Fat Guy

It's not just writing; it's everything. In most any area of human endeavor there will only be a small percentage of practitioners who do something very well. cookingwithamy, while I emphatically agree with the general proposition you've put forward, I can't see the discussion going anywhere on that basis. What exactly is it that's bothering you about food writing in general? And perhaps you'd like to give some examples. I'd also like to point out that there is a lot more good food writing out there than most people are aware of. At some point I can try to assemble a list of lesser-known sources of good food writing. More importantly, what can be done to improve the quality of food writing? I think open and forthright criticism and/or praise, like we give here on eGullet all the time, can make a difference. So by all means, if you read something and you think it's great, celebrate it here. And if you have a problem with something you read -- its content or its quality -- make your case here as well.

I bet I could eat about a thousand of those deviled quail eggs. I'd eat them like M&Ms.

Great stuff, Rachel. It's very gratifying to see people experimenting and posting their photos. Keep 'em coming. This is the sort of thing that makes the eGCI so special.

Let us pray that Thomas doesn't receive the press ADNY received upon opening. There's no need to pray. In addition to a number of factors not being present with Keller that were present with Ducasse, we're already at a point on the timeline where we can conclude it won't happen. Keller has been serving meals at Per Se for awhile now to "friends and family" and all the A- and B-list media have been there for parties and such. Although there may be some griping about the commercialization of Keller, etc., there's not a chance in hell that there will be a sustained, across-the-board media outburst against him. Which isn't to say he's handled his opening flawlessly -- someone really needs to write the book about what not to do during the pre-opening (Rule #1: Don't tell magazine writers with long lead times the wrong opening date; Rule #2: Don't name your restaurant Per Se) -- but he and his publicists have done a good enough job.

I wanted to mention -- after a dialog with slkinsey -- that it's possible to get a runny center and browned exterior if the pan is too hot or has been allowed to heat too long before the eggs are added. If the butter actually browns, so will the omelette. Likewise, if the pan is too hot, the bottom of the omelette will cook before the top has any time to come up to temperature. Interestingly, you can get similarly runny interiors if your pan is underheated: there's not enough thermal energy to penetrate the layer of eggs, and therefore only the bottom cooks. So it's really a question of finding the center of the bell curve of ideal heat, and also adding the eggs just before the butter browns so as to knock the pan's temperature back a bit.

Two points: 1 - There's only one thing that matters when determining whether or not Keller has maintained excellence after expanding: the dining experience at the actual restaurants. The rest is politics. However, I'm sure we can expect the politics to dominate the discussions anyway. 2 - Speculation is fun and interesting, but I hope everybody will adopt a wait-and-see attitude. I can't imagine anybody credibly passing judgment on Keller until Per Se opens and has a good long time to settle in, and French Laundry reopens and also gets a little breathing room. And what, really, is the range of possible outcomes? It seems to me that rational speculation is confined to a pretty limited set of permutations ranging from two-excellent-restaurants to two-super-excellent-restaurants. I mean, knowing that Keller is incapable of opening anything less than an excellent restaurant doesn't involve any speculation at all -- it's just the nature of the universe. Of course I feel this way about Ducasse as well (even more so than about Keller, because Ducasse has been doing for years what Keller is about to do), and am constantly amazed by how many people don't.

I thought I did recommend a large pot and a lot of water in the course materials, but if you find that it's not in there I'll certainly make an addition.

That actually looks like a great omelette, but if you're looking to get a more even cook then the most reliable way to do it is by using a thinner sheet of eggs (a larger pan for the same amount of egg; or less egg in the same pan). Also relevant would be the temperature of the eggs when you put them in the pan. It certainly doesn't look overfilled, and your technique is terrific.

It's meant to really start cooking the eggs (coagulating the whites). A little bit of opaque white here and there is okay.

