markk

I still fail to see why you did. Was it because you think that the French diet is particularly fatty, by any chance? ← It's a little "rich", yes. But I mean that in a good way. When I'm in France, my dinner usually consists of two foie gras courses (cold and hot) , then at least several parts of a duck or pigeon(like the breast and thighs), or a platter of Choucroute Garni, then some cheese and some dessert. If I had to take a pill that said to avoid fatty foods when taking it, I don't know when I'd be able to fit one while in France. Can I say that I mean that lightheartedly, as well?

WHOA !!! Hold on everbody... I started this thread totally in jest - please read the initial post again. Nobody loves France or the French people more than I do, and this was about fatty foods, not alcohol. And yes I am well aware of the campaigns against alcohol abuse, and I see the message "L'abus d'alcool est dangereux pour la santé, à consommer avec modération" on the bottom of the page of every ad for wine in my monthly Gault Millau magazine. It just struck me funny to see a sticker on a prescription bottle about not eating fatty foods with it, and I thought jokingly of France. And indeed I have been in French pharmacies on extended stays where I've had to fill prescriptions from the US, and I know that the medicine is literally one-tenth the price over there (sometimes even less) and that the pharmacy experience takes under a minute - they give you the item, stamp your prescription "used" with the date and name of the pharmacy, and that's that. I assure you, I meant the fatty food question in the spirit of fun. But if I were in France and had that medicine to take, I can't imagine when in the day I would be able to, if ever. Are we okay now? I hope so.

Well I suspected in this case that it had to do with absorption, but I was asking jokingly as in do you think they even bother with this sticker in France, where of course if you consume less than 2 litres of wine a day you're allowed to say legally that you don't drink (etc., etc.)

A friend of mine has been having trouble sleeping lately and his doctor gave him some brand new, supposedly "wonder" sleeping pill that's now advertised on tv. When he picked it up at the pharmacy, they had put a bright yellow sticker on the bottle that he had never seen before and he thought of me and showed it to me. The sticker says: "Fatty foods may reduce the effectiveness of this drug. Avoid fatty foods while taking this medication." So my question is --- Do you think the pharmacists in France even have this sticker ???

The cashier called out to the second person in the Express checkout line, who had a very full cart, "Excuse me, Excuse me Miss, this line is Ten items or less!" The woman said "Oh [crap]" and got off the line. I was behind her and as I moved up called out to the cashier "Oh but I only have five items of less" and she screamed out in panic "Then you can't be on this line either !!!" A few seconds later there was a great deal of laughter from everybody around, although she never got it. ----- An A&P opened some years ago with great loss-leader prices on meats the first few weeks and sold out of all of them. Week one I went for a raincheck on the Pork Loin, and the girl at the courtesy counter wrote it out for Pork "Leon" (with the quotes around the "Leon") ----- The next week was a sale on beautiful pieces of Top Round for London Broil and they sold out instantly so I went for that raincheck. The same girl wrote out the name of the item correctly, "Top Round for London Broil" and put the price, and then added the line in quotes "Must buy 6 pounds or more" which had nothing to do with that sale (I don't think a london broil would even qualify) and which I see on the 'Family Packs' of chopmeat and pork chops, and I told her it didn't apply to this sale, and she answered, "Oh, that's just something that we have to write so they know that it's meat."

Honest to God, I was in a Shop Rite in Jersey City a few years ago that's just famous (among my friends anyway) for cashiers that just don't know one piece of produce from another. I was buying three very large lemons. The cashier held it up to me and asked "What is this?" and I replied, "It's a LEMON." She said "but it's so big" and I replied, "It's a BIG LEMON." I have a few more and I'll post them later.

I 'fourth' or 'ninth' the idea of the bechamel at this point. Here are a few enhancements/suggestions: I make mine with a very rich homemade chicken stock, in which I use a good number of root vegetables (parsnip, celery root, etc.) and sweet onions (purple, or vidalia). I also use the Baby Bella mushrooms for sauteeing and mixing-in or layering separately - they give an intense mushroom flavor that the regular white ones don't have.

