markk
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Posts posted by markk
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Ultimately, much of what we consider "jewish cooking" is very similar to what non-jews in the same communities ate, only it was adapted in order to adhere to the laws of Kashruth.
The adaptation goes both ways -- we tend to think of carciofi, artichokes, as typical Italian, and yet it was the Jews who introduced the vegetable to Italy.
This is very true indeed.
I used to spend a lot of time in Rome, where just about every restaurant serves the dish called, in fact, "Carciofi alla Giudea". Strangely, I never got around to dining at any of the "Jewish" Italian restaurants (like Piperno) in the Jewish Quarter, though. But being a wise guy, I always used to joke to people about having done so and having eaten the best "Kreplach Parmesan" of my life!
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Okay - call us gluttons; It wouldn't be the first time. Tonight, we drove from Hoboken to Montclair again to have our second consecutive night of sampling Epernay's new fall menu.
We started with the Tomato Soup in the Puff Pastry Crust, followed by the Leek and Gruyere Tart (again). Then we had the Halibut in the Truffle Broth, and the Smoked Pork Chop with Cabbage, Bacon, and Dried Cherries. And just a little Tarte Tatin for dessert.
Everything was just outrageous. Now if only I could convince them to move to Hoboken, we could walk there, and waddle home. What part of this are they not understanding?
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Not about leaving anyone out ... in my zeal to be so very politically correct and "inclusive", I made my title reflect the all embracing love of Jewish culinary arts, markk ...
and I did not grow up with these foods but the guy I married did and I tried to "recreate" his grandmother's home .. in so doing, I surprised even myself! And what a pleasure it has been to stuff my kishkes with all manner of Judaic eastern European nosherai!
Thanks for your great posts and the flanken picture ... but, alas, missing the ever essential kreplach!
I once spent an entire day learning the proper way to make kreplach only to have them "wolfied down" in a few moments of rapturous gluttony ... 
Thank YOU for starting such a wonderful post!
Some years ago, while David Rosengarten's show "Taste" (which I loved) was still on the Food Network, he used to talk about growing up Jewish in Brooklyn (I grew up in Queens at about the same time) - and I related to everything that he talked about regarding food. So I wrote to him to suggest that the Food Network find a remaining Jewish Grandmother and give her a show so that she could teach us all how to make all the traditional Jewish dishes that we love and crave. Alas, nothing came of it.
But I collect Jewish Cookbooks, and I love this thread. Thanks again.
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BTW, if anyone is interested in stuffed cabbage (geviltike kroyt), I'll be glad to share my mom's fabulous recipe. It's time consuming but easy.
I am. Please do share. Thanks.
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my question: even if you are not Jewish, have you ever wanted to learn something about the cuisine?
or, even if you are Jewish and had no traditional cooking at home growing up .. as I did!
... do you ever wish you knew how to make a matzo ball? a knish? a blintze? maybe even a kugel? 
I would love to hear from you!
OY! You left out a whole category of people. What's the matter with those people who are Jewish and grew up eating the traditional foods as a matter of daily routine, but never learned how to cook many of them, and now, many years later, long for the dishes they ate as kids? To me, stuffed cabbage, latkes, and chicken soup with kreplach are "comfort food". What's the matter, we cant want to know how to make that food as well?
My grandmother did the serious cooking. My mother hated to cook and mostly dropped the frozen steaks into simmering water at dinnertime as well. The only Jewish thing she made at home was the chopped liver I've referred to elsewhere in this thread. Other than that, we'd go to eat everything Jewish at her mother's house, wherupon Grandma Ethel would send home with us in jars enough foods that she had cooked up and saved for us so that there were at least two or three nights a week that we didn't have to eat my mother's "cooking", if you will.
And now, the photo of my recent flanken at Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House in Miami Beach - taken unfortunately, after the kreplach were devoured. This was just how Grandma Ethel used to make it, and for anybody craving all these foods, a trip to Rascal House should be your very next order of business. They make it all, and they make it well.
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I have always wanted a good, authentic recipe for chopped liver -- and people usually look at me silly when I ask for a good chopped liver recipe...
