Fat Guy

I'm pretty impressed with this year's pitmaster lineup. It represents a distinct improvement, which isn't easy when the bar has already been set so high.

I recall some information to the effect that raw vegetables and fruits are generally riskier than cooked meat. So that particular judgment may not be crazy.

Willis Loughhead, who for years I've been calling the best chef you've never heard of, has materialized again. He has just started as executive chef at the Plaza hotel. That means he's responsible for the food at the Palm Court, as well as the rest of the hotel's food-service operations (not the Oak Room, which is operated by a vendor). Willis had us in as his guests for afternoon tea yesterday. He had given me the choice of lunch or tea, and I chose tea so we could bring our son, but I instantly regretted my decision because tea is mostly a pastry-chef thing (not that there's anything wrong with pastry chefs) and I wanted to see what Willis was doing with the actual restaurant menu. I shouldn't have worried, though. Willis sent us a selection of items from the regular menu as pre-tea courses. He sent out so much food that towards the end I detected that our server was afraid for our safety. I confess, when Willis told me he took the job at the Plaza I wasn't optimistic. I've been following Willis for years now, through a succession of unfortunate exits from what seemed like promising restaurant jobs. He opened the Bar Room at the Modern and left just a few days before it received a three-star review in the New York Times that, while never mentioning Willis, argued that the food in the Bar Room was better than the food in the Modern's fine-dining restaurant area. He next turned up at Country, which imploded soon after I had some very tasty food there. After that, he was at the ill-fated Table 8 at the Cooper Square Hotel which, while poorly reviewed, was quite good. So I figured, with the Plaza, okay, Willis took a hotel job because he wants to take it easy. More power to him. Not so. The Plaza turns out to be a serious operation, and Willis is doing some delicious food at the Palm Court. He also seems to be working 'round the clock to make the Plaza into the special destination that New York City deserves. And as a special bonus he has fought to keep the prices reasonable. We started out with a smoked sturgeon salad on a corn cake topped with American caviar. This first taste convinced me that it was okay to remain a Willis Loughhead fan: it has the look and feel of a classic, old-school, grand-hotel/luxury-liner dish but it has been reimagined by a chef with a modern sensibility. Also on the table, Willis's interpretation of oysters Rockefeller with Satur Farms spinach, artichoke puree, and Pernod. I'm not one for knuckling under to the nostalgia of old hotels, but even for me it was hard to shake the feeling that eating oysters Rockefeller -- especially such tasty ones -- in the Palm Court represented the pinnacle of my recent existence. The setting is definitive: there are the other nice hotels in New York City, and then there's the Plaza. The Palm Court has been restored to what must be better than it ever was: the lighting, glass-dome ceiling, furniture...all absolutely exquisite. And while I've heard that the Plaza hotel has a union waitstaff, with all the troubles that brings, our experience with the servers was that they were friendly, eager and helpful. The $18 price tag on the sturgeon salad is very user-friendly, as is $15 for the oysters Rockefeller. Next up, the mother of all seafood salads. This amazing creation contained Maine lobster, Laughing Bird shrimp, Berkshire bacon, avocado and blue cheese. It was as good as it looks, and huge. At $27 it's one of the most expensive menu items but that's hardly an unreasonable price for this item. Also on the table with it, first-rate burrata (cream-based mozzarella-like cheese) with roasted tomatoes and Marcona almonds. Willis is using, as he has in past positions, Fleisher's organic beef from upstate. For our last sampling from the lunch menu he sent out a roast-beef sandwich (with pickled vegetables, watercress and horseradish cream) and a chili burger (topped with short-rib chili and goat cheddar). Eating a chili burger in those surroundings is a little incongruous, but this was a chili burger worthy of the Palm Court. We were feeling alarmingly full at this point, but the avalanche of afternoon-tea trays was still to arrive. Our son simply couldn't believe what he was seeing. There are four tea assortments available. One of them, the chocolate tea, we didn't try (Willis showed mercy, otherwise I'd be posting this from the hospital). The three you see pictured here are the New Yorker (that's the one with the black-and-white cookie on the top tier), the Eloise, and the Classic. I won't go into every detail of every item. Suffice it to say the tea assortments are collections of wonderful little items, the best I think being the truffled quail-egg salad. Or maybe the scones with clotted cream, lemon curd and berry jam. Or maybe... I'm no architectural photographer but I did try to take a photo of the restored ceiling. This should at least give an idea of things. I had some follow-up email correspondence with Willis last night and he came across as incredibly enthusiastic about his new position. I don't pretend to know what will happen with the Plaza as a business proposition, but Willis is certainly doing his part to restore the place to its former glory and even surpass it. I only have two negative observations: First, the distance one needs to travel from the Palm Court to the restrooms is insane. You can't believe how far it is. No matter how much I prepare you for the journey, you're going to come back here and post "I can't believe how far it is to those bathrooms." I think they're on about Seventh Avenue. Second, if Willis pulls this off, I won't be able to keep calling him the best chef you've never heard of. This is a high-profile position and if it works out he'll be a celebrity chef in no time and will stop returning my calls. I believe the official Palm Court opening is this weekend. I won't give the address of the Plaza because if you have to ask...

