markk
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Posts posted by markk
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No, this would never work for me. For one, it would drive me nuts, positively nuts, if parts of my kitchen were rotated out of view. Also, I'm a very "out of sight, out of mind" kind of guy, so I'm sure that I would put things up to cook, rotate around to the dishwasher, and then forget that I had stuff cooking. Not for me!
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I really don't care to see pictures of your food from your trip especially if it involves impinging on the attempts of other diners to have a nice meal without distractions. If you attempt to photgraph next to me, I now have management make a decision, stop the photography or lose a customer in the middle of his meal. Societal restraints against imposing on others have been rapidly lost . Individuals feel free to impose unwanted distractions on others and don't consider whether they might be annoying others. Of course if you are eating at McD's, go ahead and shoot, because I won't be there. -Dick
Why does somebody taking a picture at the table next to you distract you so?
Sure, it's a momentary flash, perhaps, but why would you not think "ah, there's somebody so into food that he's taking a photo - how great", as so many food lovers around the world do?
I was dining at the Michelin 2-Star "Le Cerf" (having their truffle dinner for the second time in a week, and I asked the Chef Michel Husser and his wife, if I might take photos, and they said "but of course - absolutely!"
So I came away with photos like this:
And nobody minded.
Another time I was having stupendous meals in other restaurants in France, and took photos like these, by simply raising the camera when the plate was presented, and snapping:
In fact, at that last place, quite fancy at that, when the meal was over, a formidable woman marched over to my table and asked me, in German "are you Germans?", and we replied, "No, Americans". So she replied to us in English, "Ah, Wonderful, Wonderful !!! It's good to see people taking such an interest in their food, especially Americans !!!!!!"
Now, I could see if little kids were running rampant in the restaurant and knocked into your table and spilled your wine, getting annoyed, and certainly if somebody at the next table lit up a cigar during my meal I'd feel that they were impinging. As to why you feel a photo being snapped at the next table impinges, I can't imagine. Surely if it were an anniversary and somebody asked the waiter to take their photo, would you care?
Here's a photo we took recently at the table at Lupa in New York. I have to say, I've never met anybody anywhere that's minded.
There are lots more of these in the link in my signature. One of us holds up a Canon ES 20D with a hooded flash, (that'd be my partner), and if I think it calls for it, I hold two small white cards just out of range on either side of the plate to bounce light on the sides.
And unlike a photo of a dining companion, where the flash would actually hit anybody behind them, or the photo where the waiter takes your camera and stands with it and calls attention to himself, you lift the camera quietly from your side, point it down at the table, and that's it. If you're doing it quietly and compactly, what could anybody object to?
The rest is done in post-production in Photoshop.
I hope this helps you go for it! As I say, anybody there for the love of great food shouldn't mind, or never has in all the times I've done it around the world.
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Authentic Hong Kong style dim sum in Clifton? I must have passed by China Garden a million times and never bothered to check it out. Now I definitely have to.
It's not very good at all. Tired, lackluster tasting dim sum, and it's made to order.
(Ditto China Chef in nearby Secaucus, whose dim sum is from carts on weekends.)
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I make mine by hand-picking a still warm whole roast chicken - and I use everything from it, the dark and white meat, and the crispy skin torn into tiny pieces as well. If there's any juice accumulated from the chicken, I toss the meat with that. I add fresh, shelled peas (raw), diced celery and diced celery leaves, and back when I was able to digest them, fresh yellow and red bell peppers cut into dice. Toss the whole thing with mayo and a sprinkling of salt fresh black pepper, and serve it (not chilled) on some big, chewy country bread slices. (Sometimes I toss the entire thing with a little extra-virgin olive oil first before I add the mayo, and sometimes I use a teeny bit of ground celery seed as well.)
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I've been addicted to the Pomegranate/Cherry blend, but I always drink it straight. Tonight for the first time, after reading here, I used it in a cocktail - I substituted it for the Cassis when making a Kir Royale, and it was wonderful (thanks, thread!).
And it really is expensive! I must get myself to Trader Joes.
