Fat Guy

Not every reaction to offensive speech is motivated by "political correctness." Sometimes when you have a light-brown drink and you accidentally name it after light-skinned black people, changing the name is just the decent thing to do. Those who are obsessing over the political correctness of other vocabulary challenges are missing the point of this one: it's not just that the word sounds like mulatto; it's the sound of the word coupled with the color of the drink. The cups will wind up in a landfill anyway, but DQ's corporate reputation doesn't have to as well. Hopefully they're made of politically correct biodegradeable, recyclable material that wasn't tested on animals.

Start with the iSi North America Web site. There are quite a few recipes there, and also links to the Rick Tramanto and CIA materials. http://www.isinorthamerica.com

Please, this is the V thread.

Moolatte story picked up by the Houston Chronicle's Kyrie O'Connor in the July 14 "MeMo," which in a bizarre coincidence also quotes me on a totally unrelated issue. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/memo/2681202

I thought it was delicious, and we tried 2 of the 3 available flavors: mulatto and choctoroon, and we're looking forward to trying decafro. (This is what DQ can look forward to until 2035 if it doesn't get this mess sorted out)

DQ's "legal advisors" are giving them bad advice. It doesn't matter what the law is and it doesn't matter what a marketing survey demonstrates. The reality is that if a single African-American or civil rights organization takes a position saying that calling this light-brown-colored beverage "Moolatte" is offensive, then newspapers and broadcast media will soon follow with editorials and DQ will earn itself an undeserved reputation as a racist corporation that will last for, oh, thirty or so years. There was no wrong in naming the product Moolatte, but now that the linkage is clear it's a bad idea to stick with the name. There is no principle to be defended by keeping this name. Cut it loose and move on. That's what this "legal advisor" says.

$2.13 per hour x 40 hours per week x 50 weeks per year = $4,260 per year, although in some states the minimum wage for tipped employees is higher. It's not nothing -- it just about covers FICA -- but it's not the basis of a living wage. In the New York City market, for example, servers in good restaurants might earn less than 10% of their wages from wages and the rest from tips. In other words their wages are like a tip. The "replace tipping with a service charge" topic is a good one, but probably diverges too far from this thread -- we've got other open topics on the larger issue.

Most of the discussion I've seen of tipping fails on a basic conceptual level. It's hard to talk about tips without understanding what they are, and it's hard to understand what tips are because they're not gratuities. In the restaurant context, but also for others like hotel bellmen and cab drivers, a tip is essentially a form of wage passed on to the consumer. Below a certain percentage of tip, if you don't pay that amount you are actually making someone work for you for free or at a theoretical loss. This is the baseline tip of around 15% in restaurants (closer to 18% in fine-dining places), 20% in taxis, and $1 per bag for bellmen. You have a theoretical option not to pay these amounts, but not doing so makes you an exploitative schmuck. You also have to remember that the tip you pay in a restaurant most often does not go to your server directly but is, rather, entered into a pool that is distributed via a point system to all the servers, bussers, and other front-of-house staff who get essentially zero salary. Of course if you tip above the baseline, that extra amount is truly a gratuity. In France where there is a service charge built into your restaurant bill, if you leave extra for excellent service you are engaging in a true expression of gratuity. In America, if you leave a 25% tip you are really leaving a 10% gratuity and paying an implied 15% service charge. Restaurants should not be using tipped employees for takeout. It's not an appropriate form of side work because it doesn't further the needs of the customers who actuall tip. If restaurants do use tipped employees for takeout they should tip out those employees themselves or they should add a takeout charge and pass that through to the tipped employees who handle the packing. It's also damn near impossible -- nor should it be required -- for a customer to walk into a restaurant and ascertain what wage system that restaurant operates under vis-a-vis takeout. Some restaurants hire a full-time takeout staff and pay those people wages that don't assume tips; some restaurants pack the takeout orders in the kitchen using only kitchen staff who never get tips anyway; and some restaurants put the burden on the tipped waitstaff. Since the overwhelming majority of consumers assume takeout is a tip-free transaction, restaurants should be adapting to that expectation not vice-versa.

