mamster

Actually, EMSG, I only partially agree with you. I'd say that someone who thinks Taco Bell has better food than the average taco truck has bad taste. It's okay to think that your taste is better than someone else's--that's what taste is all about. The problem with Zagat is that they provide no way of reconciling people's different tastes other than smashing them all together into an unsavory mush, and the problem with Grimes is that he's not one of the first ten thousand people to notice this, and he riffs off his unclever deduction with analogies dumb enough to turn me off his whole argument.

The food at Jean Georges is better than the food at Grocery. I haven't been to either place, but I'm sure this is true. This points up a problem with the Zagat methodology that has been pointed out time and again. Grimes doesn't usually strike me as a snob, but listen to his analogy one more time: A pop song writer is not trying to be Chopin. They are writing different types of music--both within a particular Western musical tradition, to be sure, but Chopin was not trying to write pop songs and pop song writers are not trying to generate polonaises (cauliflower or otherwise). I assume Jean Georges uses better ingredients than Grocery and prepares them with more finesse, and for that reason it deserves a higher food rating. But many have said that the standard is not simply quality but complexity, subtlety, and so on. If that is so, why wasn't Grimes's article about Peter Luger? Luger's steak is the best in town; this is interesting in and of itself, but there's nothing interesting about Luger's preparation or much of the rest of their food. And yet it consistently gets sky-high Zagat ratings for food. I realize Grocery is the newcomer to the list, but it seems like the more interesting criticism would be directed at Luger (and has been here on eG, to be sure). How would you rate the food at Grand Sichuan International? It's not haute cuisine by any standard, but I noticed that Jeffrey Steingarten took Fuchsia Dunlop there and she said it compares favorably with good restaurants in Sichuan province. There is no question that some of the best food I've had in New York was at GSI, and I would rank its food on average above Gramery Tavern by any standard. (The service and decor at GT are much better, of course.) I wonder what Grimes would say to that. Bux, I tend to agree with you when you say: But you know what? I'm more impressed by something moderately hard to do and done perfectly than something very hard to do done pretty well. There is something really disappointing about a menu that falls short of its ambitions even ever so slightly. As you say, the point of Michelin is to help you avoid that experience, and it does a better job than Zagat in that respect. We agree as far as that goes. schaem: No doubt. But look again at what Grimes said: "capture the imagination". There is little question that people are going to be using the Beatles in analogies in 2060. Pearl Jam, okay, probably not. I don't think music schools should start studying Pearl Jam. I think Chopin offers a lot more to analyze and music students will learn more by playing Chopin than by playing "Evenflow." But, gosh, I'm just not interested in listening to Chopin. It doesn't make me feel perfectly thrilled to be alive the way great rock songs do. I maintain that this is well and good and that for this reason it makes no sense to assign Pearl Jam and Chopin competing star ratings, unless the rating is for historical durability or complexity rather than quality. Instead, review should do what Grimes's reviews do anyway up to the end: explain what type of restaurant (or song) we're talking about, and then discuss how good an example of that type of restaurant or song we have on our hands. Of course, the readers love ratings, so there you go.

Remember O'Boisies, the freeform potato-batter chips? I believe the slogan was "O'Boisies are o'boisterous." When I was a kid I wondered, hey, if they're using a batter, why make the chips the same size as regular chips? Why not make them unbelievably huge?

I'm with tighe. I also love the oxtails, but I don't like the roll they usually make it on. Ask them to put the oxtails on the baguette. Actually, just a pile of oxtail meat with bread on the side is even better.

Ooh, yes, the private dining room. I saw it at the opening party last week, and it looks grand. Party!

Bandol is a nice place. There was some construction noise (the sign was being put up) and the place was pretty empty, but we were quite early. tighe, scrat, and I shared a goat cheese appetizer, where the cheese was warmed in some kind of leaf (I totally forget what kind) and served with a warm beet and julienned leek salad and some little dots of pear conserve. It was good, although the unwrapping of the cheese felt a bit hunter-gatherer. I had calf's liver with red onion marmalade and pommes frites. Frites were good, liver was sliced thin but not cooked to death. The bread needs a little work. I'm not sure where it's from, but there were two different ficelle-shaped loaves, both of which had poor crust development and not a lot of flavor. Good butter, though. There are a million things on the menu I want to go back for, so stay tuned.

