Fat Guy

The category of restaurants with any stars at all is always going to be small. There are only 52 reviews a year, and even when you factor in all the one-star-worthy places that get left off that list it's hard to imagine that there are more than about 250 places in business at any given time that could legitimately hold on to even one star. So what we're really looking at is the range of possibilities within a group of a couple of hundred restaurants. Within that range, is the four-star rating simply the rating that we give to the best 5-10 restaurants in the category -- in other words is it grading on a curve -- or are we applying an objective standard that gives us the potential to say "there are no four-star restaurants in New York right now"? Or is it some kind of a mix, and if so what are the proportions?

There's some lawn they opened up for the first time for this event. At least that's what some higher-ups in the USHG told me. Unless I misunderstood. I would hold off on judging the Shake Shack until construction is completed -- it is still very much a construction site. There's an elaborate plan for the final appearance of the foliage on the roof and for landscaping around the structure. Nobody is more committed to the aesthetics of the park than Danny Meyer, who is after all largely responsible for the dramatic improvements that have been made to the park over the past 5 years. Although, to be clear, as far as I know USHG did not have total architectural control over the Shake Shack project -- I believe the Conservancy is in charge of building it and USHG is the operator. Danny Meyer is on the Conservancy's board of trustees but is not as far as I know the "chair of the park." Every park should be so lucky as to have a food concession like the Shake Shack. Now if only we can get some of the pitmasters to set up with the same degree of permanence . . .

The way I figure it -- and waiting on line I had plenty of time to consider such weighty matters -- it would take me something like 70 hours driving over a period of a week, at a cost of $560 in gas, to get to all these different barbecue places. Now, maybe they're not the exact 6 places I'd pick, and maybe I'd hit more than 6 on a trip of that magnitude, but I've driven many, many hours out of my way in order to go to Mitchell's, and I've schlepped out to the Salt Lick, and I can tell you it's a real pain in the ass. So I've got to say that anybody who complains about waiting an hour for a taste just hasn't thought it through. Regardless of what you think about the mechanics of crowd control, fundamentally those lines were moving really fucking fast. They were serving, I am sure, in excess of 5,000 people in 6 hours at some of those booths. And every one of them that I saw did it with a smile, took the time to chat with whomever wanted to strike up a conversation, and maintained a very, very, very high standard of 'cue. It's a monumental accomplishment. This is only the second annual BABBP and the first time this venue has been utilized. The event planners had no way of knowing how many people would come or how they would behave under various circumstances. It's not like at Disney World where you have the benefit of controlling access to your entire theme park, and of being able to evaluate audience demographics every day of the year in order to figure out how many people are going to want to see Captain Eo on February Thursdays when there's a 22% chance of rain. It's more like opening day at the original Disneyland -- you have no real idea what to expect until it happens, and you spend all day reacting. You've got 30,000 portions of barbecue to serve no matter how many people show up -- you can't just throw on an extra hog at noon because it won't be ready until midnight, you don't have it in inventory anyway, and you don't have enough people to process and serve it. There were thousands of person-hours devoted to planning for the various crowd control contingencies. But nobody figured it would get as heavy as it did. David Swinghammer, one of Danny Meyer's partners in Blue Smoke, was on top of the situation by about 12:01, calling in more barricades, discussing whether or not they should go to a multiple-lines-per-vendor system, assigning expediters to the various booths, positioning staff at the access points to answer questions . . . if people didn't know what was going on, it's not for lack of trying to get information out there. They had massive booths with thousands of copies of clearly printed instructions. If people won't take a moment to familiarize themselves with the procedures for such a large and complex event, there's not a lot you can do about it. Even so, as the day wore on, the organizers adapted to the crowd and the venue and got the lines much more under control. Nobody is making any money from this event, except the charities who benefit from it. Certainly Danny Meyer doesn't need any more money or any more headaches anyway. I suppose Blue Smoke gets some marketing benefit out of the event, but overall I see this event as very much a labor of love and I view it from a position of deep gratitude. Things could have been done better. There were many meetings last night after 6pm. Maybe we'll see some improvements on Sunday. Either way, thanks to eGullet, anybody reading here should now be equipped with every conceivable bit of information regarding how to get the most out of this wonderful event. See you this afternoon.

These digests are a great service to me as a non-French-speaker and as someone who barely has time to keep up on media in my own city of New York. I should add that ever since the first of these digests went up I've been getting notes of thanks via PM and e-mail -- like I had anything to do with it. Even were this just a list of summaries, it would be valuable. But the project has taken shape as journalism in its own right. This is the kind of thing that makes eGullet what it is.

