Fat Guy

I'd be interested to learn more about Hobart's sale of KitchenAid to Whirlpool. Although I've seen comments online saying the mixers aren't what they used to be, I've not really found any substantiation. What was better about them? In terms of buying a refurbished one, I don't know. Personally, I wouldn't buy a rebuilt unit given the amount of time one might own a KitchenAid. I've already had mine for 10+ years and many people have them for generations. The up front savings seems negligible in that context.

For a working restaurant critic, the mere fact of eating two steaks in an evening is just not a big deal. It may seem like a big deal in one's first month on the job, but this sort of intensive comparative eating is common to the profession wherever there is a budget for it. When you eat at seven or eight restaurants in a single day, it maybe becomes newsworthy (I've done that sort of thing when on travel assignments, and once a guy from a local magazine came around with me and wrote about how many restaurants we visited -- I guess that was deemed interesting to the magazine's readers), though Robert Sietsema has been known to push well into the teens. Learning that a restaurant reviewer ate two steaks -- and, more likely, simply tasting parts of two steaks -- is about as groundbreaking as learning that a new Porsche can go really fast. What was interesting was not that he ate a lot of food but, rather, that he did a comparison that is more definitive than the impressionistic "I ate at Luger's last month and Wolfgang's today and, yeah, I thought they were really similar" type of report you get from people who don't eat for a living. So the setup is all there: now we are going to get the non-impressionistic, side-by-side, professional verdict. And instead in the end we get mostly impressionism.

Bleu, that recipe/presentation looks almost exactly like what I had at Georges Blanc. I'll try to dig out my notes to see if there was any notable variance.

The Bresse chicken we had at Georges Blanc a few years ago was quite memorable. It seemed identifiably different from any other chicken we'd had in France and altogether different from American chickens. It was probably a 4-5 pound bird. Half of it split between two people was a lot of food. I'm pretty sure it was prepared as a fricassee, but it didn't have the same properties as when I prepare a fricassee. Blanc doesn't allow the chicken to acquire any significant color in the sautee phase, and in the covered cooking phase he seems to keep things pretty wet. By American standards his chicken is also a bit undercooked, but this definitely allows the flavors to carry -- I imagine if you took his chicken up another few degrees in doneness it would lose much of its subtlety. The sauce, consisting of about a kilogram of foie gras and butter per person, also helped. In any event, given Blanc's lofty status in the Bresse chicken universe, I would think that his methods would be a place to start. If there are unique properties of the Bresse chicken that can be brought out through cooking, surely he has given the matter more thought than most anybody else. I've only flipped through his two English-language books, but I know he has done something like ten cookbooks in French.

Was there tonight at 7:45pm. No line. Ordered two vanilla custard double dip cups, paid, walked around to the pickup window, got the goods, and ate in the park. Thought it was delicious, but as I said I've got little basis for comparison.

How does that make you feel?

Much of the commercial cooking equipment people have in their apartments is not up to code for residential spaces, or at least the installation is not up to code. You'll probably want to mention that in the story. It's also why some people might be reluctant to step forward with personal anecdotes.

Michael behaved badly so we put him on the night shift. Oakapple, my feeling about the sample-size argument is that the sample size for restaurant reviews is always too small. Especially when you're talking about service and consistency issues, how could even 10 visits be considered a meaningful sample to a scientifically inclined person? Moreover, in terms of the number of samples pertaining to a given review (as opposed to longer term sampling over time) nobody but nobody does more than the New York Times critic. Most of the professional newspaper critics are dining out 2-3 times per review and that represents the sum total of their review-related dining. The Times critic is dining out somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 times a week, both for the main review and the "Diner's Journal," and is able to visit restaurants he doesn't review so as to acquire perspective. He has the budget to make those visits anywhere -- not just for the purpose of comparing Peter Luger and Wolfgang's, but also in order to compare, say, Per Se and French Laundry, or if he so chooses ADNY, ADPA, and Louis XV. So by the standards of the industry -- which does not operate under laboratory conditions -- it really can't be said that the Times critic has a small sample size. What Bruni has right now seems to be limited perspective, some gaps in his background, and some questionable strategies for crafting reviews.