I used to make it with my mother, in the 50's and 60's, all the time. Here's how we did it:
Sautee some pretty finely chopped onions in some vegetable oil until they start to caramelize - the sweet taste of the caramelized onions was crucial part of the taste for us. Then add a bunch of chicken livers and sautee until cooked through and crumbly. Of course, you'll want to season to taste with salt and pepper.
In the meantime, you'll want to have hard-boiled a couple of eggs.
Also crucial was that you chop everything in a wooden bowl with one of those hand-held double-bladed choppers. I was too young to sautee things, but my mother would dump everything into the chopping bowl (the slightly cooled liver and onions from the pan, and the peeled hard-boiled eggs) and I'd do the rest. You just chop and chop until all of a sudden it looks like the chopped liver you always dreamed of. Hope this helps.
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The meals posted here look incredible!
I'd like to share a recent, elaborate one of my own. Technically it wasn't served as a "tasting" dinner, but rather a lot of it was served together on the largest dinner plates I own (they're probably serving platters altogether, from the way the guests groaned - although they finished every last morsel) because I wanted to try a novel approach: spending some time at the table eating with my guests!
But if I had served the duck and goose foie gras courses consecutively on little plates, and then the salad and two duck preparations (each with its own sides) consecutively, I maybe could have called it a 6-course tasting.
I prepped the day before, and began cooking 4:30 am the morning of.
To see the photos and menu click here.
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It's extremely difficult to coordinate the actions of two people, no less a hundred. The notion that all the customers of a restaurant could get together to keep it a secret is laughable. Information is more powerful than people. It will find its way around those who try to bury it, and it will wind up in all the same places.
Great restaurants will get discovered. You can either be generous, help them get discovered, and be part of the process of giving credit where credit is due; or you can make a failed attempt to bury the information while you watch the other thousand people who dined there recently make it happen. But it's going to happen either way.
Furthermore, if a restaurant allows itself to be ruined by being discovered, it's not as great a restaurant as you thought it was. The truly great places don't get ruined. They turn the extra business and attention into better food, decor, and service.
This post is truer than true - it's everything I was thinking as I read through the thread, unable to come up in my mind with such a perfect way to express my identical thoughts.
But this is something I struggle with regularly, and would like to make a confession. I'm slightly selfish when it comes to great, as-yet undiscovered restaurants where I can still get a table by calling the same day, so I tend to keep them to myself. But I don't feel bad, because I know that I'm not hurting the restaurant, only attempting to forestall the inevitable. And so, as to your sentence that begins "You can either be generous, help them get discovered, and be part of the process of giving credit where credit is due...", in my own mind, the sentence finishes "... or you can stay out of the process, hoping to forestall the inevitable discovery, prolongong, however shortly, the period of time that you can easily get a table."
Still, I am in awe of how correct each of your thoughts is. Your first and third paragraphs, for which my own selfish dining agenda has no alternate wordings, hit the nail right on the head.
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Tonight we had our first meal from Epernay's fall menu.
We started with the Lentil Soup with the Foie Gras crouton, and the Leek and Gruyere tart (and although it's not a new dish, we then split the Frisee salad). For main courses, we had the Pot Au Feu, and the Duck Confit on Pumpkin and Blue Cheese Risotto with Fried Sage and Walnuts, and then we nibbled the Chocolate-Banana Bread Pudding.
It was obscene, from the first bite to the last.
We left happy. Very happy. Sure, we waddled more than we walked, but it was a happy waddle.
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What are your thoughts on serving seperate bones on the same plate?
woodburner
Well, if I may answer that question as a prime-rib lover, I'd like to say I'd be thrilled to have the seperately roasted bones as opposed to having no bones at all.
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This is a general discussion, yes? If I may digress a tiny iota, what is the concensus about "speaking up" if you get a dish or glass of wine that you don't like? Assume there's nothing wrong with the dish except that you just don't like it. Do you ask for something else?
Yes. If I dislike it enough that I don't want to eat it as my dinner, I definitely ask for something else. But I never ask to have the replacement dish for free; I expect to pay for it. And sometimes I am charged for the first dish, which is just fine with me, and sometimes the restaurant will take a higher road and inform me that they haven't charged me for the dish I didn't like.
