mamster

What I wouldn't give to go out on top like Julia Child. It was about seven months ago that I interviewed her, and she was 100% lucid and feisty, brimming with all the qualities that made her a household name in the first place. My favorite thing about talking with her was finding that she hadn't mellowed one iota in her old age. No low-fat diets, no Alice Waters cooking-as-shopping, butter is still better. You can't help but admire that.

Laurie and I went to the Bellevue WF today with MsRamsey, Schielke, and MsSchielke. Unsurprisingly, it's a great store. We were particularly interested to see what it had that Seattle lacks. The prepared food section is much larger, and there's gelato. Really good gelato. I tasted chocolate jalapeno, which was genuinely good, not just in a gimmicky way, and a big bite of Schielke's espresso, which was awesome -- barely sweet at all. If you're one of the people who was bemoaning the overly sweet Frappuccino, get over there and grab the espresso gelato. There's also a large outdoor seating area.

Let's see. I like The Lemongrass, further north on 12th near Seattle U (good fresh rolls and banh xeo, haven't tried the coffee). I've heard good things about but haven't yet been to Moonlight Cafe on Jackson. I liked the seven courses of beef at Nha Trang, but it is no longer. I had a good meal at Green Papaya, on Pine, but have heard wildly mixed things since then. I think the banh mi shop you mentioned is Buu Dien, which does have the best Vietnamese iced coffee I've tried.

The standard of service at the average Seattle restaurant is far above the average New York restaurant. The standard of service at high-end restaurants is higher in New York. I got used to the idea that when I went into a neighborhood restaurant in New York, I would have to ask for every water refill -- and there was no drought at the time. The reasons for bad service at any restaurant, in my view (barring the occasional off night) are high turnover and insufficient training, problems that feed off each other.

There's just no comparison. There are literally dozens of restaurants in New York that, if transplanted to Seattle, would instantly be the best restaurant in town, and not just the four-star places. That said, there are plenty of areas in which Seattle can compete. Vietnamese food is one. Thai is another. I haven't been to Sripraphai (Laurie has), but I'd be quite surprised if it was any better than Noodle Boat. Then there are the places that exist on the force of one person's personality and skill and simply can't be found anywhere else, like Salumi and Harvest Vine. The most interesting trend we're seeing in the Northwest is small plates focusing on artfully prepared high quality ingredients. What I like about this is that it's inventive without being over the top, and it capitalizes on something we really have going for us: ingredient quality. We're not going to have a restaurant here that competes with Ducasse, but our produce beats the pants off what you get in New York, and it's the chefs who start with great stuff and produce simple but not-too-simple dishes who are going to make Seattle (and Portland) dining destinations, if that happens. This approach is exemplified by Lark in Seattle and by any number of places (Park Kitchen, clarklewis, and so on) in Portland. Of course, I'm biased, because 95% of the time this is the kind of food I want to eat when I go out for a nice meal.

It was quite tasty, tsquare. Laurie is going to post the full lunch menu later (it may well change tomorrow, of course), but here's what I had: Oxtail terrine with microgreens and horseradish cream. A mercifully modest portion (cut into a perfect square) of chewy, beefy goodness. Seared sea scallops with fresh corn polenta. The scallops were perfectly cooked and nicely crusted, but the corn was the best part of the whole lunch. There was as much butter in it as corn, I think, not that I'm complaining. Espresso chocolate pot de creme. Impeccably smooth and chocolaty, with real espresso flavor. Worthy of all the accolades. The cheese plate was not so great, I thought, though Laurie liked it better than I did. There was gorgonzola dolce, lancashire, garrotxa, and a washed rind cheese I'm blanking on. I'd had them all before, and the lancashire was in pretty dire shape; it had gotten translucent and spongy in parts. The pecan bread served alongside is too sweet. We liked the room a lot. It was not very busy at lunch, but there were a few other tables include one fairly large party, eight or ten people. I'm especially looking forward to going back in the winter, since winter food is my favorite kind.

If you get one of the sandwiches wrapped to go and it sits around, the bread gets a little soggy and it's easier to eat. This is also true at Salumi.

The naem you're looking for is not the same as what you make in pim's (excellent) recipe. I've never seen it for sale in the US; I'm sure they make their own at Lotus. You can do so too, with Thompson's recipe. I've been working on an article about this sausage approximately forever; this discussion has prodded me to make another batch and report back. There is a small but genuine risk of botulism here. So far I'm unscathed.

Richard, this scale looks great, and the tare button on my scale is dying, so I have an excuse. One question: is one of those buttons on the front of the KD-600 a grams/ounces button? Because to switch my current scale (a Soehnle) you have to flip it over, which is a pain. Thanks!

In my opinion, it's worth getting gulf or Mexican whites rather than Black Tiger, which have a catchy name but little else to recommend them. Buy frozen, not defrosted, and brine. The best prices are at Asian groceries, but you'll need to buy a 1- or 2-kilo block, which is fine if you've got a big barbecue going on.

