markk

I can. I had posted once about a hot dog vendor. The kid in front of me on line was bouncing a basketball in the gutter filled with dirty, disgusting water and waste while the line inched forward (I was standing on the curb). When it was his turn, he reached into his pocket with the hand that had been bouncing the ball, and got money out and handed it to the vendor (who wasn't wearing gloves, not that that would have made a difference here) - then I saw that the vendor was about to reach with the same hands that touched the money to pick up what would've been the bun for my dog - no piece of paper, no fresh glove to keep the gutter ooze off my food. So I left without ordering. Nobody, not one of all the replying posters, agreed with me. One person said they wouldn't have cared if the vendor himself had reched into the gutter to pick up something he dropped and then handled my food with it. Another one that bothered me but not anybody else: a very popular little restaurant I know where the owner and the small waitstaff make a point of shaking the hands of everybody who comes in off the street (even in cold and flu season). Then within seconds they turn and walk back to the pass and with those same hands, pick up plates of food and serve them. Nice warm plates with nutritious food, eager to help those germs multiply as quickly as they can. Again, only I cared, apparently. I agree with you, though. I think your story is gross.

A light bulb just went off in my head - is this where the first "L&N Seafood Grille" was many years ago? I knew them from Florida, but for some reason thought I had read that it came from Syracuse. The Florida ones were great but disappeared very quickly.

Howard Johnson's! How could I have forgotten Howard Johnson's?

Well, I'm hoping that the Horn & Hardart food that I ate in 1957 was more wholesome, or should I say, less adulterated and processed, than today's nuggets. But who knows really? And maybe nothing about the food has changed. Maybe we, who fulminate, have changed.

One of the nights I ate at Michy's, I was talking with Michelle about sweetbreads, and she suggested we go to Graziano's, in Coral Gables. It's really not that far. We went the next night. Graziano's steak was delicious, but their sweetbreads were not, nor were the potatoes we had, but I'm told we should have had different ones than normally come with the steak. A great favorite of mine in CG used to be Chispa, which was always truly great food, and which I'd have said was an absolute "must", but the chef changed recently and I just don't know if it's still fabulous. In all honesty, Michy's is 11.5 miles from Coral Gables, and with 3 turns in total (North on US1 which becomes I-95, right onto I-195, left on Biscayne Blvd. - US1 again actually), you can be there in fifteen minutes. Go for it! (I haven't been to Christie's in 20 years!) Every great restaurant I've found in Miami in recent years has come from the Miami New Times, and you can search within Coral Gables (65 restaurants reviewed there alone). Please be sure to post about your meals.

Wetson's is one of the ones I meant to cite, as well as Horn &Hardart. Did we grow up in the same neighborhood by any chance?

Yes, I care greatly about nutrition. I think we need a balanced amount of nutrients, vitamins, minerals (etc.?) in our diet, and I don't think that we can get all these from processed foods. I think that in the processing, they eliminate trace elements of things that we lose when they put back in those vitamins that they have identified, but only those specific ones. So I shop for nutritional variety when I plan my meals, and I avoid processed or refined foods and ingredients as much as I can. I think that your body gets its nutrition by digesting on things that give your innards a bit of a workout, during which time your digestive tract wrings every nutritional bit out of the food that mother nature put in there. So I also think that things that are not refined are healthier, both because they don't have nutrients refined out of them, and because in their unrefined state, they keep your digestive system active. I think that innards can indeed atrophy over the years if you only ask them to process things like Wonder Bread and foods with no fiber content. So I eat a lot of foods in their "whole" state - brown rices, grains, nuts and seeds, as well as a lot of fresh, organic fish and meat, and I eat a variety of oils. It's not a low calorie diet, but I hope it's a healthy one, but I still cheat and eat more cholesterol than I'd like to. I've never liked refined sugar, because it grosses me out. I think that sugar should be part of something that contains it naturally, like fruit; I'm not diabetic, but the whole idea of sugar-spikes in my blood turns me off. While I love gastronomic extravagance, and while my ideal would be to live in France and eat both fancy and rustic French food out, both of which I think are very close to the land, I still shy away from the desserts that are made of refined white flour and white sugar - that's just a personal anomaly for me. There are very rare exceptions, however, when my usually dormant sweet tooth overtakes me, but they're rare. I also try to avoid cholesterol-laden foods, because I've had more of them in my lifetime already than any three random people you might find. I also avoid saturated fats for that reason. I'm really hoping that all the studies saying that foods high in saturated fat and cholesterol aren't bad for you are true after all. I'd go back to eating lots of fatty steak. I do love the taste and texture, the "substance" and the mouth-feel of 'whole' foods, so I won't switch from whole grains to refined foods soon though.