If I only dislike it mildly, I don't say anything, although I surely do make a mental note not to order it again.
But... if they ask, then, because I never lie, I always answer truthfully. I always answer nicely, but truthfully.
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actually i was speaking to the larger/general issue. not to your recent meal in particular.
And I, at this point, thinking that you were indeed speaking to my recent experience, should have just PM'd you that message instead. I'm genuinely sorry I posted that last message publicly.
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well no one is obligated to do anything but pay taxes, read egullet, and die. however, it's often a nice thing to do, especially if you're going to trash every aspect of the experience on the internet.
i'm a firm believer in speaking up at the time of the crisis. i believe it is fair to give a manager or owner a chance to make things right. i believe this should happen during or at the very least immediately after the meal if possible. i believe that i don't need to be treated like a child and wait until i'm asked "is everything OK" before i speak up. i also believe that i am capable of finding fault in every meal and every server. but i choose to not.
those are my beliefs.
respectfully, well-fed, and generally pleased,
tommy
Well, I can’t stress strongly enough that I have no interest in beating a dead horse, and I also feel that I’ve had my fair say, and that everything about my meal has been discussed to death. But I really like and respect Tommy, and in the interest of dialog, wanted to reply one thing to him about his last post, hoping very much that it’s not out of line…
We did actually speak up a few times during the meal. Of course, when my soup arrived cold, I said so, and of course they reheated it. When they brought it back, and when they cleared it five minutes later, they didn’t notice the uneaten mushroom appetizer either time, and so we spoke up again and said that it was too salty to be eaten, which was greeted with a grunt. No offer to remake it, no offer to bring anything else, no apology, no offer to call anybody over - and nobody told a manager, or if they did, no manager came over to try to make amends. (And, while we weren’t expecting this either, no mention at the presentation of the bill of anything like “we didn’t charge you for the dish you were unable to eat”, which is something many restaurants say when this happens.) And then when the risotto came out lukewarm two courses later, (and I’d have thought that after being called on the soup not being hot enough, they’d see that the rest of he meal was served piping hot), we decided there was no point in complaining further. And truly, if I’d sent it back for reheating, my companions would have finished before I did (or let theirs get cold waiting for mine), and I’d have to wolf it down when it came, prolonging the meal, and with the people standing over us, this wasn’t a pleasant prospect. I mean this nicely, but by the end of the meal we figured, what was the point in complaining? To ask for a manager and say that much of the food was cold, and that the staff was rude, what could they have done to “make it right” at that point?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m thinking: probably nothing. And maybe you’re going to suggest that they might have done something with the bill. But you know, the whole deal, for three, was a big hundred bucks before the tip, and that’s just not a big deal. That’s gentle enough that all we wanted to do was settle up and go home. And my post about the meal was genuinely not meant to trash them, nor do I think it did - it was meant to tell some of you who loved the place about our dissimilar experience there; and then, you all did convince me that we hit an off night, and I was happy for the opportunity to discuss this on eGullet. Some people suggested that we give it another chance, many wrote in to say that if they had the same first-time experience at a restaurant, they’d say nothing to the place, and wouldn’t return either. And it’s exactly this kind of dialog on eGullet that makes it so wonderful, and makes me happy to be a member. Not to mention how many wonderful, now favorite, restaurants I have discovered thanks to member posts.
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Ah, got you.
Well, then you probably know what you're doing; were you intenting to tie the bones to the bottom of the roast as they'd be if it came not boneless? I think you'd be just fine doing something like that.
For what it's worth, I may hold the award for having cooked the world's smallest rib roast. (And, I got it rare, but I don't have the "after" photo.)
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I'm thinking of buying a whole Boneless rib eye, and tying beef rib bones around them using them as a roasting rack.
Could use some ideas.
woodburner
Why would you do that? I think you'd get better cooked, better flavored meat by cooking a rib roast on the bone, and if you have a long enough knife (like a smoked-salmon knife), it's incredibly easy to "scoop" the entire eye off the bones after it's cooked and rested. I do it all the time.
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We ate at Rocca tonight. It was disappointing.
