therese

You can certainly sit at the communal table, but you could also just sit right at the bar, as Woodfire's bar is entirely smoke free. In fact, they don't even call it a bar, but the "front room". Bag the solo table and dine in the front room. The cheese spa (or cooler or whatever) is located in the hallway between the front room and the back room, adjacent to the grill area. Try not to get saliva all over the front of it, okay?

What area's considered Chinatown? Anybody have any specific restaurants to recommend? Weekday dim sum would make a nice change from a steady diet of kidney pies and bacon sandwiches.

Off-line, via PM. If the occasion is less than 7 days away you can post to the ISO thread pinned at the top of each location's forum, or you can bury a query in a thread, but all of the subsequent details, etc. have to be via PM or email or whatever. My blog a couple of weeks ago featured a recent dinner at Woodfire (including a rather fetching picture of Michael and the wine director, Greg Koetting). Clearly one of our favorite restaurants in town, though it's hardly alone in offering great food. I don't see the food as being particularly Californian, despite it's typically being described that way. Just good food, well-prepared.

Thanks for the suggestions, Gavin. The Greenwich Union sounds like a very nice option, particularly the beer. Just the thing for an afternoon visiting the Maritime Museum.

Plans coming together nicely. An early dinner at Rules followed by Mamma Mia at The Prince of Wales. Not the sort of thing I'd usually pick, but my husband's surprisingly fond of musicals, and the children should enjoy it. At least my daughter will: I told her what we'd be seeing and she immediately began singing the theme song. We're doing lunch at St. John B&W one day, Wodka (I hope---I've not yet got a response to my email inquiry) one evening. No definite plans yet for Indian---something casual in our neighborhood would be nice. Bombay Brasserie too pricy, the new Masala Zone might be open by then but sounds like reviews have been mixed. New Tayyab seems like a trek, but maybe we'll end up in the neighborhood at some point (points of interest nearby?). I'd posted earlier to the ISO thread that's pinned at the top of the forum, but as our trip is farther than 7 days away it doesn't meet criteria for that thread (and I'll already be traveling by the time that it does meet criteria, so never mind). So at Andy Lynes' suggestion I'm re-posting here: "I'm visiting London with my family early next month, April 2 through April 8 (returning the 9th). They're huge fun, of course, but a week with kids and husband only will likely start to wear on us all. So coffee or a drink with either local eGulleteers or fellow tourists at some point during the week would be a nice break. I'm staying near the Gloucester Road Tube station, but don't mind traveling a bit. PM me if you're interested." No replies to the thread, please, PM arrangements only.

Pralines meet all your requirements. I'd probably do one sweet (the pralines) and one savory item (Zaps probably the easiest given the constraints listed).

I've eaten at TWO several times since it's opened, the most recent visit last night. Blais is, in fact, working there. The kitchen's open all the way around, so if you know what he looks like you'll see him. The operation remains very much Scott Serpas', and though the menu changes frequently it doesn't reflect any particular input from Blais that I can tell (and I've eaten lots of Blais' food, and also dined at TWO several times previous to his arrival). Assuming that Blais does eventually take the helm at the third restaurant in this group we'll presumably see more of his trademark sorts of dishes. As for whether or not TWO lives up to its hype, well, that depends on what you've heard. It's a fun place to eat and socialize, very high energy, lots of pretty people. The food's nowhere near the best in Atlanta, but it's not bad overall, and generally very good value: large portions, first courses in the $7-10 range, most expensive main course last night was $22 (for prime rib, I think) with a number of items under $15 (so inexpensive by Atlanta standards).

Great pics and info, andie. Your finished product is thicker than I'm used to, but otherwise very much a trip down memory lane.

Charleston would be a lovely place for a honeymoon. Food generally very good (I've not been in long enough that I'll defer on specifics) and it's a great town for romantic walks and so forth. Lots of inns and B&Bs to choose from as well. It will be warm in June, but not as swelteringly hot as later in the summer. Another romantic option in the southeast is Savannah. Not as well known for the food, but you can eat quite well there.

Not just cabrito, but menudo as well. The free trolleys are apparently no longer free, at least according to the three different people I asked. Everybody says that they're now $0.80. Still not a bad way to get around, but then the walk is also not bad if the weather cooperates.