Now you're talking! But that deserves its own thread for sure.

After reading a post on the Chain Restaurant thread today, I'm wondering how people reconcile such comments as the one from that thread (first one below), with all the contradictory stuff that's been 'discovered' and written about health and nutrition, a lot of which was discussed on the recent Pollan thread - though I'd like to remove from the discussion the question of whether what our great grandparents recognized as food was healthier for us than today's processed foods, which was one major focus of that piece. After re-reading the many sobering scientific points made by Fat Guy, I'm starting to question my own emotional beliefs a teeny bit. (BTW, we're not just talking about obesity here, and Fat Guys quotes aren't just about obesity, but health and longevity as well.) How does everybody else feel about this? When nobody's looking, which food do you reach for when you look yourself in the emotional mirror? My answer is, I'm not so sure any more. Maybe I can lay off the broiled fish and fresh green veggies and just indulge my KFC cravings more. vs

And I honestly didn't think you were . But after the "nubian debauchery" comment, I just wanted to make sure you understood all the fine points of proper French dining. Better safe than sorry. (You do know which restaurant employees you're allowed to make eye contact with and not, and which you're allowed to speak directly to and not, and all that stuff, right?)

The thing that we call a 'menu' here - that physical, printed thing that lists the eats that are offered, is specifically called the "carte" in France (some other European countries too). The word "menu" in France specifically refers to what we think of as a set-price dinner. The two words are never interchanged. Even the simplest of places will offer a "menu" - and lots of places will offer more than one, usually identified by their price, as in "The 120 € Menu" or "Menu at 85 €", and some places will name the menus, not only "Tasting" or "Discovery", but things like "Traditional" or "Gourmand". But early on, while checking-out places one day, I went to a restaurant I was considering and asked please to see the menu; the woman replied very nicely that they didn't have it yet. I came back later in the day and asked to see the menu, and the fellow said that they didn't have it yet. So I pointed to the stack of leather things with paper inside them stacked by the reception stand, and pointed with a furtive expression on my face. "Oh, the carte!" was the reply. (The "menus" had not been decided for that night; they'd be printed separately and inserted later.) Some of the worst language trouble I've had traveling is over the very (very) simplest things. And now you're prepared for this one. I should point out that in most cases, the "menu(s)" that a restaurant offers will be printed on the "carte" itself, but they also may be separate pages, so if you're asking to have them sent, be sure to specify the "carte" and the "menus"! Edited to say: that's where we get "a la carte" from, when you choose individual dishes, rather than order a set dinner. And of course, the "menu" always represents a lower price for those same dishes if you were to order them separately. You'll also find (not in the stratospheric places you'll be going, though) that a lot of times a "menu" for a certain price will simply be the choices of any starter, main course, and dessert from the "carte", but for less than if you ordered them "a la carte". And sometimes this is called a "formule". BTW, do bear in mind that notwithstanding the little dish which "amuses your mouth", the 'starter' course in a French meal, is the "entrée", and in the case of a two-course progression, the main course (what we in the US call, incorrectly, the entree), is the "plat" (short for "plat principal"). So don't go saying "for my entrée I'll have the prime rib"!

I don't know if these were only local to NYC, but I remember "La Crepe" (anything you could think of, savoury or sweet, on a crepe) with its waitstaff with the fake French accents, and I remember Lum's (hot dogs steamed in beer), though I know this wasn't only NYC. What "concept" chain restaurants do you remember from days gone by. Do you remember them fondly?

