therese
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Posts posted by therese
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In spite of the title of this thread, lots of my dinners with reps and/or industry people are great: wonderful meal, wonderful company. Not surprisingly these are generally when the rep really is into food and/or wine, and either takes the trouble to find a great place, or asks me to do it.
The best of these is a guy who works for Danish vendor. He's not a rep but rather director of research for the firm. He's expected to entertain at meetings but has a lot of leeway in whom he invites along (definitely not tied to revenue or potential revenue), and I'm usually one of the lucky few.
Recent meals with him (and his co-workers) have been at One Midtown Kitchen for Richard Blais' one bajillion course tasting menu and an omakase meal in D.C. at a place whose name I can't recall at the moment.
So it's not always dinner in hell.
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That would be covered under "Etc."
And yes, they were pitching the yolks (three of them on my say so, if memory serves, though it might not) on our visit a few weeks ago.
Also pitched was a perfectly nice glass of champagne, ordered by a woman who was clearly not paying for her own drinks. I try not to think about it.
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Dinners are booked at Bosco's and Vermillion Water Grille.
Maybe I could manage to sneak in some tamales late one night.
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Although I don't dine very often with reps, they tend to be memorable dinners for various reasons.
A couple of years ago I was in Philadelphia for a very large conference. I'd been invited to dinner (along with some other senior consultant types) several weeks earlier by the head of marketing for one of the vendors of a company out in Silicon Valley. This guy is himself reportedly very into food and wine, so into wine that he's actually makes some himself, as he lives in the hills around Santa Cruz. He talks about food and wine a lot.
So he's talking up the place he's chosen and I'm thinking that this is going to be great, actually worth burning an evening on (because I'm turning down dinner invitations from people I know at the conference, people who won't buy me dinner but are really cool) and wondering where he's booked: Striped Bass? Le Bec-Fin?
So when it turns out that he's booked Roy's I am not quite as excited as I might be. Sure, lots of people think of macadamia nut-crusted mahi mahi and shrimp on a stick when they think of Philadelphia, I'm just not one of them. And because this guy has yattered on just endlessly about this amazing place we're going (and because my evil twin is now sort of peeved to be burning up an evening) I point out that I've been, that we've actually got one (because it's a chain) in Atlanta.
So he books elsewhere, Italian, and it's pretty darn bad. Actually worse than Macaroni Grill, though of course he couldn't have known, and because this conference is so big most restaurants were booked up. So I ate and drank and made nice conversation as was my job as guest.
Apparently the rank and file reps at the meeting used the reservation at Roy's and had a great time. They all thanked me the next day, at least the ones who could speak through their hangovers.
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I have a pilot coworker who smokes cheap cigars outdoors and then comes inside where he radiates fumes. Imagine my joy.
Ah, yes, cheap cigars. When I was pregnant with my second child one of my co-workers (the boss) would smoke his pipe in his office (with the door closed, as it was strictly prohibited to smoke anywhere in the building). I couldn't bear to be in his office or anywhere near him, and because he wouldn't admit to smoking there was no way I could come out and say, "Listen, that crap you put in your pipe smells like dead rotting animals. Smoked dead rotting animals."
...anyone have tales about the food smells that completely did them in during pregnancy?Lemon grass: smelled like sweaty chickens
Basmatic rice: weirdly animal sort of odor
Laundry detergent: I don't remember which one, but I had to switch products during the pregnancy
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OK. Sometimes I speak before I research
.From the Star-K's website:
...Today, most of the Kosher rennet used in cheese productions is known as microbial rennet. Microbial rennet is genetically engineered, which means that scientists were able to grow microorganisms under appropriate conditions to create a new programmed organism that has the same qualities as the natural animal enzyme.So, microbial "rennet" (whether an endogenously produced enzyme or a genetically engineered form that's supposed to be the same as the bovine one) is acceptable?
Wasn't there some sort of brouhaha a while ago about micro-organisms in the water in NYC?
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I was just speaking to a local cheesemonger about this particular cheese from Lazio. He claims that the cheese-making process is a lot slower when a plant-based rennet is used and that is one of the reasons many cheese-makers prefer animal-based rennets. He visited a British producer who switched back to animal-based rennets after some experimentation and found the resulting Cheddar superior in flavor.
The link I posted in upthread (post #14) gives some of the scientific basis for these differences.
