Fat Guy

Last May, as he was presiding over the death of Country, I called Willis Loughhead the "Best Chef You've Never Heard Of." I've been following Loughhead for a few years now, with increasing interest, through a series of unfortunate situations. First he was the opening chef de cuisine at the excellent Bar Room at the Modern, which received three stars from the New York Times just days after Loughhead departed. (Presumably all of the review visits occurred under the Loughhead regime, but as the chef de cuisine working under Gabriel Kreuther it's not as though Loughhead's name would have been in the headline anyway.) Country, where Loughhead worked for Geoffrey Zakarian but effectively ran the restaurant as an independent operation, seemed on course to be something promising but the rug got pulled out from under everything and it never happened. Now Loughhead is working under Govind Armstrong, of Top Chef and Iron Chef fame, at Table 8 in the Cooper Square Hotel. This is the third Table 8 venture from Govind Armstrong, the other two being in LA and Miami. And it just got the worst New York Times review in recent memory. No stars. The other reviews have also been mostly negative. Since before Table 8 opened, Loughhead has been inviting me to come in and do a tasting. I just never got around to it, because as much as I love a free meal I don't have as many babysitting nights as are needed to stay current on everything. But the no-star review caused me to adjust my priorities. I just had to go in and see how Loughhead could be involved in such a bad restaurant. I was expecting one of two things: either the restaurant would be terrible, in which case I'd just figure Loughhead made a bad move working there, or the restaurant would be good despite the no-star rating. I was equally prepared to conclude either way, though I couldn't help but note that the no-star review, which I can only describe as neurotic, didn't do much to justify the no-star rating on a food basis -- it mostly prioritized complaints about bathrooms, noise and general ergonomics. It only took a few bites of food to realize how off-base the no-star rating is. It's true, the bathrooms are far away and weird. It's true, the restaurant is loud. It's true, the layout and positioning of the restaurant within the hotel are not great. And none of that makes the food any less good. I don't really know how much of the menu is Govind Armstrong and how much is Willis Loughhead, nor do I particularly care. Both deserve credit for some really triumphant dishes, the best of which was a smoked pork chop that was possibly the best pork chop I've ever had: the smoke flavor permeated the meat without masking the pork flavor, and the meat remained quite juicy (probably due to brining but I forgot to ask). This dish is a regularly appearing special that shows up two or three days a week, with veal in the dish on the other days (the restaurant buys sides of pork and butchers them in house, so there are only so many pieces of each type to go around). The other best dish was grilled octopus, which I believe is pressure cooked prior to grilling and comes in an acidic dressing that, on its own, would be too acidic but is just right when used as a dip for the charred, tender octopus. This is not to say every single dish we tried was perfect. There were flaws. I'll mention a few. And I struggled to recognize a particular style reflected in the menu, which seems more like a collection of tasty dishes than an expression of any particular focus. But there's no planet on which this is no-star food. Table 8 is serving solid two-star food with some dishes pushing the three-star envelope. There's a section of the menu called "salt bar," and overall the kitchen really seems to love salt. So do I, so this wasn't a problem, but I've got to wonder whether the world is ready for this much salt. In any event, the salt bar items ran about 50/50 in terms of being great. The best dishes from the salt bar were a rabbit sausage and a lamb terrine. The country terrine and mortadella, to me, had off textures, though they tasted fine. I'll be interested to see how the charcuterie program develops, as I recall Loughhead doing some nice stuff at Country. A salad of heirloom tomatoes from the Greenmarket was simple and good as could be. There was also a grilled vegetable salad that made good use of Greenmarket vegetables. "Corn risotto" was controversial at the table. I liked it -- to me it was like over-the-top creamed corn with pieces of guanciale throughout -- but others thought it cloying. Three fish dishes demonstrated a good range of skills with fish: seared tuna, pan-fried branzino and roasted swordfish over a bracing eggplant salad, all spot-on. Very good rack of lamb and roast chicken didn't compete with the aforementioned pork chop but were nothing to laugh at. There are some side dishes offered on the menu. The cauliflower sauteed in duck fat is well worth ordering. It is as good as it sounds. Desserts, described in the Times as "unobjectionable," were consumed without objection -- with gusto, actually -- by our group. These are desserts worth real consideration, prepared by an expert pastry kitchen. My favorite taste was a macaroon (not a menu item; this is the petit fours offering) laced with white truffle. Surprising and different. It takes a lot for a warm chocolate cake to stand out in today's densely populated field, but I thought this one -- served simply with cherry compote and vanilla ice cream -- managed to do so because each element was so carefully crafted and it's hard to beat the combination. Buttermilk panna cotta in strawberry soup, from the lighter end of the dessert spectrum, was also noteworthy. I'd like to return at some point and focus more on dessert. As it was I was too full to appreciate them enough. The restaurant was full of people who apparently don't follow the advice of restaurant reviewers. There were several large parties, including an outdoor-patio buyout by Modern Bride pursuant to a "world's greatest bride" competition or some such. The bride-testants were accompanied by a super-annoying videographer with a light on his camera that he must have salvaged from a police helicopter. Every time I was blinded by the stupid thing I considered the possibility of a no-star rating.