Is it the case that the street food is the "fast food" of other cuisines? That the need for something you can grab and eat on the run does exist around the world, but it's only the US which has turned that into a franchisable industry with drive through windows which it has then exported? If anything, have we seen some of the street foods of other countries (Wursts, Tacos, Neapolitan Pizza Pies) turned into standardized, franchisable fast-food chains, and then in many cases exported back around the world?

If you read the introductory/explanatory pages of the Michelin (most people do not), you'll see that "Hotels and Restaurants in bold type have supplied details of all their rates and have assumed responsibility for maintaining them for all travellers in possession of this guide". If the name of the establishment is listed in boldface, the prices will be accurate. (I was not suggesting carrying the guide in to restaurants and demanding that they stick to it, but you'll find that in terms of the range of prices, it's accurate.) But the safest way to get an exact feel for what a meal will cost is to ask to have the "carte" and "menus" (do you know the difference? - not referring to the wine list, you know) e-mailed to you.

All joking aside, have you given any thought to jet-lag, or do you have any experience with it flying eastward? Are you flying directly from the US to Paris? I've slept through many first-night dinners, despite wake-up calls, and gotten up in the middle of the night with nothing open and nothing to eat.

If you go to the Michelin site http://www.viamichelin.com/ and choose Restaurants (if you can't find it easily, go to the site map), and then Paris, you can get a listing of all the starred restaurants. When you go to the detail, you'll get a website and e-mail address for most of them. You can write in English, and you can ask them to attach you menus by return e-mail. I get menus e-mailed and faxed from France all the time - they're happy to do it. If you feel boorish writing in English, start out by apologizing for that, though in the restaurant industry, nobody will think it out of the ordinary.

This is too happy a thread to have an unpleasant disagreement, but it's really a matter of what you enjoy doing. Personally, I don't like trekking to historical sites, or churches, or museums, or architectural wonders; I used to do it when I started going to Europe, and stopped when I realized that it's just not what I enjoy. For me, travel is about seeing how people live in various places. How and where they shop for food, and how they do their laundry. Honest. I go to supermarkets and laundromats, and bookstores, and wine stores, and that's how I pass my days when I'm in a foreign country. (I do love going to the opera wherever I am, but that's what I do here. Of course, it tends to get in the way of dinner, but that's another story.) But as I say, that's me. But if Bryan's obsessed with food, there's more than enough to keep him busy day and night, and I don't think he should force himself to do "cultural stuff" if he'd rather be doing food-related things.

It does. I have seen the big metal tower with my own eyes. Nope. ("That stuff", I mean.) Though they're extremely nice when you pass them, and the tower's pretty magnificent. Many (many) years ago I gave up visiting these things in favor of what I really like to do when I'm in Europe: visit specialty stores that sell foods, ingredients, and the equipment what to cook them with. Cheese shops. Charcuteries. Bakeries. Patisseries. Open air food markets. And hypermarkets - yes, very especially much, hypermarkets! (Love to see what they're selling in theirs as opposed to what we're selling in ours.) I'd tell you to try fit in a visit to a mega 'Auchan' or 'Cora' if you can, unless this doesn't intruigue you. (The idea of the foie gras nibbles and portion-sized duck treats and "Stoufayr's" frozen Cassoulet really puts a smile on my face.) I plan my entire day around food-related shops, and if I happen to pass something else of interest, I admire it and look it up when I get back to the hotel - that's how I found out what that big metal tower was. Anyway, how can "cultural stuff" hope ever compare with things like: and And, thanks for using "cultural stuff" and "nubile college debauchery" in the same sentence !!