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So, of my original three queries, I've answered the second by booking on Hotwire. I'd had great success recently using Priceline in New York, but wasn't getting particularly interesting options for Berlin and so checked out Hotwire. Lured by the description of "boutique hotel" for $87/night I leapt, and ended up with what turns out to be a new property, the Wallstreet Park Plaza, in an old building on Wallstrassse, the Wallhofe, apparently an old office building. The interior looks very modern, inspired by a pun on the street name, and includes decor elements that are supposed to evoke Wall Street, like carpets patterned as gigantic dollar bills.
We'll see.
Anyway, looks like it's very central (23-24 Wallstrasse) and has good public transit.
So, back to the queries 1 and 3, restaurants and clubs in the area. Looks like Vau (mentioned elsewhere on eG) is close by. Anything else of interest?
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I've checked a bunch of labels in my cooler. The ingredients : milk, bacterial culture, salt and microbial enzyme.
Being an animal by-product (and one can assume from non-kosher animals), it can't be mixed with dairy. So kosher cheese will not contain rennet.
So the microbacterial cultures and enzymes are not themselves considered animals and animal by-products?
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What stands out most for me, though are experiences as the entertain-ee.
Neither my husband nor I do much that includes spouses, either him as mine or mine as his. We work for the same parent company, weirdly enough, and occasionally are both at the same event but not as each other's spouses.
Second visit recruitment dinners, "thank you" dinners like the one I describe early in this thread, and holiday parties are about the extent of it, and my husband only goes along if he anticipates the evening being at least bearable. Somewhere along the line we came up with a sort of formula that takes into account the company, the food, and the distance (as long as an hour in the metro Atlanta area). Oh, and how important spouse participation might be a in particular instance: my husband's presence de rigueur at second visit recruitment dinner, for instance.
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Yesterday I bought a sheep's milk cheese here in Atlanta (at Alon's, great bakery and cheese if you're in the area) called Evora. Portuguese, produced under "denominocao de origem protegida" by Antonio Joaquim Parracha Ganhao. Great flavor and texture: firm light gold rind progressing gradually to crumbly, slightly creamy interior. Fairly salty.
The label lists incredients as ewe's milk, salt, and "flor de cardo" or thistle. So I spent some time roaming around on the web and came up with an interesting paper on Advances in the role of a plant coagulant (Cynara cardunculus) in vitro and during ripening of cheeses from several milk species . This link will give you the abstract for the paper; click on "PDF" to get the full text with figures.
The authors give some very good background on the use of thistle rennet and present some information about the differences in cheeses from ovine, caprine, and bovine milk.
Scientific, but not so bad that a lay person can't follow it, and pretty well written.
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i saw there's a wine festival on saturday, may 20th - taste of tn?? i had no idea there were wineries in the state - how exciting!! we have a thriving wine industry here in bc - mainly centered in the okanagan valley, but also growing rapidly here on vancouver island. what sort of grape varietals do you grow there? is the wine festival worth a car rental day for? (it's at the race track).
Yes, Tennessee has a number of wineries. I've been to several along the river near Knoxville, in Loudon County. This was several years ago, and I recall being happiest with some of the berry-based dessert wines, but there was at least one red that I was happy to drink. I can't recall which vineyard, as it been years.
It will be interesting to see what's happens with wines in the southeast. It's been assumed for years that any wine that came out of this region would be ick, but in fact there are some cool ones coming out of the mountains in Georgia and North Carolina.
Given your background I'd check it out.
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...As the waiter leans over to set down my dish I manage to murmur "Bring me a glass of merlot. Any merlot, I don't care." He returns in something like 20 seconds (clearly recognizing desperation when he hears it) with the glass. My boss, seated to my left, notices it, and instantly leans over to hiss "Hey, where'd you get that?" And I told him and he ordered one as well and finally our host realized that he'd not ordered wine and did so, just asking for a bottle of whatever I'd been given.
The funniest thing about this entire episode is the fact that my boss was a very proper sort of guy, very aware of what is and isn't socially okay, but desperate situations call for desperate measures.
Remember my very proper boss, the one who (like me) was so desperate for a drink during the awkward dinner I described upthread that he also broke social convention and ordered a glass of wine when his host hadn't and also hadn't invited him to?
He really was an amazingly proper sort of guy, very formal but also very pleasant, almost disarmingly convivial (all traits which have served him very well in his career) and very good at hosting dinner for colleagues.