I don't know where to begin, I love veal chops so! Did you buy the "rib" ones or the "t-bone" chops? I prefer the rib chops much. There are lots of recipes that I can think of, but as great tomatoes are still in season, I'll give you the first one that comes into my mind. It's breaded veal chops topped with tomato and basil, although just plain breaded with a squeeze of lemon is great too. If there's any membrane around the outside of the chops, cut through it so the chops don't curl up during cooking. Beat an egg or two with a spoon of oil and let it rest. Prepare a dish of bread crumbs (ones you make yourself in a food processor from stale bread). Season the chops with a little salt and pepper, dip them in the egg wash, drain them, and coat them with the bread crumbs. Put them on a rack (like a cake cooling rack or clean oven rack) and set them in a very cool air-conditioned room for a few hours for the breading to dry out and harden - this is important. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add some butter when the oil is hot but not hot enough to scorch the butter. Add the chops gently when the butter foam subsides, and let them cook for a good few minutes until the breading on the bottom is golden brown. Turn and do the reverse side, and set them on a rack to rest for a minute or two. You can of course just drizzle them with some good olive oil, lemon and salt and they'll be delicious. But if you have access to great tomatoes or heirlooms, cut them into chunks (well, you should actually do this an hour in advance), salt them very lightly, shred some fresh basil over them, and toss them with some good olive oil and let them sit for an hour. Then, spoon this mixture, oil and all, over the finished chops. Hope you enjoy! PS - If you know how to make the Italian dish "pepperonata" (red and yellow peppers simmered with onions and wine and oil), this is a spectacular accompaniment to this dish as well !!! The original The Romagnoli's Table has a great explanation (it's hardly a recipe) of how to make this.

They do this at Artisinal, the ("The") Cheese restaurant in New York City. It never works for me - the cheese in the crust always has a burnt taste, and no matter how many times I give it another chance, it's always the same.

I went to The Jefferson twice. The first time, I had a teriffic meal, and posted about it. I also introduced myself to the chef, and told him I was an eGulleteer too. I went back to The Jefferson about a week later for another dinner. I ordered the mixed antipasto appetizer, which consists of a few bowls of things, and asked if I could have a few substitutions, and they said yes. One of items I had loved the first time was the Fava Bean puree, and I requested a repeat of that. When the tray arrived, the server pointed out what things I had gotten, and indeed one was a bowl of the green Fava Bean spread. I took my spoon and dug into it. As it entered my mouth, I realized that it was a bowl of pure wasabi (incredibly enough, they also serve raw fish which they call Italian "susci", and so they must be the only Italian restaurant in the world to have wasabi). I am asthmatic and react badly to wasabi and in any event would never eat a heaping teaspoon of it (nor would anybody else to the best of my knowledge). The next thing I knew, gasping and choking, I jumped up from the table involuntarily, clutching my throat and gasping for air. I tried to catch somebody's eye for help, and saw the Maitre d' and another person watching me, and when they saw me look the Maitre d' came over and asked if I was okay. I said that I was not and asked if there was a hospital nearby, and he jokingly said "I'm sure there is." I was astounded by his cavalier attitude, and I told him that I had been served a large bowl of pure wasabi instead of the Fava Bean puree I had ordered, and he replied "drink some water, you'll get over it." I did eventually catch my breath, but as I am asthmatic and highly allergic (and as I never order sushi or eat wasabi), it could just as easily have been a life-threatening situation. So I do not share the love of the Jefferson that many of you do.

And so I'd like to tell a restaurant-review story that I inteded to tell much earlier in the thread, and now I'll present it in case it lightens the mood and gives everybody a small diversion... There's a local newspaper in Hoboken, although I use the term loosely (newspaper, that is, not Hoboken) that has always published restaurant reviews. I'm going back 15 or 20 years here, but I've told this so many times that while I think I've lost the printed review, I can paraphrase it well enough from memory for the purpose it will serve here. Hoboken had its number of Chinese takeout joints, and as it began to gentrify and yuppify, the first "noodle shop" opened. Well, there weren't really ducks hanging in the window (they claimed that wasn't 'sanitary' and that they had them in the fridge in the back), but it certainly wasn't a noodle shop like we'll all think of for sure. And the only duck on the menu was an appetizer portion of 1/4 or 1/2 half duck, and they had the first Cantonese Wonton soup that you could add one or two meats to, but that was about as far as they went. And so our husband and wife team of critics reviewed it, and I always imagined that somehow they were elementary school students who somehow were able to get married and write reviews, for they wrote, and I promise you that I'm quoting it from memory pretty close to word-for-word perfect, "Most of the Chinese people in the world eat at a kind of Chinese restaurant that most of us have never seen or set foot in - a Noodle Shop, with wonderful roast ducks and racks of roast pork hanging in the windows, and pots of simmering broth to cook all kinds of wonderful noodles in to add the meats to. Such and Such which just opened in Hoboken is just that kind of restaurant, and one of the first noodle shops to open anywhere in New Jersey. And so we couldn't wait to give them a try. "They also have the standard Chinese dishes as well, so to afford ourselves a fair comparison with other Chinese restaurants around, we decided to try the Chicken with Broccoli. The chicken was moist and plump and tender, and the broccoli was so obviously fresh that you could actually taste the chloryphill (yes, it really said that). And the sauce was definitely a step up from the usual fare. A must try dish at a must try restaurant." Now I ask you my fellow gulletteers, any comments?

