Fat Guy

After my second and third drinks of the day, which rapidly followed one another, I did indeed fall asleep for a couple of hours. I made the drink with some Appleton 12-year rum. Interestingly, I liked the rum very much when I sipped it straight, but found the overall drink to be sweet and one-dimensional, not to mention an ugly color, in the end. No amount of tinkering with the ratios could save it. I then tried it with some Polish potato vodka -- something I intuited without seeing the suggestion here! This, for me, worked the best. It was like an improved, more complex version of the vodka gimlet, which is my wife's favorite drink. I could easily imagine making a pitcher of this stuff, serving it to guests, and not getting laughed at. I'm going to make the drink again later tonight, and will use a measurer not for the purposes of creating the drink but, rather, so I can report my exact proportions to you all.

What does the failure to mention Kunz have to do with eating at the restaurant? What does pointing out the sycophantic, obsequious tone of the review have to do with eating at the restaurant? To review a restaurant or make substantive comments about the quality of the food served there, you need to go to the restaurant. To critique a piece of writing, you need to read that piece of writing and evaluate it on its own terms and in its media context. We're engaging in media criticism here.

Okay, I'm going to rest up and try the same with rum later. I definitely like rum. Should I be using clear rum or dark rum?

Okay, here's what I did and here are my observations: - I tasted both types of gin plain and warm. I very much did not enjoy the regular gin; what is it I'm supposed to like about this stuff? The Sapphire was less offensive because it had less flavor but it still tasted like medicine to me. Anyway, nobody said I had to like it, just that I had to taste it, so I made my mental notes, used the Sapphire, and moved on. - I tasted a squeeze of lime juice. Wow -- that's tart as all heck. But not bad. - Rinsed and tasted Rose's. Yuck! I've had this stuff mixed into drinks and it seems to work, but tasted straight it tasted like a nasty sweet fake-lime syrup. - Added 6 ice cubes to a 14-oz glass. - Poured in some gin -- I have no idea how much; I sort of stopped when it started to climb up the edges of the glass beyond the first layer of ice cubes. - Added about a lime's worth of lime juice and a couple of glugs or Rose's. - Stirred and added a couple of glugs of club soda. - Stirred. Skipped adding the lime wedge because I'm all alone here right now. - Tasted. As I had hoped, the ingredients magically and dramatically improved one another when combined into a cocktail. The fresh lime and Rose's lime complemented each other very nicely and combined into something that tasted like real lime but sweet. The club soda added a nice fizz. But ultimately I think I just don't like gin. I had a few sips but just couldn't convince myself to enjoy the flavor of it. I'm also concerned that my cocktail fundamentals are so lacking that the Zen approach isn't appropriate for me. I think I'm more of a positivistic, measure-it-carefully and establish-a-baseline type. I didn't take a photo because it just looked like a glass of slightly greenish-gold water.

I'm on it. Back in a few.

Regular gin or sapphire gin?

Dude, I don't even know what bitters are. Which doesn't mean I don't have them. What does the bottle say or look like?

Also, looking through the cabinet, have Martini & Rossi extra dry vermouth and about 5 different species of brandy. Also Limoncello, a couple of types of Toroni syrups (pomegranate, peach), and something called Amarula. I have Champagne as well but would rather not open a bottle for these purposes.

I have limes, oranges, grapefruits, grapes, and pears in stock. No lemons in da house at this time.

As luck would have it, I underwent some dentistry yesterday and am definitely going to be having a couple of cocktails this afternoon. Any suggestions? I've got tonic and club soda (in individual glass bottles), Rose's lime, Grenadine, plenty of ice, several brands of vodka, Bombay Sapphire gin and regular Bombay gin, representatives of each of the major species of whiskey, several rums from crap to Appleton 12-year, Cointreau, Drambuie, Kalhua, Amaretto, Ouzo, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff.

