Fat Guy

That's a slightly more complex and somewhat different question -- internal corporate memoranda are often considered fair game in news coverage -- that we could discuss on another thread. Although, I know so little about how Gawker works (presumably someone at the times feeds Gawker the memoranda) that I probably wouldn't have much to say. I'd like to know more, though.

Dude. You're not going to make a gin drinker out of me because gin tastes like shit. But you can make me that drink with vodka anytime.

Aside from the fact that Gawker has almost definitely violated the copyright laws by reproducing those photos (one assumes without permission from PBS and HarperCollins), I really don't see how that kind of attempted sabotage is called for. The Times has its system. If you think it's stupid, make the argument -- we've done that here. But don't resort to virtual guerrilla warfare.

Nice article from Mamster in The Daily Gullet on Bread Baking. And I agree with his improvement on my comments.

Dude, and you wonder why all your search warrants are getting rejected? You gotta have the indicia of something!

This won't be the first time people have said of me "We've created a monster!"

There does not appear to be a professional standard for this, so I have tried to reason through what the preferred method might be. I have been playing the shaker thingy, just with ice and water, and I have developed some theories about the positioning of the parts: - Given that the idea is to form a seal by contraction of the metal part, logic dictates that one should not build the drink in the metal part. The metal part should be ambient temperature and the ice and ingredients should be in the glass. When the two are combined, the seal should form instantly as the temperature of the metal is driven down. - For a similar reason, when beginning the shake, it would seem to make sense to start with the glass standing up, place the metal part over it, and then quickly invert the whole package and then right it back up while applying pressure. Bang! You have a seal. - In addition, because the glass is smaller than the metal part, there is no risk of overflow if you build the drink in the glass. - At least insofar as the spring strainer I have is concerned, it fits much more nicely into the glass part. The glass part is also much more pleasant to hold -- the metal gets uncomfortably cold. So I am supporting the pour-from-glass theory.

Haha. But I've never written a search warrant -- not that kind of lawyer. I'm just generally a geek.

The term sourdough simply means "a leaven consisting of dough in which fermentation is active." (Merriam-Webster.) In other words, sourdough bread is bread that is risen by yeast cultures that are active in dough, as opposed to crapola industrial yeasts that are added as a powder or goo. Sourdough bread does not inherently taste sour. Some of it does -- as in "San Francisco sourdough," which is a specific style of sourdough that does have a sour taste -- and some of it nobody would describe as the slightest bit sour. You can even make a sourdough baguette. I have never had bread made with commercial yeast that is as good as good sourdough bread. Never, not once. The reason is simple: in breadmaking, as in many types of cooking, it takes time for excellent flavor and texture to develop. If you make bread in just a few hours with commercial yeast, it will not have the flavor of bread that has risen long and slow with sourdough. Bring on the taste tests, and prepare to be offended again and again and again.

When a chef-restaurateur is a control freak in the kitchen and with his staff, it benefits the customer. When he's a control freak with his customers, it's just annoying.

I think it depends on the reviewer, and on the review. At the apex of Patricia Wells's reviewing career, she was a giant. I think every smart consumer should have cared greatly about her restaurant opinions. I know I planned three trips to France and gave her opinions more deference than those of any other source. Most current reviewers do not, I think, deserve that kind of caring and deference. But once in awhile a review speaks to me, even if it is written by someone I don't generally listen to. So it's possible to make me care about a specific review, even if I don't care about the reviewer. In other words, the better the reviewer, and the better the review, the more the reader should care about it.

So is there no Japanese equivalent of the phrases "sushi bar" and "let's go out for sushi"? Because in both of those uses, the term has got to include more than just the rice-based items.

Here's some interesting info from Mott's: http://www.motts.com/pages/main.cfm?tid=2&...aid=147&pid=169 In particular, I bet it does have something to do with the lime variety, and also with this cryptic statement about the preservation process: I agree, now that I've just tasted a few drops, there's no actual aromatic in there -- nothing like juniper or mint or whatever. Still the mention of aromatics gave me an idea for an iteration of my drink-in-progress that would have a little mint in it. I'll report back next time I mix cocktails. I'm also wondering what a touch of rum would do to it, given that the original version of Rose's had rum in it as a preservative.

I think there's a basic problem with the definition of the word "sushi." Especially as it relates to the New York Times piece, what do they mean when they say sushi? The Merriam-Webster definition, which is probably correct insofar as how English-speakers with a certain degree of culinary knowledge most often use the word when they're trying to be precise, is "cold rice dressed with vinegar, formed into any of various shapes, and garnished especially with bits of raw fish or shellfish." But there's a more casual usage of the word, which would for example include sashimi as part of the definition of sushi. And there's an implication, also in common usage, that there's sushi and there's sushi -- in other words that a cucumber roll is sushi but not sushi, because it doesn't contain fish, and that a California roll is sushi but not sushi, because it doesn't contain raw fish, and that sashimi tuna is sushi but not sushi, because it's a Japanese-derived raw fish dish but it doesn't contain any vinegared rice.

I don't like the taste of Rose's straight, but it provides something in the finished cocktail -- something at least partly desirable -- that doesn't seem to be replaceable by a substitution of fresh lime plus sugar. There must be some aromatics or whatever in Rose's that we could learn about. Hmm. That already gives me an idea.

I'd go farther, Mabelline: the joke is on France. While Americans have been busy learning about good bread, the French have been equally busy forgetting about it.

Not that I've been everywhere in the world, but of the places I've been it's not even close: the best bread is in Northern California. They have a bread culture out there that's truly remarkable. The sheer quantity and variety of good bread in that region makes it hard to eat anything else.

