markk
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Posts posted by markk
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I'm a "supertaster", and I've taken other tests with unrelated questions that also said that. But... I adore grapefruit, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and spinach!
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Yet, there seems to be a taboo among gourmets that says it's not okay to use sugar -- white, granulated, refined sugar -- in savory cooking. Why?
A little white sugar can go a long way towards improving a soup, a tomato sauce and many other dishes. It can bring dishes into balance when they're too bitter or acidic. Just a tablespoon can noticeably improve the flavor profile of a whole pot of chicken soup. My late father-in-law, who was one of the best soup cooks I've ever encountered, often added a bit of sugar to his soups. They were excellent without it, but even better with.
Yet I can remember cringing the first time I saw him add sugar to a soup -- it went against every gourmet instinct I had. Why? Is it because manufacturers of packaged foods use sugar and equivalent sweeteners with reckless abandon? In the US, is it a reaction to the stereotype that American food is too sweet?
I can only speak for myself, but it's a combination of two factors for me. One is that I have a personal prejudice against refined products and white, granulated, refined sugar in particular. (Don't want to get OT, but it started once many years ago when I had a breakfast pastry [refined white flour, refined white sugar] for breakfast on an empty stomach and a short while later went into a sugar-slump; I researched that and learned how sugar metabolizes if there's no slow burning protein to extend the burn, and was grossed out, and that started my aversion to processing-out things that aren't in their whole state, as in if I want something sweet, I'll eat a whole peach. I'm not preaching that this is right, just explaining how I feel about it.)
The other thing is my great love of bitter and sour things, which I think that many in the non eG population that we're calling America eschew, because they just like everything sweet.
(Some years ago there was a commercial pasta sauce that didn't have sugar or fructose sweetner. I don't like red sauce to begin with, but in a emergency I could make a pasta meal with it. Then they discontinued them. I called to compalin, and the rep on the phone said, "I happen to agree with you, but I have to tell you, most of America doesn't agree with us; our sweetened tomato sauces outsold this one by 100 to one and we discontinued it".)
I think that the sugar and sweetners in commercial tomato sauces today goes way, way past the little pinch that would correct a tomato. We (they) make everything too sweet, and my turning against sugar is a reaction to it.
I still think commercial foods are too sweet. Ketchup tastes like candy to me!Me too!. I don't want my main course tasting like my dessert.
I think there's a perception that sugar is used in this way to cover up less than perfect ingredients and is therefore shunned by those in the know. Adding sugar to your tomato sauce? Perfect tomatoes don't need sugar!Yes, my sentiments exactly, though I also say that we've definitely gone past 'correcting' or 'covering up', and are now into the spoonful of sugar to make Americans like everything; I'm just surprised they're not packaging arugula or radishes in sugar syrup.
In the US, is it a reaction to the stereotype that American food is too sweet?For me, a resounding yes. As I say, I want my dessert sweet, not my savoury course. Yet I know that many dishes are based on "sweet and sour" like my beloved stuffed cabbage. I try to make mine sweetened only from the raisins, and when I have to add a little organic brown sugar, I wince. I do know that historically, refined sugar was a luxury and a treat, and that making things sweet was a nod towards the people who could afford real sweet things (except when it, and sour, covered up bad food). I don't do really well with sweet and sour because of my sugar prejudice, unless I can get the sweet without resorting to added sugar.
When things like soups and stews need a sweet component, I try to get it from sweet vegetables, e.g. carrots, parsnips, sweet onions, etc. When I make one of my favorite vegetable side dishes, pureed yams and turnips, I use black pepper and nutmeg, and if I need a hint more sweetness, add a tad of organic maple syrup.
foodie subcultural trend that runs through New York, London, Paris that says it's verboten to add white sugar to your savory dishes -- that it's cheating, that if you do it you're not a "purist."That's me, and there's why I feel that way.
