Tess

Two words: stuffed lobster.

I think not calling ahead and not expecting to pay a service chage is crazy, but some people are crazy. In general, it must be hard as a host or server, the way some people seem to use restaurants as their personal space. I stopped in for a late dinner at a nice place and there were a group of co-workers winding up what had clearly been a long dinner with exchanges of gifts and things. They were at a table right in the middle of the room and you couldn't hear yourself think while this was going on. I had the feeling I had accidentally crashed someone's party.

Is anyone here really saying that they exepct to be served their own cake without compensating the restaurant? I'm sure there are people who expect things like that. I agree, it's not rational, but no one's making that argument, are they? And the answer to your question is, yes. I've owned a retail business, sports equipment, and people did expect us to do all kinds of things for free. I'm sure that happens to people in all businesses.

Tofu, quickly pressed, pan-fried with available vegetables and soy-based sauce. Fish is even better but I always have some tofu around. If you don't mind eating leftovers, you can do a lot by cooking extra. I have a lot of meals based on leftover baked potatoes )and skins of same-- someone in this house doesn't eat the skins). Also, when we roast corn on the cob I make a lot extra. Stuff like that. I put the potatoes or whatever else in a dish with other vegetables and top with some cheese or cut-up meat and herbs and either dress like a salad or run under the broiler.

Agreed about the various food blogs, now including bilrus's (although that was not officially a blog). I absolutely love theme threads like "Japanese Spaghetti," especially when they have plenty of pictures.

I don't have the book, but this has really inspired me to do something father out of my culinary comfort zone! Thank you so much for this and for the detailed rundown at the end. It was really helpful.

Thanks for answering my query! What you say is pretty much what I've suspected; the system seems to upset people but it's not going to change. And people were still perfectly free to tip less than 20%, last time I heard. If they are upset about tipping 15%, maybe the restaurant isn't really in their comfort zone. The other thing is, even if the US adopted the system of some other countries and abolished tipping, you'd still have to pay for your food and service one way or the other. I don't see how it would come out much cheaper on average than what the cost of the meal plus a reasonable tip is, unless they started to do things to reduce their total profits. Reducing the total cost of a meal by specifically reducing what the server gets, as these calls to abolish tipping often seem to suggest, is about the silliest way I can think of.

Yes, those are bodacious morels. Can't wait to see what's next!

What I don't get here is why a difference of 5 percentage points on the tip would make a really considerable difference in your ability to dine out or your sense that it's a reasonable expense. The whole cost of going to a restaurant is inflated in a sense. You've got huge markups on wine most of the time. You pay to have the food prepared for you. Basically from the minute you walk in the door you pay a lot of money to have people do stuff for you. Why should the server be any different? As I understand it, tips are how they get paid. So if the whole amount including a decent tip is too much for you, the restaurant is too expensive for you. I would really be interested in the views of experienced people in the industry like Food Tutor. (Sorry to single you out, but you come to mind.) Would a no-tipping system in the US be better for everyone? I've heard comments here and there but never a complete rundown. If it were better I would gladly go along with it, but at the moment tipping is the system. Questioning the whole system seems like kind of a red herring when you're debating proper percentages. Personally, I tip 20% (after tax) almost every time. But then, I tend to eat at places where 20% is hardly more than $20, so I can afford it. I did give 25% the other day at a small French bistro. The place was slammed and the usual host wasn't there. The person who was hosting was not doing a good job and the server was run off his feet. He cheerfully acknowledged that we had been made to wait and he comped us two quite nice glasses of wine. And then, I'm ashamed to say we pushed at the end to get out of there. All in all, I wanted to make sure it was obviously a good tip. So, yes, when I leave a big tip I guess I'm compensating for something but I thought I should.

I make chai a lot and always get compliments on the smell. Making some and offering it to drink might not be a bad idea. I have to say, though, I find sweet baking smells kind of a turn-off if I'm not cooking the stuff myself or getting ready to eat it. If I were showing a house, I would probably invest in some good kitchen candles to dispel any scents from my adventurous cooking, and possibly light some other high-quality candles elsewhere in the house. (I'm a fan of Aveda candles and have a couple of citrus candles from Williams-Sonoma in the kitchen.) Strangely, the most compliments I ever got on the smell of my house were when I tried to reduce red wine too quickly on my stove and burned it! Not going to do that intentionally, however.

90%? I would have to say that your experience is unusual, if that number is for real. I'm not sure what the term "foodie" means to you, but if you mean people who cook fairly seriously and go to restaurants for the food experience, the ones I know are not more overweight than the others, as a group. The nutritional content of any particular recipe someone may share here is less important than their overall food consumption of the day or the week. The chefs I know happen to look like they're normal weight; same with most of the people I see in cooking classes.

I think the article is blatantly sexist. The writer admits: "If their roles were reversed -- if Francine were a man of her generation -- she'd be perfectly unremarkable, of course. No one would make jokes, there'd be no blueberry sculpture or fake fur apron." But that's just lip service because it's still written as if she's a bizarre character, and they wouldn't be writing about a man that way. I do feel sad because a lot of women that age (and considerably younger) were raised with screwed-up relationships with food, expected to stay unrealistically thin while spending an awful lot of time shopping and cooking. That combination makes some people crazy and I can well understand someone wanting to just get out from under the whole preoccupation with food. It does seem a pity to go to good restaurants and eat the same thing over and over, but a lot of people do that.