I own a few cookbooks that present recipes at that level of complexity, and I rarely cook from them. On the rare occasion that I do, I'm most likely to cook one component of a dish, like just the sauce. For me, as someone who writes about food and particularly restaurants, the reason the Grand Livres are so essential is that they do so much to represent highly evolved contemporary French cuisine as practiced at the Michelin three-star level. I think if people simply read some of those recipes, without even understanding them, they'd get a much better idea of why it costs $165 to eat a meal at ADNY. Christian Delouvrier told me -- and mind you this guy is a French chef trained in the Michelin system and with four New York Times stars on his resume -- that when he first accepted the job at ADNY he decided that he was going to figure out a way to cut the prices back a little. But after a month in Paris and Monaco at Ducasse's restaurants, he came back saying he can't imagine doing cuisine at that level for a penny less than what they charge. It doesn't take long with either Grand Livre to start to see the rationale for that kind of thinking. I also think examining these books is helpful in terms of defining the outer limits of technique, plating, and the other technical aspects of cooking. This knowledge can serve us well as non-professional consumers. When we amateur cooks visit restaurants that fall far short of that standard, even though we can't ourselves cook to that standard, we can nonetheless have a better idea of how they fall short. And when we go to places like the Tasting Room and Blue Hill in New York, or to the corresponding new wave bistros in Paris, where every once in awhile you see bits and pieces of Grand Livre-level technique in a 19 Euro dish, we can say, "Bravo!"

I'm a good party member and waited on line like all my comrades who didn't know if they were waiting for toilet paper, Czech shoes, or beef brisket. I didn't even get to eat any of the pig I helped load up, or anything else from Mitchell's today. They gave me a "Press" badge but I didn't wear it; it felt silly. The fish pants were enough. Anyway there are so many gazillions of people walking around with press badges that it hardly makes you all that much of a VIP. The only 100% reliable way to cut the line is to be from the place where the pitmasters are from. If you're legitimately from Wilson, NC, for example, you will be treated very well indeed by Mitchell's (I saw it happen once). I think, if you're the type of person for whom crowds and lines ruin an event, the best move is not to come to this thing. It's the one reason not to go, and if it's a big enough reason for you then that's the end of the discussion. There also happen to be a million reasons to go, but you're going to need to do some time on the lines just like everybody else. To recap, my suggestion, for anyone who can handle it, would be to make peace with the notion of a significant investment of time. Come before noon, get loaded up with cue-pons, get organized with a couple of teammates, fan out, each acquire multiple portions, and do your first wave of 'cue eating at the most popular places (Mitchell's, Baron's, Mike Mills's) as soon after noon as possible. Then go for snoot. Then take the bulk of the afternoon off. Enjoy the music, attend the seminars, hang out on that glorious lawn, and wait for the lines to die down -- eventually they should come down from their early afternoon peak. There are no guarantees, though, regarding exactly when that will happen or what will be left to eat when it does -- you'll have to be flexible. So maybe you'll end up your day with a snack from Blue Smoke's stand, or the Salt Lick, or Big Bob Gibson, or all three. And, uh, did I mention we're all meeting up at the panel discussion "America's Barbeculture: Who Owns It?" from 3:00-3:45 PM? I think I mentioned that, maybe.

I too am really looking forward to the English versions. They have all these books in a little library in the "aquarium" room off the kitchen at ADNY so I've had the opportunity to flip through them there, and I can sort of muscle through the recipes in French (though I could never do three quarters of the mise), but it's so inefficient for me that I'll never be motivated to read them as thoroughly as I would otherwise. To me these books are the closest things we have to modern day equivalents of Le Guide Culinaire, so I would like to be very familiar with them -- I consider them required reading. I assume the pastry book is years away from coming out in English, but when the savory one becomes available, if I have the time, I'll try to write something about it. Although I'm looking forward to the pastry book as much or more -- the French version I was looking through is awe inspiring, especially in the way the desserts are plated.