Regarding Frank Bruni's incessant, tired, neo-puritanical and scientifically nonsensical references to heart disease, I find that behavior to be merely annoying when exhibited by normal people (who are just repeating what they've heard and read) but totally unacceptable among food writers (who should know better). In 1999, commenting on this phenomenon (comments of this nature were already unoriginal 5 years ago) in a Salon.com opinion piece ("Eat Up & Shut Up"), I wrote: It's amazing to me that, of all people, the New York Times fine-dining critic would be subtly encouraging the party line on this issue.

He clearly states he made more than one visit: "On my first visit, which preceded my porterhouse-a-palooza by several weeks . . ."

The premise is great but too self-consciously stated. The story is well told -- keeping the audience hanging until the very end -- but ultimately doesn't reach a satisfying climax. The final analysis is disappointingly shallow. On a more general level, as I've said before, I think it's a waste of time and space to have the fine-dining critic review steakhouses and assign them stars. I would put Ed Levine on that job, allowing him every year or so to do a big comparative roundup of all the major steakhouses, and to present a relative ranking rather than stars.

Dave H, thank you for that enlightening analysis. If my custard-novice senses are not mistaken, the egg percentage was reduced a bit between the Big Apple Barbecue and yesterday. This appeared to be the case both according to color and flavor. And I think it worked better: the eggs moved into the background while still providing lusciousness and richness. Total bummer, though: tonight I went by at 9:30pm based on the representation that the place would be open until 10pm. It seems they had closed earlier. Pastries at Veniero's had to suffice.

During the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party '04, we got a preview of the Shake Shack, a concession in Madison Square Park run by Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. The Shake Shack replaces the former Eleven Madison Park hot dog cart and expands the menu offerings to include frozen custard, shakes, burgers, fries, beer and wine, in addition to the same Chicago-style Vienna Beef frankfurters from previous summers. The Shake Shack is now in soft opening mode. Custard, shakes, frankfurters and crinkle-cut fries are being served, and burgers will be launched on Thursday. So far I've only sampled the custard. Danny Meyer and Richard Corrain (who is the USHG's chief of operations) traveled throughout the US Midwest and South, visiting the great American custard establishments and studying the equipment and mixes necessary to make this confection. For those unfamiliar with frozen custard -- and I am very much a novice -- it is not soft-serve ice cream. It is its own category of frozen dairy dessert, with very few examples traditionally available in this region. It is similar in texture to ice cream at its early stages of production, before it has been lowered in temperature and made more solid (after which even when raised in temperature it maintains an ice cream texture, not a custard texture). Custard has a soft, luscious texture and the egg ratio is quite high. It is scooped like ice cream; it does not get put out of a machine directly into a cone. Scooping may be the wrong word, though, because it doesn't quite have the integrity to be scooped -- it is more spooned and manipulated into its serving vessel. It is quite soft. The custard I tried at the Big Apple Barbecue was terrific, and the custard I tried today had already been improved in terms of its texture and egg-balance. It was evident (and confirmed by management) that Shake Shack is making its own custard mix from natural ingredients -- the custard is not based on a commercial mix. The real vanilla was evident. I believe all the prep for the Shake Shack is being handled out of the Eleven Madison Park kitchen. Chef Kerry Heffernan and pastry chef Nicole Kaplan were themselves dishing up the custard at the Big Apple Barbecue, and Richard Corrain was working the shack today. In addition to its culinary mission, the Shake Shack has a social one. It employs 7 students from Washington Irving High School -- one of the roughest schools in one of the roughest public school systems -- and it provides nuts-and-bolts management training for externs from the hotel and culinary schools. Anybody else been to the Shake Shack yet? Looking forward to your reports.

Okay, that's it. I'm now taking the position that higher numbers are better. Also I think at some point we should pick a day and all members of the Spoon Cook Book club should add their book numbers to their signature lines. I would have liked to see more pastry recipes, because I find this aspect of Spoon's cuisine to be arguably the most interesting. You can see the heavy influence that American desserts have had on Ducasse's pastry team, or as they put it in geeky Groupe-Ducasse English, "At the end of the feast, classic American desserts have inspired Frédéric Robert to conjure up some original creations." I'm really at the full extension of my cooking abilities with even the simplest recipes from this book, aka the condiments, but I have it in my head that there will be some value in making a good-faith effort to actually produce one of the recipes and document that experience here from my amateur-cook perspective. Finding the time to do the base components and then create the actual condiment has proven a bit challenging, but it's going to happen.

