Fat Guy

Omaha steaks are frozen. You should confine your choices to steaks that are shipped fresh. I have extensive experience with Lobel's and swear by the product. I have, however, heard good things about Prime Access. But Lobel's is always where I'd place my order, finances permitting. You will notice such a world of difference between Omaha and Lobel's, it will shock you.

This is sad. And I think the paper handled it with the proper note of contrition. I'd like to suggest that the sins here be divided into two categories, however: those that are fundamentally unethical, and those that are definitionally unethical. Some of the documented behavior seems dangerously close to extortion. That I would consider fundamentally unethical. Other incidents strike me as unethical primarily because they violate the paper's ethics code. I don't feel there is anything fundamentally wrong with reviewers dining non-anonymously (indeed I think it may be ethically superior) but this paper had a policy that should have been obeyed. I should also add, from my general experience at corporations, that there is an edge to the editorial that feels a bit like the offender has been hung out to dry. I would have liked to see an investigation into exactly what was common knowledge at the paper. Because in most corporations employees will take their cues from managers and not from policies, where there is conflict between what the two sources of authority will allow. I'm also troubled by the failure of the paper to provide a single on-the-record source. Given that this is an issue of trust, it feels odd to be asked to trust that the sources are credible despite their refusal to be named. The potential to become a tool of retaliation, motivated by ancillary issues, is too high in a situation like this one. The sources should have been named.

Yes but if you're taking the slices from the interior you're getting the, how should I put it, whitey experience. The crust and seasoning are the fucking point, people.

As the closest thing eGullet has to an executive chef, I've got to agree with that take on the management model. Most of what I do around here is figure out ways to get other people to do my work as well or better than I would, so I can just hang around and post on the message boards, injecting bits and pieces of my personality at the margins. I learned that lesson the hard way. Back in the early days of eGullet, I handled so much day-to-day management that when I would go away on a road trip things would get really fucked up around here. This past six weeks you all may not even have noticed that I've posted very little -- and what you've probably noticed less is that I've had zero involvement in management, which is now being quietly handled by people who are better at it than I am, albeit according to a framework Jason and I have worked to create over the past year -- as I've been working to finish my book manuscript. I hope eGullet has been the same for you either way. And I certainly hope nobody is coming here specifically to see me, Jason, or anybody else in particular, but rather I'd like to think what people care about is the eGullet we give them, regardless of the composition of that "we" at a given time.

One issue Utagawa and I discussed at length was what I'd call prioritization of sensory inputs. In some cases, the body does this for us: if we're smelling a rose and our foot gets stepped on, one sensory input will immediately overshadow the other. But in more hedonistic experiences, an especially I think with regard to sexual ones, we have quite a bit of autonomy with regard to what we focus on. Utagawa frames this as looking at the colors in a spectrum: to some people, certain colors will pop out, and to other people other colors will pop out, but as long as you're not colorblind you can choose to focus on purple and purple will then pop out for you. He noted that in all wine-and-food pairings where there is any complexity at all, there are compatible and conflicting flavors -- he actually refers to matches in terms of, for example, "this is about a 95% match" -- and that much of the experience can be interpreted differently based on which colors of the spectrum we choose to let pop out. With umami in particular, because this is not a taste element we're accustomed to focusing on, there may be some palate retraining necessary before the right colors pop. I can certainly see taking that argument too far, but there is a certain fundamental truth to it, I think.