Attendance at the event has exceeded the expectations of even those who said it would exceed expectations. This is great in many ways: it shows the pitmasters we New Yorkers are interested in what they're doing, it benefits the charities that are getting the proceeds from the event, and it contributes to a general feeling of being at an end-of-the-world party catered by the nation's greatest pitmasters. But the crowd situation also means you'll need to be smart about your strategy for attending the event. If you come tomorrow (Sunday), come before noon so you can be early on the lines -- they are getting so long that by 1pm it may take you an hour to get a taste of 'cue from the more popular stands. If you come in a group, split up and have each person get multiple portions so you can sample as many of the products as possible. Bring your own cans of soda and bottles of water -- you don't need the hassle of those lines. You pay for everything with "cue-pons" (they are in $1 denominations; each plate of 'cue is $6; beer, cobbler, and root beer floats are $4; Fiji water is $2; soft drinks and chocolate chip cookies are $1 -- no cash accepted at the 'cue concessions) and purchasing them requires careful strategy as well. Do not under any circumstances go to the cue-pon booths at the two ends of 26th Street (on Fifth and Madison Avenues). Instead, go to the booth at the south end of the park near 23rd Street. The line is less than half as long. There's also a booth near the band stand, north of the center of the park. That line looks good too. Before you get on either line, grab a $1 "preview cone" at the Shake Shack, also near the south end of the park. The Shake Shack is the new, soon-to-open permanent installation that replaces the Eleven Madison Park hot dog cart of previous summers. The Shake Shack is a great addition to the park. It blends into the park's landscape and the increased capacity allows for an expanded menu that includes truly inspired frozen custard (and also hamburgers, but those aren't on offer this weekend -- just vanilla custard). You'll probably find Kerry Heffernan (executive chef) and Nicole Kaplan (pastry chef) of Eleven Madison Park operating the custard machine. Say hi, especially to Nicole -- as you all know she is an active eGullet member. So far I've managed to make it through two lines: Smoki O's Barbecue and K.C. Baron of Barbecue's R.U.B. BBQ. Smoki O's is serving pig snoot (aka snout) sandwiches. K.C. Baron is serving brisket. The brisket I tried was quite simply the best barbecue brisket I've ever had, and I've had the product in most of the places that are candidates for the title of best in Texas and Kansas City. The way the Baron has set up the line is such that as you wait you walk past long tables where you can view the briskets in various stages: first in the smokers, then whole, then being trimmed (the most pornographic stage of the process, when you can beg a piece of gelatinous pepper-rubbed fat off the guy doing the trimming), and finally being sliced. At the end, if you haven't passed out from this test of your will, you get a portion of brisket with slices of dill pickles and a slice of white bread. It's tender but not overcooked -- it retains some of the texture and toothsomeness of the meat without tripping over into disintegration. The exterior bits are peppery but not dry. Skip the sauce -- it's the meat you want to be tasting. As for pig snoot, well, I can't say I've ever had a pig snoot sandwich before. This is definitely an acquired taste. However, quantities are extremely limited (the pig snoot folks have less than 1/10 the capacity of the big operations like Mtichell's) so you will have to get there early on Sunday if you want to secure one of only about 400 available portions and try to acquire the taste for yourself. The pig snoot slices are cooked to an extreme state of crispy crunchiness and the slices are spread with a sweet barbecue sauce. You can't actually eat the sandwich as a sandwich -- you need to pick up the individual slices of snoot and chew on them, a lot. The taste is somewhere along a spectrum beginning with bacon the left, with pork rinds in the center, and with the snoot somewhere to the right of the pork rinds, if that makes sense. It is an unusual taste. Even the proprietor says so, in a little handout entitled "Snootology" that you will be given when you buy your snoot sandwich. Right there, printed on fuchsia paper, it says, and it's true, "We have been noted locally and as far away as New York and California for the unusual taste of our snoot." The snoot is literally the pig's nose, as Smoki O's defines it, "the pigs nose, which the nostrils have been cut away and the anterior prolongation is prepared for an exciting culinary experience." I haven't been able to learn how the snoot is made. All we know is that it is a four-stage process that took Smoki O's four years to develop. Danny Meyer and I spent a little time last night debriefing the snootologists, but I haven't extracted enough information from them yet. Perhaps tomorrow morning I can corner them and supplement this report. Note that the seminar stage is not the same as the music stage, so if you meet up with us tomorrow you will need to come to the stage towards the south end of the park and not the music stage near the north end. I'm hoping some eGulleters made it to the Saturday seminar. I'll provide a report on the Sunday one, but I was spread too thin to make it to the one today. It was great to see so many eGulleters there today, and I'm looking forward to our meet-and-greet tomorrow. We were so busy covering the event we never really got to set up a Wi-Fi connection that we could all share for purposes of posting, but maybe tomorrow we can accomplish some of that. For now I've set up sort of a mobile eGullet command center at the Starbuck's on Fifth Avenue near 28th. That's where I've been going to access Wi-Fi and get out of the sun so I can see my screen. Tomorrow, if you approach from that direction, stick your head into the Starbuck's there -- I might be inside. Otherwise, see you at 3pm.

Things are about to get started, and as I mentioned we'll be at the event all day. I may not have the battery capacity necessary to pull off what I had hoped in terms of using my PC as an official eGullet wireless station all day, so I'd encourage anybody with a Wi-Fi capable unit to bring it down. Also if you're a Verizon DSL customer you can get a really strong signal at the park, whereas the networks I'm relying upon are touch-and-go at best. Anyway, see you there. We'll have additional reports later today, as soon as we can pull everything together.

I think you all have probably gotten the idea by now that Ed Mitchell doesn't fuck around when it comes to barbecue. But check this out: Ed Mitchell is now traveling with . . . . . . a publicist! There I was, just taking a little time to commune with "my" pig, when Mitchell's new Chicago-based publicist came over and started giving me press releases. Later I'll read them and share any interesting tidbits. We hope to see you all around today. There seems to be strong Wi-Fi signal near the statue at the north end of the park and there are some good benches just east of the statue. That's probably where I'll spend much of my time. And I especially look forward to seeing everybody at the panel discussion "America's Barbeculture: Who Owns It?" tomorrow, that's Sunday, June 13, 3:00-3:45 PM. This will be held in Madison Square Park. I'd also like to reiterate the request made above that between now and Monday morning posting on this topic be restricted to those who have attended the event. We're looking to document the event through the eGullet lens, and then have the follow-up discussion starting on Monday. Thanks so much for your cooperation and support.

I'm working on permission. Most cookbook publishers are willing to hand over three recipes or some other reasonably representative sample of the work. The request has to go through the Ducasse Groupe in France, though, so it could be awhile before I get a response.