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Hi, O.P. here. I can understand the cheese. You have too much milk (you drank it in the first place because you saw young animals drinking it and figured out it was good for them and therefore maybe good for you, especially if you and yours weren't getting enough sustenance) and it spoils or separates, and because there's not enough food around to prevent starvation, you eat the curdled milk and it's fine, so you pack it in something to get it out of the liquid and perhaps firm it up and try to keep it, and it's fine then as well, and even when it gets moldy, it's still fine, and tastes nice. That scenario makes sense to me.
But I can't follow the coffee bean evolution. You see certain animals eating them, they get agitated and energetic, so you eat them too (the beans) - that I can see. But they're horrible to eat, and not very filling, so you spit them out and presumably give up. It's not like you stubmled on the animals in a clearing, and they were roasting the beans, grinding them, percolating them and drinking it and you said, "Aha! So that's their secret!"
And similarly the tobacco, If we didn't try eating it, as we must have tried with every food we found, how'd we come to the cigarette process, and why?
This is to say I buy the idea that early man didn't have a lot of food choices, and tried eating everything around him, and even that he tried to eat the magical beans that perked up those animals who they saw eating them and then acting energetic, but the leap to the brewing process and the smoke-inhalation process still aren't clear to me, to my poor mind which is at fault here trying to grasp this, and certainly the fault of the posters trying to help me.
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I was reading a local restaurant menu on-line and found this and chuckled and had to share it:
Fried Calamari
One of our signature dishes!!! We take a healthy portion of fresh squid - tubes only, no tentacles - bread them ever so lightly and then quickly fry them for a heavenly and most memorable experience. Served with your choice of sweet, medium or hot marinara sauce.
Gee, I always hope that I'm getting the healthy stuff in a restaurant even if it's not specified.
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When I was in Miami recently, I stumbled upon Michy's, before I did any googling and learned who Michelle Bernstein is. The first night I ate there, she had come out very late to talk to some friends at their table, and on her way back to the kitchen I snagged her, and she chatted with us for quite a while - it was very late in the evening. She reccommended an Argentinian restaurant to us for grilled Sweetbreads (we had raved about hers), and we went to it the next night. We went back to Michy's again the following night, and after dinner I asked if she'd come out to visit with us (so I could report on the restaurant), and the staff genuinely seemed a little flustered. (Normally, I just barge into kitchens to visit chefs, but I'm told that's rude so I was trying not to do that so much.) Well, it was late when I asked, and they came back and told me that actually, she would come out a little later when she finished up, although now I think it may have been because she was waiting for the restaurant to die down a bit and empty. I got the feeling when she came that she was trying to avoid making a show of coming out and parading herself around, and now I'm sorry if I put her in that position. She's just totally humble, and I like that in a great chef.
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Sorry again. I shouldn't have said "yell". And I never thought of what it might be like for an Orlandoian who actually doesn't like the dining choices. Oy. Though I must say, where I live in New Jersey, the restaurant food is really poor too.
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I have. A few years ago on an Orlando thread I wrote, "I just don't find the food in Orlando all that good."
Somebody, presumably a local, took offense, and wrote:
"I love comments like that. Metro area of 1.2 million, hundreds of restaurants, and a throwaway sentence to denigrate the whole city's options."
Defensive as he was, I think we're all agreeing that as a rule the restaurants of Orlando are really poor.
C'mon markk. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but sorry, I can't let this slide. *One* person wrote that *one sentence* to you a couple of YEARS ago, and here we are in 2007, with you throwing all of the eG Orlando & vacinity citizens to hell in a handbasket, as "people" who "yell?" Not quite, not from where I'm sitting. In my opinion the local folks in our small forum try to steer visitors toward the few beacons of hope that we spot in this culinary wasteland.
Sorry. I was only replying to your comment "I don't think I've ever seen any eG'er defend the restaurant scene in our fair town" to say that I have (seen an eG'er defend it).
Why don't you get mad ad Tony for his comment "Hey guys, I will never get mad at anyone trashing the general food scene of Orlando, it stinks!"
