Dryden

Has anyone tried chawan mushi/tamago in the CSO? Any suggested settings if so?

Thanks!

Everyone loves this dish whenever we get it in any number of Japanese restaurants. Literally cannot find a decent recipe for it anywhere that I can see. Does anyone have one/suggestions/cookbooks that have one/anything to help? Thank you so much! Wanted to make it special for the holidays...

Thanks everybody!

Hi folks! We are redoing our kitchen and while we know what we're doing most everywhere, it turns out we need to upgrade our existing range hood to something new and we know nothing whatsoever about them. We're in an apartment, so it needs to be a non-venting hood. Does anyone have one they really like (and why?) Price not an object here at all. It's for a 36" range if that matters at all. Thanks!

So, we recently used up a 5 gallon jug of peanut oil that we got from who knows where, and trying to replace it has been darn near impossible, seems like everyone only sells little itty bitty jars of peanut oil until the 4th of july comes around. Does anyone know where to get some? We are in Manhattan and don't have access to a car... Thanks!

Seems to me that your complaint is that the meal was expensive, and you didn't like it. Which is totally reasonable, of course. I'm not exactly sure what "3-star price" is, though. You can easily spend more than a meal at Ko at a great sushi place like Yasuda, and no one would claim that is "3-star service", either. And the format of the meal at Ko is not altogether unlike that of a great sushi bar, where you interact primarily with the chef, and very little with the wait staff. If you don't like the food, well, that's unfortunate (but it happens - my wife and I had a horrible, very expensive meal at Cello back when it was still open), but saying that just because a place is expensive means it must be trying to achieve Michelin 3-star everything across the board, to me, misses the point entirely. And I've always found the waitstaff very accommodating at all of the Momo establishments, even though they pretty much don't know me from a hole in the wall - they just lack formality and pretension, which to me, is a huge attraction to all of them.

The whole bill thing strikes me as a bit odd to bring up in regard to Ko. The restaurant, as part of its mission statement, reservation process, etc. is there to remove a lot of the artifice and ceremony from a meal of its caliber, and make it all about the food (not unlike its pseudo-model, l'atelier joel robuchon). In a restaurant like Per Se, or Daniel, or Jean Georges, it may well be terribly inappropriate to drop the check. In a place where there are basically no servers, no linens, no forks, no backs to the chairs, and an online reservation system, you think it should be French 3 star service? The reason I (and I suspect many others) love the place, and the Momos in general, is exactly because they DON'T have any of that... Different strokes, I suppose.

Basically, my wife will be taking the train back to New York with our son while I continue on with the car for work. So they're catching an Amtrak that gets into New York around 7 PM, and it would be good if they could eat something for dinner on the train that's, well, better than train food... :-)

Is it more of a gastropubby brunch, or regular american stuff? Since my wife is Chinese and we're from new york, I'm thinking we're setting ourselves up to be disappointed with dim sum... Any good takeaway food places for an early dinner you know of?

I guess this is primarily a question for Chris, but if any other egulleteer want to weigh in... We're planning to be in boston for a few days in late August, and thought it would be nice to stop into Providence for a day to see the town, so planning to come in right after breakfast, have lunch in or near Providence, and then maybe grab a takeout dinner to eat on the way back to New York... but the day we will be there is Sunday, so it seems a lot of choices (Farmstead, unfortunately) won't be open... In general, just looking for local/regional, price not a concern, and we'll have a car. Any suggestions? Having just said that, Minh Hai sounds pretty good of the choices that I've seen so far, but would love some more insight. If it helps, we're planning to hit Craigie on Main, TW Food, and B&G Oysters while we're in Boston. Thanks!

Loved the mutton - delicious and really interesting. I do wish there were 2 "exotic" people every year - there's only so much pulled pork and ribs you can do, especially when mitchell and mills are the best every year anyway.

I wouldn't run uptown to eat there if I was downtown, but I also wouldn't go downtown to go to Noodle or Ssam if I was uptown, which is pretty significant. If the menu develops more of a Vietnamese bent over time, I could see traveling quite far for it, though, since there's so little decent (forget about good) vietnamese in the city. I think we'd go just about anywhere for top-notch pho.

We went this past weekend for a fairly early lunch, wasn't too busy. Cory came in while we were eating, and Sam stuck his head out of the kitchen at one point as well. A lot of great dishes - definitely felt like a Momo, not quite the same staff/vibe as downtown, but extremely accessible. The music isn't as loud, which made us a bit sad, but seems like a concession to the neighborhood. We tried a couple of the nonalcoholic drinks, the tai boi was particularly great, and incredibly refreshing. The kitchen sent out a couple of extras during the meal, the fluke with pineapple was very reminiscent of the old Ssam dish (in a good way). The tartare was great, really good texture and a subtly asian flavor but still clearly tartare, and the shrimp chips were a great, fun accompaniment. There was a crab and asparagus special that was definitely one of those Momo Wow! reinvented dishes, the king crab was good, great calamansi mayo. The snails and sausage were good, but the mop-up on the sauce was easily the best part (only because it was so, so good...) Bun du riz were good, but needed a little Maggi seasoning to really get the balance right. Short ribs were great, very similar to a brisket at Ssam bar from a while back. The best dish was definitely the pork ribs, amazing in every way. We were there with our three year old, and this was his reaction - "This is sooo good." "You have to try this!" "Can I have them all?" He was totally right... Milk bar upstairs is kind of a half milk bar. No shakes, only 2 soft serve flavors, and instead of strawberry milk, they have fruity milk, which is fruity pebbles cereal milk (and cookies, cake, and pie). They also have the hot pocket sandwiches.

Don't know if it means anything, but I've been to Hearth recently. I love Hearth. I love eating at the pass at Hearth. It is not, on its very best night, anything like (or as good as) Ko. But it's really doing both a disservice to compare them.