Well . . . there have of course been some delays. It's looking now like an August opening. I was in today and the dining room is still quite a ways away from being completed. The good news is the kitchen is working. The menu is in an early stage of development, and there is a story to tell about the evolution of the dishes that would be inappropriate for me to tell without the perspective of the final plates. Gray Kunz's experiments, flights of fancy, and mistakes, however, put most chefs' signature dishes to shame. We had some amazing food at today's menu tasting -- the kitchen team was kind enough to make a couple of extra plates of all the dishes they tested today, so that Ellen and I could sample them. The tastes brough back memories of what I so love about Kunz's food: you take a bite and, after processing its fundamental deliciousness, you say "What the fuck is in this sauce?" And then you take another bite and say "Holy shit is that fennel? And is it pickled?" And each time you take another bite you experience the dish in a whole new way. You definitely don't want to dine with non-foodies at a Gray Kunz restaurant, because you really need everybody to shut up so you can experience the commanding presence of the cuisine. So, more to follow as the menus take shape. What I will say right now for the record is: Gray Kunz is back.

This just in . . . Before we get to Ellen's photos, which she should be ready to post in about half an hour, here's a quick report we got from Ned. I'm going to reproduce it here for completeness, since he already posted it on the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party planning thread. So, from Ned:

What is America's greatest barbecue town? Is it in North Carolina, perhaps Lexington or Wilson? Is it Kansas City, Memphis, St. Louis, or perhaps somewhere in Texas? The question will never be settled. But one city that surely doesn't get a nomination is New York City. Once a year, however, for one weekend New York joins the ranks of the great barbecue cities of America. Because on this weekend, several of the nation's top pitmasters aren't at their home bases in North Carolina, Missouri, and Texas. They're on East 26th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, on the north edge of Madison Square Park, at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party. And -- as if it could be any other way -- eGulleters will be out in full force to greet them. Last year we got caught off guard by the inaugural Big Apple Barbecue Block Party. It didn't come together until just a few days before the event. And we didn't know it would be as great as it was. Nonetheless, we brought you a terrific series of photo essays from Ellen Shapiro. This year, we had some time to get ready. Not to mention, so did the event's organizers. Instead of being crammed onto East 27th Street, the event this year will occupy all of Madison Square Park, which by the way is looking quite spiffy thanks to a years-long makeover. The pitmasters will be on the north side of the park, the bandstand will be just south of them, and the main lawn will be open (for the first time ever) to picnickers and spectators. For our part, we are going to try to cover every moment of the event, from the arrival of the pitmasters to the arrival of the pigs, from setup to knockdown, and we're going to do it in as close to real time as this medium allows. We asked for as much behind-the-scenes access as the organizers (led by Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group aka USHG) would allow, and they gave it to us, in some cases exclusively or as part of a very limited group of media. Not only will we be filing reports at the end of every day, but also we'll try to post here during the event, thanks to Wi-Fi in the park. Those eGulleters who plan to be at the event, come on over and get on my computer -- or bring your own Wi-Fi-capable unit so we'll have more resources -- and put up some posts live from the event. Those who attend the event and don't get to post live, we encourage you to post your impressions at night when you get home. Let's hear as many voices and perspectives as we can. Two other housekeeping matters before we get to some real coverage: First, we'd like to ask that between now and Monday morning posting on this topic be restricted to those who have attended the event. We'd like this to be a documentary project at first, as a precursor to discussion. On Monday we'll open the topic to everyone. Second, we're asking that all eGulleters who are physically capable of being at the event meet up at the panel discussion "America's Barbeculture: Who Owns It?" That's Sunday, June 13, 3:00-3:45 PM. This will be held in Madison Square Park. There is no charge for admission. I will figure out a way to stake out some sort of eGullet space where we can assemble. This is set to be a great, controversial and interesting discussion. I think it will generate enough heat for a great post-game debate here on our boards. And it will be a way for us to come together as a community for a few minutes before we go back to feasting. For those who meet up with our group on Sunday, June 13, 3:00-3:45 PM, there will be a special surprise. I can't say more. On to our coverage of the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party 2004. The pitmasters