One night we were out to dinner at a fancy Italian place, one of his favorites because they had very experienced old school waiters and a great wine list. Our guest was some big whig (whom I can't recall) but also at dinner were several other fairly senior colleagues from here in town. Dinner proceeded nicely through our first courses and those plates were removed and then cutlery for the next course was placed. One of my colleagues, a very pleasant guy who was seated to the left of my boss (I was to the right of my boss) suddenly held up a piece of cutlery he'd never seen before and said, "Hey, what the heck is this thing?" And before my chairman could murmur "Fish knife," one of the old waiters who'd been in the background walked up, took the fish knife out of the first guy's hand and said, "It's a fish knife." He didn't actually say "you ignoramus" out loud, but it was understood.
Not a big deal to the guy who'd said it, and we all laughed it off, but I gather that my boss later had a quiet chat with the manager. Had it been the big whig who'd been corrected I think the little chat might have occurred right then and there.
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Plus, the poor person gets the Amex points.
Love those Amex points.
Apart from the points, though, I actually do like hosting work dinners. I like picking a restaurant that's convenient for the guests, serves food that suits a variety of tastes, features a nice wine list, uses locally-sourced ingredients (thereby supporting the local farms), and is chef-owned and/or managed (thereby supporting them). And that one instance of renegade wine purchase aside, have had uniformly pleasant evenings.
On the other end of the spectrum are expense account dinners where a rep is present and paying. As has been pointed out upthread this seems to bring out the worst in some people, though I do think it's really more a question of them being that sort of people in the first place. There are certain of my colleagues that I simply refuse to dine with, as I know they will be rude and condescending to the rep, and pretty much invariably drink way too much in an attempt to extract the most "value" out of the evening.
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Surprising enough many hosts told the server to tell the guest that if they wanted to order a special wine to advise the guest that he would be charged separately for this wine or any others he wanted to order plus a service charge. Others firmly said all wine will be ordered only by myself, very few said it was okay serve them whatever they want.
So I'm not insane.
The restaurant I'd chosen was a relatively small place, chef-owned, and in a slightly dodgy, artsy sort of neighborhood, so business dinners definitely not the norm. Because all of the guests lived locally and were bringing spouses the location was perfect, though---not far from work and easy access to the freeway for people who lived in the 'burbs. And of course the food and wine were great.
So even though the staff knew that I was the host, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to find that they'd never encountered a renegade wine purchase before. And since I hadn't pre-chosen the menu (because I really did want the guests to have exactly what they wanted) it was not so immediately obvious that this guy was departing from the plan.
Had he actually gotten up from his chair and come down to my end of the table to suggest that we try a different wine, one that he particularly liked or that he'd been wanting to try or whatever I'd probably have ordered a couple of bottles for us all.
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My memorably bad business dining experiences have all been with colleagues who don't treat restaurant staff very well. I had this one very senior colleague who always pulled waitstaff's chains to the point where it would take over the whole meal, especially if any of the servers were female. He would start by putting his menu aside as if he was ready to order, and then when the server came he would act all pseudo-flustered like he was a little kid and she was a teacher trying to pick up test papers and he wasn't done. He might get her to come back three times before she got an order out of him. While someone was opening a bottle of wine he would say, "We always send the first bottle back." (We got a corked bottle once and he didn't send it back.) He made all staff stand around while he told jokes and flirted with the women. One server went slightly ballistic and asked, "Is he always like this?" Luckily, he thought that was cute so her tip didn't suffer.
Do you think you could arrange for me to meet this guy? Because I think I'd really enjoy, um, talking to him.
Come to think of it maybe we've already met.
One of my favorite dinners ever was at an upmarket Greek restaurant here in Atlanta. I was one of two invited speakers, and one of the guests was a very senior, mostly retired dermatologist who spent a great deal of the evening insisting that I'd surely had plastic surgery, as I couldn't possibly be as young as I looked. His wife finally told him to shut the hell up (but nicely, of course).
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As soon as I hear the dreaded, "oooh! What about The Olive Garden!" I'm out.
Yeah. I've been known to come down with sudden satiety at the idea of Olive Garden.
A few years ago a colleague and I were asked to come to San Jose to participate in a sort of focus group/ask the experts session for a vendor. Because we're interested in making sure that the vendor develops products that support our work we went, me from Atlanta and him from Baltimore. We were grilled (questioned, I mean) for hours, fed lunch at the company (not bad, considering) and then it was out to dinner.
Both of us happen to be really into food, and since we've known people at the company in question for years our host was well aware of the fact. In fact she made a point of telling us earlier in the day that she'd picked out a great place, a restaurant that was new and getting great reviews, and even though my colleague was feeling a bit under the weather with a brewing cold he decided to join us.