That's certainly the argument I'd have made two days ago. Maybe I'd still make it today. But my pleasant debate at the Beard House convinced me that there is more here than just a novelty pairing. Utagawa has a theory that is based on the umami taste, an issue that has essentially been neglected in Western culinary thinking and wine pairing literature. His argument is that umami-rich foods are not simply adequate when paired with red Burgundies, but actually create synergy that improves both the food and the wine -- the hallmark of the best pairings. The point being that a riesling would not provide that experience, because the interaction of the tannins and the umami taste would be absent. And through his tastings, he has convinced many Burgundy winemakers that he's right. That's not to say he is right. But neither can he be so easily dismissed. I assure you, Craig, my threshold of disbelief is just as high as yours on issues like this. It will be interesting to see what happens if and when sushi restaurants start proliferating in Beaune. Incidentally, I would like to do more thinking about the metallic taste traditionally used as the argument against tannin-and-fish pairings. No question, it's there. But I wonder if it isn't a bit of a red herring. It actually reminds me very much of the taste I get -- absent any wines or other distractions -- from very oily fish like mackerel and sardines. In other words, I know of at least one context where something very similar to that metallic taste is considered to be a desirable flavor note when plugged into a larger picture. I also noted that, while I did get the metallic taste, it was much less aggressive with Burgundy tannins than it would have been with most any other red wine. Sometimes when sharing plates in restaurants I wind up tasting shellfish with some residual cabernet or syrah or zinfandel or whatever on my palate, and that can get pretty brutal. The Burgundy hit is different.

Not really my area of expertise, but the basic issue is that the restaurant is a relatively new concept. Again well into the 19th Century there were places where travelers could eat but they were more tavern-like than anything we would recognize as a restaurant by today's standards. A family might open a place where you could pay money for a meal, but the meal would be served in some variant of home or boarding-house style or maybe as a buffet. It took the creation of a middle class, the collapse of French aristocracy, the unemployment of the palace chefs, etc., to create the restaurant culture as we know it on both sides of the Atlantic. Service a la Francais -- banquet-style service -- works great when meals are taken at banquets in palaces. But when you move to a restaurant context, Service a la Russe -- which was imported from Russia by the French chefs who cooked for the Czars -- makes a lot more sense. Restaurants here in America followed the European model, and indeed often had European chefs. These changes came close in time to Escoffier's creation of the brigade system -- they're all connected and situated around the evolution of the way people dined. Those restaurants that serve family-style are historically connected to roots that either predate or were never affected by the evolution in restaurant culture that took place in the Western world around the turn of the 20th Century. I think. You can probably learn more about this from Google than you can from me.

The market segment in which family-style restaurants have traditionally operated has in the past couple of decades come to be dominated by chain buffets like Golden Corral, Ponderosa, Sizzler, etc. The ones that survive tend to do so in specific ethnic and cultural niches, like the Amish Country and the Southern boarding-house tradition. Just to clarify terminology, I think what is being described here as family style is one species of family style dining, where the table is served a meal as a family would be in a certain kind of home, where the mother would bring out all the food on platters and in bowls, everybody would sit, and then food would be passed around for self-service. The kind of family-style service at Italian family-style places is somewhat different, because it tends to occur in courses and because it is ordered from a menu. Ditto for some of the other ethnic examples. And the term family syle is also used to describe some contemporary haute cuisine restaurants like Craft and even the new Spice Market, basically any environment in which dishes are meant to be shared. If you go back not too long ago in Western culinary history, most every meal was served this way. Up through most of the 19th Century, meals were banquets and buffets. It was only when the French imported Service a la Russe that individual plated portions served in a succession of courses became the norm.

Yes that's my bulldog, Momo. I'll send you a larger photo.

James, I've thorgoughly enjoyed your book reviews in The Art of Eating, and was wondering if you had any reflections to offer on what as a general matter you, as an experienced professional craftsman and keen observer of culinary publishing find most valuable in food books. Or you may wish to discuss what you find least valuable. If you have a few recommendations for my summer reading list, I'm listening as well. And, in terms of a few specific things I've been looking into lately, what books would you acquire in order to get the best instruction for making 1) terrines, 2) sausages, and 3) smoked fish. I'd prefer English, but if the best is not available in English I can handle the truth.

Oh, they bring all that starchy stuff to your table at Plataforma. It's all in addition to the buffet. It's really quite insane. I should point out that in Brazil the buffets are quite elaborate. One of the many embarrassing moments of my food writing career (I can hardly count them anymore) was when I wrote something about rodizio places in New York, making fun of the sushi at the buffet. A guy in Brazil e-mailed me photographs of several different local rodizio places and every single one of them had sushi on the buffet. Oops.