Meats and fish at L'Ecole are, in my experience, cooked more accurately and reliably than in all but the very top professional restaurants. Indeed, my expectation before ever dining at L'Ecole would have been that there would be a lot of student mistakes in the food. But in general I see far fewer cooking errors from the student cooks at L'Ecole than I do out in the normal restaurant world. The one thing that does happen more often at L'Ecole than in restaurants at large is that production of food slows way down when the kitchen is stressed. It appears they always choose delay over error, which is a good thing and runs counter to how restaurants that need to make money do it. Not that there were any timing issues yesterday. It's just a general observation prompted by gastrodamus's comments above. Yesterday at lunch for appetizers my group tried the cavatelli (delicious again, especially for fans of butter), the terrine (correct as all L'Ecole charcuterie items are) and the red beet and mustard seed terrine with sweet onion slaw and spicy baby greens (this appeared on another menu once and I was equally uninterested in the dish, which to me represents a lot of work to deconstruct and reconstruct something that tastes like a beet). Two of the entrees we tried were home runs and illustrated the accurate cooking of proteins mentioned above by gastrodamus. Seared duck breast and braised leg with fingerling potatoes and sour cherry sauce was the best, most tender piece of duck I remember having in ages, the medium-rare breast sliced thin and fanned our around the braised leg. The other strong entree was pan-roasted lamb loin with goat cheese polenta, asparagus, figs and lamb jus. In between L'Ecole and a Ducasse restaurant you're not likely to find jus this good, and the lamb was treated with the same care in cooking as the duck. Both of those dishes were profoundly retro. You just don't see duck with sour-cherry sauce much these days, and the platings were right out of the pre-modern era. But I'd put these dishes up against any contemporary interpretation of the same ingredients, and the old-school dishes would surely win. The entree I wasn't crazy about was veal paillard with haricot verts, wild mushrooms and spinach-parmesan purée. This was along the lines of what used to be called spa cuisine. I saw several orders go out and plenty of customers seemed thrilled with the dish, so it certainly has a place on the menu, but to me the naked veal cutlet is uninteresting. I had the passion-fruit baked Alaska again and think it may be the best dessert I've had at L'Ecole. The other desserts were solid, though I think the old-school chocolate tart is one item that doesn't hold up against more contemporary iterations of the same concept. Chocolate tarts, tortes, mini cakes, et al., have gotten a lot better in the past couple of decades. After lunch I took my guests around the school for a tour. We ran into Nils Noren, Dave Arnold and a chef from Sushi Zen conducting an experiment concerning the best way to kill a fish so as to preserve its flavor. Luckily this occurred after lunch and not before.

I've spoken to friends elsewhere about this, and nut-free seems to be fairly common even in the middle of the country. The uniquely ridiculous thing we seem to be doing in Manhattan (which probably includes Park Slope) is, whenever one kid in the school has a (real or imagined) allergy to one thing, that thing gets banned school-wide.

Stuff like that may wind up in the rotation, but my concern is that those items are highly aromatic. Depending on what kinds of things the other kids are eating, the aroma issue may or may not be a concern. I remember when I was a kid, though, the kid with the smelly lunch was an object of ridicule, and I don't want to subject my kid to that.

Yes. After a hiatus, seed products are being reintroduced on the list of allowable foods. This means sun-butter and jelly sandwiches are permitted. It also means hummus is allowed, because with a no-seed policy it's hard to have hummus, which in its non-disgusting incarnations included sesame tehina.

It truly is a goldmine. I've got a shopping trip to Super H-Mart planned in order to acquire some segmented lunch boxes, maybe some egg molds, stuff like that. I'm going to be terrified to post my newbie bento photos on that topic, but I'm going to do it in the name of education and entertainment.

Whatever it is has to be eaten straight from the fridge. That's definitely on the list as an ingredient to utilize, but is there anything interesting to be done with it?

