slbunge

Is this due to better genetics? Has it come at the expense of flavor? In the midwest, a number of boutique organic farms produce a variety that is often called 'cipollini' that is very similar to what you describe as the Vidalias from years ago. Flat and small with a very nice round sweet flavor. Excellent grilled. They are most often sold field fresh as opposed to storage onions. As for rhubarb, what is the season for rhubarb in the south? Blog on. Good stuff in here. Edit: spelling

And get there at 6 or 7--whatever time they open. If you get there any later, you're due for a long wait. I love Al's and go there everytime I'm in MSP. But I find anything other than their wally blue and eggs benedict to be very ordinary. (I like their hash browns, too.) So if you go, I'd stick with the eggs benedict, wally blue and a hash brown on the side (that's actually my usual order...) ← Weekdays they open at 6am. I stick with buttermilk or buttermilk with corn for my pancakes. I'm also a fan of their hash browns.

Al's Breakfast is one of my personal favorite breakfast spots. Great food turned out in a historic 'tween diner. Don't try to go with more than four people and two would be even better. Tavern on Grand has solid walleye (or whatever the Canadian fish is that they actually serve). It wouldn't really be on my short list of standout low-brow dining options in the area. Nye's is a gem. I prefer to drink there rather than eat. Just not the sort of food that appeals to me. Perhaps another reader will chime in about the food. Lyle's is fun but I haven't been for a number of years so I cannot give any up-to-date information. Punch Neopolitan Pizza is a great spot for an inexpensive meal of high-quality food. I'm partial to their original location on Cleveland in the Highland Park area of St. Paul. Simple pizzas cooked in a wood-fired oven with the right amount of char and smoke. I always get mine 'Neopolitan style' (in fact I rarely stray from the Margherita DOC which comes this way by design) which is un-cut and has more sauce and olive oil. Lucia's is a solid choice for mid-priced dining. She has been a mainstay of the 'support local agriculture' scene for some time. I often eat in the wine bar area where they have a sort of cafe menu.

It isn't great dining as the thread requests, but I think this is a good time to remind visitors to Milwaukee of the spectacular wine service offered by Pizza Man (corner of North Ave and Oakland). Yep, it's true, a pizza place has the fine dining and drinking establishments beaten by a country mile: great wines by the glass from their cellar that rotate nearly daily; knowledgeable staff behind the bad (Pizza Man, whose name I have forgotten, is there often in the early evenings and very easy to talk to); and Reidel stemware. For the most part, they will open just about anything from their cellar to serve by the glass if you order a minimum of two glasses. The pizza is eclisped by the wine but is still decent if you are looking for something less than fine dining. If you can stand their fairly irritating website it tells about their Wine Spectator awards and whatnot. When I lived in Milwaukee this little gem was a great place to stop and enjoy a glass on the way to dinner.

I'm not a fan of the flavor of raw or cooked green pepper. Many a decent pizza has been fouled by a small bit that jumped ship from the prep area of the pizzaman onto my pie.

Actually, I believe they have laid off the food coloring in recent years so the current Stouffer's Spinach Souffle looks a bit more like real spinach. Unless the stuff in your freezer is from about 1978. Then, flourescent it will be.

Perhaps it wasn't popular on your side of the Atlantic, but I remember many a meal when mom would serve Stouffer's Spinach Souffle. Looked very much like the bloody-hell-that's-flourescent green stuff in the sauce pan.

As a frequenter of Genna's lounge around that same time I wish I would have paid more attention. I'm guessing a few of the corner taps in Milwaukee had/have them. Only real problem I see with them is they can be a bit messy. I'm a sucker for a place that serves good soft pretzels with beer. Rarely see that anymore either.

Never seen pickled pigs' feet on the bar. You would be my hero if you brought the pickled egg back as a bar snack. When done well, a pickled egg is fantastic. Tangy, salty, big mouthfeel, and substantial enough to be a real-live snack rather than a 'nibble' or whatever we call it now. Of course, the commercial versions of the pickled egg tend to be absolutely vile so you would have to make them in-house. And I think it would be a significant hurdle to have your customers get past the fact that they are ordering what was essentially a foundry-worker's afternoon snack. Perhaps if you halve the or quarter them they would go over a bit better. Thinking about half of a hardboiled egg, I would say that in Venice (and likely elsewhere in Italy) they do bar food very well. Snacks locally known as cicchetti they tend to be small bites eaten while drinking wine at the bar on the way home from work. Lots of stuff skewered on long toothpicks. Like a chunk of mortadella topped with a piece of cheese. Or a pearl onion wrapped in an anchovy. Or marinated squid pieces (or baby octopus). Or finger food like half a hard cooked egg with a small anchovy atop the yolk. Lots of twists on delivering fats with salt and tangy vinegar. Grabbing a couple of things you got a snack substantial enough to be sated until the late evening dinner.