Thanks to all for your recommendations. I didn't end up doing any high end dining at all, but what I had was pretty good. Sunday I had brunch with my sister-in-law at The Guenther House, a ladies who lunch sort of place located in a museum that's attached to a (still functioning) flour mill. The restaurant features products made by the mill and a retail store. Right on the river (though not on the River Walk), very pretty outdoor dining on a nice day. No alcohol. I had a cold plate, chicken salad and fruit, and we split a waffle for dessert. I had lunch a couple of days at Schilo's, a German deli that's just a couple of blocks from the convention center, so very convenient. Had tongue with hot potato salad (includes dill, a nice touch) and red cabbage (made with cinnamon) one day. Bratwurst with kraut (lots of caraway) and more potato salad the next day. They're famous for their home made root beer, but I'm not much of a root beer fan so had Shiner Bock instead. German beers (draft) also available. Dessert one afternoon at Mi Tierra at El Mercado. We sat in the restaurant and had coffee, but instead of dessert I went over to the bakery side and got an assortment of things: leche quemada (caramel fudge with pecans), dulce de naranja (candied half orange), polvoron (cinnamon-flavored dry tea biscuit), and pumpkin turnover (in a spicy sort of casing). All excellent. I shared them, and still had breakfast left for the next day. Only dinner out was on the river (right on the river, lovely evening) at an old school Tex-Mex place called Casa Rio. My family takes me here when we visit, and it was fine. I got tamales (yes, just tamales) and they were very good. All in all a very pleasant visit food-wise.

Very cool blog, Malawry---reading it's giving me a very serious case of deja vu. No sororities in my past, but as an undergrad I lived in a "French House" for a year. We had to cook dinner (in teams of two) for our housemates. A head count of 20 per dinner, with a whopping budget of $1.50 per person (so $35 a meal), with which we were expected to produce meal that included (in addition to the entree and sides if appropriate) bread, green salad, dessert, and wine. And in a remarkably tiny kitchen, come to think of it. Great home ec experience, that's for sure.

Okay, so here's an example of how difficult it can be to nail down an outbreak:

Over? No, no, it can't be over, can't you just keep blogging and blogging and...oh, hold it, you're right, you can't, at least not with this intensity. Really enjoyed all the experiences and food. Should I end up in Dubai any time soon I'll surely take you up on your offer.

My Texan husband would vote for pecan pie, every time.

I also love mastic. The version I've had (there's actually a picture of the resin blobs in my blog from last week) has a vaguely citrus minty quality to it, not at all like anise (though I also like anise). It doesn't remind me of pine resin, which is what I think of when I think of tree resin. Anyway, mastic may well be the light floral note that arbuclo notes in the nougat.

Eeeh. And bleah, too. Well, you could tell her you were going vegan, or had developed some medical condition that prevents you from eating certain sorts of food, or that you just weren't very hungry (which at least wouldn't be a lie---just the idea of eating food from this kitchen is making me sort of queasy). Or you could just beg off going to her house for social occasions, instead asking her over or out to restaurants. We have friends with cats (no, FoodTutor, it's not you) and dogs and not great housekeeping skills, and because both my husband and I are allergic/asthmatic we are both altogether miserable when we visit. So we don't. We don't specify why, we just can't make it on such and such an occasion. They are good friends and we very much enjoy their company, but being in their house makes us ill.

Well, in my case, I'd still try. There are so many misconceptions about food safety, as with the perception that wearing gloves = safer than not wearing gloves, that I'd far prefer to establish a clear connection between what I ate and when I got sick over just saying, "Oh, don't ever eat at that Mexican joint called Escupimos en su Alimento. I got sick from a taco there, and man-oh-man, I'll never eat that kinda crap again!" There have been verifiable strains of bacteria that could be traced to specific sources, like the outbreak from the waterpark here in Georgia and a number of other cases. Being in the restaurant industry, I know I'm biased, but I really don't like to contribute to alarmist behavior that makes people scared of their food. So, with my background, I tend to fall back on science wherever possible. ← Oh, I'd definitely still try, and in the case of the waterpark contamination it was particularly crucial, as a number of people were getting quite ill and even dying. What they had was actually fairly obvious (a toxin-producing E. coli that shut down their kidneys, the same thing as the Jack in the Box outbreak out west a few years ago), the question was figuring out where they'd gotten it (because it wasn't from food, but from the water, presumably originally introduced by a swimmer who'd been ill but apparently felt well enough to go to the waterpark that or the previous day) and coming up with a remedy (using more drastic chlorination at the waterpark). Isolated instances are not usually so carefully worked up, as it's not just difficult from a microbiological point of view, but from an epidemilogic point of view: if only one person is sick then it's difficult to even know where to start looking. As you point out, often the presumed source of the food poisoning isn't really the culprit. In the end it is a good idea to call the health department, of course, as you may be the one of the early victims in an outbreak. As for the original post re the no gloves handling of the fish, I'd have been fine with it.

