slbunge

That is certainly what it seemed like when I was watching. Everything just too dramatic to have these be real paying customers at a luxe restaurant.

Actually, it seems to me that what you've written here would do a world of good with a wine merchant. I'm also a relative novice but I know that I enjoy minerality far above sweetness and have had good success just blurting that out when one of the mechants asks me what I'm looking for. A wine that I like quite well and is a blended white called Basa from the Rueda region of Spain. The winemaker is Telmo Rodriguez who, I have come to learn, is reasonably well known and well respected. A bit grassy but still has nice crisp fruit flavors and some minearlity. Surprisingly cheap ($9) but very good. I happened to buy this while visiting friends so it wasn't local but maybe a local store can help if you want to try it.

I'll mention it. This household has a sort of love-hate relationship with Gourmet but we do cook from it routinely and have had very few clunkers. We also cook from Food and Wine.

As an engineer, I wish I could argue this with you toe-to-toe. But, alas, I cannot. Certainly individual engineers may be foodists but a whole office full of them and the foodists will be drowned out to background noise by those who hold the cocktail weenie in highest regard, particularly when the weenie sauce is from a plastic bottle. Back in the day when I would bring treats to the office, my wife would hem and haw about making something special from scratch and my answer was always the same, "all they want are cheap-ass donuts".

There are many who freeze morels. If you google 'frozen morel mushrooms' or 'preserving morel mushrooms' there are some sites with interesting information about freezing technique. The pages I looked at seemed to indicate that you sweat them a bit so they give up their juice and then freeze them with their juice. I wonder if they would take to oil curing.

Yep yep. Ziplock bags work well. We rarely plan in advance and so use this method pretty much whenever we eat scallops. Be sure to dry them and salt them before searing.

I grill vegetables all summer. Years ago I bought something called a 'Griffo' which is a flat enamelled sheet pan perforated with holes. Profides a great surface for grilling without needing to figure out how to keep things from falling through the grates and into the fire. Works well for fish with more delicate flesh also. I recently saw that similar grills are being sold at places like Bed Bath and Beyond. Alternatively, you could skewer the vegetables to put them on the grill.

So sad that a number in your list are no longer brewed in Wisconsin. Point was a beer I often bought by the longneck case and stocked in the beer fridge. Sadly, I stopped seeing the returnable bottle cases sometime before we moved from Wisconsin. As for Rhinelander, I haven't had it since the mid-80s when a returnable bottle case was running around four times the nickel-per-bottle deposit. Our tastes at the time were for whatever was cheapest.

I've noticed that most of the micro-brewed beer I see on the shelves is Ale as opposed to lager. One exception that I am aware of is the offerings from Sprecher Brewery in Milwaukee. They built their operation on the success of their lagers (Special Amber and Black Bavarian) and many of their seasonals are also lagers. At a brewery tour I took there moons ago, I remember them saying that the water in Milwaukee (from limestone aquifer) compares well with water typical of Munich. Never seen any analysis backing that so it may just be beer-tour hooey.

If it were me and I was going for the 'beer worthy of ridicule' angle, I would choose 'The Champagne of Beers' over 'The King of Beers'? Usually, though, when I had a lawn to mow either a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or a New Glarus Edel Pils was my reward for a job...er...done.

Add a high-speed connection to the internet and you could stream video to all your friends here at eGullet.

I'm curious about your source for uncured olives.

Interesting. I expected that your vehicle would be a pickup. Great blog.

There is something of a classic german cake called Bienenstich kuchen that translates to bee sting cake. It is a moist cake flavored with almond. Surprisingly when I google up recipes none have honey...I just assumed it would. Not as fun as creating a cake that looks like a beehive, though.

This could be a decent suggestion as well, although I have never eaten at the restaurant. But, thinking of accessiblity and the fact that essentially across Tremont street are two restaurants that are also worth checking out: The Butcher Shop for a decent glass of wine (and some charcuterie) and B&G Oysters. Also, if you have time, you would be a short walk from South End Formaggio whose cheese selection is topped in the area (and perhaps all of the eastern seaboard) only by it's parent Formaggio Kitchen across the Charles River in Cambridge.