In my opinion, yes. There are always good quality steamed shell-on cold shrimp, several casserole-type dishes that can range from mediocre to superb, and various nice charcuterie, acceptably made maki sushi, and more.

Just to clarify, for those who have not been: "salad bar" is not really an accurate description of the buffet component at a good rodizio place. Salad items represent only about a quarter of the inventory, which includes much cold and hot food.

As a formal body of thought, the Slow Food concepts do indeed include what I consider to be enlightened views of assimilation and the melting pot: At the same time, I have found that of all possible affiliations, those who are involved in the Slow Food movement are the most likely to also be members of what I earlier called "the authenticity police." Perhaps most members of the movement don't fully understand its conceptual underpinnings -- certainly most of them don't completely grasp its deliberately veiled politics -- but as an empirical matter the Slow Food people do tend to be mired in preservationist notions of authenticity.

Either way, there is one in the living room. Seriously though, Bux, I believe it's always worth agitating for greater linguistic precision. Culinary language and attendant attitudes are still just barely emerging from the "sear the meat to seal in the juices" days, when wive's tales had more currency than the physical or social sciences. In attempting to rescue the concept of authenticity from the reactionary preservationsists at the Chez Slow Foodways Alliance Collective Board, we do more than quibble about language: we expose the underlying concepts that language reinforces.

Compared to the meat served even at a mid-level steakhouse, like a Morton's or a Ruth's Chris, the meat at Plataforma (and every rodizio place I've visited, which is a lot of them) falls far short of that standard. We judge steakhouse steaks by a combination of tenderness and flavor, and most gourmets prefer them medium-rare. Most of the flavor experience, moreover, is about the meat, supported by an exterior char. The rodizio aesthetic is completely different. Most meats are cooked through or cooked at least to medium. They are not tender but, rather, flavorful -- often these two attributes are in conflict. The flavor experience is partly about the meat, but it is part of a trio that includes the char and seasoning. The larger cuts, in particular, are repeatedly put back on the fire to create char, and the slices served to you are from the outside of the piece of the meat. Using such a system, anything less than medium doneness (and really more like medium-well) would be quite difficult to achieve. For a steakhouse lover to enjoy the rodizio experience, then, I think it is important to let go of one set of preconceptions and look to a different model, one more appropriate to the genre. Once you do that, and particularly if someone else is paying, an evening at Plataforma can be quite fun.

Zero taste is certainly an overstatement, but I've eaten quite a few of these cornets -- at least 10 and maybe more -- and I have come to believe they're somewhat flawed. The texture to which the salmon is processed deprives it of some of its essence, and either the product selection favors very mild specimens or the texture contributes to a fundamental lack of salmon-ness on the palate. As someone who loves salmon in its state of nature, I find the cornets to be a step down. They are wonderfully attractive and whimsical, however.

I wonder, is the William Grimes who today wrote: the same William Grimes who in 2000 wrote of receiving the check at Alain Ducasse New York:

If you google "cuisine of subtraction" the first several hits you get refer to Utagawa, including materials from the Beard House from an earlier Sushi-Ko dinner and a Steve Klc article from Pastry Arts (he only beat me to this story by a few years; I wish I had found it last night before I wrote, because it seems he already did a lot of the pain-in-the-ass research and fact-checking). So I think, nomenclature-wise, it does seem that Utagawa is the guy who is out there using this language to describe his cuisine. But I don't think, conceptually, he owns the concept of subtraction. For one thing, the literature on minimalism in the arts is heavily oriented towards these themes of subtraction and creation through negative spaces. And for another thing, I think Utagawa is primarily using the phrase "cuisine of subtraction" to describe the body of thought behind the Japanese culinary aesthetic, rather than a cuisine totally specific to him. In the Klc article, by the way, there's an interesting parallel drawn between Japanese culinary minimalism and Burgundian minimalism: I don't know of any larger repositories of information on this whole "cuisine of subtraction" line of argument, but I have a feeling I'll be seeing more of Utagawa over the years now that he's on my radar. So if nobody else gives it a fuller treatment, I will, eventually. On the red-wine-with-cooked-fish point, I've long been a convert. It has been a decade now since Andrea Immer was doing pinot noir tastings as sommelier at the Sea Grill here in Rockefeller Center. I remember a particularly stunning meal of about a million different types of fish paired with West Coast pinot noirs all made by women winemakers. Talk about seductive! But I found that the species of fish involved, and the saucing strategies used, all tended towards the "meaty." The Japanese aesthetic seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum, and so even as a red-wine-with-fish convert, I was hard-pressed to imagine how that would work. I'm glad I hauled myself out for dinner last night. "The Raw & The Red," Steve Klc in Pastry Arts: http://www.pastryarts.com/Articles/New%20F...wAndTheRed.html Don Rocks on Sushi-Ko recently, in the DC forum: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=44480 1995 Wine Spectator piece on Andrea Immer at the Sea Grill: http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Archives...275,531,00.html