Guess where sauerkraut came from --------- http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/Cooking%20by%2.../Sauerkraut.htm ← Well, then, we can certainly credit this restaurant with returning to its culinary roots. Complete with caraway seeds. I'm trying to remember some of the other salient features of the meal, but I appear to have blocked those memories in some way. Perhaps my husband will remember. Exactly how we came to eat in this restaurant has to do with the fact the Germany was much slower than some other parts of Europe (particuarly France, where it appeared that you could probably have purchases a single piece of chewing gum with a credit card) to adopt credit cards as payment for anything but large purchases. We'd been traveling through Germany, France, and Denmark for about a month (visiting friends, scientific meeting for husband, etc.) and had driven all day from France (after a week in Chamonix) to spend the night near Stuttgart prior to our flight home. Hotels near the airport in Stuttgart were booked, and the first place we found with availability was some distance away, in a hotel that also had a Chinese restaurant. We had insufficent German funds to purchase dinner elsewhere (this was in the olden days, before widespread availability of ATMs) and so eating dinner in the hotel meant we could add the tab to our hotel bill. In retrospect, any meal that afforded such vivid memories cannot have been all bad.

And even then you may not end up with an answer, particularly if it's a toxin-mediated episode (the most common): brief (usually less than 12 hours, though you'll feel pretty drained for a while) and violent. You'd pretty much have to get a sample of the food (instead of a sample of, um, whatever), and by the time the health department manages to scoot over to the restaurant it may be gone (consumed, thrown out, whatever). Only if you've been infected with something that can either be seen in a direct prep (believe me, you don't want me to go into details here) or cultured in a microbiology lab (something like Salmonella, for instance) or detected serologically (looking serially at your immune response) can the etiology actually be established. And getting a suitable sample can be harder than it sounds---by the time you feel like crawling out of your house to see the doctor that boat's pretty much sailed.

A bit off topic, as it's nothing to do with modern Italian influences on African cooking, but altogether on topic if you're looking back at very early foods around the Mediterranean (and elsewhere in the world) is Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, a book which, despite the name, is almost entirely about food. A particularly good read for the lay person.

Yeah, I had one of those really nightmare bouts once. The initial acute phase while traveling for work in Germany, actually passed out in public, in a small market (where I'd ventured to buy something to re-hydrate myself with before getting on the return plane). Sick for weeks and weeks, lost lots of weight, etc. The phenomenon whereby you have difficulty eating something that your body associates with food poisoning (whether or not it was the culprit, and even if you didn't even have food poisoning but a viral enteritis instead) is called "bait shyness", aka "sauce bearnaise" phenomenon. You will likely eventually get over your aversion, but it can take years and years (and sometimes never).

Heh heh. Yeah, we were way outside of a Chinatown area that time in Germany. When the Chinese food smells like it contains kraut with caraway seeds (which I like in the appropriate context) then you start to worry. My husband and I still talk about that meal as a bit of bonding experience.

As a reminder from up thread, the children are 11 and 14, and well-behaved. Though they're quite good at sitting through fairly long and somewhat tedious performances (a recent two hour concert featuring Bach here on campus taken in stride) I'm looking for something a bit more upbeat this time, preferably a musical. I'm planning on eating early that evening, at Rules, so proximity (so as to make the curtain) would be an issue. [edited to add the date]

In our case our impression was that it was the result of using locally available foodstuffs (including canned items) as well as suiting the local taste. Both heavier and sweeter than we were used to, even compared to Americanized Chinese.