a day at Starbuck's and speaking a whole language purpose-built for ordering coffee drinks. And while you can't go into Starbuck's and order "just coffee" without being asked a ton of follow-up questions, you can go into Starwich and order any sandwich from the menu without dealing with any technology or special language -- you just order the sandwich, pay, and they make it fresh and give it to you. Three of us went yesterday and two of us ordered from the regular menu. It took as long as ordering a Big Mac value meal at McDonald's. Our friend, who had been before, created her own sandwich with the hanging-chad-punch-card-type thing and was a couple of minutes behind us in ordering. But for that extra investment of time she got exactly what she wanted: braised boneless short ribs on toasted multigrain bread with port salut cheese and I can't remember what veggies and condiments. It's outside my frame of reference to be able to complain about that. Presumably any normal "general menu" restaurant keeps 100+ ingredients on hand, and presumably a sandwich place does much higher volume than a sit-down restaurant so can accommodate a similar inventory at a lower price point. Maybe no. I'm not a restaurant industry professional. The owners of Starwich are, though. Michael Ryan has been in the restaurant business since age 16 when he took his first job: baking pizzas at a local pizzeria in Glen Ellyn, IL. He made pizzas there for 7 years, paying his way through college in pursuit of a degree in advertising. He later joined a small team of entrepreneurs to start up a fine dining dinner cruise ship company called Odyssey Cruises in Chicago. This 800 passenger vessel was extremely successful in its first year with sales over $13 million (Odyssey is now operating in Boston and Washington, DC as well). He then became Regional Operations Director at Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, the company founded by industry legend Rich Melman, who built restaurants such as Shaw's Crab House and Mity Nice Grill, which together generate more than $25 million annually. Before starting Starwich, he was Director of Operations for BR Guest, whose restaurants such as Blue Water Grill, Isabella's, and Fiamma collectively gross more than $100 million a year. Spiro Baltas is also a BR Guest alumnus (that's where he and Ryan met) and has been a sought-after consultant in the restaurant industry. His background includes Four Seasons hotels, the Sbarro restaurant group (which in addition to the shopping-mall Italian eateries it operates worldwide also runs several more upscale restaurants), and a stint as restaurant and wine director at Tavern On The Green. He also spearheaded the expansion of the La Familia restaurant in Boston into a five-restaurant group generating $20 million in sales annually. In other words, we're not dealing with idiots here. Of course, you need more than just industry experience to operate a successful restaurant business, but it's a start. I'll be back at Starwich late next week to taste more stuff. I'll report back then.

Delivery is a major part of the business. Whether the delivery mechanisms are up and running right now, I can't say, but the menu I got today does state that delivery is available.

Cakewalk, it's not a chain yet. This is the first one to open. And yes I think the idea is that they'll service a lot of corporate lunch orders from that location. There's a massive catering kitchen behind that store. And they do indeed have a chef. His name is Alex Schindler, formerly of Sciuscia in the Giraffe Hotel (he has also worked at Medi and is a Culinary Institute of America grad). Bux, I don't think it's new to have choices at a sandwich shop. People are accustomed to specifying a lot of variables when ordering sandwiches. Starwich is taking that to another level, by offering an order of magnitude more choice and facilitating that with various labor-saving technologies. But it's not a paradigm shift the way Craft was at first. When people go to restaurants they're accustomed to ordering a completely composed dish. Craft forced people to build their own dishes. When people go to sandwich shops they're accustomed to creating their own sandwiches. Nonetheless, there is an entire menu full of pre-composed sandwiches at Starwich for those who don't wish to make choices. Jason, I don't think anybody has ever lost much business by having a Web site that only works with Internet Explorer. The average person with a Windows PC on his or her office desk will be just fine with the Starwich site, and that's the target audience. I agree that the smart card is a gamble, but if it doesn't work out it doesn't really affect the business. I'm sure as a backup plan they can just move to a profile system that's linked to a credit card, a PIN, or whatever -- for all I know that's already worked out. They didn't get through multiple rounds of venture capital financing without addressing all these contingencies. TatarsHat, there is some of that sense of wonder, similar to a kid's first experience of an Automat. Fundamentally, the sandwiches and salads are delicious. I think you'll all agree, once you've tried them, that Starwich is operating a thick cut above the current upper crust of sandwich chains: it's substantially better than Cosi or Panera, even farther ahead of Quiznos, and it would be a joke even to compare it to Subway or Blimpie. The rest can only benefit the business: the market will either embrace the technology concepts, or the business will adapt to the market's preferences with other technologies. Meanwhile, there's nobody else in the marketplace who's even thinking at Starwich's level with this kind of vertically integrated approach to ordering (the Quiznos Q-Card system that's being tested in Colorado is primitive by comparison). Starwich is not one, but two generations ahead of the competition -- and that's a good place to be when you're working out the kinks.