assembled for the first time at 3pm Friday afternoon, at the Jazz Standard (the jazz club below the USHG's Blue Smoke restaurant). The mood was tense: these folks are about barbecue, not about waiting around, and the city wouldn't turn control of 26th Street over to the Big Apple Barbecue crews until 6pm. There was about an hour of feasting on ribs and other good stuff provided by Blue Smoke. There was about an our of logistics briefings by Danny Meyer and his team (this year's event will require the work of 150 employees handling everything from security to ticket sales, and that's in addition to all the USHG staff and the pitmasters' crews). And then there was about an hour of stressing out as the crews really got to itching to get access to the venue. We're going to try to introduce you, throughout the weekend, to several of the pitmasters. There's no way we'll be able to do all six. The time constraints won't allow it, and after all we have to leave something for next year. Today we mostly focused on Ed Mitchell, in part because, as the one pitmaster cooking whole hogs, his ambitious setup was the most dramatic of all, and in part because I personally find him to be one of the more interesting people in the universe. I met Ed Mitchell at last year's Big Apple Barbecue Block Party. Two things immediately struck me about Ed Mitchell: first, he was the only African-American pitmaster at the event. All the others were white, as are it seems most of the high-profile barbecue restaurant owners in the South despite the genre's largely black roots. Second, he was the only one barbecuing whole hogs. The rest were cooking ribs, shoulders, and other small-by-comparison cuts of meat. My critics' antennae are always attuned to the odd man out, so I kept an eye on Mitchell. Later, at a panel discussion downstairs at the Jazz Standard (this year the panels will be in the park, but last year the venue was organized differently), Mitchell sat quietly on the dais with the other pitmasters. The others had plenty to say but, like a professional poker player, Mitchell was mostly silent. He cut quite a figure in his overalls, baseball cap, and massive white beard affixed to an even more impressive head. When the rest of the crew was all but talked out, however, Mitchell leaned forward towards his microphone and said, “May I add just a couple of comments?” At which point the crowd was treated to a quiet, intensive lecture on the social history of barbecue. Mitchell, among other surprises, has a masters degree in sociology. I knew then that, one day, I'd have to visit Mitchell on his home turf. Mitchell's Ribs, Chicken & BBQ rises out of Wilson, North Carolina's spartan landscape like a secret government research hangar. With few surrounding reference points, the scale of the operation isn't entirely clear until you're standing right in front of it: Mitchell's barn-like structure is large enough to accommodate a large herd of cattle or a small shopping mall. By 11am the parking lot was filling with cars and tour buses -- what are people doing on tours around here anyway? -- and over in a far corner of the lot's expanse was the same semi truck that is right now parked on 26th Street in Manhattan. Mitchell's didn't start out on this scale. It didn't even start out as a barbecue place, nor did Ed Mitchell ever have ambitions of becoming a professional pitmaster. Although as a boy he had assisted his father at many a pig roast -- in the several hours we spent talking to him in Wilson, he recalled his youth when every occasion would be transformed into an excuse for a pig roast, from birthdays to the birth of a favorite hunting dog's litter -- Ed Mitchell never intended to run a barbecue restaurant. His G.I.-bill-funded studies ranged from sociology to economics, and he spent 17 years as a manager for Ford in Boston. It wasn't until his father took ill, and he came back home to help care for his family, that the course of his life was to change. On the current Mitchell's site used to be the Mitchell family grocery. Like most small stores of its kind, Mitchell's grocery eventually came under pressure from chain supermarkets and evolving tastes. With Mitchell's father unable to work the store, the pressure on his mother was almost unbearable. One day, as Ed Mitchell was helping his mother open the store, she began to cry. “What can I do to make you feel better?” he asked. “Make me some of your barbecue,” she answered, “like you used to make.” So the dutiful son went out and bought a baby pig and spent the day barbecuing it. Near closing time, it was ready. Mitchell recalls eating the barbecue behind the counter with his mother when a customer walked in. “Oh, Mrs. Mitchell, you've got barbecue now?” The rest was history. Ed Mitchell sees his restaurant – now more than ten times the size of the family market – as a research laboratory. Rooted in the Southern barbecue tradition, Mitchell is nonetheless a modernist, and his goal is to unite the old methods with contemporary business acumen to create a barbecue empire that can expand and replicate itself beyond Wilson, and beyond Mitchell's lifetime. “I'm doing this for my son,” he said several times during the day we spent with him. His son, Ryan, is here this weekend, as is his brother Stevie (his other brother, Aubrey, hurt his foot and