I'm trying to brainstorm some lunches for our son in Pre-K this coming year. The kids bring their own lunches which are refrigerated until lunchtime. The school is in a synagogue. The rule is kosher dairy and pareve only. That means no meat (no red meat or poultry) but fish products (though not shellfish) would be okay. There are additional regulations having nothing to do with kashruth, most notably a nut-free policy. I have sufficient creativity to come up with things like cheese sandwiches. I'm hoping for some more ambitious items, though. The one nice thing is that, assuming it conforms with the above regulations, we can do pretty much anything as our son is relatively omnivorous.

If we're just talking about a cup of coffee, then the calories are relatively inconsequential. Sugar has something like 16 calories per teaspoon and there are only so many teaspoons a person is going to put into a cup of coffee (though I've seen some impressive feats in this regard). But if we're talking about replacing sugar and high-fructose corn syrup entirely, then that's a few hundred calories per average American per day. Not inconsequential, especially if there's a substitute that tastes just as good. Stevia, to me, tastes kind of weird. Of the fake sugars, Splenda/Sucralose is the one that is most convincing to me. The argument for Stevia is that it's natural, whatever that means. All of the fake sugars fail miserably, in my experience, where sugar is a structural element as opposed to just a sweetener. For example in chocolate, ice cream, etc. But for simple sweetening, Splenda does a pretty good job.

Interestingly, a whole pie is $25. So the by-the-slice markup is similar to the wine-by-the-glass markup at some restaurants. Of course, for someone who earns $25 an hour, the real cost of the pie is $75: $25 for the pie and $50 for the time spent waiting. Plus transportation.

Yes, simple supply and demand theory means the price is justified. I happen to think there's a market failure here, in that the pizza isn't good enough to justify that price, but as a matter of economics there's not much of an argument to be had here.

I'd need a source of real statistics to prove it, but it seems to me that L'Ecole is getting more popular. On this late-July Thursday, the lunch sitting was completely packed. Similarly dense crowds were on display my last couple of brunch visits, as well as during my last dinner visit. Perhaps the economic downturn has revealed L'Ecole as the value that it is. While the $24.07 Restaurant Week lunch specials at some restaurants are a few dollars less than the year-round $28 lunch at L'Ecole, the lunch value at L'Ecole is qualitatively and quantitatively of a higher order than anything I've seen anywhere during Restaurant Week. Not that these prices mean much to me, given that my average cost per meal at L'Ecole is something like three dollars. As the menu changes almost completely every six weeks and I haven't been in a few weeks, this was my first exposure to the current menu. So far it's a good one. For appetizers we tried: Cavatelli with rock shrimp, fava beans and ricotta salata, which could have been the whole lunch. Although it's a French restaurant at the French Culinary Institute, the pasta items I've tried have all been at the top of the form. This is surely the influence of the Italian Culinary Academy, which is the other, less-well-known program that shares the facility (the French Culinary Institute and Italian Culinary Academy are the two major components of the International Culinary Center). Also country pate with foie gras and truffles, which plays to the biggest strength of the L'Ecole kitchen: classic French stuff done better than the few remaining classic French restaurants do it. By far the weirdest appetizer of the day (or maybe the month or year) was "Arctic char tartare with walnuts, Stilton and Yorkshire pudding." It sounded like such an odd choice of ingredients -- and not necessarily in a good way -- it was just begging to be tried. I had trouble even envisioning what was going to come. Walnuts and blue cheese crumbled on top of raw char? To my surprise, the walnuts and Stilton are mixed right in with the fish and the mixture is plated up in a ring mold. The flavors don't clash as I suspected they might. I have to go back and re-taste that dish because I haven't decided whether I love it or hate it. On the side is a tasty, superfluous popover. Entrees: braised marlin with chorizo, clams, kale and saffron potatoes forced me to readjust my feelings about marlin. I now see that it can be a delicious fish when handled properly. All the other components of the dish tied together well with the swordfish-like meatiness of the marlin. A very strong dish. The other two seafood dishes were also successful: salmon with fennel confit, pickled ramps and mussel sauce (I've found that overall the salmon dishes at L'Ecole are well worth ordering); and seared black bass with basil risotto cake, marinated confetti tomatoes and anchovy dressing. The only misstep in the entrees was the gummy basil risotto cake, which continues the restaurant's pattern of avoidable rice items (the paella that accompanied another dish a while back was also not worthy). Of the desserts I most enjoyed the passion fruit baked Alaska. I so wish the fire codes still allowed for flaming desserts. It's just not the same when they do it behind closed doors in the kitchen. But it's a delicious dessert. I'll be heading back next week to try more stuff.

