Alex

Yeah, I'd eat that poutine, too. A restaurant here in Grand Rapids, The Green Well, just featured a "Farm to Plate Weekend" menu that included a "GR Poutine": "Lakeview Farms day fresh cheese curds, Michigan maple truffle fries, [local] all day braised pork, local fried egg, Michigan Dijon vinaigrette." Grange Kitchen and Bar The 53 Mile menu

I'm glad you enjoyed Vermillion. Restaurant Eve is closed for lunch on Saturday, so, as Joe Gerard said, do try to get there on Friday for the Lickety Split Lunch in the bar/lounge. They also have a regular lunch menu in the Bistro, but the prices are akin to moderately priced dinner elsewhere (apps 15-21, mains 18-25). I've never been there, but Landini Brothers, on King St. near the river, looks like a good bet for Saturday lunch (~4½ stars average on OpenTable). It's tough to go wrong with a proscuitto and mozzarella panino, with salad, for $9.95. While you're in that part of town, you also can visit the Torpedo Factory Art Center.

Definitely Vermillion Strongly consider the Lickety Split Lounge Lunch Menu at Restaurant Eve. Their Bistro menu for dinner would be ~$65 for three courses, w/o wine, so that may not qualify as "not too expensive." The Majestic, already mentioned, is good, too.

Piccolo Sogno has a lovely patio, an oasis in the middle of their primarily industrial area. A huge picture of it is on their home page.

Hmm. The web site says that information will be posted "soon," but it's only a couple of weeks away, and nothing yet. However, a list of restaurants is here (scroll down to the entry for August 17). There also are a couple of menus on the page. The price ($27) isn't bad. D.C.'s current Restaurant Week is $35.09 for dinner. It might be worth a weekend trip from the west side of the state. Pending more information, I'd probably opt for Roast, Cuisine, and Saltwater or Wolfgang Puck's Grille. How do those sound to you?

Testing was my very first thought when I read your first post, so I'm wondering why you couldn't do that. Have you talked with anyone at the Health Department or UNLV about it?

I use my trusty OXO swivel peeler, then Microplane if I need to go beyond an extremely fine chop. Otherwise, as David Goldfarb mentioned earlier, I slice, smash and slide (which helps to deal with the fibers), then mince.

Kerry Beal, Prasantrin(and her mom), myself and another eGulleter ate here last year during the Heartland Gathering. My sandwich was very good( and huge), but it didnt scream " Chicago" to me( if that makes any sense). I wouldnt seek the cafe out, but if you're in the hood and starving, its a good choice. ← I see you've been laying off the hallucinogens. That's good.

I haven't eaten there in a couple of years, but I'd recommend the Café at Fox & Obel for breakfast or lunch. Has anyone been there more recently?

My goodness, we're cranky today, aren't we? Which other three ingredients would you recommend that The Minimalist use instead? Also remember that the first item on the ingredient list is bacon , which gives him a free pass on almost any other ingredient he chooses to include. Here's the offending recipe.

Black garlic web site, with recipes An article in The Washington Post of Feb 25, 2009 A quick mention by Florence Fabricant in The New York Times of October 7, 2008 An article in Nation's Restaurant News Earthy Delights here in Michigan carries black garlic and is sponsoring a recipe contest.

There's commentary all over the 'net about this, of course. Here's a post by one of my favorite writers, James Fallows. I heartily agree with that "Oh, please." Our president's go-to restaurant in Chicago is Spiaggia. I tend to doubt that Bud Light is his beer of choice, even on a hot summer's day. I like the man a lot (and I apologize if he does indeed drink Bud Light), but this type of political posturing is cringe-inducing. Fallows's suggestion of Sam Adams or Dogfish Head was spot on, in my opinion.

NY Times blog post about The Publican

I'll be back in the metro area for a couple of days next month, and my schedule will finally allow me an opportunity to hit Weekday Cafe for lunch. Has anyone been there recently?

And now, Five Lakes Grill, at least as we know it.

"(Fill in the blank) Almondine" bothers me way out of proportion to the offense. (Ditto "with au jus," etc., as posted earlier.) That's probably because I perceive the bastardization of the French "Amandine" as stemming from a combination of general ignorance plus our populace's tendency to look down on other countries (except maybe Canada).

Full article here Are there any other common menu phrases you find particularly irksome?

As predicted, I am now the proud owner of: Culinaria Spain The Spiaggia Cookbook Every Night Italian Chicken à la King & The Buffalo Wing Two for the Road Candyfreak

Here's a NY Times article about Chicago's microbrews and some of the places that serve them. There are many good restaurant choices in River North. To pick just one, I'm a fan of A Mano, on Dearborn just a bit north of the river. A great place for outdoor dining is Piccolo Sogno, not too far from you, where Grand, Halstead, and Milwaukee meet. I (along with many eG'ers) am a fan of Sweets & Savories, on Fullerton about a mile west of the Red Line station. On Tuesday nights this summer the entire dinner menu is half price, which is just an outrageous deal. Also, to the best of my knowledge, they're still BYO (some liquor license hassle). I'd call first to check on that, though. There's a good wine store--Binny's--in River North, on Grand between Wells and Franklin.

Could you give us a few more parameters? For example... 1) Would you like the restaurant to be within -- a) walking distance; b) public transportation; c) reasonable cab ride; d) other -- of River North? 2) How much -- including meal, beverage(s), tax, and tip -- do you consider "not crazy expensive?" 3) Chicago, as I'm sure you know, has an enormous variety of restaurants. Do you have any strong cuisine preferences (or no-nos)? 4) Any preference for outdoor vs. indoor dining?

I recently bought a Panasonic Lumix SLR, which has a close-up Food mode: "You can take pictures of food with a natural hue without being affected by the ambient light in restaurants etc." I haven't tried that setting yet. I don't know if the D90 has a similar setting.

OK, one more: Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews. I suspect it will be joined by several more on July 4, courtesy of our local Bargain Books' half-price sale.

I agree, but Thorne seems to be saying that there is a fundamental dichotomy here: that there are only two types of people, knife people and pot people. Regardless of the setup, that fundamental distinction is simply not true, in my opinion. It may well be true for "some people," but it's certainly not true for everyone, and I'm not even convinced it's true for the majority of cooks, or even the majority of eGullet cooks. I'm sure there are people who are indeed personally connected to a knife or to a pan, but there must be other people out there who, like me, like nice tools and would prefer to use them, but feel no deep commitment or attachment to them. I'm not a "knife person" or a "pot person," I'm a "food person." ← Thorne's is an artificial, but not arbitrary, dichotomy. There's a good reason he set it up that way: Knives and pots/pans are the two most prominent non-food, non-appliance components of a "serious" cook's kitchen. He then used this dichotomy as the means to illustrate a brief history of his relationship with cooking. In fact, his wonderful last sentence suggests that living on one side of the dichotomy is a false paradise, so to speak: "And so it was that this knife cook finally found his pot and discovered that, with it, his kitchen was complete." My interpretation of the knife-pot dichotomy--and his last sentence appears to reflect this--is that it's a manifestation of the yang and yin of cooking. There is the yang knife, active and dominating, and the yin pot, passive and receptive--in complementary, dynamic balance.

Sockeye is $9.99 a pound, on sale this week, here in Grand Rapids.

Ha! On the menu of The Winchester, where I'll be eating a little later today, what should I see but a fried egg sandwich?