If you're willing to share the details, I'd be very interested in hearing them. Of course, I had a diappointing meal there last week and posed about it, and then a most heated discussion ensued. After a point, Rosie closed that discussion, saying:
"Everyone has had their say. Time to move on. If you dine at Rocca be sure to give us a report."
And that was a healthy thing to say at that point; my meal was discussed to death.
Tommy went back since Rosie invited only new comments, and posted most favorably. You went back since and were disappointed. Considering, (especially considering) that many people here tried to convince me to give the place another try, I'd love to hear the details of your disappointing experience. I'm certainly hoping that there will be no more trouble, and that you'll not receive any flack for a negative post, but I don't think it should be surprising that, or why, I'm curious to hear it: I was apparently not the only person to have a disappointing experience there. And I'm sure that your post will be as fair, and as intelligent, as all the others that I enjoy reading so much on eGullet. Thanks if you do decide to share the details!
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When the waiter/manager or whomever asks how is everything and it sucks (food and/or service or bathroom or whatever), what do you say?
I tell the truth.
I never lie when people ask my opinion of something. If the food was lousy and somebody asks me how it was, I reply "not very good", but I always say it nicely.
Part of it is that I just can't lie, and part of it is that I think it's a bad idea to lie when asked that question. There are lots of times when the food is lousy and nobody asks, and for all the same reasons that people have stated here I don't feel like complaining, so I say nothing. But if they ask, I answer.
About two years ago we dined at the famous 3-star Auberge de L'Ill in Alsace, France. The meal was just horrible. Perhaps we got it on a very off night, or perhaps the place is horrible, as many suggest, and is resting on its laurels. I don't know. We got a meal that tasted like airline food. And the waitstaff was actually condescending and unfriendly, which in my experience is the opposite of what French waitstaffs are like, most especially in that region.
So we finished, and paid our check, and were leaving, when the hostess came up to me and asked us how it was. I replied, "disappointing".
She looked at me, horrified, and said, "do you mean the food or the service?" I answered, "both". She then asked me "was it the case that you were expecting it to be great and it was not?" and I replied, "yes, exactly." Then she helped me on with my coat and asked if she could offer me a souveinr menu to take home. I said "no, thank you", very nicely, and left.
But when asked, I never lie.
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Of course, if someone didn't eat half their entree, then they should be asked if there's a problem or the manager fetched by an inexperienced server to inquire. But if you don't let someone know, then the eloquent three page nasty letter you write and send a week later SERVES NO PURPOSE.I'm simply suggesting a little TWO WAY COMMUNICATION if there's a problem... A customer that is displeased and says nothing is doing neither themselves, the restaurant or any future customers a favor by remaining silent.
May I point out to you that the disgruntled Rocca patron who posted the message criticising the meal said very clearly in his post that after the waiter had had ample opportunity to notice the uneaten appetizer (once when returning with the other diner's re-heated soup, and once five minutes later when he came to clear all the plates), the diner who could not eat his appetizer told the waiter "this was way too salty to eat" and the waiter simply grunted. Did nothing, said nothing, offered nothing, apologized not at all, and brought it to no one's attention.
At that point, don't you think that everyone at the table realized there was no point whatsoever in complaining again?
I was that diner. You've made this comment several times now, and you've refused to acknowledge that we DID complain. To no avail. I'm glad to see that the overwhelming opinion here is that complaining is awkward and uncomfortable for the diner. Now imagine what it's like when everybody serving you is hateful. You'd have to be a fool to invite more trouble. You cut your losses, eat what you can, pay your bill, and get out of there.
Please don't put the burden of this on the customer. I resent that. If I go to a service business and have a problem that can be rectified, I speak right up. If I'm given a bad or dirty hotel room, I demand another one immediately. And if I'm shorted on the length of an hour's massage at a spa, I don't pay for a full hour.
But I assure you that there's no way that in mid meal, the owner of Rocca could have fired his hateful staff and hired a new one in time to finish serving our dinner. And if after the kitchen served me cold soup (in the hopes of shortening the meal by a few minutes) and I sent it back to be reheated, wouldn't you think they'd have the brains (or concern) to remember to check that the rest of the dinner went out properly hot? (Please don't answer that, it was rhetorical.)
