Tess

That's easy. My SO doesn't like raw fish and doesn't care to see a lot of it around the kitchen. He is not terribly pleased when I cook any fish at home, for that matter. As soon as he hits the road I go to Mitsuwa and stock up. A raw fish course and a cooked fish course for dinner every night, just me and my bulldog.

I think expressions such as "conversate" have a certain rhetorical purpose. They don't sound prim like "converse" or long-winded like "have a conversation." If you stick to plain words like "talk" you sound like you've been reading Strunk and White. There are times when people want to be playful. It may not be to someone's taste, but it's not completely pointless and the people who use these expressions are not unaware that others exist. (Plus, if you bust people for using back-formations like "conversate" you run into the problem of criticizing something languages have been doing forever.) To keep this somewhat on-topic, Alan Wong's comment (quoted int he profile) reminded me that "sourcing" doesn't just refer to finding stuff but, in a restaurant for example, to the assortment of different sources you choose to get your foods from: so many local, so many imported, so many organic, etc.

Alan Wong (Honolulu) calls it "foraging." He's quoted in a profile in the October 2005 issue of Santé magazine: "Now, an important part of my job is being the forager who get to work with the farmers closely." Author Robert Wemishner elaborates: "Proudly, he points to the radical change in sourcing food supplies for restaurants on the islands. 'Now we import from the mainland only 20 percent of what we use in the restaurants...'"

I'd be interested.

I think that's a really cool setup. It really bothers me in a restaurant (or any place of business) to see some people working their butts off while other people are standing around doing nothing. I understand the problems with reciting prices, too. Among other things I think it would make the list a lot harder to memorize and mistakes easier to happen.

I do think the bar owners should be making the call. Have a policy and stick to it so that patrons know what to expect and if they want to avoid kids, they will know whether your place is for them. I have to say, though, when I was in graduate school and people started procreating, a few of them would bring their tiny babies along with them everywhere. Once the kids could walk and/or they had more than one of them, not so much. But I don't remember a lot of problems caused by babes in arms in adult environments.

If this show is anything like Project Runway, it will be fantastic entertainment. I never miss an episode of PR, and I hate "reality" TV.

One of my grandmothers was unsafe at any speed in the kitchen. She made stuffed potatoes by baking potatoes, scooping out the insides and throwing them away, and filling them with mashed potatoes from a box. Many times as a kid I tried to persuade her not to get toast out of the toaster by sticking a fork in while it was still plugged in and switched on. The other was a fantastic cook. She had lots of help in her house, including a cook, but she did the meal planning and kind of employed the cook as a sous-chef. She pretty much cooked all day long; we have her diaries and she wrote obsessively about shopping and cooking. No idea how she got interested; no one in her family knew their way around a kitchen, I don't think. Her food was eclectic but almost all very rich and heavy. There was eggplant stuffed with sausage, roast game birds, homemade jams, jellies and grape juice, and the most incredible bread, rolls and cookies. I think she used lard to shorten some of those cookies. It was kind of sad because her husband was a drunk and usually just passed out at the table; I don't think he noticed what she cooked or even that she cooked, possibly. She didn't entertain very much either, because of said husband. At least she had a lot of children and grandchildren to appreciate her food.

I got to spend one summer touring Greece a few years ago. I remember wonderful smoked fish in a casual restaurant in Ioannina; huge white mulberries sold in paper cones by a woman on the street near Olympia; amazing sugar plums given to us with tea in a fabric store in Metsovo. Greek yogurt is about 10 times better in Greece than anywhere else. We didn't do any fine dining and I wasn't interested enough in restaurants at that point to write things down. It seemed like everything was good. The only minus I can remember is some goat in Metsovo that was boiled and looked and tasted like they'd put it through a washing machine. I try to cook Greek food at home in the US-- we made an OK rabbit stifado once-- but it doesn't taste the same somehow. Some of my favorite restaurants in the Chicago area do it better, but I still need to get back to Greece and eat there.

Thanks, that's interesting. If I already suspected someone was Bruni, that voice would nail it for me.

I'm a little surprised that (assuming anonymity is still a goal they are shooting for at NYT) they would give away what his voice sounds like-- not terribly distinctive but not like just anyone's-- for that little bit of multimedia fun.