The lounge is definitely the place to be at No. 9. In fact, I think the bar seats are the best places to be in the house. Very knowledgeable bartenders and you can order from the lounge menu as well as the dining room menu. I go to the bar regularly, but my one dining room experience will not be repeated. ← This sums up my sentiments. I could not get over how much more positive the experience in the Cafe is compared to the restaurant. None of the stodginess. Sound doesn't seem to carry as well. Knowledgeable and friendly staff. Better price point. They don't take reservations in the Cafe but the several times we went in the 15 months we lived in Boston, we never had to wait very long if at all.

Many years ago, in Madison, WI there was a bakery that made 'Afghani Flatbread'. It was really quite good. It was sort of a long oval (almost rectangular) and had a look as if it was constructed of lengths of rolled dough cylinders. I'm realizing now that it is very hard to describe. This picture looks fairly close to what I remember (click) It was soft and could even be a bit rubbery. Sprinkled with black cumin seeds. Great for scooping dips.

Of the two mentioned, my opinion is that Ratzch's is by far the better choice. Mader's is far more popular and that may be part of the problem...they have changed their menu enough to appeal to a wide audience and lost their soul. Ratzch's is a beautiful space. Worthy of a visit to imagine what it must have been like for the wealthy in Milwaukee in the first half of the 20th Century.

Can't comment about Bacchus, sorry. But I know a number of people who have stayed at Hotel Metro and very much like it. Congratulations on your anniversary.

Wikipedia tells all.

Your post brought to mind an aricle I read in the NewYorker last fall. John Seabrook wrote about an Italian woman who is tracking down Renaissance varieties of pears and attempting to form a 'collection' to keep them from disappearing. I don't have a copy but Google turned up that it was in the September 5, 2005 issue on pp. 102-108. Good luck with your Orchard. Where are you on the Maine coast? Edit: Oops. I just noticed you put your location in your user information.

Any idea if the crawfish/crayfish farmed or caught in US Gulf Coast states are related to the Dublin Bay Prawn?

Sitting on the porch in the sun. Fantastic 70deg day. Juice of 2 1/2 key limes. 1 oz Campari Soda Served in a highball with ice. Yum.

This one is in my repertoire. Also, commonly when swinging the cone into place and the filter gets a little folded over and the grounds never really get the hot water properly and the carafe at the end looks a bit like tea. Blech.

It's somewhat surprising that they went to the trouble of identifying 'LEAF LETTUCE' as the proper lettuce for this recipe. Perhaps I'm stereotyping, but I would think that the proper match for a Miracle Whip-based sandwich would be a crisp leaf of iceberg lettuce.

About 12 years ago, I was staying on Cozumel for a vacation and there was a great restaurant called La Choza. They had 'avocado pie' on the menus. Since coming back, we have made an attempt to replicate that failed but was quite tasty. I think it was essentially a cheesecake but with avocado. It appeared to be baked, medium firm set, velvet texture, little bit of lime, almost no sweetness, don't remember the crust, cool but not cold for service. Anyone know if the restaurant still exists? If so, perhaps we could arm-twist the staff for a recipe.

Though I'm not living in the UK, I thought I would chime in because the same trend seems to have taken hold in the US. Excepting the sort of journalistic photography at open air markets and such, I've often wondered if these 'simpler', 'more casual' images are as styled as their previous counterparts. Sure, they now appear to be naturally lit with shallow depth of field, but in the magazine photography everything is so shiny and perfect. Or when it isn't perfect it all appears deliberately not-perfect. So, could it be that the style has changed to suit this more casual look but the mechanics still include heavy styling of the subject? I can think of photographs in Gourmet magazine, as one example, from just 10 years ago that were much more about composition (various foods on the table, fine linens, rich tones of paint on the walls, candles, dramatic lighting) than they were exercises in showing a glistening bunch of grapes in a lovely bowl whose lip might even be out of focus. Interesting topic. Sometimes I long for the photos of the whole, fake dinner party.

I'm definitely tentative. I'll know more sometime in the next three to four weeks. Sounds like fun. If I make it, I will no longer have to hang my head in shame that I've never been to Ann Arbor. Thanks for planning this.

I'm certainly not politician (nor attorney or linguist), but they choose a very interesting sentence structure for the actual prohibition... Sort of a passive agressive way to say that it is, in fact, the City of Chicago that prohibits the food dispensing establishments for selling the stuff. Minor point, just struck me as odd. Interesting point regarding the 'SALE' as some have mentioned. If everyone sitting gets an amuse bouche of foie gras on toast points that is not listed on the menu and, therefore, not priced, the city would be hard pressed to say that it was being sold.

Not true for all gas ovens. Nowadays, some (or most?) have a broiler on the top of the oven which is essentially a single burner with a shield mounted at the roof of the oven. The top burner is only on when the oven is set to 'broil' and typically have two settings: high and low. My quibble with the cheap-ass Maytag I used is that the flame pattern was quite skinny so you really had to be careful how you oriented food under the broiler. edit: clarity

If the recipe is calling for the old-time lemon phosphate fizzy drink, and if you can find it in your area and you could try the Dry Meyer Lemon soda from GUS (click). I've had a few of their sodas when visiting friends on the east coast and it is quite palatable. Much less sweet than mainstream flavored sodas. That said, you may want more citrus twang than the GUS delivers.