I think that the health benefits are largely from the "anthrocyanins" (there are alternate spellings, apparently) that give fruits their red coloring; I would think that any true red fruit juice (cherry, etc.) would have the same health benefits. I know that I started drinking cherry juice for arthritis, although there are apparently lots of other health benefits as well.
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Are there any really reliable telltale signs for knowing whether the melon is really ready for consumption?
This has been happening to me for at least the past year! When I was a kid, my little old grandmother taught me how to pick fruit - you bring it up to your nose, close your eyes, and take a deep sniff, indeed. "How it smell is how it's going to taste", she taught me. And for many years, that was true - well, maybe not for plums, but melons for sure.
And now they've found a way to make them smell ripe and delicious and be like cucumbers inside, indeed. I just fell for this again at a fancy organic produce store, and mine was considerably more than $2.50, and down the drain it went, inedible.
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I sliced some breast off and put that, with some leg and thigh in a shallow dish and microwaved it for just one minute on high.
This was the toughest bird I have ever come across! The breast meat was barely edible.
The thighs were tough as nails!
Did I do something wrong?
Yes.
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A friend has recommended a Peruvian-Chinese restaurant to me for an upcoming trip. I've never heard of that cuisine! Any Gulletteers familiar with it?
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For some reason, I once gave Pat Wells's recipe for 40-Clove Chicken to a friend's mother. (The recipe basically contains 40 cloves of garlic in their skin, cut-up chicken pieces on the bone, olive oil, s&p, white wine and brandy at the end for flaming- that's it (parsley at the end). The chicken pieces cook atop the cloves of garlic which basically roast and perfume the checken, then the wine turns it into a gravy. It was all the rage some years ago, and is delish.
As I say, for some reason I gave it to a friend's mother who made it, and told me it was indeed delicious, but at the very end she dumped in a full jar of Ragu Spaghetti Sauce because she was afraid her husband would eat it otherwise.
Dumbfounded!
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As a rule, when I am comped part or most of my meal because the house screwed up, I tip (generously, as I always do) on what would have been the full amount of the meal; I don't want the servers to lose anything just because the house didn't charge me. And as I say, I tip generously, but probably not more than 25-30% really.
In the case of the incident I posted to start this thread, I was actually startled that they would do that - take me back in for a second sitting, and not charge me anything. In that case, I decided to share my "good fortune" with the staff, that is to say, rather than tip on the value of what they served us, which was twenty dollars, I just left a $20 bill on the table. Several of the waiters came running to thank us on the way out.
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No, and it's driving me crazy! They refer to the various sections of their site as "aisles", and as I say, the've got billions of food books.
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I'm currently reading Julia Child's memoirs, and plan to start on the new Gael Greene book after that. And then, there's nothing on the agenda, and I'm getting worried about that.
That's so funny that you wrote that! I just received my copies of those, plus "Don't Try This at Home", and "Between Bites" (James Villas) all of which I'm saving for an upcoming vacation.
What others of the genre have you read (or might you have overlooked)? I've recently read:
Garlic and Sapphires
The Fourth Star
The Perfectionist
Burgundy Stars
The Seasoning of a Chef
The Apprentice
From Here, You Can't See Paris
and believe it or not, "Is Salami and Eggs Better Than Sex?" (Alan King/Mimi Sheraton).
Is there any chance you missed any of those? Would you want to share the names of any others?
There's an obscure online bookseller with thousands of culinary titles, (not Powells) and for the life of me I can't remember the name or find it at the moment!
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Since I normally post complaints, I thought I'd post what was certainly a very pleasant and unusual restaurant experience for me. It happened this past Saturday at a well-known, and well respected dining establishment in the lower portion of Manhattan. It was our first time dining there, by the way.
Two of us had a substantial and delicious dinner there early in the evening before going to a play. With dinner, we went on to a second bottle of wine, which we quickly realized we were not going to finish, lest we arrive totally sloshed at the theater. But as we had gotten a parking spot right in front of the restaurant, we had to come back there after the play anyway. So I asked if they might keep the 2/3-full bottle of wine for us for a few hours, and let us have it later in the evening with dessert... which they said they'd be glad to do.