Those of you who don't use cream in your hash, next time you make the standard potatoes+onions+meat hash try adding, for a 10-11" skillet worth, about 1/4 cup of cream during the last few minutes of cooking. The cream itself seemingly disappears -- it's not really identifiable as such once it cooks in (at which point the hash is done) -- but it acts as a luscious binder.

jpdchef, the recipe for hash of ham and sweet potatoes (with pickled peaches) is also in the "Upgrading Hash" chapter of American Appetite. Fifi, I usually make hash without any sort of cream or sauce but I've got to admit it makes for a better dish. Lately I've been adding cream more often, and in other ways I've been gravitating towards Villas's methods without knowing it. To wit, Villas believes that the main ingredient should predominate. That sounds tautological, but I've had a lot of such-and-such hash where the such-and-such was more like a garnish for what was essentially home fries. In terms of crispy bits, Villas also talks about using the oven and broiler instead of sauteeing -- this can create crispness without drying or overcooking. I haven't experimented but plan to. Jason, one authority Villas cites for non-potato hash is the chicken hash historically served at "21." This has chicken, red bell peppers, and peas but no potatoes or onions. I wonder if they still serve it there; I'd like to try it if they do. Edit: The chicken hash or a variant seems to be on the "21" lunch menu: "Creamy Chicken Hash with baby spinach and toast $35.00"

I agree that it's just coincidence, or rather that Bruni's choice was dictated by the market: most every reviewer has covered Wolfgang's recently and they'll all cover V soon enough. However, Bruni has been by far the most negative critic to weigh in on V thus far. Steve Cuozzo in the Post ( http://www.nypost.com/food/23551.htm ) just didn't make a big deal out of the deconstructed dishes one way or the other, though he loved the deconstructed lemon meringue pie. In any event, he gave V three stars. Josh Ozersky in Newsday wrote what reads like a three-star or strong two-star review to me, though I don't believe Newsday awards stars ( http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-fdnotes38...0,6716793.story ). Joe Dziemianowicz in the Daily News didn't like the deconstructed dishes but went with 2.5 stars. Above, emsny's description of his meal sounds compelling to me and the his take on the deconstruction -- "The menu is full of imagination and, on the basis of one meal, even the things that sound over the top are cannily devised." -- is written with the voice of experience. It seems there is something of a consensus about what the stars mean but that Frank Bruni, who assigns the stars that count, isn't part of it. I had a 9:15 reservation tonight but had to cancel because my friend wasn't feeling up to it. I'm looking forward to dining there.

The confluence of several at-first-seemingly unrelated events and trains of thought combined into a lunch today that was so delicious it caused me to sleep all afternoon. I had been re-reading James Villas's wonderful book American Taste: A celebration of gastronomy coast-to-coast, published in 1982. It's still available as part of the “Cook's Classic Library.” In the book, Villas waxes rhapsodic about everything from fried chicken and hamburgers to lobster and pate. The amazing thing about the book is how thoroughly modern it is even after more than two decades: there's nothing I've seen in print since American Taste that really adds anything to Villas's canonical discussions of these classic American foods. Particularly enjoyable is Villas's chapter on hash. Now, I've always been a lover of hash, but Villas's passion for and knowledge about hash make me feel like a dabbler. The hash I've always made for myself, which I think is pretty darn good and which on a good day represents the rewards of years of practice, consists of potatoes, onions, and some kind of meat, maybe bound together with a little cream and topped with a poached egg. For Villas, this is only the beginning. He views hash from a much higher conceptual perch. To him, hash isn't just something you do with whatever leftovers happen to be around; it's as premeditated as first-degree murder -- it's the reason you cook more of something in the first place. Villas draws international parallels between hash and everything from frittatas to shepherd's pies, and explores regional American hash variants from scrapple to cod cakes. His view of hash is quite broad, even including dishes with no potatoes or onions at all: “In most people's minds, hash automatically implies the inclusion of chopped potatoes and onions, and no doubt these two items contribute much to its basic character. On the other hand, I've had delicious hashes in which the main ingredient was enhanced by everything from rice to diced sausage to hard-boiled egg, and some of the most memorable examples I've sampled were made with no more than a well-seasoned chunky main ingredient bound with a luscious sauce.” This brings us to last night, when my neighbor -- bound for Australia today -- ordered dinner from Daisy May's BBQ USA here in New York City. If you want to get Daisy May's to schlep your food over from Midtown West to the Upper East Side, you have to order something like $50 worth of food. It's nice to be affluent in a situation like that, and it's also nice to have affluent neighbors. I was presented with a bag containing about 10 pounds of leftover barbecued pork ribs, beef ribs, and chicken, of which I ate about 9 pounds last night. What I didn't eat was the chicken. I don't really get barbecued chicken. It's just not fatty or collagen-rich enough to hold up to low-and-slow dry-heat cooking on a pit. I guess there's a demand for it, since most every barbecue place -- even the die-hard traditional places in the Carolinas, Memphis, etc. -- sells it, but I think it's not particularly worthwhile. The big Daisy May's order also came with quite a few side dishes, including dirty rice and creamed corn. Today for lunch I decided to make a chicken-salad sandwich or two, so I picked the meat off the pieces of chicken, after which I realized I didn't have any bread (this sort of thing happens to me all the time; I believe there's a warrant out for me for “crimes against mise-en-place”). No problem, I thought, I'll make hash. Except I had no potatoes, not to mention no cream. Okay, so what does one do with a pile of picked leftover somewhat dry chicken? Eventually, my natural denseness gave way to my short-term memory of Villas's exegesis on hash, and it occurred to me that I could make hash with “ no more than a well-seasoned chunky main ingredient bound with a luscious sauce.” Then I said, wait a second, James Villas has had “delicious hashes in which the main ingredient was enhanced by everything from rice to diced sausage to hard-boiled egg.” And I have rice, in the form of dirty rice, in my refrigerator. And isn't there cream in creamed corn, I asked myself? I bet if I throw some of that in it will act as a cream-like binder. I moistened the leftover rice with some chicken stock (I always keep ice-cube-sized chunks of stock in a bag in the freezer) and sauteed it in some butter until it came back to life, then I added the chicken and the corn – plus a little fresh tarragon I had lying around – to heat through. The creamed corn actually achieved the desired result in part, but the problem was that to get the full reaction I'd have needed to go way out of proportion with the corn. What I really needed was just a little bit of extra cream. At which point it occurred to me that, in the back of my refrigerator, in the iSi Profi-Whip, I had some whipped cream from last week when I made a peach cobbler. Can you use whipped cream instead of cream? Why not, I figured – after all I just had a crawfish dish prepared by Christian Delouvrier in which he used whipped cream to finish a sauce. So I squirted a tiny bit of whipped cream into the skillet and, voila, the whole thing came together as hash. A little salt and pepper adjustment to wake up the latent flavors, plus two poached eggs broken and oozing throughout, and I'll be damned if it wasn't the best hash I've ever had. The nap was good too.