Indeed! As I've already said somewhere here, the two are definitely related (the interest you show in your meal and the kind of recommendations, service and special treatment from the kitchen that you get) - I leared this accidentally a long time ago and was delighted to see it in the book. I'm always surprised how people will go into a "real" (i.e. not "chain") restaurant and without asking anything just order off the menu. I would say that if they are, that's terribly bad business. I mean, it's a really good meal prepared with obvious care and served with great service that turns a first time patron from the "general public" into a regular. For a restaurant to make that distinction would be bad business although I grant you that many do.

Okay, I'll take the bait. ...Bottom line, I think each review or reviewer should be treated equally, until you make a decision for yourself. The majority isn't necessarily right, nor will the opinion(s) of other(s) match yours all of the time. If you don't treat reviews or reviewers equally, you will probably go into a place with pre-conceived concepts that will certainly cloud your judgement. ← Absolutely, and I took it that that was what he meant. When I read a review in a local neighborhood newspaper, or in Fodors or Frommers, I give it a different mental value than let's say some other source. But speaking for myself, at this point I've formed a weighted average (or something) in my mind that tells me how much to credit each source, and for me anyway I think I get a good picture of what the restaurant and food will be like.

When reading restaurant reviews, and choosing restaurants, I like the idea of "triangulation" - that is to say, reading multiple reviews of the same restaurant, and forming an opinion. I really enjoy reviews written by critics who have gotten to know the restaurant owners and chefs, for all the reasons Steven gives in his book. You can get a great feel for a restaurant from such a review. But it's great to have reviews of the same place written by people not "in the know" at the establishment. By compaing them, I find that I can get a pretty good sense of what the place will be like, food- and vibe- wise. So I can't argue that a critic should be one way or the other - for help in choosing restaurants, I say 'the more the merier'.

I enjoyed the book very much, but this core message didn't resonate with me. ← I read Steven's book, and this cor message resonated deeply with me, and gave me great pause for very happy retrospection (although I'll make this message not-so-much about me, or try to keep it about him...) On my first trip to Rome in 1973, at age 22, on the third night we went to a restaurant in a hidden plaza populated only by native Romans, and the food was other-worldly great. We went back the next night again, thinking it was better to try the things we didn't have the first night than to go to a new, untried place. On that second night they were glad to see us back and took extra special care of us, bringing us food we didn't order, etc. So went back again the next night and were served an all night feast that was more like a Roman Orgy - it was certainly the greatest dining experiences of our 22 year old lives. To make this long story short, we were in Rome for 3 weeks, and ate there every subsequent night. (Well, on the one night a week they were closed they gave us directions to their brother's restaurant, and let him know we were coming so they could papmer us there.) And back at this place, they took me into the kitchen to watch them make my favorite dishes, the chef came out to sit with us after the meal (his wife gasped that he had never done that with an American in his entire life), and we repeated this several week visit on 4 subsequent annual returns to Rome. Then I started doing it in France when I started traveling there a little later in life. Of course, there's nt a great point to doing it if you really don't get a sense of loving the restaurant you're in, food wise - you move on until a place says to you "I want to be a regular here!". And so there's one place in Alsace where the chef is my bud, where I'm allowed in the kitchen to hang out and photograph whenever I want, and where the staff knows that whatever else people are ordering, Thierry is feeding me whatever he comes up with for me that night. One night, I had expressed a desire to have "cassoulet" which I'd never had in France. Of course it's a dish from the southwest of France and this was Alsace in the height of the Christmas week dining season, but that didn't stop Thierry - he started from scratch a few days in advance, and made a special batch of cassoulet for me on his day off (to his wife's amazement and frankly, horror)... me earning "regular" status in a restaurant in France But Steven is right, it can happen just as rewardingly at a simple, local restaurant as well, so I'll direct you to a recent thread here on eG where I posted about a great local joint owned by two guys who really really can cook, and as you'll see, all the special, off-menu things they create for me all the time get in the way of my trying to photograph and post only their regular menu items... a local joint where I quickly achieved "regular" status And so I think Steven is right, of course, because without even knowing that this was a "method", I've been doing it for over 30 years. And I don't think that this interferes with the critics job, although Steven didn't present it in that context, I don't think. I took it to be that he was telling people how they could get the most out of their daily dining experiences, and of course, is he ever correct! As far as when there's a critic in the house can they do something better? I don't know, some say that aside from extra touches, not much, and then Ruth Reichel pressed the issue with her disguises, and I certainly wouldn't choose to go that route myself if I were looking for a great meal but it's understood why she did and interesting too. As far as what happens if you go to a famous restaurant that's supposed to be great, and because you're not famous you realize instantly that you're not getting the same treatment you read about, and get the feeling that you're not going to get their most carefully prepared meal either? - you should get up and leave. I do it all the time. Not all great restaurants treat unknown first time diners that way, but when I sense that's what's happening, I do get up and leave. It's part of my own dining strategy, and I was so happy to see that obvioulsy Steven was born with an similar, fully developed one as well.