I also recommend Importfood--they're based east of Seattle and I've ordered from them. Yes, of course, massaman curry is wonderful with lamb. There's one upscale restaurant in Bangkok known for serving a rack of lamb with massaman curry. (I hope they serve it rare.)

So, 11am on Friday? I absolutely, positively have to be out of there by 11:50 to make it to class, which I doubt will be a problem unless they make the duck confit to order.

Sure I'm offended. I understand that some music is traditionally upper-class and that some music takes more training to write and perform. At the same time, I like Pearl Jam better than Chopin. If I were asked to rank a Pearl Jam song against a Chopin etude in a Zagat-style rating, I would rank the Pearl Jam song higher. At the same time, if someone tells me he likes Chopin better than Pearl Jam, or classical better than rock in general, I can't argue with that and I wish them all the best. But that's not what Grimes said. He said: He is profoundly wrong, and it's just as offensive as if he said that people who like Thai food have unsophisticated palates, because Thai food can't grip the imagination the way French food can. It's the same old shit: my art is better than your art, and in the end this tells us more about Grimes than about whatever belabored point about Zagat he was trying to make.

In that case, Grimes is spending a slow news day rehashing an extremely old and correct argument against the Zagat method and throwing in offensive and lame analogies.

Of course they'd still be a minor league team. And no matter how well the Seahawks play, they'll never join the NBA. I agree completely that dining guides should be well-categorized. It should be clear whether the review is of a fine-dining establishment or a burger joint. And then it should tell me whether this is a good example of its genre. Grimes's criticism of Zagat is right: if I look at the food ratings alone, I can't tell whether it's one of the city's best French restaurants or a hole-in-the-wall run by a cranky soup genius. Grimes sounds like a critic who has started to believe his own hype: there is his opinion and then there are bad opinions. Everyone is tempted to fall into that trap, but grownups can often avoid it. It's true: I think rock and roll is the best music on earth, but I'm capable of understanding that some people enjoy classical music or opera or jazz just as much as I enjoy rock and roll, and I respect that. Anybody who purports to put out a guide ranking all restaurants in a city from best to worst is in for an impossible job. Grimes seems to be taking Zagat to task not for thinking they can do this, but for not doing it right.

I couldn't possibly agree with Grimes less. "Olympic diving might offer the best analogy. A perfect reverse somersault with one turn cannot earn as high a score as a perfect reverse somersault with two and a half turns. By the same token, the perfect three-minute pop song cannot grip the imagination and hold it the way a three-minute polonaise by Chopin can." Pop music is my favorite thing in the world. If you told me I could eat all the rest of my meals at Burger King and keep my music collection or choose any restaurant in the world every night for the rest of my life but never hear Belle & Sebastian's "Dirty Dream Number Two" or the Pernice Brothers' "Working Girls" again, it would be me and Rick Bayless chowing down on our crappy baguettes night after night at the BK and rocking out. With another analogy (the diving one is also stupid), Grimes might have convinced me, but (a) this is a classic asshole comment, and (b) last night Laurie and I went out for tacos and had our imaginations gripped every bit as much by the tacos as by the ten-course "modern European" tasting menu of the previous night (which was also very good). I don't know or care whether Grocery's food deserves a high Zagat rating. Zagat ratings are subjective, manipulable, and unreliable. But the only fair measure of a restaurant is how well it succeeds at being the type of restaurant it is. If I want to go out for a burger, I want to know who is serving a great burger. I don't want to be told that I really prefer steak tartare because it satisfies the soul or something. edit: misplaced paren

There is a wider variety of Thai curries than you are ever likely to see on an American restaurant menu, to start with, but yes, there are definitely some traditional pairings. Panang curry with beef is a superb combination. Massaman curry is generally chicken or beef. In the south of Thailand there is a wonderful yellow fish maw curry. One of my favorite curry-like dishes is the Chiang Mai noodle soup called kao soi, which is made with both a version of red curry space and some dried spices (often fresh turmeric as well). It usually includes chicken or beef. Hope this helps get you started--try some combinations and see what you like, or ask the staff for recommendations. Hard-and-fast rules are not a big thing in Thai cooking, which is endlessly varied and inventive, but neither are you likely to have a choice of meat with every entree at a restaurant in Thailand the way you often do in the US.