Twenty years ago, Daisuke Utagawa had a revelation over a bowl of gumbo in Texas. The son of a Japanese journalist and Burgundy collector, Utagawa had been schooled in both Japan and Bethesda, Maryland, and later studied traditional cuisine with Japanese masters. In 1983, he took a job as a sushi chef at the venerable Sushi-Ko restaurant in Washington, DC. Soon after, at a party in Texas, his host sprinkled raw scallops and shrimp into a bowl of gumbo in the final moments of cooking. Utagawa, who had been sipping a red Burgundy, had a bite of gumbo, and then a sip of wine. Now the owner of Sushi-Ko, Utagawa has devoted his professional career to making the argument for the marriage of red Burgundy and Japanese cuisine, particularly raw fish. It has not been an easy road. But he has made some incredible progress. Utagawa's basic argument is that the tannins in pinot noir are the ideal foil for the “umami” flavor that typifies much raw seafood specifically and Japanese cuisine in general. To his way of thinking, the umami flavors and the tannins interact with one another in what is essentially a mutual subtraction, thus allowing the palate to enjoy thoroughly the fruit flavors of the wine. He also believes that, in their space, the pinot noir tannins shape and define the elusive umami and make it more comprehensible to the taster. Not entirely satisfied with the inroads he was making in Washington, DC, and in the media, Utagawa decided to go to Burgundy to argue his case. With the help of the wine exporter Becky Wasserman, who hosted Utagawa and several leading Burgundy winemakers at a dinner at her 17th Century home in Bouilland, he presented his cuisine in combination with Burgundy reds, at the source. Utagawa left Burgundy triumphant, with the support of many key industry figures. He has since made annual pilgrimages to Bouilland and the home of Becky Wasserman, where more and more winemakers are becoming familiar with his theories as he pairs Japanese dishes with their favorite wines. Last night at the James Beard House in New York, I had the opportunity to dine with Utagawa at a meal intended to capture the essence of his annual fall Burgundy dinners. The cuisine was prepared by Sushi-Ko head chef Koji Terano (Utagawa today devotes his efforts to managing the restaurant and traveling for culinary and oenological research purposes), and Peter Wasserman, Becky's son, was on hand with an avalanche of red Burgundies from the Selection Becky Wasserman portfolio. As I steeled myself in preparation for testing Utagawa's theories against my own palate and sensibilities, I reflected on the number of artificially forced pairings I've endured over the years. A particularly painful red-wine-and-chocolate tasting event a few years back convinced me only that going to such dinners is a high-risk activity: not only do you have to contend with potentially unpleasant food, but if you're forthright in your commentary you wind up looking industry people straight in the eyes and telling them you think they've failed. And, while I am no staunch traditionalist in matters of wine, I do have a fairly difficult-to-surmount threshold of credibility when it comes to novelty pairings. The Eel Tatsuta-Age looked like a good dish: squares of eel, battered and fried like tempura, and drizzled with a balsamic syrup, were accompanied by a bright, acidic cucumber salad. And it was a good dish, which at Beard House events can be a bit of a surprise: too often the visiting chefs find the poor kitchen facilities and banquet format insurmountable. This appeared not to be a problem for the Sushi-Ko team, which put out restaurant-quality food at the Beard House, albeit slowly. The moment of truth, however, was still to come: tasting this dish with Domaine Sylvain Pataille Marsannay la Montagne 2001. I was a convert after one sip. Although I developed some reservations about the enterprise later in the meal, there was no question upon this first taste of umami-rich eel with a young, fruity Burgundy that more was going on than just an acceptable pairing. The tannin-derived synergy that Utagawa promises can easily be detected, and this seemed to be the mood around the entire room. I found myself settling in, as I alternated bites of eel and sips of Marsannay, to one of the most sensuous wine experiences I can remember. Peter Wasserman chose wines from young winemakers in an attempt to add an extra level of intrigue to the pairings, though I wouldn't go so far as to say I could taste any particularly youthful attitudes in the wines – indeed most were made quite conservatively. The next dish, Flounder Sashimi with Black Truffle Vinaigrette, came topped with shredded crispy fried sweet potatoes, and was paired with Domaine du Comte Armand Pommard 1er Cru Clos des Epeneaux 2000. Again, a beautiful pairing, though my focus was on the truffle aromas (truffles are an extremely umami-rich food, it should be noted) and how they played against the tannins. In my distraction, I failed to perform much of an evaluation of the taste of the flounder alone against the red wine. Luckily, there were several more chances. I developed my first doubts when I got an unpleasant metallic hit off the pairing of the Suimono, a clear broth with white fish, yamaimo, and egg whites with Domaine Fougeray de Beauclair Bonnes Mares 2000. I couldn't get past it, and thought it was particularly odd that such a weighty wine had been paired with what was surely the lightest course of the meal. Two wines were poured with an assortment of nigiri sushi (maki had been served as hors d'oeuvres, but with Champagne): Domaine Lignier-Michelot Clos de la Roche 1999 and Domaine du Clos Salomon Givry 1er Cru Clos Salomon 2001. Here I thought the combinations worked much better, as I tasted each wine with each piece of very well made sushi. Particularly when it came to the sweet shrimp, which was topped with a little dollop of caviar, the umami-tannin interplay was explosive. The final course didn't make much of a point, because it consisted of oxtail and foie gras wrapped in savoy cabbage and served in the style of sukiyaki, but the accompanying Domaine D. Mugneret Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru les Boudots 2001 was tasty, as was the dish itself. I should also note, the chef pulled off a terrific espresso panna cotta for dessert. Throughout the meal, Utagawa thoroughly impressed me with his seemingly endless knowledge of fish, wine, and everything in between. He held forth at length about freezing and storage of fish, an issue that came to the fore recently in the New York Times. He is keenly interested in aquaculture, has many relationships with farmers on land, and has developed a whole language of colors and symbols that he uses to make his written tasting notes. He is tremendously well traveled and has met and talked shop with chefs ranging from Ferran Adria of El Bulli to Chef Hashimoto of Ryozanpaku in Kyoto. He has a thorough intellectual concept of a minimalist “cuisine of subtraction” that he strives to implement at the restaurant. But I avoided any direct discussion of the wine concept until I had finished my last taste of wine. I ran through my notes with Utagawa, making my presentation as frank and clear as possible – which is my modus operandi under such circumstances (most food writers, I have found, will clam up when faced with industry people, and will save their criticisms for the safer medium of print; I don't believe in writing what I wouldn't say to a chef, restaurateur, publicist or producer's face). Utagawa processed my critique, and concluded that he felt I could, albeit with some difficulty, be educated.