When we returned, the place was full at 11 pm with people having dinner, and they showed us to a table immediately, and brought us the wine. We ordered a large bottle of sparkling water, and one [incredibly delicious] dessert to share. (The dessert would have been $12.50, and the water would have been another 7.) When we were done and called for the check, they informed us that dessert was on them, and there was no check!
Everything about the place had been especially nice, and extremely enjoyable. However, why they chose to do that, I don't know.
Has anybody ever heard of such a thing or had a similar experience in a major city?
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This is an interesting way of looking at the issue but I think you're missing the point. I wasn't looking to reward the restaurant, though that certainly will be a result of going there, but rather to go back to places where the food was good but the smoke made things unpleasant.Well, it's not really a "reward", and if the place is a good restaurant with food and ambience that you enjoy in a restaurant, why "punish" yourself by depriving yourself of a meal at the place?
Of course, I realize that. I've simply never gone to any restaurant in a very long time that has had any smokers in it, and in years of calling ahead I've been pleased to learn that lots of places became smoke free on their own. And now if I hear about an interesting place that I'd like to try, I can go without having to check on the smoking situation, and I'm sure that will open up new places for me.
But when I read the question,
... I'd like to know where people will be going once the smoking ban goes into effect.my first thought was the irony of rushing out and giving my business to places, as I've said, who didn't care enough about it in the first place to go no-smoking voluntarily as so many good placed did.
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I love a salad of ripe tomatoes and basil with olive oil (and a pinch of oregano) to accompany a grilled steak. In fact, I like to make it an hour ahead and let it do its thing (I put a little salt on the tomatoes), and personally, I love some of the oil/juice from the salad spooned right over the grilled steak.
You can also add sliced red or some other good onion to this - raw onion doesn't agree with me, so I leave it out, but adding just a teeny slivered bit of it does make it even more wonderful on the grilled meat.
And while I love Bearnaise, it's somehow not my favorite thing to stand up to a char grilled steak. However, if you make it with a good balsamic vinegar, you get a brown Bearnaise which goes a little nicer.
And I think corn is a must.
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I'm not rushing out to reward any restaurants for complying with the new law, when it is the case that it has always been possible for any restaurant to declare itself "no smoking", and so many restaurants in NJ did this years ago. I'm thinking in particular of numerous of restaurants in Hoboken and Montclair (to name two towns) that have been non-smoking for many years now. These owners have shown a commitment to the dining experience, and they should be rewarded first.
As far as restaurants who could have elimated smoking but needed a law passed before they did
, I see no reason to reward them. -
I was a great Sun Luck Kee fan before they moved to Flushing (after, too, for that matter).
Does anybody have any suggestions for Chinatown dining at night now? I've had mixed experiences at Fuleen, and mixed/disappointing experiences at NY Noodletown.
I would love some suggestions from Gulleteers for where to dine in Chinatown now (not looking for hot/spicy). THANKS.
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Yes, that was the congee cart, and one of the other things in a "well" (I just didn't know how to describe it) was tripe, and something she could only describe as "three pork", which I was tempted by, except for how I was ready to explode.
But on a sad note, this past Sunday I took a friend to 1&9 for dim sum (who loves Wonder), and 1&9 had (naturally) a bad day - things were really off the mark.
It won't stop me from going back, but I think at this point Wonder has the edge for freshness and delicacy.
Interestingly, on Sunday, the little fried fish were nowhere to be seen, and in fact, neither was the congee cart. And we arrived at 2, a full hour before dim-sum ends - and the place was packed!!
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I guess my memory of wines by the glass was erroneous, but I do agree that they have well-priced wines that are good. I presume the French name for quartino is carafe?
It's a "quart" (i.e. 'car'), and it is indeed the term used when wines are ordered by the mini-carafe (or "pot" or "pichet" as it is referred to in various regions). It's the quarter-liter.