I had a DCS 30" range for about a decade and the infrared broiler performed admirably, if a bit quirkily. The DCS I knew doesn't really exist any more, so I have no idea how current-generation DCS units perform. The older ones are available on the used market, though. I sole mine on Craigslist for $750 and I think the purchaser is lucky to have it. That being said, there is no serious comparison between an oven broiler and a restaurant salamander or upright broiler. It's like bicycle versus car. The BlueStar unit is the only actual salamander I know of for the home market. Although, I'm not sure what codes prevent someone from just buying a used restaurant salamander for a few hundred dollars and using it at home. That's something that needs to be researched. Depending on what one wishes to accomplish with a broiler, there may be various substitutes. For example, the blow torch works well for a lot of things.

Just got the list of pitmasters for this year: • Ken Bosley Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn, Owensboro, KY • Ken Callaghan Blue Smoke, New York, NY • Pete Daversa Hill Country, New York, NY • Joe Duncan Baker’s Ribs, Dallas, TX • Big Lou Elrose Wildwood Barbeque, New York, NY • Jimmy Hagood BlackJack BBQ, Charleston, SC • Tommy Houston Checkered Pig, Martinsville, VA • Chris Lilly Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, Decatur, AL • Patrick Martin Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint, Nashville, TN • Mike Mills 17th Street Bar & Grill / Memphis Championship Barbecue / Murphysboro, Illinois / Las Vegas, NV • Ed Mitchell The Pit, Raleigh, NC • Myron Mixon Jack’s Old South, Unadilla, GA • Garry Roark Ubon’s Barbecue of Yazoo, Yazoo City, MS • Drew Robinson Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q • Michael Rodriguez The Salt Lick BBQ, Driftwood, TX • Skip Steele Pappy’s Smokehouse, St. Louis, MO • John Stage Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, New York, NY • John Wheeler Rack & Soul, New York, NY

That's a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation, though. If Ma Peche isn't enough like the downtown Momos, people will complain. If it's too much like the downtown Momos -- which to me seems like a triumph -- people will complain. I think the restaurant space is nicer than folks are acknowledging. It's certainly nicer than the downtown spaces. It's a real restaurant. They've got the big wooden X-shaped communal table, which I haven't seen before (not that I'm the authority on decor), and they've exposed the concrete beams (as well as poured concrete floors) so I think it has a Momofuku look even if it isn't the world's most unique, dramatic, gorgeous restaurant space. But ultimately the Momofuku aesthetic isn't decor-centric. It's food-centric.

The space seems in line with most high-end hotel spaces. The mezzanine is a generic lobby-type area, and the restaurant itself (which was formerly another restaurant, Town) has soaring ceilings and is hardly the first hotel-restaurant space in New York City to have no windows.

He wasn't committing to a date but thought within a couple of weeks. There's nothing physically that remains to be done, but they still need to get to a certain level of confidence before throwing open the doors at nighttime.