One of us will post at greater length about Sandor's at some point in the future, but I also wanted to add three things: 1 - If anybody is going to eat at Fish Out of Water, check in with me because I've totally gamed the menu there and can help you put in the best possible order. I spent an afternoon in the kitchen there and ate there twice on our most recent trip (so I've now been to this place something like 5 times total). 2 - eGullet member "sput," it turns out, owns a really, really nice new gourmet market in Seagrove Beach called Larder. They've got dry-aged beef, salume like you'd find at the better urban gourmet markets, a well-chosen selection of international cheeses, and all sorts of products of that nature. 3 - The opening of the Publix supermarket on 395 (right across from the 395 back-entrance to the Watercolor property) has really changed the rules of the game insofar as local food (and wine) purveyors are concerned. Now that you don't have to drive 70 miles round trip from Seagrove/Seaside/Watercolor to shop for groceries in Destin, there's no need to buy things like cereal and toilet paper at the smaller local markets. So places like the Watercolor Market have gone way upscale in an attempt to capture the niche above what Publix inhabits. The Watercolor Market wine selection, for example, has gone in the small-production/boutique direction and is much-improved from what I saw in previous years. And the food products available there are much more uniformly high-end than before.

Although Akatonbo is most readily identified with sushi, the sushi itself (specifically the maki, which I think is all the sushi on offer) is the least successful item the chef there produces. I'm not sure if it's his own issue or if he's using a formula that has been proven to work on the local population, but it is as you say over-vinegared not to mention over-sized and over-stuffed. The sushi at Fish Out of Water, in the Watercolor Inn, is much more accurate by international sushi standards. What is actually quite good at Akatonbo, though, is the non-sushi Japanese food. In particular, you can get a multi-course kaiseki meal served to you right at the little wooden tables out front of the Airstream trailer, overlooking Seaside's town square and just footsteps from the Gulf. It's among the handful of coolest culinary experiences you can have. Momo and I enjoyed ourselves thoroughly back in '02.

George Barnes, the chef/owner of Smiling Fish Cafe, is actually the first person I ever met in Northwest Florida. We pulled into the parking lot adjacent to Sandor's near the intersection of 395 and 30-A in the middle of the night. George was hanging out in the lot with a friend, also named George, and already seemed to know we were coming to town (yes, it's a very small town). I crossed paths with George several times on that visit and subsequent ones. I made two attempts to visit and interview him at his restaurant -- I wanted to include him in a couple of the articles I've written about 30-A -- but he was always off duck-hunting or fishing. When we were in town for Ellen's keynote speech at Mountainfiln On Tour, we got invited to a party at the incredible, amazing home of a couple named Joan and Jerry, and there was George in the kitchen preparing all the food. It was excellent, though George almost bit my head off when I told him I prefer bigger chunks of sausage in my jambalaya -- "That's just what a Yankee would say about jambalaya!!!" Finally, on our most recent visit to the area (two weeks ago), we decided to go to lunch at some place down 30-A past Santa Rosa Beach but we said, what the heck, we'll stop by Smiling Fish on the way and on the off chance George is there we'll hang out and maybe have lunch. Lo and behold, George was in the house, so we hung out and indeed had lunch. It was terrific. George can cook, and his product is first-rate. We had a crawfish gumbo to start, with crawfish that George apparently brings in from Louisiana (it's only a few hours' drive), followed by a spinach salad with shredded duck (probably the best spinach salad I've ever had, not that this is something I usually order), followed by panko-crusted trigger fish that some of George's friends had caught the day before. Simple but sophisticated food prepared by a knowledgeable chef. Smiling Fish is one of those places where the range of the menu is pretty broad, from burgers and fried-fish sandwiches to stuff more along the lines of what we ate. Definitely worth exploring. (Mayhaw Man: Who's Bruce Butcher?)

Okay, I'm going to do this. This can't be any more difficult than long division. I'm going to taste carefully, I'm going to find a bartender to observe, and I'm going to get some better glasses. Then again I never actually learned to do long division well. Can we go back to the part about the glasses? I'm in New York City. Presumably, the right glasses should be easy to come by. Where do I go and exactly what do I buy?