Just adding my congratulations and good luck! Similar experience here: I gained weight for a few months even while watching my diet, but then after a while it started coming off again. Nicotine was a very effective weight-loss drug for me and it was never again easy to diet after I quit; on the other hand working out became a lot easier. As I recall, the first two weeks were really difficult and then it got markedly easier.

Now I'm picturing meat-infused vodka. The jars with pieces of fish, bacon and organ meats could look quite festive.

That would be my idea of heaven. Not sure I would serve it to an unsuspecting guest though.

Where I live, it is common for people of all ages to be asked for ID. Making a fuss about it just wastes everyone's time. Multiply that by the number of times food servers have to deal with it and I can understand why they get defensive. I would have either shown ID or been forthcoming in explaining that I didn't intend to drink.

Yeah, most cocktails with savory ingredients seem to have a sweet element as well. Herbal liqueurs tend to be sugary. Even Bloody Marys have a sweet element thanks to the tomato. Still, celery juice is promising, as is cucumber-- like that great juice you get when you salt and grate cucumbers. I have thought of making drinks that are sweet + salty by putting salted preserved plums in sake or something. Wasn't there something called a Bullshot made with beef broth? I think the concept of the oster shooter could be extended eg by making a drinkable ceviche in a glass with alcohol and a small amount of solid ingredients. Fishy-tasting drinks seem appealing to me.

At a middle-level place, I find a sure sign things will not go well is when some people are working their butts off and others are standing around. If it looks like everyone is working the same, you will probably be OK. But at a level where you don't have super-professional servers the management had better be active. We go to a sports bar sometimes where we know the service will always be bad even though the servers seem very nice. Where's the manager? Standing around near an entrance gabbing with somebody, every time. Dead giveaway.

Does beer with peanuts in it count? What about oyster vodka shots? (love those.) I like savory vodka infusions like cucumber and cilantro, wasabi, etc. I don't usually mix them with much, though. Some new ideas would be nice.

If someone's made a cappucino for me I think they deserve a tip. I give them the change from my $5 bill which is usually a dollar and change. If I'm just buying something and they are only handing it over, the change in coins goes in the cup unless it's a pathetic amount and then I might give them a buck. If I'm a regular at the place, being known as a tipper gets me good service. I think the jars are smart, too. A lot of people will drop their small change in them just to avoid having to put it away, and that can add up. However, I feel there is no need to tip the person who checks your ID to get into a club just because they put out a tip jar. Tipping is for service.

Agreed. Especially with salads.

I think this was a good piece to write, if not maybe for the expected reasons. I'd like to hope some people will recognize their own behavior towards waiters here. That guy who made him repeat the specials over and over while turning and talking to his companion could have been a boss of mine who used to act like he was ready to order and then change him mind. One server came back six times that I counted. He thought that was cute.

I think he tends to use a "this intrepid reporter" type of tone which gives a gee-whiz sense to everything he writes about even when he is not pretending to be original.

There aren't really that many Polish restaurants in the Chicago area, especially considering the number of Polish familes we've got here. Polish food is defintely stereotyped as heavy. I think Mexican food (like a lot of takeout Chinese) is often imagined to be less heavy than it is, but still, you can usually get several entrees that are not breaded and fried. If you are trying to eat light, Polish food is more difficult that Mexican. And if you're just kidding yourself about trying to eat light, Mexican is much, much easier to kid yourself with. (I am also sure there are people going to places like Takkatsu and having a fried pork cutlet and thinking they are eating light because hey, japanese food is light.) I like Kuhn's deli too. Very nice selection of merchandise as well as prepared foods.

This may be stating the obvious, but another thing you can do as a student is spend a year or a semester "abroad" (do they still put it that way?) Some programs require a concentration in the right language but some do not. That's a huge opportunity and something that's much harder to do once you are out of school.

Jumer's certainly exists as an empire in the Quad Cities area. I don't recall the restaurants being all that German as far as the cuisine though. More like your standard "upscale" Midwestern dining. I ate at the Jumer's Lodge in Bettendorf or wherever several times and it was fun with the hunting-lodge type atmosphere but I thought the food was just OK. Maybe someone can correct me; it's been a few years.