Richard, my recommendation of the glass bottle may be superstitious -- I'm inferring that if bottled water starts to taste weird and plasticky a couple of days after opening, so will fish sauce. There could be any number of reasons why this isn't true, however. Anyone know?

A year or two ago I was sitting in a wine bar in downtown Portland, OR, and the person next to me mentioned that she was coming down with a cold. The bartender's face lit up and she said, "Okay, here's the first thing you do. You NEED to get a big container of tom kha gai." "What's that?" the patron asked. "It's Thai chicken soup. Write this down. TOM KHA GAI." So apparently word is getting around.

No, it's not supposed to be sweet, but it's not surprising to find it sweet in a Thai-American restaurant. For Thai salads in general, and larb in particular, I believe the sour taste should hit you first, followed by a good dose of chile heat and salt. The sugar acts as a blending undertone that keeps any of the other flavors from running away with the show, but if you taste sugar, it's got too much. Though, come to think of it, "sweet larb!" makes a good exclamation.

Knicke, I use Baby (aka Golden Boy) brand, but it really doesn't matter that much for most uses. Like any ingredient, it's possible to get obsessive about fish sauce, but I find all the major brands just fine. Look for a short ingredient list, and buy a glass bottle. I go through a 725 ml bottle in three to six months, depending on how much I'm cooking, but I wouldn't worry about year-old fish sauce. It will darken, but it won't affect the flavor, and there's a ton of salt in there. Oh, Baby does have sugar in it, but clearly not a lot.

My favorite meatball recipe, which isn't going to help Dave at all, is from The Italian Country Table by Lynne Rosetto Kasper. They're made with chicken thighs, spinach, almonds, lemon zest, breadcrumbs, and a whole bunch of other things, and served with a sweet and sour sauce (agrodolce). They're unusual and delicious. The most common error I see with traditional pork/beef/veal meatballs is not enough filler. At that point it's like biting into an overcooked hamburger. Here in Seattle, a new sandwich place called Baguette Box is serving a fantastic meatball sub that gets the texture exactly right. I'd somehow convinced myself that any meatball sub was as good as any other until this sandwich reminded me how wrong I was.

Not to mention Remy Funfrock!

I run into this problem most often with stir-fried dishes in Chinese restaurants, and both stir-fries and curries at Thai restaurants. I have absolutely no problem picking up a shrimp with my hands and slurping the meat out of the tail, but I don't want to reach into a curry to do so. Also, I do eat shrimp shells under certain circumstances (i.e., if it seems tasty in a particular context, I eat it). It's time for phase two, the international education and enforcement campaign.

mjamonica, is it possible you undercooked the kale? Here's what I do. Put a little oil in a pot. Add minced onion and saute briefly. Add kale, salt, curry powder, and a little water, cover, and braise half an hour. It's probably one of the most health-foodish things I eat, although it does need at least some salt.

My food philosophy comes from a sign on I-5 about 60 miles north of Portland: EAT DIESEL GAS

I was looking at this recipe from today's NYT, which looks quite tasty: Okra and Tomato Stew With Savannah White Shrimp and Sausage And was struck by this instruction, of which you've no doubt seen the result hundreds of times: "24 large Savannah white shrimp or other large shrimp (16 to 20 in a pound), peeled to last tail segment and deveined" Why do people leave the shell on that last segment? It's no good to eat. It's hard to get it off without losing a bit of shrimp meat, and then you have to find a place to put it on your plate. Admittedly, it looks cute. Is that the only reason? Is that really worth it?

Thanks, slbunge. As you noted, anything with an entire stick of butter in it will taste a little like brioche. Not that this is a bad thing.

No one so far has mentioned duck. To me. green beans and duck are one of those meant-to-be combinations, like collards and pork. Mark Bittman had a great Minimalist not too long ago where he braised duck pieces with green beans, shallots, lime juice, and fish sauce. We scarfed it. But you don't even need actual duck meat to make green beans great. They're lovely glazed with some reduced duck stock and butter, or sauteed in duck fat and then braised. Green beans are one of those vegetables where, as Woody Allen said about sex and chocolate, even when they're bad they're pretty good. It's hard to find a green bean specimen so shady it can't be cooked into melting deliciousness.

Lola's menus are now posted at http://www.tomdouglas.com/.

BH, I would also be delighted to see a half-size Tully's shake. At my local Tully's (Broadway and Pike), there's a pile of 30% off coupons by the register, good all summer for a cheaper shake, spin, tango, or swirkle. Okay, there's no such thing as a swirkle anymore, but if there were, this coupon would be good for it. If you don't see the coupons at your Tully's, ask.

Yeah, I think in that recent P-I story about the new lo-cal Frappuccinos, it showed that the Frappuccino lite had like 180 calories, the regular 300 calories, and the Tully's shake 175,000 calories. Something like that.