LXT, yours is a fitting tribute to Mix, and I'm afraid it's the last of its sort we'll ever read: I've just learned that Doug Psaltis left the restaurant at the end of last night's service, never to return. I'm not fully up to speed on the nature of the management conflict that led to this outcome, but it appears that Mix is to go in the Chodorow direction rather than the Ducasse direction from now on. As I learn more, I'll report back.

Three stars for Hearth makes more sense than three-star chicken wings, but two stars is probably the most appropriate rating for Hearth. Hearth is a great two-star restaurant. If you look at ADNY, Le Bernardin, Per Se, et al., as the restaurants operating at a four-star level, and you look at Craft and Gramercy Tavern as three-star restaurants, it doesn't make any sense to give three stars to Hearth. The restaurant simply lacks the luxury appointments, ingredients budget, and quantity of service to propel it into that category. Instead, you get excellent cooking at an extremely reasonable price point in a neighborhood-restaurant setting. That's what being a great two-star restaurant is all about. If, at the conceptual stage, Hearth wanted to be a three-star restaurant it would have been engineered according to a different plan. I'm sure there was always the secret hope that a critic might like Marco's cooking so much that Hearth could get three stars, but I'm equally convinced that Hearth was built from the ground up to be a great two-star restaurant.

balmagowry, if the starter yogurt was lying lumpen at the bottom then surely you could have combined it more thoroughly with the milk. I'm also wondering about the nature of your starter yogurt: was it fresh from the store or was it from old yogurt that had been sitting around awhile? The reason I wanted to use a machine for this process was to avoid any issues related to inaccurate temperature control. Everything I've read indicates that if you depart much from the 110-degree (F) mark you risk slow or no culture-action. Maybe your environment was just not warm enough.

I've just transfered my second batch of yogurt from the machine to the refrigerator. The first one was very successful, but in tasting it side-by-side against Stonyfield I felt the professionally made yogurt was thicker and more sour. So I've gone 2 hours longer this time, hoping to create a little more body and sourness in my yogurt. The design of these old-style machines is pretty silly, though. The jars, each 1/5 of a quart in capacity, are too small to hold a reasonable portion of yogurt. And you can't make yogurt again until the jars are available. So you really need two sets of jars (which, thanks to Suzanne, I almost have), and even then there are too many pieces of glass and plastic to deal with -- why didn't they just make these machines with a single 1-quart container? Or, even better, with a heating element that, Torakris-style, can just be wrapped around any container or jar? I assume Torakris's sleeve thingy would fit nicely around a 1-quart mason jar, which would seem the ideal vessel.

I think Mix should be a three-star, no question. I'm sure that's the sentiment of quite a few well-dined eGulleters who've had great meals there. But I don't want to diverge onto a Mix tangent -- we've got a few Mix threads we can use for that.

Guys, you've got to help me out here: I completely and utterly suck at mixing drinks. I didn't grow up in a cocktail-oriented household, and I rarely drink them myself. But I maintain a reasonably inclusive liquor cabinet and if a friend comes over and asks for a mixed drink I make it. And it's always bad. In response to another question you listed that basic drinks someone should know how to make. I need something much more basic than that: I need to know how to make drinks that my guests won't laugh at. I should add: once you've formulated the answer you'd give to a normal person, please take a moment to realize that I'm lazy, uncoordinated, forgetful, and a poor listener.

Two stars for Mix (from Grimes, not Hesser).

Or she could have just written a fair, independent, objective review.

The review was so sycophantic I shifted into skimming mode rather quickly (Cuozzo's review in today's Post strikes me as substantially more credible), but I didn't notice a single mention of Kunz. What's up with that? And three stars for upscale street food? It's going to take the next critic years to undo the mess Hesser is creating.

So far so good: the stuff I just took out of the machine and put into the refrigerator looks and smells like yogurt. Official tasting tomorrow morning.

Kim, when I saw that crew I was like, what did they send a bunch of actors to play clam farmers today?