So, what's in Rose's Lime? I wonder if, by mixing fresh lime juice with sugar and whatever else is in Rose's, it would be possible to do better.

So why for all of bagel history have the bagels in New Jersey, and in the parts of New York that don't get serviced from the Croton reservoir system, been just as good as the ones in the city? I suspect the water explanation is really a statement of "there's some factor we can't identify that's screwing up our bagels, so we're going with water as our final guess."

If I ran a restaurant, or if I had to draw up a wish list, I wouldn't include this particular query as part of the training manual. But it doesn't bother me at all when it happens.

It certainly seems to me that all the defects in Amanda Hesser's writings, noted here and elsewhere, boil down to one thing: insecurity. And the combination of insecurity and power is rarely a pleasant one. Which is kind of sad, because she has no reason to be insecure: she's smart, an excellent writer, knowledgeable, healthy, young, pretty, thin, successful, prosperous, married . . . I'm not exactly sure what more she's going to need in order to bury this unfortunate bad-attitude bitchy-insecure streak of hers.

Sourdough is the pinnacle of bread baking. Any serious baker will tell you that breads made with commercial laboratory-grown yeast are inferior. And to disagree with Whiting's characterization just a bit, I don't see the baguette as halfway between Wonder Bread and sourdough. I see it as Wonder Bread's better-dressed, slightly more presentable sibling.

I'm with Whiting: what's so great about French baguettes? I think they suck. If I'm looking for basic white bread in New York, I have ton of better choices at anyplace that sells Eli's or Amy's bread, without even getting into the better artisanal bakeries. I have no use for baguettes and to me, saying baguettes in France are better than baguettes in New York is about as relevant and meaningful as saying McDonald's in the US is better than McDonald's in Europe. The only baguettes I like are the "l'ancien" sourdough variety, which are as good at Pain Quotidien in New York as they are at Pain Quotidien in Europe.

No, JB. They should leave a message saying they'll call back. Not doing so is a bizarre practice that doesn't square with common and common-sense business procedures. I get answering machine messages all the time from the best restaurants in New York regarding reservation confirmations. Before Caller ID, it was (and still is) common practice for busy people to screen their calls by waiting to hear who was speaking on the answering machine. It's very simple: if Per Se left messages, it would get many pickups during those messages, and in non-pickup situations it would let people know that the restaurant was trying to reach them and would be calling back.

A few points in response to your comments, oakapple, and by the way welcome to eGullet and thanks for a thoroughly enjoyable first half-dozen posts. - A critic should, on the one hand, be aware of what star status a restaurant reasonably aspires to -- this is fairly easy to read based on luxury indicia as well as style of service, prices, types of ingredients, etc. -- and should, on the other hand, not be overly concerned with unreasonable aspirations or with aspirations that clearly have not been realized. I think the reasoning process, even if it's not as automated as this, needs to go something like: I'm about to write a review of a restaurant that wants to be a three star restaurant; is that fundamentally a reasonable aspiration for this restaurant (in other words if all flaws were addressed would it be a three star restaurant, like Asiate) or will it simply never be a three star restaurant on any rational scale (because it's a trendy high-volume club-lounge tapas place like the Spice Market)? Using the reasonable aspiration as a benchmark, my review needs to be conceptualized in those terms. In other words, my review needs to communicate -- however subtly -- that this is, for example, a three-star-potential restaurant currently performing at a two-star level. That's very different from writing a review of a two-star-potential restaurant that's performing at a two-star level. The latter is a review of a place that's succeeding; the former is a review of a place that is failing or has not yet succeeded. - In terms of the economic damage a restaurant reviewer can do to restaurants (as well as to consumers' wallets), I think William Grimes said it best in his exit interview: you just can't be worry about that (I'm paraphrasing here), so you just do your job without allowing yourself to be paralyzed by worrying about the cooks and servers who are going to lose their jobs if a restaurant goes out of business. At the same time, these days there is very little to worry about. Asiate has not been particularly affected by the one-star review: it's still the hottest ticket in town (more so than Spice Market, as far as I can tell). The Times reviewer is today one of many voices, and in many cases not a particularly important one. It would be nice to see the new reviewer earn back some of that influence, not for its own sake but because it would be acknowledgment that high standards had been restored to the position. - What exactly do you think constituted the shakeup at Ducasse that led to the award of a fourth star? I think one has to begin with the fundamental realization that the three star review was wrong and that Ducasse knew it. So Ducasse, an intelligent businessman who realized that the American critics were too dumb to get his transplanted Michelin three-star approach, knew he was going to have to earn four stars by pandering. So he did, in the shallowest possible way he could get away with: he got rid of several of the luxury appointments at the restaurant. He reduced the restaurant's level of luxury in order to earn more stars. He pushed for less formal service. The one thing he didn't change was anything about the food, save for the standard evolution any kitchen goes through in its first year of business. In the end, he won William Grimes over with a PDR dinner -- I'm not sure there has ever been a restaurant review before or since that was so heavily influenced by a private party. In any event, a restaurant reviewer should never be in the position of making demands, and he should be very careful even about offering advice. It's not his job to be a restaurant consultant. - Our culture places a high value on success in business, but what happens on a restaurant's balance sheet can be far more complex than success or failure. Some restaurants are loss leaders for hotel operations or larger restaurant groups that want to have a flagship. Some restaurants have tremendous operating costs on account of unions. The terms of leases differ greatly, thus affecting the need for certain pricing structures. There is, undeniably, an element of fickleness and dumb luck that comes into play where buzz is concerned. Partners can get divorced. People can die. A reviewer needs to realize that the validity of his reviews is not related to which restaurants prosper and which restaurants fail. Although, when the most educated readers consistently vote against the critics with their wallets, something is wrong.