MichaelB

Ohio: You can bring your own wine to a place that has no license. I think you can bring your own wine to a place with a beer or a beer and hard liquor license. There are more of these places than you might think. In Ohio, each type of license is allocated to each municipality based on population. So, in a given place, the broadest license might not be available but a narrower license might be. You are technically not permitted to bring your own wine to a place with a wine license. More precisely, the establishment cannot permit the consumption of anything that it could have sold you. This rule is almost universally ignored in finer places which will charge a corkage fee. The rule gets to absurd results in cases, for example where a restaurant is hosting a charity event and a distributor wishes to contribute the wine for the event. The distributor has to sell the wine to the restaurant (and collect cash on delivery; no credit extensions permitted in Ohio) and then the distributor may make a charitable contribution to the charity and the charity must pay for the wine consumed at the event. Geez!

Picked it up last Tuesday and read it overnight. I enjoyed it, even if there were a few places it dragged. The management style he advocates can be applied in virtually any service business.

Zero.

Why is tripe bleached? If anyone feels this would be better discussed in another thread, but all means point us to that thread, but I really wonder about this. I never knew tripe was bleached. And I guess my next question is, how do they make sure to get the bleach all out completely before the tripe reaches diners? I find chlorine bleach really gross in any context. ← Not to hijack the thread, Pan; but the bleach is almost never all the way out when tripe leaves the processing plant. When you open a box, you can still smell the chlorine smell. I find that the tripe has to washed several times to eliminate the odor. I have never worked with the unbleached product.

I have done it a couple of times. Came out beautifully. The cooking time is seriously off in the recipe, however. I think my wife has notes on the page in the book but cooking for 12 to 14 hours seems to be what I recall.

Worse, even. A left-handed Virgo. OK, I am essentially out of here until Saturday. I am off to two and a half fun-filled days of cooking in large quantities. I might get a chance to look in once or twice but probably not. Feel free to make fun of the lawyer playing chef on his birthday all you want. Oh, and I drove by Ron's Roost last night. No camera; no battery even if I had it.

I'll join you on that plateau in about a month and a half. ← As will I, ummmmm, someday. Well, that someday happens to be tomorrow.

Oooh, ohhh. I know the answer to this one. That's Jean-Luc.

I am in the middle of the execution phase of an annual charity event that my wife and I have been doing for 14 years. Dinner for about 90, six courses (plus breads), all the prep work is done in our home. The dinner itself is in the restaurant of a downtown hotel. Our dinner is the night before a food grazing event for about 1,000 guests. Food for the big event is by 20 or so chefs from around the country (and Europe). Our dinner guests are the chefs, an assistant for each, the event sponsors and executives from the charity. The main event is a week from Saturday and our dinner is a week from Friday. For the next 10 days, my constant companion will be a 15 page (more or less) Word document consisting of the menu, place settings, plate presentations and service requirements, a task list by day, ingredient lists, quantities and techniques by course, and ingredients and quantities by vendor for ordering purposes. I have been using a document like this for at least 9 years (that's how many versions I have archived). Last week's companion was a spreadsheet of the last 9 menus by course that I carried around as I ruminated over this year's menu. Next week's menu finally made it to paper at 10:00 this morning. This is a long way of saying that the basic organization for any project hasn't changed in many years -- or centuries; the tools just evolve.

If you can restarin yourself, hold onto a couple of Cannonballs for a week or two. I like mine with a bit more age on them.

If one were to send me a new battery for my camera, I could probably take care of that request. That was YOU? Hello, Mother. Did you ever find that photo album of mine that you "put away" for me sometime before I moved out an indeterminate number of years ago?

I didn't even know that Slim's served brunch. And it is a different sort of place. Patrick had some sort of farm/restaurant thing near Cleveland before coming to Cincinnati a few years ago. At least when he opened, dinner was a 4 course affair with the only choices being among 3 main courses. As you would have seen, the kitchen is nearly non-existent. You do have to be in the mood to do it "Slim's Way" to go there.

Geographical clarification: That would be Slim's in Northside. Northside is one of the old neighborhoods in the city. It is about 3 miles north of downtown and almost as far west. It would have been considerd to be on the northside of the area about 150 years ago. Today it is a neighborhood completing transition, particularly popular with the artistic community. Ronnie, if you took your 9 year old to the leather bar almost next door, please don't tell the rest of us about it.