With little fanfare, the first Starwich store opened earlier this month at 525 West 42nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues. By autumn, we can expect to see a Financial District store, another on the Upper West Side, and and outpost at JFK airport, followed by perhaps a dozen more in 2005. I've been following the Starwich opening since the beginning of this year, because I've included the Starwich story in a chapter of my forthcoming book. I've spent quite a bit of time talking to the founders, corresponding with them by e-mail, reading corporate materials, and writing about Starwich. Today, however, was the first time I actually got to eat anything there. Thankfully, it was delicious; then again, months before Starwich opened, I knew it would be. Starwich is a high-tech, culinarily ambitious, classy sandwich-and-salad endeavor. Customers will soon be issued "smart cards," which are small plastic credit-card-sized devices with an embedded computer chip (100 of them have been distributed for testing, and they'll be implemented for all customers soon). The Starwich smart card remembers your name, your three favorite sandwich combinations (right down to special requests like "extra mayo"), and your last ten orders. Customers can also soon access their profiles online at http://www.starwich.com, where they can add money to a virtual account that lets them pay for sandwiches with the smart card. In the course of writing my book, I was offered more free meals than I can count, yet the Starwich smart card was the freebie I wanted most. Those smart cards will come in handy, because a customer has a lot of choice at Starwich: there are in the neighborhood of 130 ingredients available, including yellowfoot mushrooms, boneless short ribs, soft shell crabs, serrano ham, cheeses ranging from roncal to manchego to port salut, caramelized onions, lobster, fresh sashimi-grade tuna, pine nuts, and figs. Dressings include roasted garlic pesto, roasted pepper aioli, and sherry vinaigrette. Will people want 130 ingredients? Certainly the choices are a bit overwhelming at first, and the fill-in-the-bubbles computer card you fill out for custom orders looks like it came from one of the Florida electoral districts in 2000. But I doubt it will take long for most people to internalize and appreciate the choices. Spiro Baltas, who along with Michael Ryan is one of the founders, points out: "Remember, prior to Starbuck’s 'Triple Shot Grande Skim Latte,' people only had the choice of regular or decaf." The restaurants are designed like coffee-house lounges, with comfortable sofas and intimate places to sit, read, work, and think. Each Starwich store will be equipped with Wi-Fi wireless Internet, universal cellular phone chargers (I charged my LG phone today), and fax and photocopy machines. There are cool tunes on the stereo and classic films projected on the wall. The Daily Candy-subscribing crowd is young, hip, and very attractive. On the service side, Starwich trains its staff according to the guidelines of The Roderick Institute of Hospitality -- a group that develops training plans for some of the world's top hotels. It includes concepts like a 10-foot "zone of hospitality" around every employee, and never saying no: "If we cannot accommodate the request, we will give alternative options, log the request and be better prepared tomorrow." Most sandwiches and salads are $9. For that amount you get a choice of six items. There are a couple of free items (like mustard and mayo) and a few with surcharges (like lobster and soft-shell crabs). There are also a number of pre-selected sandwich combinations, the most expensive of which ($13) is the “Soft Shell Crab BLT” on toasted sourdough with pimento-rosemary aioli. It was delicious, with all the ingredients nice and warm (there is a real kitchen there; not just a sandwich assembly line), as was the most expensive ($14) salad, a Lobster Salad with steamed Jerusalem artichokes, yellowfoot mushrooms, baby red and green Romaine lettuce, and tomato-saffron coulis. I'll be heading back to Starwich next week to taste more food and gather more impressions. For now, I just wanted to let you all know it's there and very much worth checking out. Starwich, 525 West 42nd Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-736-9170, http://www.starwich.com