A long time ago I used to think Murray's was all that, but I've found in the past decade or so that it has become more and more possible to find wide selections of cheeses at better prices. Fairway and Zabar's, in particular, seem like the best bets for price/quality. These days, all the good places seem to be selling similar cheeses anyway. As far as I can tell, of the major retailers, only Artisanal adds any value, due to the affinage program. The other way to get unique value is to buy from Bobolink at one of the Greenmarkets.

It would be hard to overstate the extent to which using made-to-order tortillas improved every taco. The tortillas at most taquerias are cardboard by comparison. Of the tacos I tried I think my favorite may have been the picadillo. I liked it as much as or more than the al pastor.

This is the sort of thing where I'd go looking around at the local vocational-technical schools for someone to do it cheap. If the school has the equipment, there are probably students who can pull off something like that. I don't know if Parsons has a metal shop, but that's where I'd start.

See I thought this dish was a home run. It was my favorite of the evening. I think this was just one of those risk-taking dishes that people are going to love or hate. But to me it was brilliant. I also couldn't really taste the flavors and I thought the cake was dry. This dessert just didn't work for me.

The main reason I don't have an induction burner (or an electric oven) is that in New York City the standard arrangement is to have your electricity individually metered and billed to you, but for natural gas to be part of the building's common expenses. So no matter how much gas I use I don't incur any appreciable charges, whereas if I did a lot of cooking with electricity it would start to cost money.

Just got home after a grueling air-transit adventure. While sitting on the tarmac at O'Hare (for nearly 3 hours) I remembered a few things that have yet to be acknowledged: 1 - The Manifesto dude came and not only poured drinks but also dressed really well. 2 - Aaron Deacon wrecked a whole bunch of the chocolate cups but Kerry made so many that it didn't matter. 3 - Edsel was the grand-prize winner for getting a course out late but it was worth the wait. 4 - The prize for coolest individual at the gathering surely goes to Lora's dad, who takes the do-it-yourself ethic to the extreme and smokes a mean trout.

Those are Lora's pies.

There was talk of all sorts of locations -- St. Louis, Winnipeg, Milwuakee, Ann Arbor, others -- but nobody stepped up and outright offered to take point on organizing the next one. If somebody who wasn't there (several key people from past years were not) wants to make that offer, by all means please go for it (on the planning topic). Moderator's note: This planning topic has been split off from the 2009 Heartland Gathering in Kansas City report topic so we don't lose track of the folks who have already started planning for the 2010 event. -PR Let's get the boilerplate out of the way: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN ORGANIZED THROUGH EG FORUMS BY MEMBERS BUT IS NOT SPONSORED BY THE EGULLET SOCIETY FOR CULINARY ARTS AND LETTERS OR EG FORUMS. YOUR PARTICIPATION IN ANY EVENT OR ACTIVITY ARRANGED ON OR DISCUSSED IN EG FORUMS IS AT YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE RISK. BY USING AND PARTICIPATING IN THE FORUMS YOU AGREE AND UNDERSTAND (1) THAT IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR PARTICIPATION IN ANY EVENT OR ACTIVITY, YOU MAY BE EXPOSED TO A VARIETY OF HAZARDS AND RISKS ARISING FROM THOSE ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS; (2) TO THE FULLEST EXTENT ALLOWED BY LAW, YOU AGREE TO WAIVE, DISCHARGE CLAIMS, RELEASE, INDEMNIFY AND HOLD HARMLESS THE SOCIETY, ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, AGENTS, AND OTHER PARTNERS AND EMPLOYEES, FROM ANY AND ALL LIABILITY ON ACCOUNT OF, OR IN ANY WAY RESULTING FROM INJURIES AND DAMAGES IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH ANY SUCH EVENTS OR ACTIVITIES. YOU AGREE AND UNDERSTAND THAT THESE TERMS WILL BE BINDING UPON YOU AND YOUR HEIRS, EXECUTORS, AGENTS, ADMINISTRATORS AND ASSIGNS, AS WELL AS ANY GUESTS AND MINORS ACCOMPANYING YOU AT THE EVENTS.