And just so that you know, I did not send them a letter after the fact; I never contacted them again, and I think you should have your facts straight. I was in no touch with them whatsoever. I wanted nothing from them, and felt no obligation to them. What I did was post my negative experience on eGullet, after which the restaurant owner came on and told me that I had no right to do that! How dare he.
I realize that you're a restaurant owner. But have you ever thought of looking at things from the customer's point of view? I think that the views expressed in this thread by members say overwhelmingly that complaining puts them in a very uncomfortable position, that they and they alone feel they have the right to decide when, based on how things are going, if there's any point in complaining at a restaurant, and that they overwhelmingly do not feel that it's their responsibility to educate the restaurant in how it should operate.
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I guess the one thing I forgot to say in my last post was that it's obvious that you have no reason to return to Rocca, Markk; having read of your experience, I don't blame you one bit, nor would I try to convince you otherwise. I say here's to many ENJOYABLE meals for you at other restaurants!! For those who haven't been there, though, I still say it's worth a try--but that's based on my experience.
In terms of Mr. Levy, I'm not defending him nor do I know him, but here's what I see...a guy who hasn't ever posted on eG before, whose personality we don't know, and who feels he has to defend his livelihood publicly since you posted about your experience publicly--which I still agree was okay for you to do! Everyone has a different style; it seems that Lou wants to hear what people think of An American Grill whether it's positive or negative, but I'm sure there are just as many restaurateurs who prefer to handle these issues one-on-one. Perhaps Mr. Levy would have been better served all around if he had PM'd you and then posted a more general response on the board. And perhaps he has reamed out his staff and they'll all be far better from here on out because of your post! We may or may not know. I will say that we've all posted things here we later edited or removed or just wished that we hadn't.
Curlz
P.S. Rosie, I hadn't seen your last post b/c I was in the midst of writing; I respect the fact that you're the moderator here, but I think this discussion still belongs in NJ as long as the topic is Rocca, good or bad. There are enough of us who have been there to warrant having the conversation! Why is this different from the conversation that was started about Trattoria Fresco? There were good experiences galore, now there's been a fender bender, and people want to discuss it! Just my opinion.
I like your style.
Incidentally, I've just received some news that will place me on-the-road, and completely out of electronic touch, for the next few days, so I won't be seeing anything posted on eGullet, and needless to say, won't be posting, until at the earliest, late in the week.
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Curiz - I didn't misread your tone at all; I completely enjoyed your post and want to reply to some things that you and Anthony have posted...
But when customers of any business don’t speak up when there’s a problem, how can the business know?It's my belief that in Amerca, customers speak up with their wallets. When their business falls off and they don't have enough return customers to pay their bills and they fold, that's how they know. And I firmly believe that that's the foundation of the American free market economy. As a consumer, I vote with my wallet. I do not believe that I have any obligation to tell a business of its shortcomings. If for any reason I like them, and want them to succeed, then indeed I will tell them of problems, because there's something about them, there's been some positive indication, that they mean well and are trying. But when I encounter a business whose attitude to me is one billion percent negative, when I'm made to feel that my presence in their establisment is an unwelcome intrusion, and when I'm give not only lousy service, but lousy product as well, I feel no desire to support or help them. I want to cut my losses, get the heck out of there, and forget about them. The concept that in additon to handing them my hard earned money at the conclusion of the transaction, I should teach them as well, rubs me entirely the wrong way.
Sure, the wait staff and/or the kitchen should have spotted the issue—but they obviously didn’t, or didn’t choose to address it.That's right! Either way, for a restaurant with paying customers, and a restaurant who knew it had a first time diner, that's a seriously black mark. Did you read Anthony's comment about the people at Fascino being astute enough to pick up on the fact that he wasn't thrilled with one of his dishes? THAT'S the mark of a caring restaurateur who has trained his staff well.
Only time will tell if Rocca will go the way of Fascino or the place on French Hill Rd. in Wayne that renames itself every 18 months...And, Bingo!