couldn't make it up this year) as well as a host of cousins. Unlike most traditionally oriented Southern barbecue establishments, Mitchell's is decidedly high-tech. At the drive-through window, the employees wear wireless headsets and utilize the same computer point-of-sale ordering systems as Kentucky Fried Chicken. At the main service line, Mitchell has inverted the traditional barbecue kitchen by putting all the food out in the open: customers line up cafeteria style and point to whatever they want, and the staff builds each person a plate. “People eat with their eyes,” was another of Mitchell's oft-repeated comments. The cafeteria line also allows Mitchell to service easily in excess of a thousand customers a day. “We've never even tested the limits of this thing.” Yet despite the streamlined look and feel of Mitchell's, everything in the back of the house occurs with old-fashioned rigor. Hushpuppies are shaped by hand (most barbecue places, even the most traditional ones, now use a machine), desserts are made from scratch, and vegetables are prepared according to old Mitchell family recipes. My favorite area of Mitchell's barn/laboratory/restaurant -- and I must go back to see this thing in action -- is the Pig Bar. The Pig Bar looks like any bar, anywhere, right down to the beer taps, dark wood, and television screens playing sports programming, but where you'd normally find liquor bottles on the back bar there is, instead, a Jacuzzi-sized multi-compartment apparatus holding different cuts of pit-roasted pork. Customers at the Pig Bar point to what they want, and the pig-bartender makes up a plate. “People eat with their eyes,” commented Mitchell. “And this will get them hungry.” That's for sure. The thing wasn't even up and running when I was there, and I nonetheless have erotic dreams about it. Perhaps most innovative, however, is Mitchell's system for pit-roasting whole hogs, a system he calls “banking.” North Carolina barbecue, in the Eastern part of the state where Mitchell is from, is synonymous with the whole hog. While it's at least somewhat straightforward to create automated equipment for roasting chickens or racks of ribs, it's quite a bit more complex to create a scientifically based system for pit-roasting whole hogs. Thus, whole-hog barbecue remains the most mysterious form of barbecue, requiring 24/7 attention and continuous adjustment to the barbecue pits, and practiced only by a few idiosyncratic pitmasters at hard-to-reach locations in the rural South. What Mitchell's system achieves is a degree of standardization that can allow a properly trained employee to pit-roast a pig like the great pitmasters, without the need to stay up all night. Mitchell's specially constructed all-brick pits are wired with temperature probes, they have special valves to control airflow, and they are backed up by redundant state-of-the art exhaust and fire-suppression systems. For each weight of hog, Mitchell's team has created graphs demonstrating the pit temperature and internal temperatures for the entire length of the roast. So it is possible, using his system, for the cook to prep and leave the pig on the fire at night, reduce the pit's airflow to the proper level for that size animal, and return in the morning to a fully barbecued whole hog. Then, in the morning, the quicker-cooking items like ribs and chicken can be added to the pits, and by lunchtime there's a full barbecue inventory ready to serve. When I entered the room housing Mitchell's pits – they are indoors, right where a normal kitchen would be – I was reminded of my second barbecue road trip through North Carolina. This was when I first met Dean McCord ("Varmint" here on eGullet). As I set out on the trip, I vowed to visit the pits everywhere I could. I figured there would be resistance -- pitmasters have a reputation for secretiveness -- but I'd persevere and get behind the scenes. At Wilbur's barbecue in Goldsboro, North Carolina, Dean, Ellen, and I summoned up the courage to ask “May we see the pits?” “You want to see the pits?” asked a puzzled owner, leaning on his white pickup truck and smoking a big stogie. “Sure.” We walked around back to a long brick shed lined with smokestacks exhaling gray soot and vaporized grease, and Wilbur (that's his name) opened the door and gestured for us to enter. It was like walking into an oven, in Hell, without any air, surrounded by the sight, aroma, and vapor of dead baby pigs. I lasted just long enough to have the vision recur to me over the years in early-morning nightmares. I didn't ask for very many pit tours after that. Wilbur was, I think, amused. In Mitchell's pits, the thermometer on the wall reads 70-degrees. There is no aroma. The pigs are under metal domes and, in moments of denial, even look kind of cute. You can read a book, take a nap, or have a picnic in Mitchell's pit area and never know there are whole hogs roasting six feet away from you. And by extension, you may be able to have a Mitchell's barbecue franchise next door to your apartment in a large city yet not be inconvenienced. That, at least, is Ed Mitchell's hope. Tonight, when Ed Mitchell's rig pulled up onto 26th Street, all the other pitmasters stopped and stared. The rear doors of the semi truck opened and Mitchell's crew rolled out not one, not two, but eight wheeled barbecue