Betty, for phad thai I use "rice stick" noodles, the ones that are approximately the width of tagliolini, wider than the vermicelli noodles and thinner than the fettucine-like ones. Perhaps I'm not being clear. The noodles are about 1/8" wide, I'd say. Laurie and I took three friends to Thailand on our last trip, and I've thought about leading a tour, but I don't know if I have the knowledge to make it worthwhile. pim, on the other hand, could do a knockout job.

I'm hoping pim knows more here (again!) because most of my sweet consumption in Thailand has been limited to mango with sticky rice, fresh fruit, those little popsicles sold on the street, and Pocky sticks. One thing I was just reminded of last night is that the photos showing me cooking phad thai were taken by eGullet user LaurieA-B. Thanks, LaurieA-B!

My understanding, and pim may need to correct me, is that Royal Thai cuisine is distinguished largely by presentation, and that the idea that there were once many recipes known only to the royal court is a myth. Nowadays, a restaurant that claims to serve "Royal Thai" cuisine is likely to have more vegetable carvings and higher prices. (Many such places do serve good food regardless.) Certainly, though, since the royal court has long been in the central plains, it's not surprising that many royal Thai dishes are rich in coconut milk. pim, help me out here! Oh, and prasantrin, you didn't miss the class--it's linked from the first post in this thread, and is available in perpetuity. It's not a one-time event.

That would look so much like vomit brulee it wouldn't be funny, unless you were a kid, in which case it would be hilarious.

Snowangel, I often make phad thai without any meat as well. And I'd love to do a class on more obscure Thai dishes at some point. I don't know when my next trip to Thailand is, but it's gonna be big--I've already learned enough Thai to decipher many menu items. trillium, I freeze chile pastes. And hey, I'll give frozen galangal a try. I assume it's cheaper, too.

None of the ingredients in the nam sod/kao tod has gluten. It's more a figure of speech here, meaning "it gets sticky." The rice has a little amylopectin, which I think is the culprit. Jason, you put the yum in yam. And I'll get to work on part two as soon as you double our salary.

I should add that I told pim I'd be on question duty for most of today, so ask away--just don't ask me about my childhood in Bangkok!

I grew up on sweet phad thai (well, grew up since 1996 or so) and still like it that way. The recipe I gave uses a lot of sugar, but also a lot of acid, and they tend to balance each other. By all means reduce the sugar if you prefer, of course. If you're using frozen galangal, you might actually start with less. I haven't bought prepackaged frozen galangal, but I often put fresh galangal in the freezer, and it freezes well, but it tends to dry out a bit and this concentrates the flavor. Shrimp paste lasts a long time in the refrigerator. Put the jar in a Ziploc bag or the smell will permeate your fridge. I couldn't find cardamom leaves either. Isaan sour sausage is one of my favorite things. It's very simple, really. You make sticky rice and mix it with ground pork, lots of garlic, and salt or fish sauce. Then you let it ferment at room temperature until sour. Traditionally it's made into one-inch links, but you can also just make a log and wrap it in plastic. There is a very small but real risk of botulism with any home-fermented sausage product that doesn't use curing salts, and at some point I'm planning to see if I can develop a version of sai krok that uses nitrates without adversely affecting the flavor. Basically, if you try sai krok and end up in the hospital, you didn't hear about it from me.

When Laurie and I lived in NYC, it was in the Teachers College dorm on 121st, and our friendly RAs arranged a bus to the Harlem Fairway every Saturday morning. We went every week, and we always put on the jackets. The things I remember best are finding Red Hook ESB for $4.49 a six pack (here in Seattle, its homeland, it's was $6-$7 even then); the mountain of gargantuan sweet potatoes; the fresh mozzarella; and Fairway's unique bagging strategy. They would give us three times as many plastic bags as any other grocery, often putting a single can in one bag. Do they still do that?

Can I ask a relatively off-topic question about Snapple? Back when I spent the summer of '94 in NYC, I drank a lot of Snapple cherry soda. I think it was called "French" cherry soda for some reason. As far as cherry soda goes, it was great. Does this product still exist?

Mark S, for what it's worth, I agree with slkinsey completely.

One 14 oz can of Chaokoh is a little less than two cups (one of milk, one of cream), and a 19 oz can of Mae Ploy is a little more than two cups. Mae Ploy has a higher cream to milk ratio. In other words, the answer is two cans, and if you're using the large cans of Mae Ploy you might have a little extra.