Last night's communally cooked dinner was a meal for the ages. Here's a rundown of what we had, and I hope we'll get lots of additional photographic support eventually. There weren't really any "live-blogging" opportunities because we all worked hard and ate hard, but I assume the information flow will get turned back on later today as people start returning home and slowly recovering. We had so many items on the hors d'ouevres table that it wasn't truly necessary, or even particularly desirable, to have a meal afterward. I don't have enough fingers, toes and other appendages and protrusions to count up the number of cheeses that nyokie6 provided, no less the condiments and such. The Chris Hennes salami turned out to be quite serious. White Lotus and Dance provided a dizzying array of teas and mamagotcha and co. provided full-on barista services from the get-go. Tino27's focaccia redefined the standard for focaccia. Zeemanb's comparative pork-butt tasting presented little contest -- the real pork was so much better. I imagine that most of the top barbecue places in the country could be significantly improved by switching to better product. (They'd also have to triple their prices). Edsel, who appears to have a profoundly deep relationship with short ribs, started us off with approximately 20 pounds of pastrami-cured short ribs before he headed off to replicate the Gray Kunz short ribs for the final course of the dinner. Kerry made bacon-chocolate bark. There was other stuff as well: some smoked oysters from Lora's dad, a few other things . . . I can't keep track. It was obscene. We sat down to a welcome smoked-trout canapé and cucumber crudite (Lora and dad). Course 1 consisted of two interpretations of corn and avocado. Corn was a major ingredient that emerged at the market. It found its way into several dishes. So we had the cold interpretation: corn & avocado soup with cilantro oil (moosnsqrl & jgm). And the hot interpretation: a tempura corn fritter topped with the White Lotus/Dance smoked salmon and an avocado-lemon dressing (Torakris assisted by Chris Hennes, with distant involvement by me). Accompanied by rosemary focaccia (Tino27). Course 2 was green-chile risotto (Chileheadmike) and platters of cabbage with bacon and roasted vegetables (ronnie_suburban). Course 3 was strips of griddled cornbread topped with pulled pork, purple-hull beans, green-zebra tomatoes, creme fraiche and cilantro (Aaron Deacon). Accompanied by family-style platters of tomato salad (moosnsqrl & S.O. & jgm). Course 4 was chicken curry with jasmine rice (Kerry Beal, prasantrin on rice) Course 5 was Gray Kunz short ribs with Heston Blumenthal mashed potatoes (Edsel, tino27) and patty-pan squash with sesame oil and rice-wine vinegar (mamagotcha). For dessert we had pie (Lora), peach and blueberry cobblers (nyokie6), chocolate cups and more bacon bark (Kerry Beal). I'm sure I missed some things and people. Those who provided equipment, logistical support and cleanup services will, as per standard procedure in culinary circles, receive no acknowledgment and remain largely unappreciated, even though the undertaking would not have been possible without them.

Mamagotcha got it exactly right in my opinion: Bluestem really threw down, radically exceeding my expectations and serving a meal on par with what the better restaurants are doing in the much bigger cities -- where a meal of this caliber would still be quite noteworthy. And the place is deceptive: you wouldn't think from walking in that it would be a Very Serious Restaurant. It feels more like a relaxed neighborhood spot. Not that it's a huge surprise in this day and age to find this juxtaposition of excellent food and casual unpretentiousness, but still it was unexpected. I agree that the dessert was kind of weak. Can't think of any other real faults, though.

Dinner at Bluestem was terrific. I'll leave it to others to post photos and details, as I need to help make dough now.

In what is surely a first for the Best Western Inn & Conference Center, Tino27 and I are now weighing out flour and yeast for a preferment, to be transformed into focaccia dough tomorrow (aka later this morning) in the hotel room while the rest of the group is out shopping at the market.

Kris, Jenny and I arrived in time to intercept the barbecue crawl on its second stop, at LC's. I thought the ribs were out of this world: just the right balance of smoke, rub and tasty pork. Based on that sampling I figured we were in for a significant amount of great barbecue consumption, so I paced myself. In retrospect I wish I'd eaten four times as much at LC's. I thought OK Joe's, while a wonderful spot in a functioning gas station, did not have particularly good meat. Only the plain pulled pork (as opposed to the junked-up sandwich variants) was exceptional. The brisket and ribs were just passable. And at this stop, eating in the nearby park, we got to try some of the Arthur Bryant's ribs and brisket from earlier in the tour. Unimpressive. Profoundly so. Barely any flavor. I give OK Joe's credit for the best side dish of the day, though: the beans with nice bits of meat were superb. Woodyard was a step back in the right direction. The ribs had excellent smoke. But I think they were slightly undercooked and insufficiently seasoned. The special of the day was hot-smoked salmon. Dry and not flavorful. The creamed corn with cheese was a very good side. I also loved the ambience at Woodyard. It's in a wood yard. Piles and piles of wood all around. Cool place. Taking a nap before heading to Bluestem.