The Borsao is just not to my (screwy) taste (though I have serious wine friends who swear by it), but I heartily second the Altos Las Hormigas Malbec. My contribution here is likely to evoke some strange reactions. It began with an article in the NY Times by Frank Prial in May '04 "WINE TALK; Raising a Glass to Affordability", in which he spoke of the $1.99 "Lost Vineyards" wines primarily available then at Astor in the city, and now widening. My recommendation is the "Portuguese White" (The label says "White Table Wine" and then "Portugal") though I don't want to build it up too much (we buy car-loads full of it, honestly). It's well worth a taste. I like a wine that's got the profile of a Sauvignon Blanc, or something that tastes like a really nice white that you get in Italy along the seashore. This wine delivers a combination of very, very clean flavors, and a very enjoyable grape flavor (to me, anyway). I'm just afraid of building it up too much. But in blind tastings at our house, it beats the pants off all the other simple, quaffing whites. They bottle many other whites (Argentina, Italy, etc., ) but for grape-flavor reasons, I'm not crazy for those, and also a Portuguese Vinho Verde which I really don't like. There's also a very real incidence of corked bottles of the "Portuguese White" (though at $1.99 I don't care, as long as I have backups), so beware; if you're getting off-flavors, don't write it off as the price - it's a bad bottle. Try another. I've amazed people with this wine (and now I've built it up too much.) Then we became addicted to their White Lambrusco from Italy. No, I don't drink White Zinfandel (hate it, hate it), but this wine's just not like that. Although you might want to wait a few more months to appreciate this one, it just tastes like "summer in a glass", and you might marvel at it. I don't know how they did it, or how to describe it. A beguiling wine, truly. A lot of stores are carrying these now. I've been getting them at the Shop Rite Liquors of North Bergen, which has an entire wall stacked with cases of them, which I mention since everybody's citing sources. These wines do not keep from year to year, so getting them from a place with a good turnover is important. (I learned that one the hard way.)

I've been eating meaty, succulent "blue crabs" this winter at my Chinese restaurant in NJ (Cantonese style) and then as of two weeks ago they stopped having them! But there's a communication breakdown, so they can't tell me why, only, "sorry, not tonight". (Very frustrating.) I just learned (from another eG member) that in Maryland the season ends Dec. 15., though there's nothing to say that these crabs came specifically from there; they had them for another month in great supply so I'm guessing they didn't. These were not frozen, that's for sure. I would say that they came from somewhere where they were abundant because the restaurant only has them when they're plentiful and not too expensive; that's the best they've ever been able to tell me about why they have them in winter. (And as I say, they've been plump and meaty till the end!) Can anybody explain to me how this works - when they're plentiful on the east coast, and where, when they're legal to catch or not, and what would explain their sudden disappearance around the second week in January? I'm wondering if they'll reappear. THANK YOU, THANK YOU !!

I read in one of the local threads, "Middle TN is the testing ground for all new chain concepts. It is a sad state of affairs. This problem however is not secluded to nashville, it is a national crisis. The chains have saturated all other markets and are now entering the upscale casual / affordable fine dining realm. They are like a giant blob picking off local independants left and right." That's as good a phrasing as any I've seen of this phenomenon. But I keep thinking that in life and society, things are supposed to come around, and what's old becomes new again, and to cite one real example, in our cities, the absolute worst neighborhoods become the trendiest as the years roll by. And of course, one area, and one way in which new, independent restaurants driven by a chef and a dream come to life is by opening up in those neighborhoods before they're reborn, when the rents are still low and affordable. I thought of my question last night while watching an episode of Alton Brown's "Feasting on Asphalt", in which he explained that the independent, mom and pop "roadside" eating establishment died out in the USA with the creation of the Interstate Highway system. And I guess one thing led to another, and that's why we have the situation described in the original quote - the chain restaurants are ubiquitous, and the independents are gone; whether you're researching restaurants in the Southeast or Northwest, you're likely to get the same chain places suggested to you, even if the locals don't know they're part of a chain, and even if they're no longer only attached to shopping malls, but are now posing as free-standing restaurants and even moving into storefront locations in our downtowns. Now I know, people are voting with their dollars, and they're electing the chain restaurants for now. I'm not questioning that. So my question is not "how did this happen", but rather, can anybody suggest some scenarios for when this comes full-circle in America? How is it going to work, and on what time-frame, when people eventually get tired of all the chains which "have saturated all other markets and are now entering the upscale casual / affordable fine dining realm", and they slowly, give way back to the way it was before them? (Or, is it not going to cycle at all? Is it going to move in some direction that I'm not imagining?)

Michy's Menu That'll answer your price question. It's not a very expensive restaurant. But it is very popular. It certainly couldn't hurt to make your reservations now. They've very recently gone on Open Table too.