Somehow I missed the initial mention of Al Brounstein's death. Hearing about it makes me very sad. My wife and I had the opportunity to meet him and spend nearly a half day with him in the late 1980's -- 1988 perhaps. I wanted to visit some of the smallish producers on a trip to Napa Valley that year. So, I picked several and wrote letters including with each letter a letter of introduction from the retailer I was using at the time. In each, I suggested an apppointment date and time and told the winemaker that I would call two days before to see if my suggestion was acceptable. Al Brounstein got one of those letters. On the second day preceding, I called to confirm my visit to Diamond Creek. Al introduced himself and told me in no uncertain terms that visitors were welcome only on the two picnic weekends he held each year. He would take my name and address and invite me to the picnic. When I told him that I couldn't travel all the way from Cincinnati just for the picnic, he told me how odd that was because someone from Cincinnati was visiting him "the day after tomorrow." It took us a while to figure out that I was that person. His reaction? -- "then what are you doing calling today when I am expecting you then?" He told me where to be at 10:00 on the appointed day. Turns out that it was his home. We spent an hour or two in his living room talking about the wine, the vineyards and his career. One of his cats spent the entire visit on my wife's lap. Al had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's and was receiving treatment in Sweden (I believe) because the drugs were not yet FDA approved. We spent a while discussing the state of the FDA (his earlier career had been in the pharmaceutical business) and the effectiveness of the drug therapy he was undergoing. He then took us up to vineyardswhere we spent a good long while at the top of the hill overlooking Volcanic Hill and Red Rock Terrace talking more about the wines, the vines, and the terroir. He left us to walk down to the lake to feed the ducks and to look in on Gravelly Meadow. He told us we could spend as much time with him as we wanted to but he didn't recommend walking to the lake in our "city" shoes (it was just the start of the rainy season and had rained 4 days straight). I really wanted to either ruin the shoes or go barefoot in the mud and cold. I never gain had the chance to spend time with Al. My wife and I talk often about that day fondly. I have at least 8 bottles remaining from each of the three vineyards from each of the 84, 85, 86 and 87 vintages. I think some Diamond Creek will be on the menu this weekend. Godspeed Al.

You owe my firm a new keyboard. The bill for smoke damage will come later. Who knew you could short a keyboard out that completely by spitting a little tea on it.

Four hours at places with extended tasting menus is not uncommon. I recall a couple of meals at the old Mainsonette that began at 6:30 and ended long after midnight. The winners though are two or three meals at our home where guests sat around 7:30 and left the table after 2:00.

Right now, I am ashamed of a certain (former) West Side girl. How could you forget the name of the Forest View? <ducking> ← Oh, geez. I'm ashamed of myself. Two rounds of "Edelweiss" (listening to it, I mean) should be penance enough, ya think? ← Not nearly penance enough. I have you down for performing in the Chicken Dance at Oktoberfest Zinzinnati in September

Right now, I am ashamed of a certain (former) West Side girl. How could you forget the name of the Forest View? <ducking>

For anyone who cares to know, that would be the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music

Wine pricing at both Per Se and The French Laundry is also service compris.

Funny I should see this here today. My wife returned last night from a trip to DC. She reported seeing "white tuna" on a menu (I cannot remember which restaurant) and asked the waiter about it. He was a bit evasive but admitted it was escolar.

Skyline on 5th? I have been a denizen of downtown Cincinnati for nearly 40 years (32 -- this week I might add -- since my first job downtown) and I don't ever recall a Skyline on 5th Street. Where was it? Could you be thinking of the Southwest corner of 7th and Vine? If so, we probably have met. I worked in the bank across the street for a couple of years in college.

Bruni had some not-very-kind words about Cincinnati style chili in this morning's Times article, "Life in the Fast-Food Lane." He tried a three way from the Gold Star chain outlet in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Please? I really am not sure I understand. I am a native and long time Cincinnatian but I don't get it. Sweet chili over spaghetti? What else might be on the menu? MB (ask Fabby to explain the first sentence of the post.)

Well, I did it. Last night I placed an order for a pair of Miele ovens for that wall. On the bottom, a H4780BP convection oven. Marlene, the current models do not have the "lip" feature on the racks. I did see references to that feature on the line that is being phased out. It also accpets 5 degree temperature increments -- I made sure to check that on a working model. On the top, a DG4080 steam oven -- also known as a steamer (not sure why they use oven as part of the title. Product reviews to follow soon.