If this is an empirical statement based on an open-minded assessment, I have no beef with it. If the continuum of excellence in Malaysian restaurants in New York is such that the ones that conform most closely to a certain style are serving better food than the ones that don't, so be it. The reality is that issues of culinary creativity rarely pop up (there are of course exceptions, but they tend to prove the rule) in the context of smaller, local, ethnic restaurants that are largely oriented towards high levels of output (at least relevant to their kitchen sizes) of cheap, tasty food. Such places are probably better off sticking to some basic templates, though I think there can be forms of adaptation, particularly in terms of local ingredient substitutions, that are, if not exactly creative, at least indicative of a desire to improve through adaptation and assimilation. My concern is with a self-fulfilling prophecy you didn't put forth, but which many other people do make or imply: "the less similar it is, the worse it must be." Once we fall into that trap, the analysis becomes suspect. Because in the limited time I've spent in Southeast Asia, the top chefs there have been doing what the top chefs everywhere else have been doing: they have been departing from tradition and cooking creatively. In that regard, there is a bit of an authenticity time warp that I see in New York once I've visited other countries. La Cote Basque kept an aura of authenticity about it until its last gasp, yet you couldn't go to Paris anytime in the past 20 years and find a restaurant like it. Balthazar is said to evoke a Parisian brasserie yet the brasseries in Paris that it evokes are mostly theme-parkish recreations courtesy of the Groupe Flo. The dim sum served at the traditional Chinatown dim sum parlors is hardly indicative of the best dim sum being served today in Asia; rather, I would argue that Dim Sum Go Go, which I've heard many people call inauthentic, is far more reminiscent of what is actually happening in Asia today. All over Asia, the new important restaurant ventures are looking West -- the foie gras flows like water into the palm.