So of we go, driving through the endless pavement jungle of Silicon Valley to our destination: Macaroni Grill. At the time I think it was spelled Maccaroni Grill.
Anyway, there it was, rising magnificently from the expansive parking lot, and I really did just want feign some sort of fit right there on the asphalt. My colleague clearly wanted to cry, as he could have been back in his hotel room in a hot bath, slipping into an antihistamine-driven hallucinatory state. But we girded our loins and went inside and ate a really average meal.
Our host for the evening was very sweet and gracious, and I'm pretty sure nobody ever told her that Macaroni Grill is not necessarily the ideal venue for entertaining snotty out of town visitors. I do know that her boss nearly had a stroke when he heard (not from me) where we'd been.
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We have a nice tidy rule that saves everyone trouble, most senior person pays.
A very good rule. I'm generally in groups where there's not much disparity in seniority and then I tend to benefit from another rule, the "girls never pay" rule (unless they're reps, and then they're not really paying). Sometimes I insist.
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So me, along with a group of about eight other people were invited to Really Expensive Trendy Sushi Joint. I was excited because I'd been dying to go there, and the menu is really innovative. We got sat, bottles of sake were poured, and the host begins to order. And orders the absolute safest, most boring, non-Japanese dishes on the menu. I was so disappointed I thought I would cry. Here I was at a restaurant I'd been dreaming about going to, looking at a menu with some of the coolest things I'd ever seen, and the host is ordering tekamaki, which I eat at least once a week. I my head I was screaming, "NO NO!! Someone stop him! He doesn't know what he's doing! I lived in Japan! I love food! Let me order something!" Of course, I said nothing of the sort, and sat through one of the most depressing meals of my life, the whole time eyeing what other tables were eating with a longing that would have surpassed the ubiquitous Oliver.
Yep, been there and done that. More typically you're in a restaurant that you know or suspect has great food, but you're ordering from a set menu: chicken or pasta, and very boring chicken or pasta at that. I just gut it out.
Particularly depressing at Expensive Trendy Sushi Joint. Just remember, it could have been worse. You could have been eating at Maggiano's or The Cheesecake Factory.
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And for one corporate event, which I'd set up, a manufacturer guest wanted a special brand of scotch that wasn't on the menu. The private club where we held the event told him he couldn't have it because it wasn't included in our contract (I didn't know that). He told me, and IMMEDIATELY on the spot I had them bring me the catering contract and wrote in that anyone could order anything they wanted and the cost would be covered. I went to the office to do that, and all he knew was that in the next few moments a waiter brought him his drink.
Sounds like we're in very different situations. The manufacturer guest (and I'll use the term guest here loosely---you're wining and dining in the hopes of either initiating or maintaining a profitable relationship with him, right?) not only ordered a presumably premium scotch, but then informed you when it wasn't available. So he's clearly the alpha dog, and it's clearly your job to reinforce his position. Which you did, and that's cool.
As host of the dinner I describe it was my job to make my guests comfortable. It was my guests' job (and yes, this is a two way street) to enjoy the evening. It was not this particular guest's job to assume the role of host, or to order "better" wine than the rest of the table was drinking. I agree that ideally I'd not have had to deal with it at all, but I was also not delighted at the prospect of my other guests feeling second rate, nor at the prospect of turning in a receipt to my administrator that was out of proportion to what I'd normally spend. I don't work in the private sector.
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Forget this guy being boorish. You behaved worse than that. You treated a guest to a down-sizing for your own enjoyment so you could be recognized as THE "alpha dog."
A guest is a guest, and, no, you don't have to ever invite them back, but while they are YOUR guest, you have a responsibility to treat them kindly. And that you didn't do… even worse… you did it intentionally.
And before this discussion gets too very far out of hand let me point out that I know this guy pretty well and in fact he was trying to "hijack" the dinner. I didn't make a big deal about my being the alpha dog or anything (though of course he got the message), just smiled sweetly while pointing out that I'd already ordered wine.
That he wasn't invited to speak the next year had nothing to do with dinner, and everything to do with his chronically missing planning deadlines for the conference, to the extent that conference attendees complained.
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Let me get this straight... you invited the speakers of this event as GUESTS to a restaurant, and then when one person (who was a speaker) ordered a bottle of wine, you nixed it so as to embarrass him and put him in his place since you were the "alpha dog."
Forget this guy being boorish. You behaved worse than that. You treated a guest to a down-sizing for your own enjoyment so you could be recognized as THE "alpha dog."
