mongo_jones

is the boulder one near the crossroads mall on 30th or something like that? we ate there once after a movie. so far it is the best mexican we've had in boulder--i remember the salsa was particularly good--but nothing outstanding. tonight we eat at another mexican place with one of our colleagues--don't know the name but it is on broadway at the extreme north end of town. i will report findings here. we must drive out to this lafayette place robin's raving about too now.

doubtless this bizarre piece of boulderana has been discussed here before. if it hasn't here's a quick primer: for some reason dushanbe (the capital of tajikstan) and boulder are sister cities. to mark this relationship the city of dushanbe sent a slew of craftsmen and artists to build a lavish, traditional tajik teahouse in boulder (i'm not sure what the coloradans sent in exchange--perhaps a lifesize cut-out of john elway?). anyway, the teahouse has a great tea selection--including constantly updated darjeeling single estates--and pretty good tea-time food (and very crappy dinner food--never been for lunch). most importantly the tea house serves as a tourist attraction that guests who are unmoved by the prospect of hiking and nature can be taken to. and so, yesterday we took my visiting uncle and aunt over. tea-time is between 3 and 5 p.m but they sat us for tea at 6.30 (the hostess didn't blink, but our waitress didn't look too happy--gave her a bigger than 20% tip anyway). we had some really good tea--the second flush from an estate called margaret's hope or margaret hope or something along those lines. since we arrived after tea-time was technically over they were out of pastries but this was just as well as we then got to order their heavenly ginger bread--thickly sliced, very gingery and topped with excellent cream. if you're ever in boulder and you're a tea person it is well worth a visit.

people hate liver? i love spam

no, no--see http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...60entry629376

milk chocolate (to be fair this only after i had a nasty stomach flu 5 years ago and threw up copious amounts of milk chocolate--the last thing i'd eaten before i caught the bug) white chocolate (but not jason williams) herbal teas (quite apart from the sucky taste of most herbal teas i demand that if something doesn't contain any tea it not be called tea--herb water?) earl grey--the english are crazy jackfruit

can you say "scan/photograph and post"? billy dee! billy dee! billy dee!

ha ha ha!

i'm a little confused by this: "Mr. Pelaccio last caught diners' attention at Chickenbone Cafe on the south side of Williamsburg, a section of Brooklyn still suspended in mid-metamorphosis." now, i'm not a regular reader of the times so this is probably merely an uninformed set of questions but wasn't bruni stationed in italy until he took up this gig? how is it that he speaks of what this chef did at his previous establishment? or does it not seem to anyone else that this is an odd sentence for a reviewer very recently arrived in town to make? or is he in fact not so recently arrived? there were similar constructions in the babbo review as well. i like bruni's reviews but his cutesiness with language is already beginning to wear on me--there's a certain college composition paper feel to some of it. and with all the lepidocteric metaphors one can't help but remember that moths also emerge from chrysales.

great article andrea--considered and not unbalanced by your own preferences. thanks for the link.

actually there was a discussion about this on another forum soon after i made that post. tryska and others convinced me i should be eating 10 pounds of coconut a day and bathing in coconut oil.

not even root beer? everybody likes a little root beer now and then. i must dissent on the root beer thing. growing up in india i'd encountered so much root beer in dennis the menace, archie comics etc. when i first arrived in the u.s it was one of the first things i hunted down. only to discover that it tasted like vicco vajradanti ayurvedic herbal toothpaste (which is not something of which i have a good sense-memory association). but back to the mid-calorie programming. will they bring out caffeine-free versions of these as well?

russ, that's a very succinct, pointed way of putting it. cuts through a lot of the tendentious aspects of the discussion. i hadn't thought of it that way. i don't see why the times (or any other outlet that uses a star system based on the same principles/rhetoric) can't just say as much (or little). by the way, i was in los angeles for 3 weeks last month--among the other pleasures of our return was reading your stuff in the food section 3 of the times 3 weeks in a row. especially the piece on the farmer's market which made our return to boulder so much more difficult.

most of these are in fact questions with subjective answers. the only one that might not be is the first (though i have a tough time believing batali is shopping at costco). as for the godfather/gigli comparison, that isn't a fair analogy. instead let's compare "the godfather" and say, "the apartment"--both top-notch representatives of their respective genres. would you say these are not both 5 star films? (edit to add the last question)

the remaining pictures: the menu at han-il kwan--not a great picture but you can see i wasn't kidding when i said there's no english names or descriptions of dishes on it: some of the food at han-il kwan; i would have taken more, better pictures but my in-laws were completely befuddled by my food photography and i decided to let it be rather than explain egullet to them. visible in this pic are 1)the spicy black-cod 2) the seafood pancakes and 3) over on the end of the table the main attraction the jun-gol steaming away on its own burner. another quick reason to go here: they have the best banchan. the banchan etc. at nrz seafood (the korean sashimi place). as you can see there's edamame, kim-chi, marinated cucumber, blocks of steamed tofu with soy sauce and some tangy greens. also on the table are the cross between rice-porridge and clam chowder i mentioned (don't know what this is called), and hot chilli paste, peppers and garlic. i don't know if this is widely prevalent, but at this place sashimi is eaten the same way that bbq is in many korean restaurants--rolled up in a lettuce leaf with chilli paste, raw garlic cloves etc. the sashimi itself. i believe it was red snapper and cod/halibut--we had some translation issues since no one present knew the english names of the fish. also interesting, and you can see this right below the lemon circle, is that in addition to the sashimi they serve cuts of the chewier parts of the fish closer to the bone. i kinda liked that. and this is the spicy fish soup and grilled pike mackerel that shows up after you get done with the sashimi. once again all of this costs $40--and three can eat well. and finally away from the restaurants a home-grilled galbi meal. also present on the table: kim-chi, marinated cucumbers, lettuce, kochu-jang, bin-dae-tok (sp.? a green-onion and shrimp pancake) and rice steamed with a red bean of some sort. i'm also tempted to throw in a picture of my friends' cute little boy. going through the trip pictures i see the two major themes are food pics and pics of various breeding friends'/cousins' little children. but they're not edible (or at least so that fancypants judge said) and so i'll restrain myself. well, that's it for the pictures. i apologize for the low quality of some (all?) of them, and if their size has caused anyone connection/page-load problems. let me know if you would like a full-size version of any of these for a closer look and i'll email them to you.