Same here. Not that I mind. It so happens that the cheaper items tend to fall properly at the beginning of the progression of the meat parade. You work your way up from poultry to pork to beef, with various frolics and detours in between.

Pan, I think your use of the term "original" highlights the failure of the authenticity contingent to recognize the full significance of the evolving nature of cuisine. The tomatoes-in-Italy example, though tired and already trotted out plenty, is to me fundamental to any such discussion. I simply find it absurd to speak of "authentic Italian pizza" as requiring "San Marzano tomatoes." Likewise, Malaysian food as served in Malaysian restaurants in Malaysia today is at one point on a historical continuum that dates back to the days before capsicum peppers came to Asia from the New World. So while I think it is possible, and even desirable, to make comparisons based on time, place, and ingredients, and to define the nexus at which we find a given dining experience, I think that calling Malaysian food in New York "inauthentic," if I am taking your meaning correctly, takes us back to the same old problem I've been addressing here all along. Now, if the Malaysian food you're having in New York is bad, that's something worth decrying. But if it's good, who cares whether or not it accurately imitates what is served a million miles away in an entirely different context? Indeed, my guess is that much of the bad Southeast Asian food in New York would be improved by less attempted mimicry and more of an embrace of local products, adaptation, and experimentation. I certainly enjoy going into immigrant communities -- and after all what culinarily relevant community in America isn't an imigrant or imported one? -- and experiencing the cuisines they've brought to America with them. But my enjoyment is not based on a belief that by visiting Chinatown I am taking a vacation in China. To me, Chinatown is a wonderful, rich, valid world and culture unto itself, rooted in China but now part of America. Whether the food I'm eating at a given restaurant is something I could find in China matters very little to me from an enjoyment standpoint; at most that knowledge would serve to satisfy and inform my intellectual curiousity, but it would not affect my sensory experience of the meal. Now, I've never been to China. At least I don't think I have (the last time I said I hadn't been someplace my wife reminded me that we had once spent 5 weeks there). I can see how someone who has spent time in China, as you have I think spent time in Malaysia, would find imitative cuisine attractive from a nostalgia standpoint. But as I said before, if life works out such that the only way I can truly experience Malaysian cuisine as served at Malaysian restaurants in Malaysia is to get on a plane and go to Malaysia, I'll be fine. I'll hope to go there someday.

There's a fine line between being sensitive to the needs of your customers and pandering to the lowest common denominator. It's an interesting subject indeed. If I don't tackle it, perhaps someone else will.

All these places are noisy. They're supposed to be like big parties. The concept can't work without a certain critical mass. Plataforma, at this point, is really the only game in town. It is on 49th Street, by the way, over West of Eighth Avenue on a relatively sleepy block by Midtown standards. I wouldn't quite call it a Times Square restaurant. More like the Western edge of the Theater District.