I'm only ever surprised to see restaurants open on time, but this certainly is dragging out a bit. I'm going to try to go by tomorrow and see what's going on.

One last try: This is not political correctness. This is common sense. Had Moolatte been the name of a tuna sandwich that just happens to sound a little bit like the term mulatto, then opposing the use of that term would be an example of political correctness. But come on, people: this is vanilla ice cream mixed with coffee into an iced beverage that is as clear a metaphor for mulatto as you'll find in the world of food (and yes I'm aware that in slang some use "Oreo" in a similar context). So it's just too much to leave it out there. DQ would be insane not to turn tail and run. There is no principle for DQ to stick up for here. Just change the name of the product, issue an apology, say it was totally unintentional, and move on.

But the "certain level" is three stars -- that's what the reasonable critic should be measuring V against, because V is a reflection of that genre. Of course V may fall short, and therefore not perform at that level, and therefore not deserve three stars.

Browniebaker, we're not talking about another language. We're talking about English! I think the Slate guy nailed it, and my free PR advice to DQ is that the sooner they figure this out and ditch the name the sooner this will blow over.

Certainly, however, the plan all along with V was to create a three-star steakhouse by breaking out of the genre's self-imposed limitations and adopting something along the lines of a Vongerichten deconstructed minimalist haute cuisine approach, a fine-dining setting, first-class service, etc. There's no question that everybody on the V team was working towards three stars and that they're not a bunch of clueless idiots with a meaningless three-star fantasy but, rather, industry veterans who know exactly what the stars should mean. Perhaps I'll go to V and come back saying "man that place was a disappointment and all the deconstructed dishes were nonsensical; I agree with the one-star review." But it seems to me that, as we've discussed before, the framework for the star analysis has already been established by the restaurant's business plan: this is a restaurant that, if it accomplishes what it set out to accomplish, should get three stars by all historical measures of such things; that, if it falls short, should get two stars; and that should only get one star if it is a pretty complete failure in fulfilling its ambitions. Subject to revision upon dining there, that's the context as I see it. When his appointment was announced, the Times higher-ups commented, "Frank understands that it is not enough to be smart about food; it is important to digress from the dishes at hand and explore wider thoughts on eating out in New York." I wish that in his first review of a restaurant in the Time Warner Center -- perhaps the most important assemblage of culinary talent in US culinary history -- Frank Bruni had provided a bit more context and set things up for a unified approach to that enterprise.

The similarity in terms didn't hit me at first. When I first got the DQ press release, my only thoughts were that it was a cute name -- I'm a sucker for anything with "Moo" in it -- and that I wanted to try one. I had my first Moolatte a couple of weeks ago at a DQ in New Jersey and thought it was quite good. It wasn't until last week, still unaware of any controversy, that a couple of us were reliving the glory of the Moolatte and it dawned on us: the thing is just about halfway between cream and brown in color and it sounds really close to mulatto any way you pronounce it. Not good. The word was almost completely out of use when I was growing up, and I think the only reason I knew it was from reading old books, so my guess is that a bunch of Gen-X marketing people came up with the name without ever having an awareness of the implications. Still, DQ is going to need to yank this ad campaign quickly -- there's realy no other way to handle this unfortunate situation.

