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.

Hi, coming out with the family for a long weekend in a few weeks, was looking for some good recommendations. Coming from NYC, specifically looking for some things we can't get here, really don't care one bit for ambiance or anything like that, staying in La Jolla but perfectly happy to travel great distances for a good meal (we plan on shooting up to Chino farms at least twice during our stay). We'd love to find some good fish tacos, mexican, vietnamese (I heard there were some good places?) and anything doing a lot with really local, seasonal stuff. Lunch and dinner recs would be very helpful. Thanks! Will report back after.

Interesting... yesterday, the menu was up, but since today is Tuesday, and they're not open, no menu. From what we had yesterday, the pig's tails and ears were particularly good (the ears are pretty much just cracklings, which is entirely a good thing) as well as the beef tartare, bone marrow, and cod. To echo an earlier comment, one or two of the dishes were a little heavy on the salt, but overall, just a great meal. Tom was also there having dinner with a few folks as well, which was nice. Great playlist they had going - Led Zeppelin mixed in with some LL Cool J.

Nope. New name and website... http://damonfrugalfridayeverydayexcepttuesdaywebsite.com Went tonight, it was great.

payard does these.

I've never seen non-dessert eight treasure rice anywhere, I think you hit it right on the head, UE.

I think the focus on the muddled nature of the restaurant has to do with a desire to want Shang to be more than it actually is. When the food is great, even if it's origins are confusing, no one really cares too deeply about the disconnect. We very often read about something that boils down to, well, it's not really (insert cuisine/style here), but it is really, really good, so that's ok. The problem at Shang is that nothing is great, so the things that are okay or good need some validation - how do they tie into the theme, how do I justify them as being more than they are? In the early days of WD-50, some things didn't really work, but they made sense in the experimental nature of the restaurant, so you could at least understand how they got there. Since Shang doesn't define what it really is, so much, it's hard to give anything that justification, which leaves just a bunch of okay or good food, which isn't really saying much. People want it to be Chinese, I think, because there is clearly a void of gourmet high end Chinese in New York. I really wanted to like Shang. I don't care if a chef is around or not. I went in hoping for great Chinese food, or failing that, at least great food. It wasn't great. It was barely good. I left sad.

Given the state of the economy, seems unlikely.

Canal and Mott - go to Kam Man. They have everything you list, and will have just about anything that isn't fresh. Hong Kong Supermarket, as mentioned, is great, too. You can always go to Deluxe Supermarket for really amazing fresh items, especially all kinds of meats - it's at 79 elizabeth.

Don't know if it's the best dish I ever ate, but the steak tartare at the bar room at the modern is the best steak tartare I've ever had anywhere.

Part of the issue at Ko is obviously the unfamiliarity of the chefs to being up front like that. When we went for dinner right after they opened, it could not have been stiffer or more awkward. When we went back for lunch, and they had been open a while, and we asked some questions, the staff seemed to ease up and we had a great time, although not one I would call out for best service ever, or anything like that. We've always like the Momo service model - very casual, obviously, but also very well-informed and genuinely interested in the food - really, it's as conversational and engaging as you want it to be. We've found this to be true at milk bar as well. Best service experience would have to be Per Se, hands down. But at that level, you (mostly) expect that. The fact that they can manage to nevertheless exceed expectations says a lot about how seriously they take it. One group of restaurants that no one has mentioned, but that we've felt have quite warm and excellent service are the Arpaia/Psilakis joints.