I had an extraordinarily positive experience on the mezzanine the other night. I had been hoping to go to the actual restaurant, but it's only open for lunch at present. The mezzanine/bar menu is shorter than the dining-room menu but has plenty of choices for a first (and second, and third) visit. While there are perhaps some differences between the service approaches in Midtown and Downtown, I thought Ma Peche was unmistakeably a Momofuku establishment. Cory Lane was on the floor, and I recognized a couple of other faces. Sam Gelman, who was behind the counter at all my best visits to Momofuku Ko, is the chef de cuisine. Tien Ho, who was instrumental in defining Ssam Bar's cuisine, is executive chef. The service attitude is a little less Downtown than at the Downtown places, but that worked fine for me. Our server was friendly, knowledgeable and efficient. The food I tried was very much Momofuku food. It's hard to define the Momofuku style exactly, because it's almost an anti-style, but the flavors were assertive, there was good use of acid, salt right up to the maximum legal limit, maximum umami, and absolutely first-rate products. There's a nominally Vietnamese theme to the menu, or at least a lot of Vietnamese vocabulary on it, but based on what we tried it didn't really change the feel of the cuisine, which transcends any particular regional style. We started with a selection of Hood Canal, East Dennis and St. Simone oysters. The Thai basil mignonette had Momofuku written all over it, but the oysters themselves were so good it was a shame to use any sauce. Also poached shrimp with kaffir ketchup, king crab with calamansi mayo, and squid salad with scallions and peanuts. The shrimp and crab (and oysters), being raw-bar items, were mostly noteworthy for being great product, but their sauces were all terrific. The squid salad was a real dish, and the first dish that gave me a full-on Momofuku flashback. It's just described as "Squid salad, scallions, peanuts" but of course has about million other ingredients -- citrus, herbs, something piquant -- giving it that four-star-food-on-stools taste. But we were on comfortable couches in a nice hotel lounge. We also had "fluke, pineapple, herbs," which was kind of lost on me especially once I'd had a few bites of the squid salad. The second wave of food consisted of "mussels, crab paste, beer," the wild Burgundy snails with pork sausage, garlic and tarragon -- let me just pause to say, yes, both of those dishes were as crazy-Momofuku-good as they sound -- the fried cauliflower with curry, mint and fish sauce, and the 12-ounce "Juliet" steak with rice fries. These last two dishes didn't live up to the rest of the meal. The fried cauliflower at Ssam Bar is one of the best vegetable dishes I've had anywhere, ever. The Ma Peche permutation is a big step down -- it simply lacks the revelation quality of its ancestors. And whatever a Juliet steak is, it's not going to make my top-100 favorite cuts of beef list. Although, the rice fries are a neat trick and quite delicious. The cocktail menu wasn't disposable so I didn't grab one. My group went through a half dozen cocktails and I thought they were up to boutique-cocktailian-bar standards: Kold-Draft (probably) ice cubes, a lot of labor involved in each drink, excellent products being used. The Dark and Stormy, the only cocktail we tried where I had a good basis for comparison to other versions, was particularly well-made. We spent just under $200. In addition, a few of the above-mentioned dishes were sent out gratis. After we ate, Sam Gelman showed us around the kitchen and main dining room. The wood tables, poured-concrete floors and exposed-concrete columns evoke the Downtown establishments. They're doing no-reservations, which is a risky move in Midtown but maybe they'll be able to pull it off. The kitchen facility is impressive: they should be able to accomplish a lot there. I was bummed that Milk Bar was closed when we left. I think they plan to open it later into the night once dinner service starts in the dining room.

Due to a lot of packing and moving around, I didn't get down to business with my new Vita-Mix until today. Wow, the thing can really blend.

Is it mathematically accurate to say that Mexican food is under-represented in Vancouver? There's not a large Mexican population in Vancouver, is there? Or does under-represented just mean "We wish we had more of this kind of restaurant"? If you look at it as a question of representation per population, my guess is that you get Russian as one of the most under-represented cuisines.

I've heard of this happening a few different ways. There are definitely some chefs who will ask you to cook an omelet or a roast chicken. There are others who couldn't care less about how you handle those basic technique tests and will instead ask you to cook a meal from certain ingredients, or follow recipes from their in-house binders, or work backup at a station on the line for a shift. In the latter cases there's not a lot you can do to prepare. In the former cases you can grab an old Julia Child book and practice some basics.

The steak knives actually seem fine. I'm not sure what they cost so it's hard to know how they stack up value-wise against, for example, good Laguiole steak knives. But they're nice enough knives. Steak knives aren't really the same as the knives used for kitchen work, however. They just need to cut bites of cooked meat at the table. It's the Cutco kitchen knives I've been using that I think are poor.

Sheesh. Why not just sell decent knives? They could do a private-label version of Forschner and sell it for a ridiculous price. At least they'd be providing people with something useful.

I've been working in a couple of borrowed kitchens lately, and both have been equipped with Cutco knives. I can't for the life of me figure out why anybody would buy them. They're not inexpensive, and they don't cut particularly well. What's the secret of the enduring popularity of these knives?

The ginger syrup is surprisingly powerful. I was surprised how little of it was needed to give a ginger taste to the whole volume of liquid. I was prepared to add a lot more (I have nearly a liter of it on hand that will probably be abandoned at the beach) but didn't need to. The pomegranate syrup was more generically sweet and red. Not nearly the same quality of pomegranate flavor as Pom. There seemed to be no point to adding more.