Russ, I don't think a critic should "represent" anybody. A critic should represent excellence. The recommendation for restaurant critics to remove themselves from the community they cover is obviously well intentioned, but I have two main problems with it: 1) Although you say you think art, music, book, et al. critics should also follow those guidelines, those are not the generally accepted guidelines for such critics. As John W. explains, an extremely high percentage of literary critics are authors. That restaurant reviewers are widely held to a different standard says something about editorial attitudes towards restaurants: it is a statement that restaurants are generally corrupt and trying to take advantage. It's not a message I approve of. I also think it says something about restaurant reviewers: that they are incapable of resisting flattery, pressure, etc. Well, that's part of one's job as a critic. You either resist it and do your job, or you don't resist it and you suck. 2) The focus on separateness as a means of maintaining integrity is in my opinion a diversion. If a critic is so weak willed that he would give a better review to a friend's restaurant than to that of a stranger, then no amount of enforced separation is going to prevent a hundred other improper forces from affecting that critic's judgment: media coverage, criticism from peers, nasty letters from chefs, pressure from readers, pressure from editors, dietary preferences, past history at a restaurant, etc. A critic needs to remain independent from all these things, not just from the people in the industry. And a critic who can maintain independence can do it regardless of contact with chefs and restaurateurs.

Do you believe these rules should apply to all critics vis-a-vis their chosen disciplines: art, music, books, etc.?

Extra: You should do animation for South Park! Gus: You've exceeded the limits of my knowledge. Let's hope Carolyn Tillie or one of the pastry chefs on the site can chime in with an answer for you.

Most people in the restaurant industry who bother to open serious restaurants just don't behave that way, Katherine. Indeed, most good restaurants serve better food than their customers demand. But no, of course it's not possible to detect the undetectable. For the most part, though, restaurants give themselves away in more ways than one and you can make assumptions based on that behavior: the restaurant that par-cooks food for regular customers but cooks to order for VIPs is also likely to tip its hand by serving disparate sized portions, by assigning a lot more service staff to the VIP table, etc. Once you get the sense that you're witnessing a scam like that, you know what you're dealing with. I must emphasize, however, that behavior like this on the part of a restaurant -- something extreme like intentionally serving total crap to one customer but really good stuff to another -- is a once in a hundred meals occurrence. It is therefore not in my opinion valid to base all restaurant reviewing decisions and attitudes on the reprehensible behavior of a few bad apples in the industry. As I said before, anonymity can be a useful tool in addressing the predatory practices of the slimiest bottom feeders of the restaurant world, but the relentless advancement of the cloak-and-dagger anonymity agenda is a disservice to everyone because it paints the whole industry with that negative brush.

Pan, having spent nearly all the money I've ever earned on dining out, I am acutely aware of the needs of the consumer, because I am a consumer. I get just as pissed off as anyone when I pay $250 for a mediocre meal for two people -- and I've paid $250 for more mediocre meals than any sane person should. But you know what? It's not a critic's job to be a consumer or a consumerist -- that's the job of the Zagat surveys. It's a critic's job to be a critic.

Pan, I can't explain why you've had those bad meals except to say it happens even though it shouldn't. But it happens to everybody at least once in awhile. If you dine out enough you will get crappy meals even at the best restaurants in the world, and even as a VIP customer's guest, and even as a recognized critic (and I don't mean a B-team critic like me -- like Russ I've dined out with several of the major critics and had bad meals at good restaurants anyway). But to try to extrapolate from your experiences at fine-dining restaurants to create a theory of how special treatment affects critics is what is called in logic, I think, a hasty generalization. My data, which are statistically somewhat robust, support a different conclusion: I've dined out quite a lot as Mr. Nobody and quite a lot as a professional restaurant reviewer and food journalist -- sometimes recognized, sometimes not, sometimes maybe-I-don't-know -- and my experience does not confirm the hypothesis that top restaurants don't on the whole perform well for Mr. and Mrs. Nobody, nor do my experiences confirm the theory that a critic can be easily hoodwinked by attempts at special treatment.

Yes, Katherine, that's correct. Do you see that as a terribly difficult intellectual challenge for a critic: Here are five mushrooms on my plate. There are four mushrooms on the plate of a customer across the room. It doesn't take a particularly keen mind to imagine the experience of the man with four mushrooms instead of five -- even I can do it. Likewise, what most kitchens think is "perfect" is simply defined as no mistakes in cooking: the meat is done to order, etc. It doesn't alter the fundamental conception of a dish. That perfect performance may be able to eliminate inconsistency in production, but it doesn't change what the restaurant is serving -- and that's what matters from the standpoint of the critic.