It looks as if it's labeled as a letter, rather than an editorial, which seems to me like less of an edorsement of the views expressed. I agree, many people would do that for a friend. It seemed quite unexceptionable to me except for that tiny paragraph at the end, because the tastelessness was (as pointed out above) in what T. said.

Print up new menus? ← Aren't they working with paper menus anyway? I agree with the pickle idea, and other stuff (salad, soup) ordered for a surcharge.

That's a cool list. When I don't broil wings in hot sauce, I braise them in my large covered frying pan with dry(ish) madeira and some white wine. (A chicken marsala recipe will do for the braising liquid; just substitute madeira. Omit any mushrooms; use lemon, shallots and garlic. I mix the madeira half and half with white wine; you could use all madeira but it will be quite a thick and rich sauce.) Don't cook them until they fall apart. This recipe can be done with very little fat; just brown the meat well at the outset and drain before you start adding wine. I actually use wing segments or just drummettes for this because whole wings are hard to cram into the frying pan.

What's harmful about grilled meat in a flour tortilla dressed with fresh salsa? Other than that I agree that chain food is mostly crap in terms of health. ← La Salsa saved my life during one nightmare week at the Riviera in Las Vegas. The grilled mahi mahi tacos were quite good. At times it's really a challenge to find that that not only doesn't taste nasty but also isn't horribly unhealthy, if you're having to eat like that for several days in a row. La Salsa is really a pretty decent option, I think. I wish we had them in the Midwest. Baha Fresh doesn't seem quite as good to me, and anyway they are closing down a bunch of them out here. (I wonder why that is? The one near us always seemed to be packed with customers.)

The sparseness reminds me-- I married a professional athlete, and he and all his friends had a tendency to subject guests to whatever weird phase of dieting they were in at any given time. You might get something like a piece of fish baked with lemon juice and nothing else, or just a salad with no dressing. The problem was, everyone always seemed to be on a different diet. And then if they didn't happen to be dieting, they were eating the world. You might get fried sausages and fried spaghetti topped with pesto, and ice cream for dessert. It was almost literally feast or famine with these people, and it was hard to guess which. One of the first times we had dinner guests over (before we were married) my husband persuaded me to serve nothing but salad. As soon as I put the salad out, one of the other guys said, "I'll have the salad with my main course." But I didn't have one! After that I always served normal food and let the dieters sort themselves out.

Highly doubtful that it was invented in the UK. Hawaii or California. ← Or Japan? Or is tuna tataki an import from the US to Japan?

I hate the cutesy and unnecessary tip jars. (The person who checks your ID to go into a club does not deserve a tip for that, in my book.) Tip jars do make sense to me in places where you pick your food up at a counter and carry it to a table. I think if someone makes you a cappucino or whatever, they deserve a tip. Also, if they clear the tables for you, that's partial service; they deserve some kind of a tip and a jar is a secure way to do that. I was just in a Corner Bakery getting a bowl of soup and I actually asked the guy, "Where's your tip jar?" They don't have them. That meant I had to leave the tip under my soup plate for the bus boy. The place is a zoo and anybody could steal cash tips off the table. Next time I suppose I could use a credit card and put a tip on that.

Oh, yes. Three different people have given me that one. It was kind of a fun read, anyway. The ones I never use are those charity and other group cookbooks. My mother had a bunch of the Junior League type ones from the 70s and 80s. My favorite was called the Forum Cookbook. Almost every recipe seemed to call for a bottle of salad dressing or something, and a lot of them had comments like, "Takes five minutes; your guests will think it took hours." "Soooo easy." Not that I mind easy recipes, but it was funny. Reading those cookbooks always made me feel like I'd had about 5 vodka gimlets.

Where do you get that? With respect, you may know a lot about cooking but you seem to know zip about journalism.

Hopefully, the future YOU will not resort to calling people stupid and fat when they disagree with you. Because I agree with you on one point: it is all about the right to have an opinion-- on both sides. And you do your own opinion a disservice when you express yourself like T. did. Also, RT said, "*It's* a little hypocritical." He didn't even say, "CT is a hypocrite." He was passing a judgment on that particular move by CT, not on the man more generally. Small bit of wording but I think it's significant.

I don't think it's as simple as that. You can keep and them and kill them relatively humanely, or not. I don't mind killing animals to eat them but I certainly see the point of minimizing cruelty when feasible. Not that I'm educated enough about foie gras to pronounce on it, specifically. I don't make a habit of eating it anyway; I just don't like it enough to bother.

Have you tried this on tuna? I like misoyaki but I find that it's better with a fish whose texture absorbs it-- and a fish that you cook most or all the way through. I tried it with opah once, and the marinade didn't really get into the fish at all. It made a crust that was fairly tasty but not enough for the effort or the ingredients. I feel as if the same thing might happen with tuna.

I thought maybe he was accusing him of being a lush. Don't you get a fatty liver from drinking alcohol? Either way, I think his comments are really inappropriate and some of the worst I've ever heard from a professional in a professional situation.