pits, each large enough to cook a 150-pound hog. They filled a quarter of the block. Danny Meyer had said to me earlier, pointing to that section of the block, "This part is for Mitchell's, and everybody else splits up the rest." I didn't realize he was serious. Stuff just kept on coming out of that truck: tables, industrial-sized canisters of condiments, logs, sacks of coals, and cartons of Mitchell's tee-shirts, barbecue sauces, and baseball caps. When everything was in its places, the crew loaded up each pit with coals, and later on with wood. After an hour or so, ten whole hogs arrived in another truck. Kenny Callaghan of Blue Smoke had procured the pigs locally, in accordance with Ed Mitchell's specifications as to size, color, and other characterisitcs. Upon seeing them, Mitchell slapped a few butts, flexed a few ankles (on the pigs, that is), and proclaimed, "Kenny did a nice job." His crew hefted the 150-pound hogs over their shoulders like they were bags of feathers, marched them over to a long table in the street, and set upon them maniacally with cleavers. Each hog was split down the middle, and its head and feet removed. Ed Mitchell allowed me to "christen" the first pit by adding the final logs, setting up the grill grate, and heaving the pig into place (aided by two guys who contributed most of the real strength to the equation), after which I mostly drank bottles of water and griped about my back for the rest of the evening. The hogs will cook overnight, for approximately 12 hours at between 275 and 300 degrees. Tomorrow morning, when they come off the pits, we'll be there. Finally, before turning this over to Ellen for some photographic documentation, let me set forth the key pieces of information about the event: The second annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party will be this weekend, Saturday, June 12th and Sunday, June 13. On both days it will run from 12 noon until 6pm. The venue is 26th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues (for the actual barbecue) and the adjacent Madison Square Park (for everything else) The barbecue establishments represented at the event will be: Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q Decatur, Alabama Pitmasters Chris Lilly and Don McLemore Pork Shoulder & Baked Beans Blue Smoke New York, New York Pitmaster Kenny Callaghan Kansas City Spare Ribs & Dill Pickles K. C. Baron of Barbeque's R.U.B. BBQ Kansas City, Missouri Pitmaster Paul Kirk Beef Brisket & Dill Pickles Memphis Championship Barbecue Las Vegas, Nevada 17th Street Bar & Grill Murphysboro, Illinois Pitmaster Mike Mills Baby Back Ribs & Baked Beans Mitchell's Ribs, Chicken & BBQ Wilson, North Carolina Pitmaster Ed Mitchell Whole Hog & Coleslaw The Salt Lick Driftwood, Texas Pitmaster Scott Roberts Beef Brisket & Coleslaw Sausage & Coleslaw Smoki O's Barbeque St. Louis, Missouri Pitmaster Otis Walker Pig Snoot Sandwiches There will also be desserts from Blue Smoke's Pastry Chef Jenn Giblin and frozen custards from Shake Shack, the forthcoming USHG-operated food kiosk in Madison Square Park. The music schedule is as follows: Saturday 12:00-12:45 p.m. Jazz Standard Youth Orchestra 1:15-2:00 p.m. David Ostwald's Gully Low Jazz Band 2:30-3:15 p.m. Matt Munisteri & Brock Mumford 3:45-4:30 p.m. Brian Mitchell & The Loisaida Social Club 5:00-5:45 p.m. Jimmy Vivino & Friends Sunday 12:00-1:00 p.m. Jazz Standard Youth Orchestra 1:30-2:30 p.m. Demolition String Band 3:00-4:00 p.m. Chris Bergson Band 4:30-5:45 p.m. Melvin Sparks There will also be a number of seminars in the park: Saturday 1:30-2:15 p.m. Chopped, Pulled and Picked: An Insider's Guide to North Carolina Barbecue Ed Levine, moderator, author of "New York Eats (More)" and writer for The New York Times Bob Garner, author, North Carolina Barbecue Flavored by Time Austin McKenna, filmmaker, Barbecue is a Noun Will McKinney, founder, North Carolina BBQ Society Ed Mitchell, pitmaster, Mitchell's Ribs, Chicken and BBQ 2:15 - 2:45 p.m. Barnes & Noble Author Signing: Ed Levine, Bob Garner 3:00-3:45 p.m. All-Star Barbecue Sauce Tasting Colman Andrews, moderator, editor-in-chief, SAVEUR Jeffrey Steingarten, author, The Man Who Ate Everything Calvin Trillin, author, Feeding a Yen 3:45 - 4:15 p.m. Barnes & Noble Author Signing: Calvin Trillin, Jeffrey Steingarten, Paul Kirk Sunday 1:30-2:15 p.m. The Ultimate Barbecue Roadfood Trip Jane and Michael Stern 2:15 - 2:45 p.m. Barnes & Noble Author Signing: Jane and Michael Stern 3:00-3:45 p.m. America's Barbeculture: Who Owns It? Robb Walsh, moderator, author, "The Tex-Mex Cookbook" and "Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook" Colman Andrews, editor in chief, SAVEUR Lolis Eric Elie, author, "Smokestack Lightning" Jack Hitt, contributing writer for Harpers, GQ, Lingua Franca, and New York Times Magazine 3:45 - 4:15 p.m. Barnes & Noble author signing: Lolis Eric Elie, Robb Walsh, Colman Andrews Admission to the block party is free, including live music and seminars. Food, beverages and merchandise are purchased with coupons. Proceeds from the 2004 BABBP will benefit the Madison Square Park Conservancy & VH1 Save The Music Foundation. There is more information on the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party 2004 Web site, especially as relates to the music and the details of the panel discussions.