If the complaint is that the food only tastes good enough to merit one star, fine. If there is a demotion because the personal preference of the reviewer is that he doesn't like intellectual food experiences, I don't consider that an appropriate objection. By that standard he'd have to give El Bulli negative thirty-five stars.

Still no review on the Times site, but all the industry buzz since Monday has been that it will be a one or two star review of V this week. Did anybody catch the NY1 preview earlier this evening? I missed it. Edited to add: One star for V; http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/dining/14REST.html

Major recognition for Landmarc's wine list in a feature by head wine writer Eric Asimov in today's New York Times:

I think we need to get Wesza on this thread. Somebody holler for him.

I'm just not buying into most of this bagel dogma. I don't even see a hint of a consensus or an authoritative source. Where is this church of bagel orthodoxy that sets forth the dogma? I believe there used to be a guild of bagel bakers, and that the standards set forth by that guild were probably authoritative in an AOC-type sense. But was that guild even operational during the lifetimes of most eGulleters? I don't wish to insult anybody's bagel preferences, but if for example you're a fan of H&H bagels, or Ess-a-Bagel, or any of these other revisionist mega-bagels, you've already strayed so far off the bagel orthodoxy reservation that you've pretty much given up the right to make other orthodox claims. I'd prefer to define what makes a good bagel. What is then done with it is far less relevant to me. If the bagel is delicious, most anything you do with it will also be delicious and worthy of embrace -- even adding blueberries. I really don't see how a blueberry bagel is categorically worse than a cinnamon-raisin bagel. Ditto for cranberry bagels. And if people want to make bagel sandwiches, so be it.

If you're going to be a bagel purist-traditionalist-nazi, you've got to be a lot more restrictive in your outlook than anybody on this thread. One issue is that none of the popular bagel places makes an acceptable bagel by traditional standards: they're too large, not dense enough, undercooked, and don't have the proper combination of flavors from the malt-dough mixture and the boiling liquid. Toppings would be limited, I believe, to poppy, sesame, or none. There would be no such thing as a bagel equivalent of a deli sandwich -- only traditional "appetizing"-type sandwiches (nova, cream cheese, etc.) would be acceptable. I've always suspected that the no-toasting rule is more a matter of laziness than of principle, though it is always disguised as principle. But really, what's wrong with toasting a bagel or, even better, splitting and buttering it and throwing it butter-side-down on a griddle? That's just delicious. I could see maybe an objection to toasting an old-style jawbreaker-type bagel because the texture is such a precise thing, but these relatively fluffy monster-bagels we get nowadays are usually improved by toasting.

The Wine Institute is quoted in numerous publications saying that the overwhelming majority of wine is meant to be consumed soon after bottling, and that 70 percent of wine is consumed within three days of purchase. Three days. I also think it's probably time to stop calling screw tops "new." We're now looking at 3-4 decades of data, not to mention what can be simulated in labs, and in the most recent decade the pace of research has been furious. The percentage of wines that are going to be aged more than a decade? Can it be even 1/10 of 1%? I'm sure those figures are available. Whatever the number, it's a niche. If those people want to use corks, fine. But let's get over it and put modern closures on everything else. And my personal experience with TCA is that at least 1/20 bottles of wine I've had have been noticeably affected. That's 5 percent, people. And my observations square with most industry research (or at least research by industries other than the cork industry). A restaurant screw top story: Argyle Winery (Oregon) uses the Stelvin screw cap. Recently at Landmarc restaurant (New York) I noticed Argyle pinot noir on the list and ordered a bottle. To my delight, it arrived with a screw cap. The opening ceremony was entirely enjoyable -- presentation of bottle, removal of foil, etc., much as described by Katie above -- and then our server (a woman of slight build) twisted the cap and . . . nothing happened. She couldn't get it open! She had to seek the help of another server (not of slight build) to get the cap off. This provided much more amusement than a cork opening. At the same time, I remembered several too-long conversations with Argyle's winemaker, Rollin Soles, wherein he had evangelized about the superiority of screw caps. And then I noticed an 800 number for Argyle printed right on the bottle. And I had my cell phone with me. I called Rollin. I'd like to say he answered, but I was told he had just left to deal with "a vineyard emergency" (probably he went for a snack at the local Mexican place, which is quite good). So I left him a voicemail complaining bitterly about my restaurant experience: "Mr. Soles, my meal was COMPLETELY RUINED by the poor performance of your shoddy screw cap . . ." etc., you get the idea. Anyway, the next day the voicemails started coming in on my end. "You gotta remember, Shawzy, it's righty tighty, lefty loosey." "Hey listen, I just wanted to mention you've gotta turn the bottle one way and the cap the other way, you understand?" So, really, the amount of ceremony I got out of that one screw cap was about 10 times what I've ever gotten out of a cork. Myths & Facts about screw caps, from Argyle Winery