No not for an article. I was reading "Garlic and Sapphires" and loving it so much I read most of it out loud to a friend (who was trying to read Harry Potter at the time) but we got to talking and laughing with her, and then tried to name all the critics and couldn't. Thanks, all.

Does anybody have a list of, or can anybody name the NY Times restaurant critics of the last 25 years or sO?

I'm halfway through "Garlic and Sapphires" and I'm LOVING it! It's extremely well, and entertainingly written, and I'm laughing myself silly out loud (I'm on vacation and the people at the pool are sort of looking at me) and I can't help it, and I'm laughing with her, of course. I had always liked her. I don't like the current state of Gourmet Magazine, as I've said, and this is the first book of hers that I've read, but it is GREAT !!

Indeed, let's hope it's for happy reasons, and that they're moving on to bigger and better things, and let's hope that they keep us informed! Here's wishing them the best of luck, and thanking them for all the great meals and wonderful hospitality that they've provided !!!

There's a wonderful book called "Produce - a Fruit and Vegetable Lover's Guide" by Bruce Beck with fantastic color photos (one page per fruit or vegetable), and a chart of each item's seasonal availability - and I know you can pick up a copy used on half.com for around five or 6 bucks.

Wow, I'm glad that everybody has liked this place. But what was I thinking? Now I'll never be able to get a table when I waltz in !

Well, I'm not entirely sure I understand your question... do you mean 'what happens if they don't take reservations and they're full when you get there and you have to wait for a table?'. That would be the same that happens at Hoboken's two most popular restaurants, "La Isla" and "Margheritas". Neither of those takes reservations, and if you get there you just have to wait, sometimes 90 minutes or more. Many is the cold winter's night I've stood bundled up with scarves around my face and hat pulled over my ears waiting outside for a table at La Isla, which has only 5 tables, and if the've all just sat down when you get there, it's a long wait in the cold. And in fact, dozens of Hoboken restaurants don't take reservations.

Reinholdt's message (above) should have shown as posted by me; sorry about that; he's a friend of mine based in Mannheim, Germany most of the year whose step-parents live in New York, and he's staying with me for the end of summer, and he registered for this forum on my computer, and it logged in under his account when I posted. The friendly folks at The Cup Joint confirmed to me tonight that while they don't in fact take reservations, if there's anybody coming from outside of Hoboken who doesn't want to make the trip with the possiblity of not getting a table, they should say this when they call, and a table will certainly be held for them.

The various truffle oils now admit that they are flavored with "nature-identical" truffle essence, and a few suppliers I asked said, "I don't know the exact details, but somehow they get the essence from the truffle and transfer it to the oil...". When I pressed them, I learned that that is total BS. There are places that synthesize the "truffle essence" in a chemistry lab and infuse it into oil. I didn't save all the links from when I looked that up, but if you Google "nature identical truffle" and "nature identical truffle oil" you'll find them.

If you're serious about your Burgundies, and you go on a night when Buddy (one of the two owner-brothers) is there and engage him in conversation and let him know that you're familiar with those wines (assuming you are), he'll guide you to some of the best Burgundies you're likely to drink in the USA. (The familiarity has to do with the fact that these are, of course, expensive wines, and he's had his fill of people coming in who don't know much about wine, asking for comparisons of several expensive Burgundies from the list, then ordering one and complaining because "it just tastes like regular red wine to them, and they were expecting something more for all that money". He has a real problem taking back bottles of expensive wine that are just fine, and he's right. But his cellar of Burgundies (white and red) is spectacular, and as he's chosen every bottle personally, he can steer you to exactly what you're in the mood to try. The food, alas, has gone steadily downhill over the years. There's really nothing to eat that matches the magnificence of the wines, or comes close, and it presents a real dilemma. If you're seriously in the mood to drink great Burgundy, then you should go on a night when he's there, engage him in a discussion of what to drink and what to eat with it, and judge for yourself. But if the prospect of a great bottle or Burgundy or two isn't what you're after, this isn't the restaurant for you.