A guest is a guest, and, no, you don't have to ever invite them back, but while they are YOUR guest, you have a responsibility to treat them kindly. And that you didn't do… even worse… you did it intentionally.
Seriously? You would order a bottle of wine at a dinner to which you'd been invited? A dinner for which wine had already been ordered and was being poured? Without asking your host?
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Along the lines of ordering wine with dinner I have another story.
This takes place about seven years ago. I've been invited along to dinner with an invited speaker, a very senior guy. The host is a colleague, a bit senior to me but in another department. Also attending the dinner is my boss, very senior to both me and the host, but not the person who invited the speaker and so not the host for the meal. The reason he's been invited is that he's an old friend of the speaker.
So dinner's in a very fancy expense account sort of place, and because it's a work dinner we're there early and it's all sort hushed and quiet. The waiter asks if we'd like a cocktail before dinner and the host declines on his own part, but then does not ask the rest of us if we'd like one, so that's the end of that.
We proceed to ordering our meals, and then we hand over our menus, and then we wait. Because apparently the host has either forgotten or doesn't know that he needs to order wine, and the waiter isn't going to remind him after the no cocktail episode.
Finally (and it's a long finally---there's somebody else at this dinner whom I don't like who is making a point of being a complete pain in the butt in a very passive aggressive way and it's all a bit uncomfortable) our first courses arrive. As the waiter leans over to set down my dish I manage to murmur "Bring me a glass of merlot. Any merlot, I don't care." He returns in something like 20 seconds (clearly recognizing desperation when he hears it) with the glass. My boss, seated to my left, notices it, and instantly leans over to hiss "Hey, where'd you get that?" And I told him and he ordered one as well and finally our host realized that he'd not ordered wine and did so, just asking for a bottle of whatever I'd been given.
The funniest thing about this entire episode is the fact that my boss was a very proper sort of guy, very aware of what is and isn't socially okay, but desperate situations call for desperate measures.
There are instances in which I wouldn't have ordered any alcohol at all, of course, specifically those in which I knew or suspected that my host didn't drink or buy alcohol for religious reasons, or if I knew there was some sort of substance abuse issue. This was neither, just a clueless host.
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Is there a scenario in which someone could have ordered a different bottle without offense being taken? While your presence here (on this forum) leads me to believe you probably have good taste in wine and didn't buy swill, it is nonetheless a matter of taste. I can see myself quietly ordering a bottle if what was served was counter to my taste enough that I thought the otherwise-enjoyable meal would be compromised. Of course, I would do so having every intention of paying for it myself.
You certainly know your colleague better than I and probably rightly guessed his motives, but I'm just playing devil's advocate here (you know the drill - read, chew, discuss). I can think of several reasons someone might do this (sulfite sensitivity being an extreme one; most wine lists today have an organic or natural or whatever you label it offering that doesn't have sulfites).
Problematic, actually. For starters it would be extra hassle for the waiter. True, not that much hassle, but it's already a huge hassle waiting on this large a party and that's one of the reasons I let the waiter know up front, sotto voce, that I'll be handling the bill and any problems that might arise.
I've been in this position myself and generally elect to either drink a bit of whatever plonk's being served or just skip the wine and order a second cocktail if the food suits (which it often does if the wine's plonk) or a wine by the glass. There is absolutely no way I'd ever, under any circumstances, order an entire bottle just for me, even if I somehow managed to pay for it.
My colleague (who pulled this stunt because he is a boor, not because he's particularly into wine) could have ordered wine by the glass if he'd wanted to and I'd not have noticed and not have minded if I had.
What do Japanese babies eat?
in Japan: Cooking & Baking
Posted
I agree with the issue really being mostly about the fact that they are beans, and beans aren't supposed to be sweet. It would be like making dessert out of corn, which doesn't seem very weird given how sweet and mild corn already is, but we don't do it (unless you count corn muffins, and those aren't really eaten as a sweet).
I really enjoy Japanese sweets of all sorts, but even I must admit that they can be a bit monotonous: how many different combinations of mochi, macha, beans (red, lima, whatever), wheat cake, and chestnut can a person eat?
I'll also point out that a great deal of Japanese food is actually very bland. I prefer to think of the flavors as delicate, but in fact things like rice and sashimi and udon and tofu are very bland and typically don't have very assertive textures. They're paired with condiments and pickles and so forth, but these are not necessarily any stronger than their U.S. counterparts. It's very common for children in the U.S., even non-eG offspring, to like very strongly flavored foods like lemons and dill pickles and ketchup.