I have pointed out some Orlando restaurants that are pretty good (maybe it was on the other current Orlando thread), but this whole thread is specifically about the dining scene in Orlando being lousy. I didn't start it. Even you called it a "culinary wasteland". Why are you picking on me?
edited to say: I never said anything about people "who yell". Are you confusing me with somebody else?
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I remember eating at "La Côte Saint Jacques" in Joigny, France, a three-star restaurant, in 1989. The father, Michel Lorain was active at that time, cooking with his son. He came out to the dining room before the dinner was served. He and a captain made the rounds of all the tables to welcome everybody and to ask about any special requests or preferences, and in fact we had a long discssion with him about our meal, and he was eager to create a meal exactly to our wants. Then he disappeared into the kitchen and was never seen again. When we went to thank him at the end of the meal, we were directed to the lounge at the other end of the hotel where he had gone to smoke a cigar. I really liked his attitude about the whole thing (and loved his food).
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I have. A few years ago on an Orlando thread I wrote, "I just don't find the food in Orlando all that good."
Somebody, presumably a local, took offense, and wrote:
"I love comments like that. Metro area of 1.2 million, hundreds of restaurants, and a throwaway sentence to denigrate the whole city's options."
Defensive as he was, I think we're all agreeing that as a rule the restaurants of Orlando are really poor.
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When the food that you've cooked for your family gets cold while you're photographing it and you don't care.
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Good point. I deal with a number of wine reps, and not only are they knowledgeable, but they are very dedicated and committed to providing excellent products. They travel to the restaurants where I work, and many others, giving classes on wine, discussing everything from the growing conditions of a particular grape to possible pairings from the wine list to specific menu items.
I believe that. But I really don't think that's the case here. We're talking about a small place where the owner is the waitress, and there is no staff. At dinnertime it's her, the cook, and anohter person in the kitchen. I don't think that anybody's offering wine education to them, and if somebody is, I don't think it's being accepted (or followed). Having eaten there so many times, and having brought wine so many times, and having had the discussion that I do it because I just don't care for what's on their list, and having given them tastes of everything with positive reactions and then leaving them nearly full bottles of wine time and time again, it's telling (to me anyway) that they never once offered "would you like us to get in certain wines for you?", or on return visits being told "we have some new things on the wine list that you might like".
Perhaps I'm dead wrong, but it really stikes me as an afterthought that somebody probably said to a distributor "can you give me 6 whites and 6 reds so we can call it a list?" It is indeed possible that a 12 bottle list could have many gems, and could be chosen with great care from various regions of the world. (You could have a rich Alsace white wine, a crisp Portuguese white, a robust red from Cahors, an elegant Pinor Noir from Washington or Oregon, etc., though I don't think you could get them with one-stop shopping, and it'd take some effort.) But as I've said, it's exactly the opposite on this list. And except in the case of an eGullet discussion, it's really not my place to second-guess their business decisions or psychological rationale. The first time I went, I stopped by in the afternoon to look at the list. When I saw it for what it was, I asked if there was a corkage fee, and then brought my own from then on. I have sometimes brought bottles from home (not that easy any more with air travel) and other times purchased them locally, but the end result is that whether it's from my having taken the time to try to teach them what to have, which has been suggested here but which I think would be highly inappropriate - I assume that they're doing what they do for their own reasons and respect that -- or because I take a little time to bring my own wines, the end result is that I'm really happy with what I drink there. If they didn't have a corkage fee and I wanted to eat their food anyway, then I'd have to think about asking them for different wines.
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Instead of sitting down with the owner and taking upon the task of educating her about her entire wine list, how difficult would it be to ask her to simply carry one dessert wine that you could order by the glass at the end of your meal? Since this is a place you've established a long-term bond with, I'd possibly even start by bringing a bottle of fairly inexpensive dessert wine as a gift.
It's very likely that she could find something suitable from one of several wine distributors in the area, and that way you could simply order your one glass to complete the meal, and the whole issue would be finished.