I'd say go to Sage in the North End. Intimate space (read: small) with very good food. Their gnocchi is incredible. Though I do not think that Sage is the best of the best restaurant in Boston I think there is good reason to consider. First, you should still be able to get a reservation. Second, and perhaps more important, it will place you in a neighborhood (perhaps 'the' neighborhood) with a lot of food related activity in the evenings that you can partake in before and after dinner. (A good example of how location would be your friend is that you can skip dessert at Sage and head down to Modern Pastry afterwards for a cannoli.) Any particular type of food you are after?

<bump> We had another great meal in the cafe area of No. 9 Park this past weekend. We had an out of town guest with us and waited about 15 minutes for a table. Wines were unremarkable, not because they weren't good, but because we had a few glasses before arriving so we stuck with the simle house red. For starters, one had the bibb salad with manchego and the others had a fantastic sort of antipasto with squid and a stuffed piquillo pepper. For entrees two of us had a fantastic piece of black bass with morels and one had the lobster gnocchi. Desserts were the black pepper cheesecake with shaved pineapple for one and the three icecreams: green almond, moscovade (a sugar), and the third I can't remember. I'm a huge fan of the cafe at No. 9 Park. I think the food is executed as well as in the restaurant, the service is decent (not overwhelmingly wonderful but certainly nothing to complain about), and it is all about value. I felt I paid too much for my one meal in the restaurant. For those of you who can't decide between the cafe menu and the restaurant menu, you can actually order off either if you are sitting at the bar. As an aside, while we were waiting for dessert Barbara Lynch out and about in the cafe and when she stopped by our table to ask about our food we casually asked about green almonds which, in addition to the ice cream, figure in an amazing dessert that my wife had there last year (and continues to artfully obsess about). She left the table but then returned shortly with a bowl of them and a pairing knife, then sat down and peeled a few so we could try them unadulturated. Very nice touch.

Please recommend a location to get these. Is it sort of a fish-shack thing or something at 'nice' restaurants. I have not seen them but I'm fascinated. I love the strong flavor of bluefish and love fried halibut cheeks. So, combine the two and I'd likely be hooked (sorry, bad pun).

Does the Kentucky Derby tend to reinforce the traditional preparation of the local favorites or if is is a time to experiement or reinterpret the cocktails or cuisine (either to be creative or just to appeal to tourists). For example, with all the tourists in town are bartenders mixing the Julep-tini or other (and likely worse) drink that is perhaps reminiscent of the Mint Julep but appeals to folks who think Bourbon isn't for the young an hip. Some sort of high-end deconstructed Hot Browns? Country ham on a stick? Just curious.

It certainly isn't dairy but 'gin and coconut water' mixes a sort of creamy mouthfeel and a bit of sweetness with gin. Dead simple and a wonderful drink for hot weather.

My suggestion is that if you find yourself in the South End on a Saturday afternoon about 4pm and hungry, it is the best time to go. The place is small and they don't take reservations. (The do a decent job with oysters as well.)

I'm with you Chris. The flashy lobster dinner (steamed or even grilled) holds no interest to me when I am at a restaurant. For the most part the meal is overpriced and is a pain to eat whilst trying to keep my outfit presentable for whatever we are going to do after leaving the restaurant. I do like lobster meat in other dishes, from risotto to ravioi to the famous lobster roll or even the lobster burger at Citronelle in Washington DC. But the flashy red crustacean on the plate with drawn butter? No thanks.

It really is a very good lobster roll. I know some purists gag at the price ($22 I think). Substantial amount of knuckle meat. Almost parsimonious with the mayo and celery which is the way I like the salad prepared. I haven't tried many versions of this classis but B&G is worth a visit.

Actually there is an interesting story behind the Loose Juice cart on Library Mall (close to celebrating it's 30th year there I think). The owner of the cart, Karl Anderson, was convicted and imprisoned for being part of the 1970 bombing of Sterling Hall during the height of the anti-war movement in Madison. The bomb was meant to disrupt activities in mathematics research funded by the army but in a terribly unfortunate incident a young researcher working very late was killed in the blast. If you want to read more, you can go here. I will say that the Loose Juice's smoothies and fruit juices are really quite good and they are priced much better than the chains (Jamba Juice, etc).

I had an amazing farro with mushroom ragu at Lupa a couple of months ago. The preparation was described by the staff as akin to risotto. The farro tasted as if it had been at least partially cooked in a mushroom broth and there was a bit of that broth with chunks of porcini and other mushroom. Very rich in flavors. Certainly it is more of a cold weather dish but it might be worth experimenting next winter.