mamster

I was there for lunch yesterday. My experience has been mixed: I love the decor, the ambience, and much of the food, but it can definitely be inconsistent. Also, the waiters are just jaw-droppingly inept. First of all, the bread is bland and it's supposed to be bland. I like it, but when I get the sandwiches, I always get the crescione (one piece of piadina, stuffed) rather than the piadine (two pieces with fillings in between) because the latter is just too bready. Yesterday I had the crescione with speck, fontina, and zucchini, and I liked it a lot. The meat and cheese crescione are by far my favorite thing they serve there; I used to get one with salami, cayenne pepper, and some kind of cheese that was excellent. Also got soup, which was farro and cannellini; it was a little oversalted and not terribly interesting. The desserts are mostly good; I don't even like tiramisu and I like their tiramisu. Good wine list, and I see they're now doing premium pours by the glass, including barbaresco, one of my favorites. Laurie had the tagliatelli with truffle butter, which I like, but it's like you said: perfect texture and a little bland. I like their tagliatelli with ragu, but (and this is something cooks are required by law to say) I like my homemade ragu better. They've changed their salads around since last I was there, but the bruciatina with crisped prosciutto and balsamic was great. But I could see thinking it's over-vinegared if you're not a vinegar hound like me. There's a variation on it now with hard-boiled eggs and something else. So basically I agree--it's a good place that I wish were unambiguously great. I'll keep going back because it's inexpensive and near my house, and I'm never actually disappointed.

There's a question worthy of a doctoral thesis.

Not to be on-topic or anything, but hey, I just finished frying some of that Whole Foods bacon too. Jinmyo, if the stuff awbrig gets at his Whole Foods is the same stuff we get, it's thick-sliced pretty regularly off the slab. I bought some Nueske's in Portland last weekend and it was sliced to order. I prefer to leave the deli-slicing to the pros.

Dibs on the portioning device!

According to Martin Yan, Vancouver's Chinatown is the world's best.

I haven't been to Philly's Best; is it better than Philadelphia Fevre?

I don't think people's adherence to dietary laws is a serious societal ill, but it sure is annoying. In a pluralistic society, being open to eating a wide variety of foods serves the common good, because it serves collaboration and open exchange with a the greatest number of people. The US has immigrants from a jillion different countries, and I don't think it's patronizing for me to say that all other things being equal, you are better off being ready to sit down at any of their houses and eat what's on the table. On the other hand, perhaps what I mean is that living my life that way brings me a great deal of pleasure; perhaps strict adherence to a dietary law that you find important brings you the same kind of pleasure. It's certainly not a practice without costs, though, and the cost is always that you annoy people whose food you refuse to share.

I worked in a high-end kitchen store for a while, and two things I learned are: (1) people never read instructions, and (2) they will throw everything into the dishwasher, including things much weirder than cast iron. We also got a lot of cast iron pans back with a thick coat of rust, people having completely ignored the seasoning instructions. None of this was particularly surprising. Oh, hey, here is an amusing story. I have this great blue chef's jacket that I got during the monthly employee draw at the store; we'd take returned and broken items that we couldn't sell and put employees' names in a random order, and they could choose whatever they liked. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the chef's jacket, but it had been washed, and it had this note on it, written by the employee who took the return: "It shrunk, said the fat man."

I don't think there's anything quite like Canlis in Portland, but (a) I could be wrong, and (b) there are a variety that are equally good but different. Wildwood and Higgins both focus on Northwest ingredients, for example, and are considered quintessential Portland destinations.

Please please please. It's definitely possible to be allergic (not a true allergy, but a genetic inability to metabolize) to certain amino acids. You know how it says on the Diet Coke can "phenylketonurics: contains phenylalanine"? Phenylketonurics are missing an enzyme in the phenylalanine metabolism pathway that causes them to accumulate toxic byproducts of this process. All newborns in the US are tested for phenylketonuria and if you've got it, you have to avoid eating too much phenylalanine while you're young (you can't avoid it completely), or it can cause severe brain damage and many other symptoms. What's important to note here is that it's not just the added phenylalanine in Diet Coke that triggers the syndrome: it's any phenylalanine, including that which occurs naturally in many high-protein foods. Similarly, there is no difference between the free glutamate in foods and added MSG. You would have to eat a stunning amount of added MSG to make up a substantial fraction of the natural free glutamate the typical eater gets. And double-blind clinical studies have failed to replicate "Chinese restaurant syndrome" symptoms even among people who identify themselves as MSG-sensitive. That doesn't mean MSG can't be overused like any seasoning, and it doesn't mean it's safe for the small percentage of people whose blood pressure is sodium-sensitive.

Belmont--welcome. First thing, have a look at the Willamette Week restaurant guide which came out just a couple months ago and features a number of reviews by our own Jim Dixon. Top spots in Portland in the last few years are Higgins, Wildwood, Paley's Place, and...what am I missing? It's been a long time since I've done any fine dining in Portland (I hope to rectify this soon), but one of my earliest culinary conversion experiences was the filet mignon in port wine sauce at Cafe des Amis; I'd had steak before, but not like that. They still have it on the menu, and I feel like I should go back for it one of these days.