Uh, dude, rib steaks three nights a week is overkilling it a bit. No, it's not. The Zocor rep told me that very clearly. But it's how I grew up eating. We had fatty red meat on average 5 nights a week. As a young adult I kept eating that way, because it tasted good. We never ate fish, so I never cooked fish when it was my turn to cook dinner in life. Well, a side story in case it's of any interest. After college I was invited to my first dinner party as an adult at the home of an Italian fellow twenty years my senior. He served pasta as the main course, which I had never had before. Later, I asked a friend, "Is he poor?" and the friend told me that no, of course he is not. Why did I ask? Well, my answer was, "My mother told me that only poor people eat starch for dinner", and since then, I've learned that that's not quite true. That's the point at which I started thinking about what I eat, and why I eat it.

Well, sort of And on a separate note, I think that there are a lot of people who still cling to old-fashioned notions of food. I done some pondering, and remembered Pollan's reference to the "French Paradox", and I thought of a friend of mine, a chef in the French countryside with whom I became friendly over many yearly visits to his restaurant. One year I e-mailed him before we came and asked if I would get to eat any duck at his place, and his reply was "no, my father and I haven't gone hunting yet this season." Another night when I was there, I asked for frog legs, and was told that a friend of his who farmed them was bringing them later in the week. And this is a restaurant with a mountain stream running through the property where they catch the trout when you order it. They're living in 21st. century France, but they're living a lot closer to the land than Stouffer's is. And according to the "paradox", living longer than we are. It's not anything religious to them; it's the only way they know of thinking about food. It's as natural to them (my friend the chef, and his father the chef before him) as breathing. And unless you're consuming food solely as nutrition, unconcerned with flavors and nuances and the hedonism that's part of eating, I don't think it's such a far fetched notion to look at the ingredients in a frozen Tyson chicken wing "product" and be horrified. Sure, it's only belief of mine. But, what are all those things doing in the food, really! I'd like the chicken wing, and hold the next 48-86 ingredients, please.

Just singling out one example here: the latest information I've seen indicates that the increase in joint problems among baby boomers is on account of exercise. As reported in the New York Times, in a story last April titled "Baby Boomers Stay Active, and So Do Their Doctors": I mention this not because the question of the cause of joint problems is particularly important in this conversation, but rather because I'm seeing factual assumptions made repeatedly here that are not good assumptions in light of the reporting in the same newspaper that published Pollan's essay. If you follow the health reporting in the whole paper, what you'll find in the past few years is revelation after revelation that the conventional wisdom about diet, nutrition, fitness, obesity, etc. is turning out to be wrong time and again. Pollan actually seems more aware of that than most of the people posting here in defense of his conclusions. The problem is that Pollan only presents the illusion of rejecting "nutritionism." He ultimately winds up supporting all the same old theories, just at -- as I said before -- a higher altitude. Fundamentally, what Pollan relies upon is the -- yes -- quasi-religious belief that what's old is good and what's new is bad. However, that thesis flies in the face of many things we know to be true about how bad the old days were and how good we have it today. Before concluding that the foods we ate when life expectancy was 40 are better than the foods we eat when life expectancy keeps pushing towards 80, I'd have to be convinced that there's some reason why processed/refined/whatever foods are bad. After all, all these drugs that people here claim are keeping us alive for so long are artificial, man-made products. Why is it so hard to believe that man-made foods can be as good or better than natural ones? What's so great about natural foods, other than that people really, really want to believe they're great? Why do we apply a standard of "food your great grandmother would recognize"? It's like a bizarre belief of some cult that seeks to live frozen in a randomly selected moment in history. What? It was okay that mankind was making wine, cheese, bread, smoked foods, cured foods and all other manner of technology-driven foods, but it's not okay that we're extracting sweeteners from corn? What possible basis could there be for drawing that line, other than nostalgia? ← That's good reasoning, but I still want to know what your "gut" feeling is; I'm looking for a "do as I do, not what I say" answer, so I still want to know if you're going to allow your son multiple glasses of soda pop a day, and if you're going to let him get his nutrition at mealtimes from junk, fast, and processed foods. Or if in actuality, despite the fact that the statistics don't back up my (quasi-) religious fanatacism, you're going to feed him more along the lines of how I've been saying I prefer to eat?