The final mix came out at: 24 oz rum 6 oz pomegranate syrup 2 oz ginger syrup 8 oz lemon juice 8 oz sparkling water 10 dashes bitters Lemons turned out to be on sale at the nearby Lowes for $1.99 for a 1-pound bag (containing 8 small lemons), so I bought two bags of them. I wound up buying a cheap plastic juicer there for $2.19. It wasn't a terribly effective unit but it was significantly better than nothing. I made the mix and left it in a jar at room temperature. The refrigerator here produces crushed ice through the in-door ice maker/water dispenser so as guests arrived I just filled rocks glasses with crushed ice and poured the mix over them. Garnished with an orange slice. I thought it came out well. It was well received, at least. We had 6 drinking adults, some had seconds and it was all consumed before dinner.

It's not that I'm committed to orange. It's mostly that I don't want to hand-squeeze a villion lemons with no proper equipment. Orange juice is available in good-quality permutations in regular stores. Lemons are both a ripoff and hard to do in bulk with your bare hands. But I guess I should just suck it up... P.S. I'm also making two other cocktails: a 3-2-1 cocktail with bourbon, triple sec and lemon juice; and a gimlet with gin, lime cordial, fresh lime, and simple syrup. So that's also a lot of citrus work. Sheesh. I also have most of a bottle of Regan's orange bitters with me, so maybe that will go either in the punch or the gimlet.

That sounds like a great plan. I was hoping to pour over ice to order, because guests will arrive over a period of time. Can I get away with refrigerating the mix and pouring over crushed ice?

I was planning to make a pitcher of it and pour it over ice in individual glasses.

One way to get access to a big list that will be rich in American wines, while maintaining the price point and casualness of a neighborhood place, is to go to one of the restaurants that has both a fine-dining section and a more casual front/bar-type room. Gramercy Tavern's front room is the archetype for this. You get access to the whole restaurant's wine list but more casual, less expensive dining. Also the bar room at the Modern. I've heard Aureole now has a good casual room. The hotel-based restaurants are also promising in this regard, like Adour at the St. Regis -- you can sit at the little bar there and order from a list of a zillion wines. These places usually have their wine lists online, so you can do research.

Trying to get some advice on ratios for a punch I'd like to make today. We're at some friends' beach house and brought a few things with us, but there's not a lot of flexibility in ingredients. Here's what I'd like to do. I have Monin ginger syrup and Monin pomegranate syrup, and Bacardi 8 rum. I figure maybe a little ginger syrup, a larger amount of pomegranate syrup, some rum and maybe...orange juice? Would that be a good one? I can get orange juice or something like it at the local grocery store, but please don't suggest anything like Falernum. So it's: Monin ginger syrup Monin pomegranate syrup Bacardi 8 rum Some kind of citrus juice available from a normal grocery store Served over ice Suggested ratios? Does it also need some lemon or lime juice? I realize I'll need to adjust the final blend based on taste but I just don't even know where to start. Trying to make enough for 10 cocktails, by the way.

The hind quarters of cattle are kosher if the animal is processed according to the kosher dietary laws. That includes various standards for the condition of the animal before slaughter, the method of slaughter, butchering, salting and, in the case of the hind quarter, removing the sciatic nerve. In the United States or any other overwhelming-majority-non-Jewish place, it generally makes little economic sense to remove the sciatic nerve. The forequarters can be processed for the kosher market and the hind quarters sold to the non-kosher market. Tom Colicchio once told me he got the steaks for Craft from a broker who sold the fore quarters to the kosher market and the hind quarters (which include major steakhouse cuts such as filet, strip and porterhouse) to the mainstream restaurant market. It makes economic sense to do all the work of removing the sciatic nerve if you have no other way to sell the hind quarters. Thus in Israel, where there is so much more of a market for kosher meat as a percentage of the overall market and you have much more volume (and the resulting economies of scale) of kosher meat production, there are butchers who will do the work and it's possible to find kosher hind-quarter cuts. In America if you want a good kosher steak your best bet is a rib eye. Kosher steaks, however, are altered by the salting process that draws out blood. So kosher steaks, while they can be quite good, can't compete on pure flavor with non-kosher ones all other things being equal. It's really when you get into braising cuts that kosher beef shines. (Maybe there's someone in the US who is removing the sciatic nerve and selling kosher hind-quarter cuts, but I've never actually seen any for sale. Maybe they're out there. If there were people willing to pay money for it, I imagine someone would do it, but we're talking serious cost -- high-quality kosher meat in the US is already super-expensive without getting into this additional step.)

I love these but have no idea what they are or how to describe them. Can anybody help identify this mysterious Asian candy?

People pay to see lots of stuff. The determination tends to get made by supply and demand, not by the observations of people who aren't interested in a particular form of content. I can't relate to why anybody would pay to see Britney Spears in concert. I'd rather pay $30 to see Bourdain than $100 to see her, or even $1 to see her. But in the end the only issue is whether there are enough people willing to pay to see Bourdain to fill the room. And I imagine there are.