It's just too right: Elk Cove 2001 Syrah Del Rio Vineyard

Fifi, it's not all nonsense. It is, however, a big red herring. Anonymity is the number one issue on people's minds when they think about restaurant reviewing, a state of affairs that critics as a whole relentlessly encourage and reinforce even though they mostly don't dine anonymously. Yet anonymity is really just one tool in a large toolkit that a reviewer may want to use on occasion. Far more important are judgment, experience, writing ability, and of course integrity and independence. Were we to test the anonymity hypothesis, we might look at a few things beyond the impressionistic claims that are typically made in such discussions: 1) Do critics who attempt to dine anonymously and those who don't tend to reach different sets of conclusions? 2) Do critics who attempt to dine anonymously tend to give better reviews to restaurants where they're recognized? I think the answer to both questions is an emphatic no. Having dined at quite a few restaurants unrecognized, recognized, and possibly recognized but they pretended not to, I can say that it's probably the case that some restaurants can do some things to trick you. But in the overwhelming majority of situations, the following rules tend to hold true: 1) The sauces are made, the ingredients are purchased, the cooks are trained, the menu is printed . . . there is only so far most kitchens can stray from that course; 2) When they do identify you, you can usually tell and therefore you can compensate for any special treatment by checking out other people's plates, etc.; and 3) In the grand scheme of things if you visit a restaurant a few times you're going to see its true nature pretty clearly no matter how much they throw in your path in terms of smoke and mirrors. There are very few restaurants out there these days where the whole place is organized around a radical hierarchy of special treatment. Certainly there are a few -- in New York, Le Cirque 2000 comes to mind. There, they really do have a whole larder full of ingredients just for the FOS tables. So in those exceptional cases you can probably produce disparate results by going anonymously and going as a recognized critic. Whether there's much value to that exercise, I suppose, depends on one's perspective.

Cool. Many thanks. Now all we need are the eggs and some vectors indicated!

The inside shouldn't really be runny; it should just be a little wet. The way you want to go to get the right effect is to make sure the ratio of egg to pan is such that you're pouring a rather thin layer, and to make sure the pan is good and hot. If you have too much egg, or the pan isn't hot enough, you'll never cook through the eggs from the bottom before you overcook the bottom. If you have the ratio and the pan right, and you wait until you see those bubbles before you start the shaking-and-rolling process, your omelette will be just right by the time you plate it. And no, you shouldn't leave it to finish after it's rolled. That will just overcook the outside. It's a seamless process from pan to mouth once you start shaking.

Irwin: On the egg man point: You have no idea how prophetic your post is. We will have a very special treat along those lines next week. Rest assured, some of us do appreciate egg men and all they do. Stay tuned. On the use of the broiler in omelette making: This is an excellent trick, one that I use especially when serving guests, but it only works if you have the broiler that most home cooks don't. If you don't have at least around a 15k BTU/hr infrared pro-style broiler, you won't hit the eggs with the blast of energy they need to really puff up that way quickly while still remaining moist. I've tried it at other people's houses with regular gas and electric broilers and it just doesn't work.

You are essentially rolling the omelette. Not folding it in half. And not flipping it over. You are basically working with a circular sheet of eggs that is somewhat wet on top yet coherent on the bottom. At the end of the process, you want a "packet" of eggs that is about 1/4 as wide (the short dimension measured across the top) as the diameter of that sheet of eggs. The way you make that happen is you do a push-and-jerk motion. You tile the pan a bit away from you, then push the pan away from you and quickly jerk it back as you lower the handle to get the pan more level. The first jerk or two wil cause a small part of the far end of the sheet to fold up and back over the sheet. As you do this several times, the whole thing will roll-fold in this manner, and when you remove the omelette from the pan onto the serving plate you also get a chance to do some final rolling-shaping in that process. Does this make any sense at all?

As luck would have it, there is an eGCI photography course in the works with a focus (sorry) on how to take great food photos with a point-and-shoot digital camera. It probably won't run for a few months, though. And those eggs look terrific -- some real successes in there.

Meet me after class!

Rachel, those are exceptionally attractive poached eggs. You get an A+ and extra credit.