But then again, if the place doesn't generally meet your standards for hospitality, you may well be better off deciding not to visit there anymore, anyway.
Well, based on the complete lack of thought that went into the perfunctory 12 bottle wine list to begin with, I would say that this is really unlikely to happen. And of course, if they cared at all about the wines they offer, they wouldn't be having the wines they do in the first place. I'm positive that it's one distributor's rep who has made the list for her and supplied the wines; nobody could purposely assemble what's on that list. It's really a lot easier and more practical for me to open another bottle and have some with dessert, and pay the second corkage fee, which I do every time; I mean, I'm bringing wine anyway and paying.
Of course, a restaurant experience is a blend of "food" and "vibe", culinary skill and hospitality, a mixture of the tangible and intangible, and what happened is that in the course of experimenting and trying some new restaurants in the mix while there on vacation, we found some that we enjoyed a lot more, and without consciously excluding this place, we realized that we had gone a whole ten day trip without returning there, and probably won't in the future.
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John, if you are in Paris at the moment, have you any way to find out if either Lintillac location is non-smoking yet? I really may hop on a plane. Thanks in advance!
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Thank you, and Good Lord !!!
I think that at the very least, Bryan has to check out the Domaine de Lintillac menu with photos !!!!!
Any place that has a menu section called "Foie Gras" with 9 different offerings is OK in my book.
John, just how good is the food? I may have to jump on a plane myself instead of waiting for the no smoking laws to take effect. I did not with great joy that Cerisaie is already a non-smoking restaurant.
Of course we have to defer to John as to how good this place really is, but I'm wondering if this menu appeals to Bryan?
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John, are you familiar with any of the places I named upthread, in particular "A Souscyrac", "Thoumieux", and "D'Chez Eux"? Do they still exist? Are they any good still? Are there any great places currently for that kind of hearty Southwestern fare?
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If there are employees I shouldn't even make eye contact with, I'd be interested to know that too.
It was just a parenthetical joke - I was teasing Bryan after we had discussed one thing he hadn't known about dining in France and another that he did know. (
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Come to think of it, the times I've had it has been in tasting menus, with small portions of it.
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I agree with you, DutchMuse. I also would never bring wine to a "wine" restaurant, or think of it. I knew somebody once who wanted to, and it was just so strange and out of place. I would also never bring a bottle that was on a restaurant's list. I just wouldn't do it.
I do bring older wines from my cellar to restaurants if they don't have them, but not only those. I collect a lot of wines that happen to be younger, and if I want to drink one with a meal instead of what they offer, as long as there's a corkage fee, I bring one of those.
The interesting thing happens on vacation. Take the example of a place with really good food, and a small, horrible wine list, nothing you'd ever want to drink with good food, that has a corkage fee. In that case I don't have any problem with visiting a wine store and buying something I'd like to drink, and paying the fee. If it happens that the wine I've chosen isn't that expensive, I don't really think about it. I bring it because I know I'm going to enjoy it more than what's on the restaurant's list. It's not like I can fly home to grab a bottle from my cellar, and it's not like I'm going to drink a lousy wine from their list. I've been in restaurants that have only "boutique" whites dripping with oak on their list, in which case I've stopped at a wine store and purhcased a delicious Alsace white for $15 to bring. Sometimes, the corkage fee is more than the price of the wine. But I wind up drinking something I enjoy.
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The definition of a "corkage fee" is that fee charged by a restaurant to a customer who brings his own wine.
The statement "A wine corkage fee exists to allow a customer to bring a special wine, not to bring what they like, because they don't like what's on your list." is simply one person's opinion. It's of no real consequence or importance, because when restaurants are asked, they say that there are no conditions or restrictions; restaurants do not specify that you may only bring "special" bottles or that you may not bring a bottle because you don't like what they offer. That's one man's interpretation only, and should be noted as such. It exists to cover the restaurant's expenses in serving that wine, and to replace the profit that the restaurant would have made had the customer purchased a wine from the list. It's a monetary transaction, and any conditions or restrictions on it not stated by the restaurant are imaginary.