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And a warning for those who wish a simple glass of wine, Lupa does not offer wine by the glass, one must select a mini-carafe: a glass and a half.
I say: "Lynch the Bastards".
(creepy!)
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This IS bad.
We must mount an all-out campaign to keep Cel-Ray alive! Many is the deli I have walked out of because they haven't been able to serve me one with my pastrami sandwich.
Let's mobilize !!!!!
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Ever since wilsonrabbit posted about 1-9 Seafood Restaurant (which is on Rts. 1&9 South, in Avenel, NJ, not far from Exit 12 on the NJT), I have become a semi-regular there. I don't think the dim sum is AS good as at Wonder (especially the "cheung fun"), but I have come to love it, and it is a lot closer to the north. It's a big, bustling Dim Sum Parlor kind of place, and again, the clientele seems to be (except for me) exclusively Chinese. Even the website has no english on it ! (www.19seafood.com). The people are great, and I've had the same waiter each time I've gone.
One of the dishes I always have is "steamed pork ribs with black beans" and the last time I was there I had the Chicken Feet as well.
Until today I had only been there for "menu" dim sum on weekdays, but today I got to experience the full "cart service". After I had pretty much eaten my body weight in dim sum, a cart passed by that didn't have steamer baskets of dumplings, but rather "wells" of things that they scoop out, and the waitress said, basically, "I don't know if you'll like these" and described some things that I wasn't crazy about, but would have tried had I not been so full. Well, my regular waiter came running over, and pulled her back, and said to me "you HAVE to try the Duck Feet - you will like it" (I'm sure he was right) but after a heated discussion with the waitress pushing the cart, it turned out that she didn't have them!
Then, after I had eaten yet more, the waiter came by to tell me that an approaching cart had something I should try - they were what I only know in French as "whitebait" - little tiny fish perhaps an inch long, fried to cruncy; at that point, I thought I would explode if I had any more food, so I explained that to him, and he actually patted my [formidable] stomach (many waiters do that) and told me that he thought I could hold a little more food; but, I could not, and intend to return as soon as possible for this dish.
So, I'm in love with this place! As far as Americans receiving 'sub-par' treatment in Chinese restaurants, I personally have never experienced it, and I eat in as many Chinese restaurants as I can find; the treatment I described above has always been the norm for me. Perhaps it's because I had the Chicken Feet and they knew that I wasn't afraid of non-typically-Western foods, and perhaps not.
But thank you wilsonrabbit for posting about this place !!
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I can't wait to try this place out. I called to ask if smoking was allowed, and I assume I spoke with one of the owners who was quite lovely. He said that yes, until the deadline they allowed smoking against his better judgement..he said his partner still smokes....anyway...my question is...is the smoking bothersome? I am very sensitive to it, and can't wait for April 15th.
Yes, although other people will probably tell you "no".
I was in a few afternoons ago and took out some extremely delicious brisket for dinner along with some delicious sides, and the place was mostly empty; while I was waiting for my takeout to be ready and chatting with the outrageously nice people who own the place, two people came in and were smoking. If I had been eating there, I would have had to leave.
But the brisket and the people were fabulous indeed!
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THAT'S IT !!!!
I particularly love(d) it because there are some things that I make that only have a few ounces of "jus" but a lot of fat, and it's too small an amount for the other types of separators to separate.
If anybody sees one of these for sale somewhere, PLEASE let me know? THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
Melon Disappointment
in Cooking
Posted
Yesterday I bought some Prosciutto di Parma at the Shop Rite (great prosciutto, great price) so I bought a honeydew melon, and there were no indications from it that it would be any good. As it turns out, it was sweeter than sugar! I also bought a canteloupe from the A&P on the way home that didn't give off great hope, but it wasn't terrible. (I had sliced them open a bit in advance in case I needed to know that we couldn't eat them, and I wound up mixing the slices in a bowl for a while so that the honeydew could sweeten the canteloupe. I don't know that honeydews ripen at all - I would say go for it; if the supermarket one I got was ripe, chances are yours is too?