Hi Tobey. Welcome to the dark side. I love some of the search engine results I get when Googling eGullet. I was checking to see if we had an existing topic on cooking sweetbreads at home and this snippet came up: "... a bit of trouble getting fresh blood here in New York. ..." Does anybody remember if we've discussed 1) cooking sweetbreads at home, and 2) where to buy sweetbreads in NYC for the purposes of cooking them at home?

Craft is a great place to try most any single-ingredient in a relatively pure preparation. You can be pretty sure you will be getting a first-rate specimen prepared with a high level of technical proficiency.

RAW means you are getting the image exactly as the camera's image sensor recorded it. This is a very memory-intensive way to store data. But it allows for extra flexibility in processing because you have more data to work with. You can "push" and "pull" a couple of F-stops with RAW images with virtually no loss of quality. If you try this with JPEGs you will suffer noticeable loss of quality. Most cameras by default store images as JPEGs, which are compressed files. There are different levels of compression, each of which makes compromises between storage size and image quality. The highest JPEG quality setting is plenty good for most purposes and usually takes 1/5 or less of the memory that a RAW image takes up. Not all cameras have RAW settings, but all the professional and most of the "prosumer" ones do. You will need very large memory cards, or be willing to take very few shots between downloads, if you want to use the RAW setting. You also need special software to process RAW images into other, more usable formats (you could not for example post a RAW image on the Web without first converting it into a JPEG or GIF or other universal format), although the newest versions of the best image editors like PhotoShop can handle Canon RAW and some other RAW formats and there are plugins available for some other packages.

Restaurants typically pay much more attention to the appearance of food than home cooks. It is often a fundamental consideration when composing dishes. There are plenty of great-tasting items that never make it onto restaurant menus because chefs decide they're unappetizing to look at. Home cooks are much more oriented towards cooking for flavor and almost never think about appearance until it's time to assemble the final dish, so they are usually limited to garnishes as the primary tools for brightening up plates and adding contrast.

I'm just about out of things to say on this subject, so I'll most likely be moving on to the next thing, but let me sum up by saying that the most disappointing aspect of the review to me had to be the statement that “Bouley as a whole does not create or sustain the kind of rapture that the very best restaurants do.” Because if you read the recent glowing reports about Bouley from lxt and others, what you will see very clearly is that Bouley can and does create rapture at least in the experience of many educated and experienced diners. Which doesn't mean it always does so or that it does so in a sustained manner over time. But what saddens me is that Frank Bruni clearly didn't get any sense of rapture at all on any of his visits. Thus his review recognizes Bouley's greatness only in a pro forma sense of acknowledging that there is talent in the kitchen, that some dishes are very good, and that David Bouley is an important chef. There is no actual recognition of the heights so many have experienced at Bouley, and therefore the form of the demotion feels empty, awkward, and unfair.

Overstated? Me? Stop the presses!

It's hard to answer your question because it makes so many assumptions with which I disagree. My comments are neither vitriolic nor motivated by anything other than my fundamental disagreement with much of what is said in the review and, to a lesser extent, the timing of the review. Rather than saying I love Bouley, I would say that Bouley is a restaurant that has over time been beloved by many. And as I've repeatedly stated, the three star rating doesn't bother me -- it may very well be the right rating. But there are many paths to three stars, and I can't follow Frank Bruni along the one he has chosen.

Dude, I'm still shopping for the ingredients for the first recipe!

Thanks for the background, Chop. That's pretty much what I've been hearing, though your version is of course much more detailed and authoritative. In the end, a restaurant always has to be prepared to be judged on every meal it serves, but still in light of the context the timing of the review feels wrong to me.

Chop: Can you give us a brief history of recent events in the Bouley kitchen? Am I correct in my belief that over the past few months DB has hired some sharp new people and focused his energies and is right in the middle of a big improvement project at the restaurant? Or am I totally off base? I'm sure you know better than I.

I doubt I'll ever make pita. I just want to know how the damn process works.