Nobody is saying Ducasse's team whipped up the book in the short time since Adria published his. But Adria's impending book was no secret, and I can't help but wonder if the technical details of the book's enormity were influenced by the Adria book's production -- for that, there would have been plenty of time. The Grand Livres, for their part, are minuscule by comparison. They are not reminiscent of the Adria book. This one is. I couldn't find any mentions of the book on the France board -- I only found a reference to the older Spoon book on the Cooking board -- but I'd like to read whatever was said about it. Perhaps somebody could provide a link.

I think this notion that the fourth star is for ambience approaches the issue from a questionable perspective. It's not as though there are all these restaurants out there serving food as good as Jean-Georges and ADNY but that aren't allowed to have four stars because they're too casual. The four star restaurants serve the best food. It so happens they also have luxury ambience -- it goes hand in hand with being the best. The cost of ingredients and labor, the wine program needed to support that kind of cuisine, and the seriousness of servers needed to present it all lend themselves to the need for luxury. On occasion, we might see a brilliant chef who pulls it together so as to offer four-star-worthy cuisine, but in a restaurant that doesn't have the corresponding wine, service, decor, etc. That restaurant needs to be given three stars because it doesn't offer the complete experience.

I think fundamentally we do not have to change our notions of what a four-star restaurant should be. The current system, implemented by a reviewer with an open mind, can easily accommodate non-French four-star restaurants. There is no need to create multiple overlapping sets of standards to accommodate other styles. In their native places, those cuisines have had no trouble, in their restaurant manifestations, achieving the level of experience necessary to get the highest accolades such as three Michelin stars or the local equivalent. If nobody is building these restaurants in New York, so be it. Redefining the star system to make Babbo or Masa into a four-star restaurant would not be productive. A four-star rating is a judgment, to be sure, but there is no shame in a three-star rating. In some genres, that is simply the highest available rating, and that's fine. When it comes to setting the standards for restaurants, there's no shame in being a little Francocentric as long as you don't trip over into xenophobia or confuse the Francocentric notion of restaurant excellence with anything having to do with the actual cuisine. The French invented the restaurant, the French have maintained leadership in that area, and therefore they get the biggest vote in defining the genre. For the most part, all over the world, that's the model everybody aspires to, regardless of the specific cuisine being served. What New York has added to the Francocentric model is a layer of celebration -- restaurants like Daniel don't exist in France, they are very much a part of New York, so in New York it is appropriate to bend the French model in order to accommodate what is right for us. But even under that modified system, Babbo isn't ever going to be a four-star restaurant.

The bar is definitely higher now than it was in the 1970s, though I think it may be lower than it was in the mid-1990s. But what's even more interesting is that the Chinese restaurant bar seems to be categorically lower. When you think about what the level of luxury was at places like Uncle Tai's Hunan Yuan, you simply can't find that at any Chinese restaurant today. So it's not as though they stayed put and the bar got raised. I see it more as them failing to keep up with the natural course of development of any growing form. Interestingly, Uncle Tai's Hunan Yuan seems to be operating at the upscale Boca Center in Dallas, where it is apparently "One of Dallas' most elegant and priciest restaurants." (DiningGuide.net) Vong is a good example of a non-Japanese Asian restaurant that has at times operated near the four-star level in terms of overall experience. Not that Vong has ever deserved four stars -- and today it probably doesn't deserve three either -- but as a theoretical rather than an empirical statement I think we can say that Vong demonstrates the potential for four-star Asian dining in New York. I also think the finest hotel restaurants in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and a few other cities around Asia could easily set up camp here today and get three stars, and once you do that, assuming you've got all the trappings of luxury in place, it's just a question of scaling up to four and convincing critics to recognize it and consumers to pay for it. Give me $20 million and I can easily build a four-star Chinese restaurant by hiring the right consultants from around here and the right chef from a top Asian hotel restaurant. It will go out of business in a month because nobody will pay what I need to charge to recoup that $20 million, because the critics might not get it, and because I would embezzle all the money in order to subsidize my personal dining and travel. But building it isn't a big challenge. Some said Lespinasse under Gray Kunz was a four-star Asian restaurant, though I disagree that it could really be called Asian. In any event, it demonstrates the potential of that palette of ingredients in a four-star context.

I think, given Bruni's clear penchant for meta-issues, that it would make sense for him to propose new wording for "What the stars mean." There's no reason it couldn't be fleshed out a little.

Also, it occurs to me, we often hear discussion implying that there has never been a non-French four-star restaurant. We even hear it in the New York Times. Perhaps that conventional wisdom needs to be amended in light of its apparent inaccuracy. The true picture seems to be that, in the past 20 years, the French have pushed everyone else out of the category. That's not only the accurate rendition, but also the more interesting story.

That's how I see it. You can deflate the value of four stars by adding a fifth, thus compensating for the inflation. Then you get a new chance to make the system right. As for four-star Chinese restaurants, apparently there were three in the 1970s according to this reference on CuisineNet from a few years ago.

I think it was a different place, Uncle something or other. I'll look into it.

Star inflation = giving restaurants more stars than they deserve Creating a new category for restaurants that raise the bar = not star inflation

Gotham Bar & Grill really seems to have pioneered the modern concept of bar dining, where you have a true fine-dining experience at the bar. They created special wooden trays, shaped to fit the bar, that extend the edge of the bar so you don't need to lean in to eat. The chairs are exceptionally comfortable. And the bartenders are oriented towards food service. I think the food at Gotham Bar & Grill remains excellent, and to me it somehow tastes better at that wonderful bar. Another place I would heartily recommend for bar dining is Picholine. You can even get cheese-cart service at the bar. It is a particularly enjoyable setting for lunch, because the bar is so low-traffic at that time. And of course the food is terrific. Good bar at Nougatine. Bread bar at Tabla, of course.

And they certainly called the precursor restaurant the French Laundry. I don't mean to say it's a freak accident that all the four-star places are French or heavily French influenced. France has the stuff. As well, there is certainly an element of stare decisis upon which you can rely when putting a zillion dollars behind a French restaurant; you don't have those assurances when you fund an Austro-Hungarian place, even though that area of Europe can lay a heavy claim to importance in the restaurant arena. And certainly the risks are higher when you go Asian. There is perhaps not a sufficient customer base in New York that would pay four-star prices for, say, Chinese food. But with Japanese, the base is clearly there -- the biggest ticket restaurants in town, at least foodwise, have long been Japanese, and the cuisine itself and the forms surrounding it have the kind of global clout to demand being rated in every available category of the scale. I just don't think a tiny sushi bar like Masa has exactly gone after that segment, despite its luxe prices and ingredients. I'm not sure Masa gave a moment's thought to the issue of stars -- why would he? At a restaurant that small and idiosyncratic, you're operating in a whole different universe.