I don't feel that the diner has any role in correcting a restaurant's shortcomings. A restaurant should understand that it stays in business by pleasing its customers to the point that when they leave, they want more and want to return. As I said in a much earlier post, nobody at Rocca the night I was there could possibly have thought that we were enjoying our food, or the attitude with which it was served, and I am entirely within my right to want never to return.
Did I hit an off night? Apparently so. Still, it was a hateful dining experience, with rude service and mediocre, cold food for me. I'm glad that most of you have had better experiences there.
What I resent, and I say this one more time, was Mr. Levy's comment that I had no right to share my negative experience with my fellow eGulleteers. (And that he suggested in his post that my criticisms were 'irrational ranting' is to me, thoroughly offensive. )
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Tommy -
I wasn't trying, in any way, to dissuade anybody from going to the reataurant.
I merely posted to the community that my experience there was a great odds to the majority opinion. Many of you, whose opinions I have come to respect from reading your posts about restaurants I like myself, convinced me that I hit the food on an off night, and I was perfectly willing to accept that.
And the fact that I got lousy food and rude service was not really a problem. If you don't try new places, you don't find new restaurants to love. I, certainly, don't try new restaurants thinking I will love every one of them. You win a few, you lose a few. Better to have experimentd and found new favorites than never to have tried at all.
As I said all along, I had a lousy meal with lousy service, and decided not to go back, and I shared this with my fellow eGulletteers.
For me the problem was the owner of the restaurant coming on here, and telling me that as restaurant patron, I had a "duty" to him, and I grealy resent the fact, that in just so many words, he told me I was wrong to post my negative expericnecs at Rocca, or criticise him on eGullet, without discussing it with him first. What nerve! This is insulting to the entire eGullet community. We have a right to share with each other the negative, as well as the positive.
And lastly, I think that his referring to my critical postings publicly as "ranting" and suggest that he would have preferred it if I were "fair and rational" - I think these comments are, while unprofessional, borderline libelous as well.
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What time did Markk actually arrive at the restaurant? It's never mentioned, only characterized as "late."
We arrived at 8:59, at which hour Mr. Levy insisted then, and insists now, that we were, in theory anyway, welcome - but I'd like to explain that arriving at that moment was - most assuredly - NOT our intention. We were scheduled to arrive around 8:40, and got lost following the directions, coming from Hoboken, and having never been anywyere near there; we did however, call, and he knew we were delayed. He also knew from the location I gave him for help finding the place, how far away I was, and he could have told me then that we'd not make it in time to be served.
But the salient point, I believe, is that he, in my initial call, when I asked if we could come 8:30/8:40- ish, insisted to me "you are welcome to walk in here until one minute of nine". (That's something he reiterated very clearly in his post as well.) And, although not intending to, that was precisely when we did arrive. I can't really see how that makes a difference. I upheld my part of the bargain, arriving in within the specificed time, and he did not.
I'd like to thank those eGulleteers who have posted their support for me, and those others who have e-mailed me privately with theirs!
I'd also like to address what I feel is the important issue here, and ask my fellow members: what do you do when you receive mediocre food, or bad service in a restaurant? Do you feel that you have a responsibility for this, or do you simply pay your bill, leave, and take the decision never to return?
In the Fascino thread last night, adegiulio posted a wonderful message about receiving a dish with which he was disappointed, (at a restaurant he assuredly loves) and that the waiter picked up on this, discussed it with him, and then a moment later the chef came out to see what could do as well. (I'm sure you can all find it.) I'd like to ask my fellow eGulleteers if they don't think that for the restaurant to notice something is wrong and take the iniative themselves to remedy it, should be the norm in dining out?
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Funny how that works, isn't it.
That's a great story, and a point very well made!
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I have to add (again) that the frisee salad is outrageous. I keep wanting to try something new, like the mussels that everyone raves about, but I end up ordering it every time I'm there.
Well, one doesn't preclude the other, you know. I frequently make a meal of the frisee salad as an appetizer, and the dinner-sized mussels as my main course - and it's a wonderful meal!
Jewish cooking .. ever want to try making?
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted · Edited by markk (log)
And as you know, sometimes after a big Jewish meal, you have no choice but to "ruminate" and "muse" over it all through the night. As they say, that's why they invented Seltzer!"