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I've eaten it a number of times with no distress- actually two of us have. You might not have to do anything.
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Missing Cork
in Wine
I guess machinery errors are not just limited to bottling wine. I once bought a bottle of black truffle oil (an excellent brand I'd had many times before) that had no truffle essence - it was plain oil. When I contacted them, they said that indeed they'd had a batch where the truffle essence part wasn't injected into the oil, but they thought none of them had been shipped.
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Curious to test the validity of the statement, "A wine corkage fee exists to allow a customer to bring a special wine, not to bring what they like, because they don't like what's on your list" I called 21 leading restaurants in Miami, culled from the "top/most popular/best" 20 according to several online sources (Zagat, Miami New Times, CitySearch, AOL/Digital City). The list follows.
I asked each one “Do you have a corkage fee?”, and when the answer was “yes”, I asked “are there any conditions, restrictions, or limitations on what I may bring?”
Three restaurants replied that they have no corkage fee, and bringing wine to the restaurant is not permitted:
Barton G
The Forge
Azul
Two of the 21 said that the only condition was that the wine you bring may not be on their list (Prime 112, Capital Grille).
The other 19 said that you may bring any wine that you like upon payment of the corkage fee, with no restrictions or conditions:
Pacific Time
Chef Allen
Michy’s
North 110
Mark’s South Beach
Osteria del Teatro
Oritanique
Hannah’s Gourmet Diner
Tantra
Escopazzo
Social
A Fish Called Avalon
The Palm (Coral Gables)
The Palm (Miami Beach)
Timo
Vix
That’s pretty-much an exhaustive list of the top and most popular restaurants in Miami. 18 of them have a corkage fee, and with the sole condition that two of them impose about not bringing a wine already on their list, no restaurant imposes any other conditions or restrictions on the bottles you may bring.
The statement "A wine corkage fee exists to allow a customer to bring a special wine, not to bring what they like, because they don't like what's on your list." is false. It is a figment of the imagination. Restating it over and over again doesn't make it valid. It is not based on reality or fact, and cannot be substantiated or documented. What has been substantiated and documented is that when you pay the corkage fee, you may bring whatever wine you like, for whatever reason.
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I think that, perhaps, you lack an understanding of exactly how many hours there are in a day when one lives in a moderate climate with abundant food, and yet television has not been invented yet.
I generally take it as read that just about anything that can be done with natural ingredients and rudimentary tools has been done at some point ... No elaborate scientific process was necessary to weed out the things that were not tasty or which didn't deliver the desired substance,
I understand that our ancestors had a lot of free time. But, and I mean this all friendly, you didn't answer what my mind is trying to grasp. How did they even know that things had a "desired substance", and which ones did, and then, once they did, how did they know to grind and brew certain things and drink them, and dry and ignite other things and inhale the smoke? Did they systematically grind and brew, and dry and smoke everything around them?
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Tony and I are in complete agreement. It's pretty hopeless.
If you're looking for "just want to find a nice place to go like on a date and that it is not just typical hotel tourist food", I think you can do that. It's the same dilemma that I face when I vacation there, and have come to dread dinnertime; you have to lower your standards. Still, if you combine a place's enjoyment factor with some kind of good food, you can get a "nice" experience, albeit by lowered standards than you were initially looking for.
I still think that Texas de Brazil is a lot of fun, most especially considering your other options. And indeed, Coq au Vin is incredibly old school, but after enough lousy meals down there, you may see what I mean. And if you're craving a great steak and don't mind what must be possibly the world's most horrifying dining experience, you should try Vito's or Charley's.
Lastly, here are two recent menu inserts from Emeril's Orlando. The daily specials and "tasting menu" for each night is side by side. Is this what you're looking for?
Banned Foods
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
It was "sour cherry" juice. Or, "Sour Cherry Juice with Carcinogens".
I have two cartons of it I could sell you.