Suvir, your lyrical chops make you the Saran rapper of our time. Question: I seem to remember that when I was in London, if an Indian restaurant had "bhelpuri" or "bhelpoori" in the name it meant that it was vegetarian. Do I have this right, and if so, what's the connection with the dish if any?

I'm going to Nightscotsman's cocktail party (see PNW) and will be bringing gougères split and made into sandwiches with arugula, Nueske's bacon, and homemade pickled onions. I'll eat some of those along with whatever other people bring.

I'm in Portland today and took the opportunity to indulge in some Oregon pinot noir. I did so at Oregon Wines on Broadway, downtown between Alder and Stark. It's a nice little place with a bar serving thirty Oregon pinots by the taste or glass, and little else. (There are whites on the shelves and a couple by the glass, and you can get bread and cheese.) A serious niche business; I hope they are doing well. I requested a flight of three tastes (1.5 oz), increasing in price. There's a five-tiered price structure with tastes between $1 and $5 and glasses up to $18 depending on the price of the bottle. I had a ten in my pocket, so I went for the $1-$2-$3 range and left a big tip. I don't know whether this makes me generous or stingy. The wines are served on a tasting sheet with room for you to write notes, so I did, even after admitting to the bartender that I know nothing about Oregon pinot and asking her to choose the wines. They were (in order by price) Runaway Red (I didn't catch the vintage year), 2000 Evesham Wood, and 2000 Witness Tree. I believe the cheapest bottle was $12 and the most expensive $40. It was an excellent choice of wines because they ran in a continuum from simple to complex, fruit-forward to leathery. All were similarly light in body. The Runaway Red was pure young fruit and easy drinking. The Witness Tree was full of tobacco and mineral flavors with a long finish. A hugely satisfying wine. The Evesham Wood was, well, kind of in between--more tannins than the Runaway Red but without the full supporting structure exhibited by the Witness Tree. Obviously I'm missing much of the vocabulary to describe these things, but this is a great place to get introduced to Oregon pinot. Plus it's right around the corner from Good Dog/Bad Dog.

I try to avoid ingesting anything that causes intoxication.

Damn, I wish my biochemistry professor had sent to me stay with his buddies in Switzerland. What I liked most about this piece--well, okay, it was the goat story. But aside from that, Ellen, you did a great job of establishing yourself as a knowledgeable amateur and bringing the reader along on your learning experience. I really enjoy that type of piece--when it's done in the right spirit and intelligence, it's a lot more approachable than "I am an expert and am going to tell you all I know about Pinot." -mamster, who didn't come here to raise goats

Probably about the hundred degrees that E. coli loves. Bux, as far as I know, the only reason to keep hot food uncovered is so it cools faster. The bacteria you're worried about here are at least facultatively aerobic, and the more oxygen they get, the faster they grow. But temperature has a much larger effect.

I don't envision the market basket thing being any sort of competition--it would be great if people wanted to help each other out via PM. Let me give the idea some thought (and by all means keep the suggestions coming), and let's give it a try next month. I love winter cooking above all others anyway.

As someone who works in a lab with microorganisms and watches just how fast they grow, I'm going to defend the government guidelines. Of course the guidelines are overcautious--they're like engineering standards. If you're building an office for ten people, you don't build a floor that can hold the weight of eleven people, you build it to hold fifty people or more. In your house, you can do what you want--it's your body--and I can be as lax as anyone. But the guidelines are written for commercial establishments and the people. If a restaurant is letting food sit out in the "danger zone" they're putting a lot of people at risk. The State of Washington did a study a few years ago about the causes of food poisoning in restaurants. The top two were not washing hands properly and not cooling hot foods fast enough. Here in the lab a bottle of warm "broth" goes from a microscopic number of bacterial cells to a swarming, stinking mess in a few hours. I'm not saying you should all be terrified of germs, but c'mon, don't you want the restaurants you eat in to be covered by regulations that are a little stronger rather than a little weaker than necessary? We're not talking about something like banning raw-milk cheeses, where you're cutting into the quality of the food--not letting food sit out at room temperature improves quality.

Anna, I don't think the divide is so deep: whether we're talking about intuitive cooks or recipe cooks, we're talking about cooks. If you really want to see a battle royale, try cooks vs. non-cooks. (Not really--the cooks can cook and the non-cooks can do dishes.) Jinmyo, that was scary.

My trick for cooling big pots of stock is to stick a bunch of ice cubes in a Ziploc and toss it in the pot and stir until the ice melts. It's pretty quick and also a lot of the fat ends up sticking to the outside of the bag.

I think this may have already come up, but has anyone been to Zoe? I keep wanting to try it, partly because it's a great people-watching corner.

1995.

Malawry, I edited that reference in. Suzanne's review noted (correctly) that there are no illustrations in Glorious French Food. He does at one point refer you to Essentials of Cooking which demonstrates some of the meat fabrication and prep techniques in particular, and I wanted that to be explained in the review. Perhaps I went overboard and made it sound like every technique described in GFF is illustrated in EoC, which is of course not so.

Okay, Jinmyo, since you twisted my arm: Your market basket items are ground beef, hamburger buns, ketchup and iceberg lettuce. GO! Seriously, we could have a thread to hash out details, but I don't want to steal Anna's thunder on this great idea. Let's see what she thinks and go from there. Also, I'm a bum.