i actually like to cook slowly, langurously. the key is to know your rhythms and plan meals accordingly. i always get dinner on the table exactly when i say i will--which is more than i can say for my wife (and it is a good thing she doesn't read egullet).

all of you beer-aficionados probably know about fat tire, boulder colorado's favorite beer. while drinking a glass of it with my lunch yesterday i read the label carefully for the first time, and noticed that in addition to the capsule brewery history, genealogy of the name "fat tire", alcohol content, best-by date etc. they also list the optimum temperature at which to drink. can't remember now what that is (45 degrees f?) but am wondering how common a practice it is among craft-beer makers to put temperature recommendations on their bottles. and do any of you actually get out a thermometer to check?

one of the best ways to enjoy gur is to wrap a fresh hot paratha around a few small (or large) chunks of it. gurer payesh (bengali style kheer with gur instead of sugar) is also excellent.

louella parsons and hedda hopper were a pair of feared, vicious, highly influential hollywood gossip columnists back in the golden age of the studio system in the 20s and 30s. they wrote for rival publications and had a rivalry of their own--promoting favorites, dragging down the other's favorites and so on. surprised no one's made a movie about them yet. or have they?

yup! and the pizza's still pretty good. i'm happy to report that canter's has not upgraded their waitresses. i once had a roach crawl over the back of my date's chair there--when i pointed it out to the old dragon serving us she casually knocked it off with her hand, stepped on it and kept taking our order. there's a lot of great fast food at the farmers market too, of course.

this looks like a mangosteen photographed from the other perspective... still not too clear Don't we have a botanist lurking around?? alas v.gautam seems to have abandoned us completely

every louella parsons needs a hedda hopper or else the universe gets thrown off balance.

i'm sorry to have set off such a wave of belle-lettrism with my offhand comment. but since we're in these waters here's a little more cloudiness: gantlet1 noun 1 a section of a railway where two tracks overlap 2 (U.S.) a variant spelling of: gauntlet2 [ETYMOLOGY: C17 gantlope (modern spelling influenced by gauntlet1), from Swedish gatlopp, literally: passageway, from gata way (related to gate3) + lop course] gauntlet1 , gantlet noun 1 a medieval armoured leather glove 2 a heavy glove with a long cuff 3 take up (or throw down) the gauntlet to accept (or offer) a challenge [ETYMOLOGY: 15th Century: from Old French gantelet, diminutive of gant glove, of Germanic origin] all this from http://www.wordreference.com/definition/gantlet.htm this bruni is a subtle fellow--takes our minds off his pickiness with music by throwing in a little unusual word usage.

oh gantlet is a correct spelling alright--it just isn't very common usage. since it showed in an otherwise archaic spelling-free article in the times i wondered whether it was a common usage among fancy-pants americans. you know you people can't spell most words correctly. does this add something to bruni's personality? that he'll occasionally throw down a gantlet, so to speak? i'll try to not let it burthen my reading of his reviews.

damiano's for ny style pizza; india sweet house on pico/fairfax for north indian comfort food; sunnin (spelling?) for great lebanese on the corner of westwood and santa monica. does hanbat sullung tang (again, sp.?) in koreatown count? they only have one item on their menu (with variations).

something else to think about as we consider what "new indian" might mean in a more global sense is this (i've written about this on the indian forum as well and again i am probably echoing vikram here--he is smarter and has eaten more than me): one of the most exciting things that's happening in india as the economy liberalizes and middle-class people begin to start leaving their home regions for work in the major metros across the country is that the different indian culinary traditions are beginning to encounter each other in a fuller way than they have before. along with other social forces that i've written about elsewhere on egullet this is leading to the breaking the monopoly of the north-indian "moghlai" restaurant as the kind of place you go out to to eat indian food in india. (another symptom of this change is the explosion in regional cookbook publication in india--penguin has an excellent regional series and they make most of their money from cookbook sales--arundhati roy notwithstanding.) within india therefore a welcome form that "new indian" cuisine may take is the presence of foods from different parts of india on the same menu in a structured, articulated way that currently doesn't exist (not to my knowledge, at least--that is to say outside of special food festival menus at the 5-stars). this would be "fusion" in a very indian sense and indeed vibrant and "new". this again is something gourmets not familiar with the contours of indian regional cuisines may not be able to recognize. but i think they should make rhetorical space for these kinds of articulations alongside their own. ------ edit to add link to vikram's excellent article on swati snacks in bombay: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=40612